Clause 1.—(POWER OF POSTMASTER-GENERAL TO REGULATE USE OF THE TELEPHONE SYSTEM, &c.) (Hansard, 4 July 1951)

§ Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, East)
I beg to move, in page 1, line 8, to leave out from "him" to "will," in line 9.
The words I propose to leave out are: …(whether through the medium of the public telephone system under his control or otherwise)… I put down the Amendment mainly because I did not know what those words meant, but I have since had it represented to me that their primary purpose is to do something rude to the city of Hull. I am suspicious about these words. Maybe one of the hon. Members representing Hull will speak, but do not understand the Clause when it says: The Postmaster-General may, with the consent of the Treasury, make regulations for— this, that or the other, followed by the words which I seek to delete. I want to know what "or otherwise" means. The Postmaster-General must have had some purpose in putting in those words, if he did put them in. Perhaps he did not put them in. We know what happens with Bills. The Minister determines that there is to be a Bill and then the drafting is left to certain other gentlemen, and no doubt those are the gentlemen who will have provided the brief which the Postmaster-General will read in response to my Amendment.
I was once a junior Minister for a short time and I have had some experience of 2330 how these things are done. It is sometimes amazing how little Ministers understand about the Bills for which they are, responsible. Perhaps this does not matter to hon. Members opposite, who do not listen very much. They are driven through the Lobby and often they do not often know what it is all about. That is obvious from some of the conversations which take place outside afterwards.
I imagine that the words which I seek to delete enable the Postmaster-General to control something which he does not provide, and they make me a little suspicious. He knows that I have some connection with the part of South Wales from which he comes. I am a North Walesian and he is a South Walesian, and we are always suspicious of each other. Each regards the other as an alien. Most of those in the South are aliens because they came from England to dig coal.
I am most suspicious about the words in the brackets and I want to know what their purpose is. Whenever we find words in brackets in a Bill, it is a reason for being suspicious. It is a device for concealing something or other. I hope the Postmaster-General will give me an adequate explanation of why he has put in these words in brackets, which seem to me to be very strange and totally unnecessary. I do not see why the Postmaster-General should control other people's telephonic communications.
I said at the beginning that my mind was not originally fastened upon Hull. I have been there only twice in my life. I merely wondered what the words meant. I hope that an hon. Member representing Hull will take part in the debate, because, after all, Hull has a rather clean reputation and I do not want it disturbed. Hull has the best telephone service in the United Kingdom; it is the only telephone service not under the control of the right hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. W. R. A. Hudson (Hull, North)
I want to say a word in support of the Amendment moved by my hon Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) and to thank him for the tribute he paid to the Hull telephone service. In passing, I might say that we should be glad to welcome him in Hull whenever he likes to come.
This Clause, and particularly the words which it is proposed to exclude, raises 2331 serious doubts in the minds of the people of my city. We feel that those words may have some sinister significance in regard to our telephone service. I do not propose to go into any lengthy description of it, because it is well known, but it has lasted since 1902 and is still going strong under licence from the Postmaster-General which expires on 31st December, 1962. The licence covers a large part of the rural district surrounding the city, and it provides for a payment to the Postmaster-General of a royalty of 10 per cent. of its gross takings. I suggest that it may be argued from the wording of the Clause that the service is provided by the Postmaster-General. It could certainly be so argued if the words which it is proposed to exclude stand part of the Clause.
In Hull we already possess the powers which the Postmaster-General will have conferred upon him by this Clause, namely, the powers of regulation, the powers to bring contracts to an end without individual notices, and so on. But if it is established that the Postmaster-General by Statutory Instrument can provide regulations applicable to the City of Hull, then our telephone service might be in grave danger. I want to illustrate that by three figures. For the year 1949–50 the Hull telephone undertaking achieved a gross surplus of £27,062 and a net surplus of £16,223, after paying the Postmaster-General a royalty amounting to £20,463. We have a similar and better record for many years while charging our subscribers rates no more, and in most cases less, than those charged for the national service.
If, indeed, the Postmaster-General can make regulations which would apply to Hull, then that position might be completely altered and the undertaking might become a liability instead of a valuable asset. For instance, he may vary the rentals and charges, he may make costly regulations which will put a burden upon the undertaking that it could not carry and he may indeed—this is very significant so far as we are concerned—vary the royalty which is at present 10 per cent. He may even double it, which would wipe out our surplus completely.
So, whether or not the Postmaster-General accepts the Amendment as it stands and excludes those words, I should 2332 be grateful if he would tell us in his reply how the Clause will affect Hull and whether it is his intention that the regulations for which he is now taking powers will be applied to our local undertaking.

§ The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Hobson)
The speech of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) was largely asking for information. He had as usual a little fun but we have come to associate that with the hon. Member—

§ Sir H. Williams
Serious fun. though.

§ Mr. Hobson
I hope I can show him that I know sufficient of my brief without having to read it. Then we had a more serious contribution from the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson). As he knows, the Hull telephone service works under licence from the Postmaster-General and it is not the intention of my right hon. Friend to interfere with what happens in Hull.
The reason for the words in parenthesis— (whether through the medium of the public telephone system under his control or otherwise)"— is to ensure that the public telephone system will have access freely to the worldwide network, and also so that private exchanges which are rented from my right hon. Friend likewise have access to the general telephonic service. As far as those private lines are concerned which exist in the sole ownership of private persons, the regulations will not appertain at all. The sole reason for having these words in parentheses is that greater emphasis may be given to the means of telephonic communication.

§ Sir H. Williams
I have heard the explanation and I find that it has nothing to do with Hull. The hon. Gentleman referred to people who have private networks having access to the international telephone service. I see by today's newspaper that we shall be able to dial PAR and get through to Paris. What does he mean by what he said? Does he mean that private telephone installations shall have access to the network? If I have a big office—which I have not—with a private branch exchange and several lines, does it mean that he can take steps to ensure that from there, or from a telephone in this building which has a private branch exchange, one can get through?
2333 The hon. Gentleman said he understood this without his brief, but I do not understand him without his brief. Perhaps he will consult his brief and give us further explanation, because I have not the foggiest idea of what his explanation meant.

§ Mr. Charles Williams (Torquay)
May I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having made a quite important statement on behalf of the Government? It is important because there is no intention on the part of the Government of changing the fortunate position of Hull. My hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson) pointed out that his city is in the fortunate position of not paying higher telephone charges than the rest of the country, but that they make such a success of their system that they contribute largely to the taxpayers in the country.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the fact that he, the Postmaster-General and the Government have had the good sense to admit that the shining example of the efficiency of private enterprise shall continue—

§ Mr. Hobson
It is a municipal enterprise.

§ Mr. Williams
The hon. Gentleman said he had no intention of interfering with the licence, but may I ask him to develop it further under those words which would give him the necessary power, and grant other people licences? I should like between now and the Third Reading of the Bill to have him think that out because, from what the Assistant Postmaster-General said, many of us might be enabled to get better services in different parts of the country.
I am not quite clear whether the word "medium" is the right one to use on this occasion. I rather doubt it. For instance, there are all kinds of mediums in the world—or should I say media? I ask whether, in the circumstances, it would not have been better to have introduced another word. I am not a professor or a lawyer, and I am not used to splitting words, but I do say that I cannot remember having come across this word before in an Act of Parliament, and it might be advisable, for the purpose of getting the best word, to omit that word on the Report stage and—obviously the drafting authorities would have to give their consent—find a better word than this which 2334 might be interpreted so badly, especially in places such as Wales, where the people might not realise the meaning of the word and misinterpret it even worse than other people would.
I do not press this matter to the point of wishing to divide, because I feel that the Government have performed a useful service in recognising that if we want efficiency we should get away from any form of national control.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter (Kingston-upon-Thames)
I should like to follow the point which was made with his usual vigilance by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson). I was glad to hear the Assistant Postmaster-General say that there was no intention to use the powers of this Bill to interfere with the Hull system, but I submit that under the words of the Clause as it now stands power is being taken to do it. I should be interested to hear from the Assistant Postmaster-General or the Postmaster-General whether they agree with my reading of these words, because it seems to me that the words as they stand are wide enough to give that power.
On that basis, and in view of the statement of intention made by the Minister a moment ago. I hope it may be possible, if not at this stage, at any rate at a later stage of the Bill, to insert words making it perfectly clear that that power is not given. It would be perfectly easy to draft a proviso something on these lines: "Provided always that the powers taken under this Section shall not be deemed to apply to the telephone installation at Kingston-upon-Hull," or whatever may be the appropriate words. Some such words ought to be introduced, because it is wrong for Ministers of the Crown to take powers which are in excess of what they really mean.
Although I am perfectly satisfied by the assurance given that the Assistant Postmaster-General does not intend to interfere with Hull at the moment, that assurance does not necessarily bind his successors, and I hope that in the interests of the extremely efficient system in Hull and in the interests of its continued functioning without interference by subsequent Postmasters-General, we may have some indication that the Government will, at a later stage, look favourably upon the insertion of the necessary words to make it quite clear that no such power is taken.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston (Westbury)
I should like briefly to reinforce the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). I understand that the position is this. The Postmaster-General has no intention of interfering with the internal arrangements of Hull or with the internal arrangements of any private branch exchange. What he is seeking to do is to lay down provisions by which he will connect a private branch exchange with the trunk system or with the overseas system. That appears to us to be quite reasonable, but it appears from the Bill as it stands that the words give the right hon. Gentleman a power to interfere in a way which he does not intend.
4.15 p.m.
We do not expect the Postmaster-General to suggest an alteration at the moment, but I think it would be advisable if he would look at these words again to see that they are restricted to the powers which he wishes to take and which powers we agree he should have. It is merely a question of restricting the words of the Bill in that ambit.

§ Mr. Hobson
It is perfectly true, as I said, that this provision does not interfere with those private branch exchanges which are not under rent from the Postmaster-General. Nor does it interfere with the Kingston-upon-Hull system. I am assured that the position of Hull is absolutely guaranteed by virtue of the fact that they are operating under a licence which has yet to run for many years. Therefore, in those circumstances, I fail to see why it is necessary to incorporate any other words in the Bill.

§ Sir H. Williams
We have had no explanation at all why these words are in the Bill. The Assistant Postmaster-General has said something about private branch exchanges, but he has not told us what private branch exchanges. He has said that Hull is out of the picture, but will he give one example of the kind of thing he means by the words "or otherwise"?

Mr. McKie (Galloway)
I hope the Assistant Postmaster-General will be kind enough to reply to the point which my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), has just made and to which he has sought a reply from the 2336 Assistant Postmaster-General. There can be no question—there never has been in the past—that words are put into a Bill for a definite and specific purpose. If the purpose is merely that they should look nice, or to give the draftsmen a little more to do, or to cloud the minds of laymen like myself, well and good. If that is all that is intended, I should be satisfied, although I hate anything that is unnecessary or redundant.
I hope the hon. Gentleman will realise that I am not trying in any way to be obstructive; I am trying to be helpful. After all, the telephone system affects everybody, high and low, rich and poor. We all desire the most efficient telephone system in the country, and we want to see that this Clause sets out to make things more efficient. We should have a little more amplification from the hon. Gentleman, or perhaps from his chief—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East, being a fellow Welshman, would very much like to hear the Postmaster-General himself—stating what the words mean and telling us why it is necessary to have them in what the right hon. Gentleman, no doubt, hopes will be a Statute before the Summer Recess.
I think the Assistant Postmaster-General has done his best with regard to Kingston-upon-Hull, after the very able speech and the many interrogations which were addressed to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson). I think he has eased the mind of my hon. Friend—he has eased mine—but he has left me very doubtful indeed about the private branch exchanges—[Laughter.] It is all very well to laugh. I do not wish to be too disrespectful, but hon. Members opposite are often inclined to laugh when matters involving many of their constituents are under discussion, and they may be disinclined in the dog days which may soon be upon us to examine these apparently innocent matters with the degree of seriousness which they merit. The private branch exchanges will fail to be satisfied with the hon. Gentleman's remarks as far as they have gone.
Although I should like to refer to the kind of cases to which my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) alluded, with regard to Wales and Scotland, I will content myself by saying that I hope one or other of the representatives of the Post Office will be 2337 good enough to explain why it is necessary to have these words in the Bill, and make the position a little more clear with regard to the private branch exchanges in this country. If the right hon. Gentleman does that, I feel he will have done a very good service to the general public, who are so interested in having a good telephone service.

§ Mr. John Hay (Henley)
I want to get back to the point about Kingston-upon-Hull, because many of us on this side of the Committee are a little puzzled about what the position is to be. The Assistant Postmaster-General said that the licence under which his right hon. Friend provides the service to Hull has a number of years to run. I am not certain, and I do not think anyone will take a snap judgment on it, whether regulations made under the Statute would or could override that licence.
This is not a fanciful point. A Statutory Instrument is really delegated legislation exercised in a modified form. Practically every day Statutory Instruments are made which have the effect of varying and altering obligations in different contracts made by private indivduals. We do not know the terms and all the details of the licence granted to Hull. I should like the Postmaster-General to give us an assurance that he will look at this matter again. I can understand that he may feel, when he has looked at it, that he is quite right, but we are not putting this forward for the fun of doing so and we would like him to look at it again.

