Commons Sitting of 27 February 1948

Preamble
The House met at Eleven o'Clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORDERS OF THE DAY
  POLICE PENSIONS BILL
  As amended, considered.
  POLICE PENSIONS BILL

    NEW CLAUSE.—(Protection of serving members.)
    (I) Any regulations made under Section one of this Act shall be so framed as to ensure—

    (a) that the times at which an existing member of a police force is or may be required under those regulations to retire on the ground of age do not, unless he at any time elects otherwise, differ from those which would have been applicable in his case if those regulations had not come into force; and

    (b) that the scale of pensions payable under those regulations to an existing member of a police force who ceases to be a member of that police force either—

    (i) after having served for any period prescribed by those regulations; or

    (ii) by reason of infirmity of mind or body after having served for any shorter period so prescribed, not being infirmity due to injury received in the execution of his duty,

    is not, unless he elects otherwise within such time and in such manner as may be prescribed in those regulations, less favourable than the scale applicable in his case immediately before the coming into force of those regulations.

    In this Subsection, the expression "existing member," in relation to any police force, means a person who is serving in that police force at the date when the regulations in question come into force.
    (2) Regulations made under the said Section one shall not be invalid by reason that in fact they do not secure the results specified in the preceding Subsection, but if the Secretary of State is satisfied, or it is held by the High Court or by the Court of Session, that any such regulations have failed to secure those results, the Secretary of State shall so soon as may be make under the said Section one the necessary amending regulations, and any
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    such amending regulations shall have effect as from the date of the coming into force of the regulations which they amend.—[Mr. Younger.]
    Brought up, and read the First time.
    11.5 a.m.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Younger): I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."
    This Clause has been put down to implement the undertaking given last week that we would try to give some guarantee to members of the Police Forces, now or in future, that their basic conditions would not be worsened by any regulations which might be made. The House will see that the regulations are to be framed so as to ensure that the times at which an existing member of a Police Force may be required to retire on the ground of age shall not differ from those which would have been applicable but for the regulations, unless he elects otherwise. In other words, every member of the Police Force is to have the opportunity of accepting new regulations which affect his rights, or of rejecting them. Under paragraph (b), the same provision is made for the scale of the pensions payable under the regulations, and the scales referred to are given in sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii). In that case also the member of the Police Force has the option; he can elect to accept the new regulations or not.
    An important part of the new Clause is the end of Subsection (1), where the term "existing member" is defined. An existing member means not merely a member of the Police Force who is in it at the time when the first regulations are made, but a member of the force who is in the force at the time when any future regulations may be made. Therefore, this is a continuing guarantee, not merely a transitional one for the members who are in the force when the first regulations are made under this Measure. In Subsection (2) a specific remedy is given by way of a decision of the High Court or, in Scotland, the Court of Session, if the regulations are thought not to have met with the requirements in the earlier part of the new Clause.
    I would remark, in passing, that this new Clause gives statutory protection to two classes of person mentioned in earlier stages of the Debate: first, those members

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    of the City of London force who had their pre-1921 rights preserved under Section 26 of the 1921 Act. That protection will be carried on by this new Clause. Secondly, the now rather small group of men who were enlisted between 1919 and 1921, and who were anxious that their rights under Section 29 (I, b, i) of the Act of 1921 should be preserved. Under that Section their rights to serve on until they had got their pension were preserved, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Norwood (Mr. Chamberlain), on the Second Reading of this Bill, asked that there should be some guarantee given to those men under the new provisions. It was intended at that time that the guarantee should be given in regulations but, now that this new Clause is down, it gives statutory protection in the Bill, which I think is all that they could ask. I hope the House will think that this fully meets the wishes expressed last week and the undertaking given, and that hon. Members will be prepared to accept this new Clause.
    Mr. Grimston: It appears to me that this new Clause fully meets the undertaking the Home Secretary gave in Committee. I make no complaint, but it has only appeared this morning, and there has not been a very great deal of time thoroughly to master it. As I see it, the Clause provides that the present pension rights hitherto secured by Act of Parliament to those now serving in the Police Force shall still be secured in the statute. In other words, their present pensions conditions could not be worsened by the regulations which come into force under this Measure. It will have the further provision that new entrants will know that the set of pensions regulations under which they accept service at any time will also be secured to them by statute, inasmuch as they cannot be worsened by subsequent regulations. What will be possible is to modify a condition with the consent of the police officer—in most cases, probably, to better some condition.
    It seems to me that this new Clause does what we ask—guarantees to all existing members of the Police Force and future entrants that their pensions cannot fall below the level they accepted when they joined the force. That appears to cover the psychological point we raised, and I think the Home Secretary has been wise
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    in meeting it. I wish to thank him for meeting it in this way. I would like to have an assurance from the Under-Secretary that my interpretation is correct, and that our point has been fully met.
    Mr. W. J. Brown: This new Clause can be defined as an attempt to make the best of a bad job. It certainly meets the point made by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) and others on the Committee stage, in the sense that it gives to existing members of the Police Force the assurance that when the regulations appear they will not worsen their position. To the extent that that is the effect of the Clause, I join with the hon. Member for Westbury in giving my blessing to it.
    It still leaves unsettled what I regard as the whole essence of the Debates we have had on the subject, the broad issue whether the main points of a pension scheme should be left to be dealt with by regulation, or whether they should be dealt with in the terms of the Measure itself. I maintain strongly the view that the right place for these conditions is the Measure itself, and not any regulations to be made subsequently, however much the Under-Secretary kindly tries to assure us that the regulations will be all right when they are made. It would be out of Order to pursue that point today, but when we come to a later stage I warn the House that I propose to attack it, because, in my view, it leaves to the discretion of the Minister all kinds of issues which ought to be subject to statutory decisions by this House. I welcome very much the proposal in the Clause so far as it goes, and add my blessing, but when we get to a later stage I shall attack the fundamental defects.
    11.15 a.m.
    Mr. Perrins: I welcome the new Clause. I raised the matter at some length in Committee, and we received an assurance by my right hon. Friend that any regulation he proposed would have the force of law. That assurance was sufficient for me, and I felt he had gone a good way to meet the point I raised. On reflection, and after reading the new Clause, it seems to me that my right hon. Friend listened with some attention to the points made by other hon. Members and myself and that he has tried to gather the tenor of our

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    opinion and to meet us to the extent of 100 per cent. in this new Clause. We can say without any qualification or ambiguity that he is giving the regulations the force of law, and I welcome the Clause, as it meets the objection I made in Committee.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

    CLAUSE I.—(Police pension regulations.)
    Mr. Younger: I beg to move, in page 3, line 28, to leave out from "and," to the end of line 30, and to insert:
    "before any such instrument is made, a draft of the regulations shall be laid before each House of Parliament, and the instrument shall not be made until that draft has been approved by resolution of each House."
    This is an Amendment to implement an undertaking to make the regulations under the Measure subject to the affirmative instead of the negative procedure, and the form of words is in conformity with the requirements of the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946.
    Mr. Grimston: As the Under-Secretary has said, this implements an undertaking which the Home Secretary gave in Committee to put the affirmative procedure into the Bill. I wish to thank him again for meeting us on this point, which I think is a considerable improvement of the Bill, since it will ensure that the regulations have to be brought before the House by the Government. I wish to ask that, between the laying of the regulations and the bringing of the Resolution before the House, there shall be sufficient time for the regulations to be studied, and for any opinion on them to manifest itself. Perhaps the Under-Secretary can give me that assurance?
    Mr. W. J. Brown: Like the hon. Member for Westbury, I very much prefer the affirmative Resolution method to the entirely unsatisfactory negative Resolution method, which appeared in the Bill as originally drafted. We are all familiar with the negative method of procedure, and we all know how much undesirable matter gets through the House of Commons under its operation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] To the extent that this substitutes the positive method, and that the Government have to put a Resolution on the Paper, it is an improvement. But, positive Resolutions can come up at all sorts of awkward times, and they
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    demand the utmost vigilance of all hon. Members to see that an undesirable positive Resolution does not get through. I repeat that it would have been infinitely more satisfactory to put the issue beyond any kind of doubt, leaving neither the negative nor the affirmative Resolution method, but putting the essential Clauses of the pensions scheme into the Bill itself. This provision, like the new Clause we have just discussed, is better than the original provision, but still, in my view, does not meet the essential requirements of the situation.
    Major Bruce: On behalf of hon. Members on this side of the House, I wish to express pleasure that the Under-Secretary has seen fit to incorporate this Amendment in the Bill. I must dissent from the observations of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown). He complained that under the affirmative procedure it is necessary to exercise vigilance in order that these Resolutions may receive proper attention. I should have thought that, in view of the vigilance which the Police Force exercises in the country, such vigilance would come automatically from Members of Parliament.
    Mr. Frank Byers: I wish to associate myself with much of what was said by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown). I, too, would like to see much more in the Bill itself, but I congratulate the Government on having gone this far to meet us, which I think is generous of them. It is a good example to other Government Departments, and one that I hope they will follow in the case of other Bills.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I agree that the change to an affirmative procedure constitutes an advance on the original proposals, but it is only a halfway house. There still remains the disadvantage that it will not be possible for the House to amend the regulations. While, joining with other hon. Members in congratulating the Government on having bowed to opinion on both sides of the House, I would add that I hope the House will appreciate the disadvantages even of this procedure. The main advantage of the affirmative over the negative procedure is that there is more chance of the matter being discussed in the daylight hours and not in the

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    middle of the night, but even that is to some extent at the discretion of the Government. The first regulations which it will be necessary to table, and which I understand will be on the lines of the White Paper, will be most important for the Police Force. They will be very elaborate and detailed, and I hope that the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary will stand up quite firmly to the Leader of the House, and insist upon full and adequate time, at least one day, being given to the discussion of those regulations when they are tabled.
    The Solicitor-General (Sir Frank Soskice): We are gratified at the reception which has been given to this Amendment, and I should not have risen but for the assurance which has been asked for by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) and the observation of the hon. Member for Kingston (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) that the House should have time to discuss the regulations which are required to be affirmed by it. We will certainly bear in mind what has been said. We hope that the Amendment meets the objections that have been made. I would add that the regulations can only be made, as hon. Members will see if they look at Clause I, with the general consent of the Treasury "and after consultation with the Police Council." I do not advance that as a complete answer, but it ensures that the police authorities will be fully aware of the contents of the proposed regulations.
    Amendment agreed to.

    CLAUSE 2.—(Application of regulations.)
    Mr. Younger: I beg to move, in page 3, line 31, after "of," to insert:
    "the Section (Protection of serving members) of this Act and of."
    This is a drafting Amendment, consequential upon the new Clause to which the House has just agreed.
    Amendment agreed to.

    CLAUSE 3.—(Forfeiture of pensions.)
    Mr. Younger: I beg to move, in page 5, line 43, to leave out from "after," to the end of line 45, and to insert:
    "the police authority have given him notice in writing requiring him on any reasonable grounds not to do so."
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    This Amendment is to implement an undertaking given that we would redraft this Subsection to make it quite clear that notice in writing should be given individually to the persons concerned, and that the warnings should not be given in some general circular which might easily be overlooked, and might perhaps not even be known to members of the force.
    Mr. Grimston: This again implements an undertaking which was given, and I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman.
    Amendment agreed to.

    FIRST SCHEDULE.—(Repeals to come into Effect with Savings on making of Regulations and Provisions Conse- quential on those Repeals.)
    Mr. Younger: I beg to move, in page 12, line 14, at the end, to insert:
    "7. The Police (Overseas Service) (Greece) Regulations, 1948. Part II and the Second Schedule."
    This is a drafting Amendment to put the Police (Overseas Service) (Greece) Regulations on the same footing as those already applying to Germany and Austria. The reason this Amendment has to be inserted at this late stage is that these particular regulations had not been made when the Bill was introduced. The Amendment will have the effect of putting the persons concerned in these different theatres on exactly the same footing.
    Amendment agreed to.
    11.25 a.m.
    Mr. Younger: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
    I do not wish to take up much of the time of the House at this stage, but there are a few words which I should say. We have had fairly prolonged and interesting Debates on this Bill. As the House is aware, this is primarily an adapting Bill, designed to adapt the police pensions schemes to the new National Insurance schemes which will be coming into force this year. It is that rather than any major changes in the police pensions system which is the purpose of the Bill. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) and the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) have both given me notice that they are not yet satisfied with the form of this Bill, and that they think, as the hon. Member for Rugby says, that it is only making the best of a bad job.

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    Neither of them referred to the advantages which there are on the credit side in doing, at any rate, a certain amount of this type of work by regulation. I do not intend to say anything in detail about that, but the House will remember that it was pointed out on Second Reading and on the Committee Stage that there have, in the past, been amendments favourable to the members of the Police Forces, and upon which almost everybody was agreed, but which have hung fire, sometimes for a matter of years, and have not been introduced simply because of the difficulty of finding time for legislation. That difficulty of finding time is one which confronts every Government. I do not think that it is substantially more difficult now than it has been found to be in the past to introduce amending legislation, particularly if it happens to be only on small matters of detail. Therefore, there is something to be said on the credit side, in the interests of the Police Forces themselves, for having an additional degree of flexibility.
    Having said that, I would like briefly to recapitulate the guarantees which are now in this Bill. It has changed a good deal since it was first introduced. I am not complaining of that. I think that most of us feel that it is now a better Bill than when it was first introduced. In case there should be any apprehension on the part of anybody because parts of the scheme are still left to regulations, I would point out that there are the following safeguards. Firstly, there is to be consultation with the Police Council; that is to say, the persons concerned with the Police Forces will be fully aware, before the regulations are laid, of what is proposed. They will have the opportunity of discussing them and will have no difficulty in seeing that their views are subsequenty adequately put before this House. Secondly, we have the affirmative Resolution procedure, to which reference has just been made. Thirdly, and this is only a small point, my right hon. Friend agreed to alter the wording in Clause 1 (2), which states that "such regulations shall provide …" for the matters set out and not merely "may" provide.
    Then, we have introduced into the statute detailed provisions as to appeal in case of grievance. We have also introduced a new Clause setting out the circumstances in which a pension may be
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    forfeited. It will be within the recollection of the House that the new Clause is more favourable to members of the Police Forces than was the corresponding Clause in the Act of 1921. Next, we have the new Clause to which I need not refer in detail, because we have just discussed it. That gives a further guarantee—
    Mr. Grimston: Could the hon. Gentleman confirm that my interpretation, in accepting the new Clause, was correct?
    Mr. Younger: Yes, Sir. I am sorry. I should have done that. The new Clause ensures, as I think the hon. Gentleman said, that all members of the forces existing at the time when the first regulations come into force and at the time when any future regulations may come into force, will know that they cannot be compelled to accept new regulations which worsen their position in respect of the matters set out in the new Clause.
    The guarantees which I have recapitulated are pretty considerable. Although they do not cover the whole field of detail, as has been the case in past Acts, I submit that they cover the basic elements of the pensions scheme. They should give a complete sense of security to the police. In addition, my right hon. Friend was very glad to have been able to introduce something in Clause 2 which will enable a measure of assistance to be given to existing widows whose unfortunate circumstances, in that they were not able to take advantage of the national insurance scheme, have been well known to everybody in this House.
    I would like to mention two small points which my right hon. Friend undertook to look at last week and about which he has not done anything by way of Amendment to the Bill. It was suggested that it would be better that appeals should go to the county court rather than to the court of quarter sessions. My right hon. Friend has ascertained that all sides of the Police Council feel that it would be better that appeal should continue to be to quarter sessions rather than to the county court. Moreover, one of the arguments in favour of the county court was that it already dealt with matters of industrial injuries. That will no longer apply when workmen's compensation gives way to the provisions of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act. Therefore, on reflection, my right

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    hon. Friend did not think that it was necessary to introduce any Amendment on that point.
    Mr. Speaker: I must point out that this is not in the Bill. On Third Reading we can discuss only what is in the Bill.
    Mr. Younger: I wanted, if possible, to explain that my right hon. Friend had given consideration to the matters which he had undertaken to examine, but I appreciate that it is not strictly in Order at this stage.
    I hope that the House will feel that my right hon. Friend has been co-operative in this matter. He has asked me to say how much he appreciates the work which hon. Members have put in on this Bill, and how much he has been assisted by the suggestions which have been made in trying to give the necessary sense of security to members of the police. The Debates which we have had are a measure of the close interest which hon. Members take in the welfare of the police, and the recognition of this House of the importance of the work which they do. The House can feel that this Bill gives good security to members of the police within the framework of the new general security provisions for the whole nation in which the Police Forces in the future, unlike in the past, will share.
    11.35 a.m.
    Mr. Grimston: There is no doubt that this is now a very different Bill from the one which was introduced on Second Reading. When it was introduced everything was to be left to regulation subject to negative procedure, with the sole exception of existing pensions. I would like to recall, with becoming modesty, what I said on Second Reading, namely that we must be careful to put back everything into the statute that we possibly could, because great uneasiness had developed in the Police Force. I suggested that both existing members and those who might join in future, would have the feeling that their pension conditions might be altered arbitrarily at any time unless much was put back into the statute. I am very glad that the Home Secretary has accepted that view. In the various stages of this Bill we have put back a great deal into the statute. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, the right of appeal has been put back into the
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    statute, and the conditions as to forfeiture of pension have been put back. Also, our request that a sentence of imprisonment of 12 months, and not three, must have been incurred before pension can be forfeited, has been granted.
    This morning, we have safeguarded existing pension rights. The existing pension rights of all those now serving are secured in the statute. That is what the new Clause means. Similarly, the conditions of pension which new entrants accept are also secured. I think that we may say that we have secured a great deal of what we set out to achieve, and I express my appreciation of the action of the Home Secretary in meeting us on so many points.
    I would like to discuss the question of regulations, particularly in the light of the remarks of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown). I must concede that there are advantages in being able to make adjustments by regulation from time to time. As the hon. Gentleman said, very often there may be matters which require adjustment and are desired by the police but are held up because of the reluctance of most Governments to find time for Bills. In the future, it may well be that things which otherwise would be held up will be done by this procedure with its affirmative Resolution which we have secured today. However, there are those who hold the view that everything should be in the statute.
    I consider that this Bill is a pretty fair compromise, and after all, compromise is part of the genius of our race. What we have done is to put into the statute the minimum conditions of any police officer's pension at any time. The man who is serving at present is safeguarded, and those of the future will know that the set of pension conditions which they freely accepted at the time of entry into the force cannot be altered to their detriment except by another Act of Parliament. We have done a great deal. Whilst I would not go so far as to say that we have got the best of both worlds, I agree that we have secured a most reasonable compromise.
    In the near future the Home Secretary will introduce the first set of regulations, and he has asked that representations should be made about them between now and Easter. I have one or two small points to mention. I think, Mr. Speaker, that it will be in Order as these regulations

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    are to be introduced under the Bill as it now stands.
    The first point with regard to the option of new entrants whether they shall take the full police pension plus full insurance, or a lower police pension and national insurance, has already been mentioned. That option is reserved to existing members. I believe very strongly that, in the interests of recruiting, that option should be extended to new entrants into the force. I had some correspondence on the subject which takes a different line from that which the Home Secretary took on an earlier stage, and it is quite obvious that there are some who consider that the deductions for police pension and national insurance are more than they wish to pay. Very well, give them the chance of taking the lower rate of police pension. At the same time, there are others who feel strongly that they should be able to have the full quota of police pension, plus national insurance, and, if they should so elect, it should be allowed. I would reiterate this point for the consideration of the Home Secretary before he introduces the first set of regulations.
    There are one or two small points to which I would refer, one of which is that service before reaching 20 years of age should count for pension, and I find it very difficult to understand why that should not be conceded. The second is that, on transfer from one force to another, all previous service should count.
    Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I would like to point out to him that the Debate on Third Reading should be confined to the Bill as it exists, and should not extend to criticism of administration. I am not quite sure that, when the hon. Gentleman is talking about possible regulations, that matter would come under the Bill or under the heading of administration, which is not in the Bill.
    Mr. Grimston: With great respect, Mr. Speaker, I submit that what I am discussing is the content of regulations which must be introduced by the Home Secretary as a result of the Third Reading of this Bill.
    Mr. Speaker: Is not that administration, therefore?
    Mr. Grimston: I would submit that it is delegated legislation under this Bill.
    Mr. Speaker: Very well.
    Mr. Grimston: I am much obliged. The other small point is that the retirement pension should be based on the scale of pay at the time of retirement. The Home Secretary has asked for notice of these matters between now and Easter. I have given him notice of some, and I have no doubt he will receive others from all quarters, and I commend them to his careful attention. There will, of course, be further opportunities of discussing the matter when the regulations are brought before Parliament.
    As the Home Secretary has said, we want a contented police force of the highest standard. I believe that, in responding to the feelings expressed during the various stages of this Bill, the Home Secretary has taken a step which is conducive to that end. By introducing the Amendments which have been asked for, I think that the feeling of uneasiness which was provoked by the Bill as it was first produced, should now be allayed. In conclusion, I should like to tell the Home Secretary again that we appreciate the way in which he has met us in this matter. We believe that the Bill is vastly improved, and we shall, without further ado, let it go forward to its Third Reading.
    11.44 a.m.
    Mr. W. J. Brown: In the three days that we have devoted to the various stages of this Bill, there has been, so to speak, a coalition between all sides of the House radically to alter its terms. Today, if I might adapt a phrase of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill), "the famous Coalition" breaks up. My allies opposite accept the Bill as the best they can get from their Government. I understand that very well, and I have no criticism to make against them for accepting this as the best they can get. My allies above the Gangway are also deserting the famous coalition, and urging that we shall accept the Bill, because it is a good "compromise," and we are told that to accept compromises is part of the political genius of this race. I share the view that compromises ought to be accepted, and, when a compromise gives me all I want, I am the first to accept it. This particular compromise does not give me all I want, or all that I think is proper, and therefore, although deserted by my hon.

