Commons Sitting of 26 June 1959

Preamble
The House met at Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL
  Order for consideration, not amended (in the Standing Committee), read.
  Bill re-committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the Amendments to Clause 1, page 1, lines 7, 12, 16, 19, 22, and 25, and page 2, line 8; and Clause 5, page 6, line 4, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. Glenvil Hall.—[Mr. Glenvil Hall.]
  Bill immediately considered in Committee.
  [Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]

  PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL

    Clause 1.—(INCREASE OF PENSIONS SPECIFIED IN SCHEDULE.)
    11.3 a.m.
    Mr. Douglas Houghton: I beg to move, in page 1, line 7, to leave out "thirty-first day of March" and to insert "first day of April".
    The Deputy-Chairman: I understand that it would be convenient for the Committee to discuss together all the Amendments relating to the dates. These are the Amendments in lines 7, 12, 16, 19, 22 and 25.
    Mr. Houghton: Yes, Sir Gordon. These Amendments deal with the cut-off date, 31st March, in each of the years concerned. They deal with the simple point whether the date should be 31st March or 1st April.
    I am grateful for the opportunity of dealing with the matter again. In the Standing Committee the fact that many public service pensioners felt that the Bill as it stands is disadvantageous to them on this point was not drawn to our attention until a very late hour, and, therefore, it was not possible to have a discussion on it during that Committee stage.
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    The simple issue is whether to take the end of the month of March as a dividing line between the different percentage increases is fair and appropriate. A number of public service pensioners have written to draw attention to the unfairness, as they see it, of the date 31st March. They point out that it is customary for public servants to retire at the end of a month and that their pension, therefore, begins on the day following the end of the month. I realise that in some cases, particularly public servants reaching the age of 65 who must retire on their birthday, there cannot usually be an extension of service until the end of the month—they retire on or the day before their 65th birthday—hut many civil servants and public service pensioners affected by the Bill retired before the age of 65 and were, therefore, able in many cases to complete a month of service before going on pension.
    I have a case before me of a local government officer who was due to retire on the 25th of the month but continued to serve, at the wish of his employers, until the 31st of the month. Many civil servants and local government officers of one kind and another will have retired at the end of the month. They naturally feel that one day makes a difference in the percentage increase to their pension.
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury will probably say that one day is going to make a difference anyhow. It certainly is, but the important question is, what is the day of the month on which people customarily retire? That is the simple point. A great many of them retire at the end of the month. Of course, if they retire at the end of earlier or later months they are unaffected by this point of division between one percentage and another under the Bill. A pension beginning not later than 31st March, 1952, will carry a 12 per cent. increase. A pension begin-ginning after 31st March, 1952, and up to the end of March, 1953, will carry a pension increase of 10 per cent. All those who retired on 31st March, 1952, will find that pension increase will be 10 per cent.—not 12 per cent.—because their pension began after 31st March, 1952.
    Whatever else I say, I shall come back to the same point. I think it is a question of judgment as to whether we wish

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    to bring into the maximum benefit under the Bill those who retired on 31st March in any of the years in question. I think it very unlikely that many public service pensioners retired on, say, 2nd April. Most of those who were going out about that time of year will have retired on 31st March and their pension will have begun on the following day, 1st April.
    Another point which the Financial Secretary may make is that it has been usual to take the 31st of the month in previous pensions increase Measures. That to an extent is true. Although there have been such different divisions in earlier pensions increase Acts, I doubt whether the point has arisen quite as acutely before as under this Bill. The Committee will remember that under the 1956 Act there was a descending scale of percentage increases based upon the period covered by the averaging arrangements. In many cases there the beginning date was not in fact the 31st of the month but the 1st of the month. I think each pensions increase Act has taken its material dates and periods from the provisions that were embodied in the Act itself. Here we have reached a new phase in pensions increases, one which is simpler than ever before and which has a clear and unmistakable scale of percentage increases relative to the date of the beginning of the pension. We are entitled to look at this question more closely now than on previous occasions.
    Finally, this Bill and the 1956 Act show the flexibility of approach to this question on the part of the Government and this House. We would not wish anything that has gone before to inhibit us from making a small but important change in the arrangements under this Bill in order to remove any causes of dissatisfaction on this particular point. I hope that in view of the time he has had for consideration of this point—which, perhaps, I raised unexpectedly in Committee upstairs on the second day—the Financial Secretary will feel able to tell us whether this change can be made and, if not, why not. I think everybody will accept from him any reasonable and full explanation of all the Difficulties, as well as advantages, which may lie in the change, but I have received so many appeals from civil servants to
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    give attention to this matter that I think there must be a great deal in it.
    11.15 a.m.
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon)The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon) rose—
    Dame Irene Ward: May I have a go first?
    The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Gordon Touche): Dame Irene Ward.
    Dame Irene Ward: I wish to thank the Financial Secretary for allowing me to intervene. It is very important that both sides of the Committee should have an opportunity of giving their views on an important matter of this kind. I am personally very grateful to the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) for having raised it. It is a very complicated question for anybody like me who is not in possession of all the facts and who has had no experience inside the Civil Service nor of dealing with staff problems to be able to make an informed contribution, but I am bound to say that in matters of this kind I follow with great attention and sympathy the points of view put by the hon. Member. I have had a number of representations on this question. In all the representations I have had, some of which I have sent to my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary, I cannot say that I have been convinced—this is not unusual in the case of Treasury Ministers—with the replies I have received.
    I feel very certain that my hon. and learned Friend and the Chancellor of the Exchequer want to be absolutely fair. I fully realise that whatever date is given in the Bill it will preclude some people from obtaining the advantages of the Bill. The difficulty about this Bill is that so many people will not know the details until it is on the Statute Book. That is why it is so important to have all the facts fairly and squarely put before us. As the hon. Member for Sowerby said, he had his attention drawn to this problem only when it was too late to have a really fair discussion in Committee. I know my hon. and learned Friend will agree when I say that when the Government finally decided, after a great deal of pressure, to introduce this Bill they went ahead at enormous speed. I cannot help feeling that, having taken the decision to move forward quickly

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    after being brought to that point, the Government did not find very much time to have all the details examined in the Treasury.
    One of the difficulties in all these Pensions (Increase) Bills is that there is never a real opportunity for an ordinary back bencher like myself, who is enormously interested in the details of the Bill, to get down to a proper examination of it. How do I know the dates or the percentages of people who retire on any one date, or how many people have been asked to stay on to suit the Civil Service working generally? I have no idea, but am prepared to accept what the hon. Member for Sowerby says.
    I am not going to say any more, because I have nothing in the way of an informed solution to offer. I always look slightly suspiciously at what the Treasury does, because it is so difficult to discuss the material points. I feel, as the Government rightly do, very pleased and proud that the money has been found for this Bill. I do not want the Bill to be spoilt by some niggling little difficulty which raises a great deal of appeal inside the Civil Service. I hope, therefore, that my hon. and learned Friend will look at this in great detail if he cannot be convinced now and say that he is always in a position to amend the Bill in another place if it should prove necessary to do so.
    Mr. Simon: One of the advantages of recommitting the Bill is that we have had a contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), whom I need hardly say I did not wish to shut out of the debate, nor was I conscious that I was doing so. The hon. Lady is particularly entitled to be heard because she has done so much for the beneficiaries of this Bill and others in similar positions.
    I suppose the hon. Lady is right to be suspicious of Treasury Ministers. Indeed, the House is right to be suspicious of any Minister, but I think the Committee appreciate that it is my duty to weigh and place before it the interests not only of the beneficiaries, the public servants to whom we have a very definite duty if they fall on hard times, but also to those who have to raise the money to increase pensions—who themselves, in many cases, have had their means eroded by inflation and
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    who may be in circumstances just as straitened as the public servants. If, therefore, I point out the difficulties and mention the cost from time to time, it is for that reason.
    This matter was raised on the Question, That the Clause stand part of the Bill. It was not the matter of a specific Amendment, but I promised to consider it before the further stages of the Bill. I pointed out that there was no general pattern of retirement which the Amendment would be needed to meet. In general, a civil servant retires on his birthday. Teachers tend to retire at the end of a term, and National Health Service retirements are completely at random. As the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who has had a very close connection with these problems, and my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth have pointed out today, there is considerable pressure, which indicates that, taking the great mass of long-term retirements, a certain number tend to take place at the end of the month rather than at the beginning of the following month.
    The Bill applies percentage increases which operate according to the date when the pension began, and the dividing line between the various percentages is drawn between a pension beginning on the 31st March and a pension beginning on the 1st April in each of the years from 1952 to 1957. The effect of the Amendment will be to move the dividing line on by one day so that it will fall between pensions beginning on 1st and 2nd April.
    The argument is that the beginning of a pension is defined in Clause 5 (1) in such a way that it is generally the day following the day of retirement. It means that anybody retiring on the 31st March will not benefit by the larger increase but if the date were moved forward a day he would benefit under such circumstances.
    I am advised that, so far as the Civil Service is concerned, the cost of the Amendment will not be very substantial. As there is no general pattern of retirement, the cost is obviously likely to be small. There will be some cost in so far as we will be meeting a grievance. The Amendment will make a difference when we consider the increase of pensions of the Armed Forces. We are not strictly in order in discussing

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    this; but, as the Committee knows, there will be parallel-Prerogative Instruments which will give similar effect to the pensions of the Armed Forces. There is a point here, because the 1956 code took effect on 1st April, 1956. Under the Bill the appropriate increase on this code will be 2 per cent. Under the Amendment it will be 4 per cent. The initial cost will be negligible because most of the people on the 1956 code are under 60. It will rise in time, and might rise to the region of £150,000 a year.
    The Amendment proposed will obviate a number of anomalies which exist in the Services code and which would continue on a parallel arrangement to the Bill as drafted. In that respect, therefore, the Amendment will not only meet some cases of grievances within the Bill but a considerably greater number of grievances outside the Bill in the Armed Forces.
    Having given, as I promised, the matter the best consideration that I could after the Committee stage, it seems to me that the Amendment is well advised and one which the Committee could properly accept.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I think those of us who sat in the Committee would wish that the Financial Secretary had been as amenable then to suggestions from both sides of the Committee as he apparently has been up to now this morning. I do not know whether his sweet reasonableness will continue when we come to further Amendments, but I sincerely hope that it will. Because of the number of Bills that are now Acts that we have had on this subject, it seems to me astonishing that at this late stage we have discovered that by changing the date in the Bill by just one day it makes a considerable difference to a large number of pensioners, particularly those in the Armed Forces.
    11.30 a.m.
    Mr. Simon: The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that that problem arises only under this Bill, because the 1956 code came into existence in consequence of the 1956 Act.
    Mr. Hall: What the hon. and learned member says is true. Nevertheless, on his own admission it increases the cost
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    somewhat. That being so, we are glad that he has agreed to the change.
    Many of us objected in Committee, and still object, to what are called the yearly "rests". In previous Measures we thought that the Treasury should have made the scale rise or descend in half-yearly instead of yearly stages. Although 1st April is better than 31st March, many people who retired between 1st April and the following 1st April will suffer, because there is no 'rest" in October. It would have meant a difference of at least 1 per cent. if not 2 per cent. to the individuals concerned.
    In Committee the hon. and learned Member indicated that 2 per. cent. did not amount to very much. I agree that £2 a year is not a great sum to people in the higher ranges, such as judges, but unfortunately the average Civil Service pension is still only about £200 a year, and £4 a year to somebody with a pension of £200 a year is well worth picking up. Therefore, although we accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's concession with as much gratitude as we can muster, we would have liked the Bill to provide for half-yearly instead of yearly "rests".
    Amendment agreed to.
    Further Amendments made: In page 1, line 12, leave out "thirty-first day of March" and insert "first day of April".
    In line 16, leave out "thirty-first day of March" and insert "first day of April".
    In line 19, leave out "thirty-first day of March" and insert "first day of April".
    In line 22, leave out "thirty-first day of March" and insert "first day of April".
    In line 25, leave out "thirty-first day of March" and insert "first day of April".—[Mr. Glenvil Hall.]
    Mr. Houghton: I beg to move, in page 2, line 8, after "years", to insert:
    "(fifty-five years in the case of pensions specified in sub-paragraph (i) of paragraph (c) of subsection (3) of section three of this Act, and in paragraphs 6, 7, 8, and 19 of Part I and paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of Part II of the Schedule to this Act)".
    I move the Amendment solely for the purpose of considering once again the

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    position of those public servants, especially in the police, the fire services, and similar services, whose retirement age is often under 60. These public servants, who serve at home, do work which entails some danger, where physical fitness is of paramount importance, and their terms of service provide, therefore, for the completion of pensionable service before the age of 60.
    It is rightly assumed that if these public servants were allowed to continue to the normal retiring age applicable to clerical, executive or office workers, the efficiency of their force might be reduced. They are therefore permitted to retire, having earned full pension, before reaching the age of 60. Certain overseas civil servants who are covered by the Bill were specially provided for in the 1956 Act, particularly those who were serving in India, Pakistan and Burma, who were compulsorily retired on the change of status of the country in which they were serving and who came home on pensions related to their length of service. Some, no doubt, received compensation payments, but others probably retired before they could qualify for any such addition to their pensions.
    This matter has been debated before, and up to now the House has decided that since the pensions increase legislation is intended to relieve hardship we should draw the line between those who are still relatively young and those who have passed the normal retirement age. It must be admitted that many of those public servants who retire from the police force, the fire service or similar services at an age lower than 60 find other employment and supplement their police or fire service pensions by earnings at one level or another.
    If we consider the matter from a logical standpoint we must admit that if a pension has lost its value some restitution should be given, according to the degree of loss suffered and not by reference to the question whether the pensioner concerned has reached a certain age. If, after a person has fulfilled the conditions of service and the length of service, the State tells him, "Here is your pension. You may now leave. This is the pension that we have contracted to pay you. It is implicit in the whole
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    contract of service that a pension should be paid to you which will give you a certain standard of life in proportion to that which you enjoyed when on full pay," the State is also entitled to say, "Since the pension that we have given you has lost a good deal of its value, you are entitled to some restoration of its purchasing power."
    In earlier days pension legislation was probably so strictly related to the relief of hardship, and the introduction of many inequalities in the process, that we were right in saying that we could not relieve hardship at lower than the customary retirement age for public servants generally, because it was unlikely that hardship would exist there to the degree which would call for special relieving action. Under the Bill, however, we are moving away from the rigid idea of the relief of hardship, and towards fair treatment to those who have public service pensions.
    Under the 1956 Act, for example, we went into the higher range of pensions when awarding a pensions increase. We never did that before. Nevertheless, in 1956 we were still so inhibited by our conception of the relief of hardship that we put a ceiling on the increase which could be granted for pensions in the higher ranges.
    Under this Bill, we are removing that ceiling. There will be no ceiling. I quote that as an example of the way in which we are moving towards a principle of restitution of the purchasing power of pensions rather than sticking to our earlier conception about the relief of hardship. The question is whether we have gone far enough yet to enable us to cut this knot which has hitherto held public service pensioners under 60 away from the increases which we have provided in the various Pensions (Increase) Acts.
    With regard to certain civil servants serving in India and Pakistan, at the time when the 1956 Bill was in another place one noble Lord raised this matter. When the plea for the Indian and Pakistan Civil Service was being put very cogently by the noble Lord Hailey, the Government reply was to relate their claim to that of many civil servants at home who were subject to earlier retirement—firemen, policemen, prison officers