§ The Postmaster-General (Mr. Ness Edwards)
I must reply to the blandishments from the other side of the Committee, but I cannot understand this indignation. I think my hon. Friend made it quite clear. I gave an undertaking on Second Reading that these regulations would not be allowed to interfere with any contract which existed except that the contract should be terminated by the means provided within the contract itself. That, surely, must apply to Hull and its licence. I should be astonished if Hull did not claim that its licence is a contract and, therefore, it could not be terminated except upon the terms and conditions contained within the licence.

§ Sir H. Williams
Like the Persian oil business.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I think that is quite clear and there ought to be no apprehension about it. Incidentally, I was very pleased to hear the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson), refer to the efficiency and success of the Hull system which has been due to regulations it had and for which I am asking in this Bill.
Now I come to the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), who gave half his case away. He is certainly agreeable that we should have the power to make regulations governing the use of the public system, but his Amendment would withdraw our right to have regulations governing the public system. He has run away from that—

§ Sir H. Williams
No

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
He now pins his case to the words "or otherwise."

§ Sir H. Williams
I do not know what they mean.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
The Postmaster-General has no control over the telephone system abroad; no control whatever. Therefore, it is "otherwise" than under his control. The public telephone system in this country is under my control, but the public telephone system abroad is not under my control. I must have powers to make regulations governing the use of the medium of telephonic communication with other administrations abroad. The same applies to radio-telephony. That is all this amounts to. It is that and no more.
We are talking now about the medium of the communication, and "otherwise" refers to the media of communication, not under my control, which are abroad. It seems clear that unless we can have the power to make regulations governing the conditions of using, or governing the conditions of access to, other telephone systems abroad, we shall completely isolate ourselves, leave ourselves without a very important means of revenue and a valuable facility for the people of this country.

§ Sir H. Williams
I am more confused than ever. This is to make regulations, not for the purpose of initiating a telephone call in this country, but on how such a service is to be regulated in Paris.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
No.

§ Sir H. Williams
What does it mean? Let us read the words very carefully, because now, at least, we have some kind of indication of what is in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman. ….make regulations for determining the terms and conditions on which the use of means of telephonic communication provided by him (whether through the medium of the public telephone system under his control or otherwise… That means my access to an instrument in this country— or otherwise) How can the right hon. Gentleman make regulations as to what happens at the other end? His writ in these regulations cannot extend outside the frontiers of Britain, unless someone is so stupid as to set up a system of federal government in Europe, of which I do not approve. His writ does not run beyond the three-mile limit, as far as I know. I am trying to find the faintest example of the kind of regulations the right hon. Gentleman would have to draft to give effect to those words, "or otherwise." The Assistant Postmaster-General has had a go, the Postmaster-General has had a go and I have seen the Parliamentary Private Secretary briefing him but they still have not given a clear idea of what they want to do. Can the right hon. Gentleman give me an outline of how I am to get into communication with Paris without these words in the Bill? He cannot do so.

§ Mr. Hay
I beg to move, in page 1, line 13, to leave out "or providing for determining."
I think it would be greatly to the convenience and relief of the Committee, to say nothing of the Chair, if I also discussed later Amendments with this Amendment: in page 2, line 7, leave out "or providing for fixing"; in line 22, leave out or determined under"; in line 30, leave out "or determined under": and in page 3, line 7, leave out" or under."

§ The Chairman
The Chair is quite agreeable. These Amendments seem somewhat associated. Is it possible to have them discussed together?

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
There are certain differences which might come out in discussion. I do not want to inconvenience 2340 or disoblige the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay) but I think it would be better to take them seriatim and then, when the principle has been agreed, they might be moved formally.

§ The Chairman
Does not that mean repetition? If there would be repetition it is better that the discussion should be on the first Amendment, but I do not wish to press the matter against the wishes of the Committee.

§ Mr. Hay
I think it would undoubtedly lead to repetition, because the point I wish to put is quite brief.
Subsection (1) gives the Postmaster-General power to make regulations for certain purposes which are described in the Bill as for determining terms and conditions on which the use of the telephone will be permitted and in particular for determining, or providing for determining, the terms and conditions on which calls may be made and for fixing, or providing for fixing, charges. 4.30 p.m.
The purpose of these Amendments is to elicit exactly what is the right hon. Gentleman's intention in using that alternative form of words. We are rather puzzled that an alternative should be referred to at all, and we should like to ask why it is really necessary, when power is being taken for these regulations to determine terms and conditions and to fix charges, to qualify it by saying or providing for determining. We feel that the Regulations that are to be made—we already know from what happened on the Second Reading that they are likely to be voluminous—should be clear. If there is any lack of clarity in the parent Statute, it is likely to cause some ambiguity and doubt when people come to draw up and construe the regulations which are made. If the Bill authorises the determination and fixing of charges by regulations, should we not say that determining and fixing should be by regulations alone and not by some other method? The words providing for determining, which we seek to leave out, would indicate that there is some other possible procedure for such matters within the regulations, some other power perhaps to determine and fix the charges within those regulations.
2341 We ask whether, in fact, what is intended is not some kind of sub-delegation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) put it on Second Reading, to some other authority within the regulations themselves when the questions come to be decided. My hon. Friend was extremely clear when he referred to this matter on Second Reading. He said: The disadvantage of that is that even the degree of Parliamentary control given by this Bill is thereby excluded because it is only the regulations and not the exercise of the power delegated under the regulations which is subject to any Parliamentary control. We have seen in other cases how delegated legislation has produced children and grandchildren that is to say, power twice delegated, and in the process of that double delegation twice insulated from even the formalities of Parliamentary control."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 20th June, 1951; Vol. 489, c. 621.] That is the point we want to have cleared up. The reason was not given in the closing speech by the Assistant Postmaster-General, but I do not complain about that because a number of other points made had to be dealt with, and naturally time was limited.
The view we have about this rather important point is strengthened when we refer to other similar provisions, which are the subject of the other Amendments on the Order Paper, and which have been linked with the one I am moving. For example, Clause 1 (1, b) relates to the fixing of charges and goes on to say: …for providing that the provision as aforesaid by him of equipment or apparatus shall be subject to compliance with such terms and conditions as may be specified in or determined under the regulations. There, I think, is ambiguity or duality of the possible purpose. There is power under the regulations and also apparently there is power of determination by some other person. Clause 1 (1, c) also has the same defect to the extent that here again a period of time is fixed and the decision as to the period of time is such as may be specified in or determined under the regulations. Again, there is power for someone else to determine the time. Clause 1 (2) provides: Different provision and charges may he made and fixed by or under regulations.… Here again, there is that duality.
I hope it will not be considered that these are unnecessary technical points. I 2342 think they are important for the reasons given by my hon. Friend on Second Reading. If we are to have these regulations, it should be quite plain that it is the regulations which are to govern, and not some Departmental decision by some individual far removed from the actual scene of events who will decide and determine on some matter purporting to come within the regulations. I hope, therefore, that we shall have a clear explanation of what is the exact meaning of these words.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
The Amendment has been moved in an extremely reasonable manner, and it is right that an explanation should be given of the powers which it is proposed to take in these regulations. In the first place, it ought to be realised that the Post Office is a great commercial undertaking, and I am sure that the last thing the Committee want to do is to strangle it with red tape. We want to give every reasonable opportunity to exercise initiative. We want people on the spot to be able to decide what to do instead of referring to headquarters to get authority. Things can be done more quickly and far more efficiently that way, even without the skilled help of the people at headquarters. The feeling about this is very wide.
The first point deals with rentals, and I should like to remind the Committee of the great disparity that exists in the conditions occurring within the Post Office. There is, on the one hand, the large firm with whom we have contracts which run into thousands and thousands of pounds, and there is the ordinary village cobbler who pays a rental of something like £4 a year. It is obvious that we cannot fix in regulations what the charge may be in cases like those or, indeed, for any one of the five million utterly dissimilar circumstances which prevail.
Therefore, it is necessary that on the job someone must have the right to fix the proper charge. How is it possible, for instance, in regulations to predetermine the amount of connection charge that ought to be paid by the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams).

§ Sir H. Williams
Zero.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
That is not a charge but the absence of one. In his case, the hon. Member wants a connection made to a certain part of his office. 2343 The distance may be short or it may be long. How are we to determine under the regulations what we are going to charge him?

§ Sir H. Williams
So much a foot.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
How could we provide for a charge of so much a foot in the regulations with the cost of materials and the cost of labour varying? These regulations have to provide beforehand what an appropriate charge would be while these other considerations are occurring willy-nilly all the time. That is one of the types of case for which we want to have the power to fix the charge.
Secondly, I have sought in the regulations for power to reduce a charge for a special night rate. This relates to the other Amendments which are under consideration. Had we taken them individually, I would have put forward groups of arguments to deal with each Amendment, but as we are taking them altogether, I am putting all the arguments together. The regulations, when they are issued, will provide a rate for ordinary telephone calls, but I will take power under them to reduce the ordinary rate to give a special night rate. I must have have the right from time to time either to extend the hours over which this preferential cheap rate will apply or to contract them in accordance with the traffic which exists at any time.
It will also enable me to try to arrange to have preferential charges to break the peak traffic which we cannot handle. We set peaks of traffic at certain times. One of my predecessors, Sir Kingsley Wood, did a lot in this direction. He found the peak reached such a stage that it could not be handled, and what he did under the powers he had was to arrange for cheaper rates during the off-peak periods. We now have periods where the traffic reaches such a peak that it becomes extremely difficult to handle, and I want the power to reduce the charges in order that we may spread the traffic and get a much more efficient use of the service.

§ Sir H. Williams
How often does the right hon. Gentleman want to do this? I gather he is making a plea for a regulation so that inside that regulation he may play about without restriction from Parliament. The frequency cannot be very often. He has only to consult his 2344 right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade with regard to the frequency with which his right hon. Friend uses regulations about the price of babies' nappies, which we were discussing late last night, and he will see that he is trying to get outside the control of Parliament.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I cannot get outside the control of Parliament. What must be recognised with regard to the Post Office is the very great degree of Parliamentary accountability.

§ Sir H. Williams
That is a good idea. The right hon. Gentleman ought to tell that to the other nationalised industries.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
What I am proposing in this Bill is to provide for an even greater degree of Parliamentary accountability. I have never resented any question at all even about the most minute thing in the Post Office. I think it right that Parliament should be recognised as the boss of the show. Parliament represents the citizens and we must be accountable to them. In that sense, whatever I do should be accountable to Parliament and I should be liable to be shot at for any misdemeanour I may commit. So that question does not arise.
Regarding how often I should want to change the charges, the hon. Gentleman has referred to nappies, which I understand are changed very frequently. I quite agree that the number of occasions on which I should want to change these preferential rates would not be as great as the number of changes which occur in the case of nappies. But here we have a changing traffic. It may change whenever we get a storm or interference with our radio communications. The traffic was very heavy at the time of the Test Match.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I want this power in this case, not to increase the cost to the consumer, but to reduce it. When we are passing on a concession of that sort, we ought not to have to wait to come before Parliament to get a regulation before we can pass on the benefit. If I were imposing a greater cost, I could understand the hon. Member's point of view.
There are other things which cannot be provided for in regulations. Take, for example, personal calls. A personal call may take place over the radio, by 2345 telecommunication to Spain or the South of France, where some hon. Members go. from both sides of the House—

§ Sir H. Williams
I pay my own fare when I go.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
So do I. How can we determine in regulations how much is to be charged for a personal call to be taken in the South of France? The terms and conditions in France are not under my control and cannot come under my regulation. What I have sought to do is to have the power under regulation to fix the charge.

§ Sir H. Williams
May I ask a question? Suppose I want to ring up a friend in the South of France, surely before I start the operator will tell me the charge. I presume that the operator already has the charge fixed. Surely that charge must be published in some way. If so, why not in the form of a regulation?

