Commons Sitting of 20 November 1956

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  HOUSING, SCOTLAND

    Controlled Houses (Rents)
    Mrs. Cullenasked the Secretary of State for Scotland the average increase of rent which will be permitted under the Rent Bill on tenanted and controlled houses remaining under control in Glasgow, in other parts of Scotland and in Scotland as a whole; and over how many houses in each case is the average reckoned.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Nixon Browne): My right hon. Friend has no means of estimating the average increase in rent which will be permitted under the Rent Bill but the increases throughout Scotland will range from about 1s. to a maximum of 4s. per week in the case of the "1956 Act increase"; and from about 2s. to a maximum of 8s. per week in the case of the revised repairs increase under the 1954 Act.
    Mrs. Cullen: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that on Saturday, 24th November, worried and angry tenants from all over Scotland will descend on St. Andrew's House to protest against the Bill? Will the hon. Gentleman consider its withdrawal?
    Mr. Browne: I am afraid that we cannot possibly consider the withdrawal of the Bill. I would point out to the hon. Lady that, out of 640,000 houses, the increase will apply only to houses that are in good and tenantable repair and not in any other respect unfit for human habitation.

    Subsidies
    Mrs. Mannasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has considered the joint memorandum on housing subsidies from the Convention of Royal Burghs, the Association of County Councils and the Counties of Cities Association; and what action he proposes to take thereanent.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: My right hon. Friend has not yet received the memorandum from the local authority associations.
    Mrs. Mann: Will the hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend, when he receives that memorandum, to refuse to give it sympathetic consideration but to act upon it instead?
    Mr. Browne: I do not think that I can make any comment on the memorandum until it is received.

    Rent-Restricted Houses
    Mr. Thornton-Kemsleyasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many houses in Scotland fall within the ambit of the Rent Restriction Acts; and how many of these he estimates will be released from control under Clause 9 of the Rent Bill.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: I would refer my hon. Friend to the White Paper published on 16th November.

  SCOTLAND

    Road Junction, Cumbernauld
    Mr. Benceasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received respecting the provision of traffic lights at the junction of roads A80 and A73 at Cumbernauld; and what action he proposes to take.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Henderson Stewart): The County Council of Dunbarton has recently asked that the possibility of making this junction safer should be examined again, and my Department is in touch with the council.
    Mr. Bence: May I thank the hon. Gentleman for the information that something is to be done, because there have been several serious accidents there, a few

    1521
    of which have been fatal? Will the hon. Gentleman do everything he can to see that traffic lights are provided, or something done to prevent a recurrence of the series of accidents which have occurred in the past?
    Mr. Stewart: We recognise that and we are in close touch with the county council and will try to do something that we are commonly agreed upon.

    Bridge of Don, Aberdeen (Reconstruction)
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a detailed statement on the progress of the work of reconstruction of the Bridge of Don, Aberdeen, indicating how much has been done, and how much remains to be done; and if he is in a position to state when the work will be completed.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: Work is proceeding satisfactorily and so far amounts to about 15 per cent. of the contract, which provides that the work must be completed in thirty-two months from 1st May, 1956.
    Mr. Hughes: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the complaints about the danger to pedestrians caused by the condition of the footways, and the demand for some system of control lights in order to protect pedestrians until the work is completed?
    Mr. Stewart: Yes, Sir. I gather that there is a point there, and it is in hand.

    Haemophilic Patient, Glasgow (Treatment)
    Mrs. Mannasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware that a successful operation was performed for the first time in the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, on a haemophilic patient; what was the nature of the operation; and what report thereon he has received from the Medical Research Council.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: The case to which the hon. Member no doubt refers is not, I understand, the first of its kind, atlhough I am glad to say the treatment has been successful. It is not usual to disclose publicly the details of such treatment, but a report is being sent by the hospital to the Medical Research Council because of its interest in such patients.
    Mrs. Mann: If it is not in the interest of the public to disclose such details, is the hon. Gentleman aware that every newspaper in the land has been claiming that for the first time in history a haemophilic has been operated on successfully for appendicitis? My information is that this claim is utterly false. Are haemophilics to be misled into believing that they can now be operated on, and cannot the hon. Gentleman do something to counteract these misleading statements in the newspapers regarding patients in infirmaries?
    Mr. Browne: I think that the hon. Lady's Question and the reply which I have just made will draw sufficient attention to the matter.

    Fabrics (Misdescription) Act, 1913
    Captain Duncanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many convictions have been obtained in the last five years under the Fabrics (Misdescription) Act, 1913.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: This information is not available for Scotland as a whole, but I understand that in the four counties of cities there has been no conviction in the past five years.
    Captain Duncan: Arising from that Answer, does my hon. Friend agree that this Act has discouraged manufacturers from the manufacture of non-flammable materials because of the fear of prosecution? Will he consider abolishing the Act and producing something more modern and up-to-date?
    Mr. Stewart: I believe my hon. and gallant Friend has a Question to ask the President of the Board of Trade on this matter. I think that then an effective Answer may be given.

    East Kilbride Development Corporation (Mrs. Judith Hart)
    Mr. G. M. Thomsonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland why the East Kilbride Development Corporation took steps to dismiss. Mrs. Judith Hart from its service immediately on learning that she had been nominated for selection as a prospective Parliamentary candidate.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: In carrying out part of the task for which. Mrs. Hart had been temporarily engaged, she was to undertake house-to-house visits for social

    1523
    survey purposes. The corporation considered that this could not suitably be done by a person publicly and locally committed to a particular political party, and decided that the visits should not take place. Mrs. Hart's engagement was terminated when her services were no longer needed for the completion of the task.
    Mr. Thomson: Is the Minister aware that the information on which his Answer is based is misleading, and that in fact the interviewing part o. Mrs. Hart's job was not normally part of her duty but occupied only two hours of her work over many months? Is he aware that the job on which she was engaged was not finished when she was dismissed, and that there is the clearest evidence that this dismissal was because of her political views?
    Mr. Browne: I am afraid that I must disagree with the hon. Member. The first part of her job was to sit in an office and deal with the results of the social survey. The second part was to follow up visits to people who had not completed the questionnaire. Completion of the task can be done and will be done by some very junior official.
    Mr. Hector Hughes: Does the Minister realise that the reasons which he has given for the dismissal of. Mrs. Hart are completely inadequate, and that this looks very like a case of political discrimination against her because she is a Labour candidate? Will the hon. Gentleman make public fuller facts in regard to this matter?
    Mr. Browne: I think that on reflection the hon. and learned Member will agree that a known Parliamentary candidate of any political party is not the best person to get the best co-operation from households of varying political views.
    Mr. Thomson: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter again at the earliest possible moment on the Adjournment.

    Electricity Supply, Outer Hebrides
    Mr. Malcolm MacMillanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what areas in the Outer Hebrides and what percentage of the population are now served by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric
    1524
    Board; what areas are not yet supplied; and when the Board's programme will be completed.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: I am informed that approximately 80 per cent. of the total population of the Islands of Lewis, Harris, South Uist, Benbecula and Eriskay are now supplied with electricity by the Board. The Board is not able to say when all potential consumers in these islands and in Barra and North Uist will be connected.
    Mr. MacMillan: Will the Joint Under-Secretary approach the Chancellor and the Treasury and try to get them to reconsider this very mean economy, considering the fact that in the Island of Harris the poles and wires are already up in some villages and come past the doors of the houses, many of which are wired? There is no real economy in not providing this electricity in Barra, where much of the equipment is already on the spot and where there is some local unemployment. Will the hon. Gentleman ask the Chancellor to reconsider a very petty economy, which in fact is no economy at all?
    Mr. Stewart: The need for national economy has had some effect, I admit, but the completion of the programme in these islands and the extension to Barra and North Uist must be governed by the financial position of the Board as well as the request of the Government to reduce capital expenditure.
    Mr. MacMillan: Was this economy on the initiative of the Board, or under the credit squeeze?
    Mr. Stewart: The Board has played its part.
    Mr. John MacLeod: Can my hon. Friend say how much the difficulties of the Board in bringing electricity to these remote areas was caused by the exorbitant capital charges it demands, which are far too high? Surely that and not the credit squeeze is the cause?
    Mr. Stewart: That is another question.

    North Ford Causeway
    Mr. Malcolm MacMillanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when work on the North Ford Causeway in the Western Isles is to begin; the estimated total cost; and what financial contribution is to be made by his Department towards this.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: I understand that Inverness County Council has now invited tenders. The estimated total cost of the work is £337,000, of which my Departments will contribute 90 per cent.
    Mr. MacMillan: Can the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that this work will in fact begin as soon as it is possible for the county council to complete all the preliminaries? Will he have regard to the point that the so-called economy envisaged four years ago means that whereas the cost would have been £160,000 on the old estimate, the work will now cost £337,000? Does he realise that to delay any longer means a further dead loss?
    Mr. Stewart: Of course that applies to everything done this year which might have been started ten years ago.

    Eoligarry (Road)
    Mr. Malcolm MacMillanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when his Department intends to provide a safe and adequate road to the community at Eoligarry, Isle of Barra, in place of the present tidal sand-track.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: This road would link two sections of Class III road and would be built by Inverness County Council as the highway authority. I regret that in view of other competing demands on the funds available it has not yet been possible to authorise a grant towards its cost, but if the county council puts it forward as a case of special urgency my right hon. Friend will do his best to approve it in the near future.
    Mr. MacMillan: Why is the whole of the onus laid on the county council in view of the fact that this is a responsibility of the Department of Agriculture on one of its estates? Cannot this work be undertaken as part of ordinary estate management? Is it not part of the work of the Department and not of the county council?
    Mr. Stewart: It is not quite that. This is part of the programme for which the county council has responsibility. There are not enough funds available to enable it to do everything that it wants done, but if it puts this work on a higher priority we shall be prepared to play.

    Cancer Registration
    Mr. Hannanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many hospital regions have now completed their cancer registration and follow-up arrangements.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: My right hon. Friend regrets that it has been possible in only two of the five regions to organise a reasonably complete system of cancer registration The difficulties elsewhere appear to be mainly medical and statistical and my right hon. Friend has, therefore, asked the Cancer Committee of the Scottish Health Services Council to inquire into them and suggest ways of overcoming them.
    Mr. Hannan: While thanking the Joint Under-Secretary for that statement, which is helpful, may I ask him to impress upon his right hon Friend the urgency of this information for research purposes? I understand that research is likely to be delayed unless this information is provided.
    Mr. Browne: Yes, Sir
    Mr. Woodburn: Will the hon. Gentleman see that medical officers of health who are keen to push on with this work receive every co-operation from the Scottish Office, and get every encouragement in the provision of material, where that is necessary?
    Mr. Browne: Yes, Sir.

    Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency
    Mr. Hannanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has considered the White Paper relating to mental illness and mental deficiency in Scotland; whether he has come to a decision to amend the law; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: A number of interested bodies have still to formulate their views on the important questions raised by this White Paper, and my right hon. Friend is, therefore, not yet in a position to make a statement.
    Mr. Hannan: Will the Joint Under-Secretary of State impress on his right hon. Friend the urgency of this matter—an urgency which, in view of the latest returns, is growing and is giving great concern to the authorities?
    Mr. Browne: My right hon. Friend appreciates the urgency, but when the White Paper was published in December, 1955, no time-limit was fixed for sending in observations, and it is desirable that all bodies should have ample time, in view of the importance of the issues involved.

    Local Government Finance (Review)
    Mr. McInnesasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if the committee appointed to review all aspects of local government finance, including industrial derating, has yet completed its deliberations; and if he intends publishing the Report.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: No, Sir. I cannot at this stage add anything to what was said in the Most Gracious Speech.
    Mr. McInnes: Does this Committee comprise the same personnel as considered the housing subsidies and rents? if so, I can assure the hon. Member that the Committee is quite capable of producing evidence suitable for the Government's policy.

    Drainage
    Mr. John MacLeodasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when legislation is to be introduced to deal with drainage in a comprehensive manner in the Highlands of Scotland.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Niall Macpherson): My hon. Friend will appreciate that drainage problems in Scotland are not confined to the Highlands. Discussions are still proceeding but I am not able to forecast when legislation may be possible.
    Mr. MacLeod: Could the Joint Under-Secretary of State say why there is this interminable delay? Recent floods would have been much less severe had there been a comprehensive scheme. This matter has been discussed many times in the House in the past few years. When is the Minister going to take some action?
    Mr. Macpherson: As has been repeatedly said in the House, the difficulty is to get agreement between the parties interested.

    Agriculture (Improvement of Roads)
    Mr. Willisasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many road improvement schemes in Scotland under the Agriculture (Improvement of Roads) Act,
    1528
    1955, he has so far approved; and the total cost involved.
    Mr. N. Macpherson: Local authorities have been invited to submit applications and so far sixteen authorities have done so. As my right hon. Friend informed the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) on 24th July, however, in view of the need to limit capital expenditure no grants are being approved at present.
    Mr. Willis: Does not that make nonsense of what the Government said a few months ago? Could he say when the Government intend to get on with this job?
    Mr. Macpherson: No, Sir.

  EDUCATION, SCOTLAND

    Nightdress Material (Flammability)
    Mrs. Mannasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware that in the schools under his jurisdiction, sewing mistresses are teaching girls to make nightdresses from the material that causes the highest death rate from burning accidents in Scotland; and if he will ensure that this practice is discontinued.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: My right hon. Friend is aware that in some schools nightdresses are made from inflammable materials and he is considering what action should be taken in the matter. It is of course the case that very many fabrics in common use are inflammable.
    Mrs. Mann: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the campaign "Mind that Child" in regard to road accidents and also of carelessness in regard to highly flammable materials? Is there not an opportunity to introduce Winceyette processed as a new non-flammable fabric? Will he encourage a little propaganda about home accidents during sewing-class meetings?
    Mr. Stewart: I am very much obliged to the hon. Lady. That suggestion will be taken into account.
    Captain Duncan: Is my hon. Friend aware that a large sum of money is being spent by the National Health Service every year in treating in hospitals accident cases involving burning, and that that money could be saved if the manufacture of non-inflammable materials were encouraged?

    Potato Harvest (School Children)
    Mr. G. M. Thomsonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland to state, for each of the education authorities in Scotland, the percentage of their children on the school rolls aged 13 years and over who were this year exempted from school attendance to attend the potato harvest; and if he will state the average period of exemption for each authority.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: As the Answer consists of a table of figures, I shall, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the Answer:
    The following table gives the information asked for in so far as education authorities are at this date able to supply it.

    CHILDREN AGED 13 AND OVER

    Education authority

    Number exempted

    Percentage of roll

    Average period

    Days

    Aberdeen

    1,659

    32

    10·6

    Angus

    1,262

    40·5

    5

    Argyll

    200

    9

    14

    Ayr

    452

    30

    8

    *Banff

    —

    —

    —

    Berwick

    410

    40

    15

    Bute

    149

    28·4

    15

    Caithness

    168

    17

    4½

    Clackmannan

    170

    14

    5½

    Dumfries

    1,005

    32·6

    13

    Dunbarton

    650

    9·2

    8½

    East Lothian

    380

    33

    15

    Fife

    5,585

    35

    12

    *Inverness

    —

    —

    —

    Kincardine

    Nil

    Nil

    Nil

    Kirkcudbright

    186

    24·3

    5½

    Lanark

    1,874

    6·5

    8

    Midlothian

    1,313

    29·4

    12

    Moray and Nairn

    1,143

    48

    5

    Orkney

    3

    0·28

    10

    Peebles

    129

    21

    7

    Perth and Kinross

    1,760

    40·7

    9

    Renfrew

    308

    3

    6½

    Ross and Cromarty

    551

    16·6

    15

    Roxburgh

    424

    24

    15

    Selkirk

    184

    26

    15

    Stirling

    1,331

    22·2

    9

    *Sutherland

    —

    —

    —

    West Lothian

    1,089

    32·1

    11

    Wigtown

    Nil

    Nil

    Nil

    Zetland

    91

    10

    3½

    Burghs

    Aberdeen

    633

    8·4

    7

    Dundee

    3,098

    42

    15

    Edinburgh

    507

    2·8

    10·8

    Glasgow

    663

    1·5

    15

    *Figures not yet available.

    Mr. G. M. Thomsonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many children from Dundee schools, including the Dundee High School, obtained exemption to attend the potato harvest this year; which schools they came from; and the average period of exemption.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: As the Answer includes a table of figures I shall, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the Answer:
    The particulars for schools under the management of Dundee education authority are as follows:—

    School

    Number of exemptions

    Average period of exemption

    Logie Junior Secondary School.

    437

    Three weeks

    Rockwell Junior Secondary School.

    409

    Three weeks

    Stobswell Boys' Junior Secondary School.

    599

    Three weeks

    Stobswell Girls' Junior Secondary School.

    505

    Three weeks

    St. John's Roman Catholic Junior Secondary School.

    533

    Three weeks

    St. Michael's Roman Catholic Junior Secondary School.

    434

    Three weeks

    Grove Academy

    134

    Three weeks

    Harris Academy

    22

    Three weeks

    Morgan Academy

    22

    Three weeks

    Lawside Academy

    —

    —

    Fairmuir Special School

    3

    Three weeks

    TOTAL

    3,098

    No pupils were released from attendance at Dundee High School which is under the management of a voluntary governing body.

    U.N.E.S.C.O. Gift Coupon Scheme
    Mr. Hannanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will consult education authorities for the purpose of initiating a campaign under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation gift coupon scheme through which schools and other organisations can adopt schools or educational projects in other countries, especially in Hungary and Egypt.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: In a circular issued to education authorities on 12th October in connection with the celebration of United Nations Day, it was suggested that special attention might be given by schools to the U.N.E.S.C.O. Gift Coupon Scheme. Lists of projects approved by U.N.E.S.C.O. as requiring assistance are circulated to Scottish schools, but I am informed that these have not so far included any in Hungary or Egypt.
    Mr. Hannan: In such a campaign as is suggested, does not the Joint Under-Secretary appreciate that excellent opportunities would be provided for lessons in international co-operation and extending practical help to victims of aggression? Even refresher courses might be provided by local authorities for Her Majesty's Ministers to help them to a better understanding of the aims and principles of the United Nations Charter?
    Mr. Stewart: We are entirely in favour of that, and the circular to which I have referred the hon. Member, of which I shall be glad to give him a copy, indicates that we are very much in favour of this gift coupon scheme, but the arrangements are—and always have been—that it is only for those projects approved by U.N.E.S.C.O. that coupons are used.
    Mr. Hannan: Will the Joint Under-Secretary of State see that such help is extended to the two countries mentioned?
    Mr. Stewart: I think that is a matter for U.N.E.S.C.O. It is not appropriate for the Secretary of State to suggest to U.N.E.S.C.O. what it ought to do.

    Schools (Television)
    Mr. Woodburnasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, in view of the shortage of teachers of mathematics and science, he will examine the possibility of television making the best teaching available to all school children.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: The British Broadcasting Corporation and the School Broadcasting Council have arranged, with the concurrence of my right hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education, for an experimental school television service to start in the autumn of 1957, in order to find out what contribution television can make to the teaching of school subjects.
    Mr. Woodburnasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether his attention has been called to the experiments in the use of closed circuit television teaching in schools in the United States of America; and whether steps will be taken to ensure the speedy application of the results of such experiments to the benefit of Scottish education.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: These experiments will be followed with interest, but it is not yet possible to say how far this device will be suitable for adoption here.
    Mr. Woodburn: Referring to both Questions Nos. 17 and 18. would the Secretary of State consider the possibility of earlier experiments, such as those suggested in Question No. 18, which would be at less expense and less universal than complete broadcasts? This could be done within some of the larger schools, and different experiments could be carried out in different schools. It might provide earlier information for both the B.B.C. and the Secretary of State. Would the right hon. Gentleman consider that? I understand that the apparatus is available from the manufacturers.
    Mr. Stewart: Whatever the right hon. Gentleman suggests we will consider, but on the matter of television in the schools it is thought by those best qualified to judge that it needs a good deal of preparation and that it will not be until next year that the full experiment can be started. I will bear in mind what the right hon. Gentleman has said.
    Mr. John MacLeod: Is my hon. Friend aware that on the Western seaboards of Ross-shire and in the Islands there is no likelihood of having television at all, and that, despite the fact that there is a shortage of teachers in Kyle of Lochalsh, there is absolutely no hope of getting television, according to the latest announcement of the B.B.C?
    Mr. Stewart: My hon. Friend should address that question to the Postmaster-General.

    Mathematics and Science Teachers
    Mr. Rankinasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received from the Association of Head Masters of Senior Secondary Schools dealing with the shortage of fully qualified

    1533
    teachers of mathematics and science, particularly in Glasgow; and what proposals he has to make on the matter.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: I have received a copy of the Association's Report, which was published in the Press on 15th November, and I have arranged to discuss it with representatives of the Association. I am meeting them, I hope quite soon. A number of steps, including the recent increases in salaries, have already been taken to overcome or mitigate the shortage, and my right hon. Friend is considering what further action may be possible.
    Mr. Rankin: When the Joint Under-Secretary of State discusses the matter, will he remember that between this year and 1961, 9,000 pupils will enter secondary schools in the city of Glasgow, that there will be insufficient teachers and that the result will probably be that teachers will be withdrawn from the junior secondary schools to staff the senior secondary schools to meet the increased number of pupils? Would he consider urging on local authorities the need to appoint an administrative assistant in each secondary school so that the headmaster can be relieved of much of his administrative work and be free to undertake part of the teaching?
    Mr. Stewart: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. We will look at that idea.
    Mr. Woodburn: Would the hon. Gentleman again refer to Questions Nos. 17 and 18 and consider making those experiments in Glasgow in order to make the best use of the science and mathematics teachers available?
    Mr. Rankin: On a point of order. My Question refers to a shortage of teachers and not to a shortage of mechanical aids.

  BRITISH ARMY

    Rhodesian Rifles (Pensions)
    Sir L. Plummerasked the Secretary of State for War whether he will consult the Government of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland with a view to increasing the pensions of members of the 1st Battalion of the Rhodesian Rifles who have served, or are now serving in Malaya.
    The Secretary of State for War (Mr. John Hare): It is for the Government of the Federation, and not for me, to decide what pension rates ought to be provided for their own forces.
    Sir L. Plummer: Is the Minister not aware that Her Majesty's Government make a contribution towards these pensions? Is he satisfied that an Askari who has a 20 per cent. to 50 per cent. disability should receive a pension of only 2s. 9d. per week and that an Askari with a disability of 80 per cent. and over should receive a pension of only 5s. 2d. per week? Is it not the duty of Her Majesty's Government to see that these African soldiers are treated decently?
    Mr. Hare: The hon. Member knows that these troops are the responsibility of the Federation Government. Her Majesty's Government are not in a position to interfere with the administration of these troops
    Mr. Hale: But is not the Minister aware that when he was at the Colonial Office it was said that both the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Office would make representations and, we understood, they made strong representations? Are we to understand that those representations have been ignored, because the whole position of the Askaris, both those now serving and those disabled in the war, is a matter which gives great concern to the House, and if those representations are to be ignored that does reflect upon the Government of the Federation?
    Mr. Hare: I have not said that the Federation Government have necessarily ignored representations. I am sure that the Federation Government will take note of what has been said in the House today.

    Kenya
    Mr. Bellengerasked the Secretary of State for War what economies in military personnel will be made in Kenya due to the withdrawal of troops from active operations.
    Mr. John Hare: In anticipation of the withdrawal of the Army from active operations in Kenya, British troops in the territory have been progressively reduced during the last year by about 4,500. This process will continue. The House will, I

    1535
    am sure, join with me in paying tribute to the fine work of our troops, which has brought military operations to an end and made possible the withdrawal of Armed Forces.
    Mr. Bellenger: The House, of course, is not aware of how many troops there are in that area, as we have not had official information, but would it be correct to say that there are large numbers of troops out there who could very well be used, either for the strategic reserve—although that probably no longer exists—or to relieve reservists who have been called up to meet other obligations?
    Mr. Hare: As I said in my Answer, we are further reducing this force, and by April of next year the plan is to have about a battalion, with a few ancillary troops, in Kenya; that is all.

    Operations, Port Said
    Mr. Lewisasked the Secretary of State for War how many of the 10,000 rifles captured from the Egyptians at Port Said were British Lee Enfields; and how many British six-pounder guns were captured.
    Mr. John Hare: One thousand three hundred and fifty-eight rifles of all kinds were captured in Port Said. Four hundred and twenty of them were Lee Enfield rifles. Four British six-pounder guns were also captured.
    Mr. Lewis: I thank the Minister for that reply. Can he say why no information has yet been given about the British arms which have been supplied to the Egyptians? Can he further say how many other types of guns and munitions were supplied to the Egyptians and used by them against our boys there?
    Mr. Hare: No. As the hon. Member knows, under the Tripartite Declaration of 1950, certain arms were supplied in accordance with the terms of that Declaration. I share with the hon. Member the regret that British-made arms were used against British troops, but that was a risk inherent in the Declaration, which in fact provided for the supply to both the Arab States and to Israel of limited quantities of arms for their internal security.
    Mr. Dugdale: Can the Secretary of State for War say how many of these
    1536
    arms were sent before, and how many after the members of the Government, other than the President of the Board of Trade, knew that large supplies of Russian arms were going to Egypt?
    Mr. Hare: If the right hon. Gentleman cares to put down a Question, I will try to answer it.
    Mr. Wiggasked the Secretary of State for War whether he will make a statement on the Army's rôle in the Port Said landing, including times of departure from Malta and Cyprus; and whether he will make a statement on the existing situation.
    Mr. John Hare: Some troops left Malta for the Eastern Mediterranean late on the night of 30th October. Others left Cyprus for Egypt on 4th and 5th November. As the House has already been informed, the commando and parachute Brigades have now been relieved.
    It would be invidious to distinguish between the three Services in what was essentially a combined operation. A battalion group of 16 Parachute Brigade made an airborne assault on Gamil airfield on 5th November. Within seven hours this force had secured and cleared the airfield for our aircraft to land and had advanced two miles to the outskirts of Port Said. On 6th November one squadron Royal Tank Regiment supported the assault by 3 Commando Brigade. The remainder of the Parachute Brigade landed following the assault and within a few hours advanced 24 miles down the causeway from Port Said to El Cap.
    The success of this operation against determined resistance by the equivalent of a brigade group supported by Russian tanks and assault guns was due to meticulous planning, to splendid tactical air support from the R.A.F. and the Royal Navy, and to the fighting quality of the troops concerned, which was worthy of the highest standards of our military tradition.
    Mr. Wigg: May I, for my part, and I am sure on behalf of my hon. Friends, pay a tribute to the courage and devotion to duty of these troops? Having said that, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman the following question? First, has his attention been drawn to the statement that the civilian casualties in Port Said

    1537
    were much heavier than the Government have said? Has he seen the statement by Mr. Nehru that the casualties, killed and wounded, are of the order of 3,000? Will the right hon. Gentleman also be good enough to say why the operation planned for air drop and landing at first light on Tuesday was changed to air drop on Monday, commando landing on Tuesday? Will he also say whether the military commanders on the spot were consulted before British troops were left in the nonsensical tactical position in which they now find themselves?
    Mr. Hare: It is a little difficult to answer all the hon. Gentleman's questions. He had the courtesy to tell me about one of them in advance: that is, the question of civil and military casualties. I have seen the rumour to which he has referred and which appeared in the Press. I have no further information than that which was supplied from our own Allied Force Headquarters, that the killed Egyptian civilians numbered 100, and wounded 540, and I know of nothing to lead me to suppose that those figures are not accurate.

    Discharge by Purchase
    Mr. Haymanasked the Secretary of State for War how many officers and how many other ranks, respectively, have purchased their discharges in each of the last five years, to the latest convenient date.
    Mr. John Hare: Officers are not eligible to purchase their discharge. The numbers of other ranks for each of the years 1952 to 1955 are 397, 735, 1,811 and 1,574 respectively. That for the first nine months of 1956 is 854.

    Suez Base Contractors (Interned Employees)
    Mr. Gresham Cookeasked the Secretary of State for War if, arising out of the visit of the Swiss representatives, he can now give fuller information about the safety of the employees of the Suez Base contractors now interned in Egypt.
    Mr. John Hare: The Swiss Representative in Cairo has only now been allowed to visit the contractors' employees and his report just received discloses a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. The employees are interned in three storeys of the Khedevia School in Cairo. Each
    1538
    person has a bed and a mattress, one towel, two woollen blankets and two pillows. The beds are close together. There are no tables or chairs and they have to eat on their beds. Food is insufficient (between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day) and not good. Sanitary facilities are inadequate. The internees possess only the clothes they wore on arrival. The strongest possible pressure is being brought to bear on the Egyptian authorities and we hope that world opinion will reinforce our representations.
    Mr. Gresham Cooke: While that is a distressing report, I am sure that the relatives will be glad to know that the 450 internees are not in the Citadel, as was rumoured, but are in a school. Would my right hon. Friend give an assurance that British troops will not leave Egypt until these men are rescued? Also, would he recommend to his colleagues that if these men continue to be interned in Egypt, some Egyptians should be interned?
    Mr. Hare: I do not think that I could make a statement on the lines suggested by my hon,. Friend, but I should like to make one thing clear. As I said in my Answer, I hope that the expression of opinion in this country and in the world will impress upon the Egyptian" that they are behaving in an utterly scandalous way.
    Mr. Paget: Would the Minister tell us what danger these gentlemen were in before British troops went into Egypt?
    Mr. Hare: That is not the Question which is on the Order Paper, so far as I know.
    Mr. Stokes: Arising out of the original Answer, may I ask the Secretary of State whether it was not implicit in the arrangements which were made for the occupation of the Base by the contractors' staff that, whatever might be the circumstances, the persons involved in the preservation and supervision of that Base were to receive proper treatment at the hands of the Egyptian Government?
    Mr. Hare: The right hon. Gentleman is quite correct, so far as I know.
    Mr. Dudley Williams: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the Secretary-General of the United Nations, when he was in Cairo recently, took any steps to safeguard these British subjects?
    Mr. Hare: I think that the trouble has been that the Swiss Government, who are the international authority acting on our behalf, have had the greatest difficulty in getting any information at all. I, personally, only got this information early this morning. Therefore, I do not think that the facts were known to the Secretary-General.

    Military Installations, Suez Area (Value)
    Mr. Haleasked the Secretary of State for War the estimated value of the military institutions in the Suez area taken over by the Egyptian Government; and what was the original cost.
    Mr. John Hare: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the military installations?
    Mr. Hale.
    Mr. Hare: The estimated value of those installations which until recently were operated by the Suez Base contractors is about £2 million. Their original cost is not readily available, but it may be roughly estimated at £9 million.
    Mr. Hale: Is the Secretary of State for War aware that the War Office itself made a statement in the Press, in which it estimated the present value at £40 million? How did this statement come to be made? And are we to regard this as a gratuitous addition to Colonel Nasser's heterogeneous collection of international arms; or does he regard it as a supplementation of the tanks, aeroplanes and destroyers with which right hon. Gentlemen opposite, when they were wooing Colonel Nasser, insisted on endowing him, in anticipation of a nuptial settlement?
    Mr. Hare: The hon. Member is mistaken. That is why I particularly asked him if it was to military installations that he referred. My Answer did not include the value of stores held in the installations. That is estimated at a figure of between £40 million and £50 million. I think that that is the figure which the hon. Member had in mind.
    Mr. Hale: But can the Minister say what kind of stores they are? Why did we leave £40 million worth of stores lying there after the evacuation?
    Mr. Hare: They are munitions, workshop installations and so on, all of which were extremely difficult to move.
    Mr. Strachey: Would not the Minister agree that his Answers to this and the previous Question completely show the total failure of the Government's action in one of its main purposes which, we were told, was to protect British life and British property in the Canal Zone? It has obviously done neither.
    Mr. Hare: The right hon. Gentleman can say what he likes, but we have stopped a war.

    Egypt (Israeli Attack)
    Mr. Haleasked the Secretary of State for War when his Department first received information of the intended Israeli attack upon Egypt; and what action was taken thereupon.
    Mr. John Hare: My Department received no advance information of the Israeli attack, and the second part of the Question does not therefore apply.
    Mr. Hale: Would the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries of his hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. H. A. Price), who told us that news of a planned Egyptian attack was received in September, and of his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister who, apparently, on 16th October, was discussing the matter with the French Government, when the decision was made to send contingents of French aircraft to drop napalm bombs upon Arab men, women and children; and was any notice taken of the possibility of blinding and burning women and children, and igniting British installations?
    Mr. Hare: All I can say is that the hon. Gentleman is merely repeating worthless gossip.
    Mr. Stokes: Always having regard to whether newspaper reports are correct or not, has the attention of the Secretary of State for War been drawn to the statements in Washington that the State Department has now said that it has evidence of British, French and Israeli collusion and co-operation before the Israeli action in Egypt?
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister cannot be asked about statements made in Washington unless they were made to

    1541
    Her Majesty's Government. The right hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) did not state that they were so made.
    Mr. Stokes: With great respect, Mr. Speaker, you will be aware that I tried to put down a Private Notice Question on this subject and you disallowed it. This is a matter of very great importance to the nation. These statements have been made, and I want to know from the Government whether they have paid any attention to those statements and whether they have any statement to make?
    Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Member's Private Notice Question was disallowed for precisely that reason. The Government are not responsible for any statement made by people in other countries unless the statement is a message from another Government to Her Majesty's Government. Then they can be asked about it. That is the rule about Questions. I did not make it, but I am bound to keep to it. That is why I had to disallow the right hon. Gentleman's Private Notice Question, and it is also the reason why, if it is not in order as a Private Notice Question, it is not in order as a supplementary question.
    Mr. Stokes: Of course, I accept that Ruling, Mr. Speaker, but am I to understand from that that only after a very tedious and delayed process are the British people, who are the only people who really matter in this connection so far as we are concerned, to be allowed to know—at the very end, when everybody else has discussed the matter?
    Mr. Speaker: There are other methods of discussing the matter apart from Parliamentary Questions.
    Mr. Paget: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This seems to be a very important Ruling indeed. Where a State Department or a Foreign Office abroad makes a statement, surely it has always been in order to ask the Government whether they have seen it and whether it is true? I am sure that I have seen that sort of Question asked on a large number of occasions.
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. and learned Member is mistaken, I think. It is not an important or new Ruling; it is a very old one. It has been adhered to in the House for a very long time. No doubt,
    1542
    with the assistance of the learned Clerks, an hon. Member can sometimes frame a Question so that it has some connection with Her Majesty's Ministers, but merely to ask whether a report of some statement made abroad is correct or not is not a proper subject for a Parliamentary Question. If the right hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes), as I advised him, had consulted about the form of the Question, it might be possible for him to get an answer. That I cannot say, but in the form in which he has asked it, I could not pass it.
    Mr. Stokes: While naturally accepting your verdict, Mr. Speaker, may I ask whether in the process of coming to your decision you also bore in mind the statement in the Press that French pilots manning French aeroplanes took part on the Israeli side against Egyptians? Surely that also shows collusion?
    Mr. Speaker: That is nothing to do with me. I did not take that into account because I did not hear it until the right hon. Gentleman uttered it. It would have nothing to do with the rules of order.
    Mr. Hale: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As the War Office now employs public relations officers, and as these public relations officers and other officers make statements to the Press on the events of the day, surely these public relations officers make the Minister responsible for their statements? Are we not, therefore, entitled to probe the question whether these statements are accurate or not? Are we not entitled to ask the Minister, when we see a two-column front page statement in the Manchester Guardian this morning, whether it is correct or not?
    Mr. Speaker: That is another question. The statement about which the right hon. Member for Ipswich was asking was, as he said, made by someone in America and not by a public relations officer at the War Office.
    Mr. Wigg: Further to the point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely the Government have a responsibility here if these French aircraft, as it is alleged, flew from a British airfield and were supplied with British petrol?
    Mr. Speaker: That is certainly not a point of order. There is nothing in this Question about French aircraft. I have never heard of them before in this connection.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: Surely the question is when the War Office received information of the intended Israeli attack upon Egypt. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) asked his question as a supplementary to that Question. What he did was to ask whether, in view of what had been published in America, the War Office could give further information by way of amplifying its reply to the original Question. Surely that is in order?
    Mr. Speaker: As the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) has said, the Question asked when the Secretary of State's Department first received information. The Minister answered that Question. There was then an attempt to tack on to that—I do not say it in any critical spirit—a question whether something said in America was true or not. That is why I had to intervene. I did not make the rule.

    Reservists (Release)
    Mr. Haleasked the Secretary of State for War what number of Army reservists have been released from emergency service since 2nd August, 1956.
    Mr. John Hare: Nine hundred and sixty-six have been released on compassionate grounds and 612 because they were required as key industrial or agricultural workers. In addition, some reservists were found to be medically unfit and were relegated again to the Reserve. The actual number will not be available for some days, but I will write to the hon. Member.
    Mr. Hale: I am much obliged for that information. Does that mean that 1,500 have been released because they should not have been called up at all, or that none have been released because the emergency is regarded as at an end?
    Mr. Hare: I hope to be able to say something about the future release policy in a statement at the end of Questions.

