HC Deb 19 October 1943 vol 392 cc1320-52
Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, South)

I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to his Majesty praying that the Defence (Fire Guard) Regulations, 1943, presented to this House on 30th June, 1943, be annulled. As the Home Secretary knows, this is not a hostile Motion. Its purpose is to obtain a discussion on this Defence Regulation and, still more, on the subsidiary Orders made under it which have, naturally, aroused great interest. Apart from the Defence Regulation there have been consequential Orders, which are numbered 1043, 1044 and 1048. There are two matters to which I want to refer before I get down to the subject-matter. It was my privilege as Chairman of the Special Inquiries Sub-Committee of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, to carry out an inquiry into the National Fire Service and in our report which was presented to Parliament on 23rd July, 1942, our last recommendation was that the possibility of bringing fire guards under the operational control of the National Fire Service should be carefully studied. Our recommendation was not too precise because we realised that, to a substantial extent, the fire guard administration organisation had to be a local authority function, but I would be grateful if the Home Secretary would tell us to what extent he feels there is a proper operational link between the National Fire Service and the fire-guard organisation. We realise that they cannot be the same organisation, because there has to be a local authority organisation in connection with the domestic premises and the busi- ness premises Orders and it would overload the National Fire Service to ask them to perform that function.

Later, the same Sub-Committee looked into the problem of the payment of fire guards and a report was presented to Parliament on 15th April, 1943. It was referred to in the Debate on Civil Defence some time ago but I will briefly state the facts. No one knows the figure with complete accuracy, but there are about 5,000,000 people undertaking fire-guard duties and every night one-seventh of them, 750,000, are on duty. Of that 3,000,000 about 100,000 are under special arrangements. The ordinary person gets nothing. That is true of a good many of the domestic fire guards. A certain number get a subsistence allowance, generally 3s. a night, or a little more during the long winter nights. Another lot are paid wages for fire-guard duties. I am no.1, talking about full-time fire guards to whom it is a sole occupation and who do it every night but the man and woman who does 48 hours a month and is paid wages for it. Some of these people are paid up to 2s. an hour--that was the maximum.

In our Report we made a slight slip because we said that difficulties which had arisen were purely local and concerned only individual firms and that was not quite true. There are national arrangements certainly in the milling industry and I think in the printing industry and another which I forget, and the milling industry has drawn attention to the fact that the statement to which I refer did not quite represent the facts. These arrangements were made at a time when an obligation was imposed on the occupiers of premises to have fire guard arrangements and when there was no corresponding obligation on citizens to undertake fire-guard duties. In the result, we have 4,900,000 persons doing a civic duty, and about 100,000 being paid, in many cases at handsome rates. This is a cause of great discontent among those who do the work voluntarily. Neither the trade unions nor the employers want to stop it. The trade unions negotiated the terms in many cases and their members would be discontented, and the employers do not want any trouble and do not worry, because in nearly every case they are the recipients of handsome profits which would be paid over to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and this comes out of E.P.T. But it is important to note that the State is being exploited to the tune, as far as I can guess, of £4,000,000 a year paid to a narrow aristocracy of 100,000 fire guards. What the rest are doing is a civic duty and the sub-committee were unanimous—and not only the sub-committee but the Select Committee—that this state of affairs should be brought to an end. I hope the Home Secretary will be able to tell us what is happening.

Since I put down this Motion I have had a mass of correspondence. Some of it I did not agree with at all. Some people thought compulsory fire watching was wrong but I think we cannot help having a compulsory Order. I think that is inevitable for a great task requiring 5,000,000 people. In its scope, it is almost bigger than National Service, because I very much doubt whether 5,000,000 people have been called up to the Armed Forces in addition to those who joined voluntarily. This matter affects potentially the general mass of people in this country who are not in the Forces, and there is a great deal of anxiety as to whether tribunals will take into account and give adequate consideration to the personal difficulties which arise in many cases. There is considerable nervousness about the attitude of the hardship tribunals largely because, judging by the letters I received, some of these tribunals are not as sympathetic as they might be and sometimes not so courteous to the people who appear before them. The main body of criticism I have received does not concern the Defence Regulation but the three documents to which I have referred. They are lengthy documents and because people did not understand them—or because somebody did not understand them—an Explanatory Memorandum of 71 pages was issued by the Home Secretary. This is all the more irritating because paper is short, ink is scarce and the type is so abominably small that it is a weariness of the flesh to read it. I think a good deal of the criticism was directed primarily not to the Order itself but to the explanation of the Order.

I shall be brief because we have started the Debate much later than was expected and I want the Home Secretary to have as much time as possible to explain his Explanatory Memorandum. An hon. Member here has handed me a letter which he received from the proprietors of a well-known paper, the "Dundee Courier." It says: Enclosed is copy of one of new fire-guard forms. Dundee has been very cross about this, and I think the Home Secretary may have heard a mouthful when he was there recently.

Our firm will have zoo and more to fill up with detail particulars we have to hunt, while formerly four forms, easily filled up, covered the job. It is bureaucracy at its worst, for behind it all are threats and bullying. I do not know whether that is true or not, but this letter is written by a Mr. D. C. Thomson. It is rather a lot of stuff to fill up. I registered for fire watching in Westminster and I did not fill up anything like so much, and there is a danger that we may have too much paper used.

There is a constitutional issue that I want to raise. When the new Orders were published there appeared in the Press a statement that Members of Parliament who thought they would not be able to perform their duties if required for fire watching, could apply to the Home Secretary and he would grant them a certificate of exemption. I was rather worried about that, because the privileges of Members of Parliament are not personal to a Member. Our privileges are intended to enable us to perform our duties to our constituents and so are privileges given to the constituents. I believe that, constitutionally, no officer of His Majesty can direct a Member of Parliament to do something which interferes with his duties here. I believe that, constitutionally, every Member of Parliament is exempt from the National Service Act, whether the Home Secretary issues a certificate or not. I do not believe the Home Secretary has a right, constitutionally, to issue those certificates, because presumably he has not the power to order a Member of Parliament to fire watch in circumstances which may prevent his attendance here. I would advise hon. Members to get from the Library the Report of the Select Committee on the Secret Service Act which was presented in 1939. It is the latest statement on what are the privileges of Members of Parliament. I believe that if the Home Secretary or the Minister of Labour were to issue a direction to a Member of Parliament which in any way interfered with his attendance here, that Minister would be guilty of contempt of Parliament. I just want to put that on record. I am not blaming the Home Secretary. I know that he had the best legal advice, namely that of the Attorney-General, but I believe that the Attorney-General was wrong in his constitutional view. I believe that it is of the utmost importance that we should make it clear that no Minister is entitled to stop a Member of Parliament from doing his duty.