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    and nurses. The Government spokesman in another place said:
    "…it has always been the practice, with the exception of the special circumstances under the 1954 Act, to pay pensions increases to pensioners who reach sixty. I think the reason for this is quite clear: that pensions increase payments are made in consideration of the fall in the value of money. The taxpayer himself is also concerned adversely in this factor. It is difficult to ask the taxpayer to make a special payment of this character to pensioners who are, in fact, of an age when they are still capable of working."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 19th April, 1956; c. 1142.]
    That is the case against the Amendment that I am moving, and I fully understand the strength of that argument.
    As I have said on previous occasions when discussing this matter both in Committee and before the House, sometimes the Government can do the taxpayer an injustice. They presume to think that the taxpayer does not want to improve the pensions of public servants and that he would not assent to the step which is proposed. The taxpayers, from whom we never hear, this body of people outside for whom the Government always presume to speak, have not, as far as I know, expressed any will in the matter. I have had no letter from any taxpayer who says he did not want to give any pensions increases to Indian civil servants, police or firemen who retired earlier than sixty. I have had no single communication on the subject at all.
    I have had plenty of other communications, but none like that, and I do not believe that the Financial Secretary could go out of this Committee now into Parliament Square and bring into this Chamber any taxpayer who would echo the sentiments that have been expressed on some other occasions, when matters of this kind were raised. After all, the taxpayer is very conscious of equity. Indeed, our passion for equity makes our administration so horribly complicated.
    The taxpayer knows that fair is fair, and if the taxpayers have engaged, through the instrument of Government, that certain persons should render service to the public, like the police, members of the fire services, nurses and prison officers, and if these public servants are told "The nature of your duties is such that it would not be in the interests of the public service to
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    allow you to go on to the age of 60 to allow you to earn your pension in the normal way, and we are going to retire you earlier than that, but we shall of course give you a pension," I do not think the taxpayer would say "If that pension is eroded in your hands when you get it, do not come to us for restitution, because we will not give you a penny until you have reached the age of 60 and we are satisfied that you have reached decrepitude and incapacity and are unable to supplement your pension by earnings."
    11.45 a.m.
    After all, a pension is a pension. It is deferred pay. The conditions of service take the pension into account, and especially in the public sector, where comparisons with outside conditions of service are being brought more closely to bear in wage negotiations. The value of a pension in the public service sector is being taken into account in making these comparisons, and there is no difference in principle between a pension which is drawn earlier and the pension which is drawn later. They are both pensions, and both are affected by the consequences of inflation, so that I think there is a stronger case today than before for asking the Committee to give attention to this matter.
    We are now looking rather more to considerations of equity and not quite so closely to considerations of the relief of hardship, and that enables us to look at some aspects of the present pensions increase arrangements that we have felt unable to attend to before. Other things which were ruled out in earlier legislation have later been brought in. I have given an example of one, but there are others. There was once a means test, but we have abolished it, and now here we have another aspect of this problem which I think the Committee might perhaps feel more favourably today than it has done when discussing the matter on earlier occasions.
    Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett: I must begin by declaring an interest in this Amendment, because I think that if it were carried I should receive an immediate and substantial increase in my own income. Nevertheless, although I fully appreciate the sentiments behind the Amendment

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    and what the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said in moving it, I cannot support it. I am not saying that I oppose it so strongly that if my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary announced that the Government were prepared to accept it, I should go into the Lobby against them, but, at the same time, I could not possibly press him to accept it.
    Here again, I should like to ask for a little latitude to refer to the effect which the Amendment will have on the Armed Forces, because although they are not mentioned in the text of the Bill we are told in the last paragraph of the Explanatory Memorandum:
    "As in the case of the existing Pensions (Increase) Acts, former members of the Forces will be granted similar increases by Prerogative Instruments"—
    when the Bill is passed. I deduce from that that if the Amendment is carried it would be applied to those who have retired from the Armed Forces as well, and, therefore, it is highly relevant when we consider the effect of the Amendment, because the consequence of the change of the qualifying age from 60 to 55 would be immensely greater in the case of the Armed Forces than in those of the other categories to which the hon. Gentleman referred when moving the Amendment.
    After all, the great majority of those who retire from the Armed Forces do so either at the age of 40 in the case of other ranks or 45 in the case of officers, and it is a well-known fact that, with few exceptions, they find some other jobs. They go into industry in most cases, or become commissionaires and so forth. The effect of this Amendment would be to make a statutory increase in their Service pensions at the age of 55. I think we can truthfully say that five or ten years before, they had no intention at all of retiring from whatever work they are doing. I think it would be extremely difficult to justify.
    I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will be able to give us some sort of estimate of the cost of this concession. I am not sure that the estimates will be correct, because it is an established and undisputed medical fact that the most dangerous thing which a man can do in life is to retire from work. I honestly and sincerely believe that if the Amend-
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    ment were accepted it would, in practice, result in quite a number of people who are able to go on working, and in whose real interest it is that they should go on working if they are to go on living until they would retire, going to seed. I do not believe that we should do any service to them at all. Therefore, I find myself unable to support the Amendment although I fully appreciate the sentiments behind it.
    Mr. George Thomas: It was not my privilege to participate in the Committee stage of the Bill, but I have read the report of the proceedings there with great interest. I do not think that I have ever read the report of a Committee in more felicitous terms. It seems that much of the time was spent in hon. and right hon. Gentlemen paying each other compliments—well deserved I have no doubt at all.
    Mr. Houghton: My hon. Friend will have noticed that the Financial Secretary did not get much of a compliment from my right hon. Friend a few minutes ago.
    Mr. Thomas: I noticed that most of the compliments were being paid when my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) was away.
    I rise to support the Amendment. I thought that the argument of the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) was a little thin this morning. It is a little tall for us to say that if we give an increase in pension we shall encourage people to retire, and, therefore, that they may go to seed. The hon. and gallant Gentleman must have sat up all night trying to look for an argument to produce a weedy little argument like that which is no argument at all.
    Looking at the merits of the Amendment, this Bill is such an improvement on other Pensions (Increase) Measures that it seems a pity that the Treasury should spoil it in this regard. After all, when people go to spend their pensions they are not asked if they are over or under 60 years of age. They do not get things cheaper if they are under instead of over 60. All the arguments which apply for increasing the public pensions for people over 60 years of age apply equally to those under that age.

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    The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to be bringing back the old argument of hardship, whether we are increasing pensions solely in cases of greatest hardship. That has now gone. We are increasing pensions of four figures. Therefore, I think that all logic is on the side of giving the increase to these public servants, some of whom have been abroad and come home and cannot work the same as other people. Many of them have been serving in different climates. They have to take lesser jobs because they are out of touch with life at home. I think it is unfair to say to them, "You shall be the only pensioners whom we will cut out. Although you have justifiably received this danger pay from the Government, you shall not benefit by this Pensions (Increase) Bill."
    I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman who has come to the House in such a good mood this morning will announce that he is prepared to meet my hon. Friend on this question.
    Dame Irene Ward: I am sorry to have to keep on intervening, though I think that the last interventions from both this side of the Committee and from the benches opposite were very successful. Of course, I was not on the Standing Committee, and therefore I would like to express my views.
    I have listened very carefully to the speeches made this morning from the benches opposite and to that made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). Of course, immediately the question is raised as to whether every point of view has been properly and thoroughly considered, I must say that do not believe that it has.
    I try to be logical in my Parliamentary life and I have observed that whenever we want to build up the police force, the fire service or the nursing service we always ask for improvements in conditions of service and in salaries, and quite rightly so. From my point of view, however, I always think that when we are discussing that matter we ought also to consider improving pensions. I have a feeling, and I have had it for a very long time, and that is why I take such an interest in the matter, that we are always very concerned with the future
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    when we really need police, firemen or nurses. But we do not seem to realise—and the same goes, of course, for the Armed Forces—that in order to be really fair and to do what I think the country wants by these very important public servants, we ought to consider those who have done good service in the past. We never examine the whole picture, and that is my complaint.
    I can quite see the force of some of the arguments used by my hon. and gallant Friend. I am not going to develop this point because I hope that between the passing of this Bill and the next Pensions (Increase) Measure we shall get down to a proper examination of all these problems. I do not think that they have been properly examined or that justice has been done. Therefore, I feel that the whole matter must be properly looked at.
    I want, however, to support the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) who spoke for the Indian civil servants and for those who were serving in Pakistan and in Burma. I want to quote one small paragraph from a letter which I and a lot of other people have received. It is from the Secretary to the Indian Civil Service (Retired) Association, and states:
    "I am to urge that the position of those pensioners of the Indian Services is not comparable to those of the Home Civil Services in that the full pension has ordinarily been earned before the age of 60. Further the body of pensioners on behalf of whom I write were compulsorily retired and, it is thought, should merit special consideration."
    I would accept that, but I can quite see that there may be some other arguments which we have never had a chance of examining.
    I would say, if my hon. and learned Friend is going to use the argument, which is perfectly true, I am glad to say, that our police, firemen and nurses find valuable and rewarding work to do in this country, that it is not nearly as easy for those people who have served in India, Pakistan and Burma. That is another aspect of the situation. Therefore. I will confine myself to saying, in support of the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment, that I have a feeling that my hon. and learned Friend is not going to accept the Amendment. However, I hope that he will go as far as

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    to state that nobody in this House or the taxpayer believes that this whole question has had proper and adequate consideration. I am hoping that we shall be told today that it will have consideration in the future.
    12 noon.
    Sir Lionel Heald: I wish to add a word to what has already been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) regarding cases from India, Pakistan and Burma. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary will try to give those concerned a careful and sympathetic explanation of the position. They are among those people who have already had cause to feel that they have not been very fairly treated. When we went into this matter in 1955, we found that there were some who had no benefit at all. That was remedied; this time they are all in. But I think that makes it all the more important that they should be made to feel their case has been considered very carefully and sympathetically.
    There is a great deal in what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth. There is a feeling that individual considerations are not given sufficient weight. We are told that we cannot have anomalies, and I think that sometimes those who deal with these matters—even in a small way such as in the unofficial committee with which I have the privilege of working—find that is true. If once we start trying to deal with individual cases, we get into great difficulty. On the other hand, sometimes there is a temptation to say that if we can arrive at a nice easy figure, we need not trouble about the anomalies.
    There is another point of view which I have expressed before and I do so again today, but not in any complaining manner. There is a tendency to say that there are different kinds of anomalies. If there be an anomaly in which a number of people get £5 less than they should, that is something about which nothing can be done. But if there be an anomaly enabling someone to get 6d. too much, of course that amount has to be shaved off. I know the Committee will understand that I am not saving this in a complaining way, but it is curious that that kind of thing seems to happen every now and again.
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    No doubt my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary will point out—I do not think that we can get away from it—that in a Bill of this type, and working on these lines, it would be unjustifiable suddenly to make an exception in favour of the people from India, Pakistan and Burma. I am sure that such people, who have devoted their lives to their country and given most valuable service, would not like to feel that they were enjoying an unfair advantage. But it underlines what my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth said, that in the future we must consider whether we are dealing with this matter in the right way by adopting a sort of flat percentage approach which does not enable us to deal with individual cases.
    The matter does not especially arise in the consideration of this Amendment, but I think it justifiable—I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will agree—that I should ask him to be particularly careful to explain to these people that their case has had close and sympathetic consideration. We must realise and bear in mind where these people have spent most of their lives the great burdens which many of them have to sustain and the difficulty they experience in getting a job when they return to this country.
    I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) would never have any difficulty in getting suitable employment whatever happened. But there are many people—I know one or two of them—who spent a great many years of their lives in India. After all, some parts of India are pretty wearing places in which to live. A man aged 55 who has lived in certain places in India is not always in very good shape to work in this country Not only that, but when he comes to look for work, very often he cannot find anything suitable. Although, as I say, I do not wish the Committee to think that I am complaining in any way, I think that we should realise these things. There is no doubt that there has been a considerable improvement in the general attitude towards old age and the way we approach the whole problem. That is all the more reason why we should not spoil things by leaving some people with a feeling that they have not had a fair deal.
    Mr. Arthur Moyle: I welcome the opportunity to reinforce what has been said about this Amendment. I cannot understand why the Government have not tidied up this aspect of superannuation rights. It is not something which relates merely to colonial ex-public servants. It also affects our domestic public servants. I speak from memory—if I am wrong perhaps the Financial Secretary will correct me—but I think that for the police, and certain sections of the staffs employed in mental hospitals, the normal retiring age is 55. That is the pensionable age.
    The reason for this difference between the normal retiring age of 65 and their retiring age is the type of employment in which they are engaged. Therefore, it seems to me the essence of the case—if we agree that a person shall be entitled to a cost of living adjustment at the age of 65 in certain circumstances, or, because of physical disability, at the age of 60 and so on—to say that the person who retires in the normal way at 55 shall get the adjustment.
    I am glad, Dr. King, that you called the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald). I thought he made a first-class speech. I was somewhat surprised at the manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) chided my right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall).
    Mr. G. Thomas: I was congratulating him.
    Mr. Moyle: I thought my hon. Friend was chiding the right hon. Gentleman for having been too agreeable and complaisant and ready to compromise. I was surprised to hear that from my hon. Friend, who comes from a distinguished profession whose main ethic in politics is to flirt with all parties but to marry none.
    Mr. Thomas: My hon. Friend is making a remarkable contribution to the debate. I would remind him that I said nothing derogatory to my right hon. Friend who is always so courteous and polite both to his opponents and to his friends. I was commending his disposition.
    Mr. Moyle: I am quite prepared to be corrected, but I thought the burden
    1576
    of my hon. Friend's complaint was that my right hon. Friend was so excessively courteous to the Government in Standing Committee and I must say, as a Member who served on that Committee—
    The Temporary Chairman (Dr. Horace King): Order. I think that this exchange of pleasantries has continued long enough. I would ask the hon. Gentleman to speak to the Amendment.
    Mr. Moyle: I must accept your correction, Dr. King, but the going was so good in this discussion that I succumbed to the blandishments of hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. I hope that anything I say will serve to strengthen the revolt of hon. Members opposite and secure from the Financial Secretary, whom I see is sitting beaming on the Government Front Bench, the kind of answer which will bring solace not only to the "rebels" on this side of the Committee but to those on the benches opposite as well.
    Mr. John Rankin: I, too, was a little surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) should say that it appeared that compliments flowed from one Front Bench to the other during the proceedings in the Standing Committee which dealt with this Bill. I think that this must be a case where "distance lends enchantment to the view". I attended the Committee and what appeared to my hon. Friend, who was not in the Committee, was entirely hidden from me.
    I come now to my main theme, which arises out of what the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) said about people who retire at 45, 50, 55, who will be affected by the Amendment, and who, he said, when they leave their professions, as many policemen do, can walk into other jobs. That was an interesting and, in my view, somewhat provocative remark.
    Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I did not say a word about policemen. I was talking about members of the Forces who leave not at 55 but at 40.
    Mr. Rankin: Perhaps I was misled a little in thinking that the hon. and gallant Gentleman was referring to the

    1577
    police forces. But even taking the Forces in the sense of the Armed Forces, I think that the impression I gained still applies. I have in mind the city in which I live, where many people in the Armed Forces, such as those to whom he referred, have their homes. I was trying to think of where they would find jobs to walk into. Over the whole of Scotland today, there are about 100,000 people out of work. In my division, there is redundancy in the shipbuilding trade. The dock workers are very often idle to the extent of 800 to 1,000 men unemployed on certain days. I give those as illustrations of my contention that it is not as easy as many people imagine for those who have retired and who are still able to work to walk into some other kind of job.
    The jobs are just not there, whether we look for them in industry or elsewhere. Therefore, it is important that this Amendment should appeal to the heart of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Financial Secretary who has the power to say "Yea" or "Nay" to what we on this side are suggesting. Whether people are not yet 60 or are 60 years of age, they have to buy in the same market, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) said. Because of that fact, and because of the appeal which has come from the benches behind him, I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will favourably receive the Amendment and affirm what he said in opening the proceedings by telling us now that he will continue to follow the lead which we have presented.
    Mr. Simon: The hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) says, quite rightly, that it falls to me now to say "Yea" or "Nay" as to whether I can recommend the Committee to accept the Amendment. I am sorry to have to tell him that my answer is "Nay". My only consolation is that I shall not thereby strain the loyalty of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) by forcing him to go into the Lobby against his conscience.
    As the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) indicated, the matter has been considered by successive Governments on successive Pensions (Increase)
    1578
    Measures. It has been scrutinised closely by the House of Commons, and I can assure my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) that it has had renewed consideration on this occasion. It is a fundamental point of principle. My right hon. Friend stated it on Second Reading, and perhaps I might remind the Committee of what he said:
    "To abandon the limitation which Governments up to now have considered right would mean undermining the philosophy which, I think, we must maintain in these Bills, that the object of increasing any pension is primarily to relieve hardship."
    12.15 p.m.
    Interpolating there, I think that that is a principle which certainly commended itself to the House on Second Reading and commended itself overwhelmingly to the Committee when we scrutinised the Bill with great care. Even if, as I think it is right to do, we speak of "relative hardship", the principle still remains. My right hon. Friend went on to say:
    "Moreover, and perhaps it is even more important, it would be, I would have thought, inconsistent with national policy on the age of retirement, namely, that people should be encouraged to continue at work, though not necessarily in the same jobs, as long as they can. The taxpayers should not be asked to pay for increases of this kind in the pensions of people of working age who may reasonably be expected to get work at current rates of pay."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd June, 1959; Vol. 606, c. 42.]
    I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend was right when he said that it is in the interests of the pensioner no less than of the nation as a whole that there should not be premature retirement when the pensioner still has a valuable contribution to make towards our economy and society.
    Mr. Moyle: What would be the position, having regard to the nature of the employment which many of these people who retire at 55 have and the conditions to which they are subject during most of their working lives, if such a pensioner broke down in health at, shall we say, the age of 57 and was unable to remain in employment? What would be his position?
    Mr. Simon: I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Oldbury & Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) for raising that point. In the event of a breakdown in health or,