    United States Equipment (Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement)
    Mr. Swinglerasked the Secretary of State for War (1) if he will make a statement on the conditions under which the Army is entitled to use United States Military equipment supplied under the mutual security programme;
    1544
    (2) what representations he has received from the United States Government about the use of United States military equipment, supplied under the mutual security programme, in Army operations in Egypt; and what reply he has made;
    (3) what items of United States military equipment, supplied under the mutual security programme, have been used in Army operations in Egypt.
    Mr. John Hare: As my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence explained in answer to a Question by the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) on 14th November, these conditions are set out in the Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement of 1950 which was published as Command 7894. The equipment referred to by the hon. Member is inextricably intermingled with British equipment throughout our forces, and I cannot say what items provided under the programme may have been used for operations in Egypt.
    The United States Government issued a Press statement in Washington to the effect that the use of United States aid equipment was subject to restrictions, and I understand that a copy was sent to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence. I am not, however, aware that any more direct representations have been made to the Government on this matter.
    Mr. Swingler: Is the Secretary of State for War aware that the 1950 Agreement with the United States laid down that this equipment may be used only in accordance with defence plans formulated by N.A.T.O., recommended by the N.A.T.O. Council, and agreed to by the two contracting parties, and that otherwise it may not be used except with the prior consent of each contracting party? Is it not, therefore, clear that this equipment has been used in violation of this Agreement with the United States? What explanation has been afforded by Her Majesty's Government for their failure to ask for the prior consent of the American Government and their failure to maintain proper account of this equipment?
    Mr. Hare: I quite see what the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) is getting at. The difficulty, the House must believe, is that some of this equipment was in the Middle East; we cannot tell yet whether, in fact, any was used in Egypt. It is a most difficult question to answer.
    Brigadier Clarke: May I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War what quantity of arms and ammunition was sold by the Labour Government to Egypt during their term of office; and further may I ask if he does not think that the Opposition show enormous concern for Nasser and none for our own troops?
    Mr. Speaker: I cannot think that the present Secretary of State for War is responsible for what happened before he or his Government took office.
    Mr. Strachey: Will the Secretary of State for War please explain what answer his Government are going to make to the United States' representations on this matter? We fully appreciate that he cannot distinguish this equipment and whether it is being used or not; but, in that case, ought he to have undertaken the operations without consulting the United States, in direct contravention of this Agreement?
    Mr. Hare: I will draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence to what the right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) has just said.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE

    Milk (Half-pint Bottles)
    Sir L. Plummerasked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the proposed increase in the retail price of milk, he will introduce legislation to amend Section 7 (1) of the Sale of Food (Weights and Measures) Act, 1926, with a view to ensuring that a dairyman shall have milk in half-pint bottles available at all reasonable times.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. F. J. Erroll): No, Sir. It would be outside the scope of the Weights and Measures law to require a trader to keep milk available in any particular quantity.
    Sir L. Plummer: Is the Minister aware that a firm like the Express Dairy Company, a very wealthy firm, is now refusing to supply old-age pensioners with milk in half-pint bottles, and is he aware that that is a considerable hardship to people who have no mechanical means of keeping milk cool? If he has no power, will he at least ask his right hon. Friend to
    1546
    express to the company Her Majesty's Government's disapproval of this particularly harsh and mean action?
    Mr. Erroll: I will certainly draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture to what the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) has said.

    Soap Products and Synthetic Detergents
    Mr. Woodburnasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will take steps to ensure that packages and containers are required clearly to distinguish soap products as distinct from synthetic detergents.
    Mr. Erroll: No, Sir. I do not think that there is a public demand for this step, which would require legislation.
    Mr. Woodburn: Is the Minister aware that it is alleged that some of these articles are injurious to the hands and to limbs, whereas pure soap products do not have that injurious effect; and is it not desirable that people should be saved from possible dermatitis, if so caused?
    Mr. Erroll: The question, I think, is whether it is in fact so caused, and the health aspects are being studied by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health.

    Fabrics (Misdescription) Act, 1913
    Captain Duncanasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will introduce legislation to repeal the Fabrics (Misdescription) Act, 1913, which has the effect of discouraging manufacturers from developing non-inflammable textile materials, and introduce new legislation to encourage them to do so in co-operation with the British Standards Institution.
    Mr. Erroll: My right hon. Friend agrees that the provisions of this Act may need re-examination by the light of modern conditions, but he would prefer to await the results of the current consideration of textile flammability by the Committee of the British Standards Institution before reaching any conclusion on the point.
    Captain Duncan: May I ask my hon. Friend when the conclusions of that Committee will be reached, and when he can get on with this matter?
    Mr. Erroll: The Institution is making a very wide investigation, and I am sorry that I cannot give the information which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) requests.

    Oil Supplies, Scotland
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is yet in a position to state the effect which the recent restrictions in the use of oil and petrol are having on industry and employment in Scotland.
    Mr. Erroll: My information is that the recent restrictions on oil and petrol have not had any appreciable effect on industry or employment in Scotland.
    Mr. Hughes: Are the Board of Trade or the Government taking any steps or precautions to avoid the damage to industry and employment which is occurring in Scotland?
    Mr. Erroll: We have no information of any such damage occurring as yet.

  EGYPT

    Government's Action (Prime Minister's Correspondence)
    The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:
    Mr. LEWIS: To ask the Prime Minister, whether he will give details of the communications, resolutions and deputations he has received supporting and opposing the Government's action in Egypt.
    Mr. Lewis: May I first ask your permission, Mr. Speaker, to say how sorry we are to learn of the Prime Minister's indisposition, and to wish him well; and to say that if he finds the cares of office too heavy we should be only too pleased to give him permanent leave of absence?
    The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): I think I should be right to respond to the former part of the remarks made by the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis).
    I have been asked to reply to the Question.
    No, Sir. It is not my right hon Friend's practice to give details of his correspondence. And he must resist the temptation on this occasion.
    Mr. Lewis: On previous occasions when I have asked Questions similar to this, the Prime Minister has in fact given information as to the number of resolutions and protests which he has received. Can we take it that he does not want to do so now because the overwhelming majority of them are against the Government's action in Egypt?
    Mr. Butler: No. I said that my right hon. Friend resisted the temptation. It would, in fact, be in my right hon. Friend's interest to declare the nature of the correspondence which he has received.
    Mr. J. Griffiths: May I, on behalf of my hon. and right hon. Friends, say that we associate ourselves with my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) in expressing regret at the Prime Minister's illness and hope for his speedy recovery?
    Mr. Butler: I am sure my right hon. Friend will be very much gratified by the remarks of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on behalf of his hon. and right hon. Friends, and by the remarks of the hon. Member for West Ham, North, which I shall not hesitate to convey to my right hon. Friend.
    Mr. H. Wilson: Will the right hon. Gentleman say how many local Conservative associations have not yet replied to the urgent promptings of the Tory Central Office and sent telegrams?
    Mr. Butler: I am aware of some information which was published by the Conservative Central Office, which illustrates that over 1,000 telegrams alone forwarding resolutions in support of the Government's action, not only from Conservative branches, were received by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
    Mr. E. Johnson: May I ask my right hon. Friend if he is aware that a prominent member of the Labour Party in Manchester has now joined my association?

    British and French Troops
    Mr. Lewisasked the Prime Minister if he will now give further details of the temporary nature of the British occupation of Egyptian territory in the Suez Canal zone; and how soon

    1549
    after the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Egypt he will order the withdrawal of all British forces.
    Sir T. Mooreasked the Prime Minister if he will give an assurance that the British forces will remain in their present position on the Suez Canal until a United Nations force approved by the British and French Governments as to numbers, armaments and effectiveness is landed in Egypt; if he will seek a similar assurance from the French Government as regards their troops remaining in Egypt; and if he will convey these assurances to the Egyptian Government.
    Mr. A. Hendersonasked the Prime Minister what arrangements are being made for the withdrawal of British troops in Egypt, in view of the arrival of elements of the United Nations Police Force.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
    My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary is at present discussing in New York the arrangements for the replacement of British and French troops by a United Nations force.
    My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister stated in this House on 9th November that Her Majesty's Government were willing to hand over to the United Nations Force
    "As soon as the force is in a position effectively to discharge its tasks,…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT,9th November, 1956; Vol. 560, c. 422.]
    The French Foreign Minister made a similar statement to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Council of the Republic on 13th November. No doubt the Egyptian Government have noted these statements.
    Mr. Lewis: On the subject of the qualification stated by the Lord Privy Seal, relating to the time when the United Nations forces are in a position to carry out their job, may I ask who is going to decide that? Will it be the United Nations, as we hope will be the case, or will it be Her Majesty's Government? Can we have a categorical assurance from the Minister that he will abide by the United Nations decision on that particular point?
    Mr. Butler: Decisions on this matter must be made by Her Majesty's Government and the French Government, in consultation with the United Nations.
    Sir T. Moore: In view of the fact that this man Nasser wanted war with Israel, got his war, and was defeated, and now has the audacity to dictate or seek to dictate terms, will my right hon. Friend give an assurance to this House that we will not give way to any blackmail on his part?
    Mr. Butler: I trust that we shall not give way to blackmail from any source.
    Mr. J. Griffiths: Will the Lord Privy Seal give us an assurance—
    Mr. Nabarro: Put your hand on your heart.
    Mr. Griffiths: —that tomorrow or, at the latest, Thursday, he will indicate to us whether Her Majesty's Government have now decided to respond to the appeal and decision of the United Nations on withdrawing our troops? Since the Prime Minister last week promised that he would make a full statement on every aspect of the question this week, may I ask that when the Lord Privy Seal and the Government are considering the statement which they have promised to make to us on the situation in the Middle East, the right hon. Gentleman will deal specifically with the widespread belief and the persistent and continuing comments in the Press at home and abroad, which are causing deep anxiety in the country, that there is growing evidence of collusion between Israel, France and the United Kingdom? Does the Lord Privy Seal realise that these persistent comments cannot be allowed to continue without the Government making a clear statement about this?
    Mr. Butler: I was going to answer Question No. 50 by the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens), which, I thought, would implement the undertaking of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to make a statement. With your approval, Mr. Speaker, I will make that statement directly Question Time is over.
    Mr. Speaker: I think it is over now, The right hon. Gentleman can proceed with the answer to Question No. 50.

  MIDDLE EAST (SITUATION)
  The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:
  Mr. ROBENS: To ask the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement on the present position in the Middle East, with particular reference to the transfer of responsibilities of the Anglo-French forces to the United Nations forces in Egypt.
  Mr. R. A. Butler: May I then answer, with the permission of yourself, Mr. Speaker, and of the House, Question No. 50?
  Hon. Members will recall that last Thursday my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that in the earlier part of this week he hoped to be able to make a statement on the present position in the Middle East. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary is still engaged in discussions in New York. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has only just returned to New York from Egypt. My right hon. and learned Friend will no doubt be in early consultation with the Secretary-General over the arrangements for replacing British and French troops by an international force and upon developments in the situation generally.
  My right hon. and learned Friend is expected back in London the day after tomorrow, and I hope he may then be in a position to report to this House the latest information upon the situation. I would suggest that it would be better to await this information.
  Mr. Robens: We accept the situation as described by the Lord Privy Seal and that it may not be convenient before Thursday to make the full statement for which we asked last week. I would, however, like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will make perfectly clear in the statement the exact terms and conditions upon which the Government are prepared to withdraw their troops from Egypt.
  Mr. Butler: I would naturally wish the Government first to be in full possession of the results of the visit of the Secretary-General to Egypt, which we are only just receiving; and secondly, I would wish either myself or the Foreign Secretary to
  1552
  give a full account to the House of the situation as we then see it. I hope that it may be possible by Thursday afternoon, because I realise that Thursday afternoon is more suitable than Friday, but I certainly think that we ought to do it on the first occasion we can.
  Mr. P. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in earlier statements there has always been reference to an "effective" United Nations Police Force? Today, that word was missing. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the United Nations Force to which he is willing to hand over shall, in fact, be an effective force?
  Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. In answer to Question No. 46, I repeated the Prime Minister's words,
  "as soon as the force is in a position effectively to discharge its tasks."
  I said that purposely because I thought it was important.
  Mr. J. Griffiths: Will the right hon. Gentleman deal with the question of collusion, to which I referred earlier?
  Mr. Butler: I have no statement to make on that matter today, but I will note what the right hon. Gentleman has said.
  Mr. Henderson: Arising from the reply of the Lord Privy Seal to the question put from his own benches, may we have an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will leave it to the General Assembly of the United Nations to decide when the United Nations Police Force is effective and will not defy the decision of the United Nations on that basis?
  Mr. Hirst: Hon. Members opposite would leave it to Nasser and have done with it.
  Mr. Butler: In answering these questions, it is important to be quite clear what one is answering. When a degree of withdrawal is necessitated on behalf of the British and French forces, a degree of volition on behalf of the French and British Governments is at least reasonable. It is most important that I should make clear what I said before: that a decision as to the effectiveness of the Force must be made by Her Majesty's Government and the French Government, in consultation with the United Nations.
  Captain Waterhouse: Is it not a fact that, under the Charter of the United Nations, the Assembly has power only to recommend and no power to enforce a decision?
  Mr. Butler: That thought did cross my mind just now in answering the right hon. Gentleman opposite. It is important to realise the various powers of the Assembly and of the Security Council on this matter.
  Several Hon. Members—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We have not had the statement yet. We are not getting it until Thursday.

ARMY RESERVISTS AND REGULARS (RELEASE)
Mr. Hare: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement on the release of Army reservists.
A start can now be made with the release of recalled reservists and retained Regulars. The process will begin on Thursday next, 22nd November.
The rest of the reservists and retained Regulars must be kept in the Army for the time being, but, as my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal explained in the House on 13th November, no man will be kept longer than he has to be, and we shall carry out the process of release as quickly as we can without impairing our ability to carry out the tasks which lie immediately ahead of us.
Mr. Strachey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we welcome, of course, his announcement that the process of release has begun? May I ask him three questions about his statement? Do his words mean that the retained Regulars will be released before all, or the bulk, of the reservists have been released? If so, is this not apt to cause anomalies?
Secondly, will the right hon. Gentleman now, or later, explain why 20,000 men had to be called up in the Reserve when, as we know, approximately 400,000 men were in the Army and 250,000 of them were in this country? We have never been able to get any explanation of this.
Thirdly, why cannot the release of the reservists go much more rapidly, in view
1554
of the cease-fire and of the replacement of our forces in Port Said by United Nations forces—[HON. MEMBERS: "No"]—to which the Lord Privy Seal has just referred?
Mr. Hare: There will be no question of the retained Regulars being released before the reservists. As I have tried to point out in my statement, we will release men whether they are retained Regulars or reservists if we do not have an immediate job for them. Therefore, the release will apply to both reservists and retained Regulars. I suggest that the second question, why we called up 20,000 reservists, might be a subject for debate on the Army Estimates or an occasion of that kind. What was the right hon. Gentleman's third point?
Mr. Strachey: Why the release could not be much more general and speeded up.
Mr. Hare: We are making a reasonable start. I do not want to try to raise people's hopes, but I think that hon. Members, on both sides, will find that we will make a reasonable start. I will certainly keep the House informed as to progress.
Mr. Royle: Will the right hon. Gentleman give special consideration to the Category II men, who, at the completion of their National Service, are given no information about their liability and, in fact, receive no pay during that liability?
Mr. Hare: I certainly will bear in mind what the hon. Member says. The whole point of this scheme is that we could have held back and released special categories, but that would have been unfair in keeping on men whom we did not really need.
Mr. Ramsden: Will my right hon. Friend consider an age and service group scheme for releases, like that which obtained at the end of the last war?
Mr. Hare: I do not think that that applies in this case. All the reserves were called up at about the same time, and I do not think that the circumstances of this present call-up applied to the schemes employed for getting people into civilian life immediately after the war.
Mr. Stokes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we are all delighted that after pressure from this side of the House

1555
he has at last made a start? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Well, hon. Members opposite asked for such a remark as that. What I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman is this. Can he be a little bit more explicit? Does he mean that, in the main, reservists serving in this country and in Germany will be released within the immediate future?
Secondly, in support of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) has just said, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he does not think that an explanation is due to the public from the Government for having to call up 20,000 reservists when they had about 400,000 men at their disposal, 250,000 of whom were at their disposal in this country?
Does he not think that the Opposition's Motion of censure which was on the Notice Paper a week or so ago, but which was removed owing to the circumstances—[Laughter.] Yes; it was removed precisely because the Government made a mess of things. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that the demand made in that Motion for an investigation by a Select Committee of this House is fully justified?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is still demanded? [HON. MEMBERS: "How many more questions? "] I am going to finish. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that is still demanded by the people of this country, and that they will not be satisfied with anything less?
Mr. Hare: I cannot agree with either the beginning or the end of the right hon. Gentleman's rather long statement. I believe that Members on both sides of the House are anxious to release reservists of whom we have no need, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that it has not needed any pressure upon me at the War Office to perceive that fact. What the right hon. Gentleman said at the end, which, I think is a matter that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) referred to, may be debated in the House.
As to the business of the speed of release, it will be possible to release people at home or in B.A.O.R. more quickly than those serving in the Middle East or farther afield, but the right hon.
1556
Gentleman will understand that it is not possible to release certain troops at home straight away, for they have to check their equipment and put it back into store. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] All these things take time. I am particularly anxious not to disappoint people, but I do hope that within three weeks we shall have been able to release about 3,000 reservists and about 3,000 retained Regulars.
Mr. Stokes Mr. Stokes rose—
Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order. Is there any means, Mr. Speaker, by which the interests of private Members may be protected from the depredations on Parliamentary time of Socialist Privy Councillors seeking places in the Shadow Cabinet?
Mr. Speaker: Order. Does the right hon. Gentleman wish to ask a question?
Mr. Stokes: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I do not mind what the hon. Member said in that interruption.
I want to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he really thinks that the speed of demobilisation is quick enough. I remember that when I was told I was to be demobilised it did not take me three weeks to check my kit. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, in all seriousness, can he assure us that while the demobilisation of men in this country and Germany will be speeded up steps will also be taken to replace reservists who are now overseas by Regular serving soldiers from other units?
Mr. Hare: I can only repeat what I have already said, that we intend to carry out the process as quickly as possible; but I do not want to mislead people. The estimates which I have given are very conservative. We hope to do better.
Mr. Gresham Cooke: If it becomes necessary to recall these reservists again during the present emergency, will a further Proclamation be necessary?
Mr. Speaker: Is not that a hypothetical question?
Mr. Shurmer: In view of the right hon. Gentleman's statement about the releasing of about 3,000 out of 20,000 reservists in three weeks' time, can he promise, seeing that we are very near Christmas, that

1557
many of these reservists, if they are then still in the Army messing about, will be allowed to go home on Christmas leave, to be recalled if necessary?
Mr. Hare: I have every sympathy, as I am sure all hon. Members of the House have, with all those concerned, but we must not mislead people by raising their hopes. I have purposely tried to understate these estimates.

OIL SUPPLIES (RATIONING)
The Minister of Fuel and Power (Mr. Aubrey Jones): By your leave, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement.
In view of the continued uncertainties of the situation in the Middle East, the Government have decided that further measures are necessary to reduce oil consumption. The broad purpose of these measures which will affect all the main petroleum products, is to make good an estimated shortfall of 25 per cent. in United Kingdom supplies. The measures have been designed to maintain industrial production to the maximum possible extent. They fall under three main headings.
First, a statutory rationing scheme for motor fuels, that is, motor spirit and diesel oil used in road vehicles, will come into operation on 17th December. I have today made the necessary Order.
Ration books for private motor vehicles will be made available at main Post Offices and local taxation offices from this Thursday, 22nd November. There will be a basic ration with limited supplementary allowances for really essential purposes. Coupons for goods and public service vehicles will be issued by the regional transport commissioners of the Ministry of Transport and for farming, industrial and miscellaneous uses by my regional petroleum officers.
Public passenger transport consumption is to be reduced on average by 10 per cent., the cuts varying widely according to the type of service.
Secondly, for non-industrial central heating the present cut of 10 per cent. will be increased from 1st December to one-third on gas-diesel oil and 25 per cent. on fuel oil. Hospitals, nursing homes and similar buildings will continue
1558
to be wholly exempted and the further cut will not be applied to schools, but all will be expected to make every possible economy.
Thirdly, for industrial purposes, the present cut of 10 per cent. in gas-diesel oil will be increased from 1st January to 20 per cent. Minimum requirements for the railways and for coal production will be maintained, but diesel oil for agriculture and fishing vessels, which have hitherto been supplied in full will be cut by 10 per cent.
Thanks to the substantial savings that can be made in ships' bunkers and by the Central Electricity Authority, I do not propose at present to increase the 10 per cent. cut on fuel oil for industry. I must warn the House, however, that further cuts in fuel oil may in time become unavoidable.
Hon. Members: Resign.
Mr. Callaghan: I am quite sure that the acting Prime Minister will want to afford time to the House to debate this latest vindication of the Government's policy, but in case there is any reluctance on his part may I ask him now whether he will afford facilities to us for an early debate?
Meantime, I should like to ask one or, two questions. What is the basic ration to be? The statement did not contain that information?
Secondly, why is the Minister estimating on a basis of a cut of 25 per cent. in out' supplies when, according to all the estimates that have been given, we are expecting a cut of 45 per cent.? Does the right hon. Gentleman anticipate being able to maintain the basic ration at this level? If so, for how long?
Finally, in view of the gross mishandling of our national affairs over the last few months, would it not have been appropriate if this statement had contained an apology to the people of Britain and of Western Europe?
Mr. R. A. Butler: On the question of business, I understand that the Order will be laid tomorrow, and I suggest that we then indulge in the usual conversations in order to arrange a time when we can discuss this matter on the Order itself. That will be the most appropriate Parliamentary way of doing it.
Mr. J. Griffiths: I take it that the right hon. Gentleman understands that we shall want adequate time to discuss this grave statement.
Mr. Butler: I do not underestimate the gravity of the statement. That is precisely why my right hon. Friend has made it today. It is most important that people should realise the situation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"]—and also the steps that the Government have in mind to deal with it. I am convinced that we shall have public support in facing up to our difficulties.
Mr. Jones: I should like to reply to the two questions which were specifically addressed to me by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan). First, I ought perhaps to add that full details of the whole scheme will be available in the Vote Office this afternoon. The basic ration will be equal to 200 miles a month, whereas the former ration, in the former rationing period, was equal to 90 miles a month.
I ought perhaps to explain that there is one very crucial difference between this rationing scheme and the old rationing scheme. The old scheme had a relatively low basic allowance with large numbers of supplementary allowances. This scheme, as I have indicated, will have a not so low basic allowance but fewer and more limited supplementary allowances. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] Because, otherwise, the administrative costs of the scheme would be far greater than they are.
As to the second question, on the extent of the shortage, I recognise, of course, that it is the professional occupation of hon. Members opposite to make things appear worse than they are, but it is not right to assert, as the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East did, that our supplies are down by 45 per cent.
Mr. Callaghan Mr. Callaghan indicated dissent.
Mr. Jones: If the hon. Member did not do so, I must have misunderstood him. The figure of 45 per cent. was used.
The reduction in supplies from Middle Eastern sources is certainly less than 40 per cent., and the reduction can in part be made good by supplies from the Western hemisphere.
The hon. Member also asked how long the reduction was to be maintained. I
1560
cannot peer into the future. Everything depends on events. Ration books are being issued initially for a period of four months, but the situation will, of course, be kept under constant review.
Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: Would my right hon. Friend agree that his statement, combined with the present coal prospects, makes an even stronger case for pressing ahead at the fastest possible pace with the development of atomic energy?
Mr. Jones: I accept that entirely. As I think I indicated to the House the other day, I hope before the end of the year to be making a statement on that subject.
Mr. Hamilton: In view of the very disturbing statement which the Minister has made, and taking it in conjunction with the statement made by the Secretary of State for War, will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to have consultations with his right hon. Friend, because many miners called up as reservists are still digging in their heels in the Army, doing absolutely nothing, while we are wanting coal?
Mr. Jones: I will certainly look into that.
Mr. Nabarro: Will my right hon. Friend clarify two points about the rationing of motor spirit? First, can he give the House an assurance that branded petrol will continue and that there is to be no return to pool petrol? Secondly, can he tell the House whether it is his intention to require commercial vehicles to use red petrol, as in the last phase of the previous rationing scheme, or whether all motor spirit for private cars and commercial vehicles will be in its natural colour?
Mr. Jones: I can certainly give my hon. Friend the assurance for which he asked in the first part of his question
As to the second part, there is no question, for the time being at any rate, of red or coloured petrol but, of course, the situation will be kept under review.
Mr. Wade: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what steps have been taken to define the term "essential purposes", so that the general public may know what is covered by that expression?
Mr. Jones: The hon. Member had better address a Question to me after

1561
having studied the full details of the scheme which are now available in the Vote Office.
Sir R. Grimston: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that this announcement shows the extent to which our economy could be controlled by the whim of a Nasser in unfettered control of the Canal?
Hon. Members: Answer.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members should not demand an answer where there is an inference that any hon. Member can draw or not.
Mr. T. Williams: Can the Minister say whether, before deciding upon the reduction of diesel oil for agricultural purposes, the Minister of Agriculture was consulted? If so, is he satisfied that it would not interfere materially with winter operations on the farms?
Mr. Jones: The answer is "Yes" to both questions.
Mr. H. Fraser: As the flow of oil is vital to this country, would not my right hon. Friend agree that if needs be, and if dollars be the shortage, he should consider a reduction of tobacco purchases by this country in America?
Mr. Jones: I must respect my Departmental confines. That is a question which must be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr. Ernest Davies: Is it not ridiculous to reduce the allowance to public transport by 10 per cent. in view of the fact that there will be a far greater demand on public transport as a result of rationing?
Mr. Jones: As I said in my statement, the reduction, or "cut," which is the word that we have accepted, for public transport will vary widely as between different forms of usage. For public bus services the cut will be relatively light, but for coach services the cut, of course, will be a heavier one. The 10 per cent. is an average for all purposes.
Mr. Patrick Maitland: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that these measures also illustrate the vital urgency of clearing the Canal?
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order, order. Again, this is an inference, which one can draw or not as one pleases.
Mr. Callaghan: May we not have an answer from the right hon. Gentleman to this very important question? Will he not convey to his Cabinet colleagues that the quickest way to get the Canal open is to bring the British and French troops out of Egypt?
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is four o'clock. We are to have an early debate on this matter.

NEW MEMBER SWORN
John Meredith Temple, esquire, for Chester.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Proceeding on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

EMERGENCY LAWS (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)
4.2 p.m.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Major Gwilym Lloyd-George): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty under section eight of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, praying that the said Act, which would otherwise expire on the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, be continued in force for a further period of one year until the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.
There are three Motions on the Order Paper in my name, Mr. Speaker, and two in the name of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply and as is customary. Sir, I ask your indulgence for the debate to take place on this first Motion, and thereafter to take briefly the other four Motions.
Mr. Speaker: That course has become customary. I should like to know whether the Opposition agrees to it on this occasion.
Mr. Douglas Jay: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I think that that would be convenient.
Mr. Leslie Hale: On a point of order. It was impossible to hear what was said, Mr. Speaker. As I understand, some arrangements are being made for future discussion. On previous occasions it was agreed that there should be something in the nature of Second Reading speeches permissible on the whole of the three Motions. Can we take it that those of us who want to deal with any specific or detailed points on any Motion may rise and seek to catch your eye, when each Motion is called for the vote?
Mr. Speaker: Yes, that is what has been done in past years. A general discussion has been held to cover all the points that could be raised on the Motions individually, but I shall have to put the Question on each Motion separately to the House. If an hon. Member rises, he will catch my eye.
Major Lloyd-George: As the House is aware, it is necessary for the Government to come to Parliament every year for
1564
approval of the continuance of a number of Defence Regulations and emergency provisions which would otherwise expire on 10th December. In accordance with custom, we have presented a White Paper on the continuance of emergency legislation. In that White Paper hon. Members will find a list of the powers which we propose should be continued, and an indication of the methods to secure continuance under the various enactments with which the five Motions are concerned.
In previous years I have given an account of the progress we have made since 1951 in disposing of these wartime powers. I do not propose to do that again at any length this afternoon, but I should like to mention briefly the following facts. When we came into office, in 1951, there were 215 Regulations. In December last that number had fallen to 69. At present, the number is 67. We now propose to the House that only 58 should be renewed, of which two-thirds are formal and ancillary provisions.
The Regulations which have been revoked during the year are Regulation 60D, which was revoked by the Aliens Employment Act of 1955, and Regulation 58A, which conferred power to regulate the engagement of workers by employers. In addition, we now propose that the nine surviving Defence (Sale of Food) Regulations should not be renewed, as their provisions have been incorporated in the Food and Drugs Act of 1955 and in the Food and Drugs (Scotland) Act of 1956.
An Order will shortly be placed before the House revoking Regulation 60A and paragraph (2) of Regulation 59, whose provisions relating to safety and welfare in mines and quarries will be replaced when the Mines and Quarries Act, 1954, is brought into operation on 1st January next. There will also be an end of the Sugar Industry Act, 1942, which is renewed under the third Motion, by 31st March, 1957.
As I told the House last year, it is broadly true that the powers now remaining cannot be given up until Parliament replaces them by permanent legislation. For this purpose, a number of Measures, some of them presenting points of great difficulty, need to be prepared and allotted a place within the legislative programme, Inevitably this process must be slower

1565
than the outright revocation of powers which are no longer needed.
Last year I expressed the hope that Regulations 50A and 56 would be dispensed with during the Session, and that Regulation 26 of the Defence (Agriculture and Fisheries) Regulations might be revoked. Unfortunately, Parliamentary time has not yet been found for proposed legislation on water supplies which would replace Regulations 50A and 56.
As to Regulation 26 of the Defence (Agriculture and Fisheries) Regulations, it has long been obsolete in England and Wales, but has still to be preserved in force for Scotland until the amendments to the schemes of the Scottish Milk Marketing Boards have been made. That has taken longer than we expected, but it should be completed within a few months.
At this stage, let me remind the House of the statement made by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade on 20th June this year, in a Written Answer to a Question about the committee on the use of unpatented inventions for defence purposes. The Report of the Howitt Committee was published on that date, and my right hon. Friend informed the House that he proposed to discuss its recommendations with industrial organisations and to give effect to them as soon as it was found practicable to do so.
That will mark the end of the Defence (Patents, Trade Marks, etc.) Regulations. So far as we can see at present, we shall be left at this time next year with, at most, 56 Defence Regulations, of which 35 may be described as ancillary and formal.
There are only 21 Regulations which may be called substantive, of which 13 are in the Defence (General) Regulations, and 8 in the other codes. I should, perhaps, say a word about the main groups of these substantive Regulations.
Regulation 46, dealing with the control of trade by sea, and Regulation 55, giving power to control import and export transactions abroad and ship construction, are needed in accordance with international agreements to control the supply of strategic goods to the Soviet bloc. China, North Korea and North Viet Nam. I expect there will be general agreement
1566
that these powers should be retained at the present time.
Mr. Hale: Certainly not.
Major Lloyd-George: Well, nearly general agreement.
Mr. Hale: I doubt it.
Major Lloyd-George: Then let us say that it will be general minus one. I think that most people will agree with my view of the situation.
Regulation 55 and the related Regulations 55AA and 55AB are also used for the maintenance of certain economic controls. Orders made under the Regulations impose the very necessary restrictions on hire purchase or hiring of articles, and, as stated in the Gracious Speech, we propose during the present Session to introduce permanent legislation on this subject.
Apart from this, the scope of the controls is limited to strategic goods and to a few other commodities such as coal, iron and steel scrap, paper, some foodstuffs, and, of course, oil. The House has just heard my right hon. Friend the Minister for Fuel and Power speak about the way in which he proposes to control the distribution of oil in the present period of shortage.
Mr. Gerald Nabarro: Does that mean that it would be within the scope of our deliberations this afternoon to debate in detail the proposals for the rationing of petrol and oil?
Major Lloyd-George: It is not for me to say, but I should have thought that it was entirely out of order. This is the method which is used. I have just quoted one or two commodities for which these Regulations are used.
Mr. Speaker: If I may express an opinion, the real question here is the granting of powers to the Government. It might be advanced as an illustration, or example, that the Government should not get these powers because it might be said, "See what they have done with petrol," or an argument in that style, but it would be out of order to go into the merits or demerits of the details of the scheme. It could be mentioned as a reason for denying these powers in general to the Government, but the merits or demerits cannot be canvassed or discussed in any detail.
Mr. Jay: Further to that point, Mr. Speaker. Since the Order restricting the distribution of petroleum products will be made under Regulation 55, which the Government are asking us to continue, presumably it is reasonable—I agree that it would probably be wrong to go into detail—to argue up to a point that the general situation is such that there is a need to introduce the restrictions effecting petroleum.
Mr. Speaker: The actual rationing of motor car fuel is complicated by the further fact that an Order has apparently been laid to deal with it. That can, of course, be prayed against, and we could not allow a discussion which was anticipating such a normal procedure.
Mr. Jay: But you would agree, Mr. Speaker, that that Order is laid under Regulation 55 and that, therefore, some—general, I agree—arguments would be legitimate?
Mr. Speaker: I think that a general argument would, but a detailed argument ought to be kept for the Order itself.
Mr. Hale: Might I draw your attention to this point, Mr. Speaker? It would be better if we knew the scope of the debate to begin with. According to page 47 of the Defence Regulations, Section 2 of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, gives the Government power to control prices.
There are several points on that. The first one at the moment is: is it wise and necessary to give a Government of this kind power to do anything? Secondly, is it worth while giving the Government newer to control prices if they decline to use those powers? The third, and most important, point is: is there not a necessity for the control of prices at this time of increase in the cost of living, and ought we, therefore, not to take this opportunity of urging upon the Government the necessity for using the powers for which they are today asking?
Mr. Speaker: I should not like to rule on an argument in advance, but, in general, the question really at issue on this Motion is whether or not the Government should have these powers. As I say, I think it might be relevant to mention this or that Regulation as a reason why the powers in general should or should not be renewed, but the actual
1568
details of any proposed Regulation are out of order.
Mr. Nabarro: Before my right hon. and gallant Friend resumes, might I ask him a question? It is not a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: As I have been asked to intervene about these matters, perhaps I might just be allowed to add this.
I regret to say that I was in error in my reply just now to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale). I can only allow a general discussion on the first Motion on the assumption that it will cover the whole field of all five Motions which are before us. Otherwise, if I stick to the order I shall have to proceed piecemeal. A view having been expressed by the Home Secretary, and it having been assented to by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), that is the course that we must adopt. If we have this general discussion, I must then put the Questions to the House, but the other Motions cannot be debated again.
Mr. Nabarro: Before my right hon. and gallant Friend proceeds, might I ask him a question? The Order relating to petrol and oil referred to in the earlier statement by the Minister of Fuel and Power is not yet available in the Vote Office. Can my right hon. and gallant Friend say under which Defence Regulation, and which section, the general Orders for both petrol and oil are to be made?
Major Lloyd-George: That would be under Regulation 55. I cannot tell my hon. Friend the section.
Mr. Hale: It would have had to be mentioned every year for five years.
Major Lloyd-George: No, Sir. When it was first introduced, it was for five years anyway. There was to be yearly renewal after the first five years.
We have done a good deal to get rid of these Regulations. I do not want to get into any controversy about those which have gone. I want to explain about the ones which remain.
I was referring just now to Regulation 55, which deals with raw materials, including, among others, oil. It should not be forgotten that it also deals with

1569
coal, iron and steel scrap, paper and a good many other things not affected by the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power.
I am very glad to have this opportunity of announcing, with the approval of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, that we have decided to give up the control of tinplate. This control has been used to allocate the inadequate supplies of tinplate between consumers at home and between the home and export markets.
Now that production at the new strip mills has increased so much, there will be enough tinplate for all consumers at home, and there will be more also for the export market. For instance, production this year will be, I am told, about 925,000 tons, but in 1957 it is expected to be 1,125,000 tons, an increase of about 20 per cent. I think that, in these circumstances, the House will agree that the control of distribution is unnecessary and undesirable.
Another group of—
Mr. J. T. Price: Before the right hon. and gallant Gentleman leaves the point about tinplate, which is a very interesting one, can he say what is the amount of tinplate for the canning industry still coming from dollar sources in the North American continent? Does his announcement mean that the industry in this country will be able to carry on next year without any of those imports at all? I know that a considerable amount of tin is being imported from North America at the moment.
Major Lloyd-George: Speaking without the record by my side, I should have thought that it was the other way round, remembering how great our trade with North America and Canada in tinplate used to be. Sometimes, when I was Minister of Food, we had very great shortages, even for our own food export, though I think that that has now completely disappeared. I cannot give the information for which the hon. Gentleman asks, because I have not got it with me; but I will see whether it can be given to him later.
Mr. Price: I know that I cannot debate the subject at this stage and can only
1570
make a passing reference to it. However, I know that the biggest manufacturers of tin cans and boxes in this country are not able to maintain their production entirely on the basis of home-produced plate and that home-produced plate is being supplemented by considerable imports from the North American continent.
Major Lloyd-George: I should not like to argue with the hon. Gentleman because I have not the figures, but I was very surprised to hear what he said because my difficulty, when I was Minister of Food, was to get enough tin for our own food containers. I should be very surprised to hear that there was a very large dollar import of tinplate, because we had very severe restrictions to deal with that. Now that the new strip mills have come in, the increase has been enormous. As I have said, we shall be getting an increase of 20 per cent. between this year and next.
Another group of Defence Regulations is formed by 50, 51 and 51A, 52 and 62, which relate to land. Fresh legislation will be needed before they can be disposed of, but the extent of their use continues to decrease. As I did last year, I will cite Regulation 51 as an example. This Regulation is at present needed to acquire land and premises at short notice for defence purposes or for opencast coal mining, a very important part of our economy at present. It may no longer be used for taking possession of land for housing.
The number of buildings retained under requisition by Government Departments under this Regulation and under provisions of the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act, 1945, had fallen from 3,858 in 1951 to 676 on 30th September, 1955; and on 30th September this year the figure was only 376. This is a reduction of 90 per cent. on the 1951 figure and of about 44 per cent. on last year's figure. In fact, since 1945 about 996 per cent. of the premises then held on requisition have been released.
The remaining two Defence (General) Regulations 58AA and 59 relate to employment, and are used for the maintenance of the Industrial Disputes Tribunal and to give exemption from certain provisions of the Factories Acts which are not flexible enough to meet