There is a good deal of day-time fire-watching. I regard it as a complete waste of time. There may be odd places where it is worth while, but I know that in the office buildings where I have an office—Abbey House, at the bottom of Victoria Street—a number of clerks have to attend all Saturday afternoon, for what purpose I do not know. People are passing thought the street and plenty of the population are about, and if an incendiary fell on a building it would be seen quickly and notice could be given to the fire brigade. It is a waste of time. People are continually being irritated and burdened unnecessarily. I cannot see the Germans risking large raids on this country in day-time. I should be very reluctant if I were a German pilot to come over this country in day-time—although they did wake me up at 8 o'clock in the morning recently, but that was on a Sunday, which perhaps explains it.

We must not over-insure. The whole art of strategy is to balance your risk. The man-power employed on fire-watching is equal to the whole of the man-power in the coal mining industry; 750,000 people are engaged every night in fire-watching and they are getting bored. They are doing nothing, but just hanging about. We are boring, irritating and burdening people at a time when they have plenty of other burdens, and I hope that day-time fire-watching will be restricted as far as possible. If we can only develop aeroplanes enough, there will be nobody left to fight in the armies. That is a very important consideration. I see that Air Marshal Peck gave an estimate that there were 1,000,000 people in Germany in antiaircraft and fighter squadrons, engaged in the defence of Germany against our attacks. If you add to that the whole-time A.R.P. organisation and the balloon barrage in Germany, the total number of people immobilised in Germany and the satellite countries is in the neighbourhood of 2,000,00o. The number of Germans fighting on the Russian Front is 2,500,000, but the mere possibility and the fact of air raids can immobilise a force equivalent to the whole army fighting on that front. That is one of the most extraordinary things in the world.

I have made a calculation, but I will not indulge in it now. I have tried it on one or two people and they did not disagree with me. The Germans have a larger area to defend than we have, and that is the most gigantic second front that we have ever thought of—large numbers of people compelled to do nothing. It is one of the strangest things that the war has brought about. How far are we to insure? We may insure ourselves so much that we destroy our productive capacity in other directions and lose more than we gain. I hope that the Home Secretary will be able to make some comment on that point, although to some extent it is outside his Departmental purview—although it is within his purview as a member of the War Cabinet. How much of this can we have? I hope we can get the explanations for which so many people are looking. I have not sought to be critical but just to draw attention to one or two points which I thought were of sufficient importance to be raised in Debate.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison)

I thought it might be for the convenience of the House if I were to speak now, not with the slightest view of closing the Debate. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is here. She is very expert on this matter, perhaps more expert than I am, and she will be very willing and perfectly competent to reply to any further observations that may be made in the course of the Debate. The hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams) has been very reasonable in what he has said and exceedingly brief, and I am grateful to him for the care he has taken to leave me as much time as I thought appropriate to reply to his observations. Certainly I have not the slightest complaint either of the contents or the tone of what my hon. Friend said about these Orders.

In this matter we are dealing with the leisure time of millions of our fellow citizens. Therefore the task is bound to be a very big one, a little explosive, liable to get one into trouble and to cause a certain amount of friction. The task whichis involved in this organisation is enormous; it is nothing less than the protection against fire bombs and up to a point the extinction of fires that have begun, in the great bulk of, nearly all, the buildings of the country over vast areas. As a consequence, the amount of detailed organisation which is involved is very great, If I may take a political analogy which hon. Members will understand, I would ask them to call to mind the enormous amount of work involved in the canvassing of the electorate for a General Election, the distribution of literature and the chasing of voters to come to the poll. I will not say that this is as bad as that, because it is not quite so scientific and not so detailed, but they are in the same category. This is one of the pieces of administration and organisation in connection with the war in which there is an extraordinary amount of detail. Every square yard of by far the greater part of our built-up areas has to be covered. At the same time we are dealing with the liberties and to some extent with the comfort of millions of free British citizens. Clearly it is a task of the greatest magnitude and of considerable difficulty.

is involved in this organisation is enormous; it is nothing less than the protection against fire bombs and up to a point the extinction of fires that have begun, in the great bulk of, nearly all, the buildings of the country over vast areas. As a consequence, the amount of detailed organisation which is involved is very great, If I may take a political analogy which hon. Members will understand, I would ask them to call to mind the enormous amount of work involved in the canvassing of the electorate for a General Election, the distribution of literature and the chasing of voters to come to the poll. I will not say that this is as bad as that, because it is not quite so scientific and not so detailed, but they are in the same category. This is one of the pieces of administration and organisation in connection with the war in which there is an extraordinary amount of detail. Every square yard of by far the greater part of our built-up areas has to be covered. At the same time we are dealing with the liberties and to some extent with the comfort of millions of free British citizens. Clearly it is a task of the greatest magnitude and of considerable difficulty.

Consequently, if it be the case that, in the course of the administration of fire prevention, there have been a fair number of changes and some evolution in the Orders, even changes of mind on the part of the Minister and the Department, it is not surprising. To a considerable extent we have had to learn as we go. I am rather proud of the fact that we were willing and anxious to learn as we went. Consequently there had to be ohanges. I believe, and the Parliamentary Secretary thinks too, that we have now reached substantial finality on the essential organisation of the fire guard, but we may be wrong. In the course of the administration of the present Orders we may find imperfections, and it would be foolish and obstinate on our part if we did not contemplate amending them. I can only say that we have done our best in the spirit of two things. One is that the country must not burn. If it did, that would be a grave injury to the war effort. Everybody accepts the doctrine that the country must not bum down; even the people who have objected really agree that the job has to be done. The second thing is, to be as considerate, sensible and reasonable as possible in dealing with these millions of our fellow citizens, realising that they have had a fair amount of strain and that the longer the war goes on the more that strain must be taken into account. It is in that spirit of great determination to get the job done, combined, I hope, with such a degree of sweet reasonableness as we can muster in administering it, that we have sought to administer this vast piece of organisation.

My hon. Friend asked whether I thought we had now got a proper operational link between the fire guard and the National Fire Service. In a useful survey which the Select Committee on National Expenditure published, coming from a Sub-Committee presided over by my hon. Friend, there was an exceedingly valuable report in connection with the fire service. One of the proposals they made was that there should be a greater operational tie-up between the National Fire Service and the fire guard. There were some critics who said indeed that the whole fire guard administration from top to bottom should be taken over by the National Fire Ser- vice. I think that was going too far. The National Fire Service is one of which I am very proud. I do not say that it is perfect. I think it is a pretty good show, but to land all the vast detail of fire guard organisation on to the National Fire Service, some of whose officers, quite frankly, are rather better at fighting fires than they are at detailed organisation—although some of them are very good at detailed organisation as well as at fighting fires—would have broken it down. They could not have done it. We preferred to do it in other ways.