    1579
    indeed, premature retirement owing to ill health, the pension increase is payable. It is only where the person is fit to work that the pension increase is postponed until the age of 60. That is provided for in Clause 1 (2, b) of the Bill.
    Mr. Moyle: That is after retirement at 55?
    Mr. Simon: After retirement at any age. The subsection says:
    "A pension payable in respect of the pensioner's own services shall not be increased under this Section unless the pensioner—

    (a) has attained the age of sixty years; or

    (b) has retired on account of physical or mental infirmity from the office or employment, in respect of which, or on retirement from which, the pension is payable …"

    Mr. G. Thomas: That is different, is it not? The argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury & Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) relates to the man who retires in good health but, who, two years later, has a breakdown in health. Is he to have no benefit?
    Mr. Simon: I hope that I shall not be interrupted in the middle of every sentence. If the hon. Gentleman had only had patience, he would have heard me go on to draw attention to the concluding words of the subsection:
    "… or the pension authority are satisfied that the pensioner is disabled by physical or mental infirmity."
    I hope that that meets both points. I see that the hon. Member for Govan is restive, in spite of all that.
    Mr. Rankin: I apologise to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but my main purpose this morning is to try to deal with a particular case in the category which the hon. and learned Gentleman has just instanced. Unfortunately, time may defeat me. I have here details of a particular case which, if I cannot deal with it this morning. I shall send to the hon. and learned Gentleman. The person in question is a civil servant who has retired due to ill health and, according to all his knowledge and my knowledge of the Bill, he is not to have one single penny out of these new provisions. He retired of course, after March, 1957. His belief is that he receives nothing. If I cannot intervene again, I shall send details of the case to the hon. and learned Gentleman.
    Mr. Simon: I shall, of course, look with care into any communication I receive from the hon. Member for Govan.
    Having dealt with that point, I must tell the Committee what the cost of the proposal would be. All along, we have had to weigh the interest of the taxpayer against the interest of the public service pensioner, remembering that many taxpayers are in circumstances as difficult and as straitened as those of the pensioners themselves. The immediate cost is about £1½ million, of which about £750,000 would relate to the Armed Services. It seems to me that it would be quite unrealistic to take that as the figure of cost, because every argument that has been put forward in support of this Amendment would equally apply to abandoning the age limit altogether.
    The Amendment reduces the age limit to 55, but all the arguments for shifting it from 60, the general retirement age, would equally apply to whatever is the age of retirement. If the retirement age limit were abandoned altogether, the cost would be a further £1½ million. Equally, the arguments apply not only to the age limit in this Bill but to all the previous Pension (Increase) Bills put forward by both parties, and taking those into account, the total amount at stake is about £6½ million. I am sure that the Committee will see that in the scheme which has been approved and which has commended itself generally to the Committee and the House, figures of that sort are unacceptable.
    My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey asked me about the Indian and Pakistan pensioners, and my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth (Dame Irene Ward) and other hon. Members also mentioned their position. I can assure my right hon. and learned Friend that their case has been considered and, to use his words, considered "closely and sympathetically". He asked me to say why they are not given special treatment. The first reason is that it would be quite inappropriate to give them special treatment and not to give it to all the other people who also retire before the normal retirement age—that is those who retire before 60. I am sure that the Amendment which

    1581
    has been put forward is logical in extending it to the various other classes of early retirement.
    Secondly, it is quite true, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, and several hon. Members have pointed out, quit they have had an exacting career, in many cases in difficult and exacting climates, but this was taken account of in their pension as originally fixed, and, in addition, the fact that they have suffered hardship in having their career prematurely determined in many cases has already been taken account of, in that the arrangements for terminating their services, I think in almost every case, included an element of compensation, apart from the pension for early retirement.
    For those reasons, it seems to me that, with the best will in the world, it is not possible to treat them separately. In the end, too, they are governed by the general principle which my right hon. Friend indicated—that in balancing the needs of the taxpayer and ratepayer and the needs of the public service pensioner the same arguments apply to them as apply to the police and the fire service, and so on.
    That brings me to the final point of principle, which is one indicated by my right hon. Friend. This is a matter which has been examined by successive Governments, and I believe that we are all united in saying that we should encourage people to stay on working as long as they can do so properly and as long as they have a contribution to make. It is in their interest and in the interest of society generally.
    The hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby challenged me to say whether it would be possible to find a taxpayer who would say "No" to this. I am quite ready to respond to that challenge. If I went into Trafalgar Square and found somebody, aged 63, who had not enjoyed a pensionable occupation but who had saved over the years for his old age, and whose savings and the income from his savings had been eroded by the inflation to guard against which this Bill is intended, and we said to him, "Is it right that you, aged 63, with your meagre savings eroded by inflation, should be further taxed or forgo remission in taxation so that some-
    1582
    one aged 40 or even 55 who is still able to work may have his pension increased," I have no doubt that he would say, "No". We too would say that it would be inequitable to tax him for that purpose.
    Mr. Houghton: If I know that taxpayer he would say, "What did we promise him? Did we promise him a pension as part of his condition of service?—Yes. Have we depreciated the value of his pension?—Yes. All right, he ought to have something." That is my taxpayer, and I am sure I could find him.
    Mr. Simon: The hon. Gentleman, in spite of all his declarations of principle, is now going over to the argument of parity. It is not one that we have accepted or that the House as a whole has accepted. After all, a contract was made to pay a certain pension, just as in the case of savings a contract is made to pay a certain rate of interest or dividend. Inflation has affected them both. Therefore, it seems to me that in trying to balance interests and trying to do what is fair and equitable, which I am sure is what the Committee and the House wish to do, fair is fair, as the hon. Gentleman said. But what is fair is to say that if a person can go on working and if he is capable of helping himself against rising prices by continuing in employment, it is wrong to call on the taxpayer to increase his pension.
    For those who have reached the age of 60, the matter is different. They quite properly, when they suffer severe hardship, look to the taxpayer and the ratepayer for the relief which we have so gladly put forward in this Bill.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I think that the real answer to the Trafalgar Square taxpayer to whom the hon. and learned Gentleman has so movingly referred is: Why have any Bills of this kind at all? The argument which the hon. and learned Gentleman has used could be applied equally to any of the Acts which have been passed to increase pensions because of the change in the value of money. One thing which he did not remark and which I will, if I may, is that in every speech, except the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett), from both sides of the Committee, as on previous

    1583
    occasions when we had discussed this matter, there has been practically unanimity in the whole Committee on this subject.
    Mr. Simon: I take it that the right hon. Gentleman who occupied my position at that time was in a minority of one, but, nevertheless, he got his way.
    12.30 p.m.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I should be out of order if I went back as to what happened between 1945 and 1950, and I will not attempt it. We have plenty of matter before us this morning when discussing this subject.
    It is obvious that on both sides of the Committee, apart from one dissentient, there is a feeling that something should be done for those who have been mentioned. That, I might say to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), was the position when we dealt with this matter in Committee. My hon. Friend chided myself and others of my hon. Friends for the friendliness we showed towards Members opposite and to the Minister himself. The reason was that we were all of one mind, except the Minister. There was no point whatever in attacking hon. Ladies and Gentlemen on the other side of the Committee, because they were with us and they were making every effort, as we were, to improve the Bill. We made no impression whatever on the Minister. This morning when we began and he accepted our first Amendment, we thought that perhaps he had had a change of heart. We are, however, no further forward than the second Amendment and he is saying, "No" to us, as he did throughout the proceedings upstairs.
    The speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) put the case very well, as did, as he always does, my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). The real question is not the age, but why these people have retired at an earlier age than 60. The reason is that their occupation was such that it was essential in the public interest that an earlier retiring age should be laid down. That is the yardstick. If they have served their time, surely they have earned their pension. Therefore, their age is quite immaterial in this matter. It is a ques-
    1584
    tion of whether they have served twenty, twenty-five, thirty or thirty-five years and what the pension at the end of that period should be. If, as a result of having drawn that pension, and properly so, under their contract, they find as the years go on that their pension buys less than they had anticipated, it is only right and proper that the Government should do something to help to make it up.
    The drop in the value of money means a drop in the burden on the Exchequer. We are sometimes inclined to forget that. A drop in the value of money, however, is an increase in the burden on the pensioner, because the cost of things to him has gone up. Therefore, it is not a case of the Treasury or the taxpayer finding extra money. All that we would be doing is, because of the drop in the value of money, making up to the pensioner something he has lost through no fault of his own owing to the change in the cost of living.
    If the Financial Secretary considers our Amendment too modest in that we fix the age of 55 and if it would lead to anomalies, of which we have heard a great deal, we are very willing to iron them out if he so wishes and to change the age limit laid down in the Amendment so that it covers all who have retired, irrespective of age. I am sure that in the great majority of cases, it would not mean a vast increase to them and I am positive, too, that in the circumstances they well deserve it.
    Therefore, on behalf of my hon. Friends on this side, we regret very much that the Financial Secretary has not seen his way to accept the Amendment. Attempts have been repeatedly made. We discussed this issue at length in 1956 and so far we have failed to make any impression on the Government. I am sorry that we can do no more than put the case before them and leave it to their conscience when the Bill reaches another place.
    Amendment negatived.
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 5.—(SUPPLEMENTARY PROVISIONS.)
    Mr. Houghton: I beg to move, in page 6, line 4, to leave out from first "pension" to "is" in line 6.

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    Behind this simple and innocent looking Amendment lies a complicated subpect and an exceedingly sticky wicket. It is a matter which I raised in Committee upstairs to which I had not then found a complete answer, and upon which I promised to send the Financial Secretary a memorandum. That was a measure of self-protection so that if I floundered hopelessly this morning and got positively incoherent on this topic, the hon. and learned Gentleman might be able to get up and say that I had explained the point clearly, he thoroughly grasped it and would proceed to deal with it in his own inimitable way.
    The Amendment attempts to deal with the position of public servants who, on reaching normal retirement age, extend their service in what is called a disestablished capacity. This goes back to the Superannuation Act, 1949, which as a Bill I remember clearly, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) was then Financial Secretary to the Treasury and was piloting that Bill through Committee upstairs. The first thing I did to my right hon. Friend in that Committee was to vote against him. I joined forces with the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) on the question of unestablished service to count, a matter with which the House of Commons is familiar. I was so convinced by the arguments used by the right hon. Member for Monmouth that I decided to support him. The right hon. Gentleman has not since honoured the point of view which he took on that occasion, but I let that pass.
    The Superannuation Act, 1949, introduced a number of important changes and improvements in the Civil Service superannuation code, particularly pensions for widows and orphans, but it also provided for civil servants who reached the normal age of retirement to continue their service in the public interest beyond that date. To encourage them to do so, the 1949 Act enabled a civil servant reaching the normal age of retirement formally to retire, draw his lump sum gratuity, have his pension determined under the relevant Superannuation Acts and then continue in the public service in a disestablished capacity. The great attraction of that
    1586
    arrangement was that the civil servant concerned would be able to draw his lump sum gratuity, which he no doubt wanted for some important purpose—perhaps to pay off a mortgage or to do something to which he had looked forward. The gratuity would enable him to do it.
    The provisions of the Superannuation Act, however, did more than allow him to draw his gratuity and have his pension determined and then carry on either in the same grade or in a lower one. It also provided that the extended service that he rendered in a disestablished capacity should count for additional pension and additional gratuity. The Act dealt differently with the two types of extended service. In the case of the officer continuing in a disestablished capacity in his then existing grade or rank, the Superannuation Act, 1949 laid down that the addition to his pension could be made by reference to a recalculation of his position at the final and actual date of retirement on the basis of his total service and the average of his remuneration for the years preceding his final retirement.
    In the case of the civil servant who stepped down a grade during the period of extended service, the 1949 Act provided that he could have a recalculation of his pension by reference to the added years of service, but based on the pay that he was getting in the period immediately preceding the formal and earlier date of retirement. That was to give him the benefit of a recalculated pension on the basis of his higher remuneration at the time he stepped down and not upon the lower remuneration that he received during his period of extended service in a lower grade.
    Those provisions were satisfactory. It remained only to deal with the third type of case, namely, the civil servant who did not avail himself of the provisions of the 1949 Act. He just went on as a fully established civil servant, postponed his retirement, served in his existing grade or rank until a later date and then finally went out. In his case, his pension was based in the normal way on the average of his remuneration during the three years preceding final retirement and drew his gratuity then and not before. He continued in the same way as he would have done at the earlier age

    1587
    of retirement had he availed himself of the provisions.
    In the case of the 1956 Act, something had to be done to safeguard civil servants and others because these provisions have been extended to other superannuation schemes in the public sector—from being at a disadvantage in connection with the pension increase which was being made in the 1956 Bill when it was before this House. The problem was that if a man had his first or formal retirement before the relevant date for a pension increase, was then reemployed and finally retired after the relevant date he would obviously get into trouble in connection with his pension increase.
    It was noticed that it could happen that again the additional pension rights as a result of the further service could be less than the increase in pension lost by crossing the relevant date. Section 6 of the 1956 Act safeguarded the position of the civil servant from being worse off by extended service. We have done something on similar lines in Clause 2 of this Bill. The provisions in Clause 2, like the provisions of Section 6 of the 1956 Act, enable a civil servant in that position to receive the more favourable of two alternatives. He can either have his final pension plus pension increase, if any, at the actual and final date of retirement, or he can have his pension as calculated on the formal date of retirement plus pension increase, if any. It would usually be the case that the pension increase applicable to the formal and earlier date of retirement would be higher than the pension increase applicable to the actual and later date of retirement, because we have provided in our scale of pension increases a higher percentage for the earlier date of retirement.
    12.45 p.m.
    Whether the civil servant continues in his existing grade or not in an established capacity, he is still protected by Clause 2, and, as the Financial Secretary pointed out when I raised the matter in Committee upstairs, Clause 2 is a relieving Clause, not a disabling Clause. Clause 5, however, in this respect is a disabling Clause, and subsection (1, a) of it deals with when a pension shall be deemed to begin. It lays downs that in
    1588
    general circumstances the pension shall be deemed to begin on the day following the last day of service. It seems to me that the words in brackets prevent a civil servant who became disestablished under Section 36 (2, b) of the Superannuation Act, 1949, from counting for this purpose the day following his formal or earlier date of retirement.
    As I understand it, the deletion of these words would enable such a civil servant to get an increase under this Bill composed of two elements. First, his pension at the formal date of retirement plus pension increase, and an addition of pension for extended service plus pension increase, but at the date relevant in the latter part of his pension to his actual and final date of retirement. That would give him the benefit of two increases or two separate elements of his total pension, whereas the Bill as it stands would give him the choice of one calculation or the other but not the benefit of both. The question is: is it unreasonable or unfair to others that a civil servant who retires under the provisions of Section 36 of the Superannuation Act, 1949, should have a pension increase based on his formal date of retirement and another increase based on his extended service added to it plus any increase that might be applicable to that having regard to the date of his final retirement?
    One extremely damaging point can be made against my proposal—at least from a superficial point of view it might be regarded as damaging. It would give to a civil servant with extended service a higher total pension than would be granted to a civil servant without extended service but who retired on the same total length of service as the other man. It would give to a man who retired at 65 with the benefit of extended service on the lines of the 1949 Act plus my proposal a higher pension for a total of 35 years' service than it would give to a civil servant who retired at 60 and did not have extended service but who also had 35 years' pensionable service.
    From some points of view, that could be regarded as an anomaly, but from my point of view I do not think that it is. I think that the person who renders service after the normal retirement age is entitled to some benefit, even for the

