HC Deb 22 February 1955 vol 537 cc1231-6

12.15 a.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart (Fulham, East)

I beg to move, in page 1, line 15, after "if" to insert: except in the case of a person employed in the merchant navy. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins) who had hoped to move this Amendment are, unfortunately, unable to be in the House at this hour. I therefore venture to move the Amendment in their place.

This Amendment puts its finger on the one point in this Bill about which there was any doubt or dispute. The main purpose of the Bill is to prevent any person who ought to do his National Service from dodging his liability. We are all in support of that purpose and want to see the Bill go through, but, by a curious chance, the Bill could have a totally different effect in addition to the one which is obviously intended. One way for a person to dodge National Service is to be out of the country at a certain period of his life. Therefore this Bill is mainly concerned with people who are out of the country for certain periods. But there is a quite different section of the community who may also be out of the country for certain periods. They are merchant seamen. In that one respect the merchant seaman, oddly enough, resembles the type of person who tries to dodge his National Service as he may be out of the country for certain periods.

Therefore, a Bill intended for a most admirable purpose may have a wholly undesirable result of causing someone who has done the nation excellent service in the Merchant Navy to have additional and quite unreasonable burdens put on him. In Committee this matter was put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) and others to the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour heard most sympathetically what we had to say. Since then he has done us the courtesy of acquainting us by letter of the further inquiries the Government have made into the technical and legal difficulties involved.

I realise that it is going to be extremely difficult so to alter this Measure as to make quite certain that no merchant seaman will suffer by it without opening such gaps in the Measure as would destroy its main and very desirable purpose. But my hon. Friends felt it right, and I agreed with them, to put down an Amendment in this form on Report stage. If recently the Government have been able to give the matter further consideration and arrive at a solution they can inform us. If the hon. Gentleman says that after the fullest consideration the Government cannot feel that this Amendment would do what we all want and it is impossible to devise an Amendment which would—if his argument is that it is impossible to give a merchant seaman absolute legal security—I hope he will add that the Act will not make the position of the seaman any worse. I trust the hon. Gentleman will make it clear, not only on his own behalf but on behalf of his right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Labour and of the Government as a whole, that in any administrative action they take in the process of call-up no one who is bona fide a merchant seaman will be in any way worse off because the House has passed this Bill.

I think the hon. Gentleman knows that a great many people working in the Merchant Navy have been concerned about this Bill. We are not raising a mere technicality here. What we want is the most categorical and definite statement, so that if at any future time, by some inadvertence, somebody in the Merchant Navy should be entrapped in the meshes of the Bill, it would be possible for him to appeal to his Member of Parliament, for the matter to be raised in this House, and for there to be a statement in black and white to which any Member raising such a case could appeal.

I think I am not going beyond what my hon. Friends would agree to when I say that if we can have a statement as clear and as categorical as that they will be willing to accept the view that it may not be possible actually to amend the Bill. I await with interest what the hon. Gentleman may be able to tell us on this matter.

Mr. Hugh Delargy (Thurrock)

I beg to second the Amendment.

There seems to be no one else present to second this Amendment. The Parliamentary Secretary will recall that another Amendment, not quite in these terms, much more rigid than this one, was moved in Committee. He refused it, and I gave him my support, as against my hon. Friends, because my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins) mentioned in the Amendment a definite period of service that merchant seamen ought to perform before they are exempted. I think the period of two years was mentioned. That was one of the reasons why the Parliamentary Secretary refused the Amendment, and for that reason, and that reason alone, we did not press the Amendment to a Division in Committee.

The more I think of it the more do I become convinced that some special exemption really ought to be made for merchant seamen. It is said against that, that there are other categories such as miners and agricultural labourers who are also exempted after the age of 26 years under the Act. I agree, of course, that special legislation should be made for such categories of workers. What I cannot see is the logic of those who say that the identical, the same rigid legislation ought to be made for merchant seamen.