We did accept the doctrine that there should be an operational tie-up between the National Fire Service and the fire guard. That is the reason for what is known as the fire guard plan, in which there is provided the most close cooperation between the two services. That is one of the reasons for the fire guard Orders being published at a later period than would otherwise have been the case. I think I can say that my answer to my hon. Friend's question is that there is now a proper, reasonable and adequate operational association between the National Fire Service and the fire guard; but we will watch it as it goes, and if we should find tat further adjustment or further integration is necessary and appropriate, we shall not hesitate to learn and to make such adjustments as may be needed.

My hon. Friend referred also to the vexed and difficult question of what he called the wages paid to the fire guards, but what I would call allowances. They are not wages under my doctrine. So far as I am concerned, they may be regarded as subsistence allowances but not wages. To that matter we have given a great deal of the most careful attention. Fire guarding has a long and tortuous history. It began under the doctrine, I think at the beginning of the war, or perhaps before the war started—I was not there, anyhow —that there was an obligation on an occupier to see that his premises were guarded against enemy attack by incendiary bombs. It stopped there. Consequently many occupiers proceeded to employ people on something like a full-time basis for wages. The wages varied in the extreme, and I must say, if rumours and stories were true, that some of the time rates plus piece rates were on an extraordinarily high level. That was the beginning. Then it became clear that that was not enough. All the occupiers could not find people for these jobs as the labour shortage developed. Then they proceeded to enter into agreements with the trade unions for the payment of a sum per night or per stretch or per hour, which in some cases came to full wages per hour, or estimated wages on piece rates, plus overtime rates—in an extreme minority of cases; I do not want to put it higher than it is—varying down to sums which nevertheless were higher than the allowances which the Government subsequently recognised.

All this was done with the best will in the world. People had to make their fire-guard arrangements as best they could before the issue of compulsion was raised and dealt with. Consequently, by the time I came to face the fire blitz of the winter of 1940–41—which did not start in full blast straight away; it was rather a matter of high explosives at first—I could see, and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary could see, that if we did not bustle about we might be gravely injured in the war by valuable establishments being burned down. Therefore we said we had got to transform this system of professional employment of restricted numbers of workpeople engaged under particular agreements between employers and workpeople into a mass affair. That is to say, fire-guard work had got to become mass service instead of selective work. So 1 broadcast, and the result was very encouraging. Vast numbers of people responded. They were particularly willing to do duty in residential areas, but they were a bit more sticky about duty in the places where they worked. Their response was very fine, and I shall never cease to be grateful to the British people for the kindness and consideration they have extended to me. Despite all the bricks I have had thrown at me, I think that on the whole I was treated pretty well in regard to this voluntary effort. Not only did I get a substantial response, but the number of volunteers rose to enormous figures.

Inevitably, however, it was not long before the volunteers looked down the street in which they lived and over the factory where they worked, and they saw a proportion of people not doing the job at all. Very quickly they brought pressure to bear upon the Government, and the Press did the same. They said, "Don't fool about with this job. It has got to be done. If you have got to get us to do it, then let us have all-round compulsion in the fire-guard service." And they were right. I saw that the Government had to come to a quick decision, and in consultation with my colleagues I got authority to go ahead with compulsion.

It was done pretty rapidly, but, believe me, the Government have got to do things pretty rapidly in critical circumstances of that kind. That is the story. Subsequently, we had to determine what was to be the standard rate of allowance, and broadly the standard rate of allowance was 3s. per night, with 4s. 6d. for a somewhat longer period and 6s. for a still longer period. It varied in accordance with the length of duty and was laid down in the fire-guard Orders. The Government saw at that time that there might be trouble about these special payments—I had got plenty of trouble of my own just then—and one grievance was that there had not been longish consultation either with employers or with trade unions. That was true. We arranged what consultations we could, but we were in a hurry and the war was in a hurry, and rightly or wrongly, the Government took the view that we had better leave things as they were; that existing arrangements, or, as I believe they are called in other circles, existing contracts, had better be left where they were, and that for the rest the people would have to be compelled to do the job on standard allowances. It was very understandable, exceedingly British, but, I admit, all very illogical.

The Select Committee has examined this matter, and my hon. Friend as Chairman of a Sub-committee has presented a Report. The first Report is a very nice one and a very useful one. The second Report was very nice, and I am not going to say that it was not a useful one, but it presented me with a bit of a headache when I got it. I said to myself, "Now you are up against it." The Committee presented its Report on the basis that if the Government laid fire guard service down as one of the duties and obligations of a citizen, if they laid it down as a duty of civic service and not to be done as employment for wages or for any personal advantage, they should make a sort of subsistence or out-of-pocket allowance, not by way of remuneration, but in order to see broadly that people were not out of pocket by doing this duty. The Committee said it was wrong that some citizens should only get 3s. subsistence allowance while others got varying, higher rates of remuneration amounting in a minority of cases to full wages and even overtime rates. In short, the hon. and Conservative Member for South Croydon presented me with the Socialist argument of social service.

I will be perfectly frank. I cannot answer the Socialist sentiments of the hon. Member for South Croydon. They are unanswerable arguments. Once this job is put on the basis of compulsory civic service, it is wrong that some should get subsistence rates and others should get remuneration for what they do. I can only defend it on grounds of expediency. If it is put on the basis of equalitarian Socialist justice, I think he is right, and I do not dispute it. I only say that on the ground of expediency this was the best we could do in the circumstances. We have been in consultation with a body which we set up after the disturbance in connection with the fairly quick imposition of compulsion, namely, the National Advisory Council for Fire Prevention, which has been a most useful body to me in the administration of the Orders and the shaping of the organisation. The employers' bodies are on it, the Trade Union Congress is on it, local authorities are represented, the Co-operative movement is represented, the Regional Commissioners are represented, and there are some others on the body as well. It is the case that at the time or round about the time compulsion was introduced we, the Government, the employers and the unions, issued a joint declaration agreeing that the existing contracts should continue, that these special payments should continue to be made.

Therefore it was right when we came to consider the Select Committee's Report that I should go to the Advisory Council and ask them what their views were and give them an indication of mine. It is fair, I think, to the employers and the trade unions that I should tell the House that the view that was expressed, not only by the Trades Union Congress, not only by the employers but by both employers and the Trades Union Congress, was that this honourable undertaking having been entered into by the Government, the employers and the Trades Union Congress at the beginning of compulsion, the old existing agreements between employers and employed should continue, that it would not be right or proper for the Government now to bring them to an end, that it would cause a good deal of friction in industry, and that at the end we should lose more than we gained over the standardisation which we had under consideration. Therefore the employers have not pressed me to cut these payments. I agree with the hon. Member that it is not irrelevant that E.P.T. in many cases creates a situation in which the employer in fact is paying them out of the Treasury indirectly. However, I do not suggest that they would be influenced by that consideration, but it is the case that the employers had not pressed us to make any downward change in this matter. Indeed the Trades Union Congress and the employers were both agreed that it would be a pity for the Government to interfere and that we had better leave it alone. It is only fair that that should be stated. Indeed, the employers in particular wanted me to make it clear that they were not pressing the Government to do this as a result of any attitude of meanness towards the wage rates of labour.

