HC Deb 14 November 1945 vol 415 cc2173-84
The Lord Advocate (Mr. G. R. Thomson)

I beg to move, in page 9. line 47, at end, insert:

  1. "(4) Section six of this Act shall have effect as if—
    1. (i) in paragraph (a) of Subsection (5) for the words from 'certified as' to 'joint committee' there were substituted the words 'has been referred to the joint committee and has not been dealt with by them'; and
    2. (ii) in paragraph (b) of the said Subsection for the word 'certified' there was substituted the word 'referred'."

This Amendment is in the Scottish application Clause and is consequential on the Amendments which have just been agreed to on Clause 6.

Amendment agreed to.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

6.36 p.m.

Mr. Molson

I do not think the House should part with this Bill without a few words being said on the part of those of us who have opposed it from the very beginning. We opposed it in the last Parliament when it was introduced by the Coalition Government, and we still do not think it is entirely satisfactory. The worst features have certainly been eliminated from it by the Amendment that was moved by the Lord Privy Seal and by the further Amendments which the Lord Privy Seal has been good enough to accept. I am sorry he did not accept on Committee stage a number of other Amendments, which I think would have improved the Bill without, in any way, affecting the purpose for which it is intended, which is generally to expedite the procedure under Provisional Orders.

I said on Second Reading that I accepted the objective as stated by the Lord President of the Council when he said: The real aim should not be to resist the principle of delegated legislation, but rather to devise a Parliamentary check whereby the Government might be prevented from running away with the show."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th August, 1945; Vol. 413, c. 1048.] Those words were exactly in line with the Explanatory Memorandum with which this Bill was provided when it was introduced. But the Bill bases its distinction between Statutory Orders which are to be considered on the Floor of the House and those which are to be considered by a Committee upstairs, upon an entirely different principle. I believe it would have been far better if the Bill had been drafted to come into line with the Explanatory Memorandum, instead of the distinction being taken of a petition of general objection and a petition for amendment. I hope that this Bill will work satisfactorily, but I am extremely doubtful whether it will. I fear that before long there will be a considerable number of local authorities desiring to petition against Orders made under the Boundary Commission Act, under the Water Act, under the Town and Country Planning Act, who will find themselves, in point of fact, deprived of the opportunity of making their petitions intelligible to Parliament in the only way in which they can be made intelligible, that is upstairs before a small Committee, with their case explained by Parliamentary counsel, and with opportunity for plans and maps to be passed round and for careful examination of the whole matter in an entirely non-political atmosphere.

There is provision, of course, in this Bill for petitions of general objection to be referred to a Joint Committee which will sit upstairs in just that atmosphere and it, therefore, does depend entirely upon the attitude of the Government for the time being as to whether they are prepared to allow petitions of that kind to be considered by a Joint Committee. The right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe), who had a great deal to do with the origins of this Bill in the last Parliament, made a speech on Second Reading of the Bill in which he gave general support to it, but he did say that there was one matter in it that troubled a number of my hon. Friends. As I say, it will require, in any case, the most careful approach by the Government, the most—not conciliatory but, on the Government's own side, watchful approach—in order to see that no opponent is put in a wrongful position, by reason of this innovation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th October, 1945;Vol. 414, c. 1393.] This Bill does give the Executive the power to use its majority as a bulldozer to rub out any opposition from petitioners against Statutory Orders if it wishes to do so. It is no good saying that, as long as there is the right of an hon. Member to pray against an Order, that is an effective way of enabling a petitioner or a local authority to be heard. It means that one hon. Member representing his constituency, acting at the request of his local authority, has to try to persuade a number of his Friends, who are not in the least interested in the subject, to sit late at night, in order to keep a House and listen to him stating a highly technical case, which he finds it extremely difficult to understand and still more difficult to explain, against some Statutory Order which has been made by the Minister of Health or by some other Government Department and which his own local authority or some other constituent whom he seeks to help, considers injurious to their interests.