I think special legislation may be made for certain workers because we are all, of course, in agreement that miners and agricultural workers are essential to the nation's economy and that, therefore, special legislation should be made for them. Nevertheless, miners and agricultural workers do have certain advantages that merchant seamen do not have. They can enjoy their home life, for instance, whereas the merchant seamen are away from home for long periods of time. At some time or another the Government should go into this matter of arranging some certain period—I do not say what it ought to be—of time served at sea which would automatically exempt merchant seamen from military service. However, that is not the point at issue tonight.

If the Government could not accept a period of two years, I should have thought they could have accepted this Amendment, which is wide in reference and quite innocuous. My hon. Friend has said that he and I and the rest of us would be satisfied by some categorical statement by the Government tonight that the position of merchant seamen will not be made any worse by the Bill. I would not go as far as that. What the Government can do, if they do not accept the Amendment, is to say that administratively it will be arranged that merchant seamen will be left outside the ambit of the Bill. What we should have liked to have seen would have been legal protection for merchant seamen. I cannot see how they can be legally protected unless this Amendment is accepted by the Government. Nevertheless for reasons given by my hon. Friend. I second it.

Mr. Kenneth Thompson (Liverpool, Walton)

I have no wish to detain the House, or to differ from the hon. Gentlemen who have moved and seconded the Amendment, but I should like to take the opportunity of expressing to the Parliamentary Secretary my personal appreciation, and the appreciation of those who as merchant seamen are personally concerned in this problem, of the care and thought he has given to trying to devise a way of writing into the Bill an Amendment which would protect their rights and interests in this matter.

This is a most difficult matter to define. The fact that the Amendment is drawn so widely and will spread its effects beyond the limits which we all have in mind is surely an example of how difficult it is to write into a statute precisely what we all want. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service has gone to great pains to put into the Bill precisely what we all want to do. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. Stewart) for his assurance that it will be sufficient if my hon. Friend will give the House a categorical statement of the fact that the interests of merchant seamen are preserved in the Bill. I think that we can all be satisfied that what we have in mind has been protected and preserved.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Harold Watkinson)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fulham, East (Mr. M. Stewart), the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy)—who supported me in Committee—and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) for drawing attention to this point of substance. We have all tried very hard to see whether something could not be written into the Bill because, as the hon. Member for Thurrock put it, that would place the matter beyond all doubt.

In my various researches I found words which the then Minister of Labour used when he spoke on the National Service Bill, as it then was, in 1947. I use them because they cannot be put in a better way. He said: We are satisfied that if we start statutory deferments for one section as against another we shall only land ourselves into further difficulties … That is exactly what we found. He went on to say: It is quite true there will not always be the same Minister at the head of the Department, but the Minister has to lay it down that we shall follow the intentions of the House."—[Official Report, 21st May, 1947; Vol. 437, c. 2398.] That is a very important point, and that is what hon. Gentlemen are asking me to do now.

Having consulted expert aid, I cannot devise an Amendment which is legally and satisfactorily water-tight. Therefore I can only respond to the Amendment on the Order Paper by laying down again clearly what administrative action we propose to take, on behalf of my right hon. and learned Friend, as other Ministers before him have done. By far the great majority of men who pursue their civilian life by administrative discretion are not in the Merchant Navy, and there are some 165,000 at the moment. The hon. Member for Fulham, East pointed out, however, that it is only merchant seamen whose calling takes them out of the country at the relevant date with which the Bill deals.

The bona fide seaman is not in our view an evader because his job may take him out of the country at the relevant time. We accept that the working of this Bill will not worsen his position under National Service compared with what it is today. Therefore, I can give a clear pledge on behalf of my right hon. and learned Friend and the Government that we will see that he is not put in any worse case under the Bill than he would have been had it not been passed. We will see that he is not prejudiced or put in worse case merely because his calling rightly takes him out of the country at the relevant date.

I do not think that I can go further. I hope that is plain and satisfactory to hon. Members, and I hope that under these terms the hon. Member for Fulham, East and the hon. Member for Thurrock will agree not to press the Amendment.

Mr. M. Stewart

The House is indebted to the Parliamentary Secretary for his clear and unequivocal statement. In view of it, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill read the Third time and passed.