1571
present day needs. Paragraph (2) of Regulation 59, which had similar provisions for mines and quarries, is no longer necessary and will be revoked on 1st January next.
There remain the supplementary Codes. The Defence (Agriculture and Fisheries) Regulations provide for marketing of bacon and livestock, and for the modification of the milk marketing schemes. As I said earlier, Regulation 26, which deals with milk, is now required in Scotland only and should be revoked during this year. The other provisions must be continued until permanent marketing arrangements have been worked out with those concerned and, where necessary, given legislative effect.
The Defence (Finance) Regulations have one remaining substantive provision, which is needed to supplement the existing powers of exchange control in Hong Kong and to control certain assets owned by residents outside the sterling area. The Defence (Armed Forces) Regulations have a solitary provision enabling members of the Armed Forces to be employed on agricultural work and other work of urgent national importance.
The continuance of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, which is the subject of the first of the Motions, also extends for a year powers under three other Acts. Of these, the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act enables requisitioned property to be temporarily retained. The powers under the Ministry of Supply Act, 1939, are needed to enable the Board of Trade to continue the winding up of their trading operations in raw materials. The Board of Trade also needs these powers in order to continue trading in imported jute goods until measures to safeguard the United Kingdom industry under conditions conducive to efficiency can be worked out. The Supplies and Services (Defence Purposes) Act, 1951, makes possible the temporary closure and diversion of highways for defence purposes.
The third of the Motions is for the presentation of an Address asking for the continuing of provisions relating to wheat, land drainage and sugar. The land drainage provisions are no longer needed, but cannot be repealed independently. The wheat provisions are needed until legislation for the repeal of the
1572
Wheat Acts, 1932 to 1939, and certain other enactments relating to home-grown cereals have been passed. The sugar provisions maintain interim arrangements for the industry until the Sugar Act, 1956, has come into force, that is, partially on 1st January, 1957, and finally on 31st March, 1957.
I hope I have made clear to the House the continued intention of the Government to do away with this residue of emergency legislation. We claim that what is left—and it is really quite a slim volume now—comprises, by and large, the matter on which proposals for permanent legislation should be put before the House. It is objected to less for its substance than for its origin. But before it can be replaced by permanent legislation, a great deal of work must be done in the Departments and there must be the fullest consultation with all the interests affected. When all that has been done, time must be found for the House itself to consider and pass its judgment upon the important issues raised.
I can assure the House that the powers still surviving have been gone through with a fine comb to see what is the minimum that must be kept. The Government are satisfied that there is a real need to continue the Regulations and emergency enactments referred to in the Motions, and I invite the House to agree that the continuance of these powers for a further year is warranted.
4.28 p.m.
Mr. Douglas Jay: The Home Secretary hardly seems to have told the country as much as it will want to know about the way in which at any rate the major economic controls covered by the Motion are to be used in the next twelve months. He rather spoke as if the country had now more or less overcome its economic difficulties, experienced since the war, which gave rise to these controls.
The truth is that in these last few weeks the Government have got themselves and the country into such a disastrous plight, economically as well as politically, that a number of these controls will be very necessary indeed in the year beginning on 10th December. It might have been fully consistent with the present Government's reputation for foresight if they had chosen this moment to

1573
get rid of the remaining controls altogether. At any rate, we are glad that the doctrine of Conservative freedom, which has already cost us 25 per cent. of our gold reserves since 1954, has not been carried quite as far as this.
This Motion, as the Home Secretary said, will keep in force for twelve months Regulations such as 55, for controlling and regulating industrial processes generally, and 55AB, for controlling prices. A far-reaching use of these powers may very well be likely in the next twelve months, as the Minister of Fuel and Power was rather reluctantly forced to admit at Question Time today. For, whether or not we regard the Government's general conduct of affairs in the past month as a great military and diplomatic triumph, it is certain that the country is now faced, for as long as the Suez Canal is blocked, with a shortage of oil which the Minister estimated at about 25 per cent.
To estimate the extent to which rationing of oil and other materials may have to be used, we have to realise that, even to keep supplies of oil at that level and to make the cut not greater than 20 per cent. or 25 per cent., we shall have to find, according to the Economist, extra dollars estimated at the rate of £50 million for every three months. Incidentally, we are entering on this grim squeeze period with the reserve of gold and dollars £30 million less than it was even a year ago, and £260 million less than it was in 1951. What a comment that is in itself on the electioneering activities of the Lord Privy Seal in 1954 and 1955 in throwing away so many controls and such a large proportion of our gold and dollar reserves. We could now do with many of the controls and a good deal of the gold which he threw away in those imprudent years.
I very much hope that the Government now agree that the powers contained in these Regulations, and particularly 55 and 55AB, will be needed in this next year for at least three main reasons. I would like to know whether they agree. The first reason is to eke out our short supplies of oil. The second is to prevent the remaining oil shortage, which will be unavoidable, from spreading disruption of employment and production more readily throughout industry. The third
1574
is to prevent rises in the cost of living, due to shipping shortages and higher freights, from starting a new wage-price spiral.
Therefore, we are entitled to ask the Government—I see a lot of their representatives present—to tell the country what they are planning to do about this situation and how they are planning to use these powers. There is a great deal of nervousness in the country about production and employment.
First, as to the major question of oil. The Minister made a very grave statement today which, so far as I was able to follow it without seeing it in print, announced a heavy cut in the supplies of oil for transport and a considerable cut in the use of oil for industry, particularly for heating and to a lesser degree for industrial fuel. It is agreed that there will have to be another discussion about petrol and oil rationing on the Order which will shortly come before the House. We shall then have to examine the whole subject in detail. I therefore content myself today with one or two general comments. Frankly, the way the Government now conduct their affairs makes it difficult for us to conduct our discussions in an orderly fashion in this House. We had, for instance, no notice until Question Time that a major statement about petrol rationing was to be made.
May I, in passing, suggest to the representative of the Ministry of Fuel and Power—I think there is one here—that when he prints the petrol coupons he might like to print a label for sticking on windscreens saying "Thanks to the Conservatives"? [Interruption.] The plight that the Government have got into, and their hurried restoration of petrol rationing, show how fortunate it is, even for the Government, that they have left some of these control powers on the Statute Book, despite the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro).
Mr. Raymond Gower: Is the right hon. Gentleman really saying that if there had been a Labour Government at this time and the trouble in Egypt had developed, they would, in some miraculous way, have avoided the troubles in the Middle East?
Mr. Jay: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not provoke me into getting out

1575
of order. I am quite convinced that no Government of this country for 400 years could have acted as insanely over Egypt as the Government that is now sitting on the Government Front Bench.
Mr. R. T. Paget: Before my right hon. Friend leaves that point, could he elicit information how the Evening Standard knew all about the proposed petrol rationing before we did?
Mr. Jay: That is a relevant point, but later in the debate, if my hon. and learned Friend catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, he will no doubt be able to develop it. I will endeavour to remain strictly within the rules of order.
What a judgment it is on the Government's powers of foresight that all these powers of rationing petroleum products were thrown away, removed from the Statute Book altogether, during the Lord Privy Seal's electioneering frolics during 1954 when he was "investing in success," and have now to be hastily restored, How particularly revealing it is that Order 1693, which comes before the House under Regulation 55 and which we are to discuss later, was made only on 31st October, 1956. Until that moment it had apparently never occurred to the Government, who presumably knew what their own policy was, that that policy over Suez might lead the country into a disastrous oil shortage.
The whole mechanism of petrol rationing was broken up, and it now has to be hastily restored in order to rescue the country from the plight caused by the Government's own insane foreign policy. Can we have a little more information—industry needs it badly—either in this debate or somehow or other, about how the new powers will be used in rationing industrial fuel oil, apart from motor spirit?
The Home Secretary said with glee, as if we were moving on to some plateau of eternal peace and prosperity, that he was now getting rid of the powers over tinplate. Was this decision taken before the Government had landed us in this shortage of oil? Unless I am mistaken the steel and tinplate works at Margam—or a very large part of it—is running on oil and not coal. I think that goes
1576
also for the other two works at Llanelly and Swansea. Is it wise to assume, with oil shortages threatening, that we have passed beyond the period of difficulty for tinplate?
Mr. Nabarro: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that tin-plate imports have steadily been declining, in any event, during the last eighteen months. In 1955 they totalled £7,050,215 while in the first ten months of this year they had sunk to £3,400,000, a reduction of more than 50 per cent. In the natural process of things tinplate imports would disappear, as the Home Secretary has pointed out. Surely there is no need to retain these cumbersome powers for longer than is necessary.
Mr. Jay: I quite recognise what the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, but it rather confirms my point. The reason why imports have declined is that Margam, Trostre and Velindre have been coming into full production. As all those works, or at any rate a large part of them, are run on oil, we are entitled to ask whether the Government took the oil shortage into account before coming to this decision.
The country is entitled to more information about these matters, because industrial production, quite apart from the Suez crisis and thanks to the economic policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the past twelve months, is running at a level lower than a year ago. That is what the Chancellor called "considerable progress" in the last speech which he made. Unless there is to be some system of priorities—not merely rationing—and allocation for industrial fuels, and perhaps other raw materials, which would come under Regulation 55, are we not in danger of bottlenecks which will make our industrial production even lower in this coming year?
The Financial Times, speaking of the Midlands only, yesterday said:
"The threat to production and industry is now more serious."
Surely we all agree that it would be a disaster in our present situation if industrial production as a whole were to fall even lower than the present dismally low level.
Can we be told rather more than the Home Secretary told us—and this is

1577
relevant to a point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget)—about what the Government's intentions are in asking for the continuance of Regulation 55AB on price control? Have they now had a change of heart about price control? Do they mean at long last, now that they are continuing this power, to make a real effort to check the rise in living costs? For instance, will this power for which they are now asking be used in the next year to resume control over the price of bread?
It appears that the price of bread is going up again, also as a result of the Government's aggression in Egypt and the resulting dislocation of shipping and shipping freights. I do not know whether hon. Members realise this when considering price control, but bread, which is still the most important single item in the cost of living, now costs 70 to 75 per cent. more than it did in October, 1951. Of course, we were always told by the present Postmaster-General, when he was at the Ministry of Food and was discussing price control, that if we removed price control, prices would go down. In the case of bread, as in almost every other case, the price has gone up, and we should like to know whether the Government propose to do anything about it.
As a result of shipping shortages and as a result perhaps of speculation and scrambles following the dislocation of world shipping will not the prices of other commodities tend to rise unless the Government make more use of these powers? In particular, do they intend to do anything to control the price of oil itself? There are a good many rumours at the moment. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Kidderminster believes them of not, but there are rumours that the price of oil is likely to rise in the coming weeks, which may have further serious dislocating effects on our industry and our cost of living.
Mr. Nabarro: Is not the right hon. Gentleman's argument in a state of suspended animation? Obviously, if the price of oil rises it will be entirely due to increased international freight rates. That is something over which the British Government by themselves have no control. Surely the whole of the right hon. Gentleman's argument is totally spurious.
Mr. Jay: I think most things are in suspended animation while this Government are in power. Surely the hon. Member realises that the price of oil or anything else may rise as a result of higher shipping freights; and there may then be a further unnecessary and artificial rise as a result of the shortage and speculation to take advantage of it. We want to see that it does not rise any more than is necessary.
While I hope that the House will grant even this Government, since it is there—however long we do not know—all the necessary powers, I hope that the Government may at the same time learn some lessons from this crisis into which their political folly and lack of economic foresight have plunged the country. We now face a very bleak and grim economic year with inadequate controls and with a pitifully inadequate gold reserve. Yet we see that this power of petrol rationing, now necessary, was abandoned in 1954 and is having to be restored in a panic.
How about the control of building? That was also abandoned during the period of fatuous delusions in 1954. Why is that not being restored? I understand that it has not been restored. Can we afford the absurd waste of luxury building going on in the economic situation which we now face? The Home Secretary spoke of the Defence (Finance) Regulations and exchange control. Is he satisfied that there are sufficient exchange control powers on the Statute Book to meet the very grave dollar shortage which may easily arise in the year immediately ahead of us? If those powers are not in existence, might it not be better to take them now, while we still have the chance, rather than drift further into disaster and have to regain them in a panic?
I should hate to predict where our economy will be on 10th December, 1957, if the Government have even now not realised the fantastic folly of believing that all our economic difficulties are over and throwing away our economic defences just because, for a few short months, we seemed to have run into economically rather fairer weather.
4.46 p.m.
Mr. Raymond Gower: The right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) spoke as if he relished the idea of emergency powers and controls and approved of them as a permanent feature

1579
of our work in this Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) reminds me, the right hon. Gentleman was the advocate of the idea that the "gentleman in Whitehall" knows best.
Mr. Jay: I was merely saying that it is better to have the necessary provisions in advance of events rather than to slip into a crisis because they do not exist.
Mr. Gower: Be that as it may, the right hon. Gentleman spoke with a good deal of relish about the possession of these powers and, even more, about the exercise of these powers.
I think I speak for the majority of my hon. Friends when I say that we approve of the exercise of these powers in times of emergency; we appreciate that emergencies may arise when the exercise of such extraordinary powers may be needed. But we do not regard the work of a Parliament or a Government as in a permanent state of emergency, and I imagine that nearly all my hon. Friends would welcome the progress which has been made and is being made by the Government in reducing the number of these emergency powers and regulations.
May I, for my part, and, I think, on behalf of my hon. Friends, say that I trust the Government and my right hon. Friend are not complacent in this matter. These powers were granted by Parliament as long ago as 1939, at a time of particular and supreme emergency in this country. Since that time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) has epitomised our desires in a phrase which has often been ridiculed on the benches oppose—a desire to "set the people free". This phrase has aroused a great deal of amusement among hon. Members opposite, but we on this side of the House believe that it is sound common sense. We think that it is a good thing to set the people free and to remove from them all these emergency powers, as far as is compatible with the necessary control in times of particular emergency.
Mr. Jay: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the Labour Government abolished petrol rationing and that his Government are now bringing it back?
Mr. Gower: I realise that the Labour Government made certain relaxations, at
1580
the same time preaching the virtue of these Regulations. We deplore the emergency which makes us sometimes restore Regulations. It appears to me that the right hon. Gentleman almost exults in the necessity for such Regulations.
Some people still advocate the advantages of a planned economy, a strictly planned economy. I think that the right hon. Gentleman does. We are seeing at this moment in Eastern Europe the ghastly failure of a strictly planned economy. In Eastern Europe and in countries dominated by the Russian system we are seeing a strictly planned economy coming adrift.
I suggest that, apart from some most extraordinary reasons, my right hon. and gallant Friend should scrutinise even more closely the exercise of these powers. I respectfully submit that, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, all properties which were requisitioned in 1939 should now be derequisitioned. Those properties have been long enough under an artificial form of control. I hope that my right hon. and gallant Friend and his colleagues will examine every single item in the exercise of these powers.
Also, I respectfully suggest that in every possible instance residual powers of this kind should now be cast in the form of permanent legislation. In his opening speech, my right hon. and gallant Friend gave several examples where these powers have now been put into permanent legislation. I hope that it will be possible in the very near future to dispense with Regulations of this kind and to put them in the form of permanent legislation.
4.52 p.m.
Mr. Leslie Hale: As I am afraid that I shall not resume my seat without being perhaps a little controversial, I should like to start with a non-controversial statement and, with respect, congratulate the Home Secretary on his presentation of the facts in a way which has greatly assisted the House. He went with sufficient care and clarity into each Measure and he made it much easier for those of us who try to deal with these matters who always find a very considerable difficulty in discovering what the law now is.
I used to follow a profession in which I had to pretend a rough acquaintance

1581
with the law, and I always recall the American jury who, after a retirement of three hours, returned to court and said, "The jury want to know from your honour whether what you said is really the law or whether it is just what you think it is." I am bound to say that I imagine that even the right hon. and gallant Gentleman must face these debates with a little uneasiness, with a feeling that something may have been overlooked. Therefore, I congratulate him with great sincerity on the way in which he put the matter before the House.
I am never quite sure when the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) rises whether he rises to support the Government or not. I agree with him entirely on one point. I have constantly said in debates of this kind in the past that my attitude is ambivalent. I agree with him entirely. I detest this sort of legislation, not because of what it says but because of the way in which it is presented. I detest this wretched hotchpotch of statutes in which we are asked to refer to the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act of 1947 and then to the Act of 1946 and then, when one has referred to them, one finds that they refer to Acts passed in 1932 and to some Regulations which people have never heard of and certainly never read. It is a bad system of legislation, and everyone agrees.
To that extent we congratulate the right hon. and gallant Gentleman on his declared intention to try, as far as possible, to put such necessary powers as must continue into statutory form and gradually to get rid of those which need not continue.
I said that my attitude was ambivalent. If there is such a word, I should say that it is "trivalent". I find myself on the horns of a "trilemma". I could not draw a rough sketch of a trilemma for the elucidation of my difficulties. As we have just heard today, Lord Beaverbrook's heifer has had triplets, and I imagine that his bulls may be described as "tri-corned". Indeed, those of us who read the Daily Express know that he has many bulls.
My difficulty is this—and I ventured to indicate it in an intervention earlier. I object only to the form of the Regulations. I think these powers are excellent
1582
powers. I think that they are necessary powers. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Barry was serious when he talked about exulting in them; nor do I know what exactly was in his mind when he talked about "the gentlemen from Whitehall." I do not think that it is necessary to sneer at the Civil Service. What did he mean? I will give way with pleasure if he will say what he meant by the phrase "gentlemen from Whitehall", said certainly in no adulatory or complimentary way.
I have never thought it necessary to sneer at these gentlemen, who, on incomes which I have always regarded as inadequate—they compare favourably only with those of Members of Parliament—devote their lives to a service which has a reputation throughout the world for integrity and honesty. It does not seem to me that that is a matter for criticism.
Mr. Gower: Does the hon. Member regard it as desirable that anybody, even the most admirable of persons, should possess permanently powers which are described as "emergency"?
Mr. Hale: I am so glad that we have this clear, because I can help the hon. Member. It is not so. The decision is taken by Her Majesty's Ministers. Looking at them one may not think that they are a very bright lot—and I would agree if the hon. Gentleman feels that—but the decision is made by them. When Mr. Jones, the gentleman from Whitehall, signs a Statutory Instrument he cannot do it, and does not do it, without a Minister being consulted. We were told this in evidence before the Select Committee, and most of us believe it. The Minister takes responsibility for that Measure before this House and those of us who spend our lifetimes reading Statutory Instruments, weighing them and deciding whether they should be prayed against, know that. No gentleman from Whitehall is really authorising a policeman to wander round to Lady Somebody's cottage and put her out without there being adequate Ministerial responsibility.
My first and important point is that these powers may be good in the hands of an intelligent Government. They may be good in the hands of a Government which is devoted to planning, and here again the hon. Member for Gower made one observation which we ought to record.
Mr. Gower: Is the hon. Member aware that the right hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) is the Father of the House and sits on the same side as the hon. Gentleman?
Mr. Hale: I should have recollected that. The right hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) is not only the Father of the House; he is one of the best respected men in the House, and I certainly do not wish to attribute to him the views expressed by the hon. Member for Barry. The hon. Member for Barry said that the countries of Eastern Europe are now in this terrible mess because they had a planned economy.
Mr. Gower: I am sorry to interrupt again, but the hon. Gentleman is referring to me all the time. I said that we were witnessing in Eastern Europe the failure of the planned economy.
Mr. Hale: That is precisely what I thought I said, but I will adopt the words the hon. Gentleman has used. What is the situation? The situation is that in a planned economy the standard of living in Hungary has gone up enormously year by year, and from being one of the poorest countries in Europe Hungary was becoming the most prosperous. British Railways is using Hungarian designs for its locomotives.
What has happened is that under a dictatorship the people have lost freedom, liberty and justice under one of the harshest of dictatorships. But it is as well to give the devil his due. One of the difficulties of fighting the atrocities of Communism is its economic success. It is that it nearly always gives to the working people a higher standard of life. [Laughter.] I would ask hon. Members opposite who cackle to tell me a country where it has not happened. I will give way. Tell me one where Communists have been in power for five years and where the peasant and the worker has not got a higher standard of life.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): I think that this is getting a little bit away from the Motion.
Mr. Hale: I respectfully agree, and I see no point in pursuing it at all. The issue was raised by the hon. Member for Barry. I merely said that I disagreed with him. I was then greeted with the
1584
usual vacuous cackling that now comes from what one would unkindly describe as the less intelligent Members on the Tory benches, and it is just a question whether one passes it by without any recognition of the fact that no eggs have been laid or whether one should make a comment, but I will leave the point now, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in deference to you.
The important point is whether one should entrust a Government like this with any powers. I have a personal regard for the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, and my main attack today is not being aimed at him, and I have a great respect for the honourable name that he bears; but I must say that it was ruled yesterday, very properly, that it is a breach of Parliamentary etiquette to accuse a Minister of deceiving the House, or apparently even attempting to deceive the House, and I would not for a moment break any Parliamentary rule. The statement we heard today from the Minister of Fuel and Power differed in very great detail from the statement he made a few days ago. We are therefore in the situation that the facts coming to Ministers are not being appreciated and statements being made by Ministers certainly do not bear any relation to statements they made a few days ago.
Explanations come daily from Ministers, new explanations which apparently are improvised on the spur of the moment without any relation to known facts. Constantly in speeches over the last fortnight one has felt that the Ministers' handling of truth with such lack of care puts it in danger of coming to pieces in their hands. To give my own view as moderately, temperately and inoffensively as I can, if I were confronted with a sworn affidavit from a Conservative Minister and a casual obiter dicta of Baron Munchausen I would not know to which to give the higher degree of credence.
There was a time when Ministers sheltered behind the protection of refusing to answer Questions at all. Now they do not do that but they make statements which ultimately prove to be misleading. In those circumstances, it is difficult for me to convince myself that they ought to have these powers. On the other hand, they are Her Majesty's Government and

1585
it is a very grave emergency. The fact that they are responsible for the emergency does not detract from its gravity. We therefore have to consider what should be done.
On this point the very admirable speech of the- right hon. and gallant Gentleman was also extremely revealing because he showed his temper in the matter at once. He said, "Of course we do not like using these powers at all. We rather dislike these powers. We go through them with a small tooth comb—a hair brush or something—and scrub out one by one all those we feel should be eliminated for the time being." As I gathered the picture he drew, quite a number of gentlemen in Whitehall are anxiously and carefully considering the question of how quickly they can get rid of the rest. That is the attitude.
Mr. Nabarro: Hear, hear.
Mr. Hale: The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) says, in a sepulchral voice, "Hear, hear." [AN HON. MEMBER: "Growls it, I should say."] I cannot remember whether it was Flotsam or Jetsam, but I seem to recognise the tones of the observation.
Mr. Nabarro: I said "Hear, hear."
Mr. Hale: That was much more alto.
Mr. Nabarro: The tone does not matter, even if it is falsetto. What matters is that I strongly approve of the policy of Her Majesty's Government in dismantling these Regulations as rapidly as they are able to do so.
Mr. Hale: The hon. Member is under a misapprehension on this. I remember one of the greatest financial swindlers of his generation who always used to be accompanied by a man who said. "Yes, I agree" in sepulchral and impressive tones at the precise moment when the fraudulent shares were about to be pedalled. I am sure the hon. Member would not, for instance, make a proposal of marriage in the same tones in which he expresses his agreement with Tory Ministers.
Let us move from that, which may not be strictly relevant, and come to the point with which I was dealing. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman seemed to indicate that he has no use for these powers at all and that it is only where
1586
the Government have found themselves in a sort of continuing situation which cannot for the moment be terminated and which needs the continuation of the powers that he intends to preserve them. Yet how fortunate it is for Her Majesty's advisers today that a Labour Government made these provisions, which give them the power, at a moment's notice, to tell the House that they are about to ration petrol under the provisions of a scheme which was to be in the Vote Office this afternoon but which had not arrived twenty minutes ago.
Major Lloyd-George: I rather gathered from what the hon. Member said earlier that he was in favour of doing away with regulations if they were replaced by permanent legislation. Many of the Regulations I mentioned today are disappearing because either they have been or will be replaced by permanent legislation. One of the most important instances is the Mines and Quarries Act. There have been only two Mines Acts in this country, one introduced in 1911 by a Liberal Government and another in 1954 by a Conservative Government. That last Act has done away with many of these Regulations.
Mr. Hale: I agree entirely with that, Although I made it clear that I did start with encomiums, I then came to the attitude of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to what remained, which I thought was one of disapproval. If in this emergency he is learning the lessons of experience and facing the problems which now arise and has come to the conclusion that more control is necessary and more powers of direction are necessary and that he may have to use those powers, I think that is a very important, thing to have happened. It is one which I personally welcome because I do believe in planned economy and I do not believe in laissez faire.
If we look at the powers we are being asked to concede to the Government today we find, as I indicated in a previous intervention in discussion of the first Motion, which applies to the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, that Section 2 of that Act confers upon Her Majesty power to make Defence Regulations for controlling prices. My right hon. Friend the Member for Batter-sea, North (Mr. Jay) mentioned this. This, of course, is exceedingly important.

1587
It is right for the House to consider whether it is worth while giving this Government powers they have no intention of using, but it is equally right that in discussing this matter today we should inquire of the Government whether they do intend to use these important powers.
We face the situation that where the Government have deliberately increased the price of food by the withdrawal of subsidies it is hardly possible to imagine any system of price control which in the circumstances could very usefully be proposed. The thing would be to restore the subsidies. In the particular example of milk and bread, to which my right hon. Friend referred, surely the occasion has come for a consideration of the matter. Hon. Members opposite wilfully blind themselves to two well-known facts. The price of bread was of the order of 95s. a quarter when control was removed. The price of bread has been the subject of a mill owners' war. There has been cutting of prices and restoring of prices. We are told that Mr. Rank for the moment has turned his attention away from Miss Dors and Miss Monroe to the people's food. Tom Hood used to say:
"Oh! God! that flesh should be so dear.
And flesh and blood so cheap!"
Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman intend to do anything about it? Either he wants the powers or he does not.
If he wants the powers, presumably he wants to use them and not merely to keep them in abeyance in case the Prime Minister starts another war and another new problem arises in consequence. If he is asking for the powers only from now until next December, presumably he wants to use them or, if he does not intend to use them, he should not come to the House and ask for them. If he does intend to use them, why not start with bread and realise that this is going to be a pretty miserable winter? We are going to be faced with a fuel shortage, which nearly always hits hardest the poorest of the poor.
Mr. Nabarro: I am sure the hon. Member would not willingly mislead the House. He says that this winter there is going to be a fuel shortage. I agree that the fuel situation is serious, but only for a relatively small part of the total
1588
fuel consumption. Is he aware that stocks of coal at the moment are standing at a higher level than in any post-war winter since 1945?
Mr. Hale: Here is the hon. Member for Kidderminster, the voice of the back benchers, the television personality of the House, the expert on fuel and power, the man who was about to bring down the Government on this very question six months ago, speaking with a quite astonishing ignorance of the situation. He seems to think that one fuel has no effect on another. Only this morning the West Midland Gas Board said that it is going to give up the use of oil for the manufacture of gas and to use more coal. If more coal is used in that way there will be less for someone else. Does he know how much oil is used for domestic heating and lighting? Does he realise that people in agricultural districts cannot buy oil for their cooking, their heating and their lighting but need some other form of fuel?
Mr. Nabarro: What the hon. Member is saying in no way derogates from the principle which I have just stated, that the relative consumption of oil for heat, power and energy in this country is small when compared with coal, which carries the overwhelming bulk of that load.
Mr. Hale: That, of course, is true, and I am glad to hear that testimonial to the work of miners. Primarily due to them and partly owing to pockets of unemployment, we have rather larger stocks of coal at this time of the year than we have had before. In view of the fact that the wretched Government have been calling up miners for military service, that is a very remarkable achievement and one to which on this side of the House we would all wish to pay the greatest possible credit. The hon. Member for Kidderminster is naive in these matters. He apparently believed the statement of the Minster of Fuel and Power last week that with a voluntary 10 per cent. cut we will get through. He knows that all the time the coupons were printed, all the time the announcement was imminent, all the time the Minister was plucking up courage to slip down to the House on a quiet day and get it over as soon as he could.
Hon. Members: After Chester.
Mr. Hale: And, of course, after the Chester by-election result had been declared, with a loss of only 5,000 or 6,000 votes to the Conservative Party.
I should like to examine one of these matters in detail, because I am in considerable doubt about it. Although I am in favour of planning, planning powers can be abused. It is the duty of every liberally-minded Socialist to see that planning powers are not abused. The Secretary of State for the Home Department in a cheerful moment in his opening speech said that no one would object to Regulation 49, because Regulation 49 controls shipping and was the Regulation under which we were able to prevent goods, which we did not want to go, from going to China and the Soviet Union.
He said that no one would object to that. I can well appreciate the difficulties of the mother in the Punch cartoon who said that only her Bill was in step. When I have been described as a minority in the House, I have entertained humble doubts about the accuracy of my opinions and I am bound to accept the proposition that abler men than I can see reasons for sending arms to Egypt and refusing to send gramophone needles to China—but I do not understand them. The only country with which we have had a war in the last two or three years is the country to which we propose to send Centurion tanks, destroyers and aircraft and to spend millions of pounds in so doing.
Major Lloyd-George: It does not make much difference, but Regulation 49 deals with
"Competent authorities for the purposes of Part IV."
Mr. Hale: Regulation 46 or 49. Mr. Ukridge used to take "the big broad flexible outlook" on statistical questions, and I am following a former Chancellor in taking a rough view. Whatever the Section may be, that is the one to which I am referring.
We have a situation where we have 500 million people anxious to buy British goods, 500 million people in dire need of British goods—[Interruption]. The hon. Member for Kidderminster really must remember that the mere possession of a Jimmy Edwards moustache does not constitute a humorist.
1590
The Chinese people are importing goods from all over the world. We saw that only a few weeks ago in Peking when we were driving in a modern American car. That fact may be seen in the number of staff of the American Embassy at Hong Kong, which is composed almost entirely of American businessmen numbering about 100. The Chinese need many things. They need tractors and machinery for development. They need the heavy machinery which only we can supply. The Yellow River irrigation scheme is the greatest scheme in world history. Its magnitude has never been approached before. It will take at least 50 years to complete and a major part of the work in the next five years will cost millions of pounds. It is hoped to bring to a vast population new forms of irrigation, to constitute huge lakes well over 1,000 miles from the sea, to provide dams and electrification.
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman casually says that of course no one will want to interfere with Regulation 46, because that is the one under which we stop British trade with China. If we question Ministers, they say that we are technically still at war with China.
Mr. Paget: Not with China, surely?
Mr. Hale: Oh yes, indeed. The explanation is that although the armistice agreement has been signed there has never been a formal declaration of peace. After General MacArthur had made his mad dash to the Yalu River there was an armistice agreement, but we are still at war with China and China does not exist anyhow except under Chiang Kai-shek, who is stuck in Formosa with two million Chinese exiles. It is a good thing to laugh about it, but it would be better to cry about it and there would be more effect if we cried about it. Generations to come may have reason to weep about it.
The youth of China is growing up without having seen a British machine, without knowing anything about Britain and without seeing a British teacher and knowing nothing about our way of life. We are doing that by this embargo under Regulation 46. I beg the right hon. and learned Gentleman to consult his right hon. Friends. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is better endowed with judgment and good sense—and that is no

1591
great compliment—than most of his colleagues and if he would talk to them in that fatherly way which he can manage and make a few suggestions, he might make a contribution not to the subject of delegated legislation but to the subject of world peace.
There is another aspect of this matter which is important and on which it may be necessary to spend a few moments. Through all these matters which we are discussing today is a constant reference to the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, and the power to make other Regulations. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman was a little coy when I said that he referred only to the revocation of powers and the waiving of powers, but he has said nothing about what he will do in future and how he will use these powers for the benefit of the community, or what ideas there are in the bright brain of the President of the Board of Trade.
One of these powers is to assist the relief of suffering and restoration and distribution of essential supplies and services in any part of Her Majesty's Dominions or foreign countries in grave distress as a result of war. These Regulations were made, of course, during the last war and were made to deal with a much graver situation, when there were refugees all over Europe, unaided. The shame of the modern world is that those refugees are still there.
People are rushing to subscribe to Hungarian relief. Everyone welcomes that and hopes that the Hungarians will find in this country a great and hearty welcome and that they will settle down in the peace and security which has been denied to them. But a million refugees are left from the last war. What have we done under these powers? What do we propose to do under these powers? Why do we not give a lead under these powers? Goods and ammunition worth £40 million were left in Egypt because it was said to be a little difficult to shift £40 million worth of stores, but they added to Colonel Nasser's stock, because the War Office never thought of shifting them and someone else did not know they were there.
We cannot have a school in Oldham and we give to the International Children's Emergency Fund only one two-
1592
hundreth part of what we left lying in this Egyptian ditch to be pinched when someone decided to pinch it. It is incredible, yet Ministers can sit there complacently listening to these things. They have got so inured to error and to failure. They muddle and muddle on without any idea of the direction in which they wish to go, and certainly no idea of the direction in which they are destined eventually to proceed.
We have powers:
"to secure a sufficiency of those essential to the wellbeing of the community or their equitable distribution or their availability at fair prices; or
to facilitate the demobilisation and resettlement of persons and to secure the orderly disposal of surplus material; or
to facilitate the readjustment of industry and commerce to the requirements of the community in time of peace."
Those of us who remember this Act, those of us who remember its provisions, those of us who remember the attack staged from the Tory benches on each individual Regulation from ten o'clock at night until two o'clock in the morning; those of us who remember the former hon. Member for Torquay and the former hon. Member for Tamworth using criticism which was reinforced by the present Minister of Pensions and others, believe that the whole intention of these Regulations was beneficial. Their whole purpose was to secure orderly demobilisation, to restore the world to tranquillity, to lay the foundations of peace and to try, in difficult circumstances, many things which we then did.
Now we have a complete reversal. We were very glad to abolish petrol rationing—the Tories have restarted it. We were very glad to arrange demobilisation—the Tories are calling up more and more men. We were very glad to reduce the Armed Forces, and here there was a point on which our party was not unanimous on certain aspects of the arms situation. In the main, however, we were all glad to reduce all these things. All these things were done.
Now, the Minister says, "Well, I am sorry, in a way, that some of these steps have had to be taken. I am sorry that we have had to use powers which we were reluctant to use. We have done it in the public interest." It is a very lame explanation from a Government who

1593
have been whistling to keep up their courage and saying to the whole community, "What you never understand is that we foresaw the whole results of this action before we started it. We contemplated all the miseries, all the horrors and all the lack of confidence, all the casualties. We knew, somehow, that, as a result of this the United Nations would do something which we have voted against but nevertheless think eminently desirable. We knew it would happen, and here is the result of our endeavours."
Did they foresee this? Was this one of the things that was foreseen by Her Majesty's Government a month ago but not by the Minister of Fuel and Power last week? It is a somewhat surprising state of affairs—but there it is. The Minister says today that certain aspects of rationing are not to come into force until 1st January next year, but with the present magnitude of the crisis the right hon. and gallant Gentleman might well consider whether 12 months is sufficient extension of powers to cover even the rationing. We shall have to have blue petrol, and uncoloured petrol before long, no doubt.
I have been going through an anxious conflict of mind, placed in a dilemma between my lack of confidence in the Government and my general approval of economic planning. I have been wondering whether I can trust such a wretched Government with powers which would be eminently desirable if lodged in a Government of ability. I have been wondering whether, if they have those powers, they will use them intelligently. I have been anxiously trying to find out from the Minister, and I do not use the term in the usual sense, though it is an ordinary term, whether his intentions are honourable or not. I must say that I am a little dubious of his intentions.
Having listened to the Minister and others on the Front Bench opposite and to interventions, helpful or otherwise, made by one or two hon. Members opposite, I have come to the conclusion that right hon. Gentlemen opposite have not the slightest knowledge of what their intentions are—not the slightest knowledge. They drift on from muddle to muddle day by day. They have faced so much criticism, and they realise that they have lost the confidence of the community. They know that when the time comes
1594
when they are forced to go to the electorate they will be rejected with contumely. Knowing all this, and appreciating all this; appreciating that nothing can save them, they drift from day to day, hoping that each day will relieve a little of the pressure upon them, and that they will be able to find in some relaxation other than politics that comfort which they are denied in this House.
5.25 p.m.
Mr. Gerald Nabarro: One would have supposed, listening to the references made by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) to Regulation 46, that that Regulation had been brought into use for the specific purpose of continuing the control on the shipment of strategic goods in certain categories to China. In fact, the whole purport of his argument was directed to that point. I doubt very much whether he has read Regulation 46, or knows what it says; or that it was perpetuated by his own party between 1945 and 1951, and covers a whole vast range of goods shipped by sea under the general title "Control of Trade by Sea". Surely the hon. Gentleman could not deny that, in the present turbulent condition of the world, those powers are indispensable to any British Government, irrespective of its colour?
Mr. Hale: I am grateful to the hon Member for giving way. It may be that he overlooked the passage in the speech of his right hon. and gallant Friend to which I was replying. Personally, I am in favour of the powers, but the right hon. and gallant Gentleman himself said that these powers will not be abused, because it is under these powers that we are, at the moment, stopping trade with Russia and China.
Mr. Nabarro: I have written down very carefully what my right hon. and gallant Friend said. The hon. Gentleman is, as usual, twisting that speech rather like a corkscrew. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary said that Regulation 46, dealing with control of trade by sea, and Regulation 55, giving power to control import and export transactions abroad, and shipping construction, are needed in accordance with international agreements, and to control the supply of strategic goods to the Soviet bloc, China, North Korea and North Viet-Nam.