There is the power, in this case, to refer the matter to a Joint Committee of both Houses and, quite obviously, there are going to be many cases. This Bill was intended to deal with the Boundary Commission Act. That is an Act which enables a Commission to alter the boundaries of local authorities, to deprive even a county borough of its county borough status. It deals also with water authorities, it gives great and, I believe, in many cases, beneficial, powers of compulsory amalgamation of different water authorities. It deals also with the Town and Country Planning Act and all that is involved by the expression "an area of extensive war damage. "Statutory Orders are going to be made by Government Departments which will affect the rights of individuals and of local authorities. I do not doubt that Ministers are going to make them with the best possible intentions. They believe they are going to be in the general interests of the country as a whole, but it has always been a principle and a tradition of our Constitution, that the subject and the local authority which is injured or aggrieved by any particular act of the Executive shall have the right to come to the House of Commons. Until now every petitioner has been able to have the issue tried in a judicial atmosphere upstairs. Three or more Members of this House have sat behind a table, and have heard each side stated by Parliamentary counsel. I remember a town clerk saying to me: "I have not got an awful lot of use for your Parliamentary institutions, or for your politicians, but I can say this: I have come on a number of occasions with Private Bills to the House of Commons, and we have always had an extraordinarily fair hearing. Whether we have won or lost, we have always gone away feeling that we have had a fair hearing."

I would say to the Lord Privy Seal that he is going to get the Third Reading tonight of a Bill which will expedite procedure in getting Provisional Orders through. I am not against speeding it up; I have always been in favour of speeding it up. But I believe there are various ways in which it could have been greatly speeded up, without taking the great risks which are being taken in this Bill. For the first time, the petitioner, who puts in a petition, is not able to ensure that his petition is going to be heard in that judicial atmosphere upstairs. You, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in your capacity as Chairman of Ways and Means, and the Lord Chairman of Com- mittees in the House of Lords, are going to be put in an extraordinarily responsible position; and one which, I think, you will sometimes find very difficult to fill. You will be asked, when a petition comes up to you, dealing with some highly technical order, issued by some Government Department, to decide whether this is a petition of amendment, in which case it is to be dealt with by a Judicial Committee upstairs, or whether it is a petition of general objection, in which case it is to be dealt with by a Prayer on the Floor of this House. You are going to be called upon to take that decision. In many cases, you will decide that this is a petition of general objection.

It it comes on to the Floor of this House, and if the Minister responsible for it—in many cases it will be the Minister of Health; in some cases it will be the Minister of Town and Country Planning—tells the Whips that he does not wish to have this matter referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses, then it will be dealt with by a Prayer; and it may be dealt with late at night. The House will have had a long day upon important, perhaps international affairs, and then, late at night, a representative of a local authority will get up and move a Prayer, when everybody will be anxious to go home to bed. I would ask the Lord Privy Seal to give an undertaking now that this Government, at any rate—and if they set an example, perhaps other Governments will follow it—will not use their majority as a "bulldozer, "in order to prevent petitioners from having a fair opportunity of having their case heard in a judicial atmosphere upstairs, even if it is going to delay matters to a certain extent.

There was another matter which I raised upstairs, and that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, dealt with the position in which you, and the Lord Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords, will find yourselves, when you are considering these petitions. They are going to be highly technical petitions, and it was not at all plain in the Bill when introduced that when you were considering whether a petition was a petition of general objection, or a petition of amendment, you would have the right to call for evidence from the Government Department concerned, and, consequently, as one would hope, for the petitioner. It did emerge, I think, in the Committee stage upstairs, that the Government had every intention that there should be every opportunity, at that stage, for the two Chairmen to have explained to them the significance of the Order, and the significance of the petition against the Order. The exact procedure will be dealt with, of course, in the Standing Orders, which will have to be laid before the House, as a result of this Bill. The Standing Orders are not, primarily, a matter for the Government, but, naturally, a Government which controls a majority of this House will have a good deal to do with them. Therefore, I ask the Lord Privy Seal to repeat now, on the Floor of the House, the assurance which he gave to me upstairs, in the Committee Stage, that, so far as the Government are concerned, they desire that the Standing Orders shall make ample provision for the Chairmen to have the opportunity to hear both evidence from the Government Department concerned, and also adequate evidence on behalf of the petitioner against the statutory Order.

6.54 p.m.

Mr. Charles Williams

I wish only to say a few words on this Bill. It deals with a matter which is likely to affect, not only the lives, of individuals, but also the whole situation, in the case of boundaries of local authorities, some of which may have gone on for a very long time, some of which are efficient and others inefficient. I think we all have sympathy with the Lord Privy Seal in this respect—if this Bill will save in time and cost in getting through some of the things that have to be done, then many of us will support him readily; and I hope that will be the result of the Bill. But there is another side, and I have seen a little of it. The working of these Bills which go upstairs does not take the time. That is not where the real time goes, generally. The time is taken when these Bills are going through the Government Departments, and not in the Parliamentary stages. Although you may save something in that respect, I doubt whether the saving is going to be anything like as much as some people think.