As we went along with the fire guard organisation we were faced with the difficulty that we had to make use of manpower as a whole and do so as equitably as we could. It was the case that certain people were evading duty by living in a non-prescribed area and working in a prescribed one. That is another matter, but there was another difficulty which was not evasion, where in a big factory the number of workpeople employed were many more than the number needed at 48 hours per month to produce the necessary degree of fire guarding. As it was distributed over all of them, it might be that they would do not 48 hours but 30, 24, or 12, even less in some extreme cases, as my hon. Friend will agree. At the same time there developed a shortage among the local authorities who had to take over the responsibility for the pooled smaller business premises and they were pressed for man-power. Consequently it was essential to decide, and it was to the credit of the Advisory Council that they with their eyes open agreed to it, that if in a big factory you take such men as are needed for 48 hours a month to fire guard it the surplus you have should go to the local authority to go into the pool or be otherwise used. When you do that it creates a new situation. You take a man out of the job where the trade union agreement for a higher rate of payment may exist, and in many cases you forcibly transfer such a man to the local authority pool where he gets the standard rate. Such a man is going to feel sore not only at having to do more hours but at getting less remuneration. That was a consideration.

The next consideration was that we were concerned with what we call block schemes. In places where there was a miscellaneous group of medium-sized factories, for example, it was advantageous to organise them or blocks of them as a unit. Therefore, the man-power had to be mixed up, and as a consequence the 3s. a night men might be mixed with others getting materially more. I saw that life was going to be increasingly difficult for someone, probably me, if men working side by side got a materially different reward or subsistence allowance. I have put this quite frankly to the Fire Advisory Council. The Government as a whole have considered it. We have come to the conclusion in principle that these unequal rates must stop, and honestly in equity I do not see what else the Government could do. I may be criticised for this, there may be argument about it, but the more you look at it, if the system is to be elastically administered as a civic service, it becomes increasingly more indefensible that men and perhaps women fire-guarding side by side should have materially different rates and compensation for the work they are doing.

Therefore, the Government as a whole, I having consulted my colleagues, have come to the conclusion that it must terminate, but in view of the history of the matter and in view of the fresh arrangements that will have to be made, and in view of the psychology of this rather difficult business, we think that good notice should be given. One of the most material parts of the change is that employers will no longer get taxation relief for any moneys they spend over and above the stipulated rates, unless of course they are employing the persons concerned on a full-time basis; otherwise they will not get tax relief after what one may call the appointed day. As far as the Government are concerned, I take responsibility on their behalf for saying that in the judgment of His Majesty's Government all these people should be treated in the same way, and we think that the same way is to give them the standard rate of subsistence allowance which is provided for in the fire guard Orders.

As regards the date on which we think this change should be operative, we have come to the conclusion that there should be proper notice in order that it should come at a time when psychologically it will work most sweetly and happily. We have come to the conclusion that we had better start it about 1st April, which is round about the beginning of double summer-time and the beginning of the Income Tax year. It seems to me that at about the period of the beginning of double summer-time people begin to take things more happily than in the middle of winter. I hope the House will agree that it is reasonable. We hope the change will be taken with more sweetness than would be the case if we were to do it now. [Interruption.] If peace breaks out, it will solve a lot of problems, including this one. That is that. I now hope for the best. I am not sure that my hon. Friend is right about the figures he mentions. He does not know, and I do not know, that the cost is £4,000,000—and I am not contradicting him—but it sounds to me a bit on the high side.

Sir H. Williams

We tried to find out from the Treasury how much they were sanctioning, but they had not the faintest idea.

Mr. Morrison

As regards relaxations, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is chairman of the Fire Prevention Operations Committee which has been dealing with that matter, and I will leave this question.to her expert hands. The Parliamentary Secretary has done a great job on fire prevention, and I should like to say here that I am exceedingly grateful to her for the expert and efficient way in which she has worked in this matter. I am a great admirer of the courage and the pluck with which she has stood up to a difficult, tricky and not always thankful task.

I will come absolutely clean about the Explanatory Memorandum. As regards the Orders, we have fewer now than we had before: the number is materially less. They are very nice reading, too; and we have rationalised and amalgamated some of them, so that they are better. I agree that it is not easy to defend an Explanatory Memorandum which was issued for the purpose of simplifying and which contains more words than the number of words in all the Orders which it explains—I am on a bad wicket—but I will try to defend it and make the best of a difficult case. First, we were in a hurry with all the applications, and people kept bobbing up with new ideas. The Press—bless their hearts—kept bobbing up with new suggestions. We held up the Memorandum to make some further improvements, and we added pages because we were having new suggestions dropped upon us by the Press. I am sure the Press would take responsibility jointly with me for the size of the Memorandum, although they have pulled my leg about it ever since.

Some of the Orders are entirely new. It is not essential that each person concerned with the administration of Orders should know everything about all the Orders. The local authorities want to know the local authority side: the business premises man wants to know the business premises side, but he may not want to know the local authorities side. Nevertheless, a document was wanted in which everything was to be found. The trade union officials, the high officers of the Government Departments, the local authority and regional officials and so on, want a document in which everything is included, so that they can pick out what they want to know, and find an answer to every question. That is the basic reason for the length of the Explanatory Memorandum. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary was rather criticised for something she said. She said that it was not a document for casual reading by every one of these millions of fire guards, but a document for the supervisory people who have to run this machine. That is true. We have supplemented this Memorandum by a series of leaflets of a simple and short character, which I am sure will be very helpful. We had not much time. We had to get it out. If I had had more time I would have referred it to that new and admirable institution in Government Departments, the Public Relations Department, with instructions to cut it down to half, and I have no doubt that when they had had a tussle with the Fire Prevention department, which would have taken weeks, they would have cut it down to half. I wish it were shorter; I am not proud of its length; but it is complete, and the people who have to administer it can find in it everything they want to know. The number of Orders now is three, dealing with local authority services, business and Government premises, and medical and hardship exemptions: previously there were 12. So we have made an extraordinary reduction in the number of the Regulations.