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    Friends opposite and those on this side of the House, the battle must go on.
    It would be churlish not to recognise that the Bill comes here in very different shape from that in which we found it on Second Reading. We have secured in the Bill entitlement to pension, right of appeal to quarter sessions, statutory deductions in respect of pensions, improved conditions as regards forfeiture, and a defence of the rights of existing members of the force to conditions no worse than they now enjoy. It would be ungenerous in the extreme not to recognise that these points do represent an immense improvement in the Bill, and, if we have to have this sort of a Bill, I would join in the gratitude which has been expressed on all sides of the House for the changes made.
    I do not, however, think that this is the sort of Bill that we should have had. If the Bill goes through in its present form, the only safeguard which the police will have in future is prior discussion at the Police Council before the Home Secretary exercises his unfettered discretion. That is the situation as it will be if the Bill goes through as it stands. What is this Police Council to whom we are asked to entrust the examination of pensions matters affecting the police and to make recommendations to the Home Secretary? I do not know whether the House is aware of the composition of the Police Council, but it ought to be, because it is largely to them that we are leaving, subject to the Home Secretary's veto, the consideration of matters affecting the pensions of the police.
    Who comprise the Police Council? First of all, the Home Secretary has a right to attend—a right which he does not always exercise, but which he can use if he likes. Secondly, there are three or four Home Office officials. Thirdly, there are two or three representatives of the Association of Municipal Corporations. Fourthly, there are two or three representatives of the County Councils Association. Fifthly, there is the Commissioner of Police, or his deputy, in the case of the Metropolitan Force. Sixthly, there is the Commissioner of Police for the City of London. Seventhly, there are two or three representatives of the Chief Constables' Association. Eighthly, there are four representatives of superintendents of police. Ninthly,
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    and this is the point to which I want to draw particular attention, there are nine representatives of the Police Federation.
    Now, of all the bodies I have mentioned in this list of nine sets of people, only the last, the Police Federation, can claim to be even remotely a body of a trade union character. Even that claim would be a very remote claim, because, under the constitution of the Police Council, of the nine representatives of the Federation, three are inspectors, three are sergeants, and three are constables. In other words, out of this imposing and numerous committee of something like 25 to 30 people, the constables, who comprise, I suppose, about 80 per cent. of the entire Police Forces of Britain, have to content themselves with three representatives on that very large committee.
    I want to put this to my hon. Friends on the other side. They do not always agree with me in politics, but one of the things on which I am sure we are in agreement is the conduct of trade union affairs. There is no hon. Member on that side of the House who would describe that body as a suitable negotiating instrument for a body of workers in this country. There is not a Member on that side of the House who would say that was a satisfactory body—a body with a total of 25 or 30 members, out of whom only three represent the interests of 80 per cent. of the Police Force. It is to that body that we shall be compelled to leave the consideration of matters touching the pensions of the police when this Bill goes through. I say quite categorically that, deserted as I am on the Left, and fled from as I am on the Right, I stand by the view that this is not the kind of body to which we should entrust these matters.
    I again make the appeal—I should be out of Order if I pursued it at length—which I have made over and over again, that the Home Office should revise its whole attitude towards the Police Force, should allow them to have a reasonably representative trade union, and should give them the rights of conciliation and arbitration which other bodies of public servants enjoy. As I say, I have made that appeal several times before, and I shall go on making it in this House again and again, before the next election, and—I trust—afterwards as well. I would also like to support what was said by

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    an hon. Member above the Gangway about the counting of service for pension before the age of 20 years. The Under-Secretary of State and the Solicitor-General will probably know that, in the case of the Civil Service proper, the date from which pensionable service reckons used to be 16 years, and is now 18 years. I do not see why there should be a differentiation of two years against the police in this regard.
    I have said what I wanted to say about the Bill. It is better than when it first came to us, but it is still an unsatisfactory Bill. I am not moved by the argument that there is some advantage in adjusting by regulation. I would agree with that argument of my hon. Friends were we dealing with comparatively small matters of detail. But we have left out of the Bill, not only small matters of detail, but the main structure of the pension scheme. The basis of the scheme is not described, the number of years which have to be put in before a man qualifies, and the amount of pension to be secured on retirement—all these things are not dealt with in the Bill. While there may be some advantage in leaving comparatively small matters to be dealt with by regulation, there is no advantage whatever in leaving out some of the main provisions of the scheme.
    Therefore, although I regard this as a less objectionable Bill than it was when it first came before the House, I still do not regard it as a satisfactory Bill. I do not propose to divide the House against it, because I should have difficulty in getting a couple of tellers out of the only party whose position in this matter is not now hopelessly compromised by the speeches which have been made. It is not a good Bill, and will never be a good Bill. Nor shall we get a good Bill until the Home Office has radically adjusted its views as to the type of organisation which the police ought to be allowed to have to represent them.
    11.54 a.m.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: I am always interested to hear the views of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown), but I must say that, on this occasion, I rather regret the remarks he made about the constitution of the Police Council at the present time. That Council is a body which I believe has the fundamental and complete respect of the whole of the Police Forces of this country.
    Mr. W. J. Brown: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for interrupting him, I would point out that I was not attacking the constitution of the Police Council in respect of any other function than this particular one, in regard to which, I say, it is unrepresentative.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his interruption and explanation, but I do not think he has really improved the position, because the functions of the Police Council, as we are considering it this morning, are those of the representative body which is to be consulted by the Secretary of State on all matters connected with this Bill. Therefore, it is fundamental to the whole basis of the intention contained in the Bill that the Police Council should have the confidence of the Police Forces of the country as a whole.
    Mr. W. J. Brown: It has not got it.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: I believe it has, and that such suggestions as the hon. Gentleman makes, and has just made, only tend at the present time to undermine the confidence which does exist, and to throw doubt into the minds of the members of the forces as to whether or not the Police Council is an appropriate body to represent their interests in the consultations which the Secretary of State is to have with it. However, I do not wish to pursue that point, because I believe it is one which can do more harm than good.
    I return to the more general tenor of the Debate, to say, with my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston), that I believe we have very largely succeeded in improving this Bill. When opening the Debate, the Under-Secretary of State made one remark with which I did not feel quite in agreement. It related to the argument which we have been trying to press upon the Government right from the beginning—that we are setting about this matter in the wrong way. In order to overcome their immediate difficulties, the Government have explained that it is necessary to have means whereby the pensions, particularly, of the Police Force generally and their widows, can be amended before 5th July. We maintain that that step should have been taken by a temporary Measure, an enabling Measure, to allow the right hon. Gentleman to deal with it

    2291
    for the time being by regulation, and then to introduce his permanent legislation as soon as that has been fixed, and as soon as the committees, which are now considering the rates, have reached their conclusions.
    The Under-Secretary of State said the difficulty about that was the question of finding Parliamentary time in which to get the ultimate major Bill. I venture to think that the proposals contained in this Bill are going to use up more Parliamentary time than would otherwise have been the case. There is coming before us at the conclusion of this Debate a very minor Bill which will occupy next to no time in this House, and for which there has been no difficulty in finding the time. I believe the position would have been the same in the case of a Police Pensions Enabling Bill. We are now going to have, not only a full series of Debates upon this Bill, but, at more or less regular intervals, Debates on the affirmative Resolutions to be laid before the House in connection with the regulations to be made, and in regard to which the hon. and learned Solicitor-General has, to our universal gratification, recognised the need for a really full and proper Debate, instead of it being tucked in at the end of the day. In those circumstances, I believe we shall occupy much more Parliamentary time in considering these matters than would have been the case had we debated the alternative procedure which I have outlined.
    We are grateful to the Government for accepting so many of the suggestions made from this side of the House. We have the same object in view, and I believe the Bill goes a very long way towards attaining that object, namely, to restore the standards of conditions of service in the Police Force. I do not believe that the standards of the police themselves need any restoration; they are as high as they have ever been. But that cannot continue so long as their conditions of service remain static while those of everybody else are improved. We know, particularly, of the police with whom we come into immediate contact within the precincts of this House. We may think they have a comparatively easy time. Speaking as one who has served with a great many of them and who has been brought into contact with the duties of policemen, I know that such
    2292
    easy time as they may have now is a reward for the very hard work which they have done out on the streets in different parts of London.
    We must remember particularly the country policeman. He has hardly been mentioned in the course of these Debates, and it is essential that this Bill should provide him, as I believe it does, with a a far better assurance concerning his conditions and the conditions for his widow and dependants after he leaves the Service. The country policeman occupies a place in country life which, so far as I am aware, is unique in any part of the world and in any walk of life. He is the guide, philosopher and friend of everyone in the community, and the type of work which he is called upon to discharge would fill an ordinary town policeman like myself with alarm and despondency. Certainly his methods would sometimes not be acceptable to all the superintendents in a Metropolitan borough, but they are invariably effective. A great responsibility is imposed upon him, and he has to be a highly qualified and picked man of the utmost integrity and one whom all the community trust. To get a man of that sort into a Police Force at present necessitates that his conditions, both during his service and in relation to pensions, are such that the very best type of man is attracted.
    That, I believe, will be the result of this Bill, and I am particularly gratified that we have added the new Clause this morning. It ensures that, although the conditions themselves are not enshrined in the Measure, all men now and in future serving in the Police Forces will know that their conditions of service cannot be worse than those which they undertook when they joined the Service. That assurance will go a very long way towards attracting the right type of man. While personally I am disappointed that this Bill will never be called a policeman's charter, nevertheless it provides the groundwork for very satisfactory and assured conditions for the most responsible body of men working in the country today. Now that the House will be able to consider and debate, though not to amend, the regulations before they come into operation, that groundwork may well develop in the course of time into a very real and proper charter for the Police Forces of this country.
    12.4 p.m.
    Major Bruce: Without wishing to reestablish the coalition to which the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) referred, and of which he has appointed himself the Metternich, I would say that I entirely endorse his remarks about the unrepresentative nature of the Police Council. I do not think the hon. Gentleman meant in any way to impugn the integrity, sincerity or the complete reliability of any of the existing members of the Police Council. I think he was endeavouring to put forward the view that a council thus constituted, and consisting of extremely worthy individuals, nevertheless could not be held properly to represent those 80 per cent. of the Police Forces which are comprised of the ordinary constable. I hope it may be possible that in the passage of time, stimulated by pressure from all quarters of the House, the police generally will have a rather more representative body to negotiate their conditions for them.
    This is a Bill which, on Second Reading, might normally have been thought to be just the type of Bill which we can go through very quickly on a Friday, as so much of our legislation sometimes does. The fact that the discussion on it has lasted so long is a tribute to the Parliamentary institution itself, because the Bill has been subjected to considerable criticism, the majority of it constructive, from all quarters of the House, and it is very different from what appeared on Second Reading. There have been representations from all quarters of the House on matters which have been subsequently incorporated in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham (Mr. Hale) and I are particularly satisfied that during the progress of the Bill we have obtained five out of the seven concessions which we sought originally.
    We would, therefore, like to thank the Home Secretary for the very constructive spirit in which he has approached the Bill. Some of the more substantive conditions which many of us sought to have incorporated have, in fact, been put into the Bill. Not all of us on this side of the House took the view that every condition in regard to pensions should be incorporated in it. I myself took the view that it was very wise that the variable factors—that is to say, the various rates which might have to operate owing to a varying cost of living—should be incorporated
    2294
    by regulation, and that it would be wise to have only the substantive conditions of pensions incorporated in the Bill. I cannot say that I am completely satisfied that they have all been put in, but I am satisfied that the Home Secretary has made a very workable attempt in an accommodating spirit to meet the wishes of the majority of hon. Members.
    There is one thing which I am particularly pleased about, and I think this will find an echo in all parts of the House and, indeed, outside. Although it was originally proposed that the Bill should be confined to the conditions of future pensions—that is to say, pensions that will fall due to be granted after the appointed day—the Home Secretary has been humane enough to accede to our wishes and take powers to make regulations to grant pensions for what we call the pre-1918 class of widow as well as for existing widows who have lost their husbands and those wives who may lose their husbands prior to the appointed day. We are also considerably reassured by the fact that the appeal to the courts in the event of forfeiture, and in the event of there being dissatisfaction with pensions, has now been granted in rather more comprehensive terms than was indicated in the White Paper which accompanied the issue of the Bill on First Reading.
    Also, in relation to forfeiture, many concessions have been granted, some of them completely unobstrusive. For example, in the case of a pension having to be forfeited by reason of a former police constable having been convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment for three months, so far as I am aware there was no mention in the House that in other branches of the Civil Service the period was 12 months. I believe unofficial representations were made to the Home Secretary to which he willingly responded, and the term of 12 months was inserted. We very much appreciate that concession.
    The other representations relating to forfeiture, which were made by the hon. Member for Oldham, myself and other hon. Members, have not been fully met but they provide a very great measure of safeguard. For example, we are glad that it has been possible to insert in the Bill the provision whereby if a police constable who has retired is carrying on a business as a private detective and the police authority does not like it, he is to be given notice in writing of the fact that they wish

    2295
    him to stop it, before he becomes liable to have his pension forfeited. These, and numerous other provisions that I could name, show that a real endeavour has been made to make this a good Bill, but here I echo sentiments in moral support of the hon. Member for Rugby; it is, of course, the regulations which will have to be laid before this House which are still the most important part of the Act itself.
    During the Debate, not many of us have spent an undue proportion of time in pleading for more favourable consideration to be given to higher rates of pension for existing widows and for those who come under the purview of the regulations to be issued. The reason for that is not only to save the time of the House, but also because we knew perfectly well that the rates of pension, as such, would be subject to regulation later and, therefore, we would have a fuller opportunity of discussion. I do not think it would be right, however, if we allowed the Third Reading to pass without saying to the Home Secretary that we expect, when the regulations are laid before Parliament, that they will contain provisions which will show a very substantial increase in rates of pension over those envisaged in the White Paper. When these regulations are laid, they will be subject to very careful scrutiny indeed. I hope the Home Secretary will make some endeavour to examine the point which has been raised, principally from the other side of the House, on the question of pensionable service below the age of 20. I think the case made by hon. Members opposite in support of such a provision is completely unanswerable, and I feel that the regulations should cover it.
    We, on this side of the House, are extremely pleased with this Bill. It does not go as far as we would like—Bills rarely do—but we think the Home Secretary has met us in a most constructive spirit, and we are satisfied that the Bill is in the best interests of a very gallant body of men who so unobtrusively do the duty which this House from time to time assigns to them.
    12.13 p.m.
    Colonel Wheatley: I quite agree with the hon. and gallant Member for North Portsmouth (Major Bruce) that the regulations are the important things. I think a good many of the police appreciate the fact that the
    2296
    scales pension are to be fixed in the regulations, and not in an actual Act of Parliament, because they have an impression that it would be easier to make a change in a regulation than it would be to make a change in an Act of Parliament. A matter which is causing great contentment among the police is the improvement in the widow's pension. Many of those who have acted on standing joint committees will remember how many times the question of the scandalous rates of pension has been discussed in the past, and this improvement gives great contentment to the police. When the Home Secretary is working out his regulations, under his delegated powers, I hope he will not shut his mind entirely to the question of the widow of a policeman who married after he left the Service. I quite agree there are difficulties in the way, and there must be some sort of stopper put on the designing woman who wants to marry a retired policeman because he has one leg in the grave. There are other cases, however, which deserve consideration, and which have not that fault.
    I agree with the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) in his remarks about the Police Council. I have taken a good deal of trouble to find out from the police of various ranks what is their view of this Council and whether they have confidence in it, and my opinion is that they have perfect confidence in it. They think the Council does very good work, and that their interests are very well covered. I do not say they would not like the number of representatives of actual constables to be increased, but I have spoken to those who have served on that Council, and they say they have confidence in the way it is working. I do not have the same anxiety about this as the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown), perhaps because I am not so imbued with the idea of turning it into a trade union, which apparently underlies some of his remarks.
    I think that, as a whole, the police welcome this Bill. They feel it is a step forward, and they feel that they will now have a far better deal than they have had in the past. I welcome the Bill, and I am sure it will help recruiting. After all, another point about having regulations is that if the Minister is not helped in his recruiting, he will be able to alter the conditions far better than if they were

    2297
    embodied in an Act of Parliament. I believe this Bill will add to the attraction of the Police Force, and that the Home Secretary will be able to get the type of recruit we want to see him get.
    12.17 p.m.
    Mr. Turner-Samuels: I think it would be doing a great disservice both to the Police Force and to the public interest to say anything which might tend to weaken the influence of the Police Council. I was very disturbed on the Second Reading when the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) raised what appeared to me to be a desire to revive a police trade union. I should have thought that that chapter, being closed, was much better left alone, for this reason: the Police Council which is referred to in this Bill, is a representative body drawn from all elements of those who belong to or are directly interested in the constitution and the administration of that particular body, and the Police Federation, formed by statute in 1919, is an important unit in that amalgamation. It ought to be said, I think, that it was proved at that time, and it stands now beyond controversy, that the idea of having, or reviving, a trade union for the Police Force is not merely impracticable, but constitutionally impossible.
    Mr. W. J. Brown: Nonsense.
    Mr. Turner-Samuels: It may be nonsense to the hon. Member, but the answer is this: a member of the Police Force is an officer of the Crown.
    Mr. Brown: A civil servant.
    Mr. Turner-Samuels: He is a public servant. He is in no way in the same position as the ordinary workman, whose interests are, and have to be, protected by his trade union. He is not even a servant of the borough or county council which employs him, although it is quite true that he often is under their supervision or subject to their regulations.
    Mr. Speaker: It seems to me we are getting a little far from the Bill. It may be mentioned as an objection to the Police Council that it is not a trade union, but hon. Members cannot argue the merits of whether or not it should be a trade union—that is not in the Bill and has nothing to do with this Bill.
    Mr. Turner-Samuels: I abide by your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, but I would re-
    2298
    affirm that it would be very unfortunate indeed if anything which came from this House appeared to tend to weaken the influence of the Police Council.
    This is a peculiar Bill. It is an attempt to legislate by regulation and, in my humble view, nothing could be worse than that: it is worse than legislating by reference. It can only be justified, in my submission, on one or, perhaps, two grounds. The first is this. The Home Secretary has said explicitly that the reason the Bill is in its present form is that he intends to set up a committee to advise on conditions wages and pensions, and so forth, of the Police Forces, and that the Bill is in its present form, therefore, merely as a temporary Measure, in order to meet the requirements of the National Insurance provisions which are coming into force this year. In my view, that is the only justification for a Bill of this kind. The Home Secretary says it is impossible to include in it now all the provisions which will have to be made by regulation when the committee has reported to him.
    However, I think that the form of the Bill is not quite as objectionable as it may appear when we take into account the fact that the provisions of the Police Pensions Act, 1921, still operate. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) said that the Bill in its present form was an improved version from what it was on Second Reading. With respect, I cannot see any improvement whatever in substance at all, and for this reason: there is nothing in this Bill, except in one respect, which is not contained in the Police Pensions Act, 1921; although I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it would be much better if the Bill contained all the provisions which are necessary for improvement of the conditions and pensions of the police, and, in matters of this kind, if the Bill were more of a code, and did not leave so many things to be settled later by regulations. But all the new matters in the Bill are contained in substance in the Police Pensions Act, 1921; and, therefore, I do say without fear of contradiction that there is nothing material added by this Bill, except one item, which is an improvement on that position.
    That is not necessarily a criticism of the Bill. The Home Secretary has tried to meet criticisms that have been made, and