I agree with my hon. Friend who has just spoken that the really vital point, when you are dealing with such matters as a boundary question, is that, when the question has been dealt with and settled, the people can feel that their case has been really fought out in the House of Commons. I will illustrate my point: Supposing a large borough on the edge of a county proposes to extend and to seize and run a great bit of the adjacent county, as well as the county in which it is situated. That will leave a very great deal of bad feeling unless the adjacent county and the county in which the borough is situated are quite certain that their case can be heard by Members of the House of Commons; I do not mean the whole of the Members, but a committee of Members sitting upstairs in a judicial capacity. The people concerned will go back and say, "We put our case to the committee, and it was considered with care and in detail, and the proposal has been lost. "They will say, "We hate joining in, but the case has been considered, not by a Government Department, but by elected Members of the House of Commons, sitting as judges. "It has always been one of the very big things about the House of Commons, that although we can have extraordinarily bitter party strife here—and I think I can remember once or twice taking part in it myself—that we can put that aside, and work as ordinary men together.

If the Government, as I hope they will, accept the broad lines laid down by the hon. Member who spoke just now, and do not press to have these things taken too quickly, and will allow a Joint Committee to be used, from time to time, then I believe we can achieve some acceleration of time, and that we shall not be losing very much. I would not like to say, or do anything, that would hold up the very important Measures that have been put down, because I fully realise that these changes, or some changes, have to be made in order to rebuild after the troubles of the war. But I think myself that this procedure should be used very carefully indeed, or we may lose something, which will, ultimately, not be for the good of the House, and the good of the country. We may create the feeling that we are setting up great barriers, and have ill-feeling, simply because people may think that their case has not been properly gone into. It may have been gone into properly, but the people of this country judge by what they think is right. I emphasise, once again, that I doubt if the saving of time is going to be very great. I think that it is in the Depart- ments that saving could really be made. I hope that this Measure will be worked in the common interest, so that anything that is done may leave after it a sense of good feeling in the localities.

6.59 p.m.

Mr. A. Greenwood

I know that my Scottish friends became very impatient about artificial insemination, and I have no doubt that their impatience is growing now, because I understand there is a matter which is of very deep interest to them coming before the House, but I could not allow this Bill to pass its Third Reading without offering a few observations. In the first place I should like to express my sincere appreciation of the services of my hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak Division (Mr. Molson), who, amongst the back benchers of this House, knows more about it than all the others put together, I should imagine. Indeed, I am not sure that he does not know more about it than I do. He has been giving the matter attention longer than I have. I thank him very sincerely and congratulate him on the part he has played in getting the Bill to this final stage. My hon. Friend referred, to the statement made by the right hon. and learned Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) on the Second Reading about whether this Bill was going to 'be used ruthlessly. The term "bulldozer" was used by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I may say that in that very Debate he was reminded by an hon. Member that he, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, had had a good deal to do with laying this egg, because the Bill was largely his work. I do not know what lie contemplated when he was for the time being Attorney-General in the late Coalition Government, or what he thought about how the Bill would be worked.

I cannot speak for any future Government, least of all for a Government drawn from the opposite benches, but I can speak for His Majesty's present Government. I do not want to mince my words at all, and I give the most specific assurance that we do not regard this Bill as a weapon with which to beat down opposition or to carry proposals through without due regard to all the interests who ought to be considered. I think it would be wrong to use the Bill in that way and so long as this Government continues I can assure hon. Members that this specific pledge which I have given will be honoured to the full. By this Bill we hope to do something which will really improve our Parliamentary procedure and ensure that justice is done to petitioners authorities and statutory companies, who feel a grievance. We hope to get on to the Floor of the House discussions which go to root of Ministerial Orders. As to the term used in the Explanatory Memorandum I hope I am not to be expected to apologise again and to stand here in sackcloth and ashes, because I made full apologies during the Committee stage, which my hon. Friend accepted, and I must deprecate this repetition of references to faults that have been committed not by me but by others.

As I was saying we hope that by getting on to the Floor of the House discussions which go to the root of a Ministerial Order, instead of allowing them to be conducted in Committee upstairs, in what my hon. Friend called "forensic" fashion, we shall have done something to reduce the cost of Committee proceedings, and thereby to help, in particular, the smaller local authorities and statutory undertakings and also private persons who may be affected. The cost of these proceedings under the existing system arises very largely from the fact that counsel and witnesses are kept hanging about for days and days waiting for some details to be settled while time is being spent on proving the Preamble. I hope that process will now be considered on the Floor of the House itself.