I ought to refer to one other matter to which my hon. Friend referred—that is, the position of the Member of Parliament. This is a matter on which I must walk warily, because the business of Privilege is tricky, and I cannot pretend to be unchallengeable or an expert upon it. But the position, as I understand it, is as follows. There is no express provision in these Orders exempting Members of Parliament. I think my hon. Friend would not wish there to be such a provision, because he would say that that was a presumption by one of the King's officers. Therefore, if the machinery were left to operate on its own, Members might find themselves required by some Civil Defence controller, fire guard officer, town clerk or what not, to do fire guard duty. The Member might say, "I am not going; I plead my Parliamentary Privilege," and then there would be an interesting situation. If I tried to make him—which I say quite freely I would not—I think the remedy for him or for me would be to say, "We are in dispute; this should go to the Committee of Privileges, which alone can determine these things." I assume—although this would be a matter for the House to decide—that a Member could disregard such a requirement if, in his judgment, it would interfere with his Parliamentary duties. I do not want to see difficulties arising between Members of Parliament and the local authorities, for the sake of both Members of Parliament and the local authorities.

I thought, as a matter of common sense, that the best thing would be if I intimated to Members of Parliament that if they told me that, in their judgment, fire guard duties would interfere with their Parliamentary duties, I would make the necessary arrangements; and then everything would go smoothly. The last thing I wanted to do was to interfere with the rights and privileges of Parliament. To avoid this question arising, the Secretary of State for Scotland and I thought it right for us to ask Members whether the carrying out of these duties would interfere with their Parliamentary duties. We agreed between ourselves that we would accept the view of the individual Member of Parliament, and take the necessary steps, as provided by the Order, to see that Members were not worried by requirements which, in their view, they would be entitled to disregard. I think that, having indicated the spirit of respect, and even of humility, with which I approached this subject, and having shown that really it was a matter of studying the convenience of hon. Members, I shall be acquitted by my hon. Friend of any wish to challenge the rights and privileges of Members of the Legislature. This being on the records of the House, I hope it will be agreed that I have not done anything to challenge the privileges of Parliament.

I have spoken at rather great length, I am afraid, and I hope that the House will now excuse me. There is a meeting which I must attend and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, who is an authority on this subject, will be exceedingly glad to deal with any other points which Members may raise.

Mr. Rhys Davies (Westhoughton)

I rise, not to enter into the Debate or to challenge these Orders, but to put a point to the Parliamentary Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman some months ago was good enough to answer a Question which I put to him, and perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to enlighten me if I remind her of what the right hon. Gentleman said. Let me say first that some men and women are willing to do fire-guard duty, and really are doing it, but because they decline to register they are prosecuted. There has been a very remarkable case in Liverpool of a minister of the Unitarian church who was actually doing all that the Home Office and the local authority required of him, but because be refused to register he was prosecuted, and sent to prison. I do not think that the State gains anything by prosecuting an individual when in fact he is performing voluntarily all that is legally required of him. This is what the right hon. Gentleman replied to me: The new Orders will provide relief to a man who though having a conscientious objection to compulsory registration is nevertheless prepared voluntarily to perform the requisite duties. I am not prepared to modify the Orders in favour of persons who refuse to undertake this duty. I think that was a fairly generous statement on behalf of the right hon. Gentleman. All I am doing is to raise on this issue, with which I have been trying to make myself familiar, the question whether these new Orders carry out the promise the right hon. Gentleman then made on the Floor of the House of Commons. That is all I want to say, and I trust that I may get a reply on that important point.

Mr. Salt (Birmingham, Yardley)

I wish to support the hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams), who moved this Prayer. I think that the answer we have received from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has justified him in moving it. I cannot really say, however, that we have had much of an answer yet to the difficulties that are being found in these Orders and particularly in the explanatory notice. Like the Mover of the Prayer, I have had many letters from people stating they cannot understand what is meant. In fact, they are more fogged by the Explanatory Memorandum than they are by the Orders. I received a letter this morning in which a gentleman said: I have always thought I could at least unravel most of these Orders and put the man details into effect but I find that these absolutely beat me despite the object of the Explanatory Memorandum. That has not been completely cleared up by the Home Secretary, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be able to give us a few more details, as I know she is entirety capable of doing so. I want to bring a rather more fundamental objection to the Orders themselves. It would appear that we are still considering the technique of 1940–41, and personally I think that the type of bombing we are likely to get at all will be of a different nature. I understand from the statement of the Minister that he is still considering that we shall have—if we get them at all—raids of a similar nature to those two years ago.

Personally—and I believe a great many others think the same—I think that one of these days we may get a raid comparable to those that we are giving to Germany night after night. If we consider the position of a great city having a 3o minutes' raid with tons of explosives coming down, we have to look at the way of meeting it from a different point of view from that of the stirrup pump and the fire-watcher. Possibly it is explained in the Order, but I would like to ask exactly what women who are fire-watching are to do when the actual raid takes place. When the siren has gone and immediately they get up—because most of them are expected to be either sleeping or lying down—what is their next work? Are they to go to the top of the building —and I am thinking of buildings in great towns—to watch out for incendiary bombs, or are they to go down the street to watch? If they do anything of the sort, if a bomb should come down, the probability is that they will never do anything further to try and put out bombs. In fact, they will be killed. If they are in the street, they are risking danger not only from bombs but from our own guns. What are they to do? I am sure that these women do not know what would be their next work. If we are going to have short but terrific raids, the stirrup pump will be ineffective; it is satisfactory and useful in the suburbs, but we have to consider rather that there should be squads of highly trained men. If women are to continue fire-watching, they should go down to the shelter until the raid is over. I see that the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary looks surprised, but they would be more use coming out of the shelter when there is a slight lull than risking being killed without being able to do anything at all.

I want the Minister to consider whether he is satisfied that the fire appliances are satisfactorily dispersed. At present in large measure they are housed in the great fire stations, and one bomb might put out of action valued apparatus which would be wanted at once. That is a question that might well be considered. I should like to feel that the Minister and his very efficient staff—and I have had the pleasure of meeting his officers, and they are as fine a body as we can possibly have—have considered the new technique, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be able to give a satisfactory answer to these points.