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
Because the present method is that the charge is published in the London Gazette. It does not have any authority from this House. It may come into operation within a few days. The publication of a regulation for the purpose of altering a charge to one suburb of Paris would be nonsense. What the hon. Gentleman is seeking to do by his attitude is to strangle the Post Office with red tape.
Take, for instance, Continental telephone calls. The Continental telephone system will not handle calls at all its exchanges right through the 24 hours, and one must have the right to fix conditions under the regulations on which those telephone calls will be accepted, because it is no use our accepting them here unless they are received and dealt with at the other end. I think the hon. Gentleman will realise that this Committee cannot hope to make regulations to control the use of the system in another country.
Where we get very heavy traffic in some parts of the country we have to decide that during certain parts, of the day calls shall not exceed three minutes in order that the traffic may be dealt with. Those circumstances change from time to time, and what we are dealing with under those parts of the Bill which hon. Gentlemen 2346 are seeking to change by Amendment is the day-to-day operation of the system and the day-to-day changes in the conditions of the system which cannot be anticipated or formalised in terms of regulations to be submitted to this House.
Here in London and in the docks we have initiated a system of telephonic communication with ships which are linked up with the public system. If the ship is far out in the dock or in an inconvenient spot, the length of the connection is obviously much greater. Some shipowners take the view that they would like to have a public kiosk put on the ship and the Post Office be responsible. Other shipowners think they ought to have a telephone system of their own. All these conditions are variable and cannot he anticipated beforehand. We must have power to fix a charge, because if we cannot fix a charge we cannot provide the facility.
A most important question is that of new apparatus. We are developing new telephone attachments, and from time to time we want to put them into use and to get experience of them before we come to any final conclusion about the charge to make when they become normal equipment. We must have power to fix a charge for the experimental period. With the introduction of teleprinters—and there are some new types of phonogram and facsimile equipment now coming into use —we want, for an experimental period, to have the right to fix charges. Otherwise, we simply cannot introduce them. I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite not to put any impediment in the way of these facilities.
My last point is about the right to fix the cost of repairs. If the hon. Member for Croydon, East throws his telephone at his wife and breaks it in half—

§ Sir H. Williams
Or she throws it at me.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
—or she throws it at him, and smashes it beyond repair, all we have to do is to fix the price for replacement. It might be the hon. Gentleman's replacement, and that might be a very desirable expenditure. Various types of damage are incurred by Post Office apparatus, and the cost of repair varies in a multitude of ways. Someone must have the right to fix the cost of repair and replacement. We cannot do it very well by regulations. It is necessary, in 2347 order to run this large business and to meet this multitude of varying circumstances, to have the right to fix charges by regulations.
Wherever the apparatus is normal, the charges will be specified in the regulations. Wherever the charge can be calculated beforehand, it will be put in the regulations. When we come to discuss the regulations, we shall be pleased to consider the introduction of further regulations to make good any omission which hon. Gentlemen opposite might have in mind. In the circumstances, I ask that the Amendment be withdrawn.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
I was a little puzzled as to why the Postmaster-General did not want these Amendments to be discussed together. I think I understand now, because he has spent a considerable time discussing an Amendment which has not yet been moved. I refer to the one in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), in page 1, line 19, to leave out from "facilities," the end of line 6, in page 2. I do not know whether my hon. Friend will move that Amendment later, but we specifically excluded it from this series of Amendments, because we desire to leave the Postmaster-General with power to vary charges during certain periods. I am sorry to say that the right hon. Gentleman has not met the more confined point of the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Hay).
I can understand perfectly well that there must be some elasticity to allow for the fixing of charges for special jobs, but I do not understand why that cannot be done under Clause 2 (1). This method of giving power under a regulation—not under a private contract—to provide for fixing charges, runs into the difficulty of sub-delegated legislation to which we all object in principle. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned ships. Surely those cases could be dealt with under Clause 2 (1) rather than by sub-delegated legislation. I should like him to explain why he cannot do that work under the powers contained in Clause 2 (1). The same applies to other instances which he gave.
One would have thought that, generally speaking, the charges for connecting up telephones, extensions, and so on, could 2348 be put in the regulations. When I asked that the cord on my telephone should be twice the normal length, I was told at once what the charge would be. These are not charges which vary from day to day, or which have to be settled by the man who does the job. I should have thought that all these charges, which will not be changed except when there is a major alteration in prices or charges, could have been incorporated in regulations. If, for example, the Postmaster-General could reduce the general run of charges, or if he had to increase them, all he would have to do would be to lay an amending regulation before the House. I should have thought that in the other category of various little jobs, he could have used Clause 2 (1) and avoided the evil of sub-delegated legislation. I should like to know why that cannot be done.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee appreciated the general propositions with which the right hon. Gentleman began his speech. Indeed, he went so far in his enthusiasm for the Parliamentary accountability of his Department that, if his right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport reads what he said, he will think that the right hon. Gentleman is a blackleg. That general observation, and his general observation on his desire to administer his Department as a great and flexible commercial undertaking, will commend themselves to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee.
When he applied those admirable general propositions to the more specific and limited methods contained in this Amendment, he did not seem to use them as an effective argument against the Amendment. He was under the disability, which was obvious to most hon. Members, that he had expended a great deal of his eloquence in dealing with an Amendment which had not yet been moved, and which may never be moved. That detracted from the value of his argument when he came to deal with the specific matters which arise from this series of Amendments.
I wish to confine my argument to these Amendments. The right hon. Gentleman pointed out that his charges would be complicated. Of course they would; but would they necessarily be any more complicated than the scale of charges which 2349 British Railways impose? The scale of charges for British Railways are fixed in elaborate detail with the aid of the Transport Tribunal. Elaborate but definite scales have been laid down and they are ascertainable by everybody. I do not believe for one moment that the system of charges in the Post Office is necessarily any more complicated than that in the transport industry.
I do not see why the right hon. Gentleman should not put the general scale of charges into the regulations made by him and laid on the Table. I do not see why he finds it necessary to insert words into the Bill to take power to authorise himself by these regulations to fix these charges in some other way without any Parliamentary control at all. That will be the effect, if he uses these words to confer on himself or on his Department the right to fix charges. These charges will not be subject to any form of Parliamentary control, and the fine words which the right hon. Gentleman used on Second Reading: It will he seen that I am providing for this great national service a degree of Parliamentary accountability which is exceptional."—[OFFFICIAL REPORT, 20th June, 1951; Vol. 489, c. 610] would only be true in the ironic sense of the term. It does seem to me that he has evaded, and did not deal in his speech at all with, the question of Parliamentary accountability, and that, if he uses the regulations simply to empower himself to fix the charges, he by-passes Parliamentary control over the fixing of those prices. The right hon. Gentleman did not seem to me to bring any real reason, from the practical point of view, why it was necessary to do that.
5.0 p.m.
Let us take the example of the case of providing facilities for ships in docks. Obviously, ships are of different sizes, and may dock at different places, but it should not be beyond the capacity of the Department to devise a scale of charges providing different charges for ships which are half a mile or a mile away, whether he puts a kiosk on the boat deck, or puts the telephone in the captain's cabin or wherever he puts it, provided that he states in the regulations the scale of charges for doing that. It is a quite unnecessary reflection on his Department to suggest that they would have any difficulty whatever in providing such a scale of charges.
2350 When the right hon. Gentleman came to what was his main argument, he seemed to me to go astray entirely, because there he said that he could not do without these words "providing for determining," because it would be necessary for him to have the power to lower charges in special and exceptional circumstances. If he will look at the Bill, he will see that he has already got that power without the words which we seek to leave out. If he will be good enough to look at the bottom of page 1 of the Bill, he will see that one of the things which he takes power to do by regulation is to empower the Postmaster-General to direct that, at such times or during such periods as may he specified in the directions, the charges fixed under this paragraph by the regulations or such of those charges as may he specified in the directions shall he reduced in accordance with the directions;". That is to say, he already has, independently of the words which we seek to delete, power to do what he rightly said he wanted to do, but which he seems to think he could not do if we took out the wording set out in this Amendment.
We are, therefore, in this position. His major purpose, as he sees it, for having these words in the Bill, is already taken care of by other words in the Bill, and, if that is so, it seems to me that the whole case against this Amendment falls to the ground, and so, of course, when we come back to the major issue of principle, so do the almost concluding words of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He said, and I was glad to hear him say so, that he will put his general charges scheme in regulations to come before the House. That is excellent, and I know that the right hon. Gentleman, having said that he will do it, will do it, but why should he take power, as he is doing, to do precisely the opposite?
There is nothing whatever in the wording set out in the Bill to prevent him, or subsequently his successors, simply producing a set of regulations saying that the Postmaster-General can charge what he likes for any service which he likes to provide. He can do that without any further Parliamentary sanction, as far as moving to annul regulations is concerned, because the power he will exercise, and which he confers upon himself, is different to the ordinary control over Statutory Instruments and will not be affected by Statutory Instruments at all.
2351 This is the same point as that which we discussed on an earlier Amendment. Here, he comes forward with, apparently, a blameless intention, yet, at the same time, seeking to argue what seem to me to be highly blameworthy powers. I do not think it is a respectable argument to address to the Committee to say that the reason why the right hon. Gentleman wants the powers is that he will not use them, and that is really what the right hon. Gentleman is doing. He will, in fact, submit these charges to Parliamentary control, but he is taking power in these regulations to alter every one of them or to vary every one of them, under powers sub-delegated to himself and immune from Parliamentary control.
That is the right hon. Gentleman's decision. If he would say that, in the light of this discussion, he would reconsider before the next stage, or, indeed, in another place, the insertion of some other words to make it clear that neither he nor his successors shall have the power to do what he said he does not want to do, I think we should make much easier progress, but the right hon. Gentleman cannot come to that Box and seek to insist upon retaining in the Bill those powers if he is not going to exercise them. The only substantial reason which he put forward for seeking to exercise them is dealt with, as I have already pointed out, in the words at the bottom of the first page of the Bill.
We are here up against a thing with which we are all to familiar—the tendency for Ministers to ask for far wider powers than are necessary—and, to our regret and to our shame, we in this House have only too often acceded to these requests. I think that public opinion, inside and outside the House, is now much more alive to that danger than it was some years ago, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman, who has shown himself to be reasonable to public opinion on some aspects of the matter, will appreciate that both public opinion and sound constitutional doctrine demand that a change should be made in the Bill.

§ Mr. A. Edward Davies (Stoke-on-Trent, North)
I should like to follow the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) in his discourse upon delegated legislation and its evils. The hon. Member has, by this time, 2352 sought to educate all of us here and the country upon the evils of this form of legislation, and we have a great deal of sympathy with his point of view. It is certainly a practice which needs to be very carefully watched, and, certainly, Parliament should exercise the closest scrutiny and control over things which are of public interest.
As I listened to the Postmaster-Genera, today, it seemed to me that he made out a very good case for what he is seeking to do in this Bill. He made the point that there was such a variety of day-to-day jobs which need to be settled, not only centrally, but in the country, that it would be a complete waste of time for any Parliament to discuss them every time somebody wanted a little telephone job doing quickly by the Post Office. Surely such things can be done without a great deal of elaborate regulations, especially where prices and circumstances are changing from week to week, and even more frequently than that. I should have thought that that was really carrying the argument very much too far.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the former Railway Rates Tribunal and the present Transport Tribunal, which, he said, was a comparable body which might be regarded as having a comparable job to do. He said that there was a formula laid down, and that what was done was there for everybody to see and that Parliament had a certain amount of control over what was done in that way. May I respectfully remind the hon. Gentleman and the Committee that, today, there is a great deal of argument in the transport and economic world that the Transport Commission is hamstrung, because of the rigid and inflexible nature of its machinery. It is said that, at a time when charges and circumstances are changing and when it is necessary to adjust charges to customers, that piece of clumsy and longwinded procedure handicaps a corporate body in having to observe conditions, which were framed in totally different days, in a condition of monopoly in which it had to ensure that preferential treatment was not given to customers. I agree that in this matter we have to protect that position.
A very pertinent point in the argument is, of course, that if the charges were published we should be assured that everybody was having the same treatment, 2353 whereas if we left it to the Minister he could make his own terms. There would be no assurance on the matter. Nevertheless, I submit that in this matter the Postmaster-General has made out a very good case on grounds of practical day-to-day administration and of giving the country good service, and I for my part cannot see that there is any abstraction from the powers of Parliament in doing the job this way. I hope we shall give the Postmaster-General this power.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
Is the right hon. Gentleman going to reply?

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I was not quite certain that a reply was called for. I was astonished at the hon. Gentleman, who has had experience of the Post Office, putting forward the propositions he did. I am certain that if he were there now he would not put them forward.

§ Mr. Grimston
The right hon. Gentleman should not adopt that attitude. First of all, I told him that he had put up a very good case against an Amendment which had not been moved, and then I put to him perfectly seriously the point about the mischief of sub-delegated legislation. I asked him why he could not use the powers taken under Clause 2 (1). I expect an answer to those questions and I do not expect to be told that I should not ask for a reply.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
The hon. Gentleman should not be too hasty. What he is asking me to do is this. If someone wants two screws put into his telephone, I should do it by agreement; if someone wants his telephone moved from room A to room B. I should do that by agreement. Is that really the way in which to run a business? How it is now done is like this. The officer goes across to see the subscriber who wants his telephone moved from one room to another, measures up the job, and gives the cost. If the subscriber says he accepts the estimate of the charge, the work is done.

§ Mr. Grimston
He now signs an agreement.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
The customer does not sign an agreement. He signs an agreement for his rental, but not for his changes, or even for his extensions. He makes application for them, but does not sign an agreement.

