HC Deb 15 November 1948 vol 458 cc163-74

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Snow.]

10.1 p.m.

Mr. Maude (Exeter)

I rise to draw attention to a matter regarding the food distribution of this country as affected by the grant of licences to clubs. It is my submission that the facts which I am able to tell the House show a scandal that ought to be disclosed and should have been remedied a long time ago.

May I remind the House of what the position is at the moment so far as the Ministry is concerned, in the distribution of food? The material comes from letters which I have received from the hon. Lady who is to reply. First, owing to the necessity to save food there has to be a control of food. That control is exercised by the Ministry of Food and amongst other bodies that are controlled are clubs. The relevant order is the 1948 Order No. 368. Catering licences are needed and one cannot get a catering licence, as the correspondence reveals, unless the club shows one of two things: first, that it cannot function efficiently without it; or secondly, that it is able to show that there would be hardship owing to lack of local facilities.

In any event the proper procedure is to go before a local committee, which appears to consist not of civil servants and not to be under the control of the Ministry of Food—that is the food committee. If the applicant, that is the club, is successful, then the matter goes to the local food officer and he or she, I apprehend, is a civil servant under the Ministry of Food. It is the rule of the Ministry in the case of a club, for the matter to be referred thereafter to the divisional food officer before the club gets its facilities. Obviously, that is the check designed to ensure that everything is above-board and fair so far as these officials are concerned.

What has happened in my constituency? In Exeter, so far as I know—unless something has happened about which the hon. Lady has not told me—I apprehend that even tonight there is a Civil Service club which has been started recently in the City. That club made an application to the food committee and the matter went forward to the local food officer. The Minister agrees, on the correspondence, that the licence should never have been granted, and the reasons given in the correspondence for saying so are, that the two primary conditions have not been fulfilled—that is to say, no case has been made out to show that the club cannot function efficiently without the licence; secondly, no case of hardship has been made out, of lack of local facilities.

The fact that the licence should have been granted was in itself bad enough, but it is an abominable state of affairs that the matter was, in fact, never sent to the divisional food officer at all and the correspondence reveals that the check was never imposed. So we get a situation where civil servants have allowed—it is absurd and fantastic to say "under their noses," because they must have known perfectly well—a food licence to be passed and to come into existence in the city for a club for civil servants, without enforcing the law and seeing that the policy of the Ministry of Food was upheld.

When my attention was drawn to this matter and I took it up with the hon. Lady, what answer did I get? I got an answer from her refusing to revoke the licence of the Civil Service club, which I had called upon her to do. I asked that it should be revoked and said that it was quite wrong it should ever have been granted, and as they were responsible for the distribution of food and had power to revoke, they ought to revoke this licence. Nothing of the sort. My request was refused and in the letter which I received on 20th October last the hon. Lady said: You also ask why, once a licence has been granted, it cannot be revoked unless its terms are infringed. It is within the power of the Minister to revoke any licence issued under his authority but such power must obviously be used with the greatest circumspection, and, since the inception of licensing, Ministers of Food have restricted the use of their revocation powers to cases where people have been considered as unsuitable persons to carry on distribution. Further, would it not be unjust to revoke a licence which was obtained in good faith although through an error on the part of this Department. As far as I am concerned—and I hope that the House and people outside it will agree with me—it is absolutely essential that the Government should behave in such a way—as, for instance, the Attorney-General was saying today and has said again and again in other places—that justice should manifestly be seen to be done. This Ministry has absolutely no right whatever to allow a state of affairs to exist where it is possible to say, and rightly to say, that, in fact, the civil servants are in possession of a licence which should never have been granted. The civil servants know perfectly well that that licence ought not to have been granted. The Minister of the Crown knows perfectly well that his senior officer never saw the matter. A Minister of the Crown cannot defend the position in any shape or form by saying: "We never have stopped this sort of thing and, indeed, it would be unfair to do so."

