TOWN DEVELOPMENT BILL (Hansard, 10 June 1952)

§ The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Harold Macmillan)
I beg to move, That the Bill be re-committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the Amendments to Clause 2, page 2, lines 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20 and 45; Clause 3, page 3. line 46; Clause 4, page 4, line 7; Clause 10, page 9, lines 39, 40, 42, page 10, lines 2 and 7; Clause 22, page 16, line 18; and of the new Clause, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. Harold Macmillan. Re-committal is necessary because there are certain Amendments which I undertook during the Committee stage of the Bill to make and which involve an increase in the charge on the Exchequer or on local rates, and there are consequential Amendments which may have this effect. In order to make these Amendments, it is necessary to re-commit the Bill.

§ Mr. Speaker
I have not selected the two Amendments which are on the Paper to the Minister's Motion, one of which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren). The matters to which that Amendment is introductory were adequately discussed in Committee. As regards the other Amendment, in the name of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), it is not necessary to re-commit the Bill in order to discuss it. As he has put it on the Order Paper, I will call it on the Report stage, when we reach it, so that he can move it as a manuscript Amendment.

§ Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton)
On a point of order. Is not the re-committal of any Amendment which involves a change in the distribution of rates or a charge on the Treasury automatic? Is not the discretion whether it is to be selected when it goes back to the Committee that of the Chairman of the Committee and not, I respectfully suggest, of Mr. Speaker? By rejecting the Amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren) on the ground that it covers matters already adequately discussed in Committee, you are, I respectfully suggest, 50 usurping the discretion of the Chairman of the Committee.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am obliged to the hon. and learned Gentleman for his point of order. I carefully considered the matter, because the same point did occur to me before I came to my decision. In selecting an Amendment to the re-committal Motion, I have to assess what is meant if the House accepts it. Of course, it would be introductory to the discussion in Committee of the various Amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Wellingborough. Therefore, it was necessary for me to go into the matter to see how these subjects have been dealt with in Committee. I came to the decision that they had been adequately discussed in Committee and that the Amendment could not properly be selected.

§ Mr. G. Lindgren (Wellingborough)
I agree entirely that the discussion in Committee was very extended and adequate. Most of the Amendments which I have down for the re-committal stage will fall, because the Minister has carried out the undertakings he gave in Committee that he would put Amendments on the Order Paper. There is one Amendment which is important, namely, that which proposes to include the County of Middlesex with the County of London. From my point of view that is a vital matter, and if possible I should like some opportunity for the proposal to be discussed by the Committee.

§ Mr. Desmond Donnelly (Pembroke)
Further to the point of order, and with regard to the point about Middlesex. The Minister's Amendment half meets us in this respect. I submit to you that by admitting half a loaf of the discussion in Committee, you have agreed to the principle of discussing this particular point. So far as Middlesex is concerned, half a loaf is not good enough, because this is a very important point to the people concerned. As you have allowed us to discuss the Amendment put forward by the right hon. Gentleman, you should allow us to discuss the Middlesex point, because it is the same kind of subject.

§ Mr. Speaker
In coming to my decision, I had in view the length of time which was occupied in discussing—as the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren) frankly agrees—this matter previously. I also had in view the extent 51 to which it seemed to me, from reading the Amendments in the name of the Minister, that some attempt had been made to give effect to what was said. On all those counts I must therefore adhere to my Ruling.
In further replying to the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), I must point out that I take the responsibility instead of leaving it to the Chairman of Ways and Means. There is a Ruling of my predecessor on exactly the same lines, I find, and for exactly the same reasons. If I were, as a matter of form, to allow the Amendments to be re-committed, it would be very hard for the Chairman of the Committee to fail to select them. I must take the responsibility. Otherwise, an awkward burden is placed upon the Chairman.