§ Mr. Hay
What the right hon. Gentleman has just told the House is a give-away of his point. What happens is that though there is no agreement, there is a verbal contract between the agent of the Post Office and the subscriber.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I am asking for power to fix charges. How do I fix them? My officer goes to the subscriber and tells him what the job will cost, and it is done. If I do it by regulation, I must have an agreement form; I must get someone to draft an agreement. The amount of time taken up in doing that would be far more than by the other method.
It has been suggested that ship-to-shore communication should only be provided under agreement. Do hon. Members opposite seriously suggest that in every case where a ship asks for this service it should only be supplied under agreement? Many ships dock one day and go out the next. Is an agreement to be drawn up in such cases? I would suggest to the hon. Gentleman, who, I believe, has had a longer experience in the Post Office than I, that in this matter he ought to rely on the good judgment of those who served him in the days when he was in that Department and who serve me today.

§ Mr. Grimston
How does the right hon. Gentleman suppose these things are done as between private firms who, of course, have no series of regulations laid down by Parliament.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
Private enterprise say a thing will cost so much, and that is that. That is what I am asking for. Is it suggested that if, for instance, Mrs. Jones wants two screws put into her telephone she should look at the regulations to see what the job will cost? I think that is a preposterous suggestion.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
The right hon. Gentleman says it is preposterous, but if Mrs. Jones takes her shoes to the shoemaker for repair she pays the shoemaker the price laid down by his right hon. and learned Friend the President of the Board of Trade.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
Whatever Mrs. Jones pays, the cobbler is not answerable in this House for the charge, whereas I am answerable in this House to the representatives of the nation for any charge I make to any citizen in the country.
2355 I now come to the argument adduced by the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). I wish he would not import so much political prejudice into the consideration of the problems facing this great national institution. He has, I believe, recently become a father, but I notice that in every one of his arguments he still has the bad habit of pouring out the baby with the bath water. All I can say is that I trust he has a greater experience on the domestic front.
It is my intention, and I made it quite clear, that in normal circumstances provision will made in the regulations for the generality of charges. I shall make them as all-embracing as I possibly can. But no one can anticipate all the variations. I must have power to fix charges in a variety of circumstances which cannot possibly be anticipated, and many of which may have no identity with any similar circumstances. That is my case. The hon. Gentleman said that this was a sort of sub-delegation of powers for which there is no Parliamentary accountability. He is quite wrong in his conclusion. I am always accountable to Parliament, whether a thing is done under regulation or not.
Hon. Members can raise any question concerning Post Office administration. They can question any treatment I may mete out to any subscriber; they can ask why a letter has been delayed, or why through a reorganisation of the postal service a town has been robbed of its special identity. All such matters can be raised in this House. Indeed, the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames has been the person who has taken the greatest advantage of my Parliamentary accountability to question me on all sorts of things. Therefore, for him to say that I shall be able to do these things behind the back of Parliament is not to pay himself a compliment for the awareness and agility which he has shown for a considerable time in these matters.
In view of what I have told the Committee, I do not think it should support this Amendment. I am satisfied that the hon. Gentleman who moved it, and who, unlike his hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames, has a considerable amount of industrial experience—

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I understood he had. I am surprised to learn he has not, if I may say so, because he spoke with a good deal of sense. I should have thought that the case I have put forward completely proves the need for giving me the powers for which I ask.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
The Postmaster-General had rather a bad run, because not only did he attribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston) industrial experience which he has not had, but he did what, outside, would have been the more serious thing and attributed to me a recent degree of paternity which equally I have not had.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I can only say that I regret that very much.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his regrets, which no doubt are founded on eugenic reasons. Equally, when he thinks over what he has said and, perhaps, reads his speech in HANSARD, I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that he indulged in a very false point when he said that there was no need to worry about Parliamentary control over the regulations because he was always accountable to Parliament.
If there were any validity whatever in that argument, there would have been on need to put in the Bill the degree of Parliamentary accountability for the making of regulations which is, in fact, in the Bill. If there is any validity in his argument, those words are surplus, yet the right hon. Gentleman has put in these words. He cannot at the same time be heard to say that it is right to put in these words, under which his regulations are liable to be annulled by the House, and then go on to say that if he makes other use of the powers which he is not expected to take, he is sufficiently accountable to Parliament anyhow, because those two arguments will not ride together.
I have heard Ministers use that argument very many times, and they generally use it better than the right hon. Gentleman used it this afternoon. He knows as well as every hon. Member knows, how difficult it is in practice to bring a Minister of the Crown to book on a somewhat special and peculiar matter. In the 2357 first place, owing to the number of Questions nowadays, Ministers can only answer oral Questions fairly infrequently and when they are towards the top of the list. [Interruption.] Hon. Members have only to look at the list of Questions to see what little progress we have succeeded in making and how many Ministers who are down to answer orally are not reached. They will know how difficult it is on a Supply Day to raise a small and particular point, because even if one has the good fortune to catch the eye of whoever is in the Chair, there is no guarantee that in the end when the Minister replies, one will get a definite answer to one among 20 other things which have been asked of him.
But when there is power to annul a regulation, any hon. Member has the right to bring the specific matter forward and to have it answered on the Floor of the House. That is a far more effective way, as the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, of securing Parliamentary accountability for the exercise of these delegated powers than are those other methods for which the right hon. Gentleman showed such enthusiasm. I am certain that he is a good enough Parliamentarian to know that that is so.

§ Mr. Viant (Willesden, West)
I did not think that the Committee would pay undue attention to the Amendment. I have listened very attentively to all the arguments that have been adduced. Had hon. Members opposite put down an Amendment asking that the Postmaster-General should issue a price list of all the services that are likely to be rendered by his Department, I could have appreciated at once what they were after; but in essence and in practice that is precisely the thing for which they are asking, and they are asking for it, to be incorporated in regulations.
The hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston), with his experience of the Post Office, knows quite well that this proposal would be simply ridiculous, if not an impossibility. I could suggest many services that have to be rendered by the Department. but it would be quite impossible to incorporate them in a price list, because contingencies arise which are not always similar—in fact, they can be very dissimilar—and in practice the result would be that it would be quite impossible to forecast or to suggest what the 2358 price of a certain service was likely to be. When it is analysed, the idea behind this proposal is simply absurd.
We are, of course, always interested to hear the arguments of the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). He puts up a bogey, marches on to the other side, knocks another one down, and then returns to knock the first one down again. It is the old argument, which is very interesting from the point of view of dialectics, but which when analysed has nothing in it. The hon. Member enjoys himself. We delight in hearing him, except that at times we feel he has wasted a considerable amount of time. None the less, he has been amusing in putting forward the Amendment. My right hon. Friend has to take it at its value, and I hope that the Committee will vote against it.

§ Mr. Hay
The hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Viant), attributed to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) an agility which earlier the Postmaster-General attributed to him. I certainly did not form the same impression of a very careful, and carefully reasoned, argument that my hon. Friend put forward on the Amendment as did the hon. Member for Willesden, West. Having listened with great interest to the whole of the discussion which the Amendment has initiated, I feel that we have not had a satisfactory answer in this matter, and I urge the right hon. Gentleman to think again about it.
I understand the right hon. Gentleman's argument. He says it is vital that there should be flexibility; that it would be quite intolerable for every small every day matter to be laid down and determined in advance by regulations. I see the justice of that; to a certain extent it is reasonable. But I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has fully appreciated, even now, the difficulty which is in our minds, that there is a substantial risk that by administrative action alone the subscriber may be substantially prejudiced because the person who is to exercise the rights which the words that the Amendment seeks to delete will give him under the Statute will be someone far away from direct contact with the subscriber who is affected.
2359 The right hon. Gentleman says, "That is all right. Why worry? I am accountable to Parliament, either under the regulations or by Questions to me by Members of the House." That may be so, but as my hon. Friend has pointed out, that is a somewhat cumbersome procedure. One is never certain of getting an opportunity to have a question fully answered, whether in debate or by means of a Question.
We on this side still feel that to leave these words in the Bill gives to people in the right hon. Gentleman's Department, albeit with the very best of intentions and with the best will in the world, powers which Parliament ought not to confer directly upon them. I do not see, even now, that it would be completely impossible or intolerable that all these matters should be broadly regulated by the regulations which the right hon. Gentleman will in due course lay.
I suggest once more that he reconsider this matter. I do not propose to withdraw the Amendment, because it will have a slightly greater impression upon the Postmaster-General if the Committee comes to a decision upon it; but I again urge him to realise that we are putting forward something upon which we feel deeply, and something which, we feel, would improve the Bill and avoid what would otherwise be a very substantial risk.

§ Sir H. Williams
I beg to move, in page 1, line 17, to leave out "or indirectly."
Unfortunately, I have been out of the Chamber for a few minutes and I am not quite certain whether this Amendment was discussed in connection with the previous Amendment or not. Nevertheless, I think that there is a point in this Amendment by itself. I move it because I want to know what the Postmaster-General means by "or indirectly," and I should like the position clarified.

§ Mr. Hobson
The hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) is again asking for information as he did on the first Amendment. The reason for including the words "or indirectly" is to cover ancillary services of the telephonic system.
2360 There is, for instance, the case of dictating a telegram over the telephone, in other words, the phonogram service, and of summoning an express messenger on the telephone to collect a letter or some article. The words cover such services as those. I hope that the hon. Member will be satisfied this time with the explanation.

§ Sir H. Williams
I think the explanation is much better this time. I understand that one of the services is where I can ask the Post Office to call me in the morning. It used to cost me Id. It now costs a little more, but it still wakes me up. In view of that explanation, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

The Deputy-Chairman
Sir H. Williams.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
On a point of order. Is not the Amendment to line 18 which stands in my name and the names of my hon. Friends to be called?

The Deputy-Chairman
I thought that the Amendment was covered in the earlier discussion.

§ Mr. Grimston
With respect, Sir Charles, I do not think so. The Amendment to which I refer is that which seeks to insert words after "system."

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I do not think that Amendment was included in the group of Amendments which it was suggested should be taken together. With respect, Sir Charles, I think that it might be better to call that Amendment.

The Deputy-Chairman
Very well.

§ Mr. Grimston
I beg to move, in page 1, line 18, after "system," to insert: for determining the circumstances and classes of case in which the Postmaster-General shall not he under any obligation to provide equipment or apparatus for the purpose of affording means of telephonic communication. Perhaps it would be convenient if we discussed with this Amendment the last Amendment to Clause 2, in page 3, line 39, to leave out subsection (3).
What we are seeking to do here is to put better words into the Bill for achieving the object which the Postmaster-General has in mind. He will remember that on 2361 Second Reading reference was made to the provision in Clause 2 (3) which reads: Nothing in the foregoing section shall he construed as implying that the Postmaster-General is under any obligation to provide equipment or apparatus for the purpose of affording means of telephonic communication. The right hon. Gentleman explained in his Second Reading speech that that was required in order that he could withhold service in certain cases. He gave an instance of one where a firm went bankrupt and certain persons in the company re-established themselves and he did not place them on the telephone until they had paid the old bill. One can quite imagine such cases. The right hon. Gentleman added: Subsection (3) preserves the freedom under the present contractual system of the Postmaster-General to provide a service or not in a certain case "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th June. 1951: Vol. 489, c. 610] Under the wording of subsection (3) the Postmaster-General is really taking wide powers to disclaim any responsibility for providing service at all under any circumstances. This is not a large point, but it seems to me it is another case of taking a sledge-hammer to crack a nut. I think it is rather beneath the dignity of the Post Office to take these wide powers just for this particular purpose, and anybody who has served in the Post Office will realise that there is an atmosphere of giving service in that Department and an esprit de corps which has been built over some time. It is therefore a pity that there should be in Clause 2 words which, in effect, say, "Do not forget that I am not under any obligation to provide you with anything." I hope the right hon. Gentleman will indicate that he will accept this Amendment which would specify in the regulations the classes of cases in which it might be necessary for him to withhold telephone service.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I too felt that we were using an elephant to do this small job, but on looking at the matter a little more closely I find myself in this position. If the Bill imposes upon me an obligation to provide a telephone service, it might cost in some cases as much as £500 to provide a telephone service for a single subscriber. Am I then to be under an obligation to provide a service in that case when the return for it would be about £4 12s. 0d. a year?

§ Mr. Grimston
Surely the right hon. Gentleman has a remedy in that case. It would be to say to the subscriber "You must pay me this or that sum if you want a service," and thus cover the liability. The subscriber then could choose whether he would pay that sum or not.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I am obliged to the hon. Member for making that point, but the regulation in practice is that a connection charge of 5s., 10s. or 15s. and no more is made. If one had to lay a cable to a lonely island, say Lundy, to provide a telephone—as I would be obliged to do if the obligation was imposed upon me in this Bill—goodness knows how much it would cost for a return of £4 12s. a year as the regulations now stand. That was what made me demur about changing this form of words when I considered the matter.
If the obligation were limited and I was enabled to withhold the service in certain cases—such as the case of a bankrupt who had dodged his previous liability—by putting that type of cases into the regulations, one would still leave the obligation upon the Postmaster-General to provide a telephone in all sorts of impossible and uneconomic circumstances. It was for that reason that, whilst I see the point made by the hon. Member, I came to the conclusion that we ought to resist this Amendment.