I will deal with my case rapidly, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because my hon. Friend the Member for Northwich (Mr. Foster), if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, has a similar matter which he would like to mention and about which notice has been given to the hon. Lady. In Exeter, we applied for a food licence for the Heavitree Conservative Club. But the local food committee would not pass it. I took the matter up with the Minister and pointed out there were no local facilities that could possibly be called sufficient. We received an answer dated 13th September stating that: Because of the continuing need to save food we can only issue catering licences to clubs, where it is evident that the club concerned cannot otherwise function efficiently and where in the absence of catering facilities members would be caused hardship. The Food Control Committee refused the application … under the above policy and also because they considered that existing catering facilities were adequate to meet the needs of people visiting and living in the district. Then comes this significant passage: As regards the Civil Service Club, it appears that the granting of a catering licence restricted to the supply of snacks was agreed to by the Local Food Authorities who were undoubtedly generous in their interpretation of the rules in this instance. We cannot of course regard this as a precedent when considering other cases and as we have been compelled to refuse many applications for licences from clubs throughout the country there is no justification for making an exception in this case. I wrote back saying that this was monstrous, that: It is a … considerable annoyance to find that the local food authorities were permitted to be `undoubtedly generous' in their interpretation of the rules … and I asked her to explain. I received another letter, and the House will realise that so far, it had not been disclosed to me in the correspondence that the local civil servant had not passed the matter on to the divisional food office. The blame had been laid upon the civilians, who had been rather stupid and had been allowed to be rather over-generous. On 8th October I got another letter from the hon. Lady: I am sorry to say that my enquiry has shown me that the rules which are laid down for the grant of catering licences have not been properly applied in this case. I need hardly say I have taken steps to prevent this happening again. The rules preclude the grant unless it can be shown that catering facilities are necessary to enable the club to function efficiently and that hardship would be caused to members by the refusal of a licence. She then goes on to say that two blacks do not make a white, and so on. I was not satisfied and wrote a rather harsh letter: You will forgive me saying that this appears to me perfectly iniquitous. Surely it is the duty of the Ministry of Food to protect the public and it seems outrageous that some official or officials should commit an act which leads to the maldistribution of food and that nothing should be done about it. If the hon. Lady says tonight that something has been done about it and that some civil servant has been punished, I should like to know how. I would point out that it is absolutely insufficient to say that a civil servant has been punished, while in that city there are licensed victuallers wishing to serve more food and there is this flourishing club, within 200 yards where a licence has been refused, and the Ministry and the Minister know the Civil Service club ought not to have its wrongly granted facilities. The hon. Lady wrote: Clearly, we are obliged to rely to a great extent on the local knowledge of Food Control Committees, but their recommendations in the case of clubs should be forwarded to the Divisional Food Officer for a final decision. Unfortunately, the case of the Civil Service Club was not submitted to the Divisional Food Officer, and a licence was granted by the local Food Office solely on the strength of the Food Control Committee's recommendation. As I said in my last letter, steps have been taken to see that this does not happen again. I do not want to leave out anything which would be unfair to leave out and I think I ought to say that the hon. Lady also says: some errors are almost bound to occur and one has unfortunately occurred on this occasion. She refuses owing to the rule of anonymity to disclose who on earth was responsible for this. But if this sort of thing is allowed to happen in even one instance and the Civil Service are sheltering behind Ministers, it is monstrous.

10.12 p.m.

Mr. John Foster (Northwich)

The hon. Lady seems to have an unfortunate ex- perience with Conservative clubs. Northwich Young Conservatives Club asked for a licence and I took up the matter and pointed out that the Gladstone—a Liberal Club I believe—had a licence. In this case I think it quite right that the Gladstone Liberal Club should have a licence and I think it is wrong that Northwich Young Conservatives Club should be refused a licence. Two blacks do not make a white. The hon. Lady wrote to me stating: I find that the proper procedure laid down in our instructions for the granting of licences to clubs of this character was not followed and the Gladstone Club has received a licence which should not have been granted under our policy. There are, you will appreciaae, many thousands of applications for catering licences being considered by our local officers and I am afraid that it is impossible to avoid an occasional mistake being made. Our policy in cases of this kind, fortunately very rare, is to take disciplinary action"— cane them, apparently— against the officers concerned, but to allow the error to stand. We do not allow such cases to create precedents or to influence us in any way in considering other applications for licences of a similar type. I then wrote and said that Weaverham Youth Club had a licence. In Northwich the trouble is not lack of facilities, but the total lack of facilities. In Northwich there is no single cafe which supplies a cup of tea or a bun after 8 p.m., and after 7 p.m. only one supplies a meal. How it can be said that there are facilities and that it is not a hardship on young Conservatives not to have a catering licence I cannot understand. I do not think the hon. Lady understands industrial conditions in the North.

