HC Deb 12 June 1952 vol 502 cc571-9
Mr. Hale

I beg to move, in page 10, line 22, at the end, to insert: (4) Similarly such a council may with the approval of the Minister cease making contributions to such a participating authority if it appears to them that the conditions laid down are not being observed by that authority. This new subsection raises some of the issues which we have already discussed. It tries to deal with the point which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) raised in connection with the limited, permissive powers which have been added to Clause 4. For the benefit of those hon. Members who have not had the privilege of serving on the Committee which dealt with this Bill, I would explain that we are talking about Clause 10 and that in the first place one might say that even the side note is not clearly intelligible. It reads: Contributions to authorities participating from the Exchequer and local authorities benefited. That is, I suggest, certainly not clear, but the purpose of my Amendment is to establish that a participating council, if it can satisfy the Minister—and the Clause is quite clear about that—and it is implicit—[Interruption.]I would ask the right hon. and gallant Member for Leicester, South-East (Captain Water-house) to cease interrupting. I am trying to address the House, and I would formally report to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I have been interrupted by the right hon. and gallant Member. Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman wish to speak? I understand that he has no desire to take part in our discussion. He does not wish to rise, but to make some remark from yards away across the House.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hopkin Morris)

I hope that the Amendment will be discussed and that these interruptions across the Floor of the House will cease.

Mr. Hale

I understand there is no question of discussing the Amendment. The right hon. and gallant Member is seeking to conduct a conversation—and doing it at this moment, repeating the offence. While I am addressing the House I shall demand the proper courtesies usually extended to an hon. Member who is speaking. If I am to be constantly interrupted by this sort of observation which the right hon. and gallant Member himself says has no relevance and which he says has nothing to do with the Amendment, I must claim your protection of my right to continue.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I hope the time of the House will not be taken up by this back-chat between the two sides of the House.

Mr. Hale

I wish to say at once that I resent the suggestion that, in appealing to the Chair for protection against interruption, I was taking part in back-chat. I was addressing the House.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

That was not the meaning I was attaching to the term "back-chat." The meaning I was attaching to it was that if hon. Members wish to say anything in the House they should get up and say what they have to say. Otherwise, they should give a hearing to the hon. Member in possession of the Floor.

Mr. Hale

I apologise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I misunderstood your term. I was claiming the courtesy of the House, as I am entitled to do.

In this Amendment we are seeking to provide a small additional administrative subsection which will make the Clause quite clear. After all, one of the very necessary facts about this Bill is to create in the local authorities complete confidence that the machinery will work and work to their benefit. No participating authority is likely to enter into long-term undertakings with a grant of money unless they are completely satisfied that they can ensure the purpose of that grant will be carried out. They must be satisfied that there is an effective remedy available to them if it is not carried out.

What we are saying with reference to the powers contained in Clause 10 is this: the participating authority report to the Minister a set of facts. They say: "We are frustrated from carrying out this scheme by the action of another authority, and we are asking leave to discontinue making payment we have undertaken to make." That is really perfectly reasonable. I cannot think of any reason why this little Amendment might not be accepted.

The Minister may say this can be done in some other way. But it is really necessary to inspire confidence. It is necessary that the town clerk of a county borough concerned shall be able to report to his committee on a set of facts that they are entering into this on specific terms, and if those terms are not carried out they will not pay. They can go straight to the Minister and say that if this is not carried out, they will not go on with the payment. Surely that is sensible? I think the Amendment is a useful addition to the provisions of the Clause, making for greater clarity and creating more confidence in the authority concerned.

Mr. Benn

I beg to second the Amendment.

I think the Minister would do well to consider this Amendment sympathetically. I have not mentioned my own constituency in the House today, but I should like to talk about it now for a few moments. Bristol is a very overcrowded city, and as a county borough it might easily be affected as an exporting authority when the machinery of this Bill comes into operation. Under these circumstances, with a very large waiting list of people awaiting houses, it is quite possible that a lot of money paid by Bristol ratepayers will be used in the way this Clause contemplates in financing a receiving district to provide accommodation for industrial sites and so on. It seems only reasonable that the Minister should take as great an interest in the safeguarding of the ratepayers' money as he does in his statutory function of safeguarding the money he gets from the national Exchequer.