§ Sir H. Williams
I was interested in what the Postmaster-General has just said. At one time I was connected with the electric supply industry when it was run by private enterprise. I remember a speech made by the late Mr. Ernest Bevin in the election campaign of 1945, when he said, that he wanted to apply a system of "Postalisation" to electricity charges. But, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, it is the terminal charges that matter. The cost of transport is trivial and the Post Office in fact have never applied that system because trunk calls cost more than local calls.
I have often heard private enterprise being violently abused by the right hon. Gentleman because they did not apply this system of flat-rate charging. Now that recently he has become a commercially-minded Postmaster-General he objects to spending £500 for a return of £4 12s. I am glad to see that he is now a reformed character. I have got up only 2363 to say these words and to underline what he said so that hon. Members opposite may be a little more careful about their platform speeches in future.

§ Mr. Grimston
I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I appreciate his difficulties. I wish it had been possible to find something less than an elephant. In view of the difficulties which the right hon. Gentleman faces, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Sir H. Williams
I beg to move, in page 1, line 19, to leave out from "facilities," to the end of line 6, page 2.
I expect the right hon. Gentleman was a little surprised that I put down this Amendment. Again, it is exploratory. If we leave out these words he cannot make certain reductions which I imagine will be desirable in my own case and in that of other deserving people. To go back to the electricity supply industry, when the first Act was passed it said there must be no undue preference in the supply of the service. I do not think the courts were ever called upon to interpret what "undue preference" meant. We thought it might mean that one must not make more profit out of one consumer than out of another. There was never a decision in the courts.
The phrase here is that such charges as may be specified in the directions shall be reduced in accordance with the directions. I should be delighted if the right hon. Gentleman would direct that my telephone charges should be reduced and those of my hon. Friends left unchanged. I want to ensure that when he issues directions for the purpose of reducing charges these shall be of such a general character that no citizen can say, "The gentleman up the road is receiving preferential treatment by comparison with me."
What the Minister says does not count in the courts, but it imposes a certain measure of discipline, and it would be as well if the Postmaster-General stated what he had in mind when he put these words into the Bill. It is very important in matters of public interest and the interests of individuals that people should be treated equitably. That is the purpose of the Amendment—to get from the right hon. Gentleman a statement of his inten- 2364 tions, whether they are honourable or dishonourable.

§ Mr. Hobson
The subsection has been included for the benefit of telephone users and in order that they may have cheap telephone night rates. To take the analogy of the electricity industry, which the hon. Member is always quoting, the public can have cheap rates during the off-peak load. It is also to deal with the abolition of cheap rates on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

Mr. McKie
I am sure we are all obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his statement. But it is all very well to have pious aspirations about cheap rates. We should have liked him to lift the curtain a little and to give some indication of his intentions, if he and the right hon. Gentleman are allowed to remain in office a little longer, in the way of providing reduced charges. Hon. Members opposite have been ready to cheer and sneer at my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), but I hope they will take this point seriously to heart.
It is very desirable that the general public should be given some indication of the right hon. Gentleman's intentions. No doubt it is impossible for him to reveal the whole of his plans, if he has any. I doubt whether he has, and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East, says he has not. We cannot be expected to know what is in the right hon. Gentleman's mind. It has been apparent throughout the whole of this discussion that the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend delight in clouding the issue, where possible, and in using words in such a nebulous form that we on this side of the Committee, at all events, are none too clear about the meaning. We are specially charged with the task of protecting the public interest. [Laughter.] There has been little evidence from the other side of the Committee that hon. Members opposite take that duty seriously, as far as the telephone services are concerned.
5.45 p.m.
The Assistant Postmaster-General said it was his intention to do certain things in the way of reduced charges. The general public would be more satisfied if he could say what he intended to do or give some indication of what they may expect in the future, if this Government remains in 2365 office or, indeed, if their places are taken by hon. Members on this side of the Committee as a result of the October election.

§ Sir H. Williams
We have had the Assistant Postmaster-General intervening four times and each time he has used the phrase "off-peak." Perhaps it is in his brief. I remember when Sir Kingsley Wood first introduced the cheap telephone calls after 9 o'clock—1s. all over the country. On the day it was introduced—it came into operation on a Saturday—I was at an electricity conference at Torquay and I wanted to talk to somebody in London. It was quite hopeless because the peak load had accumulated to such an extent because everybody wanted to take advantage of the cheap rates. It was not until I had told the operator that I was a Member of Parliament that I got through. She did not know what party I belonged to. Possibly she assumed that I was one of those M.Ps. who represent the Union of Post Office Workers and that was why she gave me the facilities. The hon. Gentleman must not become too obsessed with the phrase "off-peak." If he indulges in excessive reductions he will find that the peak comes at a new time of the day.

§ Sir H. Williams
I beg to move, in page 2, line 42, after "regulations," to insert: Provided that any person aggrieved by the sum assessed may appeal to the county court against such sum. I think every hon. Member must sometimes wonder whether his telephone account is accurate. We have a lot of local calls of which the ordinary person does not keep a record. I understand that the Post Office have machines which automatically record them. In addition, there are the toll and trunk calls with an excess over the ordinary charges. We get a bill and sometimes we wonder whether it is accurate. Occasionally I have queried my telephone account.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but this Clause deals with rentals and does not deal with calls at all.

§ Sir H. Williams
I am dealing with the question of charges made. Sometimes we may desire to challenge them and I am not quite certain about the position 2366 of the citizen in respect to his telephone bill. We know that an Act of Parliament was passed recently which confers upon the subject a right he did not enjoy until two or three years ago—the right to sue the Crown. I presume His Majesty's Postmaster-General is part of the appanage of the Crown and that we can sue him more easily than we could at one time.
What I want to make sure of is that if we are aggrieved by a bill sent to us by the right hon. Gentleman or his myrmidons we have a right of redress in the courts. I am not a lawyer, although anybody who has served some time in Parliament acquires a certain amount of legal experience; and so, not being a lawyer, I am not quite certain of what our rights are under the law as it stands, and I want to make sure that if we feel aggrieved by the type of account covered by this Clause we are entitled to take legal action against the Postmaster-General in respect of such an account. It is to clear up that point that I move the Amendment.

§ Mr. Hobson
The hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension. This subsection deals solely with the question of the rentals for telephonic equipment. Every subscriber will be responsible for rental for a minimum period. There are two classes. There are the ordinary residential subscribers whose rental may be for a month; and then there are the exceptional or long-term subscribers who have special installations which are also provided within the general framework of the telephone system.
In the case of a residential subscriber, if he gives up the telephone prematurely—that is to say, before the expiry of the time limit—he will be responsible for the rental for that part of the term he had it, before the full period expired. If an intending subscriber cancels his application before service is given, he will pay the residue of the rental on the minimum rental period. The rental for the minimum period, or the cost of the work of installing the telephone, whichever is the smaller, he will be called upon to pay. Indeed, he may be called upon to pay even less, if we can use the installation for another subscriber.
It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is under a complete misapprehension, because in both these cases, if there were 2367 a default in the payment of the rental, it would be the Postmaster-General who would be aggrieved, and, in those circumstances it would be he who would take the proceedings under the county court procedure to recover what was his due. It would not be the person who had given up the telephone before the contractual obligations had been fulfilled, or who had never had the telephone at all because, although he had ordered it and the work on it had been put in hand, the order was cancelled. It seems to me that it would be my right hon. Friend who would be at a loss and who would have to recover the money through the county court, and not the person for whom the telephone had been supplied.

§ Sir H. Williams
I am not quite satisfied. I confess that I was taken a little by surprise when my Amendment was called, because I had not expected it to be called, and so perhaps I did not put the case as well as possible. However, it seems to me that this Clause provides for charges other than rental, and it provides, amongst other things, for the payment to the Postmaster-General, towards recompensing him for loss of revenue by way of charges in respect of the provision of the equipment or apparatus or, as the case may be, for the cost incurred by him in doing the work "— Doing the work: it is not merely a matter of the rental, but the cost of installation— of a sum assessed by him in accordance with such principles as may he specified in the regulations. Now the Postmaster-General, under the regulations, is going to lay down principles. In accordance with those principles I get a bill. I think that bill is excessive. I resist payment. The right hon. Gentleman takes me to court.
What I want to be quite clear and certain about is that the court will be able to decide whether or not the bill has been properly made out. The purpose of my Amendment—its drafting may, perhaps, be improved, for, as I have said, I am not a lawyer—is to make sure that the ordinary citizen who has a bill of that kind is protected or can be protected by the courts against the Postmaster-General, so that the Postmaster-General cannot treat him roughly. I hope I have made this quite clear. I want to make quite sure that the citizen is protected by the courts of law.

§ Mr. Hobson
The point will be illustrated by the evidence before the court.

§ Mr. Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)
There is an important point to be considered in this connection. The Postmaster-General has the remedy, and invariably uses it before the grievance is taken to court, of cutting the subscriber off.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
No.

§ Mr. Nicholls
Oh, yes.

§ Mr. Hobson
The hon. Gentleman is talking of quite another matter. We are discussing the question of work not completed in putting the telephone in.

§ Mr. Nicholls
Yes, but the Assistant Postmaster-General said this Clause had regard to rental. If a rental is payable it means that the instrument has been installed, and that rental is payable certainly for the first quarter. If one is aggrieved by some of the items on the bill and one does not pay, before ever the Postmaster-General resorts to the county court he cuts off one's line, whether or not the grievance is justifiable, and so puts one to the inconvenience of having no telephone at all.
The Assistant Postmaster-General talks about installation charges, but it does so happen that other items appear on the bill, and charges for calls come in on the same bill; so we are referring, to some extent, to grievances felt about the charges for calls as well. I really think the Postmaster-General ought to give the subscriber a little bit more satisfaction, and while the court is coming to a decision the subscriber ought not to have his line cut off and suffer all the consequential inconvenience from a decision which the Postmaster-General can make.

§ Mr. Hobson
But the subscriber knows his obligations when he orders the telephone to be installed.

§ Mr. Shurmer (Birmingham, Sparkbrook)
I am rather interested in this matter. If one is aggrieved by a bill sent by the Postmaster-General and refuses to pay that bill, the Post Office cuts the telephone off. Suppose one goes to court, or the Postmaster-General goes to court, is the Postmaster-General going to leave one's telephone or not, pending a decision of the court, or will 2369 he cut the telephone off because the account has not been paid? That is what we want to know.

§ Mr. Hobson
If the bill were not paid in the first place, the telephone would be cut off.

§ Mr. Shurmer
That is it.

§ Sir H. Williams
Dirty work. However, after that not too adequate explanation, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
I beg to move, in page 3, line 5, at the end, to insert: (2) Nothing in this Act or in regulations made thereunder shall he construed as empowering the Postmaster-General to change in any way the terms and conditions specified in any agreement (whether made before or after the passing of this Act) with a person for the provision by the Postmaster-General of equipment or apparatus for the purpose of affording means of telephonic communication, or to determine any such agreement otherwise than in accordance with the terms and conditions so specified. The right hon. Gentleman will remember that during the debate on Second Reading we on this side of the Chamber expressed concern that in the Bill the Postmaster-General was taking powers to abrogate contracts. In response to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), he said: There is nothing in the Bill which authorises me. My hon. Friend then asked: Or 'prevents'? Then the right hon. Gentleman said: Authorises."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th June, 1951; Vol. 489, c. 609.] What we felt very strongly was that if there was any doubt about the question it should be cleared up in the Bill, and that it should be written in the Bill that the right hon. Gentleman was not taking power to abrogate contracts. Perhaps, in view of what is happening in a certain country in the Middle East at the present moment, it is just as well for Parliament to remember that example.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
Hear, hear,