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes (Carmarthen)

I regret that I cannot follow the hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Salt) in his line of approach on this problem, because I decline to assume either now or at any subsequent stage in this war that the Luft-waffe will be able to impose upon this country anything like the scale of air attack that the Royal Air Force and the American Air Arm are able to impose upon Germany. I would ask the House to come back to the purpose which by publicity we were told was to 'be considered. We were told in advance particularly about the Explanatory Memorandum. I listened with great care to the hon. Gentleman the Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams), and I found that his criticisms of the Explanatory Memorandum were very mild and watery, but I must confess that I listened with far greater trepidation to the difficulties put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary for his extraordinary memoranda. I hope that in what I have to say I shall not be accused of sycophancy or of bowing to the higher authority of the War Cabinet. But we are considering a system of legislation, delegated legislation, it is true, which, as we have heard, affects many millions of our people. You have a compulsory system which is designed to provide imme- diate fire protection throughout the greater part of the country, to compel people not only to look after their own homes, which is comparatively easy, but the homes of other people. You have to compel people to look after the places where they work, which is far more difficult. They would sooner be looking after their Jhomes. Further, you have to compel them to look after places where other people work. You are, in fact, affecting 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 people in this country, their rights, liberties and leisure. You have to try and do that on a fair and equitable basis, and to erect a system of this kind must necessarily involve complicated and difficult legislation. It has taken us a little time to get it. It might have been a great advantage if we had had it a little earlier in this war, but, nevertheless, we have at last a comprehensive code.

I have read the code, and I have asked myself whether I would like to explain, first, what it meant and, secondly, how it affected and altered the existing legislation. Every lawyer in this House is familiar with what happens in legal circles or the circles of those who have to administer the law, when legislation of this comprehensive and codified kind comes into effect. The law publishers gather to themselves the best explanatory lawyers they can find and announce that, as near as may be to the time when the law comes into effect, they will publish a tome on this or that Act. They set out, Section by Section, the terms of the Act followed by explanations and cross-references stating exactly how it affects the existing legislation. That is what those who have to administer the law and the lawyer who may have to take part in a case in court look for. The publishers provide this at a price ranging from a modest 10s. to anything up to four or five guineas. I looked at the code we are now provided with and found I was assisted with an Explanatory Memorandum. Not only have I read the code, but I have read the memorandum, the first third or half of it with considerable care. I am sorry to contradict my right hon. Friend but I must say that I find it an excellent document.

Mr. H. Morrison

I did not exactly run it down.

Mr. Hughes

I did not hear the right hon. Gentleman say anything much in praise of it. He was at pains to apologise for its length. If I have one complaint about it, it is that it might very well have been a little longer. The only complaint of substance that can be brought against it, on the basis on which explanations of Statutes and Orders have hitherto found their way to the hands of the legal profession and the administrators of the country, is that, instead of selling it for anything from 10s. to five guineas, the Government are selling it for 6d. That is the price of the Explanatory Memorandum. It is, indeed, a very excellent piece of work, upon which my right hon. Friend and his advisers are to be congratulated. In saying that, I do not mean to imply that everything contained in the code is perfect. The more one studies it the more one finds small points which could be raised in almost endless numbers.

But I merely want to raise two matters. First, I regret to see that my right hon. Friend has not, even at this stage, seen fit to apply a really comprehensive code. The block system is an excellent one. I sat upon a local authority in the early stages of the war and before it, and we advocated from the very first the institution of a block system which would incorporate everyone in the block. The block system, in terms, has been accepted but, if you study the Orders, you will find that there are authorities which can declare themselves outside the right hon. Gentleman's authority. Other Government Departments are exempt. He has no compulsory powers over any other Government Department. We have been told that the Service Departments must be exempt. Operationally, it may be, but, after all, the Service Departments have a vast range of houses and buildings and offices, largely used for what may be called purely peace-time purposes and having nothing to do with operational work at all. You can study this code and you will find that the War Office has a house with a group of clerks in it and they are outside the block. The same thing applies to all the other Government Departments. It is to be charged against the right hon. Gentleman that he has not insisted that there should be, in respect of a block, one authority and one only. That is the major criticism on the general scheme.

There is another general criticism of the set-up of this scheme and the way in which it has been prepared. It may be said again that this is a lawyer's charge, but I think it is a sound one. It is wish respect to the sanction, the enforcement of its provisions. The only enforcement provision is a back reference to Part 5 of Defence (General) Regulations, 1939. That kind of draftsmanship of applying one general enforcement blanketing over the whole provisions of this elaborate scheme, is not good enough. You will not find a decently drafted Statute or Regulation that does not apply different penalties for different offences. On the one hand, you may have a contumacious refusal to perform proper fire-guard duty, a really serious offence. On the other hand, you may have a failure on the part of a co-workman to provide certain information for which, under the Regulations, his employer is entitled to ask him as to his residence. He may have put it in wrongly. In both cases they have offended the Regulations and they come against exactly the same penal provisions.

Do not let us forget that the major part of the enforcement of these Regulations lies in the hands of lay magistrates. Does not my right hon. Friend know of the difficulties that arise from the inefficiency of lay magistrates? He has had trouble enough in recent days about lay magistrates going wrong. Many of them are apt to do so. At least they could have been provided in this code with some guidance and not left at large to the provisions of Part 5 of Defence (General) Regulations, 1939, as a complete sanction for any and every provision throughout the code. However proud the right hon. Gentleman may be—though he was not so very proud of it—but however proud his advisers or the hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary may be of this edifice, which is a very well-constructed affair, I am glad to think that it is one of the things that will not give rise to any post-war problems. As soon as peace comes, however fine the edifice, it will all, I hope, fall in dust to the ground.

Mr. Ralph. Etherton (Stretford)

I want to deal with an aspect of this Order which I have raised with the Minister of Home Security before and which I was disappointed to notice he did not deal with in his speech. I refer to the injustice which is imposed on certain areas by the joint schemes which are administered by the Ministry of Aircraft Production. These schemes, which operate in certain industrial areas, impose a financial burden on firms which does not apply in any other part of the Kingdom. I understand that the Parliamentary Secretary has been looking into this matter and I shall be most interested to hear with what results, because the burden which the Ministry of Aircraft Production, for the benefit of their interests, in these areas have thought fit to impose on firms is wholly unjust and quite unequal. Indeed, the matter has got to the pitch where I notice that the auditors in the letter and certificate which they attach to the accounts of a particular civil defence executive committee for the year ended 31st August, 1943, indicate that various expenses borne by occupiers ought to be paid by the Ministry of Aircraft Production. I should like to know what the Parliamentary Secretary is proposing to do to put right this inequality for which her Department is responsible, though she or her Minister has handed over primary responsibility for the operation of these joint schemes to the Ministry of Aircraft Production. It really is time that this inequality was put right.

Sir Peter Bennett (Birmingham, Edgbaston)

I rise only to thank and to congratulate the Minister for having tackled the question of the differential rates for fire watching, and I do so because I am afraid that if the Minister were here he might look across at me and remind me that I was one of those partly responsible for these being in operation. But I should like the House to remember that in those early days in 1940, when we were being bombed, the essential thing was to get fire watchers on to the roofs and in the streets to prevent incendiary bombs doing damage. It was my duty at that time to be responsible for a very large number of factories under the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and I had to go round and persuade people that at all costs they had to get the fire watchers at work that very night. I had to send officers all over the country, when we were arguing about conditions and rules and regulations and what they were to be paid or whether they were to be paid at all. The great thing was to save buildings being burned. I prophesied that London would burn, and London did burn. I prophesied that Birmingham would burn and that Manchester would burn, because I knew there were hundreds and hundreds of establishments that had no fire watchers. I said to some of the firms on occasions, "They are coming tonight for all you know, and you have to get men on the roof to-night instead of thinking about organising and arranging something." Under those conditions all sorts of anomalies arose and they have gone on.