12.30 a.m.

Nothing will create more ill-feeling among participating authorities than the belief that if they have made this agreement with a receiving district to do certain things they cannot get out of it except by taking what may amount to legal action. As I understand it—I may be wrong; I am not a lawyer—the whole machinery of the Bill is intended to work under the benign, sympathetic consideration of a good Minister who wants to make it work. If the Minister himself tries to obstruct the working of the Bill there will be little hope of it coming to anything. Throughout all the Clauses we see power given to the Minister to give his approval to grants made by him and grants made by local authorities, to set up joint boards, to make orders and so on.

Great power has been given to the Minister, and it is mainly power of a positive kind. The only power which the Minister reserves to himself of a punitive kind is in the Clause which we considered the other day dealing with penalties if the participating authorities do not fulfil the conditions that the Minister lays down. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) objected to the use of the word "penalty". He said in the course of another debate that it would be wiser to be more sympathetic, and I agree with him. But here is a case where the ratepayers' money is affected by the grants made by one authority to another. If there is a suspicion—one can think of many examples —that the grants made by the Bristol Council to a receiving district were being misused, a rumour of that kind could create a great deal of ill-feeling, and without good feeling the machinery of this Measure cannot work.

This Amendment does not suggest that the exporting authority should have the power to cease the contributions just on its own. We do not believe that is right. We do not ask that the exporting authority should have the same rights as the Minister himself has, because we know that if the Minister is objective in his approach to the whole matter he will want to see the Bill work. That would be his main concern, whereas among local authorities there may be differences of opinion which could obstruct the working of the Bill.

What we do say—and I submit that this is a reasonable request—is that just as an authority has to ask the permission of the Minister to make a grant, if there is failure to fulfil the conditions laid down the exporting authority may seek the permission of the Minister to cease making a grant. There is the safeguard that the Minister is called in.

It is often said when this type of problem has arisen that the local authorities do not want the Minister to interfere. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), who is not in the Chamber at the moment, said that local authorities got on very well with each other and that they did not want the Minister to interfere. No one was more pleased than I was to hear the optimistic forecast of the good work between different local authorities, but in the event of something going wrong it is quite right that machinery should be laid down in the Bill whereby the authority that wants to take action should first of all have to appeal to the Minister.

This is a permissive Clause. It does not say that the Minister himself can force a local authority to stop paying a contribution. All it says is that if a row blows up between two local authorities, and a row of this kind might prejudice the whole opportunity of success, the Minister should have the right to be called in in the early stage. That is all it says, and nothing more. If we leave the Clause without this provision, then the row may brew on for some time—if I may mix my metaphors—and all the good will upon which the scheme is based may have evaporated long before there is arbitration. I ask the Minister to consider this Amendment. If he does not like its wording he can redraft it and introduce it in another place, but I do hope he will give it sympathetic consideration.

Mr. Marples

The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) in moving this Amendment said that it was similar in some respects to a previous Amendment we had discussed, and indeed that is so. The arguments in the previous Amendment apply to this one also, although this one is slightly different in some respects to the previous one. The main argument against the point of view put forward by the hon. Members for Oldham, West and Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) is that these contributions which are made to the receiving authority by the exporting authority are somewhat different from those made by the Minister, because they are made under an agreement freely arrived at.

It will be the case that the local authorities can, if they want, appoint an outside arbitrator or ask the Minister to arbitrate, in which case, as the Clause stands, they have the option to ask the Minister to be the arbitrator, which, in effect, is what the Amendment seeks to do. If the hon. Gentleman the Member for Clapham (Mr Gibson) is right and they do not want the Minister to arbitrate, it would impair the harmonious relations necessary for the working of this Bill to have it imposed on them.

Mr. Benn

The hon. Gentleman has made it clear that the agreements between the local authorities are voluntarily entered into and that everything, including his blessing, is granted by the Minister. Surely if he has given his blessing it makes it essential with these agreements that the Minister should take an interest in them in the future.