§ Mr. Grimston
Well, we have drafted this Amendment, but I see that there appeared on the Order Paper this morning another Amendment in the name of 2370 the right hon. Gentleman, in Clause 2, page 3, line 23, at end, insert: (2) Nothing in the foregoing section shall authorise the making of regulations determining any such agreement as aforesaid (whether made before or after the passing of this Act). That appears to me entirely to cover the point, and therefore I suggest that it would be for the convenience of the Committee if the Postmaster-General would say something about his Amendment now; for if he were to say that it does cover exactly the same point as that I have in mind, that would save the time of the Committee; and when we come to Clause 2 his Amendment could be moved formally and agreed to. I hope that the Committee and the right hon. Gentleman will be prepared to adopt this course.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for suggesting this procedure. I was impressed on Second Reading by the general feeling of the House that I ought not to take powers to interfere with contracts. The Explanatory Memorandum includes these words: The transition to the new system will be effected by terminating the 5,000,000 odd existing contracts by the appropriate contractual notice.", and I felt that that in itself ought to be sufficient assurance that I did not intend to do an illegal thing, because it would have been illegal if I had interfered with contracts except within the terms of the contracts. It would not have been illegal —and this was the point which worried the House—if I had taken powers in the regulations to interfere with the terms of contract, but I still feel that a Postmaster-General would be quite wrong to interfere with the contract by using the regulation-making power, and I have no intention of doing that.
I thought that my intention was adequately explained in the Explanatory Memorandum, but in order to reassure hon. Members, and I hope to emphasise the principle to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, I felt it desirable to put down an Amendment—in Clause 2, page 3, line 23, at end, insert: (2) Nothing in the foregoing section shall authorise the making of regulations determining any such agreement as aforesaid (whether made before or after the passing of this Act). 2371 I am advised that that completely covers the point. What I have done is to tie not only myself but, I hope, every future Postmaster-General in relation to individual contracts. In those circumstances, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his Amendment and accept my form of words.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
Before my hon. Friend indicates what his response will be to what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I should like him to clear up one point which arises as a result of what he said on Second Reading. Just before the words referred to by my hon. Friend, I asked the right hon. Gentleman: what is the provision in the Bill which safeguards existing contracts from being interfered with by regulations made by him? and the right hon. Gentleman then said: I require no powers; I have the power to terminate contracts."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th June, 1951; Vol. 489, c. 608.] It depends, of course, what is meant by "terminate." That is where the difficulty arises. Obviously if the right hon. Gentleman makes a contract and that contract contains provisions for bringing it to an end, the right hon. Gentleman has the power to do so, as has the other party. But used in this context it has certainly been believed by people outside that in using the word "terminate"—in itself, I think, an ambiguous word—he meant that he had the power to bring existing contracts to an end without regard to their provisions.
From what the Postmaster-General is now indicating, I do not think that he meant to say that. It would help to clear up the misunderstanding which has arisen if he could now indicate, what I believe to be the fact, that apart from this Bill he has no power to bring to an end contracts other than in accordance with their terms. By his own Amendment he is, very properly, barring himself from doing so under this Bill.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I cannot understand the ambiguity about my speech on Second Reading, when I was concerned to preserve the sanctity of contract. I declared on a number of occasions that it was my intention to terminate contracts by giving the proper notice provided in the contract. I have the power now, at any time, to give notice to terminate any contracts.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
In accordance with its terms.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I have the power, by giving the necessary notice provided for in the contract, to terminate the contract. That is a power I have always had, and I cannot understand the ambiguity about it. I hope the matter is quite clear now, and that the Postmaster-General will, neither now nor in the future, be allowed to terminate a contract except by giving the notice provided in the contract he will not be entitled to do it under regulations now or in the future.

§ Mr. Grimston
I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for having met our point in this way. We always accepted his own assurance that he never intended to terminate a contract other than within its terms, but we felt it important, not only that there should not be that power to be misused by any future Postmaster-General, but that it should also go out to the world that this Committee would not tolerate that sort of thing happening. In view of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks and the fact that he has put down the Amendment to which he referred, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. Hay
I beg to move, in page 3, line 8, after "case," to insert: but not in relation to similar circumstances and classes of case. This Amendment differs slightly from the Amendment as printed on the Order Paper, but I hope that I may move it in this form, because otherwise our subsequent Amendment in line 15 will not be able to be dealt with. What I am now moving is what we intend. The purpose of this Amendment can be very simply described. It is designed to ensure that in similar circumstances and classes of case there shall be no discrimination. That puts it in a nutshell.
The subsection, quite rightly I think, empowers the Postmaster-General to make different charges and provisions in different cases and circumstances. When one realises the very wide variety of existing contracts, it is quite understandable that he should wish to retain the power to make such changes as may be necessary from time to time. For example, the ordinary form of contract 2373 is a three-monthly one, and the rental charge for the ordinary form of contract is £4 12s.; that is the common or garden variety.
Then there are other contracts which differ substantially in duration. There is the monthly contract, used especially by newspapers which wish to have a telephone installed for certain sporting events, such as the Wimbledon tennis tournament, or the regatta which is going on in my constituency today—and where, if I may say so, I would prefer to be at this moment, as I expect most hon. Members would. Then there is the contract which would run for a period of years, covering a very large installation, perhaps, in a big office building.
There are also differences of rental. I believe that rentals in London are higher than in some other big cities. In cities, rentals are higher than in the surrounding countryside. There is also a difference in the number of telephones which may be provided for any one subscriber, and in the number of lines which are allowed. There is also a difference in the type of use. A business telephone commands a higher rental charge than the telephone of the ordinary private subscriber.
With all these differing circumstances and differing classes of case, no one would begrudge the Post Office the power to make different charges and different conditions in respect of them. While we agree that, obviously, the right hon. Gentleman must have this power to provide for these trying circumstances, we say that it would be entirely wrong to say that in similar categories in different places or at different times there should be different provisions and different charges. That is the point of the Amendment. We say that there should be uniformity in similar circumstances, because we believe that uniformity would lead to certainty and clarity.
I do not think that it would be very difficult to categorise the various sorts of circumstances and classes of case and still maintain that flexibility to which we referred earlier. Every similar case ought to be treated in an exactly similar way, if we can do so, otherwise the subscribing public will just not know where they are. In exactly similar circumstances, one charge may be made in one part of the country and another charge in another part of the country. The words we pro- 2374 pose to insert would prevent that sort of thing from happening.

§ Mr. Hobson
I think that the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay) has put his point of view very reasonably, but we do not think that it is necessary to accept this Amendment. First, let me say that he has appreciated the difficulty of my right hon. Friend, which has come out in discussion of one or two of the Amendments moved by the Opposition, namely, the different circumstances that obtain with regard to the installation of telephones on the question of whether it should be a business rental or a residential rental, etc.
The hon. Gentleman feels that it would be better to have these words inserted in the Bill, but I draw his attention to subsection (2), which states categorically: Different provisions and charges may be made and fixed by or under regulations under this section in relation to different circumstances and classes of case, … It would appear that this circumscribes the regulation-making power of my right hon. Friend, and there is no doubt at all that different regulations are not going to be for identical cases. It would be entirely invalid for my right hon. Friend so to do. Therefore, while we appreciate the point the hon. Gentleman has made, we do not think that under the circumstances the words are necessary.

§ Mr. Hay
I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that explanation. I do not understand why he says that it would be invalid for his right hon. Friend to make these discriminations. All that we seek to do is to ensure that there will not be discrimination, and we now have that assurance from the Assistant Postmaster-General; but, in spite of his explanation, I think that the words which we propose to insert would be very desirable. We may not have the right hon. Gentleman, beaming beneficently from the Dispatch Box opposite, representing the Post Office in the future, and it may be desirable to have some limiting words in this statute. I hope that the point, if not conceded, now will be considered again.

§ Mr. Douglas Houghton (Sowerby)
I found it rather amusing that any hon. Gentleman opposite should deliver a lecture to a Government Department on uniformity. If there is one thing that Government Departments suffer from, it is 2375 uniformity, and hon. Gentlemen opposite are now trying to urge on a Government Department that it should engage in uniformity to an even greater extent than at present.
Surely the whole basis of equity in public administration is that, in similar circumstances, members of the public should be similarly treated, whether with regard to charges or Post Office service or Income Tax purposes; but there are occasions when slight differences may creep in which, if these words were put in the Bill, some member of the public would underline and say, "But there is a proviso which says: 'but not in relation to similar circumstances and classes of case '. and try to exact from the literal meaning of those words a rigidity of charge and of treatment which it would be unreasonable to expect.
I am sure that hon. Gentlemen opposite will realise that with the long tradition of the Post Office, in which I began my working life, there is no fear that the General Post Office is going to rush into discriminatory treatment and excess of administration which would be open to objection by members of the public. I think that the explanation given by the Assistant Postmaster-General should completely satisfy the mover of the Amendment.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
I take it from what the Assistant Postmaster-General has said that the important word is the word "different," in line 2 of subsection (2), and he is advised that, that word being there, the purpose of the Amendment is entirely covered. Is that so?

§ Mr. Hobson
That is so.

§ Mr. Hay
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
I beg to move, in page 3, line 9, to leave out from "provide," to "for," in line 10.
I think that this may well be an issue of principle of some importance, but at this stage I desire to elicit from the right hon. Gentleman what is meant by these words. If hon. Members will look at subsection (2) they will see that regulations 2376 may provide for a number of things, including the words which we seek to leave out, which are … for the determination of questions which may arise in giving effect to the regulations … It appears that these words may be taken to authorise the right hon. Gentleman to include in his regulations some provision under which a person who enters into dispute with him about the regulations may be debarred the opportunity to take that dispute to the courts of law, and may have to argue them, if at all, before some Departmental tribunal set up by the right hon. Gentleman under the regulations.
I have little doubt that the words are wide enough to enable the right hon. Gentleman to do that. If they are not—and I am glad to see present the Attorney-General, who will, no doubt, advise the Committee with his usual clarity and the authority which goes with his office—it seems to me that the words are liable to permit of the right hon. Gentleman denying to the citizen with whom he has any dispute on a matter arising out of these regulations access to the courts of law. We shall no doubt hear from the right hon. Gentleman whether that is his intention. I hope that it is not.
Whether it is his intention or not does not dispose of the question whether the power is in fact taken. It seems thoroughly objectionable that in what is largely a commercial matter—and the right hon. Gentleman on a previous Amendment referred to his Department, quite rightly, as a vast commercial organisation—if the Postmaster-General enters into a dispute with a citizen, that citizen, who may have substantial interests involved, should be disentitled from going to the King's courts to settle his dispute. It is a risk that follows from the whole purpose of this Bill.
The purpose of the Bill is to transfer from the realm of contract to the realm of regulation making the relations between the right hon. Gentleman and his customers. Suppose that the right hon. Gentleman made a contract with me and he fell down on it, I could take him to the courts, or if I fell down on it he could take me to the courts. Our access to the courts is, I think, clear. It is not at all clear that the right hon. Gentleman, by the use of the words affected by this Amendment, may not be able to 2377 prevent me from taking him to the courts if I am in dispute with him. It may be that he intends—I do not know—to set up some administrative tribunal to settle these disputes. If that is so, I would call in aid against any such intention His Majesty's Government. They have recently published a White Paper, Command Paper No. 8274 on Retail Price Maintenance, and I will quote some words in paragraph 14 of that document. To sum up, the Government sees two main objections to the practice… I will not bother about the first. Secondly, the methods of enforcement described above involve a private system of law and punishment allowing no appeal to the established Courts of Justice. The Government holds that only overwhelming reasons of public policy in favour of the practice could justify its continuance in face of these objections. That is a Departmental authority statement, issued presumably on the authority of the President of the Board of Trade, denouncing the practice that possibly the right hon. Gentleman may be contemplating in this case.
Therefore, in moving this Amendment, I do so with two purposes. First, to elicit from the right hon. Gentleman whether it is his intention under the regulations to debar, directly or indirectly, a person in dispute with him from access to the courts, and secondly, if that is not his intention, that the construction that the right hon. Gentleman shall have the power to do so is in fact the right construction.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I am glad that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has moved this Amendment in the terms he has. What we want to do under this Bill is to see that the regulations do not place the citizen at a disadvantage. I accept that completely. I should like to consider the matter further, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his Amendment and maybe I can do something on the Report stage to make the position quite clear so that the citizen is not placed in a disadvantageous position.
It will be remembered that on the Second Reading I gave an undertaking that the subscriber would not be placed in a worse position under the regulations than under his contract. I must carry out that undertaking, and if I find that these words are conferring upon me wider powers than I should have had for that 2378 purpose, I shall certainly see that my original intention is properly expressed. In those circumstances, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his Amendment.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which he has approached this Amendment. I should like to get from him one point of clarification. He said quite fairly that it is not his intention to put what he describes as the subscriber, or what I would call the customer, in any more disadvantageous position than he would have been if he had had a contract. I take it from that—and the right hon. Gentleman can confirm this or not—that he, would not provide by the regulations for any restriction of the right which the subscriber otherwise would have to go to the courts of law. Is that included in the right hon. Gentleman's term "disadvantageous"?

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I think that is not stretching it at all. Any right that a subscriber now has under his contract must be preserved. He must not be put in a worse position under the regulation than he is today under his contract. I hope that satisfies the hon. Gentleman.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
It is quite clear, then, that the right hon. Gentleman is not taking away any right of access to the courts of law which the subscriber has now?