I should like to make the position of this Government, and I think of any other Government, clear in this matter. The present Government are just as anxious as were the previous Government, which first introduced this Bill, that all interests which ought to have a hearing shall be heard but—and I do not think that hon. Members opposite can dissent from this—it must rest with the Government of the day, whatever its complexion, to advise Parliament whether a particular issue raised on a Ministerial Order is or is not one of policy on which the Government may feel bound to use their Parliamentary resources in support of their point of view. I should imagine that would be accepted by the Front Bench opposite. I gather that it was certainly in the mind of the previous Government when the Bill was under consideration by them.

We have had one or two references to the Boundary Commission, the Town and Country Planning Acts, and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for the High Peak Division made the point in Committee that the question whether or not an Order went upstairs would, under the Bill, depend upon what he regarded as accidental circumstances. He instanced a hypothetical case, which has been raised tonight, of an Order made by the Local Government Boundary Commission for uniting certain areas. If only two areas were involved and one of them resisted union that, in my view, would, unless it specially went to the Joint Committee, be an issue to be determined on the Floor of the House of Commons, whereas if the Order contemplated the union of 20 areas the desire of one of them to be left out would then become a question to be met by a petition for amendment. If I understand my hon. Friend's case aright he regards this as an anomaly, but I think the instance really proves the opposite of his contention.

It is obvious that a proposal to leave out one of two intending partners in the case of a union of local areas does go to the root of the matter—it is a fifty-fifty disagreement—and if the Government policy points to that union as being desirable the Government must treat it as a matter which ought legitimately to be dealt with as one of principle on the Floor of the House. If, on the other hand, it is a case of the union of 20 areas and one of the suggested partners seeks to be omitted, while this may in certain circumstances go to the root of the matter, in many other instances it would be really a matter of detail.

Take the case of a small water authority desiring to be left out of an Order under the Water Act, 1945. That Measure was severely criticised, and not least by some hon. Members who, had they survived the flood of the last General Election, would now have been on the Opposition benches, on the ground that it left the provision of water supplies too much to local initiative and showed too great deference to local opinion. The last Government admitted that in common with its predecessors it had hitherto left these matters to be dealt with by Private Bills, many of which have appeared in the last 25 years in this House. That Government introduced, and carried through this House, what is now the Water Act, 1945. Quite clearly it was the intention and desire of Parliament that the provision of water should in future be regarded as a national responsibility. The Minister of Health may feel himself obliged, in the interests of public health, to make orders which are considered by some water undertakers to be detrimental to their interests, whether those undertakers be private companies or local authorities.

The Minister of Health and any other Minister similarly situated under the Water Act or under the Town and Country Planning Act, must reserve the right to treat such an Order as a vote of confidence, if in his opinion the carrying out of national policy in that particular matter, whether it be water or other things, would be impeded by the exclusion from this particular order of an individual undertaker. That power to determine whether national policy is involved, or is likely to be imperilled or embarrassed, must rest with the Minister. That is perfectly consistent with allowing any undertaking of that kind to lodge a petition of amendment. I hope that that will meet many of the objects raised by the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Charles Williams

What of the position if one big local authority, such as a large town, wants to absorb part of two counties, including several small local authorities? How would that be dealt with in that way—a large county borough extending, and in doing so absorbing a large area round it in which there was very great feeling against the absorption?

Mr. Greenwood

If a Ministerial order were made, those who felt aggrieved would have the right to have their case heard by this judicial body, this joint committee, which would sit upstairs. I should hope myself that Ministers would act generously in the matter, and in no sense try to deny the right of petitioners to have their case fully heard.

On the point of Standing Orders, I gave an undertaking in Standing Committee which I am prepared to repeat to the House as a whole. It is vital that the two chairmen, the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Lord Chairman of Com- mittees in another place, should have guidance as to how they should conduct and carry out the very heavy responsibilities—and I quite agree that they are heavy responsibilities—which will be cast upon them. It seemed to me right that for their guidance we should have to submit new Standing Orders to deal with these matters. In fact, it is really not a matter for the Government, but as representing the majority of people in this House now I can say that we shall shape and submit to you, Sir, as Chairman of Ways and Means, draft Standing Orders for the full approval of the House. It is the intention of His Majesty's Government that those Standing Orders shall be such that no petitioner's rightful claims shall ever be rejected. I cannot use any stronger language, and I hope that now the House will give their assent to the Third Reading of this very difficult, very complicated but very important Measure.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.