    1589
    same length of service, over and above the public servant who retires at the normal age after equal length of service.
    There may be other difficulties about the proposal. If I had all the resources of the hon. and learned Gentleman in this matter I have no doubt that I could answer straight away all the points he is going to put up against me.
    I have gone almost demented trying to find the answer to this problem. I can only hang this on what I believe is a clear and reasonable principle, namely, that the civil servant or public servant who extends his service beyond the normal retirement age should get some benefit for doing so. He expected it; it was an inducement held out to him; and I think he should get it.
    Now, under the provisions of this Bill as it stands, he may not get it. It is possible for the addition to his pension by reason of extended service to be completely nullified by the pension increase which is to be granted to his earlier pension calculated by reference to the date he could have gone out had be chosen. I do not think that is right.
    I do not think it is fair to the civil servants to say, "The addition you have earned by extending your service has to be set off against the pension increase. We cannot give you the benefit of both. You can have one or the other, but you cannot have both." There are some public servants who did extend their service who are now going to draw no better pensions than those they would have drawn had they retired when they were entitled to and not rendered their additional service. "Ah! But," their Lordships of the Treasury say, "remember he drew his gratuity. He has had the benefit of a tax-free lump sum and gratuity during this time." What of it? "And also he was able to continue full-time service and draw salary, and, of course, in addition to his pension. The total is within the ceiling of his pre-retirement remuneration under Section 20 of the Superannuation Act, 1834, but at least we let him stay in and be able to earn his living and draw gratuity and have the use of it." That does not seem to me to come into the argument at all. I think that in addition to drawing the gratuity which he was entitled to at that dale, and in addition to being permitted to earn his living by extending
    1590
    his service, his total pension should reflect some increase for having stayed on. Under the provisions of the Bill that may not be so, or where it is so the addition for extended service is reduced because the pension increase is to be taken into account as well.
    That is the best I can do with this Amendment. It may be that my purpose could not be fully achieved without going beyond the bounds of this Bill, and that is a great handicap, if it is so. We have on the whole in this Bill let the past bury its own dead. We have constructed the pension increase in this Bill on all that has gone before, good, bad, and indifferent. It is, I know, difficult to go back to the beginning or go back half-way and try to put right things which have been done on previous occasions, hut, whether I have made my case technically or not, I hope that I have put to the Committee what I believe to be the general principle here, that extended service should carry some addition to pension which should not be eaten away or extinguished by the pension increase.
    I have had a great many letters on this matter from public servants who are at a disadvantage on this account. It is not enough merely to protect them from being worse off for having rendered extended service. Because that is what Clause 2 is designed to do: prevent them from being worse off. Clause 5 and its attendant provisions does not give a civil servant with extended service the full benefit of extended service. It deprives him of the advantage of the pension increase which would be applicable to his formal earlier date of retirement and some reward for extended service on top.
    I hope I have got through this difficult exercise to the reasonable comprehension of the Committee and that the Financial Secretary, who has, of course, been aided by a preview of what I was going to say, will be equally successful in the defence of whatever position he feels impelled to take up.
    Sir L. Heald: If I do not press my hon. and learned Friend to accept the Amendment, I am sure that the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) will appreciate that it is not in the least because I do not sympathise with his point of view. As I shall try to indicate

    1591
    quite briefly, I agree with him that something should be done about it if possible. It is simply that it is a very complicated and difficult subject, and I must frankly say that I am not quite certain that he has either covered the ground completely or in a way which cannot be, as I am sure it will be in a few moments, represented at any rate as not altogether satisfactory; but on his general subject I think we can all have a great deal of sympathy.
    I try in these things to be logical in my arguments. My hon. and learned Friend was very anxious to point out, in answer to what I said a few moments ago, that we must encourage people to go on working. If we are to do that, then if we have a civil servant who comes to the age of retirement and says, "I should like to go on: after what the Financial Secretary has said I ought to do. I want to go on working to help my country," has to be satisfied that he will get something for it.
    I think when one reads the wording—I have said it before but I think it should be said again—of Clause 2 of the Bill one finds it rather startling to think that the Legislature has got in this Bill a provision against a man getting absolutely nothing at all for his further service. It seems to me an almost inconceivable thing that it should be found necessary to do that.
    Mr. Houghton: The Clause does not prevent a man getting nothing at all. It prevents him from being worse off for his extended service. He can under the Bill get nothing.
    Sir L. Heald: I am much obliged. I was not being quite accurate about it.
    At any rate, if one has a case like the case of the man I quoted before, who has done eight or nine years' extra service and who feels that in effect he is getting no benefit at all, it is not going to encourage people to go on. I do think that that is a consideration which must be taken into account more than apparently it has been.
    My anxiety about this matter is really this, that the proposal of the hon. Member for Sowerby is not directed to deal with more than one of several difficulties and anomalies and troubles. I can think, for example, of three which
    1592
    have been pressed upon me very much by quite different types of people.
    There is first of all the man I mentioned who goes straight on. He says, "Instead of retiring I shall listen to the Financial Secretary and say I am convinced by that I ought not to retire; I ought to go on." That is the first one. Then there is the man who retires and after a few years is appealed to by my hon. and learned Friend to go back, and he does. The third case is one which we are not discussing here but it is another example of the general problem. It is that of the man who for a number of years has been in the public service but not in an established position and who becomes established and then retires.
    1.0 p.m.
    There are all these different cases. Perhaps the better thing from my point of view is to ask my hon. and learned Friend whether he would not say that the whole of this matter in some way will be reconsidered, so that we can deal with it when the question arises again; and we would hope to deal with it fairly soon. These things are surely much better dealt with by way of negotiations by experts round the table. There is always the fear one has that when we have finished with the Bill the file will be put away in the Ministry and not taken out again until some people start another agitation. If we could be told that there is concern about this matter on both sides of the table, as we know there is, and a real effort will be made to deal with it, it would be a great encouragement.
    Whatever anybody says about the difficulty of dealing with hard cases and anomalies, it is undesirable that we should have a position in which a man, however logical the arguments against him, will feel that it is not worth his while going on working. I have not understood these things perhaps as fully as I might, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Sowerby will not regard it as in any way a reflection on his arguments if I ask my hon. and learned Friend to deal with the matter in that way, and to give an assurance that it will not be put away until next time and that it will be noted now.
    Mr. Simon: The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) in Committee promised me—or threatened me—with a memorandum dealing with this matter, which he sent in due course and for which I am very grateful. It was a masterly enunciation of the whole problem and of the law affecting it. I think that it was Disraeli who said that there were only three people in Europe who really understood the Schleswig-Holstein problem. One was Bismarck, the other a German professor who had gone mad, and the third himself—and he had forgotten what it was about. By the time that I had read the hon. Member's memorandum I was in Bismarck's position, but I regret to say that now I am hovering between the position of the German professor and that of Disraeli. I will, of course, reply to the hon. Member in detail in correspondence. I do not think that it would be appropriate on this occasion to go into the technical complexities of the problem, which, as he indicated, are very great. It is a problem which bristles with difficulties if one is to avoid unfairness.
    The hon. Member for Sowerby and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) are quite right when they say that the whole of the hon. Member's purpose, even if it were desirable, in any event could not be carried out without further legislation affecting the substance of the Superannuation Act. I can assure my right hon. and learned Friend that this is not a file that is put away for any length of time. It is a remarkably dog-eared one which is frequently taken out. I hope that that will be some consolation to him.
    The purpose of the Amendment is to deal with the case of the civil servant who retires and returns to work at a lower grade. Its effect is to take the whole of his pension and increase it in a way which I will describe in a moment. At present, if he works on at a lower grade he gets a number of substantial advantages. The first is that he is entitled to reckon the extra years for which he works for extra pension. Even more important, they count for pension not at the rate at which he is working, but at a notional and very favourable rate related to the old and higher pay which he had been earning before
    1594
    he retired originally, and not to the new and lower pay which he earns by continuing to work. In other words, he takes a less onerous job but the pension is calculated for the extra years he works at his older and higher pay. The effect of the Amendment is to compute the pension and increase it, not by the percentage which would be appropriate when his service was actually completed but by the percentage which would have applied if he had completed all his service by the time he is retired. In other words, it introduces a new notional element in order to put him higher up the escalator.
    I will not go into the complexities and technicalities. It would be sufficient if I say—and it is really no more than was said by the hon. Member for Sowerby himself—that the Amendment gives these pensioners a much better bargain than any one else, and they get it—and this is the gravamen of the case against the Amendment—in most cases without those concerned having had to live on pension during the time when the hardship occurred which the increases are intended to offset. The pensioners who would be affected by the Amendment have been living on pay which ought to have been, and largely has been, increased to take account of the cost of living. Therefore, they would have an advantage over other pensioners even though they had not undergone the same hardship as other pensioners in having their pensions eroded.
    It seems to me, therefore, that that is unacceptable, at any rate as we consider the matter at the moment. The hon. Member for Sowerby put it that "It gives to the civil servant with extended service a higher total pension than the civil servant whose total service was the same length but was not extended." It seems to me that if we did that, the latter civil servant would have a very real grievance. I feel that it would be very wrong to introduce an anomaly of that sort, to the latter's disadvantage as he would claim.
    In addition, the civil servant who would be affected by the Amendment—who retires but serves on at a lower salary—already has an advantage over the other one—the civil servant whose total service was the same length but was not extended—for the first one,

    1595
    when he retires originally, gets his tax-free lump sum benefit. The hon. Member for Sowerby asks "What of it?" Let hon. Members think of the one left out. He has not had a lump sum benefit in the earlier years, and he would like it. Apart from the fact that the one enjoys a lump sum earlier, we also cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in the meantime he has been drawing, if he has so wished, interest on that lump sum. Therefore, he has already had an advantage, and he is to have a further advantage, which I think would be wrong. In addition, not only does he draw the lump sum benefit on disestablishment but he adds to it on reemployment, in the same way as he adds to the pension.
    I hope that, looking at it that way, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey will still feel that there is an encouragement to the civil servant to go on working.
    It is true that the advantage the man gets is "nullified" by a Pensions (Increase) Bill, but it is also true that to some extent we lift the others so that they do not suffer the hardship from which he has been spared. Nevertheless, it seems to me, particularly when one looks at the lump sum benefit, that there are real advantages in the civil servant continuing to work, and we should not be justified, apart from the technical difficulties of legislating over the whole of this field, in accepting the Amendment.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows only too well, this matter has meant an enormous amount of correspondence for almost every hon. Member of the House during the last weeks, certainly since the Bill was announced as possible. During its Committee stage, we took occasion to ventilate this matter, partly in order to get an explanation from the hon. and learned Gentleman and also to suggest what would be the effect of the Clause, which is a complicated one. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) did his best to make it plain to us, I was one of those who found it difficult to follow what he was saying. I have had the benefit of receiving the memorandum he was good enough to send to the Financial Secre-
    1596
    tary and it is enlightening. If the hon. and learned Gentleman will fulfil the promise he gave a few moments ago to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) to look at the matter, my hon. Friend might be willing to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    I suppose the difficulty arises because of the nature of the provisions in the Bill by which the percentage scales depend completely on the date of retirement. Where a man does not retire on the date he normally would have done, but goes on working in a disestablished position, complications arise, and because of that he is likely not to get the full benefit of the extra work he puts in. Fundamentally, all of us would agree that if a man puts in another five years' work there should be some benefit to him for the extra years, and therefore I did not altogether follow the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman that the man was not on pension during the years when hardship was being suffered. That may be true because he was working then, but more often than not he was on a lower scale of pay, and the increased cost of living affected him even though he was working.
    Mr. Simon: The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the man will normally, almost inevitably, be on a higher rate of pay than the pension he would enjoy if he retired; otherwise, he would not have any incentive to continue working.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I understand that, because if he were not getting more than he would get if he retired, he would not go on working. The point I am trying to make is that the cost of living affects him whether he is working or not. Even when he has retired, as these people have, and even if during the years he was working the hardship of the increased cost of living did not bear upon him, it certainly bears upon him now that he has retired. Therefore, I could not altogether follow the argument adduced by the hon. and learned Gentleman.
    As I have said, my hon. Friend may be willing not to carry the Amendment to a Division on the understanding that the Financial Secretary will look at it—as he promised the right hon. and

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    learned Member for Chertsey. The only question is when? The Bill will have to go to another place and that, I imagine, would provide an excellent opportunity. It would avoid the fear expressed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the matter may be put into the pigeon holes of the Treasury and not brought up for many years. There could not be a better time than now, when the matter is fresh in our minds. All of us are anxious to reach a settlement, and all of us know that a large number of people feel deeply about it. I would like to feel that the hon. and learned Gentleman will rise in his place when I sit down, and will give us his promise that something may be done about this matter between now and the time when the Bill becomes an Act.
    1.15 p.m.
    Mr. Simon: It would be wrong for me to leave the Committee under any misapprehension on this point. A promise to review the matter before the following stage of a Bill has a significance quite different from the words I used. It would be wrong, therefore, if I left the Committee with any idea that we intend to review the matter in any way with a view to Amendment in another place.
    Mr. W. R. Williams: I hesitate to intervene, because I was late coming into the Committee and I have not heard the whole of the debate, but I must pay a tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) for delving into the intricacies and technicalities which ordinary fellows like myself find it difficult to follow or check. However, I did not entirely agree with everything my hon. Friend said, as he knows, although I am in agreement with him on at least one point. It is that both he and I have had a large correspondence on this subject, not only during the last few weeks but for at least two years.
    Frankly, I have been torn between conflicting emotions on this issue. On the one hand, I have a feeling that some of the people who have corresponded with us are being treated unfairly in some measure but, on the other hand, I have to weigh that in my mind against any unfairness accruing to other people were certain points to be conceded which we have been asking the Treasury to con-
    1598
    cede. I will not develop the argument further at this stage but, in view of the hon. and learned Gentleman saying that he could not see his way clear to give consideration to this technical matter before the Bill comes back from another place, I support the point of view put by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald), namely, that a technical matter of this kind might be considered at an early date between the Treasury and experts of the Civil Service Staff Association and people representing retired pensioners. They would be able to go into all the details and could also consider anomalies. After that is done, would the Financial Secretary be good enough to send a letter to some of us showing what conclusions have been reached, so that we can conclude some of the correspondence we have had on this highly technical aspect of the Bill?
    Dame Irene Ward: Before my hon. and learned Friend replies on the question of an undertaking, may I ask him a question? I fully agree that an inquiry could not take place before the Bill goes to another place, because that might cause undue delay to those who are waiting for their pensions increases. However, if after examination a means is found of meeting the point raised by my right hon. and learned Friend and hon. Gentlemen opposite, would the Financial Secretary give an undertaking that he will not appear at this Box and say that, an agreement having been reached, legislation is necessary and time cannot be found for it in the legislative programme?
    I want to be assured that this will not happen. I want to be certain that, if something fair to all sides can be agreed, then we shall be able to pet the matter put straight without having to fight for a place in the legislative programme.
    Mr. Simon: Two questions have been raised, one of which I can answer easily. I find the one put by my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) very much more difficult to answer than the other.
    If the matter is raised with the Government by the Staff Side, I need hardily say that it will be very carefully considered in accordance with the ordinary machinery of the Whitley Council. I can go further and say that I will certainly

    1599
    write to the hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams), the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Hough-ton) and my hon. Friend to tell them the result of any such examination.
    My hon. Friend asked me to give an undertaking that any legislation which is required will move to the top of the legislative queue. I can only remind her that that is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal as Leader of the House and ask her to picture what would be my condition if I gave her off the cuff the assurance for which she asks.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: Throughout our proceedings in the Standing Committee and here the hon. and learned Gentleman has always indicated that the matters under discussion have been "sympathetically considered". Now they are to be "carefully considered". I do not know what the difference is. I hope there is a difference because the things which have been "sympathetically considered" have resulted in nothing. I hope that in the light of what has been said by the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald), who, after all, is a prominent member of his side of the Committee, something more will be done than just "sympathetically considering" what has been said from all parts of the Committee. Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will give us an assurance that "carefully considered" is better than "sympathetically considered".
    Amendment negatived.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended (on re-committal), considered.