    2299
    he has tried, as far as he can, to import into the Bill these additional provisions; but, in fact, the matter is not carried one step further, because these provisions still in fact operate now, and when the regulations are introduced there is a clear provision in this Bill to provide that, as soon as the Act of 1921 is repealed, then regulations have got to be made which are consequent upon and replace that repeal. Therefore, really it does not carry the matter further at all.
    What I think is important, and what, I think, this Bill in fact does, is to see that when the regulations are introduced not only are the provisions there to be as good as, if not better than, the provisions in the 1921 Police Pensions Act. That is the value of the Bill, because there is that one point which is, although an additional point, in the new Clause, that the regulations shall not be worse so far as the police pensions are concerned than they have been hitherto. There is, however, in my view, an ambiguity in the new clause which has been introduced. It refers to existing members of the Police Force, and it refers to the fact that they shall not receive conditions worse than the conditions that were prevailing at the time they joined the force. That, of course, would relate to anyone who joined while the new regulations are in existence. But suppose they join later and other regulations contemporaneously are made, it seems to me that then they may not be in a position to claim the same rights as the original members of the force could claim by the first regulations. I do not say that that is conclusively so, but I should like the Solicitor-General or the Secretary of State to look into that matter, because I think on a first glance at the language of the Clause it is a little ambiguous, and that the Clause may not, as regards the whole of the new regulations, embrace as fully as intended all those who subsequently come into the force.
    Subject to these considerations, I think the Bill is one which had to be introduced. I do not think it is a good Bill by any means, but I do not think that could, in the circumstances, be helped. The Bill had to be introduced because of the various provisions in the National Insurance Acts that have been passed, and I think we have to take it as it is. We
    2300
    have, however, to make it clear, as the view on all sides of the House, that the regulations which the Home Secretary is to introduce should be such as to meet with the accord of this House and also the requirements of justice for the members of the Police Force.
    12.27 p.m.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) is no longer in his place. He seemed in his speech to be imposing upon himself the role of Casabianca, as the only Member of the House who stood up for legislative principle against the insidious attraction of acting by regulation. However, I think that the speeches from both sides of the House have made it clear that the invidious and, perhaps, over-heated role of Casabianca is not one which the hon. Member is entitled to claim. Of course, it is perfectly true, as the Under-Secretary of State said, that procedure by regulations is highly convenient for Departments. Administrative convenience, however, is a temptation to which capable Ministers are peculiarly susceptible, and for that reason I venture to warn the Under-Secrtary of State of the danger of allowing himself to be attracted too much in that direction.
    After all, the point is, surely, that when we are providing the legal basis for a great national service it is far more satisfactory if that legal basis be an Act of Parliament than if it be a system of regulation making. That, surely, is a principle which is really far more valid in this House of Commons than even a very considerable degree of administrative convenience. It was the basis of the 1921 Act. Disguise it as hon. Members may try to do to themselves, the main effect of this Bill is to take the police service from a wholly statutory basis, and place it now, as the Bill has been amended, on a partially regulatory, partially statutory basis. That, in a sentence, is the general effect of this Bill. It is for that reason that many of us, while we appreciate highly the manner in which the Bill has been conducted through this House, do none the less regret—and seriously regret—that feature of it.
    I do not mean to labour the point, but the police service is so important in our community that, if any service is, it surely is entitled to a statutory basis for its pensions and conditions. We are,

    2301
    after all, legislating for, I imagine, a good many years. We have seen in the last 48 hours how, in another country, a revolution has been achieved largely through party infiltration into and command of a police service. That very fact should convey to all hon Members the desirability of securing in this country that the police service and its conditions are based on an Act of Parliament, as free as possible from interference by the Government of the day.
    Having said that, it would be most ungenerous not to admit that both the Under-Secretary and his right hon. Friend have conducted this Bill, subject to its limitations, with a very proper regard for the feelings of this House. It has already been pointed out, notably by the hon. and gallant Member for North Portsmouth (Major Bruce), how many important matters have now been transferred from the regulation zone into the statutory zone. Although Acts of Parliament cannot be evaluated like battleships, by their tonnage, it is significant that a Bill which, when it came before the House for Second Reading, occupied nine pages, now, as printed this morning, occupies 12 pages, and as a result of the Amendments accepted today will no doubt run into the unlucky number of 13 pages. That illustrates the fact that on this Bill at any rate the House of Commons has been allowed to exercise its proper function of amending legislation.
    Paradoxically enough, one of the strongest arguments in favour of the legislative as opposed to the regulatory process, is that on this very Bill, which confers power to legislate by regulation, there has been so vivid a demonstration of the value of procedure by Act of Parliament. It is curious, ironic, and perhaps a trifle tragic, that that should be so, but it is right that all hon. Members should acknowledge the very reasonable attitude which has been adopted by the Government. I was about to use the adjective "flexible," before I realised that the learned Solicitor-General was present, and that that was a word to which he was peculiarly sensitive.
    Undoubtedly, as a result of the proper discharge by the House of Commons of its functions, this Bill leaves this House, not only a bigger Bill but a better Bill than when it came to us. Equally, hon.
    2302
    Members must remember that the conditions which matter most to the police remain to be dealt with in the regulations which the Home Secretary will be empowered to make under this Bill. I support the very strong plea made by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) on certain points, and also the plea made from the other side of the House on the subject of the widows. The House will recollect that in moving the Second Reading the Home Secretary said that so far as the widows were concerned nothing could be done under the Bill, as it then stood, until July, 1951. I take it that as a result of one of the new Clauses inserted in Committee it will now be possible for that action to be taken as soon as the regulations are tabled this year.
    I should be very grateful if the Solicitor-General would indicate that what the Home Secretary said, no doubt quite properly, on Second Reading—that July, 1951, was the earliest date on which action could be taken to help these widows—is now no longer the fact, in that it will be not only possible but the intention of the Government to take this action in the very near future. I and other hon. Members were shocked to hear during Second Reading that the widows of policemen should, with prices at their present level, be receiving a pension of not more than £42 a year. I hope—as I believe will be the case—that the Solicitor-General will be able to give us an assurance on that point. As we leave the Bill now, with eager anticipation of what the regulations will contain, perhaps I should assure the Under-Secretary that those regulations will be scrutinised very carefully when laid before Parliament.
    12.34 p.m.
    Mr. Perrins: Having already given my blessing to this Bill, I do not propose to delay it unduly, save to say that there is one matter which we must view with a measure of disquiet and which was referred to by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston). Under this Bill, future entrants to the Police Force will be put on a different scale so far as their contributions to superannuation schemes are concerned. I am all in favour of policemen being brought within the social security scheme and having to contribute. Also, I fully appreciate that men who have contributed to superannuation schemes for a number

    2303
    of years should continue to do so. But I fail to see why the Home Secretary should arbitrarily say to future entrants, "You will be able to contribute only a lesser sum than those who are already members of the force."
    Speaking as one with much experience of this matter, I say that will create two classes and a measure of discontent in our force in future years. What a man can afford to pay should not be determined arbitrarily, for one man may have no children, another may have one, and a third may have half-a-dozen. The individual policeman should be able to elect whether to pay to the full superannuation scheme or whether he cannot afford it, because there is a limit even to what a policeman can afford to pay. Were policemen permitted to elect whether they contribute to a modified superannuation scheme, never again would there be any criticism of the administration. Unless there is that choice policemen are bound to say in future, "I would have preferred a full superannuation scheme. I feel that superannuation is a good thing, but the Bill and the Home Secretary deny me the right to have a full superannuation scheme." I hope that matter will be further considered.
    I am glad that in regulations made under this Measure consideration will be given to the widows of police officers. Hon. Members may remember my previous arguments during Committee. When my right hon. Friend replied to me then he reminded me of my old schoolmaster who, when giving me corporal punishment, would look over his spectacles and say—I never believed it then, and I do not believe it now—"This hurts me more than it hurts you." My right hon. Friend said that I had made an emotional appeal because I referred to pre-1918 widows with no pensions, and widows who had only £52 a year. I have not been able to investigate this, but, unless my memory serves me false, I believe we have already established a precedent by which such a widow could be dealt with under the Widows', Orphans' and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, 1925. I believe it was permissible for widows of those who had not contributed to be provided for. If a man had followed an occupation—such as a miner—where people in the industry now contributed,
    2304
    it was held that had he been alive he would have contributed, so they were included.
    When we mentioned this matter before, we did not intend to create a special class so far as the widows of police officers were concerned. What we were anxious to do was to ensure that the widows of police officers were in no way worse off than those of other civilians. We shall have an opportunity of pressing this matter when the regulations come before the House. I feel that the Home Secretary is to be congratulated on the way he has met us on most of our points, and I believe this Measure to have been greatly improved in conequence.
    12.40 p.m.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: I should like the Minister to explain how far the regulations will apply to Scotland. The point is not clear in the Bill. It is also not clear who is ultimately to make the regulations. I hope that Scottish policemen will not be in any less favourable position than their colleagues who work south of the Border. I also hope that the generous provisions of the Bill will apply to Scotland, and that if there are any provisions that are less generous, we shall be able to modify them by negotiation north of the Border.
    I share the enthusiasm that the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has shown for the police and for their better terms of retirement pension and superannuation. When we produce a Bill for superannuation and better times for miners, I hope he will be equally enthusiastic. Police organisations in Scotland are anxious that the regulations shall be interpreted generously and humanly, so that police widows will receive the fair treatment that they deserve. I share the view of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) that the Police Council should be made more democratic and that the rank and file of the police should be allowed the same democratic rights as other workers who are in other kinds of Government employment. Prison warders have no caste system in their organisation and are not divided into ordinary, principal and chief warders. I fail to see why the caste system which prevails in regard to the police should not be done away with altogether.
    One hon. Member has said that ladies might now be encouraged to have an

    2305
    eye upon elderly policemen about to retire, because of the handsome pension. In Scotland, there would be a snag. One of the main grievances of the police in Scotland is that they look forward with dread to their retirement because they are then faced with the problem of getting houses. This is one of the most deep-seated grievances. Over and over again I have known of policemen in my area wishing to retire on their pensions, but finding that they would then have to vacate their police houses and go into the market to find others. I do not think ladies would find it attractive to marry somebody who was unable to obtain housing accommodation when he was about to retire upon pension. I hope that the Solicitor-General, who is to reply, will tell us how the proposed regulations will affect Scotland.
    12.45 p.m.
    The Solicitor-General: The Debate has traversed a wide area, and it will be difficult, within the limits of the kind of speech which the House would expect from me, to deal with all the points of detail that have been raised. Perhaps I might first deal with the points raised by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). The Bill applies to Scotland. Clause 1 enables the Secretary of State to make regulations. "Secretary of State" includes, of course, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland.
    Perhaps I might pass away from that matter of detail for a moment to consider some general arguments that have been advanced. The main argument, to which I feel I can add very little, has been whether we have acted rightly in providing for the making of regulations to frame the police pensions scheme. We have endeavoured to embody a compromise in the terms of the Bill. The hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) expressed the view that it was a satisfactory compromise, but the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) felt that he was not able to take quite the same view. He was, I think, in agreement that a great deal of progress has been made towards meeting his point of view. When one seeks to put upon the Statute Book Bills dealing with this kind of problem, one is faced with the difficulty of balancing the necessity for periodic change with the
    2306
    necessity for a permanent basis of solidity.
    When the Under-Secretary of State spoke in the Second Reading Debate, he said—and he has repeated it today—that after the passing of the Police Act, 1921, a number of improvements were thought of upon which everybody was agreed. It was thought desirable to change the scheme embodied in the Act, but it was found not practicable to do so because each change would have meant fresh legislation. The result was that admitted imperfections were not removed for a considerable time. That fact points strongly in the direction of a regulation-making power to enable imperfections to be adjusted when they come to light. Nevertheless, we see the point of view that the great services rendered by the Police Force should be recognised, so far as is possible, by some code embodied in an Act of Parliament giving the police a guarantee in the matter of pensions.
    In framing the Bill, we have tried to balance those two considerations against each other. We hope, as the hon. Member for Westbury said, that we have arrived at the best workable compromise in the circumstances. It would not assist the House if I recapitulated the respects in which we have advanced in the work of embodying in the terms of the Bill various improvements, such as in relation to forfeiture, appeals, future regulations and entitlement to pension, provisions that future regulations are not to disadvantage people who are serving in the Police Force when those regulations are made, and so on. We have gone a good distance towards meeting the point of view of the hon. Member for Rugby. Time will show whether we have reached a sound compromise in these matters.
    The criticism was made, and evoked a great deal of discussion, that, notwithstanding all that, matters were still left to the unhampered discretion of the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Scotland. It was pointed out, in answer to that criticism, that there must be discussion with the Police Council. That answer was replied to with the further criticism that the Police Council was not fully representative. Nobody suggested that the Police Council is not entitled to the highest possible measure of respect. I am sure that everybody is grateful for the great services which the Police Council

    2307
    has rendered. Nobody has disputed it. With regard to the point whether the Police Council is representative, the discussions contemplated are not such that decisions have to be taken upon them by vote. They are for the purpose of exploration and investigation. The object of the discussion is that every point of view should be placed prominently before the Secretary of State when he is considering what regulations ought to be made.
    I hope the House will agree that the representation of the Police Federation ensures that the constables' point of view is brought prominently to notice. I believe that everybody with experience of the proceedings of the Police Council would agree that the representatives of the Police Federation have shown themselves fully able forcibly to put forward the points of view of those whom they represent. I would, therefore, part from that point by saying that the object of those discussions is that every point of view shall be brought forward and we feel that, as the body is at present composed, that result should be achieved. I feel that everybody will agree that the consultations will have the result of bringing the proposals clearly before the Police Federation so that they can then consider them among themselves and, in the time they have available, make sure that when the order comes before the House for approval, those who are minded to speak for the Police Federation will have had an adequate opportunity of acquainting themselves with the arguments which the Police Federation feel should be brought forward.
    Mr. Orr-Ewing: Surely the hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that, when the regulations are brought before the House, the House is debarred from any line of discussion which could lead to amendment of the regulations?
    The Solicitor-General:: I quite agree that the regulations cannot be amended. The object of bringing them before the House is to ask the House to approve of them. The House may decline to approve of them. The result of the discussion may be that the House will say that it does not consider the regulations to be suitable. No institution is perfect in this imperfect world, but we hope that experience will show that the point of view of those who
    2308
    are represented by the Police Federation will be prominently brought forward, first to the notice of the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland, and, secondly, if the Secretaries of State feel that they are unable to accede to the point of view which is advanced, they will be prominently brought forward and discussed in this House when the regulations are submitted.
    Mr. Orr-Ewing: In that case, would the hon. and learned Gentleman promise that there will always be a free vote of the House on this matter?
    The Solicitor-General: I believe the hon. Gentleman could answer that question as well as I could.
    Mr. W. J. Brown: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. and learned Gentleman—he is always so helpful and kindly in these matters—but I wish to put this question. On what ground of principle does the State, in dealing with every other category of public employees, including disciplined forces like the Prison Service, agree to the provision of thoroughly representative machinery, coupled with the rights of conciliation and arbitration, and when it comes to deal with the Police Force alone, deny every one of those three essential elements in the preparation of these regulations?
    The Solicitor-General: That question raises very wide issues. In order to answer it, I should have to go over matters scarcely within the purview of this Debate. In dealing with the police, we have not departed from the point of view that they should be represented as fully as possible, and we hope that experience will show that the arrangements embodied in the Bill will lead to that result. I quite agree that all members of the Police Force who are vitally affected by the provisions of this Bill should be represented as fully as possible in any discussions that take place on the regulations which will be submitted to the House. It is for that purpose that we have put in the provision about consultation with the Police Council. I cannot very well add any more to that.
    Various hon. Members have put forward their points of view with regard to different aspects of the scheme. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Portsmouth (Major Bruce) reminded us of

    2309
    the position of widows. The hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) asked for a specific assurance from me with regard to the powers of the Bill. The hon. Member for Westbury put forward three points, one with regard to pensions, one on the basis on which the scale of pay should be assessed for purposes of retirement, and one with regard to transfer and the service which should be taken into account in the event of transfer. The hon. Gentlemen who advanced those points of view will agree that they were put forward not with a view to obtaining from me a final answer as to the Government's attitude, but to remind the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland which matters were of concern to individual Members, in the hope that when the regulations came to be framed, those matters would be satisfactorily dealt with. Obviously at this stage I could not give a final answer to those points.
    Major Bruce: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman undertake that they will be considered?
    The Solicitor-General: They will certainly be considered. I was going to say that the scheme embodied in the White Paper must certainly not be regarded as the last word. In all these matters, the regulations, before being laid before the House, will have been the subject of detailed discussion with the Police Council, and it may well emerge that in certain aspects of the scheme it will be found that changes are desirable. If so, those changes will be made and the House will have an opportunity to consider them. That is the only answer I can give to those reminders.
    The hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames asked a question with regard to the actual powers under this Bill, and mentioned the reference, made during a previous stage of the discussions of this Bill, to the date July, 1951. That reference appertains to the position of widows under the National Insurance Act, 1946. The hon. Gentleman will have observed that under the terms of Clause 1 (6), it is provided that nothing in the Bill affects the provisions of the National Insurance Act, 1946. The period was three years, from July, 1948, when the regulations will be made, until July, 1951, that being the period during which the contributions
    2310
    have to be made for there to be entitlement. At the same time, as the hon. Gentleman felt, under Clause 2 there is power to deal with the position of widows straightaway in July. The question is, therefore, what change should be made with regard to the position of widows independently of the provisions of the National Insurance Act, 1946. The power is certainly there, and I hope that hon. Gentlemen will be reassured by that.
    To go over all the arguments that have been advanced on general matters of principle would not be helpful to the House. It would also not be helpful to go over the general matters of detail, because my answers would in the nature of things have to be entirely provisional. However, I would say that the scheme in the White Paper is to a large extent provisional. It will be further considered. There will be further consultations in detail on all the matters which have been referred to during the Debate. In those circumstances, I hope that, when the regulations are finally placed before the House, they will secure universal acceptance. Although I had not the privilege of taking part in the detailed discussions, I am told that the Debates have been marked by a spirit of helpfulness from all sides of the House. I believe that we have greatly improved the Bill, and I express, on behalf of the Government, their gratitude for the assistance they have been afforded from all sides of the House in the formulation of these provisions. I hope that the Bill may now be given a Third Reading.
    12.58 p.m.
    Sir Jocelyn Lucas: I want to raise the subject of a widow of a police officer who remarries and whose second husband dies. By remarrying, she has lost the right to her police widow's pension. She may marry an old pensioner or some man in poor circumstances. As her pension is so small she has to work. If she goes as housekeeper to an old pensioner, or some elderly man, it is quite likely that she will marry him to regularise the position. Then she has lost her pension, and although I believe that the Home Secretary has the power to restore it, she has not the absolute right to get it back again. It would appear that that is a direct deterrent to remarriage and, from the point of view of the public funds, the more widows who

    2311
    remarry, the better, because that saves money. However, women like security, and if they think that by remarrying they lose the right to pension again if the second husband dies, they may think twice about it. When the proper time comes, will the Minister have a look at that point?
    1.0 p.m.
    Mr. Orr-Ewing: May I ask the Solicitor-General one question? He has dealt quite fairly with the question of the advantage and disadvantage of proceeding by regulation, as set out in the Bill. He has also paid tribute, as has every other hon. Member who has spoken, to the way in which this problem has been tackled. It is perfectly clear that the entire House wishes to treat the Police Force in a special manner as regards any regulations or new legislation governing their conditions which may have to be introduced. In view of the hon. and learned Gentleman's agreement that the problem exists, would he say that the position will be examined to see whether it will not be possible to proceed by way of Select Committee when these regulations are to be brought before the House? He has pointed out, quite rightly, that a discussion with the Police Federation—
    Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hubert Beaumont): Order.
    Mr. Orr-Ewing: I am talking about the procedure under the Bill, and whether it would not be possible for the hon. And learned Gentleman to consider proceeding under the system of Select Committee, which would carry on the discussion beyond that—
    Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That certainly is outside the scope of the Bill.
    Mr. Orr-Ewing: Then, Sir, I will limit the remainder of my question to this: if he is not satisfied, after a time, that he is getting sufficient representation of feeling, and sufficient discussion within this House, would he reconsider the matter and report to the House the difficulties under which he has to work?
    The Solicitor-General: If I may add two words, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the point made by the hon. Member for South Hendon (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) is one more suitable for discussion than for answer in
    2312
    this House. It would take detailed answering, and I hope he will be satisfied that it will be considered. With regard to the second point, I have not the slightest doubt that my right hon. Friend will do his best to see that all points of view are represented adequately.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read the Third time, and passed.

  SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (AMENDMENT) BILL [Lords]
  Considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment.
  1.5 p.m.
  The Solicitor-General: I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
  I had not intended to make any detailed observations on this Bill. I believe it has secured full agreement from all sides of the House, and its purpose has been fully explained already. As the House knows, it is designed to enable the Court of Appeal to sit in four divisions to enable it to get abreast of the heavy burden of work with which it is faced at present. I think it has been found by the general accord of the House that the case for the Bill has been made, and I accordingly ask that it may be given a Third Reading.
  Mr. Joynson-Hicks: Perhaps I may accept what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said for this side of the House, while expressing to the House and to him the regret of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) who is unavoidably prevented from being here to reply to the Debate. The Bill, brief as it is, provides adequately for the two points which it is desired to meet. It is a temporary provision for the clearance of the arrears of cases in the Court of Appeal which now amount to a substantial quantity. In addition, it meets that need while avoiding what was described in another place as an undue proliferation of judicial tribunals. In these circumstances, we welcome the provision and hope that the cases now before the Court of Appeal will not remain outstanding for any length of time.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

  SUPERANNUATION (MISCEL- LANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  1.7 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Glenvil Hall): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
  During the war civil servants, local government staffs who were pensionable, and pensionable teachers were able to count for superannuation purposes any time which they spent on National Service. The main object of this Bill is to continue that practice into peace. The right to count National Service during the war was, so far as local government authorities staff and pensionable teachers were concerned, authorised by legislation which this House passed in 1939, and which authorised this practice to continue for the duration of the "present emergency." I should perhaps make it clear that the "present emergency," so far as this legislation is concerned, is not yet at an end, but it will come to an end some time. When it does, we shall be able under this Bill, if it is agreed to and becomes an Act, substantially to continue the same provisions for these two classes of public servants.
  In the Civil Service, the legal position has been rather different and somewhat more complex. During the war, and up to July, 1947, civil servants drafted into one or other form of National Service continued to receive the balance of their civil pay. They remained, in fact, civil servants. This arrangement at the time received the full approval of Parliament. Departments were thereby enabled to keep civil servants on their books and individuals were enabled to count for superannuation purposes any time which they spent in National Service during the war. Since last July, however, it has been decided that the wartime practice of making up civil pay should be stopped. As a result of this, the Government have no authority in law to reckon for superannuation purposes the National Service of the members of the Civil Service who are now going into the Armed Forces. The House will, I am sure, wish for some provision to be made for such service to continue to be counted towards pension, and provision for this is therefore made in Clause 1 of the Bill.
  2314
  It will be noted that the Bill is entitled "Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill" because we have taken the opportunity; while putting this matter right, to make other minor, but nevertheless very useful, changes in the superannuation code of the public services. For example, provision is made to facilitate the interchange of staff in suitable cases between local authorities, or between a local authority and the Civil Service, or between the Civil Service or a local authority and one of the national boards, or between a local authority and the teaching profession, if such interchange should become desirable, as it sometimes does. One of the bars against a free interchange has sometimes been the question of what would happen to a man's superannuation. At present, in many cases, it means that the man who transfers takes with him the pension rights which have accrued to him: these rights are, as it were, put into compartments, and he may be drawing two pensions if he has been employed by two different public authorities.
  In this Bill we make it possible for machinery to be set up to interlock any pension rights which have accrued, and bring them under one umbrella, whatever form of public service the man has been in, provided that that form of public service has been pensionable. Sometimes a person has transferred from one form of public service to another, and has lost all pension rights in respect of his first employment. That is not fair to the individual concerned. If possible, we should try to provide against that. The new arrangements will not only preserve and improve the lot of the individual, but will also make it possible to ensure that superannuation difficulties do not hinder him from serving the country in the capacity for which he is best fitted. In Clause 3, powers are taken to enable the Minister of National Insurance to make rules in respect of pensions payable to staff who have been employed by an approved society, or in similar employment, and who have joined the staff of his Ministry under the new Act. That, I am sure the House will agree, is a right and proper thing to do.
  We also take powers to put right certain injustices which some of us feel exist in the pension code. We hope, later on, to introduce another Superannuation Bill covering a wider field than this Measure,

  2315
  and we hope that its introduction will not be long delayed. But here we are taking the opportunity of putting one or two things right, which in our view need putting right at the earliest possible moment. Into this category comes what some hon. Members and one union believe to be an injustice against the men known as the "K" company class. We are also doing something to improve the pensionable rights of men who come over from the war agricultural executive committees or to the Assistance Board, and of others who were in the Safety in Mines Research Board. These and other sections, who, for one reason and another, have found themselves outside, or badly treated by, the present superannuation code, are dealt with by various Clauses of the Bill.
  On the face of it, this may look a rather complicated Measure, and no doubt many points will arise on the Committee stage. I have deliberately refrained from going into detail, because it appeared to me that the proper time to raise those points and to discuss them would be the Committee stage. I heartily commend the Bill to the House.
  1.16 p.m.
  Mr. Ralph Morley: There is a great deal in this Bill with which I and my hon. Friends agree although we put down an Amendment, which you, Sir, have not seen fit to call. The Amendment is:
  "That, in the opinion of this House, the Bill is unjust in those provisions which relate to intending teachers and other professional students and this House therefore declines to accord it a Second Reading."
  We very much welcome Clause 6, which apparently gives the emergency trained teachers an opportunity for qualifying for pensions by reducing the number of qualifying years. We also welcome Clauses 7, 8 and 9, which bring into pensionable service a great deal of service which so far has been outside the scope of pensionable service. We wish to point out, however, that Clause 1 is unfair to the intending teacher. It lays down that civil servants, local government employees and teachers who are in contributory service when called up for National Service, will be allowed to have their years of National Service included for pensionable service. There is a further concession that if a civil servant has passed
  2316
  his qualifying examination before being called up, he is allowed to have that year counted. In the case of teachers it will be almost impossible for an intending teacher to be in contributory service before he is called up for National Service. He does not come into contributory service in the ordinary course of events until he has left college and begun teaching. As a rule, he does not leave college until he is 20 and in some cases 21 or 22.
  If we compare the case of the intending teacher who is rejected from military service with that of the intending teacher who is accepted, we find that the former will leave college at the age of 20, and by the age of 60 will have completed 40 years service, and be qualified for full pension. On the other hand, the teacher who is accepted will not leave college until the age of 21 at the earliest, and by the age of 60 will have completed only 39 years service. On retiring at 60, he would lose one-eightieth of his pension, and one-thirtieth of his lump sum, an amount varying from £7 to £10 a year for pension, and from £15 to £30 for lump sum, according to the grade which he occupied at the time of retirement.
  Through being called up for one year's National Service the intending teacher will lose a substantial amount in his pension unless this Clause is modified. Nor do the losses of the teacher who is called upon to do one year's National Service end there, because he comes out of college a year later than the teacher who is not called upon to do one year's National Service, and he will lose one year's salary, and for 17 years during which he is on the incremental portion of the scale he will lose £15 a year. If we add all these losses together the teacher is fined something like £600 for having been called upon to do one year's National Service.
  Indeed, it may be worse than I have indicated, because in the White Paper on National Defence which has just been issued it is stated that in future young men will be called upon for National Service at the age of 18 years nine months, so that by the time the teacher has done his one year's National Service his age will be 19 years nine months. It is not to be supposed that the end of his National Service will happily coincide with the beginning of the college year, and after he has completed his National Service he may have to wait for six, nine or II

  2317
  months before he can enter college, and he will leave college not at the age of 21 but at the age of 22 or perhaps even 23. He will lose not one year's pensionable service but two perhaps three.
  In the lucid and interesting speech which the Financial Secretary to the Treasury made in opening this Debate he said that the Bill continued the practice and practically the same provisions as before. That is not so. So far as the intending teacher is concerned the provisions of Clause 1 worsen the existing situation, because under the Superannuation Schemes (War Service) Act, 1939, it was provided that if a teacher left college and went into the Forces before he entered into contributory service, his period of service in the Forces would count for pension, which is not the case under this Bill. It was also further enacted in the 1939 Measure that if a teacher interrupted his training in college for the purpose of service in the Forces, that service would count as pensionable service. So, on the whole, this Bill inflicts considerable injustice upon intending teachers, as compared with civil servants and the employees of local government authorities, and it does worsen the present position.
  I suggest to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, firstly, that the same concession might be made to intending teachers as is being made in this Bill to civil servants, that if the intending teacher has passed the qualifying examination which will admit him to a training college before he is called upon for National Service, his year of National Service should count as pensionable service. I am aware that there is a difference between the pensions scheme of teachers and that of civil servants in as much as the civil servant, happily, has a non-contributory pension scheme whereas the teachers' pension scheme is contributory. I suggest to the Financial Secretary that it might be possible for him to make arrangements by which a teacher could buy himself in for that one year's pensionable service by contributing £15–5 per cent. of the first year's salary. I know that if he were allowed to do that he would have to contribute another £15–5 per cent. of the salary he actually received in the first year after entering into contributory service—and would also have to pay the £11 10s. contribution under the National
  2318
  Insurance Scheme, which would make a contribution, in his first year of service, of something like £42. That would be rather a heavy contribution. Possibly he might be allowed to buy himself in by paying this additional £15 in instalments which might be spread over four or five years.
  Clause 1 of the Bill, as at present drafted, is most inequitable to intending teachers and needs some amendment to give what would be reasonable justice to them. I am glad to see the Minister of Education in his place. He is regarded by the teachers of England and Wales as their natural protector, and so far he has not disappointed them in that expectation. I hope that he may perhaps be able to soften the stony hearts of the Treasury and persuade them to make some reasonable amendment to this Bill which will give greater justice to teachers than it does at present. As the Bill is drafted it does justice to local government employees and civil servants, a justice which we welcome, but it certainly does not do justice to intending teachers, and I hope that it may be modified in order to achieve that.
  1.26 p.m.
  Mr. Assheton: The Financial Secretary to the Treasury explained this Bill to us very carefully. I have been much interested in listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Southampton (Mr. Morley). The Bill certainly appears to effect some desirable reforms and to remove certain anomalies, and I think will make it easier for the Administration to move people about within various services for which they now have responsibility. So, on general grounds, I certainly support the Bill, and I have no doubt that my hon. Friends behind me do so, too.
  There are, of course, a number of detailed points in the Bill. It is not an easy Bill to read. Some of the Clauses are not too easy to understand, and they refer to a great many previous enactments, all of which have to be studied in conjunction with this Bill if one is to make oneself entirely familiar with the consequences which would ensue from it. When the Committee stage arrives I may wish to ask some questions. I shall want to know how the employees of the nationalised industries are affected, and to what extent, if any, private employers are affected. I do not intend to ask the

  2319
  Minister of Education, who I know is to say a word later in this Debate, to deal with these matters now. It would be more appropriate for us to deal with them all during the Committee stage.
  The point which the hon. Member for Southampton raised is obviously most important. I have no doubt that the presence of the Minister of Education on the Treasury Bench today at any rate justifies me in drawing the conclusion that he is aware of the importance of it. There will have to be some further discussions between the Ministry of Education and the Treasury to see whether they cannot work out something. I know very well how just, though occasionally hard, the Treasury are. I have no doubt that the Minister of Education will use all his persuasive powers to overcome any reluctance there may be on the part of the Financial Secretary to make some modification in this matter. I do not altogether accept the mathematics of the hon. Member for Southampton. He may be right but, at first glance, I do not think he is. Certainly, there is substance in the point he raised, and it is one which must be considered. I do not think that in principle the Bill is wrong on this matter. There may be some way in which this difficulty can be met by Amendment of the Bill without damaging the important principle which, quite rightly, the Financial Secretary obviously intends to defend. If the Minister of Education finds it possible to say that this point will be examined again, then, I shall be very glad that this Bill should have a Second Reading without a Division.
  1.30 p.m.
  Mr. Cove: I wish to associate myself with the words of the hon. Member for Southampton (Mr. Morley) and to say how gladly I welcome the attitude taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Assheton) I remember being on deputations to him when he was at the Treasury. I found him rather hard. I am glad that, now he is on the opposite side of the House, we shall have his co-operation in putting this matter right.
  I do not intend to go into details—my hon. Friend did that—but I cannot understand why teachers are mentioned in this Bill. As I understand it, they would be in exactly the same position if they were
  2320
  not mentioned at all. It is clear that, in the case of this small section of people, there is an injustice. I hope that the Minister will make some response to the suggestions made by the right hon. Member for the City of London and to the pleas we are making. I do not expect him to give any details today about what might happen, but I hope he will be able to say that the door is open and that there is some hope of persuading the Treasury that these people should be treated with justice and equity.
  1.33 p.m.
  Mr. W. R. Williams: I agree with this Bill because it seems to be a further indication, if that were necessary, of the desire and determination of the present Government to try to remove the anomalies and many grievances which to my knowledge, have existed in the Civil Service for well over 30, if not 40, years. My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary will recall that when we were debating the Pensions Increases Act, 1946, I brought to his notice two very real major grievances which I thought called loudly for urgent and sympathetic consideration. The first referred to the services given by men in the old "K" Company of the Royal Corps of Signals. The second referred to assistant postmen who were subsequently appointed as full-time postmen and who received no credit whatever, from the point of view of pension, for their service as assistant postmen prior to full-time establishment.
  I am pleased to note that in Clause 4 (1, c) the Government have decided to remove at least one of the grievances to which I referred in the previous Debate. I note with considerable satisfaction that, as far as the men from the old "K" Company are concerned, it is the purpose of the Government to remove the injustice. This brings to a close an agitation which has been proceeding since 1902. The men who have been interested in the matter have tried from time to time to obtain the sympathy of Members of this House. I believe that at one period there were as many as 200 hon. Members who not only acknowledged the validity of the claim of these people, but also pledged themselves to support their claim to the Government of the day. In addition, the question was considered by the Holt Committee in 1913. It is

  2321
  interesting to remember that the Holt Committee expressed entire approval of the claim that these people should have this service counted for pensionable purposes. I think it is true to say that the Chairman of that Committee, Mr. Holt, after hearing the evidence, took a very active part in support of the agitation for the removal of this grievance.
  I would point out that nothing whatever happened during the intervening years so far as this worthy cause was concerned. I take some pride in the fact that a Labour Government, in the very short time in which they have been in power, have tried to remove some of these longstanding grievances. I express my thanks to the Financial Secretary for the manner in which he took up this case following the earlier Debate, and the sympathetic way in which he and his right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer have dealt with the grievances.
  Having said that, I am sorry to find it necessary to tell him that I am disappointed, as he is a personal friend of mine, that he did not proceed to deal with the second grievance which I enumerated in that Debate. I refer to the service of assistant postmen. I received a letter this morning from an old colleague in Liverpool who joined the Post Office when he was 14 years of age. He retires about the middle of this year at 60 years of age, after having had 46 years unbroken service in the Post Office; yet, when he comes to the end of his working days in the service, he will receive a pension for only about 38 years' service. In other words, he is not entitled to a full pension, although he has spent the whole of his life in the service. I feel sure that the Financial Secretary will agree that this cause is worthy of equally sympathetic consideration when compared with the other. I hope that I am correct in assuming that when another Bill is produced in order to adjust other minor difficulties and anomalies, this case will not be ignored. I appeal to my right hon. Friend to exercise whatever influence he may have in order to make that possible.
  I wish to refer to the arrangements made in Clause 2 for the interchange of officers from the Civil Service into local government, and to express my pleasure
  2322
  that these arrangements are to be made. For many years, when I was in the Civil Service, I felt that there was a great and urgent need for civil servants to be able to go into local government and, if possible, into industry generally, in order to enlarge their conception of administration and to interchange ideas on methods and organisation, and things of that sort.
  I think the provisions in this Clause will enable civil servants to extend their activities in this direction and in local government. I would like to think, not only that we may get this arrangement made in regard to local government, and, perhaps later, in regard to industry, but that a similar arrangement may be made in connection with the Commonwealth and Empire Governments, in order to extend the scope of this interchange, not only within the internal sphere but outside this country. I believe that the requirements of the Civil Service in the future will demand the closest liaison and co-operation with local government, industry and other Governments overseas. I therefore welcome this Bill, and hope that the House will give it the Second Reading which it so well deserves.
  1.41 p.m.
  The Minister of Education (Mr. Tomlinson): I hope the House will not assume that the brevity of the Financial Secretary's speech in moving the Second Reading of this Bill was an indication that this Bill is not of real value and importance. As the right hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Assheton) said, it is a complicated Bill, and my right hon. Friend's brevity was largely explained, I think, by the desire to deal only with the principles involved and not with the machinery which is responsible for putting those principles into practice.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Heston and Isleworth (Mr. W. R. Williams) pointed to one of these principles which I regard as being of special value, namely, the possibility of transfer from one department to another, not only of the State, but of organisation closely linked with the State machine, carrying with it superannuation rights. We all know of circumstances in the past in which these desirable transfers have not been made simply because the individual was called upon to make too great a sacrifice in what he considered to be a

  2323
  very important matter in his life. As a consequence of this Bill, both the State and the local authorities—for this is not a one-way traffic; we are thinking of a two-way traffic—will be able to benefit from experience gained in the other service, and may get to know each other better, as the old hymn says.
  I have referred to the principles of the Bill. The first principle, of course, which runs right through it, and is the main purpose of the introduction of the Bill, is the one to which the Financial Secretary referred; and I think it is demonstrably true in all cases, except, perhaps, in the case brought to our notice by the Motion on the Order Paper in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton (Mr. Morley). I hope my hon. Friends are not going to press that Motion to a Division, because it would be foolish on their part, were it possible, to risk losing the Bill because of what they consider to be a blemish in one part of it.
  I, too, was interested in the mathematics of my hon. Friend in the working out of this scheme, and I think that he was right in all respects except one, and that was where he suggested a method by which it might be possible to bring these people within the orbit. In that case, I think they would not be called upon to pay that portion of the insurance which is formulated in connection with National Insurance for superannuation purposes. Apart from that, I have no fault to find with my hon. Friend's mathematics, and, inasmuch as I am responsible for the policy which has been entered upon whereby young people shall take their training before they enter college, I am prepared to give an undertaking, at least, that this point will be looked into, and that we will see whether it cannot be dealt with in any way when we come to the Committee stage; but that ought not to be taken as a promise that my hon. Friend's suggestion will be carried out.
  I am glad that my hon. Friend referred to the "stony-hearted Treasury." It is an achievement when we have an admission that the Treasury has got a heart at all. At the same time, there may be some possibility of softening the blow so that what is a very desirable thing might not only receive the unanimous assent of the whole House, but might lead us forward
  2324
  to a period in which there is no possible injustice. Inasmuch as the women teachers form part and parcel of the superannuation scheme, unless something can be done to help forward this suggestion, it might give rise to rancour between the sexes in the ranks of the teachers, which is the last thing we want in the education service.
  I want to express my thanks for the compliments to the Financial Secretary, especially by the hon. Member for Heston and Isleworth, who pointed to the fact that he had for 42 years been seeking Amendments of this kind, and that it had fallen to the lot of my right hon. Friend to bring forward a Bill carrying out what everybody now realises to be the duty of the State in that respect. With regard to the second point which he raised, I commend it to my right hon. Friend to bear in mind for the next occasion on which he is called upon to introduce a Bill of this kind.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

  SUPERANNUATION (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) [MONEY]
  Considered in Committee, under Standing Order No. 69.—[King's Recommendation signified.]
  [Mr. HUBERT BEAUMONT in the Chair]
  Resolved:
  "That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the law relating to pensions and other similar payments to be made to and in respect of persons who have been in certain employment, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid, it is expedient—

  (A) to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament—

  (i) of any sums required by rules made under the said Act to be so paid under those rules;

  (ii) of any sums required to be so paid by any order made under the Probation Officers (Superannuation) Act, 5947;

  (iii) of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act of the present Session or of any rules made thereunder in the sums which are so payable under any other statutory provision;

  (B) to authorise the payment into the Exchequer—

  (i) of any sums required by rules made under the said Act of the present Session to be so paid;

  2325

  (ii) of any sums required to be so paid by any order made under the Probation Officers (Superannuation) Act, 1947."[Mr. Glenvil Hall.]

  Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

  EDUCATION (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  1.50 p.m.
  The Minister of Education (Mr. Tomlinson): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
  In moving the Second Reading of the Bill which later became the Act of 1946, my predecessor described it as a very modest Measure which, with perhaps one or two exceptions, was solely concerned with effecting various adjustments to the Education Act, 1944. The same description might apply to the present Bill.
  I have discovered that one of the advantages of presenting a Bill to the House two or three weeks before it is debated on the Floor of the House on Second Reading, is that one finds during that period—very often through that section of the Press which is interested—all the hidden motives which lie behind the mind of the Minister in producing a Bill at all. The fact that they are very far from the truth, or, at any rate, from the inclinations of the Minister, gives him an opportunity of seeing how the proposals that are made can be interpreted, either rightly or wrongly.
  Further experience of the operation of the 1944 Act has shown the need for some small adjustments—some to enable us more effectively to interpret the underlying purposes of that Act, and some to lubricate its day-to-day administration. I do not know whether, in 1950, we shall need another amending Measure such as we put forward in 1946, and as we are now doing in 1948, but I think the House will agree that it is in accordance with the traditions of a progressive Department that its administration should be kept constantly under review, and adjusted from time to time in the light of experience. I will not weary the House by going through every Clause in the Bill. Several of them are designed to do a useful job in a modest and effective way, and I do not think I need dwell on them at length.
  2326
  Clause 5, for instance, consolidates the provisions of the 1944 and 1946 Acts about the supplying of clothing by local education authorities, and also makes a few amendments. The very fact that it is bringing together all the powers of the local authorities with regard to clothing is, in itself, worth doing, for it enables the individual responsible for that administration to see at a glance what he can and what he cannot do. Another example is Clause 6, which embodies a very ingenious and, I think, sound scheme for dealing with cases where it is impossible to allot to any individual local education authority financial responsibility for the education of a child.
  I will now deal with the Clauses which are either of substantive importance, or which may give rise to questions in some quarters. The first two Clauses of the Bill concern the administration of charitable trusts. At present, by virtue of the Board of Education Act, 1899, and Orders in Council made therein, I, as Minister of Education, exercise Charitable Trusts Acts jurisdiction over endowments which are determined as solely educational. In the case of endowments which are in no way educational, and also in the case of endowments which are partly educational and partly non-educational, that jurisdiction is at present exercised by the Charity Commissioners.
  The purpose of Clause 1 (1) of the present Bill is to provide machinery whereby, under Order in Council, jurisdiction over endowments which are not solely educational can be transferred from the Charily Commissioners to the Minister of Education. Instances of the mixed type of endowments—those which are partly educational and partly non-educational—are, for instance, endowments for youth welfare, community centres, libraries, museums and technical colleges which carry on research as well as education, and some other institutions normally assisted by local education authorities and grant-aided by my Department.
  The recently constituted Foundation for Educational Research is another example which would probably come into this category of a mixed trust. My Department does not give grant aid to an organisation providing for youth welfare, physical training, recreation, and so on, unless the organisation is properly constituted as a charitable trust. It seems desirable that

  2327
  such a foundation should be wholly within the purview of my Department for all purposes, and not partly under my Department and partly under the Charity Commissioners. This Clause would enable this mixed type of endowment to be brought wholly under my wing, and I understand that this proposition is quite acceptable to the Charity Commissioners.
  Clause 2, which deals with the same subject, is designed to extend my powers under the Endowed Schools Acts so that endowments which have ceased to serve any effective purpose, by reason of the passage of the Education Act, 1944, may be put to good use. In 1869, when the first Endowed Schools Act was passed, the State and the local authorities were only then about to enter seriously into the field of education, and that only for the purpose of ensuring an adequate system of elementary education for the younger children of the working classes. No attempt was then made to deal with adult education. Education has now a much wider meaning, and the national policy, as stated in the first sentence of the 1944 Act, is to provide a varied and comprehensive educational service in every area.
  Many endowments, which were founded mainly to provide scholarships, maintenance allowances, and such things in secondary schools, have ceased to be effective because we have abolished fees in maintained schools and given local education authorities wide powers to provide scholarships and other benefits. At the present moment, I have applications from the trustees of well over 600 endowments asking for new schemes. At present, my powers under the Endowed Schools Acts extend only to endowments which satisfy two conditions: first, that they were founded before 1869—apart from certain types of endowments which are specifically excluded—and, secondly, that they are endowments for the education of boys and girls at school, or endowments for exhibitions.
  Under my present powers, I cannot make a new scheme for endowments founded since 1819, except with the consent of the governors of the trust. Another reason why new schemes are needed for many endowments is that, as a result of the change in the value of our money, some scholarship funds are not in a position adequately to provide for the
  2328
  education of students who obtain awards I think the House will agree that it is desirable that we should be able to interpret the wishes of those who founded those charities long ago in a way which will benefit future generations, as they have benefited past generations.
  To deal with my immediate problems, I am seeking to make three changes in the law: first, to extend the Endowed Schools Acts to cover the education of adults, as well as boys and girls; secondly, to extend the Acts to endowments given at any time, whether before or after 1869; thirdly, to require the consent of the governors of an endowment to a scheme only if the endowment was founded within the last 50 years. I am not wedded to the actual wording of the Clause, and I think there is certainly room for improvement in it. For instance, I understand that Subsection (2) gives us power to make new schemes for university endowments. I can assure the House with my hand on my heart that nothing has been or is further from my intention than to tamper with university endowments, and I propose at a later stage to put down Amendments to cover this and certain other points.
  Commander Galbraith: Would that refer also to endowments for public schools?
  Mr. Tomlinson: Public schools are already excluded under the Act to which I have referred. They are among the exceptions. Universities will be excluded by being placed in the list of exclusions in the appropriate Schedule.
  Mr. Henry Strauss: When the right hon. Gentleman says "universities," I presume he means also any college in a university?
  Mr. Tomlinson: Yes, in the case of an endowment of that kind. I am sure that the old law of charity trusts, in all its ramifications, will have to be reviewed before long. Meanwhile, I am seeking powers for the limited purpose which I have described, and I think every Member of the House, knowing something of local endowments and local schemes, will realise the necessity for it.
  Welsh Members will probably have noted Subsection (5) of Clause 2 which repeals the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889. I should explain that this

  2329
  Act is being repealed not because it has been unsatisfactory in its operation, but for the contrary reason, that its objects have long ago been successfully accomplished. The purpose of the Act was to provide machinery for filling in the large gaps which then existed in the secondary school provision of Wales and Monmouthshire. Generally speaking, this purpose has been fulfilled, and in the course of time many of the provisions of the Welsh Act have been superseded by other statutes and have been repealed. I should like to emphasise, however, that the schemes made under the Act will remain in force, and the fund's schools and institutions—for instance, the Central Welsh Board—which were established under such schemes, will not suffer in any way as a result of the repeal of the Act.
  The purpose of Clause 3 is quite simple, and it has none of the sinister implications which I see have been attributed to it in some quarters. The 1944 Act lays down that primary schools are for junior pupils and secondary schools for senior pupils, and the line of division between these two categories is at the age of 12. Everyone knows that, in general, the age of 11-plus is the normal time for transfer from primary to secondary schools in this country. We therefore need to bring the law into line with our current general practice. As a matter or fact, most of the transfers at the moment probably take place at the age of 11-plus, but before the actual age of 12 has been reached. Under the law as it stands, that is illegal. There is a small minority of cases in which a pupil's abilities justify his promotion from the primary to the secondary stage rather earlier than the majority, but those cases are few.
  Mr. Ralph Morley: If 11 is the usual transfer age, why bring it down to 10?
  Mr. Tomlinson: I want to cover the exceptional case where a youngster of outstanding ability should be transferred at that age. There is no intention, as has been intimated in some sections of the educational Press, of using this Amendment to relieve the situation lower down. The only reason for introducing it, and the whole object of the Clause, is to legalise existing practice and not to alter it. It may be that in fixing the lower limit at the age of 10 we have gone rather further than is necessary to accomplish
  2330
  our purpose. I should be quite prepared to consider whether we can make an adjustment so as to avoid making it possible for children to be promoted before the age of say, 10 years 6 months, or 10 years 8 months. There is no intention of changing the present practice; this is simply regularising the practice which now obtains.
  Clause 4 relates to the subject dealt with in the previous Clause. Together with Clause 3, it will meet the argument which has already been advanced that the managers of a voluntary primary school can defy the authority and retain their pupils up to the age of 12 beyond the present normal age for transfer to secondary schools at 11-plus. In other words, under the present Act, if the managers of a school wished to be awkward, they could defy the authority by refusing to allow their children to be moved at all until they have passed the age of 12. Anybody who has had any administrative experience at all knows that the law cannot be allowed to remain in that position. Subsection (2) has as its main object the restoration to local education authorities of the power which they had under the Act of 1921, to prevent capricious transfers of children from one school to another in the middle of the term. I think this part of the Clause may have to be looked at again, because it goes a good deal further than our present regulations which define the circumstances in which a child may not be refused admission to a school at the beginning of the term. However, it is apparent that some alteration is needed there, for the simple reason that, according to the law, one can exclude a child from school and then summons the parents for not sending him to the school. In Committee that point can be covered and cleared up.
  I am sure the House will welcome Subsection (3). This abolishes the present regulations relating to the procedure for registering pupils and withdrawing them from school. The present system requires the use of many thousands of forms—60,000 a year in London alone—and this Subsection provides further evidence of the constant efforts we make to reduce red tape. To abolish at one stroke the need for 60,000 forms in London alone, and to abolish a correspondingly larger number in the rest of the country, is evidence of the fact that we are prepared to abolish this form-filling when

  2331
  possible, and that we do not insist on form-filling for its own sake.
  I now come to Clause 7. As the House will remember, under Section 10 (2) of the 1944 Act, I have power to modify the requirements of the building regulations in regard to individual existing schools where, for some good reason connected with "the nature of the site," or "any existing buildings thereon," or "other special circumstances affecting the school premises," it would be unreasonable to require conformity with the regulations. When the 1944 Act was passed, it was not foreseen that it would not be possible, for various reasons, to make all new schools conform with the building regulations. This Clause has two purposes. The first is to remove the requirement under the existing Section 10 (2) of the 1944 Act that I should draw up what I might call an alternative set of building regulations for each individual school which cannot comply with the general regulations, and secondly, to enable me to authorise the provision of new schools in circumstances where it is impracticable for some good reason, other than financial, to meet the full rigour of the building regulations.
  Perhaps it will be convenient for me to deal first with Subsection (2) of this Clause, which applies to new schools. In the present circumstances, while we are faced with an acute shortage of labour and material, it is obviously sound policy to make such use as we can of existing buildings. Thus, in the case of special schools for handicapped pupils, we are combing the country for large houses which can be adapted and used for this purpose. None of these houses will comply with the strict letter of the building regulations and we must, therefore, make it legally possible to do what everybody would agree is sensible and necessary. I should like to give a definite assurance that the intention of this Clause is not to enable me, or any future Minister, to waive the building regulations in a general way.
  Mr. Harold Davies: Can we have some kind of guarantee? My right hon. Friend is the Minister now, but we do not know what may happen in the future, and we would like some protection. Cannot there be a period of time set down over which this would apply?
  Mr. Tomlinson: I have not said the last word on this Clause. I can understand my hon. Friend's desire to get this protection, but I was going to say something about it. The difficulty in complying with the full requirements of the building regulations must be due either to the shortage of adequate sites or shortages of labour or materials, before the Minister can use his discretion under this Clause.
  Mr. Cove: Not shortage of money?
  Mr. Tomlinson: As in the case of the existing powers which I have under Section 10 (2) of the 1944 Act, there is nothing in this Clause which would enable me to relax the building regulations in order to enable the managers of a school to get away with less than the building regulations required, solely on financial grounds. I hope the present shortage of materials and labour will be temporary, but the difficulty of finding an adequate number of adequate sites is likely to be permanent in a good many areas. I think, therefore, that we must be realistic and acknowledge that the powers provided for in this Clause are necessary. I am prepared to see whether the drafting can be tightened up so as to limit the Minister's discretion to the absolutely unavoidable cases, where, for practical reasons, the building regulations cannot be fully met.
  Returning to Subsection (1) of this Clause, I do not think there is much that need be said. It would clearly be administratively almost impossible to draw up for each case a schedule of points in which existing schools might be allowed to depart from the building regulations and, further than that, it would also be undesirable, in my submission, in that it would tend to establish a substandard set of regulations alongside the statutory regulations. Furthermore, having gone to the trouble of introducing in one Clause the powers which enable me to destroy, as it were, or to render unnecessary the filling of forms, I do not see why I should impose upon myself the necessity of filling up another series of very important forms setting out in every detail where a particular school is not up to the regulations.
  Turning to Clause 8, under the existing law once an authority have reported a

  2333
  child as ineducable, there is no power for them to revise their report. In other words, once a child has been declared ineducable, it remains so for the rest of its life, even though the authority may have been misinformed and have wrongly reported the child, or the child improves and subsequently becomes educable. This Clause gives the authority that power. I have had some pathetic cases referred to me where the existing law is obviously frustrating those who are seeking to do their best for the children concerned. I may admit to the House that I have gone outside the law in order to attempt to help those children. I am sure every one will welcome this adjustment.
  I will pass to Clause 10. Under Section 90 of the 1944 Act, an authority can acquire land compulsorily for the purpose of passing it over to a maintained or assisted school or institution, provided that in passing it over they are subject to the recouping of expenditure, but they have no power to do the less drastic thing of purchasing land by agreement to pass over to some such body in the same way. Subsection (1) gives them that power. Subsection (2), following a similar provision in Section go of the 1944 Act, requires the managers or governors of a voluntary school to recoup the expenditure if it is their duty under the Education Act to provide the land.
  I now turn to Clause 9. The present Section 95 of the 1944 Act requires an authority either to prove the age of a child brought before the court for school attendance purposes, or to satisfy the court that they have used every effort to obtain evidence as to age, but have failed. This requirement is apt to be very burdensome to authorities and in most cases—the majority of cases—is quite unnecessary, as it is obvious to everybody that the child is of compulsory school age. This Clause puts the burden on the parent, who disputes that the child is of compulsory school age, to prove that fact—putting the onus on the parent to prove the child is not of compulsory age when the authority says that he is. There is just one other matter to which I would refer. Every Clause of this Bill, in my judgment, is of real importance, as I think hon. Members will realise if they go through the respective changes that are contemplated both in the Clauses and in the Schedule.
  2334
  There is just one point in the First Schedule to which I would like to call attention, and that is the Amendment to Section 40 of the 1944 Act. I would like particularly to mention this point, which is of great importance in the administration of the law on school attendance. As the law now stands, an obstinate parent can flout a school attendance order by allowing himself to be repeatedly fined by a magistrate, while the child remains out of school. The situation is comparable with that where the owner of a dog, which has been ordered to be destroyed, retains his canine friend by paying a daily fine. This new Section enables the child to be brought before a juvenile court, in a case where his parent is disobeying a school attendance order, and removed from the control of his parents. In my judgment, that it is a very necessary and very desirable thing, for a child who is being kept out of school by the whim of the parent, is entitled to the protection of the law in order to see it gets its schooling.
  If there are other matters in the Bill to which I have not referred, and on which Members are suspicious and where they question the desire or the purpose of the Minister in seeking improvements, I am quite sure that, in replying to the Debate, the Parliamentary Secretary will attempt to set those suspicions at rest.
  2.20 p.m.
  Mr. Linstead: I think we were all pleased that the Minister has indicated that it is his wish and the practice of his Department to keep the administration of the principal Act perpetually under review, and that he is not afraid to come to the House with an amending Bill to correct any deficiences in that Act which are shown by experience of working it. It must have occurred to some of us that the precedent that the right hon. Gentleman has established might be communicated to the Minister of Health, so that from time to time a National Health Service (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill could be introduced. There are few Ministers who come to this House and admit to certain weaknesses in the drafting of their Bills who are more likely to be excused than the right hon. Gentleman. I think the House is not unreasonably entitled, when a Bill is presented to it for Second Reading, to expect it to be in a good, workmanlike, Parliamentary form.
  Mr. Tomlinson: I should not like it to be thought that this Bill is not in a good workmanlike, Parliamentary form.
  Mr. Linstead: That was what I was suggesting, having heard the Minister confess that he was hoping to see various changes made at later stages. It is important, especially now that we have such an enormous amount of legislation put before us, that the House should establish the principle—I am not particularly referring to this Bill—that Bills should be ab initio in a satisfactory form, and that it is undesirable for it to be supposed that any text will do for Second Reading because at subsequent stages it can be put into better shape.
  With regard to this Bill, I notice that in Clause 1 the Minister is taking powers to extend the borderline of educational trusts to include charities which are not solely educational. One can see at one end of the scale a trust which is wholly educational, and at the other end of the scale a trust which is wholly charitable. The Minister is now gradually to move along that scale, and reading Clause 1, one wonders where the Minister will stop. It seems to me that the limiting words, which are:
  "the same or associated powers … already vested in or exercisable by the Minister,"
  will be altered every time the Minister moves from the educational end to the charitable end of the scale, and that by these words he may gradually acquire to himself powers to take over—I do not say for a moment that he wants to do so—almost any charitable trust. I ask, therefore, whether there ought not to be some oversight of the Minister in the exercise of these powers, and whether it is wise that the Charity Commissioners should entirely lose their jurisdiction, as, apparently, they will, and hand it over completely to the Minister.
  With regard to Clause 2, the Minister said that he proposes to use these powers only in cases where trusts have ceased to fulfil any useful purpose because of the operation of the principal Act. That, in a statement by the Minister, is one thing; but he will be the first to admit that it is very far from what the Bill itself has to say. In the Bill, the Minister is, apparently, taking power to alter or add to existing trusts, and to make new trusts
  2336
  in respect of endowments for any educational purposes. I am sure the House as a whole was glad to hear from the Minister that he looks favourably upon some limitation upon the extraordinarily wide powers he is proposing to take by the Clause. It would be helpful to the House if, in his reply to the Debate, the Parliamentary Secretary would tell us by what means these powers are exercised. Apparently, they are not exercised by statutory instrument. One wonders—one does not know—whether there is any control in this House over the exercise of the powers, or, indeed, any way at all of bringing them to the light of day. It certainly looks as though the Minister can use his unfettered discretion without any publicity.
  In the same Clause there is a very complicated provision—Subsection (3)—dealing with the consent of trustees. I gather that some 600—anyway, hundreds—of trustees have already come to the Minister and asked him to vary their trusts. There are presumably trustees who have not come to the Minister and asked him to vary the trusts. The Minister, however, is now proposing to take powers to vary those trusts, and if they are "modern trusts" he may do so without the consent of the trustees. That seems to me a strong power to take, and I wonder if the Parliamentary Secretary could not give us a rather clearer indication of the circumstances in which the Minister will virtually break up a trust against the wishes of the existing trustees.
  With regard to Clause 3 and Clause 4 (1), which run together, I feel that this is a reasonable amendment of the law, but I hope that it will be found possible to bring to the attention of parents the effect of this change. It means in practice that a child that is taken away from school because his parents move, cannot go to a school in the district to which the family moves until the beginning of the next term. That is a factor which may influence parents, if they know it, in timing their removals.
  Mr. Tomlinson: I am sorry. That is an instance in which, I admit, the Bill may not be in good, workmanlike form. I have intimated that the Clause shall not apply in certain directions. An Amendment will be necessary.
  Mr. Linstead: It is useful to have that assurance from the Minister. I am sorry

  2337
  if I misunderstood anything he may have said in moving the Second Reading. It is, of course, in Clause 2 that many of the powers with regard to university endowments are raised. We were all glad to hear the Minister say that he had no intention of tampering with university endowments. I take it that that will be put beyond question in Committee. The right hon. Gentleman did say that he made that statement with his hand on his heart. I could not help noticing that his hand, at that time, was very far from his heart and was well in the air. Nevertheless, we are bound to accept his assurance that his hand was, metaphorically, where he told us it was.
  With regard to Clause 3 and the age of 10. I realise the force of the remonstrances which came from below the Gangway about this age. Nevertheless, there is the exceptional child. I have personal knowledge of one boy who has spent two years as the top boy at his primary school, and it has not been to his benefit to remain stuck in that position. If there are only a few such boys a year in the whole country it might be wise for special power to exist to move them up to a secondary school, even two years in advance of their time. I am glad to learn that, even if there is to be some advance on the age of ten it is likely to be only a matter of months. The exceptional case does exist, and there should be provision for dealing with it.
  Clause 5, which deals with clothing, is a most valuable consolidation. It would be interesting if at some time the Minister's Department published a general survey on how the administration of the clothing provisions in the Education Act are working. There must be some useful sociological information being collected. It would be of interest to know, for example, whether there is any practical value in making a differentiation between the right of property and the right of user; in other words, whether clothes which actually belong to the boy and to his family are better looked after than clothes which are merely loaned for the purpose of the boy's school life. Such information must be in the possession of the Department, and it would be of value were it made public.
  The distinction which it is sought to draw in Clause 7 between the old words and the new words is extremely difficult
  2338
  to understand. The Minister indicated that he did not want to be in the position of having to put his name to a long specification of detailed works which were permitted in a particular school, and said that the effect of doing so would be, in a sense, to make a series of substandard regulations. He is surely much less likely to make a series of substandard regulations if he approves a separate specification for each school than if, as he will apparently do now, he gives his approval
  "in such manner as appears to him to be requisite for securing conformity…"
  In other words, by being more precise in respect of each school I should have thought he would be in less danger of laying down sub-standard regulations than with the more general phrase which he is now using.
  The only remaining comment I have to offer is on the question of drafting. Had it been only a matter affecting the Minister personally we might have marked his report, "English Composition: could do better if he tried." But there is a matter of general policy affecting the House as a whole, and I hope that in future we can rely upon completely drafted Bills being presented to us for Second Reading. With those comments, I warmly commend the Bill to the House.
  2.34 p.m.
  Mr. Cove: We are debating this Bill under stress of Parliamentary time, and as I know that many hon. Members wish to speak I will confine myself to one or two points. I am glad the Minister has shown himself to be adaptable and willing to listen to arguments and consider Amendments in Committee. I thought that an excellent approach. It is an advantage, too, that he is anxious not to do anything with regard to building regulations which will perpetually lower standards. My only comment is that, having been in this House so many years and heard education Debates over and over again, I must plead: For Heaven's sake get on with some schools. The "black list" of Trevelyan still exists. The physical condition of hundreds of thousands of school children in this country is simply abominable.
  My main comment arises on Clause 3, with regard to the lowering of the secondary school age to 10. On that I thought