1595
That last mentioned is one of the facets—the control of strategic goods shipped to those countries—and I am claiming that the whole general control of trade by sea under Regulation 46 would be necessary to any British Government. It is grossly dishonest of the hon. Gentleman to attack that very desirable Measure. He attacked the whole Regulation, and suggested to the House that it was in force simply to prevent only the shipment of strategic goods to China. That is exactly what he said, and I say that he was wilfully misleading.
I want to say a few words on two aspects of Regulations 55AA and 55AB, first, in regard to the fuel and power position, and secondly, the specific references made by my right hon. and gallant Friend to the subject of jute. I would support, in present circumstances—and I think even in permanent legislation-powers over the use of our fuel and power resources so long as there is a continuing shortage of coal referred to by the hon. Member for Oldham, West. Except for two interventions, I listened to the hon. Member for Oldham, West in almost complete silence, and I do entreat him to pay me the courtesy of desisting from private conversations.
In present circumstances, I would favour the embodiment in permanent legislation of powers over the use of our fuel and power resources, for this reason. It is nothing at all directly to do with oil. It is to do with the fact that since the nationalisation of the coal mines there have been manifestly inadequate supplies of coal available to furnish the whole of our heat, power and energy needs, which is the fundamental reason that we have placed so much greater reliance upon imported oil.
The hon. Member for Oldham, West referred, in somewhat disparaging terms, of course, to quarrels that I have had with my hon. Friends in the past as to the nature of our national fuel and power policy. Those quarrels always rested on the simple proposition that it was better to employ indigenous coal rather than imported oil fuel, and the difficulties in which we find ourselves today are largely due not to the blocking of the Suez Canal, but to the inadequacy of fuel and power policy since the nationalisation of the coal mines in 1947, the continuing
1596
shortage of coal and the fact that coal has had to be replaced for energy needs by imported oil.
Today there is a curious situation. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power this afternoon announced a general proposal for restrictions upon the use of and allocation of petroleum products, including fuel oil, diesel oil, motor spirit and many by-products. They are shortly to be rationed. Domestic coal is also rationed. But the principal fuel on which the industrial production of this country most largely depends, namely coal, is unrationed. I foresee that the powers under Regulation 55AA which we are discussing this afternoon will certainly be needed in the next year or two, and most certainly so long as it is necessary to restrict by physical action, namely, by Ministerial rationing schemes, the use of fuel oil and petrol.
What is going to happen? The policy of the last year or two, which has been to encourage industry to swing over from industrial coal to imported oil, is surely about to be reversed? How can we continue asking industrialists to swing over to oil from coal when the oil itself is unlikely to be available? Quite apart from that, very large numbers of industrial plants have dual-burning facilities. They have facilities for burning both coal and oil, and if we are arbitrarily to reduce by rationing arrangements for the consumption of fuel oil, thus causing large numbers of factories, in the passage of time, to be short of oil for their production needs, those factories are surely going to swing back to coal, which was one of the points made by the hon. Member for Oldham, West.
Can we, therefore, sustain a state of affairs whereby oil and domestic coal are rationed, but industrial oil is not rationed? It seems to me that the Minister of Fuel and Power is going to find himself in very considerable difficulties on this score during the next few months, and I want him to say what are his intentions concerning industrial coal.
Are his intentions under Regulation 55AA during the course of the next few months to bring in some general restriction on the use of coal by industry, or is he going to proceed by a method, which I have always favoured in preference to direct rationing, which is to induce people to continue their efforts to use coal in

1597
industry much more efficiently than they have done in the past? That is much more likely to produce an economy in the use of coal in industry, providing that it is properly applied and there is adequate Ministerial direction and advice, rather than any physical scheme of rationing of industrial coal.
Passing from that aspect of things—and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power can give us some advice on that point—I should like to ask my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary one or two questions about his references to jute. I am sorry to swing so rapidly from coal to jute, which are rather widely removed from each other, but I have a special interest in what my right hon. and gallant Friend said concerning jute because of the requirements of the carpet industry in Kidderminster.
What my right hon. and gallant Friend said was:
"The Board of Trade also need these powers "—
that is, powers that originated under the Ministry of Supply Act, 1939—
"in order to continue trading in imported jute goods until measures to safeguard the United Kingdom industry under conditions conducive to efficiency can be worked out."
It is an interesting fact that is not generally realised in this House that out of the vast range of commodities that were bulk-bought and controlled by the Board of Trade under the Labour Government, the only commodity which remains directly under Government control today is jute. Why is this? It is evidently because my right hon. and gallant Friend and the President of the Board of Trade can find no alternative means of safeguarding the Dundee jute industry.
What happens today is broadly this. The Jute Control of the Board of Trade buys relatively cheap Indian jute goods, imports them into the United Kingdom, arbitrarily inflates their price up to the price of the comparable Dundee manufactured products, all of which is in itself an inflationary process, and thus the Jute Control causes both Indian goods and Dundee manufactured goods to be sold to the user at unnecessarily high prices. The carpet industry, of course, suffers particularly under an arrangement of this kind because it has to pay a higher price for Indian jute goods imported under
1598
Government control than it would do were it allowed to import these Indian jute goods privately and without Government control.
My right hon. Friend used the words:
"… until …conditions conducive to efficiency can be worked out."
Why not substitute a tariff on imported goods if it is really necessary to protect the Dundee industry? It seems a little illogical to say that a tariff may not be applied to imported Indian jute goods, whereas it may be applied to imported bacon from Denmark—presumably because India and Pakistan are countries that subscribed in 1932 to the Ottawa Agreement. Presumably that is the reason which denies Her Majesty's Government the statutory opportunity of applying a tariff to these imported jute goods?
Whether that be the case or not, it is about time that this inadequacy of Government trading policy was fully ventilated and debated in this House. It is manifest nonsense for my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary to say that it is necessary to keep a particular Defence Regulation in force in order to safeguard the jute industry of Dundee. If that jute industry is to be safeguarded, the Government should do it by the proper method which is by a tariff, and should not indulge in this kind of subterfuge simply because the state of affairs has evidently passed unnoticed in the House of Commons during the last year or two.
I should like my right hon. and gallant Friend to deal specifically with those two points, the question of industrial coal and the question of jute goods which is causing a good deal of dissatisfaction to the carpet industry in Kidderminster.
The general policy of Her Majesty's Government with reference to these wartime powers, originating, of course, with the Defence Regulations in the period between 1939 and 1945, has my fullest support—
Mr. George Darling: The Government will be pleased to hear that.
Mr. Nabarro: I am sure they will. They are always pleased to have the support of any hon. Member on this side of the House, especially where a controversial subject of this kind is open to

1599
many shades of opinion. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Oldham, West wish to intervene, or is he merely mumbling? At least, when I interrupt him, in tones to which he refers as "sepulchral", my tones are clear and can be heard by the hon. Gentleman. I cannot hear him; he is mumbling.
Mr. Hale: The tones of the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) have, I agree, the clarity of a cracked bell. The hon. Gentleman has been flattering himself for a long time in his references to the jute industry. The whole matter was discussed in detail when his Government stopped the national purchase of cotton, which produced such serious results in Lancashire. We then drew attention to it.
Mr. Nabarro: I will willingly give way again to the hon. Member for Oldham, West if he will give the date of the debate to which he is referring.
Mr. Hale: The debate actually followed the Second Reading of the Bill in the ordinary course. So far as I can remember, it took place in about 1953.
Mr. Nabarro: I expect the hon. Member is wrong; he generally is. Of course an Emergency Powers Bill of the kind we are discussing today has had a Second Reading every year since the war because it is an annual Measure. I have no recollection of the facts to which the hon. Member refers. But, even if he were right—which I doubt—that is still three years ago.
If there is one thing I like more than another about the hon. Member for Oldham, West, it is that he is an honest Socialist, though misguided, and believes in all the paraphernalia of bureaucratic bumbledom and the vast number of Controls and officials which are necessary to it. He believes in all that sort of thing. I do not. I am over the horizon to the right of the Tory Party; I believe in unfettered free enterprise to produce magnificent results, and I only support the continuance of emergency powers of this kind because of world conditions today. Otherwise, if we must persist with one or two of them, for goodness' sake let us put them into permanent legislation.
What I was saying when I was interrupted—and I did preface it by the words
1600
"In conclusion"—was that my right hon. Friend has achieved a salutary and very satisfactory result today in pursuit of Conservative policy and philosophy. After all, in spite of all the sneers of hon. Gentlemen opposite, in 1951 there were 215 of these wretched Regulations.
Mr. Paget Mr. Paget rose—
Mr Nabarro: I will give way in a moment or two.
Last year, on 31st December, the number was reduced to 69. At the present moment, there are 67, and shortly there will be 58. That is only slightly more than 25 per cent. of the vast number of Defence Regulations which we inherited in 1951. This, I claim, is a salutary achievement.
Mr. Paget: I was a little amused to hear the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) describe his curiously obsolete "Cobdenite" theories as Toryism. Whatever else they were, they were never that.
Mr. Nabarro: The hon. and learned Gentleman attends the debates in this House so rarely—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—that I have no doubt at all that he has not had an opportunity previously to listen to such dissertations as I have been able to give on Tory philosophy. I am sure that the abolition of unnecessary controls could not be claimed to be inimical to Tory interests or out of line with Tory policy.
The fact that 75 per cent. of the Defence Regulations have been got rid of in a short space of five years is, in my view, ample justification for the claim we made as long ago as 1950, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower), that we would pursue the policy of setting the people free. In my judgment, very substantial progress has been made in this connection during the passage of the last five years.
5.44 p.m.
Mr. George Darling: It is obvious that the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) does not discuss or look at these controls from the point of view of their efficacy or value to the community; he just says "Seventy-five per cent. have been slashed off and thrown away. That is progress". If the controls are needed, surely they

1601
ought to be kept on, and one ought to discuss them from the point of view of their use to the community.
The most important part of the contribution the hon. Member for Kidderminster made this afternoon was not in his speech but in his interjection before he spoke, in which he tried to show that the cutting off of our oil supplies to the extent of something between 25 and 40 per cent., whatever it is going to be., in the near future, does not matter a great deal, that oil is a very small part of the fuel supplies of the country, and therefore we need not worry a great deal about this situation.
Mr. Nabarro: I am sure the hon. Member would not wish to misquote me. I will give him my exact words. I said that oil formed a relatively small part of the heat, power and energy resources of the country. That is a very different thing from fuel requirements, because "heat, power and energy resources" does not generally cover motor spirit.
Mr. Darling: That may be true, but the situation he is trying to picture to us is vastly different from the one given by the Prime Minister in September, when we were told that if the Suez Canal were closed and there was a halting of our supplies of oil this country would face absolute ruin and the consequences would be disastrous. What the hon. Gentleman is now telling us is in line with the suggestions of a succession of junior Ministers last week who got up in response to Questions show that we do not need controls, that the situation resulting from the Suez crisis is quite all right, and the flow of supplies of meat, fruit, vegetables, and raw materials of all kinds will still be coming in; our stocks are all right, and prices will not get out of hand. The fact that the Government have, surprisingly, included the price control Regulations in the control to be renewed rather suggests that junior Ministers were trying to keep their courage up rather than giving us the full facts.
In any event, the plea of the hon. Member for Kidderminster that what we need, even in present circumstances, is a greater degree of freedom, and that controls are still being kept on which, in his view, could be done away with, will certainly not be supported by industrialists
1602
during the next few months. It certainly will not be supported by the steel manufacturers who will, so far as I can see, face a shortage of oil for their steel furnaces. It will not be supported by industrialists concerned with the manufacture of essential exports, who may be getting into difficulties as a result of the fuel situation.
I would add another question to the questions which the hon. Member for Kidderminster has asked of the Minister of Fuel and Power about coal supplies. As I understand it, supplies of oil to the machines engaged in opencast mining have been cut; they have taken the 10 per cent. cut. Under the rationing scheme, the details of which I have not yet studied, so that I may be speaking here subject to correction, supplies of oil to the machines engaged in opencast mining will still be cut, and we shall therefore use the situation as regards oil, apparently, to produce a smaller quantity of coal from opencast production. This would be a dangerous practice to continue, and I think we shall need, under the appropriate Regulations, a more selective rationing scheme to make sure that the oil supplies we have and the fuel oil and industrial oils we are able to get, are put to the best possible use.
There are one or two other questions I should like to ask. I am not sure whether the Government intend to take sufficient powers under Regulation 55AB, the price control of goods and services Regulation, to deal with the situation which may well arise if the Suez Canal continues closed for many months to come and we have difficulties in getting the normal flow of supplies to this country of foodstuffs and raw materials which we obtain from the Far East.
We have many free markets now which a year or two ago were to some extent controlled. Unless the Government are prepared to intervene and use their powers under Defence Regulation 55AB to control prices and prevent the free market operating to the detriment of consumers in this country, speculators may well exploit the situation which results from shortages.
I noticed, for instance, that when a Question was put to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury last week about the effect on our internal retail prices of the

1603
increase in shipping freight rates, he ventured the estimate that a 5 per cent. increase in rates would result in, perhaps, a rise of one-tenth of 1 per cent. in retail prices generally. The chairman of the Wholesale Grocers' Association has said that a 10 per cent. increase in freight rates would result in a 1 per cent. increase in our internal prices. In other words, the chairman of that association expects a rise five times greater than the estimate given by the Economic Secretary.
If that kind of thing happens, if we are to get price increases which are unjustified in relation to the freight increases and the shortages that might occur, I hope that the Government, armed with the powers that we are giving them this afternoon, will step in to make sure that the public is not exploited by profit-makers and speculators. There ought not to be any division of opinion in this House about that sort of thing.
Therefore, I should have been happier this afternoon if the Home Secretary, in opening this short debate, had suggested that he was at all aware of the problems and difficulties that lie ahead and have to be faced by this country and particularly by those engaged in industry and trade. Apart from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's references to petrol rationing, which is a fact none of us can get away from, he was utterly complacent about the present situation. He seemed to have no idea at all that there were difficulties ahead and he simply passed off the Regulations, which give him and the Government power of control, with the attitude, "Well, they are here and might be needed." Had we seen some awareness from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman of our difficulties and problems, we would have been in a happier frame of mind in giving the Government the powers that they seek.
5.53 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power (Mr. David Renton): I suppose that, strictly speaking, the only Question before the House is whether these Motions—
"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty …"
to continue certain Defence Regulations and other emergency measures should be passed; but the debate has covered a tremendous range of detail, some of
1604
which is not closely related to the purpose for which the Regulations either are being used or might be used. I will, however, endeavour to deal with some of the points which have arisen.
The right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) said it is fortunate that we still have controls. Perhaps we should be grateful to him for that measure of support, but I should make it clear that whereas both sides of the House recognise that there must be some controls to cover emergencies and to cover temporary matters which are not suitable for permanent legislation, we on this side of the House like to have as few controls as possible, whereas hon. Gentlemen opposite like to have as many as they can get away with. Perhaps I should add that when we have taken powers we use them only after very careful thought and in the public interest. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, however, have in the past tended to let them run on and to use them for as long as they could get away with them.
The right hon. Gentleman raised the general question of whether we should now be having powers to control petroleum and petroleum products. It might be helpful if I mention that the resumption of this power was obtained by an Order in Council called the Defence Regulations (No. 3) Order, 1956, which was made in Council on 31st October and laid before the House the same day. Since that date, the power has been used to issue two Statutory Instruments—the Motor Fuel Order, 1956, made by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power on 6th November, the object of which was to prevent hoarding, and the petrol rationing Order, which is more precisely described by its proper title, the Motor Fuel (No. 2) Order, 1956, which as my right hon. and gallant Friend mentioned has been made today and, I understand, will be laid tomorrow. Each of these Orders may be prayed against and, as Mr. Speaker indicated earlier, it would be out of order to discuss details now.
It is however in order, I believe for us to discuss whether the Government need to ration oil or petrol at all and, if so, whether the best way of doing it is by Statutory Instrument under powers obtained by Defence Regulation or by some alternative method. As to the need,

1605
surely no sane person can doubt that rationing either is necessary already or very soon will be necessary. The reasons are so familiar to both sides of the House that I do not intend to pursue the matter.
As to whether this is the best way, I should like to say this. First, a Statuttory Instrument under Defence Regulations is the only way in which it has ever been done before. Secondly, it is, in fact and in law, the only method at present available—and as I have pointed out, it has only recently been made available. Thirdly, the only alternative that comes to my mind is an Act of Parliament. That remedy, however, would not only take time but it is less suitable for a temporary emergency of this kind. I therefore suggest that it is reasonable to ask the House to say in effect, by passing these Motions, that there was a need to take power to ration petrol.
I do not want to say much at this stage about oil and petrol, but perhaps I should deal with one or two points which the right hon. Member for Battersea, North and other hon. Members have mentioned concerning fuel and power matters. The right hon. Gentleman asked about industrial fuel oil and how the powers would be used. When he no longer has to remain in his place for this debate, I hope he will be able to get from the Vote Office a copy of a fairly detailed statement which has already been made available to right hon. and hon. Members. When he has studied the details, he will no doubt learn a great deal of what he wants to know, and perhaps at a later stage there will be an opportunity of further consideration.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether we should control the price of oil. I should point out that we have never done so, not even during the six years of the war and the years which followed, when we had petrol rationing. We never had price control of petrol. My right hon. Friend has stated twice in the last week or two, in answer to Questions in the House, that the oil companies have given him an undertaking not to increase their prices without consulting him. However, as is well known, the matter is not fully within their hands, bearing in mind that they have higher freight charges to meet. Those are factors to be borne in mind when thinking of what prices should be.
Mr. Jay: The hon. and learned Gentleman will agree, will he not, that the price at which oil is sold is based on the Western Hemisphere price, not on what oil in the Middle East costs? In these circumstances, is a rise in shipping freights of oil from the Middle East really a reason for increasing the price of oil coming from the Middle East?
Mr. Renton: The right hon. Gentleman is tempting me to digress from the straight and narrow path of whether we should pass this and the other Motions. I think that we had better leave the matter where it is.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) talked a great deal about a planned economy and the need for controls for a planned economy. It seemed very strange to me that he has probably never had a planned economy for himself in the use of words. I am sorry that he is not in his place at the moment. His speech appeared to me to cancel itself out, because not only did he want a planned economy but, unlike the right hon. Gentleman, he did not appear to think that the gentlemen in Whitehall know best. It would seem to me that the hon. Member for Oldham, West does not support this Motion, bearing in mind the immense amount of criticism he levelled at taking and using these powers.
Mr. Paget: As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) is absent, and the hon. and learned Gentleman has quite clearly failed to understand what my hon. Friend said, perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to explain that what my hon. Friend said was that he was strongly in favour of a planned economy but regarded the present Government, in view of their record, as obviously incompetent to plan it.
Mr. Renton: If we were in court we should probably say that that is a matter for the jury to decide. I do not think that it is a matter we should attempt to decide in this House.
Mr. Paget: I was simply explaining to the hon. and learned Gentleman what my hon. Friend said.
Mr. G. Darling: Let the jury decide it.
Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), in a speech as interesting as his speeches on fuel and power matters usually are, asked various questions, and particularly about jute. He asked me, in particular, whether factories which have converted to oil will be able to get their oil. Their position is recognised and their needs will be borne in mind, but we hope that even those factories which have converted to oil will do their best to economise. I would point out that the President of the Board of Trade is of the opinion that the provisions which were announced toy the Minister of Fuel and Power today are not likely to lead to a decrease in industrial production.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster suggested that industrial coal would have to be rationed. As he knows, there are already very careful arrangements for the distribution and allocation of industrial coal. I shall not go into the detail of those arrangements because they are outside the scope of the Defence Regulations. Defence Regulations have not been found necessary. However, there is a satisfactory and fair system working at present, and one hopes that that system will continue to operate.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, North suggested that we ought to use price control a very great deal. I would point out that we have no doctrinaire prejudice against using price control when it is really necessary to do so, but we have always taken the view that, generally speaking, price control is not effective unless we have rationing or a system of allocation very close to rationing. We do, however, have price control for domestic coal, and that is a power used under Defence Regulations, and will continue to be used so long as the need is there.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster, who explained to me that he might not be able to remain for the whole of my speech, also asked about jute. I am asked to say that the extended powers are required because without them the Board of Trade would be unable to wind up its trading operations in raw materials, or to continue public trading in imported jute goods until appropriate measures to safeguard the United Kingdom jute industry can be introduced.
Mr. Paget: May we inquire of the hon. and learned Gentleman whether he has any more knowledge of what that means than the rest of us?
Mr. Renton: I do not know whether the hon. and learned Gentleman did not follow what I said, but perhaps he may agree to study it in HANSARD tomorrow.
Mr. Paget: I think I followed it all right, but it sounded to me like Departmental jargon which was intended to have no meaning at all. I wondered whether it had a meaning for the hon. and learned Gentleman.
Mr. Renton: It is perfectly plain English. Really, the hon. and learned Gentleman should think of stronger points than that to make against a junior Minister who is winding up a debate.
I shall now try to answer the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. G. Darling). He was asking about diesel oil for opencast coal operation. We have asked the contractors who are doing the opencast coal work to make this economy of 10 per cent. overall in their activities, and they are doing their best to make that economy. We hope that the economy can be made without interfering with opencast production, but merely by making economies. After all, economies are very frequently possible. We shall, however, watch the position very carefully indeed.
I think I answered the hon. Member's other questions, at any rate those of them with which I am most concerned, in answering other hon. Members, and I hope that with those explanations the House may now give this Motion its unopposed support.
Mr. G. M. Thomson: Those words which the hon. and learned Gentleman quoted about the Jute control may be meaningless to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), but those words mean all the difference between full employment and mass unemployment in the City of Dundee, which I represent.
Mr. Renton: I greatly appreciate what the hon. Gentleman has said, and especially appreciate his coming to my assistance in this matter.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty under section eight of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, praying that the said Act, which would otherwise expire on the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, be continued in force for a further period of one year until the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.
To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.
Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty under section seven of the Emergency Laws (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1947, praying that the Defence Regulations specified in the Schedule hereto, which would otherwise expire on the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, be continued in force for a further period of one year until the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.

EMERGENCY LAWS (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)

  SCHEDULE
  The following Regulations of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939, namely:—
  Regulation fifty-two (Use of land for purposes of Her Majesty's forces);
  Regulations eighty-three and eighty-five (Obstruction, and entry upon, and inspection of, land);
  Regulations ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-eight, ninety-nine B, one hundred to one hundred and two, and one hundred and five (Legal and supplementary provisions).
  Parts I, II, III and IX and Schedules I and II of the Defence (Agriculture and Fisheries) Regulations, 1939.
  Regulations one and six of the Defence (Armed Forces) Regulations, 1939.
  Regulation one and paragraph (5) of Regulation three of the Defence (Patents, Trade Marks, &c.) Regulations, 1941.—[Major Lloyd-George.]
  To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.
  Resolved,
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty under section seven of the Emergency Laws (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act,
  1610
  1947, praying that the enactments specified in the Schedule hereto, which would otherwise expire on the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, be continued in force for a further period of one year until the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.

  SCHEDULE
  Subsection (1) of section three of the Emergency Laws (Transitional Provisions) Act, 1946 (which, as amended by section four of; the Emergency Laws (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act. 1947, extends certain provisions of lie Agriculture (Miscellaneous War Provisions) Act, 1940, relating to wheat and land drainage).
  Section six of the said Act of 1946 (which extends the Sugar Industry Act, 1942).—[Major Lloyd-George.]
  To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

PATENTS
Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty under subsection (3) of section forty-nine of the Patents Act, 1949, praying that the Patents (Extension of Period of Emergency) Order, 1956, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 6th November.—[Mr. Ian Harvey.]
To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

DESIGNS
Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty under sub-paragraph (3) of paragraph 4 of the First Schedule to the Registered Designs Act, 1949, praying that the Registered Designs (Extension of Period of Emergency) Order, 1956, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 6th November.—[Air. Ian Harvey.]
To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE [MONEY]
  Resolution reported.
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to continue certain expiring laws, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of such expenses as may be occasioned by the continuance of the Cotton Manufacturing Industry (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1934, and the Population (Statistics) Act, 1938, until the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven; and of the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act, 1943. the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946. and the Licensing Act, 1953, until the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-eight, being expenses which under any Act are to be provided out of such moneys.
  Resolution agreed to.

  EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL
  Considered in Committee.
  [Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair.]
  Clauses 1 and 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

  EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL

    Schedule
    6.10 p.m.
    Mr. R. T. Paget: I beg to move, in page 3, to leave out lines 7 and 8.
    This is an annual opportunity for considering the law which governs the lives of about 400,000 human beings, for this is roughly the number of aliens living within our jurisdiction. They are governed by a law of a somewhat peculiar nature. The original Aliens Restriction Act was passed on 4th August, 1914, in circumstances in which a very full discussion was probably not to be expected. That Act was renewed by the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, 1919, and each year since then we have renewed it again. The curious thing is that, as far as I can make out from 1919 to 1952 the matter was never discussed at all.
    The law governing aliens at that time consisted of the provisions of the 1919 Act together with about 20 miscellaneous Orders in Council. The matter was raised in 1952 and, as a result of the debate then, a consolidating Order was made in which some of the more exotic provisions of the regulations governing aliens were
    1612
    dropped and the law, so far as it consisted of regulations, was brought into a single document. That was a great advance. It made it a great deal easier for the foreigner within our shores to know what his duties under our law were. Before that they had been almost unascertainable.
    The position now is that we are being again asked to renew the 1919 law. The statutory provisions are contained in that Act. There are one or two to which I should like to refer and I should also like to inquire about the justification for them. First, under Section 3 of the 1919 Act,
    "If any alien attempts or does any act calculated or likely to cause sedition or disaffection amongst any of His Majesty's Forces he shall be liable to a maximum penalty of ten years' imprisonment."
    Why should it be necessary to have a special law for an alien there? If anybody attempts to commit an act likely to cause sedition or disaffection among Her Majesty's forces, he commits an offence. Why should it be necessary to have a special offence for aliens? I am sure that the Minister will agree that in general it is desirable that there should be a common law for all within our bounds.
    6.15 p.m.
    Section 3 (2) seems much more objectionable still. It states:
    "If any alien promotes or attempts to promote industrial unrest in any industry in which he has not been bona fide engaged for at least two years immediately preceding in the United Kingdom, he shall be liable on summary conviction …"
    Is it really desirable that this special restriction on industrial activity should be imposed on a man because he is a foreigner?
    Does that mean that he cannot take part in any trade union activity or in any agitation? Does it mean that he is required, by law, to blackleg a strike? I should like to know. I should also be interested to know how this conforms with the obligations which this country has taken upon herself in the Declaration of Human Rights.
    I refer particularly to Article 19, which reads:
    "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

    1613
    And to Article 23, which states:
    "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."
    How can we make those obligations conform with this peculiar penalty applicable to an alien alone if he promotes or attempts to promote industrial unrest?
    This is very vague. I am extremely doubtful whether taking part in a strike does not contravene the Section to which I have referred. I cannot believe that it is really our intention to compel black-legging. I do not know, but we should like an explanation.
    Another curious obligation in the Act is that
    "No alien shall act as master, chief officer, or chief engineer of a British merchant ship registered in the United Kingdom … Provided that this prohibition shall not apply to any alien who has acted as a master … at any time during the war, and is certified by the Admiralty to have performed good and faithful service in that capacity."
    I should be most interested to know what war. Is this, the 1914 war? If so, why was it not applied to the late war?
    Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Or to the present one.
    Mr. Paget: Is it the Egyptian war? Which is it?
    We are being asked to renew a provision which says
    "After the passing of this Act no alien shall be appointed to any office or place in the Civil Service of the State."
    I gather that the Post Office is rather short of staff. Is it really intolerable that we should have an alien postman? I can imagine that in 1919, when the Civil Service was a great deal smaller than it is now, this sort of restriction may have been reasonable.
    How do the health services stand in this respect? Is an alien doctor inadmissible under one part of the National Health Service, but not under another? How do these regulations apply to the dental service? I ask that this kind of thing be considered in the light of modern circumstances.
    The oddest provision of all is Section 7 (1), which appears to impose anonymity upon all aliens under the age of 42.
    1614
    It states that:
    "An alien shall not for any purpose assume or use or purport to assume or use or continue after the commencement of this Act the assumption or use of any name other than that by which he was ordinarily known on the fourth day of August nineteen hundred and fourteen."
    That, on the face of it, would seem to say that no alien born after 4th August, 1914, who, clearly, did not have a name then, can have a name now. Very odd, but that is what we are asked to reassert. It is time that the Home Office woke up to the circumstances, and tried to put this in order.
    So much for the statutory part of what we are considering. Now I turn to the consolidating Order which provides the executive power over, and the duties of, aliens. This is the Order of 1953, certain aspects of which I want first to consider. The first important one concerns admission to this country. I would be the last person to say that the Government do not need, or ought not to have, a discretion as to whom they should admit into this country. Of course, that is reasonable and it is right. Equally, it is a sign not of retrogression but of progress.
    In the old days, when man possessed no economic civil rights, when there were no pensions and when there was no social security, and the only right was that the employer could import foreign labour because his local labour refused the conditions which he was prepared to offer—in those days there was an open frontier Now, however, when we make a community which belongs to the people, in which every individual has a vested interest, of course we have the right, through our Government, to say who shall enter our territory. That is agreed immediately.
    Nevertheless, there are one or two matters about which I wish to question the Government. The first is the question of health. The regulations provide for the exclusion of people who are suffering from disease, and the most relevant disease is tuberculosis. After the frightful upheaval of the late war people living in displaced persons camps in Europe were found new homes. Here I pay immediately all credit to the British Government. We did more than our reasonable share in providing those new

    1615
    homes. Finally, those people were dispersed to a new opportunity in life, but there remained the tragic residue of those whom an X-ray penalised because of a scar on the lung. Often decisions had to be taken as to whether the children should go to a new home, leaving the mother behind.
    Because of that tragic residue, I urge, as I have done on a number of occasions when I have spoken on this matter, that in the case of the Hungarian refugees we should waive the medical examination. We should do our best in that respect in this country where, owing to sanitation, we perhaps have the best control of tuberculosis available anywhere in the world. I hope, therefore, that in the case of the new problem provided by the Hungarians, such a tragic residue will not be built up again. In view of the tremendous gallantry which they have displayed in their country, might we not equally display a little gallantry in that direction?
    On the wider aspect there arises the question of the political refugee. The Aliens Act of 1907 provides a legal right for the politically persecuted to come to this country. So we provide by our ordinary law an obligation to receive those genuinely in fear of political persecution in their homelands and it is a noble provision of our law.
    That legal right was not repealed. It was only suspended, by the Act of 1914, "and, once again, we are being asked today to continue that suspension. If this Amendment were agreed to there would be a legal right in every persecuted person to come to this land of freedom. I would like to see that.
    I would like to be able to say to the Hungarian refugees, because I think it would have a tremendous moral effect in the world, "You do not come here by leave as an act of charity You come here to a land of law because our law provides that this is your home—you, the persecuted. This is the land of the free." I would like to be able to say to those in this area of persecution, which is writhing and surging and rising and dying to throw off oppression, "Here is a home which will receive you and will be proud to do so, because it is the home not only of Englishmen but of all persecuted for freedom." So I would like to see the
    1616
    Government have the imagination to revert to the 1907 law and say that this is the right of the oppressed.
    Sir Leslie Plummer: Before my hon. and learned Friend leaves that point, I am sure he will appreciate that there is not only physical persecution of people but also economic persecution. For instance, people in the United States have been persecuted by McCarthy and robbed of their employment. I am sure that he would offer the same facilities to those people as he is quite properly asking should be offered to the Hungarian refugees.
    Mr. Paget: Of course, that would be the effect if we reverted to our common law. It is expressly preserved by the Statute, which we only suspend from year to year and is none the less the law of the land. If those people could show that they were suffering from political oppression, then they would have the right to freedom here. That is the position in which England once stood in the world and I would like to see her stand there again.
    So much for the question of admission. The next important question concerns the rule of law. I would like to see the rule of law applied to those who come within our frontiers. It does in America. Quoting from memory, the great Fifth Amendment to their Constitution states that nobody shall suffer in life or in liberty or in limb or in property save by due process of law, and this applies to every alien as he enters America.
    6.30 p.m.
    Why cannot the same thing apply here? This is very wonderfully expressed in the Deuteronomic law of the Jews. It is to be found in Exodus:
    "One law shall be to him that is home-born, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you."
    That is a very great conception. I believe that we could do a lot worse than be guided by it. After all, the Commandments of God have rather marvellously stood the test of time, but we do not apply them. Indeed, in law, if not in practice, the alien who comes into this country comes into a police State. He really has almost no rights at all. I shall be returning to that matter.
    When I last spoke on this subject, which was, I believe, in 1953, I said that

    1617
    there were three classes of people within our community. There were the people under the law, and those were our own citizens; there were the people without the law, which were the alien visitors; and, finally, there were the people above the law, who were the visiting forces.
    What is the position of the visiting forces today? We passed an Act in 1952 to regulate that position. We were told that that Act would come into force when reciprocal arrangements had been made by the other allies, including the United States. I remember Mr. Bing, who was, among other things, a professor in American constitutional law, pointing out to the then Home Secretary that reciprocal legislation in the United States would require at least three amendments of the American Constitution.
    Has that happened? Has the Visiting Forces Act come into operation yet? I have particularly in mind Section 2, which confers jurisdiction upon the tribunals of the visiting forces, but excludes the jurisdiction of our own courts in certain cases. Has reciprocal legislation been passed in the United States, as we were assured that it would be?
    The Temporary Chairman (Mr. F. Blackburn): I think that the hon. and learned Member knows that he is rather straying away from the Measure which is now being discussed.
    Mr. Paget: With respect, Mr. Blackburn, this Measure seeks to renew the control of aliens. Surely I am entitled to ask what the position is of an alien who is a member of the visiting forces. Does he fall within these provisions or does he not?
    The Temporary Chairman: The question of the visiting forces is dealt with under another Act, and not under this Measure.
    Mr. Paget: This is the question which I am asking. At present, do the members of visiting forces fall to be dealt with under the Visiting Forces Act, which becomes operative under its terms only when reciprocal legislation is passed elsewhere, or do they fall under the provisions which we are now discussing? Certainly, I should say, until the Visiting Forces Act becomes operative, members of visiting forces fall to be dealt with under the provisions which
    1618
    we are now discussing. I think that that is right, Mr. Blackburn. Anyhow, I will pass from that point.
    The Temporary Chairman: Perhaps the Minister could answer that question.
    Mr. Paget: That is what I am hoping the Minister will do. That is what I am really asking should be done.
    The Temporary Chairman: The hon. and learned Gentleman has now made his point, and he should leave it at that.
    Mr. Paget: I will pass from it now, Mr. Blackburn, but I am interested to know just where we stand in that respect.
    The next vitally important point from every consideration of liberty—there are a number of subsidiary points, relating to registration, and so on, but I shall not bother to go into them now because I do not think they are very important—is the power of deportation. It is a terrifying power. It is within the Home Secretary's power and at his discretion. It can be challenged by no court. It is a decision which can be arrived at upon the basis of secret information which a man never sees and has no right to see.
    A man who has never seen any other country because he came here as a baby, who knows no other language and has spoken no other language with adults, whose children are British and whose wife is British, whose wife, home and background are British, can, without his having any recourse to any court, be taken from his family and background and separated from his home.
    If no other country will accept him, he can be held indefinitely in prison without any charge. He can be deported upon any ship which the Minister may select, although being placed upon that ship means certain death to him. There was the famous case of the Duc de Chateau Thierry, who had committed no extraditable offence, whom the French military authorities wanted to get hold of when they were our allies. We arrested him. He said, "Here is my ticket. I want to go to America, and I have a ticket for a ship which is just leaving for America." We said, "No. You are going on a French ship so that the French can arrest you." We did that although there was no power to extradite him. That is what