To-day conditions are quite different, and the Minister has shown great courage in tackling this problem. It will create a certain amount of discussion and irritation, no doubt, but I feel he has taken the right course in saying that he will cut it after a certain date. He has been very generous in waiting till after this winter and then saying, "After that date if you pay more than the standard rate you will have to bear the cost yourselves, and it will not be allowed for taxation purposes." It will ease the problem we are facing in the city I know, in which there is considerable irritation on the part of those who were in the block system, with one lot getting the standard rate and another lot being paid generously because the firm in the early days made this arrangement. I should like to congratulate the Minister and the hon. Lady for having taken this stand, and I feel sure that the workers will appreciate that it is the right course when they realise what has been done.

Mr. Edmund Harvey (Combined English Universities)

I think the House must congratulate the Home Secretary both on the way in which he has endeavoured to meet the criticisms of this Regulation and the very ingenuous and human way in which he dealt with the Explanatory Memorandum. It seems that what is really needed is a little slip to be pasted on the Memorandum, "Not for general consumption. To be taken in small doses only." I certainly think that for anyone not a lawyer who might be tempted to read the document, such advice would be a comfort, should they imagine that, by reading it, they will become masters of the whole situation.

I wondered whether I might raise two points, with which I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to deal. We all realise that the problem she has had to face is in some ways an insoluble one. You cannot get perfect justice in the very difficult conditions which have to be coped with in war-time. It has been pointed out to me how very hard it is in certain businesses where there are a large number of men that the women have no obligation to fire watch in contrast to other places where there are very few men, where women who have home ties and difficult home circumstances, have to do fire watching, while at a little distance in another firm there may be other women with no special home duties and physically capable, who have no similar obligations. I do not know whether, in any revision which is contemplated, it may be possible to reconsider that anomaly, but if so it would remove a very real sense of grievance.

The other point is the need, especially in cases of domestic hardship, of some appeal from the hardship tribunals. I had a case pointed out to me in which a married woman had to prepare all the meals for 1Ter husband, who is engaged in war work but is suffering from gastric trouble and is not able to take meals in his works' canteen. She had to rise at six in the morning and prepare his break-fast. She had to prepare his dinner to take with him, and she had to have a meal for him at 11 o'clock at night when he came back from his war work. She herself was on war work. She was not excused by tile hardship tribunal from the duty of fire watching. The Chairman simply said, "How glad you must be to sec your husband." That is the type of case where some appeal ought to be possible. In very many cases the tribunals deal perfectly satisfactorily with claims of domestic hardship, but I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will look into the possibility of some revision of the Regulations, to deal with cases like this.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Home Security (Miss Wilkinson)

I would like to deal briefly with the points that have been raised, and at a little greater length with the question of the relaxation of fire watching, because it is rather useful that the public should know about that matter, in connection with the new Orders. I should like to take the speeches one by one and answer the questions which were raised.

First there was the speech by the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies), who has apologised for having to go but who asked me to reply to his questions. He raised the question of conscientious objectors and those who refused to register. The position is that Parliament has not recognised any conscientious objection to fire guarding—which is a term I prefer to "fire watching "—as it has done to military service. Parliament has always taken the view that though it may recognise conscientious objection to the taking of life, that is a very different thing from conscientious objection to the saving of life.

But there are a number of people who have refused to register for fire guard duty. I must say that I have never yet met a conscientious objector who refused to register for his ration card, although ration cards are an integral part of the war machine. The Secretary of State is, however, most anxious that there should not be any cases, so far as he can avoid them, of what used to be known as "cat and mouse" procedure. Therefore he has taken the view that where a person is willing to do the job—that is, is willing to guard and save life and put out fires but is not willing to register—then after his first conviction he shall be deemed to have registered so that as long as he goes on doing fire-guard duties he cannot again be prosecuted. May I say, however, that this does not mean, as some conscientious objectors seem to think, that they can just go and do fire-guard duty when they feel inclined. It means that they have got to go on the rota and do the job properly. It would be absurd to prosecute a man who is doing the job.

Unfortunately, however, there are a few marginal cases, such as those to which the hon. Member for Westhoughton referred, where offences took place under the old Orders and convictions are taking place now. The difficulty is that the Ministry of Home Security is not the prosecuting authority in the sense that the Ministry of Labour is in offences of failure to register under Ministry of Labour Orders. All we can do therefore in such cases—and I want to say this very definitely on behalf of the Home Secretary—is to ask the local authorities not to prosecute again, but to work on the basis that if a man has been convicted once he shall be deemed to have registered. We cannot interfere with the rights of local authorities if they wish to prosecute for offences committed under the old Orders.

Then I come to the question raised by the hon. Member who wanted me to say, I think, that women should go to shelters when bombs fall. I would like to ask him what would have happened in the blitz if all women had gone to shelters. We all remember that magnificent work was done by women who drove ambulances. If they had not done that work, we should not have been able to get casualties to hospital. Women nurses also helped in the casualty stations. If all these women had gone to shelter, what would have happened? Then there are thousands of women wardens. Is it suggested that they should go to shelter when bombs are falling?

Mr. Salt

May I say that I was only referring to the centres of great towns and the bombing there, and that I had in mind also a blitz comparable with the attacks we are delivering in Germany? If they were killed, as they might be, these women would not be much use. It would be much better that they should go to shelter. I am quite conscious of the bravery and heroism of the women to whom the hon. Lady refers.

Miss Wilkinson

I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the job of fire guards is to deal with incendiary bombs. If they go to shelter and leave the bombs burning, what is the use of their coming out and surveying the ruins? The hon. Member asked what they should do. Under the fire guard plan there is a scheme of training, and fire guards when they have gone through that training know exactly what they have to do. We, of course, have had no experience of a Cologne or Dusseldorf raid or anything like that, and please God we shall not, but we have had, experience of very severe raids in our cities where there has been something approaching this plan in operation. If I may allude to Exeter as an example, an interesting thing is that many women fire guards were on duty that night and when we came to look into figures—and I know that percentages can be misleading—the percentage of fire guards killed was actually less than the percentage of the public. The reason was not that they were in shelters but that they knew what to do and how to protect themselves while they were protecting others. That is the whole point about training and why we say we do not want to have well intentioned people flocking about in a raid, but well-trained people who know what they have to do. I could just add speaking to the hon. Member for the English Universities (Mr. Harvey) that really the women cannot have it both ways. The claim was made that we should not use women until all the men available were doing their full 48 hours a month—[Interruption].