  2339
  I detected that the Minister was not so pliable as on the other Clauses. He seemed to have made up his mind. Many of us are very disturbed about this, and in my opinion it will have a very detrimental effect upon the junior schools. Kiddies will go to the junior school, but how long will they be there? Two years? Two and a half years? All the time they are there they will be subject to examination pressure to get into a secondary school.
  Mr. Tomlinson indicated dissent.
  Mr. Cove: The Minister shakes his head, but I think this will give local authorities the opportunity to transfer these children at the age of 10, when the pressure comes following the increase in the number of kiddies in junior schools. I can see a letting up in order to relieve the pressure in the junior schools—particularly owing to the increase of the junior school population—and a great many kiddies will have a truncated period there. We shall have to debate this rather sternly in Committee if we get the opportunity. I am dead against examination pressure in the junior schools, because of the bad effect it will have on the children. This is a vital educational principle, and I hope that in Committee the Minister will be as amenable on this point as he has shown himself to be on others.
  2.37 p.m.
  Mr. Kenneth Lindsay: This Bill does not seem to me to be the last word in draftsmanship. I thought that the Bill was one which would relax the somewhat stiff regulations which had been put into practice since the 1944 Act. Of course, an Act reforming the whole law of education was bound, in some cases, to be—I was going to say "found out"; but apparently my right hon. Friend is doing some illegal things at present, and this Bill is introduced primarily to clear them up. On Second Reading, it is very hard to discern any principles in a Bill, which is called miscellaneous. Therefore, all my comments are on Committee points.
  I simply do not understand the mixed trust Clause at all, and I share the doubts of the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead) in that regard. We are living in an absolute dream world in our
  2340
  approach to building regulations for education at the moment, when we consider the increased cost of one single school since 1939, and the conditions of junior schools, or read the report of the Advisory Council—a most moderate report—in which it is said that it will take 50 years to put the junior schools into anything like reasonable conditions. I share the view of the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) about the schools; but if we get some schools which are a little below the standards set up under the 1944 Act, I am all for having them. The London County Council have already considered lowering standards in one or two respects.
  Mr. Eric Fletcher: The London County Council found themselves in considerable difficulty with the present standards and would be anxious to reduce them in certain ways.
  Mr. Lindsay: I am grateful to the hon. Member. I know that the L.C.C. are faced with one of the worst problems in the country. It is clear that in other communities we may have to put up with inferior standards. In this case, the best is so often the enemy of the good. We have to be far more realist in matters concerning building regulations. Another matter which I do not understand is connected with the clothing regulations. Am I to understand that we shall now be able to give equipment for games and so on? If so, the youth clubs will welcome it. It is difficult for them to get coupons at present except from the family coupon pool. I hope that these provisions will give relief to youth clubs in this respect.
  With regard to the power of local education authorities to transfer pupils to secondary schools before the age of 12, am I to understand that the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to make the age 10 years and six months, or 10 years and eight months? That is roughly what is happening now. We cannot lay down an absolute rule about this matter. What an irony it is. Only four years ago we were passing the wonderful Education Act, 1944. How many hon. Members said then that examinations at 11-plus would now be a thing of the past? The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) will remember that many speakers joined with him in welcoming the abolition of the practice by

  2341
  which, at the age of 11, a child's whole future is settled. The hon. Member for Aberavon now says that if we make this age 10 years, there will be preparations for examinations starting at the ages of eight or nine, and it will mean that we shall have no junior school left. He is right. That is the fact. Until we get new buildings it is bound to be the fact.
  Let us not fool ourselves. Only 60 per cent. of the schools in this country are re-organised for secondary education. The sooner we recognise that fact the better. We have to do a great deal of rebuilding in order to make what are known as secondary schools faintly resemble schools that come up to the standard. As it is, too often the difference between the primary and the secondary school is little more than a change in nomenclature. I do not mind if the right hon. Gentleman has to go down to a little lower standard. We shall welcome some modification in the Committee stage and a clarification of one or two points, particularly with regard to the mixed trusts.
  In Scotland we have had a great deal of experience of what it means to give up a trust which always took children from one locality. This was a very local and very much respected trust. Suddenly we found that the trust was being converted for all kinds of other purposes. It may be, as the right hon. Gentleman says, that he has 600 applications. When the Parliamentary Secretary replies I hope he will give us a little more information of the kind of trust that is to be modified and that we may have some modification of the Minister's powers in connection with trusts. On every other ground I welcome the Bill.
  2.45 p.m.
  Mr. Corlett: I find it difficult to understand how there can be much objection to the Bill, which proposes solutions for administrative difficulties that have arisen in the administration of the Education Act. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) did not expect, when he initiated that Measure, that there would not be administrative difficulties. The method on this occasion is a lesson for the doctors. We pass an Act and let it operate, and then we bring in an amending Act to put right matters that still need adjustment. We are working an Act with which we disagreed in some
  2342
  respects, and now, having put it into operation, we are finding solutions for the difficulties which have arisen.
  I therefore congratulate the Minister upon bringing in the Bill. The difficulties were inevitable, and it is inevitable, too, that we should quarrel over their solution. I see the difficulties raised about the solution for educational endowments, but I am sure that the local authorities will be delighted with the very simple solution now proposed and the effective way of dealing with the trouble. I am sure they will also be delighted with the solution proposed for the problem of financial responsibility for other-area children. That question has been a bugbear to the local authorities for many years. Local authorities have wasted a terrific amount of time and energy trying to place financial responsibility, which is now to be put upon all local authorities. That seems to be an admirable solution.
  In my constituency we have a direct grant school which has just changed its status to aided. There are boys who are boarders there, and one is from Caithness in Scotland. Since the school has changed its status, that Scottish authority has absolutely refused to pay the fees towards the cost of that boy. The expense has, therefore, fallen upon my city. Under the Bill, it will spread over the whole community, and that is welcome. But I hope the Minister will not let Scotland get away with it and that there will be reciprocity so that they will have to pay for the boarder for whom we are paying at the moment.
  I agree that our attitude towards building regulations must be realist and that we must face the facts. I agree that with regard to sites there must be variation. I also agree that authorities will be compelled, by shortage of labour and materials and their cost, to set up new schools in existing buildings. Building regulations will have to be waived in such cases; but I should have thought that the Minister had ample powers under Section 10 (2) of the principal Act to control building regulation. I am not sure that he needs further powers. We have great pride and confidence in the Minister, but he will not be in that office for all time. He may now secure powers that we should not want to put into other hands. It may well be that, as he sees development plans, and has to make so many individual variations, he desires wider powers

  2343
  which would prevent him having to make a specific set of requirements for every school. But as the Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. K. Lindsay) has said, we must avoid their becoming sub-standard. I would like him, therefore, to give an assurance that his power will apply only to new school accommodation in existing buildings. There should be some limitation of his powers in time and scope. The scope should be, as I have said, that new buildings should mean only new schools when they are being set up in existing buildings. The time limit should be 30th April, 1955, to be reviewed by Parliament; then we should not go any further.
  The Clause which gives me particular concern, however, is that which deals with the transfer from primary to secondary schools. We know that the need for a new definition is there. Under the original Act, the age of transfer was to be 12 years. No child was to be transferred from a primary school to a secondary school until he was 12 years old. No child could be retained in a primary school after reaching that age and no child could be transferred before that age. Each child had to be transferred on its twelfth birthday. This meant there would be a succession of children coming into the secondary school on their birthday. This was of course administratively quite unworkable, because no head teacher would be able to organise classification or curriculum. A remedy had to be found, and the authorities found it by breaking the law. All education authorities have been breaking the law ever since the Act came in, acting illegally and irregularly but very sensibly. Instead of taking notice of the age 12, they took 11 plus; but it is no secret that has now been challenged. Parents and bodies of managers are prepared to challenge the right of authorities to remove the children before they reach the age of 12 or to keep them in a primary school after the age of 12. We might soon be faced with cases in the courts.
  But the Minister has gone much too far in substituting the age 10. I can understand his reasons. Rural schools often have the case of a bright child who it would seem really ought to go into the senior department. The problem too creates an administrative headache in overcrowded districts where the authorities
  2344
  have waiting lists for the infant schools, crowded infant classes and crowded junior classes and yet have accommodation to spare in the senior sections. They have tried all kinds of methods, including promoting children half-yearly, for it is always a difficulty to know how to get children through the overcrowded classrooms into the uncrowded ones.
  Further, the senior schools have been complaining that they do not have their children long enough. When the school-leaving age was 14, the child was sometimes in the senior school for just over two years, and while it is 15, the child is there sometimes for only three years. The authorities complain that they cannot give the children a four year course. However, the Minister must hesitate a long time before putting this figure 10 into the Act. We had fears that he intended to promote the average child at 10 and only to retain in the primary department the below average child. That would have been unthinkable, just as it can be unforgivable to promote the bright child. The House should face up to this problem of promoting the bright child. A bright child of 10 may be intellectually ready for promotion, but is he emotionally ready for promotion? Ten is a very doubtful age. A child of that age has in front of him seven or eight years of school life. He will have new experiences, new teachers, new subjects and new friends.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) that there might sometimes be a determination to push this child too rapidly through matriculation at 14 plus, and then perhaps intense specialisation for open, major and State scholarships. Over-specialisation can easily become a curse in secondary education. That might be the child's future if he is promoted at 10, and it will be completely unforgivable. The public schools do not transfer until 13 or 14. Does any one, least of all the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Saffron Walden, suggest that a child's aptitude and ability can be determined at 10? In Scotland the transfer is at 12. Our schools have been transferring at 11 plus, and there has been continuous agitation to raise that age; yet to our horror we now find 10 suggested. The Minister should find an easier way out than this.

  2345
  I know an authority which transfers its children who reach their eleventh birthday on 31st July of the year of entry. Therefore, they have a no-man's-land. They have elbow room and elasticity for children in primary and secondary schools. They promote at an age varying from 11 years to 11 years 11 months, the average age of promotion being 11 years six months. Most authorities, I think, fix the age of transfer at 11 on 31st December of the year of entry, and so get a no-man's-land from 10 years 11 months to 11 years eight months, with an average age of 11 years two months. The Minister ought to consider putting something in the Bill to legalise the existing method, and we should then all be satisfied. We do want assurances from him that he will vary the building regulations only in regard to existing schools and to new schools which may be in existing buildings and will take out of this Bill that fearful "age 10."
  2.56 p.m.
  Mr. R. A. Butler: The object of the Bill is quite clear to us all. It is to make certain amendments which have been discovered to be necessary by the administration of the 1944 Act. In so far as that is the object, we welcome the Bill. During this short Debate, I have been very much struck by the fact that the Minister and the Government have not given this Bill more consideration in detail before bringing it to the House. The Minister has said that it is his intention now to revise at least three of the Clauses in the light of the preliminary discussions there have been, even at this stage of the proceedings. In that case, it would have been wiser if some of those considerations had been clearer to him and his advisers before the Bill was brought here.
  Clause 1 is not satisfactory. That is another Clause which the Minister should reconsider before the Committee stage. While the objects of the Clause are clear, the method of using simply an Order in Council is unsatisfactory. It leaves the Minister of Education too much power in judging what powers conferred by the Charitable Trusts Acts, 1853 and 1939, shall be transferred to his jurisdiction. I should like to see some authority other than the Minister brought into the matter. We see in Subsection (3) that an Order
  2346
  in Council made under that provision may be varied or revoked by a subsequent Order in Council. In Subsection (2) we see that the Minister can do exactly as he likes. This Clause might be drafted quite shortly as, "Clause 1.—The Minister of Education can do exactly as he likes about the Charity Commissioners and the Charitable Trusts Acts, 1853 and 1939." It is not worth coming to the House with legislation of this sort. It means that this is not worth our consideration. The matter is left exclusively to the jurisdiction of the Minister. He has the only motive power to modify an Order in Council and it depends on the exercise of his discretion what is done with the Charity Commissioners. If a thing is wrong, it can be put back the other way by another Order in Council.
  When debating these matters we are always faced with the difficulty that the Minister is of a benign and genial disposition and able to get away with almost anything. No doubt we would be perfectly happy were the right hon. Gentleman always to remain in power, but unfortunately it is not the habit of Ministers of Education to remain in situ for ever. In fact, there are usually more changes in that office than in any other. I therefore ask the Minister quite seriously to consider whether he can broaden this Clause in order to make the Order in Council not dependent solely upon his whim—this is a perfectly serious drafting point—and to bring in some other authority, perhaps the Lord Chancellor, in order to render this discretion, in the case of transference from the Charity Commissioners to the Minister, a little less dictatorial than is apparent from the terms of this Clause.
  The Minister has already acknowledged that Clause 2 is far too broad. Hon. Members on this side of the House have had endless approaches from establishments ranging from universities downwards, or, if it is preferred to put it another way, from the universities upward to the most modest endowments of the smaller schools, asking where the powers in Clause 2 will end. From the language of this Clause, it is seen that the maximum powers are under the Endowed Schools Acts, 1869 to 1908, which are explained in the following parenthesis:
  "which confer powers as respects educational endowments by schemes made thereunder to

  2347
  alter or add to existing trusts and to make new trusts and to consolidate or divide endowments."
  If those powers are really as broad as that, and if the powers taken by this Minister are as wide as they are in Clause 2, there is no doubt that there is in the minds of educational establishments up and down the country the feeling that the settlement made about endowments in the 1944 Act is in some sense to be broken. I do not believe that is the Minister's intention, but the drafting gives the impression that he can transfer one type of school into another type; that he can transfer the most revered of university colleges into an establishment for girls' education, which would be insulting to the university college and no less unsatisfactory to the girls' school. If that be not the intention of the Minister, he should not have come to the House with a Clause so drafted because, from top to bottom of the educational system of this country, there has been grave anxiety. Let me take it, then, that, as he said in his opening remarks, the Minister intends to bring forward some revision of this point.
  Then we come to Clause 3. This backs up what I said earlier, that this Bill ought to have been considered in more detail before it was brought here. Here we find in the mind of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Corlett), a person learned in the art of educational administration, serious anxiety as to whether this does not mean that transfers shall take place between primary and secondary education at the age of 10. From my knowledge of educational administration, I do not believe that the Minister wants this Clause for that purpose or that there is any sinister intention in moving this Clause. I believe the reason is that there have been serious hold-ups in the administration of the Act by certain people of legal disposition who have attempted to quibble at the original terms of Section 8 (1) of the principal Act, and have attempted to hold back in those schools—quite likely voluntary schools—children over the age of 11, thereby holding up reorganisation.
  Even I, in the wilderness, am able to have some knowledge of some of the difficulties of the Minister in his reorganisation proposals, and I believe I have some knowledge of the causes which have made him introduce this Clause. If that be the
  2348
  reason, pray let him disabuse the mind of the hon. Member for York by telling him that it is not his intention that there shall be any change in the ordinary age of maturity in the passage from primary to secondary education.
  Mr. Tomlinson indicated assent.
  Mr. Butler: I do not think that could be achieved solely by altering the age from 10 to 10 years 6 months. He will have to look into this again, and so draft the Clause that he does not excite apprehensions which need not be excited while, at the same time, achieving a rod with which he can beat those who are attempting to retain children in their own establishment, thus preventing reorganisation. I sympathise in the view with the hon. Member for York that 10 is not necessarily the right age to choose at which to transfer children from primary to secondary education. I am not absolutely clear why we chose the age of 11 originally but it has been sacrosanct since the time of Hadow and has never been altered. Now that we have that age, it is difficult to change it, so do not let us confuse it by anything in this Bill. The Minister may also intend to think again about Clause 4. If so, I should be interested to hear what he has to say.
  The one Clause which seems to have escaped the need for redrafting, so far, is Clause 5, on clothing. That is not surprising because, in the 1944 Act the clothing provisions were extremely complicated. They were, in fact, exactly like the average changing room in a school. A plimsol was to be found at this end of the Act, a vest at the other end of the Act, a jersey in the middle of the Act, and various items of clothing strewn all over the floor. The advantage of this Clause is that it brings all the clothing together, and hangs it on one peg. This is a considerable improvement and something which is hardly seen even in the best regulated schools. So far we have not been able to find anything untidy in this Clause.
  Many authorities welcome Clause 6 because they find it very necessary for administration, and on their behalf, in answer to many representations I have had, I wish to thank the Minister. Concerning the important Clause 7, which deals with building standards, as far as I see it, the amendment of the principal Act in Subsection (1) is a very small one.