    1619
    happened, and that is the wholly unrestrained power which we are being asked to confer upon the Government.
    I read in the Sunday Press a few weeks ago an account of a man called George, who had apparently stowed away in India on one of the Union Castle boats about four years ago. India would not have him back, and we would not accept him as a citizen of ours. When the Union Castle Line boat arrives in Britain, the man is lodged in gaol, and when he goes away he is in the ship again. Apparently, this is his fate till he dies, because there is no solution to the problem of how he can ever cease being a ward of the Union Castle Line, which could not want him less. Can one do anything about that sort of case?
    The really vital thing here is that these powers are purely arbitrary. A man whose whole background and life are English can be imprisoned indefinitely upon no charge, and can be banished and sent to any country no matter how dangerous he may think it. He is at the discretion of the Government, and so is his family.
    I would ask the Minister to consider how that fits in with our obligations under the Declaration of Human Rights which we have ratified and to which we are a party. I do not know whether we pay any attention to it. Article 2 says:
    "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind "—
    as to, among other things,
    "national or social origin.…"
    Article 3 says:
    "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person."
    When we make people subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and banish them without a charge, do we comply with that?
    Article 8 says:
    "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights.…"
    Do we comply with that when we deny a man who is arrested and held in prison any resort to the courts?
    Article 9 states:
    "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."
    That is precisely the power which the Government are now asking us to give
    1620
    them, the power of arbitrary arrest, detention or exile applying to about 400,000 people now within our frontiers. It is a formidable power to ask. I ask the Government to consider how this fits in with their obligations to come to this House and ask for the power to do the very things which they are obligated not to do.
    What I would ask the Government to consider is this. First, is it not time that we had an aliens Statute? I entirely agree that in this field the Home Office has to have wide discretion. I am not disputing for a moment that in my experience, at any rate, that discretion has been most humanely exercised. The fact that we had an aliens Statute would not in any way limit the field of discretion. It would be no more limited by an aliens Statute than by a consolidation Order. But it would clear up the curious and anomalous remains of the 1919 Act, which brings the Statute and the Order and the Regulations under one hat and make them consistent, and it would enable this House to consider in detail what is to be done. This is eminently the place where the collective wisdom of this House in Committee would be of very great value.
    Secondly, with regard to the question of entry, I again agree, subject that I would like to see—I do not think that it would make so much difference in practice as in appearance—that very splendid legal right of asylum in this country made a matter of law rather than one of discretion; but apart from that, the Statute would retain to the Home Secretary the discretion as to whom he admitted, and upon what terms.
    I say, also, that it should retain to the Home Secretary the right to deport the visitor. I do not think that there is any difficulty in drawing a distinction between a visitor to this country and the man whose home is here. That is a vital distinction. It is a distinction known to the law as domicile. If the alien is domiciled here, then I think that he should have certain rights, but if he is merely a visitor, it is reasonable for us to say to him, "We are tired of your company. We would rather you went home."
    That, I think, in a Statute, could perfectly well be. But surely the man who has domicile, to whom deportation is a sentence of exile, to whom deportation is a breaking of the family, should have

    1621
    certain rights in his home which should be protected by the law under which he lives and which is really the only relevant law in his life. I feel that the circumstances under which we can expel somebody living here permanently from his home should be very limited indeed, and certainly should be subject to resort to the courts. It is time that this sort of thing was considered.
    6.45 p.m.
    I believe that the application of the aliens law in this country, although there have been exceptions—there was an exception in the case of Professor Cort, of Birmingham University, which was a very unfortunate decision and there may have been others—is a good deal more liberal than probably anywhere else in the world. It seems a pity, that being so, that we should have such a Draconian law which is so subject to international criticism. Why is this necessary? Why cannot we have a law which is nearer to our performance? I would urge the Government to consider the various points which I have put before the Committee this evening.
    Mr. Barnett Janner: I should like to support the Amendment which has been so very ably moved by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget).
    I would make a special appeal at this stage to the Minister who, I know, has a considerable amount of human sympathy, and who has exhibited at various times a wide and wise understanding of a number of problems. I had something to do with the consideration of the Declaration of Human Rights. I happen to be a member of a non-governmental body which advises, and has consultative status, in relation to the United Nations.
    The question of the preparation of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights was very carefully considered by nongovernmental bodies as well as by the Governments themselves. Before the actual Declaration was accepted and ratified, it took into consideration the experience not only of the last war—the terrible experience of those who had suffered under the Nazi régime, but the views of a very varied set of people who knew and understood what was the
    1622
    effective remedy for the distress which prevailed amongst refugees in the world.
    When the Declaration was ultimately accepted it was assumed that the nations concerned would abide by the principles enunciated in it and that any steps taken by the various Governments, who expressed their view in no uncertain terms about the importance of the Declaration, would comply with the Declaration. I am sorry to say that that has not been the case. Not only in our own country, but in other countries, observance has not in many instances complied with the intention, the letter or the spirit of the Declaration. I ask the Minister to take this fact into consideration when considering the matter which we are debating and to see whether he can eventually persuade his Minister and others concerned that there are anomalies which ought to be remedied in our treatment of aliens. Something should be done on the lines indicated by my hon. and learned Friend.
    Recently, we debated the position of Hungarian refugees, when everybody agreed that there was no question about whether we ought to admit them, or about return visas, age or condition of health. These considerations, it was agreed, I believe without exception, were to be ignored. Quite rightly. These are persecuted people, who have had to flee. They have shown considerable courage before being driven out of their country and it was obvious to everyone that they must be admitted. That was the end of it.
    I know that that position is acute, but how does it differ from the case of a Jewish person who was forced to leave Iraq? A number of Jewish people have had to leave Iraq because of the attacks made there upon their co-religionists. I know of cases, in my professional capacity as well as in other capacities, of these people arriving in this country, men and women who cannot go back. Their nationality has been taken from them. They have considerable anxiety about relatives left in Iraq. It has been suggested that they ought to go to Israel, but in many cases they cannot do that because once they got there questions would arise out of the animus that prevails in Iraq against Israel, and because the reaction might affect their relatives left in Iraq.

    1623
    I know of people who have been put to grave anxiety. They have made application after application for leave to remain, without success. It is a heartbreaking matter. The officials do their best to observe the regulations, but perhaps they do not understand why people who come here for a year or two ask for extensions of stay. Perhaps they think that is unreasonable, and perhaps in some respects it is, until we look at the circumstances of some of these cases. We then see that it is literally impossible for the persons concerned to go back to the land from which they came. Most of them have learned and speak the English language and can conduct themselves properly here. Consideration should be shown to cases of that sort.
    More liberal consideration ought to be given to cases of persecution, which were intended to be provided for by the Declaration of Human Rights. A man should not be kept here without being allowed to work, for example, because the strain upon him is such that he must eventually find another place to go to or be entirely broken. That kind of treatment is not in accord with the Declaration.
    Then comes the right of deportation, to which my hon. and learned Friend referred. The question of domicile is difficult. Residence for a period does not necessarily constitute domicile, but it ought to confer the right upon a person to have a proper trial in the event of his being asked to leave the country. There are humane and not so humane persons dealing with these cases. The result may depend upon the absolute discretion of certain individuals. I would not suggest for a moment that they are prompted by anything other than common humanity, but human beings are apt to have different approaches to the same problem.
    It is reasonable to allow a person who is in any of these difficulties to which I have referred to have an opportunity of putting his case before a tribunal which will not only go into the hard, cold facts as they may appear to an official eye, but can examine the full circumstances and come to conclusions accordingly.
    May I refer to the stateless person, whose plight is the most serious in the world? There is no country at all to which he can return permanently, because he has no nationality. The Declaration
    1624
    of Human Rights indicates that that condition should not exist and that nationality should be provided for the stateless person by nations who subscribed to the Declaration. When the Declaration was being made nobody denied that, yet if a stateless person comes here he is, in a sense, regarded as undesirable right from the start. He will be allowed in if he has the right to go back to the country which has given him a pass, but a stateless person has no rights in any sense equivalent to those possessed by individuals with a proper nationality.
    7.0 p.m.
    This is a human problem of considerable importance and is not confined merely to the wording of Orders. The possibilities of discretion which are open to the Home Office are much too wide. People can be deported and regarded as mere pawns to be moved from one place to another by an arbitrary act entirely dependent upon the outlook of the Home Secretary or the officials who have control. I myself have had the opportunity in the various capacities which I have the privilege to occupy in the Jewish community, and outside to see the serious difficulties which have arisen at times.
    I appeal to the Home Secretary to regard the term "political refugee" as being applicable not only to a person who can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that because of his political views he has been driven out of his country. A much wider definition should be used to cover, also, a person who has had to flee for refuge because of his religion, because of his race, because of his colour, or other reasons. I know that tonight this Amendment will be resisted, but I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to say that at a later stage the whole law relating to aliens will be reconsidered.
    Mr. Sydney Silverman: This is becoming an annual occasion. Every year for a number of years some hon. Members have taken the opportunity of calling the attention of the Government to what is generally believed to be an untirely unsatisfactory state of affairs. None of us has anything new to say. The admirable speeches which we have already heard summarise the points which have been repeatedly made by all of us over the years. If we have to go on saying them again year after year, it

    1625
    is only because of the inexplicable obstinacy of the Home Office in resisting what has become the almost universal desire of the House, the desire that our aliens legislation shall be liberalised in the sense that it shall be made worthy of a country which has always proudly boasted to the world that it is free.
    Abraham Lincoln said in a famous quotation that no nation could exist half slave and half free. It does not matter about the proportions. No nation can really call itself free while any substantial proportion of those living within its law are regarded in any respect as second-class citizens. That is exactly the position of aliens. I do not want to go over the whole ground, or repeat everything that has been said in earlier debates. There are two basic criticisms, neither of which has ever been adequately or satisfactorily answered.
    The first is that it is intolerable that the rights of a group of people, no matter how wide or limited those rights, should never be subject to Parliamentary examination or governed by an Act of Parliament which Parliament has had the opportunity to consider. I know that the position is possibly a little better than it used to be in that we have a consolidating Order and that on one occasion the House had a general debate on the consolidated Regulations. However, that is not sufficient, because the defect is that the House of Commons has no power to amend a Regulation or an Order in Council.
    We are faced with the dilemma that we must either refuse to have any legislation at all, or accept delegated legislation. We either refuse the Government any powers, or give them just those powers which they have demanded. That is an intolerable situation. Time after time we have been promised that the Home Office will look at the matter. I do not know whether its officials have done so, but if they have, they have reached exactly the same conclusion as before and we have no Statute dealing with or regulating the rights of aliens.
    The second basic question, rendered all the more intolerable because it has not had the sanction of Parliament in the ordinary way through an Act of Parliament, is that people are left completely in the power of the Home Secretary. My
    1626
    hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) said that he believed that the administration of the Home Office had always been humane—apart from one or two exceptions, with perhaps some unfortunate examples. I hope that he is right.
    None of us would like to think that my hon. and learned Friend was mistaken, but how does he know? How does any of us know? The House hears only of the disputed case; the House becomes aware that there might be something wrong only when a Member of Parliament hears of a case, or when a case becomes publicly notorious and there are deputations and leading articles in the newspapers. Questions in the House, and so on. We have no means whatever of knowing what the day-to-day administration is like.
    My hon. and learned Friend said that he would not very much bother about the necessity of continual registration. He treated that subject a little more lightly than he would have treated it had he been an alien himself, compelled to register with the police every change of address within certain limits over a period of time. That is a serious limitation. The fact that the Home Secretary himself personally has sole discretion in matters like the grant of political asylum is most serious.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) has considerable experience in those matters—as I have myself, some experience, anyhow. My hon. Friend drew the contrast between the attitude of the House and, indeed, of the Government last night towards refugees from Hungary and from Iraq. No one would want to say one single word against a liberal attitude towards Hungarian refugees. Of course our welcome to them should be warm and there should be as little restriction as possible. But when my hon. Friend talks about Iraq, I am reminded of another matter, which no doubt he will remember, too. A few years after the end of the war there were rotting in concentration camps in Germany hundreds of thousands of people who were as entitled to sympathetic co-operation, help and understanding as those we are welcoming from Hungary today.

    1627
    There was a united protest from all quarters of the House against the attitude of the Home Office on that occasion. I am making no party point about it; there was a Labour Government in office at the time. It was done by the machine, and the pretence that the personal responsibility of the Home Secretary is or can be a real thing is only a pretence. There are far too many questions for any Home Secretary to take personal responsibility for them. On this occasion there was a united protest from all over the House against the attitude of the Home Office towards refugees.
    In the end, we had a list of categories—how many surviving relatives a man had to have, what the degree of relationship had to be, what the degree of support was, and a great many other things which had to be considered before any individual case could be dealt with. That is all very well, but it ought surely to have been subjected, and ought now to be subjected, not to the pretended personal discretion of the Home Secretary, which, in practice, is the blind working of a blind machine; it ought to have been reviewed at the request of anyone involved by some third-party judgment, some kind of tribunal, as it has always been in the United States.
    I will deal with the question of political asylum, arising out of a remark which my hon. Friend made. Are we proud of the way that works now? I would say to the Under-Secretary of State—I say it with regret and with reluctance, but I say it because I feel bound to say it, believing it to be true—that the working of political asylum and the right to it has become in this country nothing but a weapon of the cold war. We readily grant political asylum to any refugee from an Iron Curtain, Communist or satellite country. I am not complaining of that; we do grant it and we should. But the suggestion that there can be any such things as a political refugee from any other part of the world is treated with complete disdain by the Home Office as though it were an affront to common sense.
    It is not an affront to common sense. There is plenty of political persecution in the Communist countries, as we all know, but they have not the monopoly of political persecution. The Home
    1628
    Office exercises its discretion in this matter not on the basis of the rights or wrongs of a particular case, but on the basis of what the effect of what they do may be upon the conflict of ideology in a bitterly and strategically divided world. Dr. Cort is only one example. There have been others. It is simply a weapon which each bloc of States use against the other. They give political asylum to Burgess and Maclean and we give political asylum to Petrov. There would be very much more in the idea of political asylum if the rôles were reversed.
    It all arises out of the basic objection, the basic wrong, that there is no right to be heard, no right of independent third-party judgment, no right to be told what it is that the Home Office has against one, no right to be confronted with witnesses, no right to be heard on one's own behalf, or to be represented by professional advocates, no right to call witnesses and no right to know what are the reasons for an adverse judgment and no appeal from it of any kind. That situation is completely incompatible with our boast that we stand for freedom in the world.
    7.15 p.m.
    I am not saying that this is a great evil in the sense that there are a great many people who are involved in it and a great many injustices done over it. I am not saying any such thing. What I am saying is that the potentiality is there, that it happens from day to day without anybody knowing and that in a great many cases where we did know about it we were unable to produce any results or influence the Home Office in any serious way.
    I say that the matter ought to be looked at again, and ought to be looked at seriously and constructively with a desire to improve our aliens legislation and make aliens in this country equal citizens, or, if not equal citizens, at least people with equal rights before the law with those who are citizens.
    Sir L. Plummer: I will not detain the Committee for long, but I should like to support what my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) has said and also the argument advanced by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) on the question of political asylum.

    1629
    I do not think we ought to be too self-conscious about the very proper action which we have taken in arranging that Hungarian refugees should come into this country without at the same time being conscious of the fact that there are a great number of aliens living in this country who are political refugees but who dare not say that they are political refugees. Whether it is right or not, they have the impression from the conversations which they have been forced to hold with officials of the Home Office and with the police that describing oneself as a political refugee in any way militates against one's chance of staying in the country.
    There are in the country today many hundreds of American men and women who are political refugees from the United States. They have been driven out of their country because, to use an Americanism, the finger has been put upon them. They have been denied employment, particularly in the entertainment industry and in the advertising and publicity world, because it has been alleged, without any shred of documentation, that they are enemies of the American constitution. They have therefore come to this country, the second great country in entertainments, advertising and publishing. They have been trying to get employment in this country so that they can practise their art and their training and use the facilities which they have developed in America.
    There people are finding that the regulations against them are not exercised vindictively but they think—and this seems to me true from the cases which I have taken up—are exercised without imagination at all. The pretence has to be that they are not political refugees but are men coming to this country to seek employment—that they should be allowed into the country to work providing that they do not put anybody else out of work. It is a fact that men trained in these particular ways of earning a living do not compete directly with other workers over here. For example, a film director is not in direct competition, because he is an expatriate American, with a British film director; it is not the same competition as in the case of two men doing the same job in the ordinary walk of life.
    1630
    Nevertheless, they are treated as though they are in competition with British professional workers in an industry which is presumed to be so short of work that they are taking the bread out of British mouths. That is not the case at all. The fact is that these men are now having to work in the British film industry, many of them under an alias—many of them under no name at all—because they are not being given the ability and the power to exercise what should be the right of the political refugee in this country—to work quite openly and unashamedly in the pursuit of his particular profession or career.
    I had hoped that we would this year have had a declaration that the political refugee was to be recognised once again by the Government. Surely, what has been going on in the last few weeks or a month in Hungary has made us all sensitive and conscious of the dreadful plight of the man who is a refugee, whether as a result of military, economic or political pressure. Surely it makes us sensitive to the awful position of men literally deported from their country and having to find a new life in an alien land. And. as I have said, so many of these people to whom I am referring are benefiting British industry and commerce.
    There is another point, and it is this. In my experience of the cases that I have taken to the Home Office—where I have always been received with the utmost courtesy, and have invariably been offered much sympathy and advice—I find that this may happen. An alien is working here on a short licence—for six months, or some such period. He is nervous and apprehensive as to whether he will be able to stay in the country long enough to qualify for what I might call full citizenship; that is to say, until he has worked here for four years with no complaint made against his conduct, at the end of which time he is free and uncontrolled to take what job he likes.
    The first six months is a time of great anxiety for the alien. At the end of that time, a policeman comes and warns him that his period of sojourn in the country has expired. I wish that we would send a plain clothes man instead of a policeman. It is not very much to ask. We ourselves get on with our police, but to the refugee—and particularly the refugee from a country where

    1631
    the "cop" is not on such friendly terms with the citizens as he is here—it is an assault on his nerves. He is told that he has to leave the country by a certain day. He is seen by the police, or by a Home Office official, and is told that he must get out of the country by, say, the following Tuesday, and he starts to pack.
    I have had these cases. I have said, "Don't take any notice, because the Home Office does not mean it seriously." I have said that because the Home Office have told me that it is not to be taken seriously, and that if the man supplies the necessary evidence he will not be deported. If that is so, why do we tell him that he has to leave the country? If no order is to be issued against him, why do we threaten him? Why do we have a routine—and it is admitted now that it is a routine—as cruel as that?
    Of course, when it happens the second time the alien does not take any notice; nor the third. He says, "Oh, this is all routine." But the first time it happens we put the alien, against whom nothing is alleged, into a state of fear and apprehension which is cruel and which he does not deserve. I should have thought that, if we are not to have a return to the law of political asylum, the Minister should order that the attitude adopted towards these people should be a humane and a considerate one.
    It is not too much to ask that people who are behaving themselves in this country, who are contributing to our knowledge, our wealth and our economic future, should be treated as politely and considerately as are the rest of us. It is not too much to ask for people who have very few friends here—very few friends indeed. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State will consider what I have said and will make to his right hon. and gallant Friend the recommendations for which I have asked.
    Mr. Anthony Greenwood: In intervening in this discussion tonight, I feel that I should ask the indulgence of the Committee, because although I have listened for a number of years to this annual discussion I have never before ventured to try to break in on that magic circle of eloquence, ability and liberal thought represented by my hon. Friends who have spoken, and who have produced such a spirited debate year after year in
    1632
    spite of the paucity of attendance on both sides of the Committee.
    I intervene on this occasion only because I think that the Committee should now be getting a little impatient with this annual task of re-enacting Section 1 of an Act of 1919, which, itself, re-enacted panic legislation in 1914. We have this annual opportunity, and we appreciate it, of having a number of rather desultory discussions of an Aliens Order which contains 24 pages, 35 Articles and six Schedules. The time is rapidly approaching when we must try to arrive at a rather more satisfactory method of dealing with this problem.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) said, when this Order was introduced it went through the ordinary procedure of an Order or Regulation. We had no opportunity of amending it. There was, as it were, only a Second Reading debate, and we had to decide whether to accept or to reject the Order in toto. Every year we have this discussion, without any opportunity at all of making Amendments which many of us think would make of it a better and more humane Order than it is at present. The time really has come, I think, when the Home Secretary should give consideration to the possibility of introducing another Aliens Bill which would take the place of the Act of 1919, and of giving the whole House an opportunity of discussing the principles of aliens legislation, and of making certain amendments to the law as it now stands.
    This problem is one which will become more and more important during the next few years. We now have talk of a common market and of a free trade area which, presumably, involves a great deal more mobility of labour in Europe than we have had in the past. Obviously, the position of aliens will become of increasing importance if economic changes of that kind are to take place. Again, we have a problem of the political refugees, to which a number of my hon. Friends have referred. Like my hon. Friends, I should like to see this country taking the lead, and welcoming political refugees from all parts of the world—and refugees from all forms of oppression, wherever they may be.

    1633
    When my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) was talking about the old Deuteronomic law of the Jews, as he called it, I could not help but recall the existing law of return which the present State of Israel has. It was one of the first laws enacted when that State came into existence, and it stated that any Jew in any part of the world who needed asylum in the State of Israel should have the right to return to the land of his fathers. It was a great, humane gesture, and I feel a little sad that when such a small country as Israel can do that, we, in this country, should be tending to take what is, I think, rather a restricted and restrictionist approach to what is a very important human problem.
    These people are entitled not only to our sympathy, but to our help. I have living in my own house at the moment, three adult aliens and one alien baby. I am occasionally called upon to advise upon the various restrictions which are imposed upon them. When I take into account the restrictions imposed on them by the Home Office and also by the Ministry of Labour, I must say that at times I myself find it difficult to understand the documents which are placed before me, and it must be a task of almost insuperable difficulty for aliens not understanding our language easily to acquaint themselves with all the regulations to which they are subjected.
    7.30 p.m.
    I should like to ask the Under-Secretary how many aliens came into the country during the last 12 months, how many came here to stay and to work, how many were refused permission and how many were deported. A number of my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee have spoken about the arbitrary right of the Secretary of State to deport aliens from this country.
    I think it is only right that I should call the attention of the Committee to an Answer which the Home Secretary gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) on 2nd August, when the right hon. and gallant Gentleman spoke of the steps we were taking to comply with the European Convention on Establishment. He told the House on that occasion that he had decided to provide for appeals by aliens whom it was proposed should be deported, and the Chief Metropolitan
    1634
    Magistrate and his colleagues had undertaken to be the appeal body.
    Although that is a step forward, I think that some of the value of it is destroyed by the fact that in the last paragraph of the Home Secretary's answer he said:
    "The procedure will not be applicable to cases where a deportation order has been made on grounds of public security …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT,2nd August, 1956; Vol 365, c. 175.]
    We all know nowadays, especially in view of the way that some of our own citizens have been treated in the last few months, how dangerous it is once this bogey of security is raised. It seems to me a great pity, if the Home Secretary has confidence in this appelate tribunal and in the justice of his case. that he should be reluctant to allow the tribunal also to decide cases of security.
    There are, of course, a number of grounds for uneasiness which all of us must feel. I make no complaint whatsoever, as my hon. Friends have been at great pains to emphasise, of the general liberal approach of the civil servants in the Home Office. It is rather the political direction of the Home Office which causes many of us on this side of the Committee to have feelings of uneasiness about the policy that it is pursuing. There was the case of the Regional Planning Conference, the Iraqi students, the treatment of Makeriotis in breach of the Anglo-Greek Consular Convention, as the Home Secretary had to admit later. We are also bound to admit that, when we are pursuing repression abroad, that attitude of mind can become very infectious, and repression can be extended to aliens and others inside our own country.
    When we last discussed these matters, on 24th November last year, the present new Leader of the Liberal Party spoke, I thought, very forcibly and convincingly. He said:
    "The position is particularly difficult today when we are faced with the main problems of Communism. The habit seems to have grown up of branding institutions and individuals as Communist, of refusing them entry into the country, and perhaps of saying that they are 'cover-fronts' for Communism if they hold conferences. There is no means by which people who are directly or indirectly accused of being Communists can defend themselves."—[OFFICIAL REPORT,24th November, 1955; Vol. 546, c. 1704.]

    1635
    That, of course, is the perilous position into which this country is drifting. It is so easy to make accusations and insinuations in public, but there, of course, one has an opportunity of replying to them. The most dangerous form of insinuation is the insinuation which is made behind closed doors with all the privilege which attaches to it, and to which the person under suspicion has no opportunity of replying.
    For these and a number of other reasons many of us are not very happy about our present policy towards aliens, and we would all agree that this Measure should be extended only for a limited period. We really must ask the Under-Secretary to tell us what plans the Home Office has for the future of aliens legislation. A year ago we had a number of questions put to the Home Office, and I should like to run through them in the hope that on this occasion we may have a reply to the points which I am going to put.
    First, there is the point which was touched upon by earlier speakers, about the possibility of having a tribunal to consider the appeals of aliens who are refused permits to enter this country. Has the Home Secretary made up his mind about that? If so, could he take the Committee into his confidence and tell us what the policy of the Government is in that respect? If it is possible for America, whose forms and procedures we do not always slavishly accept or follow in this country, to have a tribunal to which aliens refused permission to land can appeal, I would have thought it was possible for us to go as far as that and provide machinery for appeals in this country.
    Also on the last occasion when we debated this subject, the noble Viscount the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) spoke very movingly of the treatment to which, according to him, aliens were subjected at ports of immigration into this country. He described the conditions which he had seen, and ended by saying:
    "What is being done about that? Can we get to 25th November, 1956, and come down to this House on another day's debate and be told that something has happened about Harwich, about Folkestone and Dover and the other ports?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT.24th November, 1955; Vol. 546, c. 1692.]
    It is not quite 25th November, but I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to
    1636
    tell us that he himself from his own personal experience is now satisfied about the way in which aliens are treated at ports of immigration into the United Kingdom.
    There are two other points that I should like to put to the Under-Secretary. The first is one that was put last year but to which we did not have an answer which convinced me or many of my hon. Friends, and that is why we insist upon visas for aliens holding refugee passports. If he could tell us a little about that we would be grateful.
    The last question I want to put is whether we are now doing or have done anything during the past 12 months to implement the Council of Europe's recommendations about a uniform form of refugee passport. The hon. Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth), who, at that time, was Under-Secretary of State, was only able to tell us that there were already 16,000 of these in stock and that it would cost £5,000 to scrap them and print new forms—a point of view which elicited from my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) the observation that it would be much cheaper to give them all a copy of the Bible, which contains much sounder information about the way to treat strangers in one's own country.
    I should like to think that although we may not always follow the recommendations of the Council of Europe, the Home Office in the past year has taken, at any rate, some action to implement its recommendation about the issue of refugee passports. I should appreciate any information which the Under-Secretary can give to the Committee.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. W. F. Deedes): Like the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), I too am a newcomer to this annual event. The form of the legislation which we discuss is always a feature of these debates, and, whatever views we may hold about it, it at least affords this chance of a wide annual review—and I stress the word "wide"—which may not be possible on other occasions, and which I think most hon. Members who take part in the debate welcome.
    The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), who opened

    1637
    the debate, has, I know, strong views about the draconic powers of the Government in this field—views, I think, shared by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). I shall not be able to satisfy him on that score any more than my predecessors on this side or the other side of the Committee have been able to do in preceding years, but I can at least attempt to answer some of the questions he put.
    As a basis for my reply, I will at once answer the question asked about the numbers of aliens under discussion. Last year, the total number, of foreign passengers landed was 1,152,139, compared with 1,069,000 the year before. Those refused entry numbered 2,152, or 018 per cent. compared with 0·16 per cent. in the preceding year. The number deported was around the hundred figure, and that has been falling for a number of years. Those figures should be put against a background of about 350,000 aliens now in this country.
    The hon. and learned Member for Northampton, who was good enough to tell me he might not be able to be present during my reply, asked a question about employment in the Civil Service, and I should like to call his attention to a small Act, the Aliens Employment Act, which was passed in the last Session which has altered the position as to the employment of aliens in the Crown service. I will not elaborate on it now; it was not on our list, but was a Ministry of Labour Act. I think it will answer the main point made in that respect by the hon. and learned Gentleman.
    The hon. and learned Member for Northampton asked a question about health and the exclusion of those suffering from disease, particularly tuberculosis. All I would say about that is that medical examination at the port is not necessarily primarily directed at tuberculosis now. The treatment and prospects in that disease have changed radically, so that that would no longer call for absolute exclusion. In any case, a clinical examination at the port would not always disclose tuberculosis. But I think it is not to be expected that a country would or should let in without any check people who could become a physical danger to others.
    1638
    The hon. and learned Gentleman asked also about the case of Mr. George Barnard. I should like to add a footnote to what he said. Mr. George Barnard was a perpetual traveller on a shipping line and had spent most of his time in Ceylon. Neither India nor Ceylon would ultimately accept him, and we accepted him out of the—I hesitate to say out of the kindness of our hearts—but we accepted him.
    The hon. and learned Member for Northampton, as did, I think, nearly every other hon. Member who took part in the debate, mentioned the Hungarians. I should like, if I may, to say a word at the end of my reply about our stewardship in that respect, which will, I think, answer most of the points made in the course of the debate.
    The hon. and learned Gentleman expressed a most earnest plea for those who felt themselves politically persecuted, that they should be free to enter this country without any let or hindrance at all. Indeed, he went further and said he would like to see that all who felt the desire to come should find the gates open. I am sufficiently familiar with what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said in earlier years on this subject not to question the very sincere idealism and the force with which he holds these views, that the gates should be open or far more widely open than they are now. I do, however, question whether any Government, of whatever political complexion, responsible for this very crowded island could countenance a situation in which the gates were as completely open to all and sundry as he and certain other hon. Members would desire. As to our policy in that regard, I shall have a further word to say in a few moments.
    Reference has been made to deportation. I was glad that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Rossendale mentioned for the first time in our discussions the alteration which was made this year, which involves the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate who has been good enough to assist my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary; and I should like to offer a short report on the situation. It is too soon to put the new arrangements under review; there are a few cases pending where an alien will have the right to make representations to the Chief Magistrate, but none has yet reached a

    1639
    stage when he has been required to make a recommendation. One such case should have been heard last week, but it was postponed sine die on account of the alien's state of health.
    The hon. Member for Rossendale and one or two other hon. Gentlemen have referred to this question of permanent legislation and have asked what the Home Office view is for the future. That question, as I know hon. Gentlemen will agree, has been asked certainly in all our recent debates since the war. I agree it is odd that we should still be operating under an Act which we renew annually and which has operated now, I think, for thirty-seven years. It is fair to say, on the other side, that, apart from the dissatisfaction which hon. Members express about certain aspects of the policy and the facility with which they can, as the hon. and learned Member for Northampton did tonight, allude to passages which are palpably not as happily expressed as they would be if we were preparing an Act de novo, there is, of course, not a sense of urgency, in that no one is at the moment labouring under a grievance or suffering positive hardship due to the nature of the legislation under which we operate.
    7.45 p.m.
    As I think hon. Gentlemen who spoke to this will agree, it is not so much permanent legislation which is sought, certainly by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne who spoke to this, but, of course, much more freedom of entry to be incorporated in any fresh legislation which the Home Office should bring forward. I am not certain in my own mind whether that would necessarily be the consequence of fresh legislation. I would add that I am not altogether certain in my own mind whether a different law, however devised, would necessarily bring better results.
    The hon. and learned Member for Northampton did conclude his remarks, as he is usually good enough to do, by saying that he thought the application of our law was a good deal more liberal than that to be found anywhere else in the world. I do not seek to over-emphasise that. The administration of this law is bound to lead to slips, to difficulties and to hardships. But I should like to stress this to all hon. Gentlemen who have spoken, that we have got to
    1640
    hold the balance now, or under any further legislation which might be introduced, between several considerations, not all of which are necessarily compatible.
    In answer to what has been said, I should like to suggest what those considerations are. I do not think we should find that they have varied very much between Governments or that they have varied in principle much since the war. The first, obviously, is to avoid being swamped, a danger which has diminished but not dsappeared in the post-war decade, which must limit immigration, subject to specific exceptions, to people who can make some kind of contribution to the national economy.
    The second consideration, and this has been touched on tonight, is that of security, which is hard, and often impossible, to defend publicly but which really cannot be dismissed as entirely negligible. The third, I would suggest, is maximum freedom for those who want to visit us, subject to those two first considerations. The fourth is readiness at all times to contribute to the relief of genuine distress. Our attitude in that, I think, has been proved by our actions. The fifth is recruitment of labour where it is needed, in conjunction with the Ministry of Labour. Finally, there is education, on reasonable conditions; that is, for students to come from abroad. Against the background of our national needs and difficulties, I must say that I believe those to be reasonable considerations and to form solid foundations for our immigration policy.
    The hon. Gentleman the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) spoke of the Declaration of Human Rights. I took a full note of what he said, and I heard his views with sympathy. The hon. Member thought that many more individual cases should be treated as we have treated the Hungarians during recent weeks. He will, I think, accept that there will always be exceptional calls upon humanity, such as this recent action in relation to Hungary, which must be treated quite apart from anything else. He also mentioned the question of deportation, and I hope that he heard what I had to say about the recent action that we announced.
    The hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) raised the question of

    1641
    police. They are not invariably in uniform. There are certain rare occasions when it is not a bad thing—I do not say this harshly; the hon. Member will know what I mean—that the visit should be an impressive one. The police are not invariably in uniform, but I will certainly consider the psychological aspect of what I think the hon. Member was seeking to say.
    I should like to add a word, since the question was raised by all speakers, about the Hungarian refugees. We have been urged—we were urged last night—to relax the immigration laws completely and not to allow red tape to impede the instincts of humanity. Every one associated with this operation has been of one mind and I think that our actions have proved it.
    One of our chief immigration officers was in Vienna on 10th November. Four other officers left on 13th November, arriving next day, and the first refugees, as the House knows, arrived here on 17th November. By tonight, there will be a total of over 600, I believe, within these shores. Three hundred and fifty came by train yesterday and there will be another 217 by train today. Our immigration officers have not been sitting in Vienna. They have been out, down on the frontier and in the schools where the refugees are gathered, and it has not been easy to maintain contact with them.
    The point was not raised tonight, but it is extremely important that it should be made clear, that there has been no skimming of the cream in selecting the refugees who should come here. I know that a number of hon. Members feel strongly about this. From the first, we have realised the difficulties that would be created for the Austrians. Instructions were given that there should be no skimming of the cream. Families are viable units for obvious human reasons, but otherwise there were no priorities.
    Questions were asked about papers and documents. The refugees are arriving with authenticated nominal rolls accompanying each party. They give only particulars of name, age, occupation and religion, and nothing else. Nothing else is required of them. We have not asked for passports or documents of identity. We have completely waived all question of returnability and we have provided
    1642
    for immigration and health clearance in Austria, so that no delays will be occasioned here by those considerations. The refugees will go to hostels overnight, they will be registered by the police next morning and they will then be free to go to relations and friends, which, I am glad to say, a number are finding—more than we expected. Finally, the Ministry of Labour will help to place them in employment.
    Mrs. Alice Cullen: I am very glad to hear that there is no screening of the refugees, because there are rumours abroad that the Government will be very choosey as to the people they accept.
    Mr. Deedes: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her observation.
    Perhaps I might add a word of tribute to the British Council for Aid to Refugees which has been working—
    Mr. Hale: With no money?
    Mr. Deedes:—and treating this emergency as a quasi-military operation and has been doing all that is possible—
    Mr. Hale: Eighty thousand pounds a year for refugees.
    Mr. Deedes:—to bring these refugees here as quickly as may be.
    The figure of 2,500 was questioned by an hon. Member tonight. I think it is already clear to the House that that figure is not to be regarded as final and unchangeable. It was based on the original estimate of 20,000 refugees in Hungary. It was essential to give straight away a working figure on which the organisations could get to work and it was really a case of he gives twice who gives quickly. I do not think it was a situation which called for arithmetical gestures. What was needed was swift, practical action, and I think that the account I have given suggests that something of that sort was done.
    Mr. R. Brooman-White: My hon. Friend has mentioned the British Council for Aid to Refugees. Can he confirm that the public response to that Council has been a very fair measure of public feeling in the country and that an enormous volume of offers of aid of all kinds, including the acceptance of people,

    1643
    placing them in jobs or providing schooling facilities and other things, has been received?
    The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): I hesitate to intervene on this, but the question goes beyond the Amendment.
    Mr. Deedes: I agree, Sir Rhys. In general, I am quite sure that what my hon. Friend says is true.
    The hon. Member for Deptford referred generally to what we have done on behalf of refugees. If it was not the hon. Member, I apologise. Those who have misgivings might pause to consider the record of successive British Governments. A total of 280,000 refugees have found sanctuary here, including the Germans and Austrians before the war, numbering 70,000. Since the war there have been the Poles numbering 120,000; the European voluntary workers refugees, of Central Europe, 90,000; the Czechs, in 1948, 2,000; the "Two thousand" scheme, 1,880; and now the Hungarians. That is a record in relation to refugees which bears comparison with the record of any other country. Her Majesty's Government's policy has been invariable and what we are seeking now to do for Hungary is no exception.
    I want in conclusion to answer the question which the hon. Member for Rossendale fired rather as a final shot concerning visas for refugees. I can only give him the latest figures on the subject of passports. As the hon. Member knows, we have agreed to accept the standard form, but it was not thought unreasonable—the House accepted it last year—that stocks of the old type of form should be used up. Last year, the figure was quoted as 16,000 copies unused. It has now been reduced to 10,500, so that in 18 months or so they should have been cleared and then we should be using the standard form which it is desired we should use.
    The hon. Member asked a question about visas for refugees and this shall be my final word. I apologise for keeping the Committee so long, but a great number of questions have been asked and they could only be answered in a general way. As the hon. Member knows, refugees coming into the United Kingdom must obtain a visa from the British visa issuing authority abroad. Generally, the
    1644
    refugee should meet with no particular difficulty—at any rate, when he does that; but the consequences of abolishing it would present us with certain difficulties, of which the Committee should be informed.
    I do not seek to make heavy weather of any of these considerations, but they should be borne in mind. First, there would be a heavier burden on the immigration staff at the ports. They would have to exercise a little more care in permitting the entry of a traveller without a visa, and the effect would be to slow down disembarkation. Secondly, inevitably there would be some increase in the number of those who were refused permission to land. I say that because they are now filtered out by the visa officers abroad. Refusal at the port obviously presents hardship for the refugees because additional documentary evidence, if it is desired it should be produced, cannot always be produced at the port of entry.
    Finally, there are security grounds, which cannot be dismissed. The risk of admitting refugees without any period of settlement at all in the country of their first asylum has to be borne in mind, and it is helpful if immigration officers can have the guidance which visa endorsement on a passport gives. It is possible that in future we shall be able to look at this again, but I do not wish to minimise the security dangers, and I say in answer to the hon. Gentleman that it would be a mistake to believe that we could in the immediately forseeable future allow these visitors into the United Kingdom without previous scrutiny—because that is what it amounts to.
    8.0 p.m.
    Mr. Leslie Hale: I have been a Member of this House for eleven years, and it has been my rich privilege to mix with people abler than I and to hear their views expressed and to share in their work. I am now beginning to think the time has come when this membership ought to cease because, for the first time, I have had the experience of listening to a speech which I quite utterly failed to understand. I felt that someone was talking on a wavelength to which my receiving apparatus was not wholly attuned. We have just listened to the Joint Under-Secretary of State.