    New Clause—(ADVISORY COMMITTEE)
    There shall be appointed not later than two years from the passing of this Act a committee of three persons of standing to consider and report to the Treasury what, if any, adjustments in the provisions of this Act should be made in the light of all relevant circumstances including movements of the Index of Retail Prices, wages and salaries in the Civil Service, local government, police, and the teaching profession.—[Mr. Glenvil Hall.]
    Brought up, and read the First time.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
    On the Second Reading of the Bill it was pointed out by more than one hon.
    1600
    Member that this is the sixth Bill of its kind in the last fifteen years. The last one was just over two years ago, in 1956, and it seemed obvious to many of us then that introducing these Bills in this way was a very ragged method of dealing with the matter and that there should be something in the way of substantial machinery set up which periodically and automatically could review the situation and, where necessary, jog the Treasury into action so that a new Bill could be introduced. Alternatively—I do not know whether it would be possible—an enabling Bill might be introduced which would permit the Treasury to act without necessarily coming to Parliament for specific powers to increase the scales.
    I should have thought that, without my needing to argue the matter at any great length, it would be apparent to the Government, as it is to all on this side of the House, that something of this kind should be done. As I have said, Bills have been produced at intervals during the last fifteen years. There were only two, I believe, after the First World War because the cost of living went down with a bump then and there was enormous unemployment. This time the situation has been quite different. The cost of living has gone up steadily, and, although at the moment there is a pause and it has not altered very much, if at all, over the last eighteen months, we have no assurance that it will not presently begin to rise again.
    The difficulty is that these pensioners, many of whom are living on very tiny pensions, have to wait sometimes two, three or four years for the Government of the day to recognise that the cost of living has changed and the value of money has declined. Meanwhile, they suffer great hardship, and, although something is done eventually to help them, more often than not it is too little, and for many of them it certainly comes too late.
    In our Clause we suggest that something should be done to keep the matter, as it were, alive and that there should be someone whose job it is to watch the matter and ensure that as occasion arises the Government of the day, whatever their complexion, are informed and begin to move. We are not wedded to the form of words in our Clause. If the hon. and learned Gentleman has a

    1601
    different method of achieving the same object, we shall be delighted. It is the object that we are after, not this particular form of achieving it.
    Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I agree with the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) when he says that to move a succession of pension increase Bills, as has been done since the war, is a clumsy and rather unsatisfactory method of dealing with the problem. No one would dispute that. If we felt that the need to do so would continue, I should be the first to agree that some permanent machinery would be extremely desirable to obviate the necessity.
    At the same time, my objection to the proposed Clause is concerned with its actual wording. It seems to me to presuppose that one or both of two things will continue happening, either that there will be a continued rise in the cost of living or that there will be continued rises in the emoluments of public servants, and, presumably, everybody else in the country.
    Taking the cost of living first, the right hon. Gentleman said that we have no assurance that the present stability would continue. Surely, if we write into Acts of Parliament at this moment Clauses presupposing that it may, we are to some extent reducing such assurances as we have. I feel that we should be careful at present not to put anything on the Statute Book which indicates that this Government or a subsequent Government have the slightest intention, if they can avoid it, of allowing the depreciation of the value of the currency to start again.
    The second proposition, that to do with rising emoluments, raises a different problem. I would agree—I am not sure that my hon. and learned Friend would—that public service pensions, and, indeed, all pensions, should to some extent reflect any substantial change in the current rates of emoluments and any changes in current pensions. It is only right that in a period of rising prosperity and rising standard of living some of the benefits should be shared by the people who laid the foundations for it before they retired. I feel that very strongly.
    My real reason for intervening is to repeat the plea which I made on Second Reading, that we ought the whole time to consider a third possibility—that rising
    1602
    prosperity will be reflected in falling prices. Surely that is the satisfactory solution to the problem. Surely that is the goal, however difficult of attainment it may seem to be, at which we should aim. That is the only way in which we can obviate the necessity for further pensions increases Acts, on the one hand, and at the same time benefit hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who are affected in precisely the same way and who are not public service pensioners.
    1.30 p.m.
    Therefore, I should be perfectly prepared for my hon. and learned Friend simply to give an assurance that in the event of changed circumstances necessitating—perhaps I ought to say justifying—a further increase in public service pensions, this matter will be kept under review. I am not sure, however, that such an assurance is altogether necessary. After all, if we look at the history, at least for the past five or six years, the Government have had a very good record, and this record in the matter of public service pensions is to some extent sufficient to raise doubts in my mind as to the necessity for a formal Clause being inserted in the Bill. I think it is a very open question.
    I conclude by saying once again that we should be careful not to put on the Statute Book any Clause containing a form of words which implied that we assumed, either on the one hand that prices will go on rising indefinitely or, on the other hand, that the rising standard of living to which we all look forward can only be achieved by continued increases in emoluments.
    Dame Irene Ward: I can see the force of the argument which has just been used by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). He gives a great deal of study to all these matters and always puts forward a very logical case. All I should say, however, is that perhaps he has not been quite so long in the House of Commons as to realise that people like myself catch at any straw in order to ensure that the kind of pressure which has had to be exerted to get this new Pensions (Increase) Bill on to the Statute Book should not have to continue. It really is most difficult, even if the Treasury Ministers were willing, to find a place in the

    1603
    legislative programme for some of the most just causes.
    We are up against the eternal problem of finding an appropriate place in which to remedy injustices. I sometimes think this Parliamentary system of ours is not really carrying out the proper function of remedying grievances before Supply. Therefore, although I recognise the arguments of my hon. and gallant Friend, I am delighted to have a small straw by which to try to ensure that in future we shall not have all the difficulties we have had in the past two years in bringing this new Pensions (Increase) Bill on to the Statute Book and to give me an opportunity to thank my right hon. Friend and my hon. and learned Friend for doing what they have done in this Bill.
    I can also understand the difficulty about the wording of the Clause. It involves certain matters which the Treasury has always resisted, and I think rightly resisted, but I observe in it the following words, which may perhaps be useful for my purpose:
    "in the light of all relevant circumstances".
    I shall relate what I have to say to those few words. While we have been discussing the various Amendments this morning, the Committee has been engaged in probing a number of detailed difficulties. We have heard all sorts of arguments and received quite an amount of sympathy from my hon. and learned Friend. We have made some progress. Nevertheless, I think the House will agree that there are still anomalies which require examination. If we had this new Clause in the Bill, it would be much easier subsequently to exert pressure on the Government of the day to remedy anomalies. We have had undertakings, we have discussed anomalies and seen that in the Bill there are weaknesses as well as strength. If we had a Clause of this kind in, it would enable us to exert the pressure with an appropriate committee which is essential to see that all these anomalies are remedied.
    I know I am not entitled to refer to the Armed Forces, but in one discussion my hon. and learned Friend asked for indulgence for a second, so I ask for a similar indulgence. I want to make a point about the position of the Armed Forces. The basic widow's pensions for
    1604
    Regular Officers' widows were not altered for 100 years. That has had a relation to many of the problems arising under the Bill. One of the difficulties has been to try to be fair to certain sections of the community who have fallen behind in this respect. There are other sections of the community inside the Bill whom it is always extremely difficult in our Parliamentary machine to find an opportunity to discuss so that we may redress their grievances.
    Therefore, it seems that if we had a formal Clause of this kind in the Bill it would at any rate ensure that the committee could have under permanent consideration the difficulties of these people who have done remarkable service for many years in the interests of the country. We should then have a much more balanced approach. As I said when discussing one of the Amendments, not only has the future to be considered in relation to conditions of service and salaries and wages, but also the position of those who have enabled this country to survive, to increase the standard of living, and to weather many difficult economic storms.
    My hon. and learned Friend is rightly always saying that in considering these matters we have also to consider the position of other taxpayers. I agree with him, and that is implicit in the Bill. I listened with interest to hon. Members talking about a perambulation in Trafalgar Square. I should like them to ask me to accompany them there. I should get an answer from almost anybody in Trafalgar Square which would be favourable to the point of view that I hold.
    Mr. Houghton: I do not think the hon. Lady can come with me. I was only going as far as Parliament Square.
    Dame Irene Ward: I should be delighted to go into Parliament Square, but I think I should like to go a little further. The hon. and learned Gentleman is always talking about the attitude of the taxpayers, and perhaps they are not as keen as they ought to be on doing their duty by Crown servants and public servants, but I have no objection to a reduction in the price of beer. Not that I am a consumer of it; I am not. I do not regard doing something for somebody else as being a sacrifice on my

    1605
    part, because if one looks over the whole field one sees that all get their share.
    My hon. and learned Friend has not consulted me on what my attitude would be as a taxpayer. There are a lot of people on whom I would prefer to spend my share of Income Tax rather than those who have been chosen by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not a very good argument to keep on discussing that point. It is necessary to protect the interest of the taxpayer, and I am delighted to know that I have a Conservative Government protecting my interests, but that argument can be carried too far. It might be a good idea if the three of us were to go off to Parliament Square and then find our way up to Trafalgar Square. I dare say we would then get a very balanced argument.
    If the new Clause were added to the Bill it would keep the whole question of pensions under review. I can think of the colonial servants who are not covered as Crown pensioners. I think we could discuss them if we had this Clause added to the Bill.
    Mr. Simon: My hon. Friend is not right about that. The new Clause would only permit consideration of adjustments in the provisions of the Act.
    Dame Irene Ward: That might well be so, but if I happen to be one of the three members of the committee I will probably get in the bit that I want. That is the point. We could also include nurses and voluntary hospital staff, but I will not develop that argument because I shall be out of order if I do.
    I should like to know that all these statements are in the OFFICIAL REPORT so that those who are interested in these things will see that they are there and find ways and means of persuading the Treasury of what is necessary to be done in fairness and justice. Though my hon. and learned Friend may say that the new Clause is open to certain objections, I hope that he will say that there ought to be some machinery by which we can keep this whole matter under review and give attention to these problems. It would be very much simpler if we could discuss the Royal Warrant with the Pensions (Increase) Bill. Everything is done in a sort of fragmentary way which is
    1606
    unsatisfactory to all those people whose interests we are trying to serve.
    If my hon. and learned Friend will not agree to the new Clause, I hope that he will give some assurance that he will keep the matter well under review and will give us a Parliamentary opportunity, whether by Question or debate, to raise those issues in which we are all so interested.
    1.45 p.m.
    Mr. Simon: I am in agreement with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett). I am sure that what we should aim at is to see that the rising prosperity is reflected in a gentle fall in price level. Ultimately that is the only way in which we can ensure that the rising prosperity will be shared equitably among all classes of the community—the wage and salary earners, the pensioners, and those who are living on their savings. I find myself in complete sympathy with the hon. and gallant Member's approach to the problem.
    I can only say to the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) that I should be delighted to accompany her to Parliament Square, where apparently the gallantry of the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) stops, or to Trafalgar Square, or even beyond that.
    We constantly have impressed on us, and I am sure that it is the overwhelming feeling in the country, that personal taxation is still too high, that rates are too high, and that both ought to be reduced. That is something that we have always to bear in mind.
    As I ventured to point out in an intervention, the Amendment is limited to a report of what adjustments should be made in the provisions of the Act, and it would not extend to the matters with which my hon. Friend is concerned.
    The Amendment is subject to three unacceptable consequences. First, it fixes a date on which public service pensions would be reviewed again. Secondly, it takes the review out of the hands of the Government. Thirdly, it requires factors to be taken into account which are inconsistent with the principle which has by and large commended itself to the House and the Committee, namely,

    1607
    that the Pensions (Increase) Acts are directed solely to the relief of hardship, albeit relative hardship.
    May I deal with each in turn. It seems to me that the Amendment would merely concentrate pressures which are at present diffused, and create expectations of benefit which might well in the circumstances be disappointed. The Government and Parliament have to strike the sort of balance which has been in our minds throughout our discussions on the Bill. To fix a date when there should be a review would be making it far more difficult to strike a proper balance.
    It is not as if we have not acted properly in this respect. I am sure that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East is right when he says that the Government have a very good record. I ventured to point out, I hope in no acrimonious tone, that hon. Gentlemen opposite allowed the cost of living to rise by more than 28 per cent. without bringing in a fresh Pensions (Increase) Bill. Time and again we have been prompt to act, so we are entitled to say that our actions show that pensioners are in the forefront of our thoughts, and that we have recognised our special responsibilities for public service pensioners.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth asked me to assure her that machinery would exist for a review. It does exist. It exists in the Government itself, and it seems to me that the Government are in the best position to balance their responsibilities as employers and as revenue collectors. This holding of a balance, which the Government shares with Parliament, would be made more difficult if we had a specific time for review. Nor indeed would it necessarily be in the interests of the pensioners.
    The second reason is really implicit in what I have said. The Amendment takes the review out of the hands of the Government. After the Cohen Committee's successes, I can understand that hon. Gentlemen opposite should want us to follow that example in this field, but it is not exactly comparable. What the Cohen Committee was set up to do, and did so successfully, was to see that information was laid before the public. It has been of great assistance in instructing public opinion.
    1608
    It was not designed to report to the Government. It made a report at large to the community. In this case we would not be ready to follow the example of the Cohen Committee.
    Mr. James Griffiths Mr. James Griffiths (Llanelly) indicated assent.
    Mr. Simon: I am glad to see that the right hon. Gentleman agrees. It should be the Government who produce the review. It requires interests to be taken into account which are not directed solely to the relief even of relative hardship. If it were right to do that, it would be right for the Government to do it, and they could do it.
    This is not an acceptable proposal. The Government's record shows that they are alive to the problem with which the Bill deals. The Government can be proud of their record, and the public service pensioners can feel confident that they will be fairly dealt with if the review continues to be within the machinery of Government.
    Mr. Houghton: That is a very disappointing reply. I listened carefully to the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett), and I appreciate his point of view. I respect it all the more because I know that he is very sympathetic towards the purpose of the Bill and would probably carry his own wishes beyond its scope. I know that, in company with some of his hon. Friends, he has given a great deal of time to a study of this question.
    To follow him would take me into the field of economic forecast or economic and political theory. The new Clause is not based upon the expectation that the cost of living will rise in future as much as it has done in the past. It is based in part upon the need for a safeguard against that possibility and in part upon the likelihood that money incomes will rise with the expansion of the economy and the rise of national prosperity. In other connections estimates have been made that wages and salaries may rise by 2 per cent. per annum, on the average. That suggests that those who are studying the matter carefully expect money incomes to rise even though prices may fall, but there is no evidence elsewhere in the