Coming to the point of hard cases we can only deal with these through the hardships tribunals. The Minister of Labour has been very generous in letting us use these tribunals, but if you are to set them up you cannot have continuous interference by different Ministers because no tribunal would serve under those circumstances. You can only lay down certain guiding principles, although where tribunals seem to ignore relevant facts we can arrange Sometimes for a separate hearing.

I am glad that the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes) agrees with me about the Explanatory Memorandum because it is a very much better document than hon. Gentlemen who have not read it seem to think. It really surprises me that Members of Parliament who are used to dealing with large documents should faint at the sight of 60 or 70 pages. If Members of Parliament will only read it or keep it by them, they will find it a Godsend. I know it is hardly possible to increase the respect which constituents already feel for hon. Members, but it does add to his prestige if a Member is able to give an immediate answer to one of these fire guard problems. If he will turn to the page where it is excellently laid out, he win be able to give many answers which otherwise would mean a letter to the Home Office.

May I deal with another point of the hon. Member with regard to the exemption of other Government Departments? What he says is perfectly true on the letter of the law. It is not possible for one Department to compel another Department to do anything, but we can come to agreements. What we have done is this: All the Government Departments who are appropriate authorities are represented on what we call our Fire Preven- tion (Operational) Committee, of which I am Chairman, and we come to an agreement on all these matters. I can assure my hon. Friend that there are no islands in our sectors. The sector is, of course, a section into which a fawn is divided for the purpose of fire guarding. If a Government Department is in a block, that Department comes in by agreement of his own department on the Operations Committee. If there are any local difficulties—we may have some local official who tries to stand on the letter of the law and will not come in—that is reported to his Regional authority, and the matter is put right at once.

Mr. Hughes

Are there any cases where Service Departments, including Service personnel at establishments within the sector, come within the control of the sector scheme?

Miss Wilkinson

There is a difficulty with the War Office alone which is in a somewhat special position. The Admiralty, the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Departments generally have all come in. Those Departments are appropriate authorities. The War Office, in that sense, is not. Therefore, special arrangements have to be made for dealing with their particular problems. But the hon. Member said that no other Government Department comes in. All the Government Departments that are appropriate authorities come in; and it works out all right.

The other point is the question of the block schemes in the three great trading estates. I have promised my hon. Friend to go into this matter in detail, and I have had consultation with the officials in the Ministry of Aircraft Production responsible for it. We have gone into the finances in detail, and we find that not all of the expenses being paid this year are recurrent. Some of the expenses which had to be shared out came into the category of capital expenditure. The price per foot for fire prevention will not be as high, therefore, as it has been in the previous year. But even those three trading estates are not unique. We find that in many business premises they like these block schemes, and that under these schemes they work more efficiently, both in man-power and in organisation, than if they were left to run their own shows.

But it means a little more expense: that has to be faced. I think those are all the points which were raised by hon. Members, except the point raised by the hon. Member for South Croydon—

Mr. Hughes

May I remind my hon. Friend of the point I raised, regarding penalties?

Miss Wilkinson

I am sorry. I have that down. With regard to enforcement, we cannot put down a detailed list of all the possible offences you could commit on fire guard duty. You have to leave these matters to the courts. Part 5 of the Defence Regulations works reasonably adequately. In every human situation there is somebody who does something he should not do, or who makes an idiotic decision—that cannot be avoided—but, on the whole, the thing works all right. In fact, I have never heard that anyone has got the same penalty for, say, filling up a form wrongly as for contumaciously refusing to do fire guard duty. I think that my hon. and learned Friend, in his legal capacity, would probably agree.

Under the new Order we have had considerable consultation on the Fire Prevention (Operational) Committee, with the Government Departments concerned, and we have all come to the view that under the new Orders we should aim at securing the fullest practicable relaxation except in those areas and premises where it is essential to maintain the full standard. I will, therefore, just give the hon. Member for South Croydon the actual details of what will be done. By night—that is, from half an hour before black-out to half an hour after black-out —the appropriate authority or Department may reduce the number of fire guards available at places or premises or on call, but at least one must be available. Where arrangements for premises provide that fire guards need only be on call, the appropriate authority may authorise that no person need be on call.

The appropriate authorities for business premises—other than local authorities and appropriate Departments for Government premises—may also authorise the relaxation of the "wakeful watch." That is, the people should be there, but they need not be awake. Where the appropriate authority is the local authority, the Regional Commissioner may authorise the relaxation of the wakeful watch, and in the street fire party areas he may either relax the "wakeful watch" altogether or group street fire party areas and direct that only one fire guard need be awake in the group. I should emphasise that these relaxations are permissive and depend upon the judgment of the appropriate authority or of the Regional Commissioners. In daylight—and here the problem is the week-end—in most departments people are there during the day, and fire guard duty is done automatically along with the rest, The appropriate authority or appropriate department may, however, dispense altogether with fire guards available or on call at business or Government premises.

It should be understood in all cases that if circumstances change, relaxations authorised under the Order may be withdrawn or curtailed, but full rotas must be maintained so that, if required, the fire guards concerned may know the times when they are required to be available at the premises or are liable to be called to the premises. On what principle will this be done? These are the factors which will have to be taken into account—the vulnerability of the area, the frequency of raiding in the area, fire hazards at particular premises, the importance to the war effort of the work carried on at the premises, the historic or national importance of the premises (such as some cathedral or some very historic place) and to some extent, local feeling about the importance of fire guard measures. Everybody just hates fire guard duty anyway, but in many areas it is felt to be a real protection.

You may ask, How and on what basis are Regional Commissioners and appropriate authorities going to decide that these factors should come into operation? I am afraid that I cannot be explicit. I can only say that Regional Commissioners and local authorities are being advised confidentially about vulnerability and difficult areas, and on that we must take expert opinion. At particular premises some degree of relaxation of the manning provisions of the Orders (but not those relating to the "wakeful watch") may be justified where the workers live near the premises and can reach them within three minutes of the sounding of the alert or the opening of anti-aircraft fire. There is less risk of incendiary attack by day than by night at the moment, but we cannot do our duty by the country and relax altogether. We cannot, for example, have relaxation in areas like London and the South and in areas where at any moment, as we have learned from bitter experience after weeks of lull, the raiding may start again. We can only ask the House in this matter to trust the Department concerned to have all the information available. We only can say in these matters that it is a difficult job, and we will just do our best, and I thank the House for having been so reasonable.

Sir H. Williams

I wish to thank the Home Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary for the important statements that have been made, and I now 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.