    1645
    Let me say at once that my own experience of the Home Office has been singularly fortunate, and I regard it as one of the most civilised of Government Departments. Whenever I have approached it, usually about individual cases, I have been treated with considerate and careful attention, and the Department has displayed a humane and sympathetic interest. Indeed, if some of the junior officers of the Commonwealth Relations Office could be sent for a little training to the Home Department before embarking on their careers I think it would be a good thing for the community.
    However, we cannot justify the grant of arbitrary powers by this House merely by saying that they will be exercised humanely. It is never a defence of giving arbitrary, exorbitant, dictatorial powers to say, "Do not let us worry about them, for we are very good in the use of them."
    Having listened to the Joint Under-Secretary's speech tonight, I was left wondering what the discussion is about. I wondered if I dozed off and awoke to find another subject under consideration. For his attitude has really been a statistical attitude. If ever there was a "gentleman from Whitehall" as visualised by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), then this is the sort of attitude he would have manifested. We might have been listening to a lecture on how to exterminate unpleasant insects by the most kindly and by the most appropriate process.
    We are living in what claims to be a Christian country. We attend in this Chamber for Prayers. We talk about the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and if we believe in that there are no such people as aliens. There are no such people as aliens. I recognise that in a chauvinistic world there is a certain limited amount of nationalism, and most of us are prepared to concede that we have economic standards, and that it may be necessary to have some provisions to prevent too many poor people from entering into a rich country and thus impoverishing the standard of life of the people there, but we cannot allow that the theories of those who say that the laws of their economics provide a balance must apply to human beings.
    We have had today another extraordinary demonstration of the fact that
    1646
    property, from the Tory point of view, must not be under control; that we must not put any control on wealth; that we must not put any control on economic privilege; but that, from the Tory point of view, if some poor, suffering humanity menaces us, we must have control. There are the Tories, the people who an hour ago were condemning controls and talking of freedom and talking about liberty and, indeed, quoting the words of that extraordinary manifesto about setting the people free. If we talk about people, then they do not believe in freedom. When we talk about individuals, they believe in class war. When we talk about human beings, they think in terms of economic privilege.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State used an unfortunate phrase. He said, "We are not skimming off the cream" of the refugees. What is the cream of the refugees in his view? The rich? The Tory? The anti-Communist? The healthy? What is the cream? I listened to the very able speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I agreed with every word of it but one sentence. He said this country stands at the head of other countries in this matter.
    I have said there is a humane administration at the Home Office. I believe that to be true. But there is a good deal of the whited sepulchre about our general attitude. The Joint Under-Secretary of State said we cannot admit people whose health would contaminate our fellows.
    How many of us remember the denunciations of hon. Members opposite of the National Health Service which offered to cure aliens as well as British subjects. How many of us remember those long speeches we listened to at midnight voicing the complaint that we were curing aliens of disease in this country at the expense of the National Health Service.
    What does the hon. Gentleman mean by contamination? People coming in with one of those contaminating diseases? I can understand that if a genuine leper arrived at a port there might be some necessity for his segregation temporarily. What else? In a Christian country, is the test to be that a man has to be kept out if he is not very well? If he has the palsy? In a Christian country, is the test

    1647
    to be that he is to be kept out if he is poor—if he is suffering?
    The amazing thing about the Joint Under-Secretary's speech was that he produced the figures of the numbers of aliens who came in last year and that he produced them with a flourish as much as to say, "Look at what we are doing for the world." He quoted the number of the tourists. Of course. The number of the tourists, the chaps who came here to spend money. Those we made welcome because they were coming for three months to have a look round Britain and to spend money. Of course they are welcome. If that is the attitude of the Home Office, if that is the record of its achievements, it is a very frightening thing.
    Let us look at the test. The hon. Gentleman said that some hon. Members on his side want to see the gates wide open. He said that was not quite correct, and said that they want to see the gates opened a little wider. Which is fair enough. But who to? In this country we preach the faith that it is more difficult for a rich man to enter into Heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. It is easier for a rich man to come here through the eye of Dover or the eye of Folkestone or the eye of Harwich because he does not have to report for three months, he does not have to be asked any questions, he does not have to be interviewed, he does not have to produce his passport, and he can travel freely all over the place.
    Then comes the man who says, "I am told that this country is Christian, and I am poor, and I am suffering, and I am persecuted and helpless, and I have been pushed about the world as a stateless person because of the war you took part in starting, and I have no home, and I have no relatives, and the very town in which I lived exists no more, and I have no nationality." What do we say to him? We say, "Have you got any money? Have you got a health certificate?" If he says, "No," we say, "Go back."
    In years gone by when we have discussed this matter, when we have raised these subjects and when we have said that we believe in the United Nations and that we believe in the Declaration of Human Rights—I will
    1648
    lower my voice because I should hate to awaken the only Tory on the benches opposite—when we have said these things, we hoped at least that there would be some effort at international consideration of what are admittedly grave and difficult problems.
    The Joint Under-Secretary says, "Look what we are doing for the Hungarian refugees." Why are we doing it? It is because there is a sense of utter shame at the situation which we have allowed to arise. There is a sense of shame because no one knows better than the hon. Gentleman that the refugees from the last war are still wandering homeless and helpless in Europe, in Austria, in Germany, and in the Sinai Peninsula which has just been invaded there are 200,000 refugees, on the borders of Kuwait, now the richest State in the world.
    What do we do? We do nothing. We subscribe miserably inadequate sums to international funds designed for the care of these people and say that we believe in the brotherhood of man. I sometimes find myself rather helpless to understand some of these discussions. When I listen to bishops saying that it is all right to burn Arab children to pieces because our economic interests were involved, I find myself theologically adrift, and I believe that there are many others who do. I recall, of course, the helpful remark of a very distinguished canon of the Church, Sidney Smith, who pointed out that it was impossible to believe in the apostolic succession without realising that some at least were descended from Judas Iscariot, but that is, after all, a rhetorical rather than a moving explanation.[HON. MEMBERS: "The Tory Member is awake."] There are times when I have been tired myself, and I can understand that the atmosphere of the Chamber is very soothing.
    One of the great problems at the moment is the question, what is an alien? We are living in a very different world from that of 1913. We have to know the definition. In the course of these ten years we have given independence to countries like Burma and Ceylon. If we give independence to Cyprus, what happens to the Cypriots who live happily in this country? Each and every measure of emancipation creates its own problem. The establishment of Israel created its

    1649
    own problem. Many of us are in doubt about what is an alien.
    Many people are coming into this country from the British Colonies. Twelve months ago there was opposition. People were writing articles in the sensational Press saying that Jamaicans were normally engaged in keeping brothels. Now we see Jamaicans working happily, and I hope prosperously, on every suburban station and in every transport organisation, and helping us to get more cosmopolitan and understanding. If we had another million of them we might take a different attitude towards debates like this. We are beginning to realise that we have not the monopoly of freedom, of culture and of understanding. Certainly, in the last week or two we have realised that we are very far from having the monopoly of statesmanship.
    What are we going to do? Before this Order comes up again I hope that the Home Secretary, for whom I have personal regard, will take the initiative in this matter. If we are to face the problems of the future we can divest ourselves of a little hypocrisy. When we signed the Declaration of Human Rights we either meant something or did not, and we ought to decide whether we meant it or not. I can forgive any Government saying that these things are so wide as to be impracticable. I would not agree, but I could understand at least an honest Tory approach to the matter, but to say, "We signed it, but",—or "We meant it all, but"—or "Of course it will come about some fine day, but "—these are the answers of Tories to any kind of progress.
    Has not the time come for facing the really acute problem of aliens created especially by the events of the last few weeks? Has not the time come to realise that we owe a duty of shame to the Hungarians and a duty of atonement to the Egyptians? When international problems are becoming more acute, could we not convene an international conference to consider these matters?
    The Temporary Chairman (Mr. Godfrey Nicholson): The hon. Member is wandering a little from the subject of the Amendment. I hope that he will address his remarks to the Amendment.
    8.15 p.m.
    Mr. Hale: I am much obliged, but I will try to draw your attention, Mr. Nicholson, to that part of the Order which
    1650
    particularly relates to this matter. Primarily, of course, it is this—which I will now quote. I am sorry, Mr. Nicholson, but having looked it up I now find that if I had dealt with that we should be talking about double taxation in Austria.
    Article 20, relating to deportation, states:
    "The Secretary of State may, if he thinks fit, in any such case as is mentioned in paragraph (2) of this Article make an Order …requiring an alien to leave and to remain thereafter out of the United Kingdom."
    After referring to the deportation order, which is not operated without the approval of the Home Secretary, it states:
    "If the Secretary of State deems it to be conducive to the public good to make a deportation order against the alien.…"
    The matter then goes further.
    Subsection (5) states:
    "A deportation order made in the case of any person shall continue in force notwithstanding that that person subsequently ceases to be an alien; and for all the purposes of this Order any such person shall be deemed to continue to be an alien."
    Therefore, we have the situation at the moment that without any order from a court and without any crime having been committed, but on the strength merely of some report submitted to the Home Office by some undisclosed person, whose name may not even be indicated to the person who is the subject of the report, an order for deportation may be mad; without any right of appeal.
    After all, an alien has not the normal means of access to Members of Parliament that is enjoyed by the average person in London. Most of us welcome an alien if he comes, of course, but ht; does not know the ropes so well as the average inhabitant. As my hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) has said, the alien is often inhibited by the forms and by the presence of the police and so on.
    The point which I was trying to make, Mr. Nicholson, when you very properly called my attention to the possibility that at any moment I might be tempted to wander, is that when we have Hungarians coming to this country we have a highly political people coming in. Such was the case with the Poles. We all welcomed the Act for the resettlement of Poles, but the great majority of the Poles who are

    1651
    settled in this country belonged to and supported an aristocratic and dictatorial régime. If one of them fell by the wayside and became unpopular, a couple of letters from a couple of Poles to the Home Office saying "This man has Communist sympathies" could start the ball rolling.
    I want to see the gates wide open and people welcomed in the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, which were the solace of the American nation after the hysteria of 1916–17. When we take in large numbers of refugees, the process of secret trial becomes wholly inapplicable. I do not believe that there is anyone here who believes that the freedom and liberalism of 1913 exists today. I do not believe that anyone who has been a Member of the House of Commons has not seen in the atmosphere of cold war and hysteria a gradual retrogression in relation to our standpoint on liberty.
    But what does it mean now? The Joint Under-Secretary of State referred to the little chap in Oldham. The hon. Gentleman really ought to reflect before he makes use of some expressions. The little chap in Oldham was not allowed to come here because he was poor and suffering and because we wanted to welcome refugees. He did not come here because our big heart was moved by the spectacle of the suffering poor. He came here because he was fit, because he was able-bodied and because we wanted workers to make cotton. Perhaps it was a miscalculation. The time has come when we are not sure whether we want so many workers to make cotton. But we did not want his wife with him. We did not want his aged father, or his tiny child, unless he settled down, became domiciled here, and obviously had a capacity to make good. No, we brought him in because we were short of workers, just as we tried to bring in other workers because there were some industries whose attractions were so inconsiderable to our workers that we found it easier to get recruits from abroad. It was not the great heart of the Home Office beating at that time.
    It is wrong to say that our standards are the highest in the world. I believe that the United States is poles in advance of us in this matter, although, as I have said, I believe there was a period of hysteria under Attorney-General Mitchell
    1652
    Palmer and again, thirty years later, when Senator McCarthy was establishing a certain power. In the main, however, the great strength of the United States has been built up on the reception of aliens.
    In the main, once an alien becomes domiciled in the United States, once he has passed the examination of Ellis Island, he is given a chance of amalgamating himself as part of an international society, and he becomes entitled to the fullest hearing in public before any question of deportation is considered. So far as I know, that is the law of the United States, but I do not claim to be an expert. The grounds for deportation are not nearly so wide as they are in this country. Let us remember that there is no test. Nowhere in this Order is there any test. Nowhere in this order are any provisions laid down. Nowhere in this Order do we say that we can deport an alien because she is a prostitute, or because he is a pimp or because he is an habitual criminal. The test is if the Home Secretary thinks it is for the good of our society that the alien should go.
    I do not want to overpaint the picture. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) said that sometimes these weapons are used as part of the weapons of a cold war. But let us consider the test of political asylum, and consider it fairly. Is there anyone in the House tonight who would challenge the following supposition? If there arrived at a British port today two men, one of whom said he was a Tory, a refugee from Communist persecution in the Soviet Union, and another who said he was a Communist, a refugee from right-wing persecution in the United States, is there any doubt who would be admitted? Is there anyone in this Committee who would get up and challenge that? But, once we admit that supposition, once we admit that the test is political, once we admit that the test will in the first instance be applied by investigating officers, who probably still think I am a Communist because of what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) said this afternoon—which was quite flattering to a genuine Socialist—they will perhaps ask this question at the port, "Are you going to see the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) or the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale)?"

    1653
    —though they do not put it like that—and, after hearing the reply, they will say, "Well, this is a bad start, this is a corrupting influence."
    Mr. A. Woodburn: A good spy would say that he was a Tory, of course.
    Mr. Hale: That is true, and I am much obliged to my right hon. Friend. It is only the honest man who gets included under this Order, because the dishonest man would say that he had a passionate admiration for the Prime Minister and thought his action in Egypt was right. Though it is difficult to say that and look as though one believed it, a man capable of a certain amount of dissimulation would do it.
    I beg the Joint Under-Secretary of State to look at this matter again. I ask him to read the debates that have taken place in the last few years. I believe that he will find they were very good debates. I ask him to say that this is fundamentally an international question, and that there must be international consideration of it. The Home Office has a great historic record in this matter, for all the revolutionaries of Europe came to England. Refugees from radical movements came to England. Refugees from Tory movements came here. Marx came to England and Lenin read in the British Museum.
    Mr. Woodburn: And the Huguenots.
    Mr. Hale: And further back, of course, the Huguenots came and enriched our national and industrial life. It was a good thing. It added to our national heritage. Cannot we try to think of it on those lines again? The Joint Under-Secretary of State gave us some figures of the number of deportations. Is there any reason why these investigations should not take place in public? Has anyone ever advanced a single valid reason why experienced judges should not consider the question of deportation if an Order is under consideration? Is there any reason why a man should not know the names of his accusers?
    This argument applies as much to the other form of secret police action as to this security test. Many people do not appreciate that when a man is tried for treason in time of war, if a man is tried on a charge that he has conspired with the enemy in time of war, he is tried
    1654
    before the courts of law. Witnesses are called. Of course, a hearing can be taken in camera if a public inquiry prejudices the national safety. No one objects to that. But the man charged with treason, suspected as a spy, in time of war is entitled to know in detail the evidence against him. He is entitled to know the names of the witnesses who have sworn against him. He is entitled to confront them in court, whether in a public or private hearing. He has the chance of defending himself and of saying, "This is not true."
    The fear about the secret inquiry is this. I do not believe that the Home Office, however humane, by the consideration of documents and by the private interview of the prospective deportee, can ever hope to administer justice, and to administer it fairly and impartially. Certainly it can never hope to convince the public that justice has been done as it should always appear to have been done. That is the magnitude of the problem.
    The Joint Under-Secretary could add very greatly to his Parliamentary reputation in the House if he would take the problem seriously and say, "It is really part of the British heritage and tradition, cherished much by our fathers, that we are seeking to preserve. It is also part of the British way of life and part of the British philosophy. Much more than that, it is a substantial contribution to international understanding, to an increased degree of tolerance, and to the spread of the doctrine of kindliness and humanitarianism among the international brotherhood of men."
    Amendment negatived.
    8.30 p.m.
    Mr. G. M. Thomson: I beg to move, in page 3, to leave out lines 19 and 20.
    The lines I seek to delete refer to the Education (Exemptions) (Scotland) Act, 1947, which gives the Secretary of State power to grant exemptions to school children to take part in the potato harvest. When it was introduced its Long Title described it as an Act to make "temporary" provision for these exemptions. By now "temporary" is beginning to have a hollow ring. Year after year the Secretary of State asks us to extend the Act for a further year. Surely we

    1655
    are getting to the stage where the use of children for the Scottish potato harvest can no longer be regarded simply as a temporary emergency post-war measure. Surely it is becoming a general agricultural habit in the community. It is to that problem that we should address ourselves tonight.
    Scotland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has very many serious educational problems. Indeed, our educational problems are among the most serious aspects of our general national problems in Scotland. The problem of exemptions for potato picking is now one of the most serious of our educational problems, and it must now be regarded as such.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland who is concerned with the Department of Agriculture has interested himself very greatly in this matter since he took office, and I should like to pay tribute to him for that. The Rose Committee was set up to investigate the matter, and we now have an opportunity to consider its Report. The Report mentions the magnitude of the problem and describes how there were in 1955 about 26,000 exemptions of children of 13 years and above in Scottish schools.
    I put some Questions to the Secretary of State this afternoon to elicit the latest information about the extent of the problem. I discovered from the answers that the problem of child labour in the potato harvest, far from growing less as the years go by, is increasing greatly. I was told that this year there were 27,387 children exempted for the potato harvest compared with 26,000 the previous year, and that this year's total is not complete yet because one or two figures are still outstanding. It looks as though the final figure for 1956 will be over 28,000.
    This is a Scottish problem of very great importance. The figures vary widely between area and area, and the variations conceal the acute gravity of the problem in certain parts of Scotland. I am particularly concerned about the situation in the east of Scotland and especially in Dundee. This afternoon I asked for a break-up of the figures. The figures provided by the Secretary of State are staggering. I am informed that the percentages of children aged 13 and above granted exemption are 1·5 in Glasgow; 2·8 in Edinburgh; 8·4 in Aberdeen; and 42 in Dundee. These
    1656
    figures are percentages of the total number of children of 13 years and above on the school rolls.
    Only one local authority in Scotland has a higher percentage than Dundee, and that, curiously enough, is the county authority of Moray and Nairn, the constituency represented by the Secretary of State for Scotland. I hope that he can take pride in the achievement of his county in this respect. Not only are there tremendous variations between area and area in Scotland, which create acute problems in those areas which make the biggest contribution to the potato harvest, but there are tremendous variations between different schools in any one area, and variations which run very much along lines of income groups within the community.
    It is the poorer children, in the main, who go to the potato harvest, the less well-educated, the less intelligent children and those with the shortest period of education in front of them. When we look at the figures for Dundee, which is a typical illustration of what is happening in the rest of Scotland, we find how striking is this variation between the social groups.
    We find, for instance, that in one of Dundee's junior secondary schools, St. John's, according to the figures which the Secretary of State provided this afternoon, 70 per cent. of the children of 13 and over on the school roll go to the potato harvest for a period of three weeks. We find that in the case of two other junior secondary schools, Stobswell Boys' School, it is 63 per cent. and another, Stobswell Girls' School, it is 58 per cent.
    When we come to senior secondary schools, the Morgan Academy, in my own constituency, for instance, we find that the percentage drops from 63 per cent. to 14 per cent. In the case of Dundee High School, not one single student is drawn into the potato harvest.
    I would refer the Minister to some of the comments in the Rose Report on this matter. Educationalists are quoted as pointing out that
    "generally the children who apply for exemption are the weakest scholastically."
    Another quotation is:
    "The children who take part come from the poorer homes and are the children who are in greatest need of education."

    1657
    It is this kind of thing that, I think, is making the annual potato harvest, with all its exemptions, an educational problem which we can no longer afford to postpone dealing with, as we have been doing year by year since 1947.
    The educational consequences are well-known to every Scottish Member of this House who gets representations about them from teachers in his own constituencies. The exemption period comes just as the children are settling down after the long school holiday and in the middle of the winter term, which is known to all teachers as the best one for teaching children before they come into the period after Christmas when winter illnesses begins to catch up. It is generally the children who are to leave school at 15, in any event, who go to school for a few weeks and then—off they go to the potato fields
    This is producing a record of truancy and many problems of delinquency among children. I am sure that the great majority of those who go into the potato fields suffer no particular harmful effects, but there is a substantial minority on whom the effects are very harmful and they have an unfortunate effect on the schools when they go back to them. It is well-known that contractors in the potato business go out of their way to pirate children from one another. By offering the children big money, they are giving them false ideas about the value of money and laying up all sorts of social consequences for the children in the future. On general educational and social grounds, it would be a very good thing if we could bring the use of child labour in the potato fields to an end.
    The question to which we have to address ourselves, and the question to which the Rose Committee did address itself very conscientiously, is whether the use of children in the potato fields is necessary. Is it inevitable? Is there no other way of dealing with this problem? I would draw the attention of the Committee to the Middleton minority Report of the Rose Committee, in which Mr. George Middleton, General Secretary of the Scottish T.U.C. and one of the members of the Committee, dissents from the main finding of the Committee that it is inevitable that we should go on for the time being using children.
    1658
    I want to draw attention particularly to the point he makes about the great slowness in developing adequate mechanical means of lifting the potato crop. I know there are difficulties about this. I have asked Questions about this matter from time to time during the few years that I have been in the House of Commons, because I cannot believe that enough energy or effort is going into finding a mechanical potato lifter.
    I am not very mechanically minded, but I recall that during the war I spent a short time on the shores of the Solway Firth looking for an aeroplane which was so high above me that it could not be seen. It was 30,000 feet above me and it was dropping bombs on a target in the Solway Firth to an accuracy of within 100 feet. Those bombs were being dropped as a result of a man in the south of England, more than 500 miles away, pressing a button.
    This is the kind of technological society in which we live. I refuse to believe that a society that can do that kind of thing cannot invent a machine for digging potatoes out of the ground. The Government have not given enough attention to it and we have not devoted enough resources to it. My objection is that this has simply been regarded as a praiseworthy, but rather minor agricultural problem. I suggest that it be not looked at in this light, but as one of the most serious of our educational problems.
    Then, of course, there is the evidence that if farmers went about their business in the right way, had a bit of ingenuity and enterprise and were willing to be a bit untraditional about their methods they could do without using children. I am very pleased that the Joint Under-Secretary has taken the trouble to pay a visit to a Scottish farm in Laurencekirk which uses progressive techniques. Its owner, Mr. John Mackie, is a well-known Scottish farmer. For years he has done without children very successfully. I have never heard any complaint about his efficiency as a potato farmer, or from his other potato workers, some of whom I have met. They are quite competent in their potato picking under his arrangements. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State will tell us that, following his visit, he will take steps to have the method he inspected extended.

    1659
    The problem we come down to under this educational exemption is whether or not Scotland ought to go on allowing its children to be used in such tremendous numbers in the harvesting of the potato crop. Farmers tell us, and they have been supported so far by the Government, that we cannot afford to go short of potatoes. Far be it from me to underestimate the value of the humble "spud", but I submit to the Minister that the real question is whether we can go short of educated citizens. Potato harvesting is having an undeniable effect on the quality of the children that are coming out of our schools, particularly the junior secondary schools, where is perhaps our most urgent problem of curriculum.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mrs. Mann) is no longer with us in the Committee, but I will nevertheless say that although we are all interested in the price of potatoes we have not been paying enough attention to calculating the educational price that goes into every plate of potatoes that we eat. I am satisfied that the educational price of potatoes in these days is far too high and that we ought to stop paying for potatoes in terms of employing children in the potato fields.
    8.45 p.m.
    Captain J. A. L. Duncan: I have no quarrel with the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) for raising this matter tonight. His view is opposite from mine on various, but mainly educational, grounds. For some years now there has been a difference in emphasis on the importance of lifting the potato crop and its effect on education. I am certain that it is still necessary to retain this exemption in the Bill.
    I am fortified in that belief by the Report of the Committee on Employment of Children in the Potato Harvest, Cmd. 9738. This was a powerful Committee. It included Mr. James T. Allardice, who had been President of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Mr. John McEwan, Director of Education for Lanarkshire, Mr. John Allan, Chairman of Fife Education Committee, and some farmers.
    Mr. John Rankin: The hon. and gallant Member says that Mr. Allardice was a member of the Committee
    1660
    and a former President of the Educational Institute of Scotland. Will he make it plain that the E.I.S. officially opposes the scheme?
    Captain Duncan: I was merely trying to point out that this was a powerful Committee. With the exception of Mr. George Middleton, of the Scottish T.U.C., the Committee was unanimous, thereby showing that, on balance, the Committee thought that it was still necessary, in this difficult matter, for children to help with the potato harvest.
    Some people tend to exaggerate—and Mr. George Middleton says so in his minority statement—the harm done to education. Although I am prepared to admit that some harm may be done, it is not always appreciated in Scotland that other countries have similar provisions. Page 11 of the Report shows that not only Northern Ireland and Eire, but Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and Denmark have various exemption schemes to help to get the potato harvest lifted.
    Mr. G. M. Thomson: Not England and Wales.
    Captain Duncan: In Scotland we have a unique problem, because of the importance of our seed potatoes, particularly in four counties, one of which I represent—Fife, Perth and Kinross, Angus and Kincardine. It is important to realise that other countries have the same difficulty and have to give exemption in a similar way. I must stress how important is the potato crop in Scotland, especially in the eastern counties. The Report says that 300,000 tons of seed potatoes are sent to England annually and that the English have to have seed potatoes at least every other year, or their potatoes would deteriorate.
    If there were interference with the seed crop in Scotland, the English potato harvest would be affected. In addition, we export 20,000 tons abroad, a trade which is of great value to us and one which is expanding. If anything were done to hit the English potato harvest it would have its effect on our imports because we should have to import potatoes from abroad to meet the demand.
    A particular problem in Scotland is the shortness of the harvest. In England,

    1661
    potatoes are ready for harvesting from August to November, and there is a fairly long period during which frosts are not normally expected. But in Scotland potatoes are not ready for harvesting until the end of September or the beginning of October and frost may be expected at the beginning of November. I am not talking about the earlies in Ayrshire, and so on, but about the main crop. In these circumstances, there is a sudden demand for labour in Scotland so as to get the potatoes safely into the pits or the sheds before the frost comes because, otherwise, not only will there be the loss of the crop, but a loss of income to the farmer.
    I should like to stress the expense incurred by the farmer in growing potatoes today. By the time he has done the necessary cultivation, and paid for the large amount of artificial manure required to make the crop grow, it has cost him about £80 an acre, a very heavy outlay. There are only one or two alternatives to this business. We must get the crop after it is grown, and, in my submission, it is essential, not only in the interest of Scottish farmers, but also in the interests of English farmers, that crops should continue to be grown on roughly the present acreage.
    What are the alternatives? It may be said that we ought to use adult labour. But the Report says—and I think that the Government will agree with it—that there just is not that adult labour in such quantity available for a concentrated period of six weeks. There may be 50,000 names on the employment exchange registers, but what is the good of a married woman in Dumfries or a disabled person in Inverness when 60,000 able-bodies people are wanted in Angus?
    It was suggested by the hon. Gentleman opposite that we ought to go into Mr. John Mackie's scheme of piece-work. That can be done, and, indeed, is being done, Where adult labour gangs are available which can go from one farm to another; but until there are sufficient of these adult gangs, that scheme of piece-work it not the answer. It was also suggested that they might be got from Eire. But it is not everybody who can get these gangs. Some gangs do come from Eire, but, as I say, not everybody can get them. There just is not the suitable unemployed labour in Scotland to carry out this work which is concentrated
    1662
    into such a short period of the year.
    Mr. Thomson: The hon. and gallant Gentleman is an expert on this matter, but I understood that Mr. Mackie did not use imported adult labour. He worked his scheme with local adult labour. Cannot that be done in other places?
    Captain Duncan: Of course, we all use adult labour in addition to the children. I had all the local adult labour I could get last year and 20 children from one of the hon. Gentleman's schools, Logie School. This year, I had children from Rockwell School, in Dundee. These children served me very well and I was lucky to have them.
    Mr. Thomas Fraser: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman use the same kind of digger as Mr. Mackie uses? Or does he use the old-fashioned spin-digger?
    Captain Duncan: I use the spin-digger. If the hon. Member would come to my farm, and try using the Mollinson digger which Mr. Mackie uses, he would find that the children were hanging about waiting for the digger to be mended, because I have so many stones on my hill farm.
    The Temporary Chairman: Order. I think that the hon. Member is going into the matter in too much detail. It was ruled in 1948 that hon. Members could discuss generally an Act which was being continued, but could not do so in too great detail.
    Captain Duncan: I am sorry, Mr. Nicholson, but I was provoked by the inquisitive nature of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser).
    I was about to say that the third alternative is mechanisation. I am not: sure that I agree with hon. Members about what they call the lack of effort: being put into mechanisation. An immense amount of research is going on. Only last week, I received an advertisement, from a firm in Stonehaven, which spoke of a new attempt to solve the problem. We see examples at the Highland Show, for instance, the Packman. But none of these, up to now—I regret to have to say it—will work on all the soils in which we grow potatoes in Scotland. I wish that one of them

    1663
    would. The average machine is very heavy and will work on flat soil without stones, but when we take it on to the hillsides, where so many of our potatoes are grown, it will not work. Even if we have two or three men by the side picking up the stones, the machine will break down because stones are caught up in the machinery.
    All those three alternatives have failed up to now. In the circumstances, I must regretfully admit that I must support the Government in continuing this procedure for another year. None the less, I hope that in the not too far distant future we shall be able to produce a machine which will do the work. The failure to do so has not been for want of trying, because the agricultural machinery industry is very eager to solve the problem. There is a fortune for somebody who can produce a machine which will do the work. If only it will do it at reasonable cost to the farmer—£700 to £800—and will do it in all sorts of soil and all sorts of conditions, I believe that not only will it make a fortune but it will also solve this problem and save us from having to consider this difficult matter year after year on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill.
    9.0 p.m.
    Mr. William Ross: We have just had a most depressing statement from the hon. and gallant Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan). He started by telling us, more or less, that there is no reason why we should not continue this provision; but that conflicted with his regrettable acceptance of the necessity for it and his hope that, sooner or later, we should find a mechanical way of doing the work.
    Earlier, he asked why we should not use children for the work and said that they do it in Canada, America and other countries. One place in which they do not do it is England and Wales. Let us stay a little nearer home when we are considering the matter. We did not always have to do it in Scotland to the present extent, where we have children from the cities taken into the country areas. There may be some change about that in the future. Simply because they do it elsewhere is not a valid reason for doing it in Scotland.
    Captain Duncan: It is one reason.
    Mr. Ross: It is a reason, but not a valid reason. We have prided ourselves very much in Scotland, sometimes with very little justification, on how high we set education, as something to be loved for itself, but we still come across this conflicting interest of education as against agriculture. The hon. and gallant, Gentleman, certainly with belated regrets, is prepared to throw education overboard. If there were no children available next year for the harvesting of the potato crop, I wonder whether it would be harvested? I am prepared to say that it would be.
    Captain Duncan: It would not be there.
    Mr. Ross: One of the bars to getting the thing properly done, either by adult labour or the development of a machine, is the knowledge that the Government are prepared to continue this provision year after year. We have only to take the figures given by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) to realise that this year there have been more children employed in gathering potatoes even than in previous years. I can remember speeches by the Under-Secretary of State, telling us of how his hopes were high of soon getting rid of this enactment. That was two or three years ago, yet here we are, depending on it more than ever.
    I sincerely hope that the Committee will not be too ready to accept what the Government have to say about the necessity for the provision. It was introduced in 1947, I think, for an initial period of a few years, but since then we have had this request for a continuance, and it is about time that it stopped. Let us see exactly how it works out. It is not 27,000 representative children of Scotland who are affected. The greater proportion of that 27,000 consist of those children whose secondary education is already limited by the fact that they are at junior secondary schools, and have probably only three years of secondary education.
    Figures have been quoted time after time—I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael) quoting, last year, the figures for Glasgow—which have proved quite clearly that it has not been the children from the senior secondary schools—who get five years of education—who have given up part of their time for this work. It is mainly the

    1665
    children from junior secondary schools who are exempt in this way.
    Let us never forget what this provision does. It takes from local authorities the power to say "No" to a child who is seeking exemption. That power rests with the Secretary of State. If the application is made, it is the Secretary of State who decides; not the schoolmaster or the local education authority, but the gentleman in Edinburgh. The agricultural point of view has been given, but it will be found that not a single educationist in Scotland is prepared, on educational grounds, to support this. The E.I.S. has never been willing to support it. It agreed to it reluctantly.
    My own Ayrshire education authority has opposed this repeatedly but, despite that opposition, Ayrshire children have had to go on picking potatoes. It is said that this year 452 children were involved. I do not know whether the arithmetic of the Scottish Office is up to its usual standard, but in an Answer today it was stated that that represents 30 per cent. I am not prepared to accept that. That means 30 per cent. of the children over 13 years of age in the schools of Ayrshire. I should have thought that there were more than 1,500 such children in Ayrshire schools. Perhaps the Scottish Office will look again at its statistics. In any case, according to that Answer today, there are 452 children who are off school for an average of eight days.
    Kilmarnock headmasters were asked to provide a report on how this matter works out, and the report was published in last week's Kilmarnock Standard. It said:
    "Potato harvesting and education don't mix. Kilmarnock headmasters consider the exemption of pupils for the potato harvest a hindrance to education."
    There is no doubt that it is a hindrance. It is not merely a question of 452 pupils. Hon. Members ought to consider what happens when 30 per cent. of the pupils in one class axe away for eight days. The teacher might just as well shut the books for those eight days, because at the end of that time the 30 per cent. have to try to catch up with the others. The teacher has to make up his mind whether to go ahead and forget what those children have lost in those eight days, which automatically means that
    1666
    they lose far more than eight days' education, for a child of 13 or 14 years of age will take a long time to catch up, if he ever does; or the teacher has to let the remainder of the class mark time for eight days and wait for the stragglers to come back. That is the difficulty.
    When we are dealing with junior secondary schools, where the oppertunities of education are limited in time as compared with senior secondary schools, it is time that Scottish Ministers, who have time and time again expressed their hopes of great things from these junior secondary schools, dealt with this problem, which is seriously handicapping teachers in those schools. I have heard hon. Members say that it does not really matter, that potato harvesting does not do the children any harm. Far more good would be done if they were in school, and far more good would be done to the others who are kept waiting while the potato harvesters are away.
    In the interests of the whole aspect of education as well as of the children, this problem must receive serious consideration from the Secretary of State. Consider the position in Moray and Nairn. No wonder the Secretary of State is not here, for 48 per cent. of the children over the age of 13 are away potato gathering. Remember, too, that this is outside the ordinary potato gathering holiday. This is not all the potato digging that they do, because they probably do it on Saturdays as well. It is shocking that Scotland, which places so much importance on the education of its children, should permit this sort of thing to continue.
    We never hear an hon. Member on the other side of the Committee showing any concern about this at all.
    Captain Duncan: That is not fair.
    Mr. Ross: It is quite fair.
    Captain Duncan Captain Duncan rose—
    Mr. Ross: No, let me continue. When we started discussing this subject tonight the hon. and gallant Member for South Angus was the only Scottish Conservative Member in the Committee.
    Captain Duncan: Anyway, I was here.
    Mr. Ross: Actually, the hon. and gallant Gentleman is not even a Conservative. He is a Liberal-Unionist.
    Captain Duncan: The hon. Member is not being fair. He said that I take no interest in the educational aspect of this matter. I started my speech by saying that there was a divergence between education and farming. The hon Gentleman ought to be fair.
    Mr. Ross: I think I said at the start that I should try to deal with the hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech on the subject. I emphasised that he had said, first, that there was no reason why we should not do it because Canada and Australia and other countries did it, and then, in the end, used the technical argument and said that as we have not got mechanical harvesters we must carry on with this practice. What I was saying was that, generally speaking, throughout the year little interest in this problem is evinced by hon. Gentlemen on the other side of this Committee. Their attendance this evening, or their lack of it, proves that.
    I believe that this potato picking does children considerable harm. It may well do them physical harm as well; accidents have been caused to children. Heavy responsibility is thrown on those who are looking after them at the time. Educationally, it is harmful. From the point of view of the organisation of the schools, it is an educational hindrance and the sooner it is stopped the better.
    There is another point which must be stressed. Let us not deceive ourselves by referring to 27,000 representative children. It is 27,000 children mainly from the working-class families of Scotland who get this exemption. It has been pointed out in the past, and, no doubt, will be again, that it is the poorer children who are involved; but we have not reached such a happy state of prosperity that the children have to go out to augment the family income when they really should be in school, getting the benefit of what education is provided for them.
    I, for one, am not prepared this year, or any other year, to give the Government an easy passage for this Bill for yet a further year. I hope that the Committee will seriously think of opposing the granting of this Bill for yet another year.
    Mr. William Hannan: I should like to underline what
    1668
    has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), that the whole effect of this Act is to place the responsibility on the Secretary of State for Scotland to decide what the necessary labour force will be in order to uplift the potato crop. Then, having arrived at an estimate of that, he serves notice on the local auhority that, on the application of the parent, the children should be exempted from attendance from school.
    I should like to refer to the remarks of the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite, the Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) when he said that Scotland is not the only country in which children were exempted in this way. I want to challenge him on that. I know he referred to the Rose Report, but I would ask him to be good enough to read paragraph 30 again. The last two sentences merely say:
    "We also obtained information about the potato harvest in Northern Ireland, Eire. Australia … In each case we were informed that school children assisted in lifting the potato crop and in no case did we find any evidence of more advanced mechanization than in our own country."
    Perhaps "challenge" is too strong a word, but I suggest to him that his interpretation might be going too far.
    Captain Duncan Captain Duncan indicated dissent.
    Mr. Hannan: I respect the hon. and gallant Gentleman's knowledge but, making due allowances, I suggest that because of climatic conditions, longer light and so forth, it may well be that children are able to assist in the long evenings to a greater extent without exemption from school. It is exemption from school which is the kernel of our exception to this Bill.
    The problem is, of course, essentially one of measuring the importance of the ingathering of the potato crop, which is important, against the educational needs of the children. That we can admit. But, like my hon. Friends who have spoken this evening, I too am of the opinion that, just as in the war, in the organisation of D-Day, and the rest of it, if this country and Scotland were put to it and were really up against the issue, the crop would be ingathered.