The Young Conservative Club membership consists of people who have been working all day in factories. They invite people from neighbouring industrial towns to come and debate with them. They have speakers. They have to bicycle up to 10 or 12 miles to attend. The hon. Lady quibbled with me when I said that they had to travel those distances. She said that membership was for persons within a radius of five miles. She had forgotten that one has to travel both ways—there and back. I cannot understand her saying that it does not cause hardship to a club which has to have speakers and to which people bicycle a long way, to be unable to supply food. I wish she would investigate the conditions in Northwich, and if there is no place which supplies food at the required times, how can she say that there is not a lack of local facilities? Would she perhaps look into the matter further and see whether it is only in the case of young Conservatives. Does she imagine that they attend in Rolls Royces after dinner or supper with champagne? If so, I cannot imagine that she knows what happens in an industrial constituency which happens to return a Conservative.

10.17 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Edith Summer-skill)

I think that both the hon. and learned Member for Exeter (Mr. Maude) and the hon. Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster) have been fair in their statement of the facts, but their approach has been a little emotional rather than rational. I must thank them for not having emphasised the political aspect of this matter. When I quote a few figures later I think they will agree that there is no question of political discrimination in the granting of these licences. I am sure that they and the whole House realise that this is perhaps the most difficult part of the work that we have to do in the licensing field.

We have certainly delegated our powers to officials in the different regions of the country. The hon. and learned Member for Exeter feels that this should not have been done, but this House would quite rightly have been the first to object had we tried to assess local conditions from Whitehall; if, for instance, my right hon. Friend and I, while being in a position finally to decide, should also have been in the position of having to consider just where these clubs were situated, what were the catering facilities in the neighbourhood, etc., and on that basis had decided the matter in Whitehall.

Mr. Maude

That is a complete travesty of what I said. Of course I do not object to delegation. I cannot expect the hon. Lady to be flying around everywhere in an aeroplane. But where, in fact, the Minister's delegates have done wrong, I am asking the hon. Lady to put that right, and to take away the licence.

Dr. Summerskill

If the hon. and learned Member will exercise a little patience, I will tell him why we have adopted this particular procedure of not revoking the licence. We have delegated our powers because we feel that the people to whom they are delegated have local knowledge that we cannot possibly possess. In the case of Exeter Civil Service Sports Association, they did, as the hon. and learned Member said, apply to the local food control committee for a licence. It was considered and granted, but the food executive officer failed to refer the case to the divisional food officer, who in my opinion would probably have turned it down. But it was granted.

The food executive officer was certainly acting contrary to instructions. The House will agree that I have written a number of letters to the hon. and learned Gentleman in which I have not hesitated to admit these facts. He says that we should revoke the licence. What is the position? Any hon. Member here could have a small club—we do not ask what is the financial standing of any of these clubs—which applies for a licence, and the licence is granted. The executive committee of the club immediately makes arrangements to supply snacks or meals at the club. The hon. and learned Gentleman must realise that this does not involve an outlay of a few shillings. It means perhaps arranging for stoves to be fitted, plumbing, catering facilities of all kinds including urns, crocks, cups and saucers and so on to be provided. In fact, it might involve an outlay of a few hundred pounds.

Mr. Maude

Did it?

Dr. Summerskill

The hon. and learned Member says that, because one of our officials has made a mistake, we must penalise the club by revoking their licence and so involve them in a loss. I say that would be grossly unfair. The hon. and learned Gentleman said, to use his own words, "Justice should be done"——

Mr. Maude

No, I said that justice should be seen to be done.

Dr. Summerskill

I agree. He said that justice should be seen to be done. His interpretation of justice is that we should come along to this little club, which through no fault of its own has been mistakenly granted a licence, and revoke the licence because of the fault of one of our officers——

Mr. Mauderose—

Dr. Summerskill

I must ask the hon. and learned Gentleman not to interrupt. He would not like it in his court—

Mr. Maude

But the hon. Lady is misrepresenting me——

Dr. Summerskill

I cannot give way. The hon. Gentleman must be quiet and exercise patience. That is the reason why we have not revoked this licence, because it is a principle for us to stand by any mistakes of our officers. In fact, that is a principle of government. Any mistake made by a civil servant is defended by a Minister at this Box. It is the responsibility of the Minister, and therefore we have no intention of making this small club suffer because an official has made a mistake.