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
No.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
I beg to move, in page 3, line 15, to leave out from "instrument," to the end of the Clause, and to add and no such statutory instrument shall be made unless a draft thereof has been laid before Parliament and has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament. This raises the question of the affirmative procedure for these regulations as against the negative procedure. I do not think I need detain the Committee by going into all the arguments about the affirmative or negative procedure. In the former, the Government have to bring the regulations before the House to get approval for them, whereas in the other case it is open to an hon. Member to move a 2379 Prayer. One may argue both ways as to which is the most advantageous to the House, but the right hon. Gentleman has claimed the credit on this Bill for bringing in future before the House regulations which in the past he had not to bring. We give him full credit for that, and on Second Reading, despite some criticism which we made, we said that the Bill was good inasmuch as it did that.
When the right hon. Gentleman introduces these regulations the House is going to see for the first time a large number of regulations with many points. One was raised today, the question of charging for telephone calls which a customer claims he has not had. That issue went recently to a county court, and the judge had some comments to make upon it. That is a matter which raises considerable interest, and there will be many others which, for the first time, the Postmaster-General will have to bring before the House.
I do not want to pursue the matter at any length, but in view of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is improving the procedure under this Bill, I should have thought it better to give the House more opportunity to examine these things properly, which would be the case if we proceeded under the affirmative procedure rather than under the negative procedure as proposed in this Bill. I hope he will give consideration to these points.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I am in somewhat of a dilemma about this matter.

§ Sir H. Williams
A spot of bother?

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
No, I am not in any spot of bother. I gave the Committee assurances that I would try to bring within the regulations the maximum quantity of provisions that I could and use the other powers—the power for fixing and the power for determining—as little as possible. In a large business undertaking like the Post Office, speed of decision is of paramount importance.

§ Sir H. Williams
I wish the Post Office would deliver my letters a bit quicker.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
If all the regulations have to be submitted to the affirmative procedure, I shall have to wait for Parliamentary time. If I had to put into the regulations all the charges, including the charges for external radio, telegraphic 2380 and telephonic communications, every time I was obliged to change those charges, I should be somewhat at a disadvantage, because I should have to give notice to the House and find Parliamentary time before operating those new charges. The position would be that I should be collecting in charges in this country all that I was authorised to collect, which would be less than was being imposed by foreign administrations for international calls. Until I got my regulations through the House, that position would continue, and the result would be that we should be losing money over a considerable time.
If there were an excessive use of the sub-delegation powers—it would be wrong to abuse the sub-delegated powers— there might be a case for the affirmative procedure. If, on the other hand, we have to keep faith with this House and put into the regulations the maximum number of provisions, then the negative procedure is the only way by which we can hope to carry on the business of the Post Office.
6.30 p.m.
That shortly is the position. The affirmative procedure is more leisurely, depending upon Parliamentary time, and we have to remember that we have a very full Parliamentary programme. The hon. Gentleman has occupied positions in the Government. He knows how difficult it is for Departments to get a place in the Parliamentary queue. These matters would be held up. We should be losing money on our foreign telecommunications. We should be in the further difficulty that we should have to wait for the affirmative Resolution procedure before introducing a new type of apparatus or a new telephone charge. We should have to await Parliamentary convenience before introducing such innovations.
I paid great attention to the arguments of the hon. Gentleman. If the Post Office were entirely a piece of fiscal apparatus there would be very much substance in the argument for the affirmative procedure, but I have taken the view since I have been in the Post Office that the Department has not been used for fiscal purposes and that what we have done has been done on commercial grounds. I hope that the Post Office will not be tied up with Parliamentary convenience which will prevent it from meeting, immediately 2381 they are due, new charges which may be imposed by foreign administrations and which we have to collect here from our subscribers. Those are two points of very great substance in running the business of the Post Office.
Reference has been made to the new telephone cord. I was asked why we should not put into the Regulations the charge per foot for the cord attached to the telephone. We are now introducing an elastic cord. Must we wait for an affirmative Resolution from the House of Commons before we introduce an elastic cord at 4d. per foot?

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
Stretch it.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I trust that our elastic cord will stretch. That is what it is for. If the arguments used from the other side of the Committee are to be accepted not only shall I be tied up with the elastic cord with which we are experimenting but I shall have to provide in my Regulations for its price today when the price may be far less than it will be in a couple of month's time, because I shall have to get an affirmative Resolution from this House. Is that what hon. Gentlemen want to do to the Post Office? If ever there were a case of wanting to put a great commercial undertaking into red tape, it is the proposal by hon. Gentlemen opposite.
There is our case. I could extend the number of examples very far, but I will give only one. We shall have to get regulations, I presume, in October—if we are here—and I hope we shall get them through before Christmas. I may want to introduce something, but we must come to the House of Commons with a new regulation for it. Hon. Gentlemen opposite suggest that I must wait for Parliamentary time before I can do something which they all want me to do. In a business of this sort, one ought to come along, lay a regulation and proceed. If any hon. Member feels that he does not agree with it, let him raise the matter by means of a Prayer. Otherwise I have to wait 40 days—40 sitting days of this House. If I have a negative Resolution I can proceed immediately.
If I have to wait for the affirmative Resolution in the present state of business, when Departments all want to pinch a bit of Parliamentary time, I shall have to wait much longer than 40 days. The Post 2382 Office is not the Inland Revenue, imposing taxes upon people. We are dealing with charges for service. The Post Office is a business. For goodness' sake, let us treat the Post Office as a business and not as a political matter.

§ Mr. Boyd-Carpenter
The right hon. Gentleman has put undue weight on the difficulty of getting Parliamentary time for an affirmative Resolution. Such Resolutions are exempted business and therefore do not interfere with the ordinary Government time-table. The right hon. Gentleman knows that affirmative Resolutions covering such matters as Sunday cinemas, minor electoral variations, changes in Purchase Tax and gas orders, go through the House with great speed, often several of them in the same Sitting.
He was making very heavy weather, particularly when he said that in the state of Parliamentary business he might have to wait 40 days. That is not a practical or a realistic approach to the matter at all. There is nothing whatever to prevent the right hon. Gentleman from bearing in mind that this is exempted business and putting down Resolutions for any night he likes. He is a sufficiently experienced Parliamentarian to know that, and if he does not know it he has a very good Parliamentary Private Secretary on the bench behind him.
I do not suppose I shall be able to persuade the right hon. Gentleman, or he me, that the other is wrong in his view about the Post Office being a fiscal matter. I believe that Post Office charges are used as a means of taxation. The right hon. Gentleman himself, in a somewhat exuberant moment, committed himself to a somewhat similar observation a few weeks ago. He thought it was wrong. Be that as it may, these are charges imposed upon the citizens of this country by a monopoly body, and they are, colloquially if not in the technical sense, taxes upon the business activity of the country, since very few businesses can be conducted without a telephone. We need not mince words whether we call these charges "taxes" or not.
This is the kind of matter which is appropriate to the affirmative procedure. The right hon. Gentleman has only to look at the Finance Bill, of which hon. Gentlemen have seen more than they liked in the last few weeks, to see that where a charge has to be imposed the Finance 2383 Bill has provided that the affirmative procedure is to be used. This is very closely allied to the general scale of Post Office charges.
The right hon. Gentleman went on to underline the commercial inconvenience if he could not use the negative procedure which he has put into the Bill. No doubt he appreciates that if a Prayer to annul one of his orders should be carried, he would find himself in the position of having charges already in operation suddenly reversed overnight. He is concerned about commercial inconvenience. It is less commercially inconvenient for him to be held up for a few days before bringing into effect new charges than for new charges already in operation to be upset overnight.
Has the right hon. Gentleman contemplated the commercial consequences in his Department if one night the House carried a Prayer to annul a set of charges and he had next morning to return to the previous charges scheme? The difficulties which the Minister of Food found when that happened over an ounce of cheese would fade into insignificance when compared with a whole scale of telephone charges throughout the country; and the Minister of Food made enough heavy weather about the ounce of cheese. If the right hon. Gentleman is considering the commercial aspects, he should remember that any form of Parliamentary control has commercial inconveniences.
All we are engaged in doing is deciding between two forms of Parliamentary control. Even putting on one side the argument of constitutional propriety and of proper control by the House of a matter of such general public importance and going on to the right hon. Gentleman's argument of commercial inconvenience, it seems to me that from the purely commercial point of view he is running a very big risk by insisting upon the negative procedure, a risk far bigger than that of having to delay a little in imposing new charges.
I am sure that people outside will be very concerned when they read the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman about the loss of money which might arise from any delay in the making and approving by the House of these orders. It appeared that the right hon. Gentleman meant that 2384 order after order was to be made increasing the charges and that he contemplated not one increase but several increases in charges, apparently in the immediate future. If that is in the right hon. Gentleman's mind, not only is it very alarming to people outside but it seems an additional reason why the House should retain firm control.

§ Mr. Hay
The right hon. Gentleman has been in the House for very many years but even in my limited experience over the last 18 months I have seen a large number of affirmative Resolutions passed through the House without the slightest difficulty and often without any explanation sought from or given by the Minister in charge; and for that reason I disagree with his argument that he would be in substantial difficulty in getting adequate Parliamentary time under the affirmative Resolution procedure.
The Attorney-General is sitting beside the right hon. Gentleman waiting to move an affirmative Resolution, and I doubt whether he will find that a lengthy debate will be required or that there will be any spirited opposition. In the ordinary course of events the Postmaster-General is unlikely to have any difficulty in getting the assent of the House when bringing forward new regulations. They often pass quickly with a nod of the head.
The right hon. Gentleman's second argument was that if at any time foreign countries increased their telephone charges, those increases would be reflected in an automatic increase in our charges and that if he employed the negative procedure he could enforce them at once, subject to the possibility of the regulations being annulled by a Prayer, whereas having to wait for an affirmative Resolution would mean that he would be losing money in the meantime.
That is a reasonable argument but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has pointed out, if France raised telephone charges next month and the Postmaster-General had to bring in a regulation to raise British telephone charges, it is possible that a Prayer annulling the regulation might be carried to a Division and passed. If that happened the Postmaster-General would be losing just as much money and he would probably be in far greater difficulties than if he had used the ordinary affirmative procedure.
2385 6.45 p.m.
As to practical considerations, if the French were to put up their telephone charges next month, surely the right hon. Gentleman would at once come to the House with a Resolution and would say to the Leader of the House, "This is urgently necessary and, if possible, we must have it this week or next week." Does anyone think that this Opposition or any Opposition would oppose an affirmative Resolution in those circumstances? The right hon. Gentleman's point does not hold water.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
The hon. Gentleman is putting forward a very reasonable argument, but if the French put up their charges for international calls, the charge automatically goes up for a person telephoning from Britain to France. The House may not be sitting for three months, and in those circumstances the Postmaster-General would have to lose money on all such calls. Will the hon. Gentleman apply his mind to those circumstances?

§ Mr. Hay
I certainly have applied my mind to those circumstances and there are two things I want to say about that. First, what would happen at the end of the three months Recess if a Prayer to annul the regulations were carried? Second—a far more practical point—does the right hon. Gentleman say that he would have such little notice from other countries of such changes?

§ Mr. Hay
If the right hon. Gentleman says that other countries arbitrarily raise their telephone charges without giving any notice I concede that he has a point in what he has said about charges being increased during the Recess, but on the balance of practical considerations I should not imagine that that would happen very frequently, and even if it did it would be possible to have some retrospective power in his affirmative Resolution.
He also said that if he were compelled to rely on the affirmative procedure it would necessarily mean delay in the introduction of innovations such as elastic cord. I do not believe he put that forward in any great seriousness. Does he really say that because he would have to come to this House for an affirmative 2386 Resolution approving a regulation bringing in an innovation it would prevent him from bringing in innovations a little earlier if he so desired? I do not think he has the power at the moment to bring in the elastic cord.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I have that power already.

§ Mr. Hay
Then that accounts for the elastic cords in the telephone boxes around the House. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to bring in innovations of that sort, it would not be difficult for him to do so when he wished to do so and to have a retrospective provision in the regulations to allow for anything which might have happened in the meantime. He put forward a fanciful argument against what is, in all the circumstances, a very desirable innovation.
We ought to have the affirmative Resolution procedure, for it gives the House of Commons far greater control over delegated legislation. In his Second Reading speech and again today, the right hon. Gentleman has expressed his faith in the necessity for having control by Parliament over delegated legislation. I suggest that he go a step further and give us what we suggest is necessary to improve the Bill.

§ Sir H. Williams
My name is not down to this Amendment, but I have listened with great care to the debate and I am in an intermediate position. I think hon. Members have been led astray by the Statutory Instruments Act which assumes two forms of procedure. One is under Section 5 and is annulment procedure, and the other is under Section 6, Statutory Instruments of which drafts are to be laid before Parliament.
There is, however, another form of affirmative procedure which the right hon. Gentleman will find in the Import Duties Act. It is obvious that if one is making changes in tariffs, in order to avoid anticipation the instrument must have immediate effect. But those instruments all provide that that shall be confirmed by an affirmative Resolution of the Commons House of Parliament within a certain period. Then, if the Resolution is not carried, what was done up to that date is validated, but not after.
I quite see the point of the Postmaster-General. If he wants to take action during the Recess, he will find that he can take 2387 immediate action but, later on, he must come forward and ask Parliament to approve what he has done. It is true it may impose upon the Government the necessity of finding time, though they can do that at the end of Business. Tonight, for instance, we have the distinguished Attorney-General waiting to ask us to approve one of his drafts. We shall probably cheer him and not vote against it. Again, almost every other night the Home Secretary asks us to approve of cinemas being opened on Sunday evening—

§ Mr. Houghton
The Post Office is different.