Mr. Marples

I am coming to that in a moment. There is a certain amount of doubt about this matter. There are arguments for and against. What my right hon. Friend has in mind is the principle that the Bill will not work without the local authorities wanting it to work. If anything is imposed on the local authorities against their will there is no hope of the Bill doing any good. It may be some local authority—perhaps an exporting authority, or perhaps a receiving district council—would object if they were imposed on by the Minister and were forced to accept his arbitration.

Mr. Hale

If the hon. Gentleman would allow me for a moment, what is worrying me is that when——

Mr. Macmillan

Let my hon. Friend finish his argument.

Mr. Hale

The hon. Gentleman has given way. Let him give way. He is one of Her Majesty's Ministers, and the right hon. Gentleman should not treat him as an office boy in this way. He has given way courteously, and I am accepting his courtesy. Why should we have a protest from somebody I do not know. The hon. Gentleman is now saying that councils are freely able to make agreements, but exactly an half hour ago he was saying that they have no powers to do anything of the sort and that provision will be made, in response to the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks), to enable them to do so. He cannot have it both ways.

Mr. Marples

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. No one can more successfully demolish an argument that has never been raised than the hon. Gentleman, and he can do it more humorously than any other hon. Member; no one can do it and be more amusing, and that is saying a great deal. The Minister does not want to impose conditions on local authorities, and I think the entire House would be with me in that respect. There is some point in the suggestion made and it may smooth the working of the Bill if the suggestion that appears here was to be adopted. Quite honestly, the balance of the argument may be one way or it may be the other, but I do not think it is worth while accepting the Amendment unconditionally, because I am not sure it is quite right.

What I do ask the hon. Gentleman to do is to withdraw the Amendment on the assurance that we will try and think seriously on the arguments advanced whether it would be better, but I must make it quite clear that, at this stage, we do not say that it is better. We would like to have a look at it and, perhaps in another place, introduce an Amendment on those lines. Very earnest considerations will be given to the arguments put forward, and that is the assurance which is given. The balance of the argument may be one way or the other.

Mr. Paget

I want to put in a very small argument to join those which are to be given serious consideration. The Minister, when he began, said that this was similar to the Amendment on Clause 4, but, of course, it is very much narrower. Under Clause 4, we could have provided for arbitration right at the beginning. Here, the matter has to be agreed with the Minister, who has to approve, and it only emerges at the end. Being a much narrower point, we hoped it would be very effective.

Mr. Mikardo

I hope that, as this matter is being considered with the object which the Parliamentary Secretary described, consideration will not be befogged by misunderstandings about the intervention of the Minister in the functions of all local authorities.

The Parliamentary Secretary was a little naive in the argument he brought forward. In fact, right through the Bill, the Minister does intervene and keeps on intervening, and, as the whole House appears to have agreed, rightly intervenes in ever so many things. It is really a bit late in the day for the Parliamentary Secretary to say, "We are being awfully careful, because we want the local authorities to come into this willingly, and not have the Minister trampling all over them." It is a little late in the day to say that, because, right through this Bill, the Minister is taking powers to give directions here and there and make orders, and, indeed, the very conditions which are the subject of this proposed subsection are conditions which cannot be made without the approval of the Minister.

The question is not whether the Minister may or may not intervene, but simply, on the assumption that it is a fact that the Minister is intervening in agreeing the conditions, whether he shall have the right to intervene when there is a rumpus about whether the conditions are being honoured.

In discussing Clause 9, the right hon. Gentleman said—and gave very good reasons, which the House accepted—there was a case where he must have power to make orders. Do not let us obscure the position by having the Minister going all coy and girlish at the last minute about interfering with the local authorities. There is a good case for so interfering in many of the matters covered by this Bill, and I hope that, in the consideration which the Parliamentary Secretary has promised, that point will be borne in mind.

Mr. Hale

I am very much obliged for the Minister's reply and the undertaking he gave, which we would desire to accept. I appreciate very much the way he approached the Amendment and his reply to it. I think we are getting a new spirit, and I am looking forward to many hours of co-operation in the public interest in the manner in which we are operating now. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.