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
I had thought of raising a point of order, because there were certain matters I would have liked to put to you, Mr. Speaker. There are certain observations I want to make on the discussion, and I can make them without criticising your Ruling, the force of which I appreciate.
The procedure now being adopted for the Minister's Motion places the House in very great difficulty. This is the first Sitting day after an Adjournment. The Motion for re-commital is put on the Order Paper in respect of something like 16 or 17 Amendments, almost an unprecedented figure, I should think, for a comparatively small Bill like this. We are put in great difficulty, and I want to put the difficulty to you, because it is a serious one.
You have been good enough to say you will accept a manuscript Amendment on the Report stage which will repeat the Amendment which has not been selected for the re-committal. Members seeking to assist the Committee are placed in a dilemma when the House has not been sitting, because they have very little opportunity of obtaining the advice which is available when the House is sitting. They table Amendments of this kind, in case the Chairman of the Committee takes the view that their Amendments involve a variation of the charge. That is a view which could be held.
It is exceedingly difficult, if not almost impossible, to say what will happen in 52 the interpretation of a Measure of this kind, which the Minister has told us has been almost deliberately drawn in very vague terms. Not many Bills have been drawn in such vague terms as this one. I do not think that is a harsh criticism, because it does not involve us in individual action. It involves only action by the Minister and by local authorities in relation to matters which normally would not involve any invasion of individual or general human rights. Therefore, it may well be wise that the Minister should have wide and fairly well-defined powers so that he may be able to grant or withhold charges where he thinks fit, impose certain conditions, and so on. The result, however, is that it is impossible for us when drafting an Amendment to say what effect it will have.
As I understand the Ruling, it is necessary to re-commit any Amendment which involves any shifting of the charge from one authority to another, and it would even be appropriate to re-commit it if there were any shifting of the burden of rates from one authority to another. It certainly appears on one page only of Erskine May, very briefly, and not with any clarity, that any proposal which involves any shifting of burden, even within the terms of the Money Resolution, should be the subject of a re-committal order.
We are now asked to re-commit this Bill, which has never been considered in Committee of the whole House. I hope, Sir, you will forgive me if I venture respectfully to put the point I had in mind with regard to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren). My recollection of the Ruling given by your predecessor was that the Amendment had been considered adequately in Committee, and it was not given where the Committee stage had taken place upstairs and where 550 Members of this House had no chance of taking part in the deliberations. Therefore, although there may have been some discussion amongst the Members upstairs, the large majority have had no opportunity of putting their views.
Even the Second Reading of the Bill took place upon one of those unhappy days when the discussion had to be split into two parts by the introduction of an Adjournment Motion lasting three hours. 53 So there was no chance for many of us to put the point of view of the towns we represent. So far as I am concerned, these are considerable problems and I hope we shall have some variation of the procedure for the future.
We have to take the chance of whether this falls within the ambit of a shifting of burden or not. If it does, we have to table an Amendment to the Motion to re-commit. If the final decision is that we are wrong in our apprehension, we are out of order on re-committal, and we become out of order on Report because we have tabled it on re-committal. From your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, I apprehend that you will permit me to move a manuscript Amendment to remedy that position. At the same time I feel that the moving of a series of manuscript Amendments on the Report stage is not a desirable feature of our procedure. If there is any way of avoiding it, it is important that we should seek to do so.
May I say to the Minister, with great respect, that when he said originally that the Bill was all right because it had been drafted by his predecessors, he might have had some regard to the period of gestation of the Measure, and not necessarily have assumed that, merely because it was drafted in part by Labour Ministers, it was necessarily complete and in a condition to be put before the House without any further reflection. The right hon. Gentleman must agree that to produce 17 or 18 Amendments, every one of which necessitates re-committal, is to place the House in a serious difficulty in considering a highly complex Measure of this kind.
All of us would express gratitude to those hon. Members who made such useful and adequate contributions during the Committee stage. Many of them are here now, like my hon. Friends the Members for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) and Acton (Mr. Sparks), who have a specialised knowledge of these questions and who contributed a great deal of help in Committee. Now, however, we are starting afresh to consider a series of Amendments on re-committal. Under the present Ruling, as I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman's Motion to recommit a certain matter will automatically put my Amendment up for consideration and selection by you, Sir, on the re-committal stage. I hope I am right in thinking that.
54 Subject to that, the re-committal stage consists entirely of Amendments put down in fulfilment of undertakings given by the right hon. Gentleman in Committee. I think it is a procedure which ought not to occur again. Considering the difficulties in which hon. Members are placed, it might be useful if we did not normally take a highly controversial and detailed discussion of a Measure like this on the first day after an Adjournment. Hon. Members have either to jeopardise their holidays in order to put down Amendments or to have Order Papers sent long distances into remote parts of the country. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider that. Subject to that, I do not propose in detail to oppose this Motion.

§ Mr. Paget
I want to enter a protest at the manner in which this is being dealt with. We have here no fewer than 18 Government Amendments to the Bill on re-committal to a Committee of the whole House. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there seem to have been practically no Amendments accepted in Committee. This is a procedure which does not seem to me to be a proper way to legislate or a proper way to treat either the Committee upstairs or the House. By it we discuss a matter in Committee and the Government reject suggestions made. Then we come on the Report stage, not to re-commit the Bill as a whole, as I believe we should do in these circumstances, not to commit the Clauses as a whole, but simply to re-commit a series of Amendments.
Nowadays, apparently, we are not using Committees upstairs for amending Bills. A new fourth estate, the Department, has to be consulted, and in a Bill of this kind a large number of Departments have to be consulted. Thus the views of a Committee which Parliament has appointed have to be rejected, and it cannot do the work for which Parliament has appointed it until agreement has been reached between the various Departments. That may be necessary but, if so, there should still be a Committee stage, because the first stage was simply an exploratory one and not a Committee stage at all. The Committee could not revise the Bill because the consent of the various Ministries had not been obtained. So all the Amendments had to be rejected. Sound, sensible, necessary as they appear at a later stage, then they had to be rejected.
55 Therefore, this revision stage never took place, although this may have a necessity with this complicated inter-Departmental type of legislation. For that reason, let us have a proper Committee stage when the proper consultations have taken place and when the Government are ready to do their job. The whole Bill, and not just a few selected Amendments, ought to be re-committed to the Committee so that it can be properly considered.
I have to attend a Select Committee elsewhere, and I hope that the House will not consider it discourteous on my part if I cut my speech unduly short and if I have to depart without hearing the remainder of the debate.