    1609
    world of stable or static money incomes in conditions of rising national income and expanding national prosperity. I allude in that connection more particularly to the United States of America.
    The rise in pensions and National Insurance has brought forward proposals related directly to the Government's desire that National Assistance recipients shall have a share in the rising national prosperity. My right hon. Friend did not base his proposals upon the cost of living, but I do not think that it is out of keeping with reasonable treatment of the matter under discussion that that aspect of the matter should be borne in mind. I take full responsibility for any misjudgment in drafting the Clause. I can see that it would have been made a little easier for the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and for the hon. and learned Member if the new Clause had stopped at the words "all relevant circumstances" and allowed the rest to be taken for granted.
    I understand that the hon. and learned Gentleman feels that this is striking another blow for the principle of parity which is becoming more and more scorned by the hon. and learned Member as our debates go on, but it was an attempt to find some way of dealing with this matter in future, without waiting—as the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) said—for fresh agitations to begin. There is no recognised machinery for the consideration of these matters of pensions increases. They go beyond the scope of the Civil Service National Whitley Council, and even within that Council questions involving legislation are under a special disadvantage in the matter of free discussion and negotiation. It is unsatisfactory merely to wait for the next pressure to start coming from different quarters.
    I do not suggest that this is a move to take pensions increases out of politics, because they have never been very much in politics, and the Bill has probably been the least contentious and most pleasant of all which have dealt with this matter. The Government are to be commended for having produced a Bill which has enabled our discussions to take place in this sort of atmosphere. In
    1610
    Punch recently I saw a very amusing feature, written by Mr. Christopher Hollis—at one time a very respected Member of this House—consisting of fictitious letters from various people suggesting that various things should be taken out of politics. They included foreign policy, the bomb, social security—and probably pensions increases, although I do not quite remember that—and half a dozen other subjects which might be contentious. In the end there was nothing left in politics.
    Mr. Simon: The hon. Member must not disappoint his right hon. Friend, because there is still the Chevening Estate Bill to come.
    Mr. Houghton: Then the political millennium is postponed for a little longer.
    The hon. and learned Member made some objections to the Clause, and I understand his point of view. I am very much obliged to the hon. Member for Tynemouth for demolishing the hypothetical taxpayer. She rightly and properly claimed to be a taxpayer herself. As she spoke I thought I heard the authentic voice of the taxpayer—and by that I mean the taxpayer who is nothing like as mean-spirited as successive Governments make out when they call him to their aid in order to oppose something which is reasonable in itself but perhaps imposed an additional burden on the Exchequer.
    The hon. and learned Member said, first, that to fix a date of review would raise expectations, which might not be to the advantage of those concerned and would certainly be an embarrassment to the Government. There is something in that, but even if we could not fix a precise date the Government could have been a little more forthcoming about keeping the matter before them with a view to obviating the kind of experience that many hon. Members on both sides of the House have gone through in recent months. Representations have been made to the Government, and the reply has been, "No, there is no case for it". Then, after further representations, once more the reply has been, "No, there is no case for it"—and then, out the blue, an announcement has come from the Chancellor at the time of the Budget.

    1611
    2.0 p.m.
    The hon. and learned Gentleman also complained that this would take the matter out of the hands of the Government. The new Clause provides that this committee of persons of standing should report to the Treasury, and that is taking the matter out of the hands of the Government. Committees of all kinds have been appointed at various times to advise the Government. The Cohen Committee has been referred to, but that was not to advise the Government but to advise the public, or, if we like, to defend the Government against the public. I do not know what it was intended to do. Again, the Coleraine Committee is advising the Government on matters relating to the salaries of the higher civil servants, because we realise that this is outside the scope of negotiations on the Whitley body and is a matter on which the Government need the help of independent advice from persons holding established public positions. There have been Royal Commissions and advisory committees of all sorts and kinds, and I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman rather pulled that argument into his speech by the scruff of the neck.
    Finally, he referred to factors which the Government might find difficult to accept as part of the instruction to undertake a review. I would be willing to echo the hon. and learned Gentleman in that respect if that would make things any easier for him, but my right hon. Friend did not move this new Clause in the expectation that the Government would be able to accept it in its literal terms. I put it to the hon. and learned Gentleman and the House that the machinery for discussing these matters does not exist in the same form as in the case of the discussion of wages and salaries and conditions of service relating to all forms of public service, where our Whitley system is probably as satisfactory a method of joint consultation and negotiation in the public sector as there is anywhere in the world, and is probably more effective and more satisfactory than many systems of joint consultation in outside industry.
    But because pensions require legislation, there are obvious handicaps put upon freedom of discussion, and cer-
    1612
    tainly upon negotiations, through the normal channels of the Whitley Council. Moreover, there is not only one Whitley Council but several, and these cover a widening field of the public service, quite apart from the Armed Forces. I have pleaded on a number of occasions for legislation enabling matters to be discussed in the way in which other conditions of service are discussed.
    There may be all sorts of traditional and constitutional reasons against that, but I am sorry that the Financial Secretary has not felt able to promise the House that he will ensure that, as far as it lies in the power of the present Government—and it may be outside their power before long; one does not know, but can understand that he cannot promise anything with certainty beyond the end of next month—so far as it lies in their power, this question will be reviewed at no distant date and in an appropriate fashion to the times as they then are, and without waiting to be pressed, pushed and agitated by civil servants on pension and retired public servants generally, and, of course, under their influence and advice, by hon. and right hon. Members of this House. It would be very much better if he could find a different way from the one which has been followed in connection with all this pension increase legislation for the last 15 years.
    Cannot the hon. and learned Gentleman respond to that in terms which will satisfy the House, and would enable my right hon. Friend to withdraw this new Clause? It would be an assurance, but it would not be a commitment, and I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman can go a little further and be more specific about it than he was in his speech, which was in such general terms as to suggest: "Big Brother will look after you. His record is good enough for you. Has he not done this and that? You need not fear the future." The truth is that we would not have had the Bill which is before the House at the moment had not the agitation which I want to obviate been brought to bear on hon. Members on both sides of this House and on the Treasury directly.
    Question put, and negatived.
    Order for Third Reading read.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall Mr. Glenvil Hall rose—
    2.5 p.m.
    Mr. Simon: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
    It is I who ought to move the Third Reading rather than the right hon. Gentleman opposite.
    This gives me the opportunity of thanking the House, the Standing Committee and the Committee of the whole Mouse which has dealt with this matter for the very agreeable and constructive manner and atmosphere in which its provisions have been discussed.
    We have had a considerable number of experts who have helped us very much, particularly upstairs. I think the provisions of the Bill were scrutinised in great detail to see if they could be improved, and I think it is a tribute to the strength of the scheme, particularly when it is a simple scheme in a matter of great complexity, that none of the Amendments which were put forward have been divided upon. We have made one Amendment to the Bill which will undoubtedly be an improvement and will lead to considerable improvements in its repercussions outside the Bill. It is fair to claim that the provisions of the Bill have stood up to close and informed scrutiny in a very satisfactory way.
    I need hardly say what a pleasure it has been to me to have had the responsibility for this Bill after its Second Reading, or how grateful I am to the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall), who himself knows the difficulties of the problem, and to the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who in another capacity has lived with it so closely for so many years, to have had their assistance and for the pleasant, agreeable and kindly way in which they have treated my own duty in this matter. I am also most grateful to my hon. Friend the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), even though she came in only at a late stage of the Bill, to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) and to all other hon. Members who have helped from this side of the House.
    Quite apart from its simplicity, the Bill has a number of improvements over any previous Bill. The cost of living
    1614
    has risen less than before any previous Pensions (Increase) Bill, and the increases now proposed in the Bill go closer than on previous occasions to reinstating the value of the pensions after it has been eroded by rising prices. Without conceding the general principle of parity, we have gone very close to reinstatement in certain respects.
    Thirdly, the percentage increase that is given is not, as heretofore, on the basic pension, but is on the pension as increased, so that in that very simple way, unlike all previous pension legislation, we have managed to load the scheme in favour of the small and the old pension. Fourthly, which is generally, indeed I think universally, commended, there is no upper limit to the new increase payable. Fifthly, there is no earlier cut-off date in respect of the higher pensions. And, lastly, and I think this has gained the approval of the House, particularly as it has been closely examined, it is simple and intelligible. This is of great assistance not only in enabling us to conduct our deliberations so speedily, but will be, and indeed already has been, of great assistance to those concerned on the pensioners' side in scrutinising its provisions.
    It is only about three weeks today since my right hon. Friend rose to move the Second Reading of the Bill, and that seems to me to be a remarkable tribute to the way in which the House and the Committee have dealt with its provisions. The combined effect of this Bill and the previous Acts will give a solid measure of improvement to many public service pensioners, whose position is, I know, of great concern to hon. Members on both sides of the House. It will bring benefit to some hundreds of thousands of former public servants, and I do not doubt that it will be dealt with in another place with equal expedition. If that is so, there is every likelihood that the operative date of the Bill will be 1st August. I need hardly say that it will take a little time for the pensions of the 400,000 people affected to be revised, but I would like to assure the House that, as far as the Government are concerned, every effort will be made to ensure that pensioners do not wait longer than is necessary.

    1615
    I wish once again to thank the House for the speed and pleasant manner in which it has dealt with the Bill and to commend the Bill to the House.
    2.11 p.m.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I am sorry that I appeared to be usurping the position of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Financial Secretary and to be moving the Motion. I was under the impression that the hon. and learned Gentleman had just nodded and moved the Third Reading formally, and that, therefore, if anything had to be said, one had to move fairly swiftly. I do not intend to say a great deal, because there is very little one can say that has not already been said. That was one reason why I thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman was merely nodding and moving the Third Reading formally.
    Practically no change whatever has been made to the Bill either in Committee or today and, therefore, the arguments that could be used on Third Reading have already been used. However, I wish to say that we on this side of the House, although grateful for what the Bill does, are keenly disappointed that the suggestions for its improvement made from both sides in Committee upstairs were not accepted, or at any rate that some of them, which in our view were extremely reasonable, were not accepted.
    I cannot forget that the hon. and learned Gentleman himself said that the average Civil Service pension is still no more than £200 despite the increases that have already been added. In these days when £200, unfortunately, does not go very far, that is something which we cannot contemplate with any degree of pleasure. Hon. Members on both sides of the House thought that the Bill was an opportunity to make somewhat better provision for these people.
    We on this side of the House remember, too, that the drop in the value of money since October, 1951—the basis, largely, for the Bill and the increases given—is no less than 25 per cent., whereas the highest percentage increase which anyone who retired before 31st March, 1952, can get is only 12 per cent. As was pointed out in Committee by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman), there are many pensioners who retired
    1616
    well before 1952, in 1939 and 1940, who, in spite of the Bill and the changes which it makes, will suffer great hardship.
    I was rather sorry to hear the hon. and learned Gentleman say that he hoped to make the increase operative by 1st August. I take it that even if the figures take some working out, as they probably will, the increase will be operative from 1st August. We have had four previous Pensions (Increase) Measures since the war, three of which backdated the increase—in one case for at least five months. Here we are putting it forward to 1st August, I hope.
    Although in Committee we tried hard to backdate the increase as in the case of the previous Measures and were unsuccessful, I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will not now go back on what we thought was a pretty hard and fast date for the inception of the increase, namely, 1st August.
    As I say, we are very disappointed that between us we have not been able to do more to improve the Bill. We accept it for what it is, as, I am sure, will the pensioners who are to gain under its provisions. But in spite of what the hon. and learned Gentleman and others said in Committee, it seems to me that it will not be long before we have another Measure of the same kind, and when that happens I hope that we shall be more generous to these people than we have been in this Bill.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

  CHEVENING ESTATE BILL
  Considered in Committee.
  [Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]
  Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

  CHEVENING ESTATE BILL

    Clause 2.—(PROVISIONS AS TO INCOME TAX, ESTATE DUTY AND STAMP DUTY.)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
    2.16 p.m.
    Sir Lynn Ungoed-Thomas: It may be useful to make one or two observations on this Clause in addition to the glowing and merited

    1617
    tribute which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition paid to the generosity of Lord Stanhope. It is our duty, particularly those of us on this side of the Committee, to examine Measures of this nature meticulously. The last Bill of this kind on which I was engaged was the Arundel Estates Bill. On that occasion the gift was so riddled with advantages to the donor that the House of Commons, quite rightly in my view, would not accept it.
    This Bill is a startling contrast to the Arundel Estates Bill. Not only is there here a most generous and munificent gift, but on every single point of detail which one has to examine there is the most scrupulous regard to the general law and the most scrupulous requirement that there shall be no incidental advantage to Lord Stanhope or his family. Under the Bill, Lord Stanhope, who has the property for life, pays the Income Tax on the estate during his lifetime. The only provision made about Income Tax or Estate Duty is actually on the passage of the estate into the public purpose for which the Bill is designed or whilst the estate is serving that public purpose.
    I wish to say that my hon. Friends, my hon. and learned Friends in particular, and myself, having examined the Bill in detail, would like to join in paying a tribute not only to the general principle which inspires the gift and upon which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition spoke, but also to the meticulous regard that has been shown for the public law and the scrupulous way in which no advantage of any kind goes to Lord Stanhope or his family, which is found in every provision right through the Bill.
    It is remarkable that on a Bill of this kind, which has of necessity complex provisions in it, complex both in the trusts which are declared and in the Estate Duty and Income Tax repercussions, we should nevertheless come here today without having put a single Amendment on the Notice Paper. Therefore, on this matter of scrupulous detail, I should like to join in the tribute which has already been paid from these benches for this most generous gift.
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon): The hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) is, of course, a master of that branch of the law which is concerned with trust instruments of this sort. Therefore, it is gratifying to hear from him the tribute which he has just paid. It is only necessary for me to say that I entirely endorse what was said by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Not only is this a wonderful property which now goes to the benefit of the nation, but, as he said, nothing is withheld, all is given.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Schedule agreed to.
    Preamble agreed to.
    Bill reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

    METROPOLITAN MAGISTRATES' COURTS [MONEY]
    Resolution reported,
    That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to increase the maximum number of metropolitan stipendiary magistrates, it is expedient to authorise—

    (a) any increase in the sums payable out of the Consolidated Fund which is directly or indirectly attributable to any provision of the said Act increasing the maximum number of metropolitan stipendiary magistrates;

    (b) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament—

    (i) of any remuneration payable to persons acting as metropolitan stipendiary magistrates under any provision of the said Act; and

    (ii) of any increase in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment which is attributable to provisions of the- said Act relating to the powers of the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District with respect to land and buildings required for the purposes of the probation system and his power to borrow money.

    Resolution agreed to.