  2349
  It simply removes the necessity for the Minister to introduce such other requirements as may be specified in his direction, but I want to ask him, prior to our considering this in Committee, whether he does not think that the language which he is inserting in Clause 7, namely:
  "'he may give a direction modifying the obligation imposed by this Subsection as respects the school in such manner as appears to him to be requisite for securing conformity to the requirements of the regulations so far as conformity thereto can be reasonably required,'"
  does not imply that the Minister has also to lay down certain standards, otherwise he could give no direction. I want him to look into that wording, because it is of no use jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Let me repeat the wording:
  "He may give a direction modifying the obligation … in such manner as appears to him to be requisite."
  I fail to see, unless I am so informed by the Minister, how he can give
  "a direction … as appears … to be requisite for securing conformity."
  with something else, without laying down some standard of some sort. It may be legal language, but it would be interesting to me to understand how that differs in detail from the previous necessary detail.
  I am glad to welcome the power given to the Minister to abate the building regulations in new schools. That is a very useful thing. In general, I must say that I think the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. Kenneth Lindsay) is right. The building regulations were extremely stiff under the 1944 Act, and it is important that the Minister should have powers to introduce common sense into the administration of that Act. I am glad, therefore, that he has these powers, but I would say also that he must not use those powers in such a way as to alter the general basis of the settlement we reached with the denominations, with the teachers and with all the other authorities and interests concerned. I do not think it is the intention of the Act to use powers in that direction. If that is the case, we may satisfy even such authorities as the L.C.C., who themselves made observations about the building regulations, whereby in an impossible situation, or on a difficult site, some form of abatement is allowed, in order that educational progress may continue.
  2350
  I cannot add in any other way to the observations on this Bill. Clauses 9 and 10 are perfectly reasonable and the Schedule, as is usual with educational legislation, is quite incomprehensible to a layman. It may contain all sorts of horrors. As far as I can see, it does not. I have been through it as carefully as I could, but we must reserve for ourselves the right to examine these matters in Committee.
  My conclusion is that the Minister is quite right to come to this House with this Bill, but I would ask him, if he can, to consolidate the legislation referring to education. There was a habit in the India Office whereby, whenever there was an Act—and the India Act, 1935, is an example—the legislation was reprinted, so that the whole Act could be read together. This is the second Bill to amend the 1944 Act. Would it not be possible for the Minister so to influence the Government and the printers that we could have the 1944 Act reprinted, with the Act of two years ago, and this Measure all put in together, so that we can read the whole of the provisions as one? If he can use his influence in that direction and do a little consolidation, we shall attempt to help him to make this Bill more apt than it is at present to implement the original Act. I wish him well in carrying out the proposals of the original Act which are so vital to the country at the present time, and which should be prosecuted with vigour, although there is the work of a generation to be done, and in this crisis we cannot expect everything to be done at once.
  3.11 p.m.
  Mrs. Leah Manning: I am glad to know that the hon. Members opposite are searching for untidinesses in this Bill. I welcome the Bill. On the whole I think it is necessary. There were many things that needed to be tidied up. In his speech my right hon. Friend dissipated some but not all of the anxieties I felt. I turn at once to Clause 3, about which we shall need a great many assurances and certainly some Amendments during the Committee stage. I have not really got a suspicious mind, but I can remember after the first world war, when I was a very young teacher, how we used to watch what we then rather inelegantly called "the bulge" passing through the various stages of the educational system,

  2351
  rather like a meal through a boa constrictor. One of the things we did in those days was sometimes to move a class from the junior school into a senior school or to put an infant class into the junior school.
  We all know the difficulties which the system has at the moment. Overcrowding and the under-staffing situation are extremely difficult. I cannot help fearing that if we legislate for this age of 10, if it is put into an Act, at some time or other someone may take advantage of that age to lift whole classes, where there is overcrowding and difficulty about accommodation. I would not like to lay any local education authority open to that temptation. I never liked 11-plus even in the Hadow days. Even then I thought it was an age which was chosen because it was administratively easy; it cut the system up in three equal portions. I do not believe it is the right age. No one sends a child from a preparatory school to a public school at the age of 11. It is neither socially nor emotionally an age at which the change should be made, and to consider moving the age back to 10 is an extremely backward step.
  I do not believe in these abnormally and precociously bright children. I think they are often children who have been pushed on too quickly through the junior school, and who would have been much better had they moved more slowly. To put the whole system into jeopardy for the sake of a few children who are supposed to be brighter than the normal child would be great unwisdom. I hope we shall do nothing of the kind, and that we shall lay down in Committee that 11-plus is the right age.
  Sir Arthur Salter: The hon. Lady does not forget cases like Macaulay and John Stuart Mill?
  Mrs. Manning: We have not many Macaulays or John Stuart Mills at the present time, and they might have been better if they had been held back a little. I ask my right hon. Friend not to make this change for the sake of the few children. He must find some other way to deal with these ill-disposed people who want to keep children back in a voluntary school to the age of 12. I hope we can have some assurance on that before the Debate comes to an end.
  2352
  I turn to the two Clauses in this Bill which interest me most, and which have not yet been touched upon by any other speaker. The question of building has been raised by several Members in connection with Clause 7. I take that Clause together with something the Minister said, which I was very happy to hear him say, and with Clause 8. Clause 8 gives to local education authorities power to withdraw a certificate which has been given in the case of a child who is supposed not to be able to profit by the ordinary education of a normal school, the child whom. we usually describe as the mentally defective. For many years during my teaching career, I had more to do with that kind of child than I had to do with the preternatural young John Stuart Mill and Macaulay type. For many years I was the headmistress of a school which had a large number of children of that sort.
  I know that over and over again mistakes have been made about these children. Quite a wrong intelligence quota has been given them by some medical officers of health. I never thought that they were suitable persons to administer that kind of test. Once a wrong I.Q. has been given to a child the law says that it cannot be changed. That child is a mentally defective child, and he has to go through life as mentally defective. On one occasion I persuaded a very reasonable and sympathetic official of the Board of Education to come to my school and to tear up a whole lot of certificates and put them in the wastepaper basket. The position was as if they had never existed and nobody knew that these children had been certified under the Education Act. But there are not a lot of officials who are like that, and we do not get a lot of head teachers who can work on officials in that way. Therefore, I would very much sooner see this provision in the Act.
  There is another class of child who very often is wrongly certified. I refer to the child who suffers from deafness or partial deafness. I have encountered a large number of children who suffer from partial deafness. Many people think that children are mentally defective simply because they cannot hear what is said to them. It may be that the cause of a child's deafness is removed or that he is given some hearing aid. Then we may

  2353
  find that he is a preternaturally sharp child and that, in keeping up with other children and contending with the strain of trying to hear, he really was beyond the average child. I am very glad that the Minister is making it possible for local authorities to scrap these certificates and give a child a fresh start as if he had never had his I.Q. taken.
  The Minister, in dealing with building regulations, said that one of the reasons why he was anxious to have the right to vary the regulations was that he was searching the country for houses to which he could send children who were in need of residential education because of mental deficiency of one kind or another. If I were asked to say what is the most terrible problem facing this country at the moment in the domestic and educational sphere, I would say that it was the presence in the home of a child who is a low grade mental defective or even an imbecile or idiot. I do not think that a week goes by in which I do not get a letter from some parent who has a child of that kind in his home for whom the local education authority can find no place whatever. We should consider the position of the child itself. If it is merely a defective—a high grade or even a low grade defective—the position is sad enough, because it does not have ordinary normal contacts with other children. Children do not want to play with a child of that kind.
  The position of the imbecile or idiot is different. Those children do not care; they do not know; they have no minds at all. But the position of the parent and of the rest of the children in the family in a situation like that is one of the most terrible and pathetic, especially in overcrowded homes. I have a case in mind of a young boy, aged 12, living in an overcrowded home and having to sleep with his other brothers and sisters. As the Minister says, he has combed the country to find houses to accommodate these children. Are we to let stiff building regulations hold up the placing of children of that kind? That would be both inhuman and unreasonable. I should be very glad, for that reason alone, to give the Minister some elasticity in the case of regulations.
  Therefore, for many reasons—because of the foundations, the trusts, which the Minister hopes to be able to apply more
  2354
  reasonably than at present; because of the clothing Clause, which I welcome very much; and because of the Clause permitting the scrapping of these certificates in the case of children who have been proved to be wrongly certified—I welcome this Bill. I believe that it will make the position very much easier for administration in the future.
  3.20 p.m.
  Mr. Henry Strauss: I think there are two points on which everybody in every quarter of the House agrees. The first is that an amending Bill is required, and that the right hon. Gentleman is quite right in bringing it forward. The second is that the Bill which he has brought forward will require very close scrutiny on many points during the Committee stage.
  I confess that I am shocked by the drafting of Clause 2. I give the right hon. Gentleman credit for completely innocent intentions, and, indeed, for good intentions, in this matter, but, nevertheless, this Clause is at present drawn so widely that it is really shocking. I believe that, if I gave examples of the things that could be done under this Clause, everyone would agree, but there are many other hon. Members who wish to speak, and I do not wish to delay the House unnecessarily. I want to put this point forward for the serious consideration of the Ministers concerned and of the Government. Educational endowments and charitable trusts in general are things which, if they are to be interfered with at all, should be interfered with with the very greatest care and with the greatest consideration for the pious benefactors who created those trusts.
  I am glad to see that the right hon. Gentleman, as I expected, is in complete agreement with me on that subject. Not only should we act thus because it is clearly and obviously our duty, but also because we do not wish to discourage pious people in future from creating charitable trusts. Therefore, I think it will be a view which the whole House will share that, if these trusts are to be interfered with at all, they should be interfered with in a particularly cautious way.
  What do we see here? In Clause 2, the Minister takes not only an almost

  2355
  unfettered discretion to interfere, but the powers which he takes to interfere are wildly in excess of anything that he proposes to do. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) mentioned Subsection (1) of Clause 2, but a far more monstrous Subsection is the succeeding one, which defines the endowments with which the Minister can interfere as endowments "for any educational purposes". The things that the Minister could do under this Clause as it stands are really quite fantastic. I have not tested them all, but it has been suggested to me that Trinity College, Cambridge, could be converted into a girls' school and Balliol College, Oxford, could be turned into a mixed Borstal institution. I am not going to give any further examples; perhaps those will be sufficient.
  It seems to me quite outrageous that the Bill should be put forward with such a provision. The right hon. Gentleman, in opening the Debate, quite rightly made it clear that he himself was going to propose Amendments to cut down the powers which he was taking under Clause 2 so as to make them moderate and sensible. I have no doubt he will, but I hope the Government will realise the quite unnecessary trouble to which they put the authorities of universities and colleges, and the trustees of every sort of educational endowment, when they embody in a Bill provisions which are quite monstrous in character, which are wildly beyond any powers that they propose to exercise, and which owe their inclusion in the Bill to mere carelessness and inadvertence.
  3.25 p.m.
  Mr. Eric Fletcher: It is quite obvious that, in spite of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. H. Strauss), the House is disposed to give this Bill a Second Reading this afternoon.
  Mr. H. Strauss: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Fletcher: It is equally clear, as has already been mentioned, that it is very difficult, in dealing with a Miscellaneous Provisions Bill, to make an efficient Second Reading speech, although, in theory, one could deal with each Clause separately, and make a Second Reading speech on it. I do not propose to do
  2356
  that; I propose merely to refer to two Clauses. I would add that I do not think it is any reflection on the Act of the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) that it has been found necessary to introduce an amending Bill this year, in addition to the one introduced in 1946. It may even be necessary to do so again in the future. I do not think that is bad, because it enables this House to keep control over the administration of education in the country. It is commonly agreed that we have all too few opportunities for considering educational subjects in this House.
  I want to underline what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Minister and by other hon. Members with regard to Clause 7, which gives the Minister powers of elasticity in prescribing modifications of the building regulations for particular schools. In supporting this Clause, I would say at once that I do not wish to see any widespread departure from the properly high standards imposed by the 1944 Act on the building of new schools. But we must be realists; our economic position today is not, unhappily, what in 1944 it might have been hoped it would be. As the hon. and learned Member for the Combined English Universities quite rightly said, we are falling into the danger of letting the best become the enemy of the good. The object of having stiff and rigid building regulations was to prevent the more backward local authorities from neglecting the provision of proper amenities in their schools.
  We have now fallen, or are in danger of falling, into the other extreme, and making it difficult, if not impossible, for progressive and active local authorities, like the London County Council, to provide, with due regard to economy and what is practicable, the schools which ought to be provided. I agree with the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden that these building regulations must be interpreted with common sense, which means much closer co-operation than has always obtained in the past between officials of the Ministry of Education and officials of local authorities.
  I will give the House an indication of the costs involved in school building in London. Before the war, the figure per place for a junior school was £45. That was for building alone, apart altogether

  2357
  from the site costs. The figure today, in compliance with the present Ministry's building regulations, is £295 per place, which means that, for a junior school of some 310 or 320 pupils, the building costs are in the neighbourhood of £90,000, quite apart from site costs. Hon. Members should remember that the average cost of sites in London is about £10,000 an acre—in Central London it goes up to £60,000 an acre—which means that the site cost for a junior school, of even only two acres, is £20,000. That is on top of the building costs of £90,000 It is quite obvious that in a congested place like London—and I have no doubt that the same applies to other great cities—it is literally prohibitive for a local authority to provide a site with the ideal acreage to furnish the sort of playground facilities that are properly expected where the cost of land is not so expensive.
  Hitherto the Minister has had no power to modify his own requirements. There has been no possibility of him meeting a local authority like the London County Council and giving it dispensation. This Clause provides, or I hope it provides, the necessary elasticity. It is intended to do so, but does it? On the Committee stage I hope that point will be considered, because as the Clause stands the Minister may give an undertaking that if a school is built it shall be deemed to comply with requirements, but the reasons on which a Minister may give such an undertaking are
  "that it is impracticable, by reason of shortage of suitable sites, of materials or of labour …"
  I would like to see all those words of limitation eliminated. I would like the Subsection to read in such a way that the Minister can act if he is satisfied that it is impracticable to comply. That would enable the Minister to act if he were satisfied for any reason that it was impracticable, which I think would be much more suitable. There may well be cases in which the determining factor is a financial reason rather than the shortage of any particular material. I would urge that the Minister be given the widest possible powers in this field. There is an adequate safeguard inasmuch as the Minister and the local authority would have to be in agreement before there could be any departure from the provision of the highest standards.
  2358
  I think the House will be surprised to know that in accordance with the current regulations, the present cost of providing a nursery school to conform with the regulations, has been found to be as much as £1,000 per place in London. It is quite right that ideals should be laid down for the provision of buildings. It is right that where work, materials, labour and finance make it possible, schools should have separate rooms for medical treatment and women staff, separate rest rooms and separate rooms for as many facilities as possible. To insist on those amenities, however, defeats the primary object of education. Therefore, I hope that one result of this Bill will be that in the next few years the Minister and local authorities will concentrate on erecting schools as rapidly as possible, even though it may not be possible to provide all the ideal facilities in every school.
  Under the present regulations the cost of a multilateral school in London—and London is committed to building a certain number of multilateral schools on an experimental basis—will be £750,000.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Would the hon. Gentleman explain what, in fact, is a multilateral school? We know about the Geneva multilateral trade agreements. Surely those international conventions have not now spread into the field of education?
  Mr. Fletcher: The hon. Gentleman has obviously devoted more attention to matters of international trade than to education. If he had given as much attention to matters of education he would have been familiar with the conception of a multilateral school.
  Mr. Assheton: What does it mean?
  Mr. Fletcher: It is a senior school of a character enabling a large number of children in the same school to enjoy different types of education. I will not allow myself to be sidetracked into a digression for the purpose of educating the hon. Member on what, to those who are familiar with educational problems, is a very elementary matter.
  Mr. Assheton: Would the hon. Gentleman remember that the correct use of words is particularly important for those who speak in educational Debates?
  Mr. Fletcher: I entirely agree with that. If I may say so, the City of London is more concerned with commercial matters than with educational matters, although I entirely agree that the City of London has quite a distinguished record in the sphere of education, and the achievements of the City of London school redound to the credit of the City Corporation and to those associated with it. Even so, I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman knew the meaning of the word "multilateral," which, though not a very elegant word, has by now come to have an accepted meaning to all who are familiar with this subject.
  When I was betrayed into that digression, I was about to illustrate the kind of thing which happens under the present system, as the result of insisting too greatly on the rigidity of some of these building regulations. In London, we were proposing as a pioneer venture for a local authority to build a residential school, and we found the regulations provided that in a residential school we had to provide one shower bath for every five boys. As we were going to have a school for 250 boys, that would have meant providing 50 shower baths, which, of course, is ridiculous. Eventually it was discovered that the regulation was intended to apply only if the number of the boys in the school was under 100.
  In conclusion, let me refer to the enforcement of school attendance. The Minister made a reference to it. I was not quite clear about it, and I am not sure that he was, either. I gather it is proposed to amend Section 40 of the principal Act relating to the enforcement of school attendance. As I understand it, it is intended in future to enable a child of a recalcitrant parent, who has kept his child away from school and been fined, to be taken before a juvenile court. It seems to me that that may be a dangerous precedent. I do not know quite what is the Minister's intention. If it is intended that an order should be made in the case of such a child under the care and protection rules, does it mean that that child may be sent away from its home?
  Does it mean that that child may be removed from the care of his parents, and sent somewhere else, merely because the parent has omitted to comply with the requirements of the law in regard to school attendance? I fear that there are a number of cases of failure to send a
  2360
  child to school, that are due not so much to wilful disregard of parental obligations in the sphere of education, but to perfectly legitimate reasons—for instance the difficulty of finding a suitable school within reasonable distance. I should have thought that if a parent is prepared on a number of occasions to submit to a fine rather than to comply with the Act it would be dangerous to give a juvenile court power to remove his child from his parental care. However, this is a Committee point, and I hope that it will be looked into during the Committee stage.
  3.41 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Hardman): This Bill deals with a great many technical points, but, as is usual in Debates on education, in this Debate a good many general principles have been introduced. I do not want to deal with any of those general principles, because I think it is my business to try to reply to some of the technical points that have been raised, especially those concerning Clauses 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7. I should like, however, in passing to say something about the matter which has just been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for East Islington (Mr. E. Fletcher). There is nothing sinister about our suggestion to take a child to a juvenile court. It is simply an effective way of being able to deal with a child for the benefit of the child. Magistrates know from experience in the courts that small fines may be imposed with unfailing regularity, but that children do not attend school. Can we devise some machinery by which a child can be brought to the juvenile court, and proper and adequate provision made for it? There is nothing sinister in the suggestion at all.
  In regard to Clause 1, the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead) asked a rhetorical question, where the Minister would stop in dealing with charitable trusts. I think it is a fair question. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) suggested there might be some oversight, and that the Lord Chancellor might have it, and that in that way the Ministry of Education would appear less dictatorial, because there would thus be some outside person who could decide in borderline cases. Theoretically, we might, at the Ministry

  2361
  of Education, be too greedy, and attempt to filch by means of Orders in Council too many endowments from the Charity Commissioners; and so it is reasonable to suggest that some impartial person should be empowered to decide which endowments should be transferred. We are quite willing to examine the possibility of the Lord Chancellor's being that person. It has not been suggested to the Lord Chancellor that he should undertake this extra duty in addition to the burden of his many other duties, but it is a suggestion certainly worth considering. It ought to be possible to investigate impartially; and then, where there is a doubt, the Minister of Education would be removed from any suggestion of being too dictatorial.
  At present these mixed trusts are under the jurisdiction of the Commissioners, but, for all other purposes, are the responsibility of my right hon. Friend. As has been pointed out, they affect youth welfare, community centres, libraries, museums, technical colleges, and the recently constituted Foundation for Educational Research. We feel that under Clause 1 we should have power to use these trusts, where they are redundant, for more up to date purposes.
  On Clause 2, several hon. Members raised the question of university endowments. As my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, we have unwittingly brought in university endowments. However, it is our intention to make these university endowments an exception, and it will simply mean adding another Section to the long list of exceptions which are found in the Endowed Schools Act, 1869. It will simply mean that the endowed schools remain as heretofore, and another exception will be the university endowments. At another stage of the Bill this matter will be considered. In the Clause we have proposed an elaborate system of inquiry which must be applied before approval can be given, and I suggest that these safeguards are adequate.
  Sir A. Salter: The university endowments are not merely subject to the additional safeguards, but are absolutely excluded.
  Mr. Hardman: Yes, university endowments are to be absolutely excluded, along with those independent schools which are already excluded.
  2362
  The hon. Member for York (Mr. Corlett) and others have been rightly concerned about the proposals in Clause 3. It has been pointed out by my right hon. Friend that in the past local education authorities have been acting illegally. Frankly, the Minister and myself have been a little disturbed at the suggestion of 10 years of age, and we are prepared to look into the matter again. There is no lack of sincerity on the part of my right hon. Friend in this matter, because we realise the dangers only too well. In fact, children are normally transferred from primary to secondary schools at any age between 10-plus and 11-plus. We started framing this Clause with the innocent intention of bringing the law into line with the general practice.
  Local authorities are to be given power to transfer pupils before the age of 12. The question is, how long before. There has been the further controversy whether the age can be fixed. It can be, and indeed has been, asked: are we unwittingly opening the door to an exodus from primary schools, where there is a tremendous pressure on accommodation, which is growing worse because of the increase in the birth-rate? Are we—as was suggested this afternoon—failing to safeguard the able junior against exploitation? Those are questions which we must seriously answer. At the same time—and here I am not prepared to agree with what the hon. Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) said—there are children who, at a very early age, we call the exceptionally brainy and intellectual children. Somehow or other we must safeguard them, because we have to safeguard the nation. Brainy children developing into brainy, intellectual adults make a great contribution to the life of the nation; and without them I beg to suggest, without rhetoric, and without a complete development being available to them, the nation will find itself in a very parlous condition in the decades which lie ahead.
  In this dilemma, how can we safeguard the child against exploitation? How can we prevent this exodus from the primary schools to the secondary schools because of pressure of accommodation, and so on? At the same time, how can we maintain this outlet for the young brainy girl or boy? That is the dilemma? In reconsidering this matter, the Minister is prepared to suggest, not 10 as the age in the

  2363
  Clause, but 11. That is a matter which doubtless will come up again in Committee. In reply to the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden, I would reiterate what the Minister said in moving the Second Reading. Clause 4 (2) will have to be looked at again, and from the Ministry we shall put down an Amendment in Committee.
  The hon. Member for York in referring to Clause 6, which deals with children not belonging to a particular area, cited the case of a child whose parents are moved to Scotland because of professional needs. We should not expect to recoup from the Scottish authorities. This would simply be one of the cases to be pooled and met by all the authorities. The new Clause, Clause 6, replaces Section 106 of the principal Act, but leaves unchanged the position of the normal 95 per cent. of the children. The 5 per cent. we propose to deal with as follows: We shall treat them as not belonging to any authority. The claiming authority will put in a statement of expenditure to the Minister, who will prescribe machinery whereby the expenditure on claims admitted by the Minister will be pooled.
  I now come to Clause 7, which proposes that the Minister should have power to modify, within strict limits, the requirements of the building regulations for new schools. The Minister already has power to deal with existing schools. The modification proposed is, as I have said, within strict limits where there is a shortage of suitable sites, materials and labour. It is not possible, and I wish to reiterate this, for the Minister to modify simply to save expenditure to the promoters of a new school. There is no intention whatever to relax building standards or to allow financial considerations to be a reason for modification. We have found it difficult to find a form of words which is watertight enough to embody in the Clause, but we hope that during the Committee stage suggestions will be made to enable us to find a formula which will ensure that the modifications allowed are as strictly safeguarded as is possible.
  Those were the main points raised in the Debate. The Bill does not propose any great changes in the principles to which the House agreed in passing the Act of 1944. I hope that the Bill is a sign of
  2364
  progress by the Ministry of Education in attempting to implement that Act. This is the second amending Bill and it is fair to say that it will be by no means the last. We hope that they indicate that progress is being made.
  Mr. Cove: Will the hon. Gentleman say what it is proposed to do about the age of transference? I am not quite clear from what he said about it.
  Mr. Hardman: I am sorry if I did not make it clear. What we want to do is to discuss whether the age of 11 is the right age to insert as a substitute for the age 10 which is at present in the Clause.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