    1669
    9.15 p.m.
    It is quite evident from paragraph 9 of the Report that the Committee had been considering one way out: that was, to limit the acreage of potatoes and to match that acreage to the estimated labour force that would be available. One has only to refer to paragraph 9 for an indication of that. It states:
    "As regards the acreage of potatoes we were referred to the Annual Review and Determination of Guarantees, 1954 … where it is stated that the Government do not regard it as practicable or desirable to try to set precise commodity production targets in free market conditions."
    I suggest that the maintenance of a free market influenced the Committee in its considerations to a greater degree than did the educational interests of the children.
    It is true, as the hon. and gallant Member for South Angus said, that the Committee pointed out the importance of the risk which farmers or purchasers had taken in the ingathering of the crop in the limited period that is available, but in the last sentence of paragraph 12 the Committee said:
    "Apart from the grower's (or merchant's) interest there is also that of the public as consumers."
    The hon. and gallant Member did not tonight mention the consumer. In his opening sentence he mentioned education, but his speech was that of the farmer and the interest which that community has in education is not extremely high.
    I conclude by drawing the attention of the Committee to three or four facts. In England and Wales, there has been no exemption of children in the last two years. In an intervention in this same debate last year, one of my hon. Friends implied that when parents in England kept their children from school to pick hops, the parents could be fined. That is an indication of the difference in attitude between the two countries.
    There is great opposition among local authorities and in the ranks of teachers and headmasters to this practice. It started out as a temporary measure for something like two years and it has now taken on the appearance of becoming permanent. It seems a strange anomaly that while the Education Act provides for compulsory education to the age of fifteen, by the continuance of this Act we are
    1670
    allowing exceptions and exemptions to be made for this one purpose. I believe that if we apply our minds and spend more money on the development of science and research, a mechanical tool could be produced which would save us from continuing an Act which we believe to be a very bad one.
    Mr. John Rankin: In my view, the hon. and gallant Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) examined his case fairly in dealing with the need for potatoes and the need for education. On balance, he decided that the need for potatoes was more urgent than the need for education. That, I think, is a fair summary of his argument.
    The hon. and gallant Member missed the main point in the support which he sought for his argument. The economy of this country depends very largely on the export of the skill of its workers. Our greatest export trade is in shipbuilding. Engineering follows. If we are to maintain those exports and if we are to maintain the economy of our country on a reasonable basis, those skills which are essential in our heavy industries must be fostered, and they can be fostered only by proper, full and free education.
    That is not happening just now, and that is why I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman allowed his judgment to fall on what I am sure is the wrong side. It is all very well to say we export 40,000 tons of potatoes, but, with due respect to the potato and the farmer, those exports are not nearly so important as the exports of our shipbuilding industry, of precision goods and our other engineering products. The continuation of those exports and their command of the market depends in the long run on the education we give to the children who presently are being partly deprived of it.
    It is unfortunate the Government should show their bias in this matter. In my view it is not so much an agricultural question as an educational question, and I should have thought that the Joint Under-Secretary of State would have been deploring the absence of children from school, and I should like to have heard—
    Mr. Thomas Hubbard: I hope my hon. Friend is not going to start tonight another split in the party opposite.
    Mr. Rankin: I should have liked to have heard the hon. Gentleman. He would need to declare that he had a vested interest in the matter. Perhaps that is the reason why he is not taking part in the debate. He represents an area which is a great potato growing area in Scotland, and when the Bill which became the Education (Exemptions) (Scotland) Act was debated in 1947 he supported it because he admitted that we had always employed children in his part of the country and he thought we should continue to employ children in his part of the county because he regarded them as essential. It would be a very difficult thing for the hon. Gentleman, placed in that situation, to oppose this proposal, because his potato interests are much more deeply entrenched than are his educational beliefs.
    I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for South Angus and the Government will realise that, for the reasons I have indicated, the balance ought to come down on the side of education, and agree that education ought not to be continually disturbed in this way.
    There is another danger. When our late colleague and friend Joe Westwood introduced this Measure he said it was for two years, and no one doubted that statement. Despite it, many of my hon. Friends opposed the Measure then, even although it was introduced to last for only two years and at a time of food shortage. Does that food shortage exist today? Or do the Government fear that the food shortage is coming and that food will follow petrol? Perhaps that question takes the debate a little too wide. However, this Measure initially was introduced to last two years, and it was introduced in a period of very serious food shortage, and thus there was some defence for it as a temporary solution. That has now disappeared, but despite the disappearance of the reasons which activated the promotion of the Act it looks today as if child labour were going to become a permanent feature of our economy in order to satisfy the farmers.
    The Joint Under-Secretary has said that it is difficult to obtain a machine that will do this work. I understand that the difficulty is that farmers cannot get a machine which does not lift too much earth. If I am wrong perhaps I shall be told where the difficulty lies, but as far as I am aware
    1672
    that is the problem. It seems that children are to be sacrificed for unnumbered years ahead because we cannot get a machine that will lift less earth than is lifted by those which are in use today. There is the danger that this exemption will become a permanent practice and there is the further danger that the number of children employed is obviously increasing.
    I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) will recollect that in 1947 we were told that 22,000 children would be required. Tonight we are told that the number is 28,000. That is a most serious increase. When will the number cease going up? I hope that we shall have some indication of the Government's attitude towards these two points—the danger of child labour becoming a permanent feature of the economy of the country, and this continued increment in the number of children who are called upon to do this work.
    My hon. Friends have referred to the danger of dislocating the child's educational life. It is a very serious danger. I am sure that the Joint Under-Secretary will not minimise the risk that dislocation of his period of education is to the child during and after school time. He loses contact with the class and with the atmosphere of the class. Consequently, when he returns it takes some time, and not merely a matter of eight days, to re-accustom himself to the discipline of education. He finds himself out of pace with the rest of the class, and the teacher finds himself or herself in danger of having two different groups within the same class at the same time. This is a very serious educational danger and arises from the inevitable dislocation which takes place as a result of calling upon some of our children to save the potato crop.
    A few weeks ago, within the recollection of every hon. Member and under the guidance of the Joint Under-Secretary we were passing a small Measure to penalise children who did not attend school. We enacted it to ensure that children would attend school in their own personal interest and in the interest of the nation. Tonight the Government are pushing throught a Measure designed to ensure that perhaps the same children will be able to be absent from school

    1673
    without suffering any of the penalties contained in the Measure with which we dealt a few weeks ago.
    9.30 p.m.
    That is consistency in educational outlook if you like, but what can we expect from a Tory Government? My hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy Burghs (Mr. Hubbard) suggested that I should not try to split the Tory Party. Who needs to try and split the party opposite tonight? Where are all the Tories? Looking for another leader? There is a desperate search on just now. Nothing I could say would split them any more than they are split now.
    Captain Duncan: Order, order.
    Mr. Rankin: But this is part of their education, the part neglected by the party opposite. I am glad that my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee put education before "tatties". We can live without the "tatties", but we cannot live without education. We have heard it said often in the House that we will not starve because children do not pick potatoes. It is a far more grievous thing to deprive children of their necessary education than it is to deprive the country of a few potatoes—
    Captain Duncan: The whole crop.
    Mr. Rankin: No, not the whole crop. The hon. and gallant Gentleman, as a farmer, knows that. We may lose some potatoes, but it is doubtful if we eat all our potatoes. The issue tonight, as I have said, is simple: it is far worse to deprive children of their necessary education than it is to deprive the country of a few potatoes. The hon. and gallant Member posed the question, and my answer is that I hope my hon. Friends, if necessary, will press our attitude to this problem in the Division Lobby.
    Mr. Cyril Bence: Here we have the old vicious circle. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) says that if we do not allow children to pick potatoes then the farmers will not sow the crop, and that if the crops are sown, and we do not use the services of the children, the crop will not be gathered.
    1674
    One reason that has been given is that we cannot get a machine to harvest potatoes. I agree to this extent, that I doubt whether it is a practical proposition for any engineer to invent, and put into the process of manufacture, a potato harvesting machine which will work on a variety of soils and which can be sold as a commercial proposition to farmers. I do not believe that this will ever be done.
    Some years ago, I played a part in the creation of three agricultural machines, one of which was a machine for planting flax, a transplanting machine which was purely automatic. Then there is the cutter and binder for harvesting hay, and there is also the combine harvester made by Massey-Harris. The combine harvester is not designed to be sold to the small harvester of grain, nor is the threshing machine. Such machines are very expensive, and one is generally used by a group of farmers. I believe that this principle will have to be applied to a potato harvesting machine if we are to have one to do the job. We can have one. I have seen one with different sets of tines for different soils, but it is very expensive and not an economical proposition for the individual farmer. It would have to be used to harvest the crops on several farms.
    It is said that no satisfactory machine has been designed. The truth is that no satisfactory machine has been designed at a price which the individual farmer would consider economical. When milking machines were introduced, it was a job to sell them to small farmers. Most of the machines went to New Zealand and the North American continent. The potato harvesting machine must come, and it can be done if the Government and research organisations get down to the task of manufacturing one which will be a commercial proposition, perhaps being hired out to various farmers in a locality. I am sure that that is how it will be done.
    We have hop picking machines, cotton picking machines and the planting machines to which I have referred. Years ago there was the problem of St. Vitus' Dance resulting from manual manipulations in repetitive processes. It was often argued that manual operations could not possibly be replaced because of the nature of the material or the job

    1675
    to be done. Nevertheless, the engineer has provided machinery to replace those manual operations. He had to do it, especially during the war, and his tempo in development of that type is increasing. Processes relating to most difficult products are now being achieved by machinery which would have seemed absolutely impossible only fifteen years ago. I believe that this development will lead to the production of a potato harvesting machine.
    There are different types of land and stone. We should not grow anything in the soil if there were not stones in it, for soil without stones is not fertile. I have known stones to be imported to provide aeration in soil. It may be that the hon. and gallant Member for South Angus was talking about hefty stones; in that case, I do not know how the soil is ploughed. However, if the land can be ploughed and an ordinary mechanical digger can be used to put the potatoes on the surface, surely a machine could run over the ground and harvest the potatoes, even if the ground is excessively stony. If a digger can go on the ground, surely a harvester could do so. The only problem is the separation of the potatoes from the stone.
    I would agree that it might be difficult to use such a machine on, say, three-quarters of an acre of very hilly land, but that is no reason why there should not be such a machine, for there are thousands of acres in the country where a heavy machine could lift, sort and bag potatoes. I am quite certain that these areas exist. Because they do surely it is worth while manufacturing such a machine and putting it out on hire to farmers, so that we can relieve our educational system from this frightful disturbance which takes place every harvest time.
    It has been said that potato lifting does not do any harm to children. It is all right for the sons of farmers and for country bred children to say, "It is great fun; we have a good time". It is probably all right for the country schools. I started my education in a country school, and when I went into the city and met my colleagues in the urban areas I found that their education generally was much more lively than mine. I think that perhaps we had more fun than education.
    1676
    That may have been typical of country schools in my day, but I do not know whether it is now.
    Teachers tell me that in the schools in the urban areas from where these children are drawn sometimes 25 or 30 children are withdrawn from a class of 40 or 50, and the schools do not know whether to go on or to hold back because the children are away for eight days. Hon. Members in the teaching profession are better equipped to talk about this problem than I am.
    In my school days, when we came back from the harvest, during the First World War there was turmoil in the schoolrooms for some weeks as a result of our recounting stories which we had gathered in the countryside and from being on the farms; and I fear that our education was seriously handcapped.
    I hope that we shall this evening continue to oppose the continuance of this provision, because I am convinced, after reading the history of inventions and discoveries, that no one will move until this labour is not available. My hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. T. Fraser) will have read of the time when men and women and boys were employed to pick coal and sort it before screens came into use. People said that it would be impossible to get the coal without using women and children to pick it, but when the screens came the work was done automatically. I am sure that engineering, which has given us so many mechanical devices of all sorts in connection with agriculture and food processing—some of them almost human in their operation—could provide a machine which would be not so much a commercial proposition for individual farmers but one which could be hired to farmers so that they could get in their potatoes.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Niall Macpherson): We all recognise the very natural concern of the Committee for the education of our children. There can be no doubt at all that the interruption of the educational curriculum is not a good thing however healthy and beneficial the occupation of potato-lifting may be in itself.
    The hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin) said that the Government were biased in this matter, but I hope that by the end of my remarks he will agree

    1677
    that we are not biased. As mentioned by a number of hon. Members, it is nine years since the Education (Exemptions) (Scotland) Act was passed as a temporary expedient for two seasons until 1948, and not for several years as the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) thought.
    9.45 p.m.
    I would say, in passing, to the hon. Member for Maryhill (Mr. Hannan), whom I do not see in his place at the moment, that the provisions of the Act to which I have referred were fixed at the time and that it would not be possible for us to change them. It is right for us to ask whether this Measure is still necessary. If so, should we make it permanent? If we are not to make it permanent, what is being done to remove the necessity for it? These are questions which I think the House would like me to consider tonight.
    What would happen if the Amendment were carried? Next year, children of 13 and 14 could not be exempted from school attendance for potato harvesting, but the Amendment would not prevent school holidays being adjusted so as to allow schools to be closed for potato-lifting. Hon. Members opposite are under some misapprehension about what happens in England and Wales. I am informed that in the North of England schools are closed for potato-lifting and that between one-third and one-half of the potato crop in that area is lifted by children.
    Mr. Bence: That is true. There are potato holidays in some parts of England and Wales, but the time spent in that kind of harvesting is not lost from the children's education. It is added on at another period.
    Mr. Macpherson: Yes, but let me tell the hon. Member that educational opinion is divided on whether it is better to close the schools or to grant exemptions. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson), to whom I am very grateful for the moderate way in which he moved the Amendment, is under particular pressure in this matter, as I fully understand. He asked why the number of pupils being used this year was higher than last year. The answer is that the crop is heavier. That is why we are
    1678
    using more exempted children than last year. We expect that the numbers will be between 27,000 and 28,000, of whom about 17,000 worked locally and about 8,000 were transported.
    The hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred to children from junior secondary schools and said that they were being particularly penalised in comparison with children from the senior secondary schools. The proportions vary considerably from area to area in this respect. The proportion of senior secondary school pupils exempted in Dundee, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, is 5 per cent., in Glasgow 13 per cent., in Fife 18 per cent., in Ayrshire 20 per cent. and in Moray and Nairn 55 per cent.
    Can we do without these 27,000 or 28,000 children? In December, 1955. we felt that we must have an impartial inquiry into this matter. The Secretary of State for Scotland, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan) said, appointed a very strong Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Hugh Rose and to make sure that full weight was given to the desirability of dispensing with children if at all possible and leaving them to get on with their studies, the Committee included one chairman of a county education committee, one former president of the E.I.S. and one Director of Education. I take this opportunity of thanking the Committee on behalf of the Secretary of State for the time and thought it gave to the question.
    The question put to it was, "Is it still necessary for children to be granted exemption from attendance at school for work in the potato harvest". The Committee reported in March of this year, and its Report was presented to the House in April.
    The Report said:
    "… for school children education is of paramount importance. This consideration has been uppermost in our minds throughout our deliberations. …"
    It might have said that education is of paramount importance not only for school children, but for the nation. We all agree with that. In spite of receiving written memoranda from 53 education authorities and other bodies, as well as oral representations from four education authorities and the Educational Institute

    1679
    of Scotland, the Committee concluded, with only one dissentient:
    "…we are forced to the conclusion that it is still necessary to exempt children from attendance at school to assist in lifting the potato crop if the acreage devoted to this vital crop is not to be drastically curtailed."
    That conclusion reflects very great credit on those members of the Committee whose instincts and training were to hold the opposite view, but who nevertheless were able to approach the problem with complete objectivity and accept the conclusion to which they believed the evidence ineluctably led.
    Why is it so vital to maintain the potato crop? It is because, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Angus said, such a high proportion is used for seed. He quoted a figure of about 300,000 tons required for England and Wales every year—although, of course, potato farmers buy only every other year, that amount is exported annually. Actually, slightly less than that amount goes to England and Wales from Scotland, but, including exports abroad, the figure is 300,000 tons. In addition 200,000 tons are required for seed in Scotland out of a total crop of 1,700,000 tons.
    The Committee said:
    "A reduction in the amount of Scottish seed would, therefore, in turn involve the import of ware potatoes from abroad on a considerable scale and add to the country's adverse trade balance."
    As the House knows, we had to import potatoes last year, because we had inadequate supplies and in fact we were almost 300,000 tons short. The fanning community is quite emphatic that without this help from children, the acreage would in fact be drastically reduced.
    I must endorse the view of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Angus that we cannot expect farmers to waste precious acres, precious seed, precious labour, not to mention fertilisers and fuel and so on, in planting potatoes which they fear they may not be able to harvest through lack of labour. There is no doubt—and this is the Committee's conclusion—that withdrawal of children would mean a drastic reduction of acreage. What are the chances of getting more labour? The Committee considered that the chances were extremely remote. The Committee also considered,
    1680
    although perhaps not so deeply, how better use could be made of the labour available.
    The hon. Member for Dundee, East spoke about the study which has been made since 1952 by the East of Scotland College and the article which appeared in October setting out their conclusions. It was along those lines that the demonstration which I saw at Laurencekirk by Mr. John Mackie was conducted. That is not a new system, and the Garnet Wilson Report referred to it, but it is a system which is worth studying. In the particular circumstances it worked well, but no one has suggested that it would be ideal in all circumstances. It is one way of using less labour. As the article said, what it means is that
    "the same acreage can be lifted at the same time and at the same cost with approximately half the number of pickers."
    But I would point out to the Committee that there may well be farms so situated that if the children were taken away the growers could not replace them with a quarter of their number.
    Reference has been made to casual labour. Casual labour on the farms has fallen since June, 1948, by something like 45 per cent. We all know how industries seek for female labour throughout the countryside and are prepared to send out and bring it in. All that one can say is that in this great shortage of labour it is most important that the best and most economical use should be made of the labour available.
    What is the alternative? What else can be done? The Rose Committee said:
    "We are of opinion that the production of a harvester or harvesters capable of operating efficiently under Scottish conditions is the only feasible alternative, in the immediately foreseeable future and under the present circumstances of full employment, to the exemption of school children."
    The Committee made the following recommendations:
    "… an immediate and continuing review of the technical and other problems involved in the development of a potato harvester be initiated and that steps be taken to ensure that the utmost assistance and encouragement to research be given through official and other channels with a view to accelerating the development of efficient machinery …"
    What has been done? We immediately initiated that review. In conjunction with the Scottish representatives of the Potato

    1681
    Marketing Board and of the Scottish substation of the National Institute of Engineering at Howden we considered how we could accelerate progress. We are very indebted to the Chairman of the Board of the Scottish Agricultural Machinery Testing Station, who happens also to be Mr. John Mackie, for the energy with which he took up this challenge.
    We knew already, of course, that the development of a satisfactory harvester has always been an important item in the programme of research of the National Institute of Agricultural Engineering. A potato harvester is being developed and has been tested to cater for moderate crops and is designed to be drawn by tractor and operated by the power take-off. As a result of our review, additional facilities at the Scottish substation are being made available and steps are also being taken to intensify from early next year—it takes a bit of time to gather the staff together—the work already being done there, particularly on the development of devices for separating the potatoes from clods and stones.
    We found that the Potato Marketing Board was to organise the first of an annual series of demonstrations in Cambridgeshire with a view to stimulating manufacturers and also to encourage producers to try out these machines. As a result of our discussions, a demonstration was arranged in East Lothian, on similar lines to that held in London, through the good offices of one of the members of the Potato Marketing Board and Mr. Watson, on whose farm it was held.
    Hon. Members may be inclined to sympathise with the feeling of Mr. Middleton as expressed in the Minority Report that if we can make progress in a few years from piston driven engines in the aircraft industry to jet propulsion, surely we can achieve a satisfactory potato harvester if we put enough effort and willpower into it. Hon. Gentlemen have said that tonight, but I really must ask the Committee to appreciate the difficulties which we are trying to overcome. At least they are different from those with which the analogy is drawn. In the first place, practical experience is limited almost entirely to the time of
    1682
    harvesting, that is, to a couple of months or so in Scotland.
    The Committee will be interested to know that next year we are proposing to put up a Dutch barn at Howden which should enable us to make practical experiments at other times of the year. It is not just a question of lifting potatoes, getting them out of the earth and putting them into a clamp or store. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), who made a helpful speech, appreciates that; if I may say so, I thought his contribution was intended to be mechanical rather than political.
    10.0 p.m.
    The real problem which we face in providing machinery is to lift potatoes without bruising them. If the skin is broken, the tuber is liable to disease and to deterioration, and it is not easy to invent a machine which will separate the tubers from the earth clods and the stones without causing cuts and abrasions. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Angus said, the ideal machine would have to suit all types of soil—thick loam, thin sandy soil, stony ground, flat ground, slopes—and all climatic conditions.
    Mr. Woodburn: Could we not have different machines for different soils? It is not necessary to have one machine which tries to do everything.
    Mr. Macpherson: I said that the ideal machine would have to do these things, in which case we should get the advantage of mass production.
    I think the House will be interested in two of my experiences in this connection. I was at the demonstration in Cambridgeshire when a Scottish harvester demonstrated proved rather a disappointment, although it did far better at East Lothian, How it would have operated in stony soil it is difficult to judge. The other example I should like to give is of the demonstration in East Lothian. A well-known farmer, whose land was practically next door to the farm on which the demonstration was being carried out, said that on the very same day he had had to give up working his potato harvester, which was of the same kind as that being demonstrated. That gives some idea of the difficulties we have to face.
    As the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East said, the cost of the machine

    1683
    is not unimportant. It is no good achieving the perfect potato harvester if it will cost more than an economic price.
    I ask the House to bear in mind that the present kind of potato harvester covers only 1 ½ to 2 acres a day. The suggestion made by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East is, therefore, not altogether realistic—the suggestion of hiring out to a great many different people—particularly if it were a very slow-moving machine, even on the road.
    I must give the House the chance to appreciate these difficulties. I do not for one moment say that they are necessarily insurmountable, and I give an assurance that they are being tackled with skill and vigour, not only by the Government Research Establishment, but by people of enterprise and an inventive turn of mind, and we are giving every encouragement. I do not believe there is any one solution to this problem, but I must make clear that we are not behind other countries in the provision of agricultural potato harvesting machinery, as is confirmed by the Rose Committee.
    Mr. Hannan: The hon. Member says we are not further behind than other countries. In Paragraph 30 the Report says,
    "In each case we were informed that school children assisted in lifting the potato crop. …"
    Is that statement to be read as suggesting that extensions to holidays are asked for and granted in other countries?
    Mr. Macpherson: No, I cannot give an answer to that. I am not responsible for what goes on in those countries. We all know that the harvesting period is different there; and I am not well enough informed as to what their school terms are. I should not like to commit myself on that.
    I have one further observation to make. So long as this Act is on the Statute Book, it is surely extremely important for us to consider the welfare of the children and how best we can attain that within the needs that we have to meet. There have been occasions when adequate supervision has proved impossible because of local education authorities not insisting on children
    1684
    reporting at the schools before they go to the potato harvest.
    I would appeal most earnestly to all education authorities to co-operate with us in this, so long as we have to continue this enactment, for without that cooperation we cannot look after the children in the way that we would like to. We do not intend to keep this Measure in operation any longer than is necessary, but I must tell the House quite frankly that that time is not yet in sight.
    Amendment negatived.
    Mr. James McInnes: I beg to move, in page 3, to leave out lines 25 and 26.
    We have been considering a number of items which have been in operation for five, six and seven years, but I turn now to an item which, because of somewhat fortuitous circumstances, has been in operation for almost sixteen years. Section 259 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947, provides that
    "a county council or a town council shall not without the consent of the Minister concerned borrow money to meet any expenditure of a capital nature … unless the resolution to borrow has been agreed to by two-thirds of the members of the council present and voting at the meeting at which the resolution is passed …"
    Section 4 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1951, amends that by omitting the words:
    "… unless the resolution to borrow has been agreed to by two-thirds of the members of the council present and voting at the meeting at which the resolution is passed …"
    In essence, that means that before a local authority in Scotland can borrow money for expenditure of a capital nature it must obtain the consent of the Secretary of State for Scotland.
    I fully appreciate that the Act of 1951 was introduced under the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill of that year, as a temporary measure and as a continuation of what was previously included in the Defence Regulations. But I want to say in defence of the Labour Government of that time that it was necessary that they should do so because their policy in 1951, and in previous years, was a policy of control—the control of expenditure and investment in the public as well as in the private sector.

    1685
    That system of control, however, does not exist today. The Conservative Party has quite openly indicated that it does not favour a policy of controls. Today, the control, or restriction, or limitation—whatever one likes to call it—appears to exist only where local authorities are concerned. Perhaps I should put it in another way. Whatever the financial disabilities which the private sector of industry may have to endure as a result of the Government's economic policy, such as the result of the credit squeeze, local authorities have to endure not only similar financial disabilities but many other restrictions which do not apply to the private sector.
    For example, in addition to the restrictions imposed under the Bill before us this evening, local authorities in Scotland are further restricted as a result of the notorious Circular 8774, issued by the Scottish Office, which restricts local government expenditure, and they are further affected by the policy of the Government in refusing to give grants to local authorities for certain services under the Distribution of Industry Act. Obviously, the intention of the Government is to restrict the development and the progress of what we may call essential social services.
    I want to give some indication of the effect of this policy of not allowing the local authorities the freedom to borrow, of the restrictions which are being imposed under the circular referred to and of the Government's failure to encourage local authorities in the development of their schemes of social progress under the Distribution of Industry Act. I have before me an abstract of the estimated capital expenditure for the City of Glasgow for 1955–56. The total estimates amount to £18,800,000 for that year, and of that sum housing represents over £11 million, and education £4 million. Borrowing powers have been sanctioned by the Scottish Office for about £15 million of the £18,800,000, but borrowing powers have not yet been sanctioned for £1,425,000, and the Scottish Office has still to approve a further £2½ million.
    What are the projects which are still involved, which still await borrowing sanction or the approval of the Scottish Office? There is the question of playing
    1686
    fields to the extent of £44,000; road improvements to the extent of £50,000; and housing development to the extent of over £2 million. We have educational projects to the extent of £700,000. There is a sewage purification scheme, £20,000; residential accommodation for the old folk, £20,000; and clinics, £50,000.
    10.15 p.m.
    I submit that every one of these projects is absolutely essential to Glasgow and its citizens, but, because of the policy which the Government are pursuing, Glasgow is denied the benefits of these social developments. In Glasgow, we find that out of an estimated capital expenditure of £18,800,000, almost 21 per cent., almost £4 million, still awaits tire sanction of the Secretary of State to borrow or his approval to the projects themselves.
    Why is it that local authorities should be picked out as the one institution which has not been given freedom to embark upon schemes of capital expenditure? Is it because there is some evidence of extravagance or of waste? Is it because there is a suggestion that local authorities are embarking on unjustifiable expenditure? Surely no one on the Government Front Bench would suggest anything of the kind. Indeed, I am satisfied that the Front Bench recognises, as we do on this side of the Committee, that local authorities are very careful, carrying on their administration effectively and efficiently.
    There is an important distinction here. At present, all projects which are grant-aided, which represent, after all, probably by far the bulk of local government, capital expenditure in Scotland, automatically go to the Secretary of State for approval. Control is still in his hands. What disturbs me is the state of projects which are not granted, where the local authority, in the matter of clinics, for instance, or playing fields, or whatever it may be—hon. Members will recall that Glasgow, with over I million population, is spending a miserable £40,000 on playing fields—is denied the right to carry on. Local authorities are even compelled to beg the Secretary of State to approve of such expenditure, to approve even of their borrowing for that purpose.
    Surely the time has come for us to do away with this pin-pricking little enactment which we have been continuing for the past sixteen years, and grant to the

    1687
    local authorities the freedom which they seek and to which they are entitled. After all, the 1947 Act provides all the safeguards that the Secretary of State or anybody else could demand. In other words, the council would not be empowered to borrow except by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting at the meeting. What other safeguard does the Secretary of State require? I submit that that is an adequate safeguard, recognising, as I do, the quality of the people who comprise our local authorities and recognising how they are guided in many instances by the officials of the authorities, who would never embark on madcap schemes that were not in any way justified.
    I move this Amendment in the sincere hope that the Secretary of State will this year go a stage further than he has ever gone before. I hope he will accept it and not merely say that he will consider it seriously and that probably next year we shall be able to dispose of this provision. I ask him to do so tonight.
    Mr. George Lawson: In supporting my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes), I am surprised that the benches opposite are almost entirely empty. Five hon. Members, including the Minister, are the extent of their occupation. I should have thought that on occasions such as this, when we are discussing one of those principles that have always been so vital, we always understood, to Members opposite—the principle of freedom, setting the people free and in this case setting the local authorities free—hon. Members opposite would have been packing their benches; but the evidence is that they are not as interested in this matter as they would have us believe.
    I have read the debate that accompanied the passing of the 1950 Bill and I noticed the concern then expressed by a number of Members who are still with us but are not present tonight. It might not be fair to go over them all by name but I can hardly resist mentioning, for example, the hon. and gallant Member for South Angus (Captain Duncan), who said:
    "I take the view … that local authorities ought to be regarded as responsible citizens and bodies, and that they should be free to maintain the dignity, integrity, and good order
    1688
    of their burghs without interference from Whitehall, or St. Andrew's House, or with as little interference as possible."
    The hon. and gallant Member went on to say that the existing measures of grants and the grant system provided an adequate check on local authorities but that so far as the local authorities were raising money themselves, not being assisted by the central Government, they ought, in his opinion, to be free. But the hon. and gallant Member is not here tonight to advocate the case. Having seen him on the benches opposite a short time ago, I thought that he certainly would have been present now.
    I was struck, too, by the remarks of Mr. Clyde, who is not now a Member of the House but who subsequently became Lord Advocate. He was then the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, North and he talked of local authorities being
    "cribbed, cabin'd and confined' by centralised control for far too long."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 28th November, 1950; c. 1768–9.]
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Nixon Browne): Is the hon. Member quoting from the Committee stage of the 1951 Bill, or from the similar debate to this one?
    Mr. Lawson: I am quoting from the Second Reading, which was taken in the Scottish Standing Committee.
    Mr. E. G. Willis: It was about the only time that the hon. and learned Member did speak.
    Mr. Lawson: If the Joint Under-Secretary wishes the date, it was 28th November, 1950. There was quite a variety of similar remarks by his hon. Friends.
    We on this side, perhaps, do not talk as much about freedom as do hon. Members opposite, but we are, in fact, much more concerned with freedom and the evidence of our past practice is ample. We have been concerned with a whole variety of freedoms—freedom from fear of unemployment, from fear of the sack, as we used to call it, from fear of the landlord and from lying off sick in case one could not meet medical bills, and so on.
    I, too, am very much concerned that the local authorities should have freedom, especially where their freedom can in no way jeopardise the interests of the

    1689
    nation. I agree that where the central authority is making a contribution towards a local authority's expenditure there should be central authority control. But what we cannot get over is the fact that where there is no such contribution, where the local authority is itself raising money, it is not permitted to spend the money—not, indeed, permitted to raise the money unless it has prior sanction from the central authority.
    Quite apart from the question of freedom, there arises the question of independence, and the business of preparing statements which, in many cases, ought not to have to be prepared, and all such consequential irritations. We plead with the Government to leave the local authorities with this amount of freedom. It is not very much for which we ask. We believe in responsibility among local people. We have often been told by hon. Members opposite that they trust the local authorities. Let us have a little trust on this occasion.
    There are two arguments I should particularly like to mention—not at great length—which, in my opinion, justified the denial of this freedom to local authorities. When the Act was passed the strongest argument in its favour was that at that time private enterprise was circumscribed by limitations—for instance, on industrial building. There were other limitations, too. It was quite fair to argue that if private enterprise was limited by Governmental controls local authority enterprise should be, also. However, those controls have been abandoned. Whether they ought to be introduced again is not for us to say tonight; but they have been abandoned, and private enterprise has been left free to get on as it thinks best. So the basis of the argument which was applied in 1950 and 1951 does not apply now, and we would ask the Government to look at the matter from that point of view.
    Another argument which legitimately applied then was that in those days, in 1950, and until recently, the local authorities had a certain advantage. They raised money from the Public Works Loan Board and they got money at a lower rate of interest than that which they would have had to pay had they to go to the open market. They no longer have that advantage. I do not deny that there are occasions when they may raise money through the Board after
    1690
    permission has been granted, after the schemes for which they want it have been very closely scrutinised, after they have given every assurance that they cannot possibly raise the money in any other way.
    Indeed, so close is the supervision that it seems impossible for them to raise money now through the Board. Theoretically, it is possible for them to raise money in that way, but for this type of expenditure the local authorities must go to the open market and for this type of expenditure they have no chance of going to the Board. They must go to the open market and pay the recognised rate on the open market. Thus, there remains no argument why in this respect local authorities should be treated differently from private enterprise.
    There remains no other argument, unless, of course, we are arguing that the general economic interests of the country demand such a policy. But when we argue this way we certainly cannot argue that the general economic interests of Scotland appear to be receiving very favourable treatment at present, or have been so doing over the past few years.
    10.30 p.m.
    The possibility of local authorities acting in ways designed to stimulate employment in their respective areas is very relevant to this Bill. It is very well known that Scotland suffers more than does any other region in Great Britain. It is well known, for example, that the average unemployment in Scotland has tended, over the post-war years, to be about three and a half times higher than that of London and the south-eastern regions and to be double that for Great Britain as a whole. It is not merely the extent of present unemployment in Scotland that is important for us but the fact that, year by year, Scotland goes on losing her people. There is a net loss of about 22,000 per annum. Some go overseas, and a large number come into England. But, despite this net loss, this high proportion of unemployment continues.
    Not only when unemployment in terms of actual percentages is considered do we appreciate how Scotland is badly off and the importance of local authorities spending money which they themselves raise to publicise the attractions of their areas and to stimulate the coming of industries