  METROPOLITAN MAGISTRATES' COURTS BILL [Lords]
  Considered in Committee.
  [Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]
  Clauses 1 and 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

  METROPOLITAN MAGISTRATES' COURTS BILL [Lords]

    Clause 3.—(POWER OF RECEIVER TO PROVIDE PREMISES FOR PROBATION PURPOSES.)
    2.24 p.m.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Renton): I beg to move, in page 2, line 23, at the end to add:
    "and subsection (3) of section seventy-seven of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948 (which provides for the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of grant towards expenditure out of the metropolitan police fund under the Fifth Schedule to that Act), shall have effect as if the reference in paragraph (a) thereof to the said Fifth Schedule included a reference to this section ".
    This Amendment raises a technical point. Its purpose is to authorise the payment of grants at the appropriate rate which, the Committee will remember, is 50 per cent., of any expenditure by the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District in providing premises for the purposes of the probation system in the Metropolitan stipendiary court area. Strictly speaking, we are not doing anything new in terms of advancing authority for the payment of public funds, because the grant is already paid under Section 77 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, but Clause 3 of the Bill gives the Receiver the express power to provide land and buildings.
    Although the expenses of providing premises for probation purposes will still be defrayed out of the Metropolitan Police Fund, such expenditure in future will be incurred under the provisions of this Bill and not under those of the Criminal Justice Act. Therefore we must make special provision for the payment of the grant in that way. The Amendment makes provision for doing so by including in Section 77 (3, a) of the 1948 Act a specific reference to Clause 3 of this Bill. It is rather a roundabout process, but I must advise
    1620
    the Committee that it is a necessary process from the technical point of view.
    Mr. J. A. Sparks: I should like the hon. and learned Gentleman to complete the picture. He said that the Amendment proposes to provide a grant of 50 per cent. towards the expenditure incurred which comes from the Metropolitan Police Fund. I wish to know who will provide the remaining 50 per cent. I think the answer is that it will be the local authorities who will be precepted by the Metropolitan Police Authority.
    This raises a very important principle. Assuming that this Amendment had not been moved, would the whole of this expenditure have fallen upon the Metropolitan Police Fund? The acceptance of the Amendment will reduce the amount from that fund by 50 per cent. which will be paid by the ratepayers in the Metropolitan Police District. What consultations, if any, have been held with the local authorities regarding these financial provisions? This Committee is calling on local authorities and the ratepayers to finance the provisions of this Bill particularly regarding the powers now contained in Clause 3. I think that the local authorities should have been consulted. Perhaps there have been consultations—the Minister did not say—but it appears to me that we are placing a charge on the local authorities and the ratepayers, and I think that some consideration should be given to their point of view.
    It may be that the hon. and learned Gentleman can explain the matter, but from what he said, I think he should complete the whole picture. If he is asking for power to provide 50 per cent. of the expenditure arising under this Clause someone else must find the other 50 per cent., and I wish to know who that will be.
    Mr. Renton: I am glad that the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) has raised this point. It enables me to explain the machinery and the background to the Amendment. I must stress that the acceptance of this Amendment makes no change of substance, it merely alters the statutory authority for the payment by the Secretary of State for the Home Department of the 50 per cent. grant towards the total expenses

    1621
    incurred by the Receiver. Because there is no change of substance, but merely a change of statutory authority, which is purely a matter for Parliament, no consultations have taken place with local authorities. I do not think that the hon. Member for Acton would expect such consultations under the circumstances. There are, of course, annual consultations between the Receiver and the finance officers of the local authorities on all expenditure which the Receiver will undertake and of which the local authorities will pay half.
    We are now discussing the probation system only, and I must keep within the bounds of order by referring only to probation, but I might mention in passing that the machinery is exactly the same with regard to police expenditure and somewhat similar regarding the powers of the Receiver to expend money for courts.
    The Receiver is given power, the present statutory authority for which is found in the Local Government Act, 1948, to make a precept upon local authorities, not for the whole expenditure he has to incur for probation purposes but for half of it. He makes a precept for only half because he knows that he has statutory authority to call upon the Secretary of State for a grant-in-aid in respect of the other half. That is the situation, and I hope that that explanation gives the hon. Gentleman the information he wanted.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 4.—(BORROWING POWERS OF RECEIVER.)
    Motion made, and Question proposed. That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
    2.30 p.m.
    Mr. Marcus Lipton: The matters I wish to raise are akin to the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks). I have raised this subject on previous occasions and, in order to save the time of the Committee, I invite the Joint Undersecretary of State to look at the contribution I was able to make in two
    1622
    discussions on this matter, on 29th January, 1952, and on 6th May, 1954.
    On those occasions, I pointed out that Parliament had very few opportunities to debate the finances of the metropolitan police. I pointed out then that, outside London, we have either the standing joint committees or watch committees which exercise some degree of control over local police administration. In London, we have, in a sense, the most undemocratic form of police administration which exists in the country.
    The hon. and learned Gentleman has referred in summary fashion to the way in which police finances are provided. If one turns to the Civil Estimates for the current year, one sees there an Appendix covering the Metropolitan Police Fund. That involves a total expenditure of about £29 million, of which nearly £14 million —
    The Deputy-Chairman: I am not sure how the hon. Member relates this to the Clause.
    Mr. Lipton: What I am trying to argue, Sir Gordon, if I may be allowed another minute, is that this Clause confers upon the Receiver power to borrow money, and the repayment of any loans raised under the Clause would create a charge on public funds. In order to collect those public funds, it is necessary for the police authority to precept on the ratepayers in the Metropolitan Police District to the extent of about £13 million a year. If the Receiver is to be given additional powers, there must inevitably be an effect on the amount he has to raise by way of precept to cover the interest on the additional loans that the Clause authorises him to negotiate.
    For that reason, Sir Gordon, I wish to point out that, in regard to the Metropolitan Police, we have a classic example of a complete departure from the principle of no taxation without representation.
    The Deputy-Chairman: Order. I do not see how this arises on the Clause.
    Mr. Lipton: I am sorry that you have taken that attitude, Sir Gordon. If I may refresh your memory, the Clause provides that the Receiver may have

    1623
    power, with the approval of the Secretary of State, to borrow for the purpose of
    "acquiring any land or erecting any buildings"
    and
    "for the execution of any works or the provision of any equipment the cost of which ought in the opinion of the Secretary of State to be spread over a term of years."
    In my submission, Sir Gordon, that means that we are entitled to discuss the financial consequences of agreeing to the Clause now before the Committee. I am trying to suggest that one of those financial consequences is that the ratepayers in the Metropolitan Police District will probably have to be subject to additional precepts if the Receiver exercises the powers which we are asked to confer upon him under Clause 4. I do not see how the conferring of this power on the Receiver to raise loans can be divorced or separated from the inevitable consequences which will flow from the passing of the Clause. I was trying to bring to the notice of the Committee the fact that, every year, the Metropolitan Police authorities issue a precept long before they have submitted any estimate either to the House or to anyone else.
    The Deputy-Chairman: That does not arise on this Clause.
    Mr. C. W. Gibson: On a point of order, Sir Gordon. I submit to you that the opening words of subsection (2) are "The security". The security for the funds which it may be necessary for the Receiver to raise is the London rates, because it is to be met out of the money which he receives from the precepts. If that is so, are we not entitled to raise the point which my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) is raising?
    The Deputy-Chairman: We cannot have a general discussion on this Clause about police expenditure.
    Mr. Lipton: I am sorry that you are adopting this attitude, Sir Gordon, because it places hon. Members in very serious difficulty. We are here expected to approve financial proposals without being given an opportunity to make any comment whatever upon the way in which those financial proposals are to be effected. The only way in which the Clause can be operated is at the expense of the ratepayers of the Metro-
    1624
    politan Police District, including 28 Metropolitan Boroughs and about 17 other rating authorities.
    If I may respectfully say so, Sir Gordon, a discussion on this point, on the Amendment moved a few moments ago by the hon. and learned Gentleman, was allowed while you were not in the Chair. On this particular Clause, which raises almost exactly the same point but in a much larger framework, you are deciding that no discussion is permissible about the financial consequences to the ratepayers of London if we accept the Clause. In the circumstances, I hope that you will feel disposed to allow a little discussion.
    The Deputy-Chairman: I think that I have given the right decision, and I propose to stick to it.
    Sir Lynn Ungoed-ThomasMay I make one short submission on the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham when he referred to subsection (2)? I have a little difficulty in following this at the moment. Subsection (1) provides that, under borrowing powers conferred on the Receiver, he may borrow certain sums of money for certain purposes on the security referred to in subsection (2). The security in subsection (2) is the moneys for which the Receiver is authorised to issue a precept. Therefore, the moneys for which he is authorised to issue a precept are the security for the borrowing powers given under subsection (1), and, as I understand it, that really means the rates. Therefore, I should respectfully submit that the composition of that security which is the subject of subsection (2) is within the ambit of the discussion in the Committee and, therefore, within the submissions which my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton is making.
    The Deputy-Chairman: That is an entirely different matter.
    Mr. Sparks: Further to that point of order, Sir Gordon. The last two lines of subsection (2) refer specifically to the issue of a precept
    "in relation to expenses incurred for those purposes respectively "
    and the purposes are enumerated above. I submit that the Clause gives power to the Receiver to levy a rate and a charge upon the local authorities in the Metropolitan Police District. If we are not

    1625
    allowed to refer to that on the Motion, That the Clause stand part of the Bill, what is it there for?
    The Deputy-Chairman: It does not refer to Government expenditure. Police expenditure is under the Local Government Act. It has nothing to do with this Measure.
    Mr. Sparks: If we wanted to oppose giving the Receiver the power to levy a precept, we should be entitled to do that?
    The Deputy-Chairman: Certainly hon. Members can argue that they do not want this Clause at all, but we are arguing about whether the Clause should stand part of the Bill or not.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: Are we not entitled to argue on subsection (2) that the rates are not a proper security for borrowing powers of the Receiver under subsection (1), and therefore to consider the composition of the security? Is not that within the ambit of the discussion on the Clause stand part?
    The Deputy-Chairman: That, might be suitable, but we cannot argue the whole matter of police expenditure.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: Not the whole matter, I agree.
    Mr. Gibson: This Bill provides for additional expenditure, mainly in relation to probation costs, but it is additional expenditure which at the moment none of us in local government in London has any knowledge of until the Receiver precepts. If the Bill is to provide for possibilities of additional money to be raised by precept on London boroughs, surely that must be capable of discussion and question. That is all that we are asking for at the moment.
    The Deputy-Chairman: Hon. Members can discuss whether these borrowing powers should be given or not, I quite agree.
    Mr. Lipton: May I within the definition that has emerged try to make the point that I was starting to make before these various points of order were raised? If it is necessary to argue that further borrowing powers should not be given to the receiver, then I am pre-
    1626
    pared to say, for the purpose of argument, that these powers should not be granted. The next question, therefore, is why these additional powers should not be given to the Receiver. I should like to adduce by way of reason why these additional powers should not be granted the fact that the people who have to pay at least one half of the expenditure, namely, the ratepayers of London, have no say whatever in the way in which these borrowing powers will be exercised if we accede to the Clause that is now before the Committee.
    I do not object, nor would any other hon. Member object, if the Government came to Parliament and said, "We want money for a particular purpose." When, however, the Government put forward a question of that kind we are entitled to discuss whether or not the purpose is a proper one for which these additional powers are required, and to what extent these additional powers will remain subject to democratic control of some kind.
    I am suggesting that if we grant the powers asked for in this Clause, as requested by the Joint Under-Secretary of State, we are betraying a trust that is reposed in us as representatives of the citizens of London to have some regard to their interests when these matters on rare occasions come before the House. Borrowing powers are not an unimportant factor because at the present time it may be seen by reference to the police accounts that there is already authority to borrow £7 million and that power is already vested in the Receiver of Metropolitan Police. As a matter of fact, £9 million has already been authorised, of which £7 million has been borrowed, repayable over a period of 22 to 30 years.
    Reference to the accounts also shows that at the end of the 1958–59 financial year there was outstanding on this capital or loan account £4,481,967 0s. 5d. For a variety of reasons, the Government take the view that these borrowing powers should be increased. The loan charges already amount in the Estimates for 1959–60 to a sum of £297,850 which is quite a considerable sum because it means that in order to provide this sum of £297,850 to cover the loan charges, there has to be a precept upon the ratepayers of the Metropolitan area

    1627
    to cover at least half that amount because only half the amount of the total police expenditure is provided by way of Government grant and the precept for the current financial year is calculated to provide £14 million. I suggest that in these circumstances it is not quite good enough that the first intimation that the local authorities have of loan charges, interest, and other items of expenditure comes in the form of a circular on 14th February each year before any of the local authorities or the House sees any of the Estimates. The first opportunity that we have of finding out what is the position comes when the Estimates appear some time in March and, by the time the people directly concerned get to know anything about it, the whole thing is cut and dried, settled and finished and demand notes have gone out. That is an end of the matter.
    2.45 p.m.
    The Deputy-Chairman: That seems to have nothing to do with this Clause.
    Mr. Lipton: I am trying to suggest. Sir Gordon, once again that if we already have to provide something like £297,000 by way of loan charges, this Clause will increase the amount that will have to be found to provide for loan charges in future years. I think that the Committee is entitled to some further information and some further assurance from the Joint Under-Secretary that in some way or other in the course of operating this Clause, if we agree to the Clause, there will be some form of consultation not merely with finance officers pledged to secrecy and not allowed to say what is going on, because local authorities never get to know about it until the whole matter is cut and dried. Before we can be asked to agree to this Clause, I think that the Joint Under-Secretary may be fairly asked to give some assurance that a better method of consultation is provided in future than has been made available in the past.
    This has been a matter of complaint for many years, and it is time that something was done about it. I raised it in 1952, in 1954 and in 1956. In 1952, when I raised this and other points, the then Home Secretary. Lord Kilmuir, said:
    "They are matters for inquiry, and that inquiry I shall make."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 29th January, 1952; Vol. 495, c. 127.]
    1628
    That is what the Home Secretary said in January, 1952, and no inquiry took place. Seven years have elapsed and nothing has been done about it. In the interests of good democratic government, I think that the time has come for the Joint Under-Secretary to provide some assurance on the lines that I have tried to present to the Committee.
    Mr. Gibson: I do not want to give the impression that I am opposed to an improvement of the probation system in London or of the buildings in which it works or that I oppose necessarily the provision of land and buildings to improve and extend this valuable service in the London courts. I have had too much experience of the help that the probation service gives in social problems to be of that opinion.
    This is, however, a proposal to expend what could easily be a very large sum of money in the extension of this service, particularly in view of the cost of buildings and land in London. If we are to extend this power to the Receiver, we should provide protection in the way of discussions before anybody is committed to the final expenditure.
    Who is to decide where these new buildings to be used in the probation service will be? Is there to be any discussion with local authorities in the London area, who have a close and intimate knowledge and an interest in the question, or are matters to be continued as at present, when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) has said, we know nothing until we get the precept? As far as I know, there is no effective discussion beforehand of any of this expenditure, except, perhaps, for a private talk with a finance officer, who never reports to the council about it. I say that with some feeling as one who spent many years on the Metropolitan Standing Joint Committee. It is up to the Government to say whether, in view of the number of occasions on which this question has been raised, a new line will be taken concerning this provision for additional expenditure, even if, in view of the Ruling from the Chair, we cannot deal with the whole cost of the Metropolitan Police.
    Will the Minister, therefore, undertake to look into the point that before

    1629
    the service is extended in any large way, at least before any financial commitments, which could be very large, are entered into, there will be discussions with the representatives of the London boroughs, possibly the Metropolitan Standing Joint Committee, a body which can represent the opinions and feelings of London ratepayers and which is responsible to them and can report to them and be pulled up, if necessary, by ratepayers, using their natural right to criticise public expenditure?
    At the moment, there seems to be no public check except through the Home Secretary, who has plenty of work to do apart from checking matters of this kind. Without an enthusiastic Home Secretary, such a check is ineffective. It certainly does not in any way meet the principle that there should be no taxation without representation. This kind of thing has been going on for so many years in London that if we are to extend the borrowing powers of the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police, we ought this time to make provision whereby discussions will take place with the people who have to provide, in the words of the Minister, at least 50 per cent. of the moneys. I put that point to the Government and I hope that they will provide a satisfactory answer.
    Mr. Ede: This is a matter that gets raised in the House of Commons from time to time. The curious thing is that the Metropolitan Police is the only part of the British police forces which is under good democratic control. Let my hon. Friends the Members for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) or Clapham (Mr. Gibson), or any other hon. Member, try to raise a matter in the House about what happens in a county force. The first thing that is said is that the Home Secretary has no jurisdiction. For the Metropolitan Police, however, the Home Secretary is the police authority.
    The Estimates to which my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton has alluded can be called for by the Opposition on any Supply Day if thought fit. Then, the Home Secretary can be called upon to justify in detail every penny of expenditure and the conduct of every officer, high and low, in that force. It is the only police force in the country to which that applies. Any expenditure
    1630
    incurred under this new Measure will be subject to that control. If my hon. Friends, or any other hon. Members, think that the site selected for a probation office or the conduct of a probation officer is unsuitable, they can have the matter raised either at Question Time or on consideration of the Home Office Vote on any Supply Day they like to call for it.
    Contrast that with what happens in an ordinary county. Let us suppose that in the Urban District of Dorking the rate payers feel that the probation office is in an inconvenient place or that the probation officer does not act appropriately. In so far as it is a matter within the police, neither the ratepayers of Surrey nor the representative of Dorking in the House of Commons, if he were free to do so, could raise anything about it. Expenditure on police in the County of Surrey is a matter for the Standing Joint Committee, which consists—
    The Deputy-Chairman: I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but he is getting a little far away from the Clause. The Motion is, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
    Mr. Ede: I am sorry, Sir Gordon, if you think I have gone too far, but I was trying to prove that the Metropolitan Police is the only part of our police forces in which the good democratic control that my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton called for operates. As I have already said, no police expenditure in any county can be questioned by anybody other than the Standing Joint Committee, and that Committee does not have to report to anybody.
    I could wish that there were more frequent debates in the House of Commons on the Home Secretary's Vote in relation to police powers. This is where all these matters can be raised and I hope that in the years to come, we shall have this matter more frequently ventilated than we have done in the past, in the appropriate way on a day set aside for the Estimates.
    3.0 p.m.
    Mr. Sparks: I listened with interest to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who has a very great deal of experience in this matter, having been in the Home Office for some