  EDUCATION (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) [MONEY]
  Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 69.—(King's Recommendation signified.)
  [Major MILNER in the Chair]
  Resolved:
  "That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the Education Acts, 1944 and 1946, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the provisions of the said Act in the expenses which under Section one hundred and seven of the Education Act, 1944, are to be defrayed out of moneys so provided.—[Mr. Tomlinson.]
  Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

  PETROL RATION (PRIVATE CARS)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now Adjourn."—[Mr. G. Wallace.]
  3.57 p.m.
  Mr. Lever: I wish to call the attention of the House to the present system of petrol rationing and to urge its abolition. Since the abolition of basic petrol, this subject has become charged with a good deal of emotion and prejudice on both sides of this House and it is a little difficult to get a hearing for views on this subject which are unorthodox. I might preface my remarks by saying that if I criticise the Government's action in the past it is for cutting down petrol consumption and motoring later than they should have done. If I had

  2365
  had my way, I should have exported 90 per cent. of our new cars right from the end of the war and cut down the home consumption of petrol before our economic situation was as bad as it is now. I hope that nobody who supported the selfish and unseemly clamour for unlimited pleasure motoring will call what I say in aid of their pleas.
  The fact that I welcome the abolition of the illusions that surrounded the state of this country and its power to afford pleasure motoring does not mean that I support the action of the Government in abolishing basic in the way they have done, nor that I approve of the present system. One has not to look far to find that it is far from being a good one. The Government are seriously attempting to ration two million motorists on individual application to the various regional petroleum officers. It is quite apparent that this is a task which no administrative organisation can adequately perform. Instead of attempting any longer to assess the relative merits of nearly two million applications, the administrative staff is of necessity reduced to assessing the competing inventiveness of nearly two million applicants. It is not necessarily the man who has the most need who gets the petrol; it is the man who knows how to dress up his need in the manner most likely to appeal to the harassed officials who have to administer this scheme.
  What I have said about motor cars applies equally to lorries and vans. The Minister will agree that in practice lorries and vans cannot have their individual merits assessed with any exactitude and that they end up by getting more or less as much petrol as they want. That means that they have more than they need and that in turn means that the black market is always amply supplied with a stream of petrol coupons not used by the van and lorry drivers, which find their way into the petrol stations so that the petrol finally goes into the tanks of motor cars which ought not to have it.
  It being Four o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. G. Wallace.]
  Mr. Lever: It must also be realised that the administration not only cannot assess the relative merits of these hordes of
  2366
  applications, but they are so behind with their work that they cannot assist the police and the checking authorities in controlling the misuse of petrol. I am told that at some regional offices there are thousands of applications lodged by the enforcement officers in order to test whether misuse of petrol has occurred, and the regional officers, who already cannot cope with doling out petrol, can certainly not give any attention to the checking required to prevent the misuse of petrol.
  There are other evil consequences. It is obvious to anybody who uses his eyes and sense that there is widespread breach of the law. I am not suggesting that every motorist breaks the law, but I suggest that a great many are doing it today, what with open breaches of the law and the perverted exercise of ingenuity which always brings people about their business occasions in the West End at the same time as they happen to be going to the theatre with their wives, or at the same time as there is some social function at their favourite hotel. So it is quite apparent that the law is being brought into contempt by open breach and by the evasive ingenuity applied to routes. Nobody knows how the Minister stands upon this, because we all understand that we can deviate a little from our route but, how much, nobody is quite clear. It is obviously bad for the country to have many ordinary, decent people breaking or stretching the law in an unreasonable way.
  Mr. Eric Fletcher: Would not my hon. Friend agree that the law is also brought into contempt when fines are imposed for quite frivolous offences, such as taking a motorcar to a garage to have it repaired?
  Mr. Lever: The hon. Member reinforces the point which I am seeking to make. I would agree, too, that some of the offences which are tracked down—if the Ministry is lucky enough to find a regional officer able to check these matters—end in a prosecution which is frivolous from start to finish.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: May I ask the hon. Member whether, if all the people who broke the building regulations of the Ministry of Health were sent to gaol, it would solve the building problem?
  Mr. Lever: The aptness of that interjection is no greater and no less than might have been expected from the hon. Member. The fact is that these prosecutions are, in most cases, not of the shrewd evader of the law, of the habitual user of petrol for irregular purposes, but of the naive and ingenuous young man who does not know the right kind of tale to tell the policeman or enforcement officer. He gets caught, while the habitual drinkers of petrol for pleasure purposes—these habitual drunkards so to say—never appear in a court of law. They have their story ready planned, they have their friends to corroborate that they were on a business visit to one or other of the West End hotels or cinemas. It is bad for English law to be brought into contempt in this way. It is even worse that the people who break the law, for the overwhelming part, go unpunished. It is bad for the law of this land, because decent people are often placed in impossible positions, as when they must either go on their way, or go a little out of their route to help someone on a filthy night and so break the law.
  But far more important is the waste of manpower involved in the present rationing system. I do not want to elaborate on the number of officials necessarily engaged in this work. They do their job to the best of their ability, and they are not greatly assisted by some of the ill-informed comments of hon. Members on the other side of the House and of people who hold their political opinions. I often think that their criticism is not bona fide, but is really motivated by a desire to have as much petrol as they want for their own purposes, and is not any genuine complaint. I can only speak from personal experience, but I have found that petroleum officials lack all the Gestapo-like characteristics which hon. Members opposite are fond of attributing to the paid servants of this Government. Apparently, when a Conservative Government are in office, the bureaucrat is a much more delightful chap altogether.
  Apart from the man hours taken by these large numbers of officials vainly struggling to apportion petrol between clamouring hundreds of thousands of motorists, and to check up on the misuse of the petrol which enforcement officers are reporting, there is an enormous waste of man hours in private industry in form filling, form checking and the sorting and
  2368
  allocating necessary to comply with the rationing scheme. I am not saying that that proves the scheme a bad one, or badly administered, but inevitably there are thousands of man years wasted every year by people who have to queue up or spend time on the allocation of petrol, whether garages or to petrol users. There is another wast of manpower, which is becoming more serious, as well as having a psychological effect. That is the springing up of hire car firms. At present, in spite of the efforts of the Government, all the pleasure motoring in this country is done by the very well-to-do. Having had occasion recently to use a hire car, I can say that it is only the extremely well-to-do who can afford it.
  Mr. Marlowe: Members of the boards.
  Mr. Lever: I do not know that they are members of the boards. Having seen a lot of these gentlemen, I would say that they are not political supporters of this Government, but stalwart champions of a system of free enterprise which commends itself to hon. Members opposite. Only the very well-to-do can afford hire cars. That brings in a lot of illogical stupidities. Instead of driving oneself to a cinema, one gets a hire car, which has to come perhaps two miles, to take one to the cinema and then to return, and not only uses three or four times as much petrol, but wastes the services of a man to drive the car. Then there is the hire car racket, which I distinguish from the hire car business itself. A good many gentlemen—who are not likely to be members of the Coal Board, or occupants of the "jobs for the boys" about which hon. Members opposite seem to have a monomania—hand their private cars to a hire car firm. Then, by some spurious device, they appear to be using their cars as hire cars in which they can roam about within a 20 mile radius. That is another effect which is very unfortunate, and evil. I am sorry that this does not exhaust all the debits of the system. There is the black market, which keeps in being innumerable crooks, spivs, drones and other gentlemen whom the Ministries are anxious to get into honest labour. It is bad that there should be a widespread black market in petrol.
  Those are the debits of the present system, and I believe we ought to abolish the rationing of petrol to private cars. I do not believe that petrol for private

  2369
  cars is an essential which warrants an enormous staff which imperfectly rations it at the present time. The word "essential" must be construed in the context of the country's economic position. I believe that petrol is a great convenience to people in business, Members of this House, company directors, and others, who enjoy the definition of "essential users of petrol." I do not believe that it is, in fact, essential having regard to our economic situation.
  Petrol should be rationed by price. If this were not an Adjournment Debate I would suggest that the Chancellor, in his next Budget, should tax petrol so heavily that it would keep consumption down to the level desired by the Government. As this is an Adjournment Debate, I cannot suggest that. I can only say that I hope that the Minister has power under some regulation to do that, and if not, perhaps someone, when it is not an Adjournment Debate, would suggest that.
  Mr. C. S. Taylor: Is the hon. Member suggesting that only the rich should have petrol?
  Mr. Lever: Perhaps the hon. Member will bear with me a little longer, and he might hear what I have to say on that matter. I would ration petrol through the purse. The duties would go in tax to the Government and produce a very useful sum for the Chancellor in his next Budget. Long distance road transport could easily be dealt with because, it is to be nationalised—
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power (Mr. Robens): Before my hon. Friend leaves his suggestion that we should ration by price, I must point out that I am prevented from dealing with that suggestion because this is an Adjournment Debate.
  Mr. Lever: I can only say that that is the suggestion—
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hubert Beaumont): I can only say that the hon. Gentleman cannot pursue that suggestion because it is out of Order, as it would necessitate legislation.
  Mr. Lever: I was about to suggest that the Minister, under his power of regulation, could sell petrol at 6s. a gallon, or whatever price is required to keep consumption to the present level, and pay the petrol companies 2s. or 1s. 9d. per
  2370
  gallon or whatever sum they get at the present time. The difference would thus be left in the Government's hands. That could be done by advocating taxation it this were not an Adjournment Debate or by the use of regulations, as this is an Adjournment Debate.
  Long distance road transport is to be nationalised, and companies operating such transport could be informed that the extra tax they would have to pay in the interim period before they are taken over would be taken into account in assessing compensation on nationalisation. "C" Licence holders, short distance transport and people like doctors could be dealt with in one of two ways, either by refunding to them at the end of the year the equivalent of what the tax would cost them on their present consumption, or to say that the average short distance road transport user is, according to the Chancellor, making excessive profits at the present time, and allow the extra tax to impinge on those profits That might be a useful way of helping to deal with excessive profit margins. Certainly the Minister can please himself which he does, but there is no reason why, if it is desired to do it, that the tax could not be refunded on vans and lorries on short distance routes, and to doctors and other essential users in classes of that kind.
  If the Road Fund tax was abolished it would save the average motorist about £10 a year. If an extra tax of something like 4s. per gallon was placed upon petrol, or the price was increased by 4s. a gallon, that would be equivalent of giving the average motorist 50 gallons a year at the present price. He would have a certain amount of basic petrol, nearly a gallon a week. It would not noticeably affect the petrol consumption, as I think the Minister would agree to provide 50 gallons at the old price, in effect, by abolishing Road Fund licences. The Minister might consider, in such a scheme, keeping in being the radius restriction, the restriction as to how far one can travel in one's car without being on an essential journey. That is quite a subsidiary matter. There are certain attractions about that, because the whole scheme would be anti-inflationary. It would mop up anything between £75 million and £125 million of purchasing power every year.

  2371
  I do not put it forward to this House as a complete scheme. It is not my business to elaborate all the details. My hon. Friend has much greater assistance at his disposal than I have at mine for the purpose of doing that. I do not suggest that what would result would be a system of perfection. In any case, the present system is not perfection: far from it. It is fallacious for hon. Members to deceive themselves by saying that the existing method is perfect and, therefore, they will not have the scheme which I suggest. We ought to say that the present scheme is thoroughly bad and that it has much to condemn it. On balance, I submit that there is much less to be said against some sort of arrangement like this than there is to be said against the present scheme.
  Mr. E. Fletcher: Would my hon. Friend agree that his scheme would be particularly attractive to motor cyclists?
  Mr. Lever: I am continually assisted by my hon. Friend. That is a very good point. The small petrol user, the little man, would come out of this scheme better than ever before. He would be able to have a little pleasure, because he would not have to pay any Road Fund tax. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary will say that this is motoring for the rich. I would like to know how many poor people are doing any motoring today. All pleasure motoring today is done by the rich and, therefore, it would not make things any worse if we were to increase the price in the way I have indicated and in the way in which I am not permitted to indicate. I dare say that my hon. Friend will strain himself and his advisers in order to discover hard cases. Of course, there will be hard cases; but every Member of this House knows that there are innumerable hard cases under the present system. Much hardship is wrought under the existing arrangement. Considerably less hardship would be caused under my system or under some general scheme on the lines I have suggested.
  I would emphasise that I do not envisage an increase in petrol consumption. Only politically irresponsible people could seriously defend the suggestion that we should cut down timber for housing or food imports in order to provide more
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  petrol. Of course, we should not do that, but there is no reason why petrol consumption should not be kept down by the price. The imperfections of the present system are far greater than the imperfections implicit in my idea. I refer to the waste of manpower, the black market, the irritations and the law breaking, which exist under the present system. The case for placing all motor taxation on petrol is now unanswerable. Obviously we want the maximum disincentive, whether or not my scheme is admitted.
  The Minister ought to tell us, when he raises his objections to the ideas I have put forward, how much petrol is being used by the Forces. Is it still the outrageous fact that the Royal Air Force is using twice as much aviation spirit as that used by our entire civil aviation services throughout the world? Is it a fact that the Forces are now using nearly as much petrol as that used by the whole of the vans and lorries in the country? The Minister might tell us a little about that.
  I want to say this to put the thing in perspective. Ministers are telling us quite freely nowadays that if we do not solve our economic problems we are going to have a despotism, and that a totalitarianism, probably of the Right, is going to rear its head in this country and finally take control of our destinies. It is no use Ministers telling us about the desperate state of our affairs if, while they talk 1948, so to speak, they act on 1938 assumptions. It is the assumptions of 1938 which gave us petrol rationing for motor cars, as if petrol for cars were some precious spirit on which the nation's economic life depended. It is not. Two fallacies underlie the rationing system for private cars. One is that petrol is an essential commodity for private cars, when it is not. It is a very great convenience. The second fallacy is the implied belief that this rationing system is only a temporary measure. It is not temporary. The people of this country had better realise that we are never going to have back the motoring of 1938—at least for a decade or more.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Oh, really!
  Mr. Lever: The hon. Gentleman is one of the blissful and ignorant. He believes that unlimited petrol for pleasure purposes is round the corner. He can con-

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  tinue to believe that. He will find that any realistic appraisal of our economic circumstances shows that we can never again afford the kind of motoring which we had before the war, or, at any rate, if not never, not for a long time, and not in the next decade. This rationing system is not some temporary nuisance; it is going to be a semi-permanent feature of our economy. We have to realise that it is something which is going to stay for very many years to come. One of the Government's duties is to contract the number of motorcars on the road today, and they have to do it by providing a disincentive by the high cost of motoring. We cannot afford to spend as much of our national income on motoring as we did before the war, and we must look at the situation in a realistic way and handle the matter in a planned and orderly fashion, instead of waiting until economic circumstances do it for us.
  One final word, and I will leave the matter to the Minister. I am perfectly well aware that all sorts of objections can be made to this scheme, but I think that, at the present time, we have either got to innovate or perish. Some people prefer to perish rather than innovate, but I think the Minister ought to look at this matter with a flexible and open mind and realise that circumstances have changed since the rationing system was introduced as a temporary wartime measure, and also realise that it now looks like being a semi-permanent feature of our national life. I hope he will give careful consideration to the points I have raised.
  4.22 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power (Mr. Robens): I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Exchange (Mr. Lever) will not expect me to reply in about eight minutes to the speech which he has taken over 20 minutes to deliver—
  Mr. Lever: That is all the hon. Gentleman asked for.
  Mr. Robens: —particularly as he raised a very large number of points which would be ruled out of Order because they involve legislation, and I am therefore precluded from following the very interesting subjects of taxing petrol and abolishing the Road Fund tax. My hon. Friend
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  said one or two things about the whole problem of rationing, and the effect of rationing upon the motoring public—and one agrees immediately that it is an irritation and a bother which we want to get rid of as soon as possible—to which I would like to make some reply. My hon. Friend also referred to the economic situation of the country, which is well-known to us.
  I must, in fairness to the Ministry and the Government, reply to some of the things my hon. Friend said. For example, it is not true that individuals can turn over their private cars to hire firms and have them hired back to themselves with any amount of petrol. New hire car allowances are given only in very special circumstances. There is no allocation of petrol at all for any hire cars unless they are in a business which was operated before the war, or, alternatively, where there is now a very special public need, or where there is a disabled ex-Service man who is registered as disabled, and in whose case the Ministry of Labour have said that the best way of reinstatement for that man is in the hire car business, in which case we do grant petrol. I would not like it to be thought—and I have heard this stated many times both inside this House and outside—that it is easy for people to say, "I have got a hire car licence and I can have a lot of petrol." It is not true, just as it is not true to say that people are prosecuted for trivial offences.
  The hon. Gentleman referred to a court action in relation to a man who was taking a car to a garage for repair. The Press really misrepresented the whole of that case. It was not purely a trivial case. While not going into details, I can say that it was not the triviality which it appeared to be from its presentation to the people. We have, from time to time, looked at all these enforcements and prosecutions, and we are interpreting the whole scheme with reasonableness and generosity, but we are determined to stop misuse where it occurs. It is true that there is always the problem of assessing needs; but, in spite of all the defects of any human system for assessing needs when the needs of individuals are so vastly different, it seems to me that it is a very much better way than to have regard only to a person's ability to pay for petrol, which really is a most astounding suggestion.

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  Take, for instance, the business man who uses his car for business. It is a business expense, and it is paid for and charged up, quite legitimately, against his firm's accounts. It does not matter to that individual how much petrol is a gallon. First, the charge goes into his firm's accounts—it is not out of his personal income—and secondly, it is a trade expense, and, therefore, the Chancellor of the Exchequer pays 9s. in the £ on that amount. The man concerned is actually paying only half the cost of his petrol. Compare that with the position of a young man with an autocycle or a motorcycle which, by and large, he has bought for two reasons: first, because he has worked out that he can save money by travelling on it to and from work, and can also get enjoyment out of it at the weekends. But he would have to pay 10s. a gallon, which would put it right outside his ability to run it. I am astonished at my hon. Friend making a suggestion of that sort.
  Mr. Lever: I suggested that the small user of a motorcycle or motorcar should be protected by being relieved of an equivalent amount of other taxation.
  Mr. Robens: That would have to be put down in black and white for careful consideration. I do not think that suggestion would bear examination, because, after all, what is the price to which petrol would have to go before people would say that they would not buy it? Who knows? No one. To judge need merely on that basis—and I say this with the best respect to my hon. Friend—is really ridiculous.
  Mr. Blackburn: While entirely supporting my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, may I ask whether the Government will try to give sympathetic consideration to workers who live a long way from their places of work, and who desire to work overtime, but who find that they get too tired to do so by having to take the form of transport available?
  Mr. Robens: I am as much concerned as anyone about the chap who has to work long hours. I know from experience that
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  it is a great loss to many of these chaps who have bought autocycles and motorcycles which they cannot use.
  All I would say, finally, is that it would have been worth while, in view of the fact that my hon. Friend has raised so many things that affect legislation if my hon. Friend—had he wanted to make a real contribution—had put down his points on paper so that my right hon. Friend or I could have gone into them, and discussed them with him. Quite frankly, I do not think there has been any real value in this Adjournment Debate. Hon. Members will want to know something about the savings effected.
  Mr. Lever: Could my hon. Friend tell us the consumption of petrol by the Forces at the present time?
  Mr. Robens: My hon. Friend will have to put down that question. A minute is hardly sufficient time in which to answer it. In October, the average weekly saving was 5,000 tons; in November, 15,000 tons; in December 17,000 tons, and, in January, 20,000 tons.
  As my last word, I wish to say that, at the present time, we are reviewing the whole situation. We recognise the irritation and the loss of convenience, and everything else, that has been caused by having no basic ration at all. However, we are determined to maintain the savings that have been achieved. If, within some compass, a review of the situation will enable anything to be done, then that review will take place. I say to the House and to the country that I am very anxious about this. The review will be completed by the end of March. I am not going to say it will mean that basic petrol will come back, or even that it will not. Nevertheless, the statement will be made at the end of March.
  The Question having been proposed at Four o'Clock, and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, Pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at Half-past Four o'Clock.