I should like the hon. and learned Gentleman to listen to this. I looked up some of these cases and asked my officials whether there had been anything similar. I was told that in 1945 the Birmingham Conservative Club was given a licence and that it appeared that this licence was mistakenly granted. It was then suggested that the licence should be revoked. It was laid down by the then Secretary the Ministry that it is a well-recognised principle in Government Departments that we must stand by our mistakes.

I quite agree that I did use that rather well-worn expression, "two blacks do not make a white." Because a mistake had been made on the case of the Civil Service Club, why should we say that the Heavitree Conservative Club should be given a licence? Surely one cannot proceed in that manner. A mistake having been made, it was right and proper for the food control committee to look at other applications in an objective manner, and not to be guided by a mistake made in the past. The Heavitree Conservative Club made its application. The food control committee considered it in the light of local conditions, and turned it down. It was then, quite rightly, referred to the divisional food officer. The divisional food officer had in mind the case that the hon. and learned Gentleman has already put. He was aware of the mistake already made in the case of the Civil Service Club. He asked the local food control committee to reconsider the case. He felt himself that there was no case to consider, but he thought, "Let us be perfectly fair and reconsider it," because he felt that the Heavitree Conservative Club was feeling rather sore about the matter. The Exeter food control committee again considered the application of the Heavitree Conservative Club and again refused to grant it.

I must remind the House that the question we ask before the licence is granted is: Can the club operate efficiently without a licence? On the appeal, the Heavitree Conservative Club said that the members wished to visit the club for a mid-day snack, and again after business before catching buses to their homes. Surely, on this basis it was apparent that this catering licence should not be given in order that the club could develop its particular political activities. A catering licence for a club, it must be remembered, is considered in this special way because it is only serving the needs of a small number of people. The argument which the Heavitree Conservative Club put forward was the kind of argument to which we listen when an ordinary catering licence is asked for and when it is necessary to supply meals for those people who are unable to get home. This was the argument put forward on behalf of the Heavitree Conservative Club. In the circumstances the application was refused.

If we granted all these applications for licences, it would mean inevitably that the domestic ration would be threatened. We must look at all these applications extremely carefully. When I started I said that I was very glad that there was no hint that we were guilty of any political discrimination. In order to reassure the hon. and learned Member for Exeter, I want him to know that I have asked for details of licences granted to political clubs in his area, the South-Western Division, during the last year. The details show that two Conservative clubs, two Liberal clubs and one Labour club received licences. I asked for the total number of licences for the whole country. There were 290 applications of which 81 were granted and 209 refused. All but two of the licences were granted on priority grounds. That means that the clubs were catering before the war and now automatically became entitled to one. I think that hon. Gentlemen will agree that there is ample proof there that there has been no political discrimination.

I wish to deal with the points raised by the hon. Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster). He applied for a licence for the Young Conservatives Club. All the arguments I have used apply in that case. The application was considered in the same way and it was refused on the same grounds.

Mr. Foster

Will the hon. Lady deal with the point that there are no local facilities?

Dr. Summerskill

I have dealt with that point in the letters. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that I have dealt with that matter.

Mr. Foster

No.

Dr. Summerskill

I have not been left very much time. May I deal with the point the hon. Gentleman raised about the Gladstone Club and the Knutsford Young Conservative Club? The Gladstone Club has been granted a licence in very similar circumstances to those that applied to the Exeter Civil Service Club. The licence for the Knutsford Conservative Club was granted on priority grounds.

Mr. Foster

I did not mention the Knutsford Club.

Dr. Summerskill

The other club was the Weaverham Youth Club. The hon. Gentleman asked why that club should be granted a licence whereas the application of the Young Conservatives was refused. That is because the Weaverham Youth Club offers amenities for every boy in the neighbourhood irrespective of his politics. It is sponsored by the Ministry of Education and it is a pre-Service training centre. That is why it is automatically entitled to a licence.

I hope that in this comparatively short time I have been able to convince hon. Members opposite that although the clubs in which they are particularly interested, have been refused licences, we have considered the applications in the light of all these circumstances and there has been no discrimination against them.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Half-past Ten o'Clock.