    1691
    into them. We should take into account, for example, the fact that according to the latest figures, for August and September, showing the ratio of unfilled vacancies to the number of registered unemployed, there were in London and the south-eastern regions 2·8 unfilled jobs for every person registered as unemployed.
    In Scotland, however, the position was the other way round. There were 26 persons registered as unemployed for every unfilled job. Scotland would find itself very much at the bottom of any league table showing relatively the worse position of Scotland compared with the rest of the country. If Scotland is to overcome her difficulties a special effort is called for by Scottish people. It is called for by Scottish private enterprise. It is unfortunate that Scottish private enterprise is not making that effort.
    The Temporary Chairman (Mr. F. Blackburn): I do not wish to stop the hon. Member, but I should be glad if he would limit his remarks to the effects of this part of the Bill.
    Mr. Lawson: I appreciate that I was going rather far, but I was trying to make the point that here is legitimate expenditure on the part of the local authorities.
    The Temporary Chairman: If the hon. Member will limit his remarks to expenditure by local authorities, he will be in order.
    Mr. Lawson: In the past few months I and other hon. Members representing Lanarkshire have been attending meetings of the Lanarkshire Planning Committee, which has been discussing the steps that could be taken to prepare sites and to publicise their advantages in an effort to attract industries into the area. This is very important for Scotland, and it is this, among other types of activity, that could be denied to local authorities.
    The Joint Under-Secretary may reply. "If a local authority came to us with a scheme of this sort, we should grant it powers to go ahead". However, there is always a doubt. For example, we know that advance factory building in Scotland has been stifled. We cannot understand why, in activities of this kind, there should be any question of the local authority having to go to the central authority for permission.
    1692
    In the interests of Scotland, sound local government and freedom, the Government should do what we ask. There is no longer the argument which applied in 1950 and 1951, of local authorities having certain advantages over private enterprise. Indeed, the position is reversed. We urge the Minister to withdraw this provision.
    Mr. Willis: I support the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes), not that I have any hope that it will be successful, particularly in view of the deplorable position of the country compared with what it was when we tried to obtain this concession last year, and also considering the enormous disadvantages that we now suffer as a result of the fatuousness of the Government's policies.
    The crux of the matter is the loans raised by local authorities for which no Government grant is received. Can we be told the amount of capital expenditure which they represent? Last year, the Joint Under-Secretary could not tell us. He asked for something, but did not know what it was, which was absurd. I do not think it can be a large sum. The figures relating to Glasgow, produced by my hon. Friend, included an enormous amount of grant-aided expenditure, and I think that the non-grant-aided expenditure would be very small. It is said that the expenditure, though non-grant-aided, receives assistance through Exchequer equalisation grants, but it concerns in the main large cities which receive little or no such grant.
    What is involved in this expenditure? Does the hon. Gentleman think that local authorities will indulge in an orgy of capital expenditure if they do not have to obtain the approval of the Secretary of State? The Government have already made it almost impossible for local authorities to borrow because of the burden of interest charges, and no local authority today wants to borrow if it can avoid it. There is not the slightest chance of a local authority losing its head and making unnecessary capital expenditure demands.
    Every local authority in Scotland has recently been confronted with ever-increasing rate burdens. The Government have made difficulties not only

    1693
    about borrowing, but about outstanding loans. The result is that local authorities are putting up rates by from 1s. 0d. to 5s. 0d. in the £. Is it likely now that local authorities will suddenly make unnecessary demands upon our capital resources? I cannot think so. I should think that there was no necessity for this provision. It is unfair for local authorities to have to bear not only higher interest charges, which private enterprise has also to bear, but the additional burdens of preparing information for the Secretary of State and then awaiting his approval. This places them at a disadvantage with private enterprise, which can go ahead, provided that it pays the interest charges.
    When we took certain powers from local authorities I remember that Government supporters making great speeches in Scotland about their pride in local government and our infringement of the rights of local authorities. It has been fortunate for local authorities that we took those powers away or they would now be suffering from a rate burden that would cripple them. We believe in having a strong local democracy, and that local authorities are composed of responsible men and women who are anxious to serve the community. They have to go to their electors every year and receive approval of what they have done. This provision is an insult to them and to local officials, and I sincerely hope that the Joint Under-Secretary of State will accept the Amendment.
    Mr. J. N. Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) for the way in which he moved the Amendment. Let me start my reply by giving in one or two words the history of this matter, so that we can get it on the record.
    Ministerial control in England and Wales over capital borrowing by local authorities has been in existence for more than half a century. In Scotland, no Ministerial consent was required provided that that there was a two-thirds majority of the members of the council present and voting. In 1939, central control was introduced by a Defence Regulation. In 1947 the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947, brought back the pre-war position, but the Defence Regulation still prevailed.
    1694
    In 1950, hon. Gentlemen opposite moved the Act of 1951, which replaced the Defence Regulation by the temporary legislation which we are now considering. The Government consider that the provisions should be extended and I hope that my silver-tongued oratory v/ill enable hon. Gentlemen opposite to agree with me.
    Mr. Willis: It is facts we want.
    Mr. Browne: Local authorities were informed before the Bill was introduced, and they have not objected, but the County Councils' Association has expressed the hope that the control will be dispensed with as soon as possible. The reasons for this control are quite simple. Ever since the war, the demand for capital resources has greatly exceeded the supply, and successive Governments have found it necessary to ensure that the resources of the country are used to the best advantage.
    10.45 p.m.
    Two hon. Members have said that it is unfair that local authorities should be controlled and private enterprise should go free. But I would remind them that, in borrowing, private enterprise is, of course, strictly controlled by the Capital Issues Committee, which exercises a most vigilant restraint.
    Mr. T. Fraser: It is not only private enterprise borrowing, but private enterprise capital investment—all those new petrol stations and beautiful new offices which have been built and which are to be so convenient for handling petrol coupons in future.
    Mr. Browne: This is one of the instruments that the Government use to control capital expenditure. Local authorities', have many essential capital projects such as housing, educational building and major road works which are grant-aided—
    Mr. Willis: They are not affected by this Bill.
    Mr. Browne: —and, as the hon. Gentleman interjects, are not affected by this Bill.
    The hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes), who gave us many figures, himself confirmed that many of the figures he gave were in respect of grant-aided expenditure and not really relevant to the discussion tonight.
    Mr. McInnes: I stressed the importance of the non-aided services such as the matter of playing fields and two or three other things. These are the matters which disturb me.
    Mr. Browne: The hon. Gentleman deluged me with figures, but I was going to say that over a large field of non-grant-aided expenditure this instrument which we are now discussing is the only means that the Secretary of State has for exercising a restraining influence. Town halls, parks, recreation grounds and improvements to local amenities are desirable, but are not necessarily essential.
    Mr. Willis: They are more necessary than a lot of the other things.
    Mr. Browne: They are not necessary if they mean diverting the resources of the country from developments necessary to maintain our economic solvency.
    Local authorities generally understand this and the Government are indebted to them for this understanding. They have refrained from seeking borrowing sanctions on non-essentials, although, of course, they cannot always be expected to judge local projects against national needs. Nor has my right hon. Friend been unsympathetic or without understanding in this matter. In the first ten months of 1956, of 1,670 applications that came within the scope of this Bill, 1,440 were approved and 230 rejected, that is, 86 per cent. of the applications were approved.
    Mr. Willis: Would the hon. Gentleman tell us the value of the applications refused, so that we may see what this Bill actually achieves?
    Mr. Browne: The hon. Gentleman will do that if the hon. Gentleman will give him an opportunity. The 1,440 approved applications involved a capital expenditure of £10,081,700, and the 230 rejected applications would have involved a capital expenditure of £3,790,380. To save the hon. Gentleman working it out, that means that 86 per cent. of the applications were approved numerically and 73 per cent. were approved in terms of £ s. d. That means that this Section has restricted non-essential expenditure by about £3¾ million, and the existing restrictions have no doubt saved even more in projects that have not been put forward.
    1696
    That is the object of the exercise. It covers nearly one-fifth of the total capital expenditure of Scottish local authorities, so that the provisions are doing useful work in the national interest. We are grateful to hon. Members opposite for putting them on the Statute Book in their present form and we are firmly convinced that they should be continued meantime.
    Amendment negatived.
    Mr. Albert Evans: I beg to move, in page 3, to leave out lines 38 to 41.
    We are now dealing with the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946. The Government are asking the Committee to agree that this Act should be continued for a further year. It will expire on 31st March next year unless we decide tonight that it should be continued until 31st March, 1958.
    The main purpose of the Act is to deal with the rents of furnished lettings. It is made effective by the 61 rent tribunals throughout the country. I believe that the number of tribunals has been reduced from 80 to 61. There is little doubt that there is a continuing need for the jurisdiction which these tribunals give.
    If we look at the work which they have done over the past year we see that there is a continuing need for them. The latest figures available to us are those contained in the Annual Report of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government for 1955. The Minister may have more recent figures and may choose to give them. If so, we shall be obliged to him. But tonight, looking back on the work of the tribunals, we have to content ourselves with and make our judgment on the figures published in the Annual Report.
    We find from these figures that in 1955 there was a large increase in the number of cases dealt with by the tribunals. The number of cases in 1955 was over 14,000, compared with nearly 8,000 in 1954. That is a considerable increase but we know that it was due to special circumstances—to the operation of the Housing (Rent and Repairs) Act, 1954. The cases under that Act have probably reached a peak and will decline from now.
    We have to look more closely at the figures of cases taken under the main Act which we are now discussing. If we

    1697
    examine them closely we find that the number of cases being taken by the tribunals has been fairly well maintained. It is true that there was a decline from 6,300 in 1954 to 5,900 in 1955—a slight fall in the number of cases taken under the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946. That decline is insufficient for us to argue that the time has come for the tribunals to end. The cases continue to come in week by week, and we take the view that the rent tribunal, as constituted under the Act, is the most suitable means of dealing with them.
    These tribunals have recently been the subject of an inquiry by the Committee on Administrative Tribunals which was set up last year. That Committee has considered a memorandum presented by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and has also taken oral evidence from some of the Ministry's leading personnel—about whose evidence Questions have been asked in the House. The Parliamentary Secretary will recall that Questions were put down concerning statements made before the Committee by the Permanent Under-Secretary to the Ministry.
    There were, at that time, some rather alarming statements published in the Press to the effect that the Permanent Under-Secretary had declared that rent tribunals might be abolished this year. We were annoyed about it, and thought that the House had been outraged to some extent by the expression of an opinion on a political issue with which the Minister alone was competent to deal.
    I want now to make it clear that, having read the Minutes of Evidence, I think that the evidence given by the various people in the Ministry was, on the whole, fair and helpful. Some of the phrasing, it is true was unfortunate and some of the sentences used would have been better left unsaid. They verged closely on matters which should be left to the Minister to decide. I think it is regrettable that the newspapers should be so misleading on such matters.
    Tribute should be paid to the members of the tribunals and to their clerks. They do a great work, week after week, helping poor people—
    The Temporary Chairman: Order. I am trying to follow the hon. Member's
    1698
    argument, but he seems to be arguing against his own Amendment in this matter.
    Mr. Evans: Well, Mr. Blackburn, I think you will find that these discussions often do appear to be contradictory; that the technique of dealing with them is that one puts down an Amendment which appears to try to bring an Act to an end, but that that does not prevent one from giving the pros and cons, and arguing not only that it should end, but, also, that it should continue. It seems to me. therefore, that I am quite in order in arguing in this way.
    As I was saying, the members of the tribunals and their clerks do very fine work. So far, they have dealt with about 100,000 cases. Those cases are brought by poor people who are in difficulties about the rents of their furnished accommodation. From my small experience of the working of these tribunals, I am sure that they inspire trust in those who go before them. It is a vital factor in this kind of work that the people who appear before these tribunals are inspired with confidence and with an impression that they are receiving a sympathetic and considerate hearing.
    11.0 p.m.
    These tribunals lack the majesty and awe of the normal courts. They were designed for that purpose, so that they did not intimidate poor and simple people. I do not think I can do better to illustrate the value of this type, of tribunal as against the ordinary court than by reading what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Poplar (Mr. Key) when this Measure was initiated and the tribunals were launched. He was talking about his work on the Ridley Committee, which originally suggested this form of tribunal, and said:
    "On the Ridley Committee, I think all of us were impressed with the evidence which was given to us by witness after witness of the fact that, if you were going to deal with this rent business adequately and properly, then you had to take it away from the courts and set up tribunals which should deal with it. It may be without reason, though I do not think it is quite true, but in the minds of a great number of the poorer people there is a great dread of ever having to go to court to get a decision; and that when, to get their grievances decided, it was necessary to go to a police court or magistrates court, they hesitate very much to do it. We felt that with tribunals it will be very different,

    1699
    and that they will be prepared to go to these tribunals, and particularly if they consist of ordinary people."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th November, 1945; Vol. 415, c. 2015.]
    There we have the underlying idea behind the rent tribunals. I am sure that that was a valid argument in 1946, and I believe it remains valid today. Perhaps we can improve some of the methods of the tribunals, but their essential purpose and their form of jurisdiction should be retained.
    I should like to refer to the remuneration of the members of the tribunals. I am not going to express any opinion about it, but it has been suggested that the remuneration of the members and their clerks is inadequate in view of present-day costs. While I express no opinion about it, I should be glad if the Parliamentary Secretary—though he may not wish to comment on it now—would bear that matter in mind and consider it.
    Despite the Amendment, I hope that this Act will be continued for another year. It is possible for an hon. Member—
    The Chairman (Sir Charles MacAndrew): Order. If I had known that that was the line which the hon. Gentleman was going to take I would not have selected this Amendment, which seeks to discontinue the Act.
    Mr. Evans: May I explain that I have considered the matter very carefully since the Amendment was put down, and that, on balance, it seems to me that I would be well advised in due course to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment. Although this may be rather unusual, I suppose it is permissible for me to have second thoughts upon this matter, Sir Charles.
    The Chairman: I think that those second thoughts will have to be that the Act must not continue.
    Mr. Evans: Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), who will follow me, will support the Amendment more fully than I have done. It is true that I have put an argument both for and against the Amendment, and that I am not sure at the moment on which side I am coming down.
    1700
    In conclusion, I express the hope that if the Minister at any time decides to alter the structure or method of procedure of the tribunals he will not allow the administrative convenience of his Department to be uppermost in his mind. I hope that he will always remember that it is essential that we should ensure, as far as possible, that the poorer people have the idea that there are no barriers to justice in their housing affairs.
    Mr. C. W. Gibson: I want to raise a point which would involve an alteration of the Act if my suggestion were accepted and carried out. It is one which I have raised before, and relates to the degree of security which tenants who go to the local rent tribunals are able to get under the law as it stands.
    I am told that if notice to quit has been given by the landlord before an argument as to rent comes before the tribunal, the tribunal has no power to give any kind of future security. I suggest to the Minister that that matter ought to be looked into.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) has said, the number of people going before these tribunals proves that there is a great deal of unhappiness, I was going to say, but, certainly, a very great deal of discomfort in the country; and particularly is that so in my own part of London and the constituency I represent, which is almost entirely residential. There is very little industry in South-West London, in Wandsworth, Putney, Battersea, Wimbledon or Mitcham, which are the places under the jurisdiction of the tribunal in my district.
    Over the last ten years during which it has been operating, the tribunal in my area has had before it 2,467 cases, an average of 246 a year. Already this year it has had 265, so that it seems clear that the difficulty which the tribunals were set up to deal with is not decreasing in any way in the south-western area" of London. This matter of security, therefore, becomes all the more important. I notice that of the applications which the South-Western District Tribunal has had to consider, 606 were from landlords, and 1,811 were from tenants. Rents were reduced in 1,138 cases. That would seem to show the necessity for the continuance of tribunals.

    1701
    If, however, the tribunals cannot give the tenants, once they have come before them, security without their having to come time and time again, or not at all when notice to quit has been given already, if my information is correct—and very often the landlords do that if they find tenants beginning to object—it seems to me that the value of these tribunals which the House thought it saw when the Act was originally passed is very largely diminished. It is interesting to note that in my area there have been no fewer than 178 applications for extensions of security in the last ten years. Tenants have had to go back to ask for it, and apparently they may have to go back time and time again.
    It seems to me that to make the Bill really useful to the people it was supposed to benefit, this matter of security, once a decision has been given by the tribunal, ought to be very much more clearly defined; the tenant ought to be given some long-term security so that he does not have the continual worry of having to ask again for an extension of his tenancy.
    I suggest to the Committee that, at any rate on the experience of the figures in South-West London, there is a case for continuing the Act but that it ought to be amended to meet this complaint about security. I ask the Minister to take seriously into account the question of trying to improve the aspect of the Act which deals with the security of tenants, so that we may have more satisfaction from the courts than we appear to be getting at the moment.
    Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Before the Minister replies—
    Sir L. Plummer: On a point of order. I wonder whether we could have your guidance, Sir Charles. Last year, when we were discussing the 1955 Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, we spent some time dealing with the Road Traffic Act, which was subsequently superseded by a new Act, which destroyed it completely. Now we are discussing the rent tribunals, and we are to have tomorrow the Second Reading of a Bill which, if it does not utterly destroy the rent tribunals, at least will limit their scope very considerably. Are we each year to go on discussing Acts which are due to die?
    The Chairman: We can consider that point when the Bill which comes up for Second Reading tomorrow becomes law,
    1702
    which it has not done yet. If what the hon. Member states is the case, no doubt this law will not be continued next year but will be superseded by the Bill which may become law.
    Sir L. Plummer: Are we not m the position now of spending a great deal of time discussing something that may well die within a few weeks?
    The Chairman: I do not think that that is a point of order.
    Mr. Anthony Greenwood: I shall take my hon. Friend's hint and not take up too much of the time of the Committee at this stage.
    One of the points which made a number of my hon. Friends and I doubtful whether the Act should be continued for a further year is our doubt as to whether it does, in fact, provide adequate protection for tenants. When we discussed this point a year ago my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) and my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) made the point that a number of prosecutions failed, or it was difficult to bring prosecutions in respect of rented property, because of the absence of a rent book.
    On that occasion, the Parliamentary Secretary's predecessor said that that was a point which the Government would consider. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is now in a position to give us the results of the consideration which, I have no doubt, he and his right hon. Friend have given to this point.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. Enoch Powell): This debate has been different from those which have preceded it today in that hon. Members who have spoken have been more anxious that the words concerned should stand part of the Bill than that they should be omitted from it. Nevertheless, it is useful that the reasons for renewing these powers should be at least briefly considered on this occasion.
    The tribunals set up under the 1946 Act have, as is well known, three main functions: their functions in respect of furnished houses, those in respect of unfurnished houses let for the first time since 1939, and those in respect of the cost of services.
    As regards the volume of work under those three heads—and here, as the hon.

    1703
    Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) suggested, I am giving the figures for the year ended 30th September, 1956—the number of cases in respect of unfurnished accommodation and of services amounted to 5,713. I have included in that a small number which relate to Crown lessees and to the security of tenure of members of the Auxiliary and Reserve Forces. And so we have that group of cases accounting for 5,713. The remainder, which relate to furnished houses, numbered 5,215.
    As the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) observed, the Bill which is to come before the House tomorrow will, if it passes in its present form—it would, of course, be quite out of order to debate the merits or the likelihood of that event—dispense with the first two of those functions of the tribunals, that is to say, rather more than half of the cases with which they deal. I shall, therefore, concentrate my remarks on those dealing with furnished accommodation, and the "furnished cases", if I may so describe them, break down as follows. There were 5,215, and of that total, 3,880 were first applications; in 2,796 of those cases the rent was reduced. The remainder were 801 applications for reconsideration, and 1,534 applications were for renewed security of tenure. Those cases, also, may be affected—although, of course, I cannot go further than that tonight—by the Bill which the House is to consider tomorrow.
    If the rateable value of dwellings, to which the jurisdiction of the tribunals applies is limited, then a difficult minority of all those cases will no longer come to the tribunals for assessment. More important, I think, is the clear connection between the control of furnished and unfurnished lettings, and one of the purposes of this whole Act is the prevention of a form of evasion in the rent control of unfurnished premises. Thus, in the next 12 months, and we are not concerned tonight with any longer period, the work and functions of these tribunals, even in respect of furnished premises, may be substantially altered, or reduced; but until we know just where we stand under forthcoming legislation, and until its initial effects can be judged, it would be premature to remove the protection at present afforded for furnished lettings.
    Even if the renewal is for only 12 months, and, again, I remind hon. Members
    1704
    that we are not concerned at the moment with a longer period, it would clearly be right that the functioning of tribunals should now be considered both in regard to economy and to efficiency. An hon. Member asked me about rent books. I think he will find his answer to that in the Bill which we are to consider tomorrow.
    I should not be in order in dealing with the question raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), because what he spoke about would mean a substantive amendment of the law; but I can tell him that there will be opportunities for debate on that in coming weeks.
    In most areas of the country this work of these tribunals is now falling to a trickle. By way of illustration, I can tell the Committee that at the end of last quarter three tribunals had no cases outstanding and four more had only one. In the same quarter, two decided no cases, four decided only one, three decided only two, and six dealt with only three cases. So that it is clear that a review is necessary, with probably some streamlining and some effort at combining efficiency with economy in the near future.
    That is what is called for, and I can give an undertaking that that will be carried out; but, subject to this, I think that there is sufficient ground for the Committee to agree to further renewal, for the next 12 months, of the 1946 Act.
    Mr. A. Evans: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Schedule agreed to.
    Preamble agreed to.
    Bill reported, without Amendment: read the Third time and passed.

  DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF
  Resolved,
  That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Republic of Austria of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Draft of an Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Austria) Order, 1956, a copy of which was laid before this House on 31st October, in the last Session of Parliament, an Order may be made in the form of that Draft.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]
  To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

  MOUNTED POLICE (USE)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Godber.]
  11.20 p.m.
  Mr. Ronald Russell: A fortnight ago, during consideration by the House of the Sessional Orders which normally are passed before any other business is taken, the House will recall that several hon. Members raised the question of the use of mounted police, particularly in dealing with demonstrations and large crowds. On that occasion a number of remarks were made with which I violently disagreed, but I did not feel disposed to take part in the discussion, firstly because the range of the discussion was limited very narrowly to the Order concerning the passage-ways outside the House, and particularly because there were matters which I wished to verify. I have since done that, and that is why I wish to raise this subject now.
  I am glad to see the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) present, because it was he who raised the matter then, and I violently disagreed with one or two of his opinions. He considered that the use of mounted police was inefficient and provocative, and he suggested that they should be abolished. They are highly efficient in that they save manpower. The opinion was expressed in an article in The Times a few months ago that, from the point of view of controlling crowds, one mounted police officer was equal to 12 or 15 foot police. Some police authorities have put the figure as high as 20.
  The uniformed branch of the Metropolitan Police is 4,000 short of establishment, according to the Report of the Commissioner of Police for 1955. Out of a total establishment of 18,000, that means that the branch is roughly 22 per cent. under strength. The mounted branch, on the other hand, according to the same Report, has a strength of 203 out of 210, which is about 3½ per cent. under strength. I suggest, therefore, that from the point of view of saving manpower alone, leaving out any other consideration, it is imperative to keep the mounted branch in being.
  1706
  Demonstrations, of course, do not make the only kind of crowd in which mounted police are used. There are the crowds attending football matches, for instance, as I know from my own experience. I cite the Cup Final as an obvious example in my constituency. I recall the occasion in 1923 when the crowd broke into the ground at Wembley Stadium and order was restored apparently by one mounted police officer who appeared on a grey horse. That incident alone would justify the existence of the mounted police.
  Nowadays, mounted police are used in Wembley to keep the crowds on the pavement, for example on Olympic Way, thus enabling traffic to move away quickly from events at the Stadium. They are also used to keep the crowds in queues outside Wembley Park Station so that there is order on the pavement as well as on the road. If there were no mounted police to carry out those duties, many more foot police would be needed.
  There are the questions of mobility and visibility. I wonder what could be substituted for the horse to give the same visibility. It could only be some kind of car, higher than a normal one, and perhaps being the height of an armoured car. A motor car or motor cycle would be far more likely to cause injury among a crowd than a horse would. A horse will not trample on anyone unless it is frightened or attacked.
  It is suggested that mounted police charge crowds. When I think of the word "charge", I think of the charge of the Light Brigade or the charge of the Lancers at Omdurman in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) took part. From what I have seen, mounted police do not usually charge into a crowd in that way. They either walk their horses or trot them. There is no question of cantering or galloping. I believe the horses are very highly trained, and so are their riders.
  The hon. Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) has said that mounted police have to control their horses as well as the crowd. Many of us know that a trained horse is not difficult to control in normal circumstances. How much easier it must be for expert

  1707
  riders like mounted police officers to control horses which they ride every day. Control of their horses is absolutely second nature to them.
  As to provocation, far from being provocative, mounted police at football matches or Royal processions are usually a source of great admiration. I suggest—I exempt hon. Members from this stricture—that the people who are provoked by mounted police are those who dislike being stopped by any kind of force from doing just what they want to do.
  It has been suggested that crush barriers might be used as an alternative. They would have to be something that people could not climb over or get under, probably something like those which are erected in the side streets at Coronation time to keep crowds off the main route. It was suggested that steel tubes might be sunk into the ground, possibly to be raised automatically by the police. Such a method would be enormously expensive and completely inflexible. Foot or mounted police controlling a crowd at a football match are a flexible instrument.
  We are also told that mounted police are never used elsewhere. However, I understand that there are 24 police forces in England and Wales and two in Scotland which have mounted branches. I believe that the total strength of the mounted police outside London is about equal to that inside London, so that we have some 400 altogether. The cities which use them include Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol and Glasgow. No doubt there are others. Presumably the chief constables concerned, like the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, consider their use essential. I believe mounted police are used abroad in Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen, New York and elsewhere. Perhaps the Joint Under-Secretary can give other examples.
  The members of the mounted branch of the Metropolitan Police are very highly trained and superbly turned out. They are a body greatly admired and respected by the vast majority of the population. I believe their use is efficient and saves the employment of a great many foot police. They deserve our wholehearted support and not criticism. I hope my hon. Friend will give an assurance that there is no question whatever of their being abolished.
  1708
  Lastly, I would pay tribute to the police as a whole, both mounted and foot, for the way in which they carried out a vast number of extra duties at the beginning of this month, when the Suez crisis was at its height and Hungary was being crushed. They had to keep crowds from the Soviet Embassy and handle the protest marches to this House and to Trafalgar Square, as well as perform the duties attaching to the State Opening of Parliament and the Lord Mayor's Show. Our thanks are due to them for the splendid way in which they carried out all these duties, some of them very onerous, and often in very difficult circumstances.
  11.31 p.m.
  Mr. B. T. Parkin: The hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) has just delivered almost a Ministerial defence of the mounted police, and with nearly all of it I found myself in agreement. I am glad that in these calmer moments it is possible to pay a tribute to the way in which the police carry out their normal duties.
  I was an eye-witness, a very careful one, of the demonstration on the Saturday afternoon, and I got as near as I could to it. I did not want to go there a second time and be a "tramplee" of the Home Secretary's forces, and I did not want to get myself arrested. I want to pay a tribute to the work of the foot police in Whitehall on that afternoon. It was an astonishing contrast to see the turmoil and confusion on one side of Whitehall and the calm that existed on the other side.
  I saw a short policeman in the gutter slowly waving his white mackintosh and saying to the people, with perfect courtesy, "Would you please keep moving" and hundreds and hundreds of people at once turning round and going the other way up Whitehall. There was here no question of large numbers of police, but of the comparative efficiency of this officer. The only criticism I make is of the use of the police and not of the individual police officers.
  I raised my criticism on the very special case of dealing with peaceful demonstrations which attempt to approach Government buildings or this House and are largely composed of people who do not set out with malicious intent to cause

  1709
  disorder or to get themselves involved in situations which are frightening. The particular instance which I tried to raise with the Home Secretary was one which I saw. I am glad this opportunity enables me to say what certainly exercised your patience, Mr. Speaker, when I tried to put a supplementary question to the Minister.
  On that Saturday afternoon there was an officer on a dapple-grey horse. As to technique, I cannot agree that it was a matter of walking. The decision as to what had to be done for shifting the thousands of people and keeping them moving was taken at a high level. As I walked down Whitehall, I was chuckling to myself and thinking "The police are extremely crafty. We shall all find ourselves in Parliament Square." It all happened in a contrary sense, because the police were driving people, who could not possibly move because of the press behind them. The idea of taking them section by section may appear very efficient on paper, but if anything goes wrong and people must veer round on other people and you start driving them back again, the crowd gets enraged.
  A few yards from me I saw this officer on the dapple-grey horse wheeling round with other officers. He was moving the stern of his horse round just at the moment when a woman decided that it would be a sensible thing to make a run for the pavement. The horse knocked her down and walked over her, trampled on her. Thousands of people saw the incident and uttered their protests. It was obvious that this officer was going to be a marked man. I saw his embarrassment, the hasty conversation with his colleagues and the room made for him to get in among them out of the way. On the following day that horse was recognised, and it was on that horse that the more indignant demonstrators moved in their charges.
  I think that that officer was in an impossible position. I am prepared to say that the actual incident of the woman was an accident. But it was inevitable in the circumstances. That is the point I wish to make, and I use the words "provocative" and "inefficient." My case is that the clearing of the crowd was not efficiently done, because that sort of action by the police enrages and frightens the crowd.
  1710
  I believe that the job could more easily be done by foot policemen. I have no doubt that a foot policeman at a football match or a flower show is a different proposition. One can ask him what he wants one to do, but one cannot ask half a dozen horses which are trampling people down. I suggest that we shall have to come back to this question of the handling of peaceful demonstrations approaching Downing Street and Parliament Square, and of the use of this "Whitehall cavalry" as a weapon of political censorship in the hands of the Home Secretary for the suppression of political expression by the people on such occasions.
  11.36 p.m.
  Mr. Harold Gurden: I wish to support my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) in this matter of the use of horses in the police force. I am very surprised to hear that a horse has actually trampled on someone. It is the first time I have ever heard of such a thing in the use of horses, particularly in the use of those specially trained horses of the police force. Even after the description that has been given to us tonight of what happened, I very much doubt whether the horse actually trod on the person, because that is the very thing that these horses are trained not to do. Indeed, it is extremely difficult to get any horse to injure a human being, because that is the last thing it wants to do.
  Sir Leslie Plummer: It might if it were frightened.
  Mr. Gurden: Police horses are trained not to be frightened. They are taken through a very rigid course of training with all sorts of noises and demonstrations, and the like, so that they will rot be frightened in times of stress.
  I should like my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department to draw attention to another aspect of this matter. When this question was debated in this House on a previous occasion, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Sir C. Taylor) referred to the attempts that were made by some people in the crowd to bring down the horses by throwing glass marbles on the ground. To people who do not know anything about horses that may appear to be amusing. I think it is an act of diabolical cruelty.

  1711
  As I have said, these horses are trained to avoid injuring people, and their use in such circumstances is the kindest possible way of trying to clear a crowd, far kinder than the methods being used in Hungary at the present time. Horses are very long-suffering animals. There is no end to their patience and to their service to man. They will work and die for humans. I feel strongly that any act of cruelty to horses such as that of throwing glass marbles on to the ground is something to be deprecated.
  I should like to hear from my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State that he will give instructions that people acting in this way should be prosecuted. Action ought to be taken against them. It is about the cruellest thing that can be done to a horse, and I believe that it is not the first time that it has happened. It is the sort of thing that could cause horses to panic and do damage. If anything could cause them to panic, this would be the most likely provocation. I hope that everyone will take note of what I have said on this matter, because it is extremely serious.
  11.41 p.m.
  The Joint Under-Secretary of State to the Home Department (Mr. W. F. Deedes): I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) has raised this subject, and the police forces concerned, principally the Metropolitan, will be grateful for what he said. He has concerned himself, as I shall, with the practical value of mounted police. That is solid ground, and it is very desirable to be on solid ground when discussing in this country the merits of the horse, irrespective of the rider. It has been said—I hope I may interpolate this—that, to get the best of all worlds, in America one should be a woman, in France one should be a man and in England one should be a horse. There is just enough truth in that to enjoin caution when one is discussing the merits of horses in this country.
  The hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) spoke as an eyewitness of one occasion. Perhaps I may say that during the last 25 years I have been an eye-witness of the principal and most critical occasions on which mounted police have been used in London. I saw professionally all the unemployed demontrations in the early 30's, nearly all the
  1712
  occasions involving Mosley in 1936 and all the ceremonial events which attracted the largest crowds in those years. I must say—even if it were not my job to say so—that those events left me not only with admiration for the mounted police but with the conviction that they are indispensable for certain solid practical reasons. I am thinking mainly of London. My hon. Friend asked me about other places. There are 17 city and borough forces and four county forces with horses in the country, but their problems are not comparable with those of London. I have not much information about police horses abroad, and I do not think it would be relevant to our problem if I had.
  I have clear recollections of the occasions on which I have seen mounted police most heavily engaged, and it is not simply a question of defending them for their forbearance, patience and skill, all of which were in evidence—I do not think the hon. Member for Paddington, North contests this—in the more recent events, despite allegations to the contrary and despite one account which appeared in The Economist and which I must say was not in accordance with the traditions of that paper.
  Generally speaking, mounted police are a positive factor for public safety. That is because very large crowds, even those with harmless intentions, are not only unpredictable but can be self-destructive. Unless they are carefully shepherded they can inflict serious injuries on themselves.
  Hon. Members have referred in this context to the use of crush barriers as an alternative. They are a valuable aid which can be used only to deal with a stationary crowd. What has to be said against them is that they are inflexible, and a very large crowd may become an irresistible force meeting an immovable object and so inflict damage on those on the outskirts of the crowd.
  It has been said that mounted police are psychologically and politically provocative. I will not argue that; I think it depends on one's psychology. But they have a number of positive advantages to offset any such allegation, and I should like to mention one or two of them.
  We think that trained mounted police are a better alternative to methods used in other countries which have been mentioned—fire hoses, tear gas, fire-arms, carbines and armoured cars. Undoubted-

  1713
  ly a few can achieve what many foot police cannot achieve. Notwithstanding the tribute which the hon. Member for Paddington, North paid to what the foot police did on a recent occasion, this remains true—without mounted police there are occasions when foot police might have to use their truncheons, and they might have to use them more often. They were not drawn on either of the recent occasions in London.
  The second factor is that both men and horses are highly trained to deal sensibly and sensitively—and I stress, sensitively—with sudden movements in crowds. Mounted police have a height and a mobility which gives them an advantage over the man on foot; they can see what is happening before the man on foot, and they can get to a particular spot more quickly than he can. On occasions, they provide a flexible barrier, which can move as and when the crowd presses.
  Thirdly, and this is in accordance with my own truthful observation, relations between the crowd and the mounted police are normally good-tempered. There are exceptions of course, but that is the normal relation. If we are to discuss psychological relationships, I think it is fair to say that a policeman on a horse is no more provocative than a policeman in a car—certainly in an armoured car, to which my hon. Friend referred—or on a motor-cycle. When tempers are roused and vented, and I think that that is inevitable on certain occasions, the chances are that they will be vented on the law in any shape. That is human nature, and there is little we can do about that.
  It is quite fruitless to pretend that all those engaged in these demonstrations, whatever their source, have wholly innocent intentions. There are a few with mischief in mind. That draws a large crowd of onlookers—idle onlookers, it may be—and that leads to the danger. That is the dangerous combination in London, to which the mounted police are an effective counter. It is noteworthy, as I think I mentioned the other day in reply to a Question, that in the recent demonstrations—and it very often does happen—the police actually suffered more casualties than did the public.
  Finally, I think this ought to be emphasised, although it has not been raised. The usefulness of the mounted police is not confined to demonstrations of a
  1714
  political character. They have become a part of London's ceremonial scene, but they play far from a decorative part only, because the crowds attending ceremonial occasions are not without an element of considerable danger—and I have seen it. Here, too, the mounted police can provide a margin of safety, for very large crowds out of control, simply by their own weight, can only be checked and dispersed by mounted men.
  Perhaps I might just sum up. Against the allegation that the appearance of mounted police is provocative—which I contest, but it is at least arguable—I submit that mounted police have a number of functions which still make them indispensable. It is fair to say, on competent authority, that occasions may arise when, without them, it would be necessary to call in troops to aid the civil power. As for their abolition, about which my hon. Friend asked, I saw that the Commissioner of Police was reported in the Sunday Times as saying that without horses he would not be responsible for law and order in London. I think that that is not an individual view. I feel that it was the view of his predecessors, and that it is likely to be the view of his successors.
  11.48 p.m.
  Mr. Anthony Greenwood: In the few seconds that remain to me, I should like to support what my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) said about the behaviour of the foot police on that occasion. I was present at the demonstration. It was extremely good-humoured, and the behaviour of the police was exemplary. The trouble started only when the mounted police were brought into use. It is indisputable that, but for the arrival of the mounted police, there would have been no trouble on that occasion. That was the view of member" of the Press, members of the party, and Members of the House. It is too late to discuss the psychological effect of the; presence of mounted police, but the hon. Gentleman should appreciate that henceforward we on this side will watch very carefully the conduct of the mounted police on any such future occasion in the Metropolis.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes to Twelve o'clock.