§ Sir H. Williams
It is worse.

§ Mr. Houghton
It is worse from the point of view of the attitude of the Opposition.

§ Sir H. Williams
If it is different, it is different from something else. It must be either better than something else or worse.

§ Mr. Houghton
If I have to be more explicit, I would say that the Opposition are much more mischievous about the Post Office than they are about other things.

§ Sir H. Williams
I do not see the point of that interruption, which is the only contribution made by the hon. Gentleman to the debate. It is singularly valueless. "Valueless" is an absolute term and means not worth anything. Now, to come back to the serious subject we are discussing, which apparently has not penetrated to the mind of the hon. Gentleman, there are three forms of procedure. One is annulment procedure of which we see a lot, the second is the draft order procedure which we shall see in operation this evening, and the third is that used under the Import Duties Act quite frequently before the war.
I ask the Postmaster-General to look at that, because in the ordinary way if his regulations are reasonable they go through on the nod. On the other hand, if they are controversial it means that he or his successor has to go to the Patronage Secretary and say, "I must have time." It is worth considering. We try to be democratic in this House. We want to debate the things that matter 2388 and we are willing that those which do not matter should go through quickly.

§ Mr. Pickthorn (Carlton)
I should like to reinforce, if that is not too arrogant a word, the argument which has just been put. I hope that between now and the Report stage the Minister will consider this.
I think the House should always start with a strong presumption in favour of the affirmative Resolution in one form or the other. I have always thought so, whatever party was in power, and have always acted on that belief. That presumption is surely strengthened where the matter to be considered is a State monopoly in a necessity. In that sense I agree with the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) that the Post Office is different. Here the State is with a monopoly and, for all I have to show to the contrary, a monopoly which it ought to have and certainly will have for all my lifetime a monopoly of what, for many people, is a necessity. That very much strengthens the presumption in favour of the affirmative Resolution.
The presumption is still further strengthened—and I suggest, with all respect to both sides of the Committee, it is irresistibly strengthened—when it not only is a monopoly and in a necessity, but where the State is claiming not to be content with the strength necessarily held by the provider of a monopoly—the strength it has in making contracts from that position but to be given an even stronger position vis-à-vis the customers. That seems to me to be a kind of geometrical progression of presumption which makes each presumption 10 times stronger than the one before.
I suggest to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite that they ought not to think merely that this is a Government versus Opposition matter, but that it ought to be seriously considered whether we cannot have the affirmative method, at any rate of the kind suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams).

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
The Postmaster-General started his observations on this Amendment by saying that he was in a dilemma. Perhaps the course of this debate will have made him realise still more that that is so. As my hon. Friend has suggested, that this is not a party 2389 matter, he should consider it again from the Post Office point of view. On small matters there is no desire to tie up the Post Office.
The right hon. Gentleman has been long enough in the House to know that in small matters affirmative Resolutions go through on the nod and there is never any difficulty. In regard to larger matters there is a case for affirmative Resolution, and there is some advantage to him in that respect too, because when the Postmaster-General has to bring an affirmative Resolution before the House, he chooses the time, whereas, if he is subject to negative procedure, he can have a Prayer moved against him at any time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) made a point which should be carefully considered in the Department. Perhaps the Postmaster-General has hurriedly to introduce a charge. If the House is not in Session it may be many months before that charge is open to question by the House. If that charge is then annulled, the Department may be put to considerable inconvenience over that which could have been avoided by an affirmative procedure.
To meet the point which the right hon. Gentleman quite legitimately made, that the House may be in Recess and he wants to act quickly, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), has suggested the procedure under the Import Duties Act. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that in the light of this debate he should look at this question again with his advisers from the point of view of what may well be the convenience of the Department. If he will give us that undertaking I shall be only too glad to ask leave to withdrawn my Amendment.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
It was with great reluctance that I came to the conclusion that I should resist the Amendment. Let us look at the thing fairly, ridding our minds of party prejudice. The position of the Postmaster-General prior to this Bill is that all he need do in order to change any charge in the Post Office is to bring an instrument here, lay it on the Table, and it is not debated. That is all. Not a single Member of the Opposition has raised his voice against that.

§ Sir H. Williams
I did.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
With one exception. With regard to the one charge which is enshrined in the contract, it is fixed by the Postmaster-General and the House has never had any voice in its size. I regard that as undemocratic, as archaic, and without any stimulation from the Opposition I have brought forward a new form of Parliamentary accountability. What one has to judge is the present position and the position proposed under the Bill. I suggest that the position I have proposed under the Bill represents a tremendous advance on what was Conservative practice.

§ Mr. Hay
Surely the right hon. Gentleman would agree that he is only acting now in line with all the most enlightened modern practice, where as before the Statutory Instruments Act was brought in the Government Departments had the power to make regulations which were not laid. Ministers are now generally accepting the situation that they must be accountable to Parliament. That is the modern practice, and the right hon. Gentleman must realise that he is only acting in accordance with what every other of his right hon. Friends is doing.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
What astonishes me is that the Opposition, instead of appreciating that I am conforming to the modern view, want to push the Post Office into the position of an ordinary Government Department, circumscribed in exactly the same way as an ordinary Government Department.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
The right hon. Gentleman will in fairness admit that previously in the afternoon I said he had introduced a Parliamentary accountability which had not existed before, and that we welcomed that and gave him credit for it. But we are not discussing that now. We are discussing the best form of Parliamentary accountability, in the interests of his Department. There is no party matter in that. We have not made up our minds between the negative and positive procedure. We put the matter down in order to discuss and ventilate it. All we are doing is asking the right hon. Gentleman not to turn it aside lightly.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I ask Members, especially those who have not heard the earlier part of the discussion, to keep in mind that general background. There has been no reluctance on the part of the Postmaster-General to increase the Parliamentary accountability of his Department.
My second point concerns the suggestion which was made by the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay) regarding changes in the rates of telephones, radiotelephone and telegrams in foreign countries, which I must collect in this country. These are charges which are varied not by myself, but by someone else. I assure the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd Carpenter) that if there is to be a great variety of changes taking place, they will be changes due to circumstances completely outside our control and outside Britain. A lot of them, apparently, are in the offing. We get rumours, but we get very short notice.
What the hon. Member for Henley suggested was that if the change operated from, say, 1st August, when the House is not sitting, I should wait until the end of October, and that I should then get an affirmative Resolution and take power to get retrospective payments from people of whose whereabouts I had already lost account. If a person in London makes a call to France during the August Bank Holiday and does so from a call box, how am I to trace him in November?

§ Mr. Hay
What I had in mind was this: That on hearing that the French were going to increase their charges and that, therefore, the Postmaster-General's charges in this country would have to increase accordingly, the right hon. Gentleman would thereupon direct, as he has the power to do under the regulations proposed by the Bill, that the charges should be raised and that when he came to the House he would have regulations which would give retrospective effect to what he had already done.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I thought that the hon. Member would at last land himself in my dilemma: that is, that if I want to keep in the regulations all the uniform charges for uniform conditions, my power to change the charge for a call to France would have disappeared as I 2392 would have incorporated it, at the hon. Member's request, in the new regulations, and I would have no power whatever to change the terms of the regulations, which had had the assent of the House, when the House was not sitting. That is the position.
I was influenced somewhat by the suggestion of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams). I thought he was trying to face up to the real position. I am not making a mistake when I say that he has had very great industrial and commercial experience and no doubt, is speaking with that experience behind him. The hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston) said that the small matters would go through Parliament without any trouble—that is quite true. It is the large matters which are the things to which Parliament's attention should be drawn.
The hon. Member has been in the Post Office and he knows that every large change that is to be made in charges is announced in the House independently by the Postmaster-General and can be discussed independently of the instruments giving effect to those charges. That, therefore, disposes of that point. I shall certainly look at the suggestion that has been made. I promise nothing but I am satisfied so far, although I undertake to reconsider the matter, that the procedure I have proposed is in the best interests of the Post Office.

§ Mr. R. V. Grimston
In view of the Postmaster-General's undertaking to look again at this matter, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Mr. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland)
Before we leave the Clause, there are a few words I should like to say. We have listened to the Postmaster-General repelling or occasionally evading, with an agility worthy of the hon. Member for Kingston - upon - Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), a variety of Amendments which have been moved with the intention of protecting the individual user, either directly or through better Parliamentary control.
The right hon. Gentleman directs what we may call a hybrid Department. It is in large measure a commercial undertaking, 2393 but is to some extent also a Department of the Civil Service. At present, at any rate, it is liable to be used, and is used from time to time, as a revenue collector. Whatever may be the right hon. Gentleman's wishes, I do not think he can seriously dispute that as being the position today.
Therefore, when it comes to questions of control through Parliament, it is a Department with which it is particularly difficult to deal. No one would want to hamper its commercial activities, and one quite understands that it may be extremely difficult to exercise detailed Parliamentary control over an undertaking which has to make quick decisions, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, and which has to deal with a variety of circumstances which may have the inconvenience of arising, for instance, during the long Parliamentary Recess.
Nevertheless, the purport of the Bill is undoubtedly to give very wide powers to what is in effect a State monopoly, and a State monopoly over a very essential service, a monopoly which to a large extent must go unquestioned. Not only must it go unquestioned by Parliament, but the ordinary user of the telephone has great difficulty in questioning such things as the charges which may be laid upon him or the directions with which he may have to comply.
At an earlier stage, the right hon. Gentleman gave an example of the sort of way in which he effected an agreement with a user about altering the telephone. I quite agree that in nearly all cases telephone officials are extremely courteous, extremely obliging, and flexible in outlook, but they have the power—and it is the power with which we are concerned, however it may be used—to exercise a tyranny in a minor way over a customer who has no alternative source from which he can get the services they offer. I hope that the Postmaster-General will realise that, although these Amendments have been withdrawn, there is considerable anxiety on some of the points that have been raised. He has given us very fair assurances at various stages, and we only hope that he will live up to the very fairest of the promises he has made.
To begin with, the change to the new system involves the termination of a large number of contracts. That, in itself, is 2394 a serious matter. There may be many people who may be now in contractual relations with the Post Office and who may have points of substance to raise over the transition to the new system. We very much hope that they will be dealt with as leniently and as flexibly as possible. On the whole, we must accept the Clause, but there must be always peculiar emphasis on the rights, not only of Parliament, but of the individual user in his relations with a Government Department like the Post Office.

§ Mr. Charles Ian Orr-Ewing (Hendon, North)
I should like to have a little clarification of Clause 1 from the right hon. Gentleman. Does it also cover telephonic communication by radio of the business variety? That is not clearly brought out. In Clause 1, subsection (1). it is stated: telephone system under his control or otherwise and in lines 10 and 11 telephonic business carried on under his control. I think that on Report it would be better to amend that to refer to "under his control as far as the giving of a licence applies." Is it not obvious that, if a licence is given to a firm to operate a taxi radio, as in the United States, where there are more than 1,000 of these apparatuses installed to improve efficiency, it is undesirable suddenly to change the, regulations, as this might have very great repercussions on the operation of such industrial undertakings. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, if he is also taking powers to change the regulations under which taxi radios and other forms of business radio operate, whether it would not be wiser to include that on the Report stage?
I am not a lawyer, but it would seem that in licensing people to operate these forms of business radio he is acting in quite a different capacity from that of operating a telephone service under this Bill. I feel it is most undesirable in the same Bill that he should perhaps change the regulations, which might make it almost impossible to operate certain forms of business radio and I should like the matter to be cleared up before the Report stage.

§ Mr. Pickthorn
The right hon. Gentleman has been very fair in trying to understand and meet our arguments and sug- 2395 gested possibilities for the Report stage. I only want to say one very short thing. If, on reconsideration, he concludes that the argument about foreign charges is decisive against our suggestions, I would ask him to consider really whether it is not his duty to find some other way of dealing with the foreign charges difficulty rather than the way of imposing on Parliament the procedure suggested, under the hypothesis I am putting to him, procedure the House would otherwise not choose. It does not seem the proper way of deciding our telephonic relations with foreign states, and surely it would be more reasonable that the collection of the charges made by foreigners should be arranged by other means than Parliamentary procedure, whether by the International Union or however.

§ Mr. Ness Edwards
I can assure the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) that attempts have been made to ease the position but these are matters not in our hands. The position is one of very great difficulty. I have considered whether or not the charges regulations should be made subject to affirmative Resolution and the conditions regulation made subject to negative Resolution. I have given considerable attention to this and the Committee will have seen that I have not lightly dismissed the arguments put forward.
Radio telecommunications come under the Bill. The taxi radio comes under the Wireless Telegraphy Act and is not affected by this Bill. I think we can agree that this power for tyranny, as it has been described, was given by a Liberal Government and I am glad to see that the Liberals have moved slightly along the democratic front.

§ Mr. Grimond
I am concerned not with the power so much as with its use. We could always feel that the power was well used when there was a Liberal Government.