    1631
    years and having been worried about this problem on past occasions. While I cannot go too deeply into the point which he mentioned, I do not think that the local authorities or ratepayers in the Metropolitan Police area will be wholly satisfied that, although they are not consulted about expenditure from the Metropolitan Police Fund, nevertheless, Questions may be asked in this Chamber after the precept has gone out and nothing can be done to change or vary any part of it. That does not apply outside the Metropolitan Police area, but I should think that there is something to be said for the watch committees who control the borough police. They have much more say in police expenditure in the boroughs than local authorities in the Metropolitan Police area have.
    We must balance the advantages and disadvantages to see which is the best object to which we can direct our attention. We are asked to approve Clause 4, which proposes to give to the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District powers to borrow money. This is for purposes connected with his responsibilities towards the Metropolitan Police Force, the Metropolitan Magistrates' Courts and the probation service within the Metropolitan stipendiary court area. That is a very wide and comprehensive field. The Explanatory Memorandum says on Clause 4 that, although this will not create an immediate increase in expenditure,
    "it is impossible to estimate the amount of any ultimate increase ".
    This is a very important factor, since the Clause envisages an increase of expenditure in due time.
    In view of the fact that the Clause presumably reaffirms the right of the Receiver to levy a charge upon local authorities and ratepayers, I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman should give an undertaking that consultations will be entered into with the people who will pay the bill, who, I am sure, will not be satisfied to be told, "In the House of Commons, you have to pay the bill and your Member cannot say anything about it". As representatives of the taxpayers, they expect us to say something about this sort of thing. I would have thought, therefore, that we are entitled to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to
    1632
    give the Committee an assurance that before any expenditure which arises from the borrowing powers of the Receiver is incurred there shall be consultations with the people or representatives of the people who will be called upon to find half the necessary money. I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman could give that assurance because we are concerned, not with an immediate increase, but with an increase in expenditure in the next few years.
    In addition, we are giving the Receiver an added power which he did not have before, namely, the power to borrow money for the probation system. That point has been adequately dealt with by my hon. Friends. We do not apologise for emphasising it, because, whatever my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields may say, this is a matter of considerable concern among all authorities in the Metropolitan Police area. All that is asked is that before the people are presented with the bill they shall be consulted.
    There is another factor which arises from Clause 4. It is proposed to give the Receiver power to borrow considerable sums of money for practically all the purposes of the Metropolitan Police district. It is a very formidable power and will enable the Receiver to acquire land, buildings, and so on, for adaptation for the use and purposes of the Metropolitan Police and its other services.
    Distinct advantages are to be found in consultation with the local authorities in the Metropolitan Police area. It may well be that the local authorities in those areas will already have land and buildings no longer required for other purposes and which could be adapted for police authority purposes.
    Therefore, for the Receiver to shut himself, as it were, in a separate and distinct compartment and say, "We are not having anything to do with you local authorities, we are going to go our own way," does not seem to me a good course to follow, because I think local authorities are in a position, if their cooperation is asked for, to make a substantial contribution in the shape of land and buildings and other requirements, towards the needs and requirements of the Metropolitan Police Authority.
    I should have thought that the first fruitful source would be consultation

    1633
    with the local authorities about the requirements of the Metropolitan Police authority. I should have thought it would invite the local authorities to make some suggestions or recommendations, to put forward any proposals they may have. It may be that the Metropolitan Police authority may like to erect some buildings in an area for its probationary service, and that local authorities in that area may already have some buildings which could be usefully adapted for the purpose, they no longer requiring them for the purposes for which they originally held them. I can see quite a wide range of possibilities in this idea of inter-relationship between the Metropolitan Police authority and the local authorities in endeavouring to meet the former's requirements as laid down in this Clause.
    All we are really trying to do is to impress upon the hon. and learned Gentleman and the Home Office that there is much more to be gained by consultation and co-operation with the local authorities than there is by ignoring them and refusing to take them into consultation. If the hon. and learned Gentleman can give us an assurance that he and the Home Office will again look into this question, which has cropped up on many previous occasions, I am quite sure we shall be satisfied that something will be done to reach towards that standard of co-operation which we ought in the end to strive for, and that is, closer co-operation between the local authorities and the Metropolitan Police authority.
    Mr. Renton: I think it may be con venient if I intervene now because—
    Mr. James MacColl: There is an important matter which I want to raise. I do not know whether the hon. and learned Gentleman would like to hear it before he intervenes or whether he will answer it later.
    Mr. Renton: I was thinking that there have been some misunderstandings, quite obviously, in the minds of hon. Gentlemen, and to save any further hon. Members from repeating similar misunderstandings I hope it may be convenient to the Committee if I do my best now to explain the position. That would not preclude the hon. Gentleman
    1634
    from raising another point later, and I will do my best to answer it.
    The effect of this Clause is that the Receiver's power to borrow for the three purposes which are in the Bill will in future not be subject to a limit imposed by Statute but that each loan which he raises will be subject to the approval of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and, of course, of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer as well.
    This Clause will not free the Receiver from Parliamentary control. All that it does is to remove the need for periodical legislation. Parliamentary control, to which, as the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) quite rightly pointed out, local authorities in similar circumstances would not be subject, will be exercisable over the Receiver's borrowing powers in several ways: first, because my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer can each be questioned in the House about the way in which the power to authorise loans has been exercised; secondly, because the Receiver's estimates come before the Select Committee on Estimates and can be called for discussion upon the Floor of the House as well; thirdly, because the Receiver's appropriation account is presented with the Civil Appropriation Accounts generally and therefore comes before the Committee of Public Accounts and is subject to scrutiny in the same way.
    Mr. Lipton: Years after the money has been spent.
    Mr. Renton: With respect, that cannot be so with the Estimates.
    As to the question of the making of a precept prejudicing the position of local authorities, it is really not so serious as the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) has suggested. As I said on an earlier Amendment, a precept is made, I agree in advance of expenditure, in respect of 50 per cent. of the expenditure, but if a change has to be made later, because, for example, there has been an under-expenditure in relation to the amount for which the precept was levied, an adjustment is easily and readily made when later precepts come to be made.

    1635
    In any event, if hon. Members apply their minds to the subject matter of the items in respect of which the precepts would have to be made, they will realise that there is no great deal of room for error of judgment or of accounting or of estimating. On the contrary, such things as better courts, new police stations and probation offices are things which the public want, and which they will be willing to pay for provided that they are built in a way which is not extravagant and the money is properly accounted for and subject to Parliamentary control. Although it was a point worth making, I say with respect that it was not a point with very great substance or one which need arouse many fears.
    It has been suggested that the Receiver, in exercising powers to provide police stations and new courts for metropolitan stipendiary magistrates and new probation offices, should consult the local authorities. The Receiver is answerable to the Home Secretary in exercising these powers and the Home Secretary, and he alone, is answerable to Parliament. Before we try to fix upon the Receiver any duty of consultation with a third party we have to consider the extent to which it might impinge upon the Home Secretary's responsibility to Parliament.
    I would add, having made that point, that, as has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), there is at least once a year informal consultation between the finance officers of the Metropolitan boroughs and the Receiver so that the authorities, through their officers, are kept in the picture about future expenditure.
    Then there is the planning procedure to be considered in respect of the siting of the courts. Where a Government Department is concerned, planning procedure is somewhat different from that in the case of the private individual. Nevertheless, Government Departments lean over backwards to make sure that they do not tread on the toes of local planning authorities, and the Receiver, acting on behalf of my right hon. Friend, when any question of providing a new court or a police station might arise, would be anxious to consult the plan-
    1636
    ning authority at the earliest possible stage. In that way also, therefore, there is de facto consultation with local authorities. Therefore, I think the hon. Gentlemen who have expressed anxieties about the exercise of borrowing powers will find that those anxieties are not as great as they expressed them to be.
    3.15 p.m.
    Mr. Gibson: The Minister has not yet dealt with the point. We are not asking about the Parliamentary control which exists up to a point after the money has been precepted and very often after most of it has been spent. We are saying that if there is to be a heavy rate, as there is in London, on the ratepayers through the borough councils for police purposes, we ought at least to give an opportunity to examine the estimates before the final figures are arrived at.
    That is what we are asking for. We are not saying that there is no opportunity of criticism, through the Home Secretary or through the annual discussion of the Estimates. We are saying that before the police issue the precept, for which they must have prepared estimates, they should give the local authorities who have to raise the money an opportunity to discuss it and put forward their criticisms, if any. That has nothing to do with planning. In any case, planning does not affect cost. It is a matter of the rights of the local authorities who have to raise the money—and who put it on my demand note every year—to have a discussion before the final decision is taken on how much the rates shall be.
    Mr. Renton: That is where I find myself in difficulty, Sir Gordon, as regards your earlier Ruling. It seems to me that Clause 4 is based upon the existing accepted law that, to the extent of 50 per cent. of the expenditure on these matters, the Receiver has the right to precept. We refer to that only because we say that the sums raised by the issue of the precept shall be the security for the loans which he is empowered to make. The only point which it is in order to discuss is whether that is a sound security or not. I do not think it would be right for me to argue that there should not be power to issue a precept, because there is no question here of amending the Local Government Act,

    1637
    and there is no Amendment on the Notice Paper saying that we should do so.
    Mr. Sparks: But why should this responsibility be saddled upon local authorities and ratepayers who are inarticulate in this matter and who are not consulted in any way?
    Mr. Renton: I think the hon. Gentleman is dishonouring himself when he says that, because he is their representative in the House of Commons, and when he raises a question of expenditure on the Home Office Estimates or on the Civil Appropriation Account, he is representing them. In my opinion he is also representing the local authority of his constituency, more especially if it should particularly ask him to do so, which it has every right to do.
    I say further that although my right hon. Friend has the sole responsibility to Parliament in these matters, subject to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's approval of the terms of loans, there is nothing to prevent any local authority from making representations to my right hon. Friend about any proposed expenditure. It is inconceivable that on any major item of expenditure, such as the building of a new police station or a new stipendiary magistrate's court, the local authority would not have got to hear about the matter, in one or other of the ways I have mentioned, before the actual amount of expenditure to which the local authority would ultimately be committed had come to light. So I say, as I said before, that although I welcome the opportunity of explaining these matters, I feel that the anxieties expressed by hon. Gentlemen opposite are not real ones, and that they dishonour themselves when they say that their constituents have no opportunity of challenging what it is proposed to do.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: We are very grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for his very full, comprehensive and sincere approach to the rather difficult problem brought forward from this side of the Committee. However, he has not quite faced the problem. He came to the point of order, and then when he came to face the problem he rather inclined to hide behind the point of order.
    Let me put it this way. What my hon. Friends, who have great experience
    1638
    of local authority matters, are concerned about is the local government position. There are two aspects to the security referred to in the Clause. Fifty per cent. of the security is provided out of Parliamentary moneys. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) has just made it perfectly clear that my hon. Friends are not in the least concerned about any inadequacy of control over that 50 per cent. There is full 50 per cent. control through the Home Secretary in this House. Let us clear that out of the way with the answers which the hon. and learned Gentleman has given on the Parliamentary aspect of representation here.
    Mr. Renton: The hon. and learned Gentleman speaks of full control over 50 per cent. There is, in fact, full control over 100 per cent., because when my right hon. Friend can be questioned about this he is questioned about not half the expenditure but all of it.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: I accept that. I ought to put it rather more accurately. I should have said that there is full Parliamentary control over what arises from taxation. Therefore, there is full democratic control over what arises from taxation.
    Let us take the 50 per cent. raised from rates. It is true—this is the whole point—that there can be Parliamentary accountability through the Home Secretary in the House for that 50 per cent. The point is, however, that the money is raised by rates through the corporations. Therefore, it is the corporations who should have the say about it. It is no more necessary to say that there is accountability through the Home Secretary in the House of Commons than to say that there is accountability to any other body. The House of Commons is a tax representative body. It is not a rates representative body, and it is no answer to say that there is an hon. Member who represents a certain borough in the House. The Member is not here as a representative of the ratepayers. The councillors are the representatives of the ratepayers.
    Therefore, the point is that with regard to the 50 per cent. raised by rates, the representation, the accountability or at the least the consultation should be with the Metropolitan boroughs, which are the democratic bodies representative of the

    1639
    ratepayers. It is no answer to say that there is accountability for the 100 per cent. in this House when only 50 per cent. is raised by taxation and the other 50 per cent. by rates.
    I agree at once with the reference to the point of order which was made by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Of course, the Clause is on the basis of the law as it stands. However, I suggest that it is perfectly legitimate to cover this, and certainly advisable to do so now that we have gone so far, when extended borrowing powers are given enabling the Receiver to raise further moneys. We are at least entitled to an answer in respect of further moneys which are to be raised on the additional security provided by the Clause, and, therefore, on the general principle which is applicable as between ratepayers and taxpayers.
    It is not at all surprising that such a very distinguished lawyer as the present Lord Chancellor, when he was Home Secretary, promised, as I understood from my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton), to look into this matter and give it his consideration. It is a serious problem. It is a difficult point of much wider import than this Bill. What we therefore ask, and what my hon. Friends have been asking for, are these two things. First, within the discretion which already exists for the Home Secretary, there should be proper consultation with the boroughs. The second point is that the extremely important point of principle which my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton brought before the Committee should be subject to the serious consideration which the present Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary at that time, obviously considered it merited.
    Mr. James MacColl: I am sorry that I cannot follow this fascinating discussion, on which I find myself in entire agreement with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas), but I want to raise an entirely different question.
    I want to ask the Joint Under-Secretary whether I am correct in assuming that the words "Metropolitan magistrates' courts" include Metropolitan juvenile courts? On that
    1640
    assumption I wish to press the hon. and learned Gentleman to give some assurance to the Committee that under these new powers which are being obtained by the Receiver some expenditure will very quickly be provided for a better service of Metropolitan juvenile courts than is at the moment available. As I understand it, this Clause is in no sense, as Clause 3 was, a formal change. It is much more than that because, in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum, we read:
    "There is no current power to borrow for court purposes; the amount of borrowing necessary will depend upon the extent and scale of building it is possible to carry out over a number of years …"
    I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman can give the Committee an assurance that there will be an extended building programme to deal with the quite shocking conditions which at present obtain in the Metropolitan juvenile courts.
    It is always an embarrassing issue of Parliamentary ethics to know how far one ought to confuse one's functions as a magistrate with one's functions as a Member of Parliament. I am always extremely reluctant to do so, but I have thought about this for some time. I think it would be wrong to allow the opportunity to pass without drawing the attention of the Committee to these very shocking conditions.
    I do not do so in any real sense of censuring the hon. and learned Gentleman and his Department. The problems are difficult. They are problems which baffled my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) when he was in charge of the Department, They are not new, but they are getting worse because of the increase in the size of the court lists. The main cause of the difficulty is that, in order to try to avoid the unpleasantness of children's courts taking place in adult magistrates' courts, they are held in buildings which are available only temporarily, with one or two exceptions, for the day on which they are used. In other words, the courts are tenants wandering from place to place.
    Mr. Renton: On a point of order. Sir Gordon. I am very reluctant to interrupt the hon. Member, because he is speaking on a very important matter; but, unfortunately, it does not come within the

    1641
    Bill. This Bill deals with Metropolitan magistrates' courts and that means stipendiary courts, not juvenile courts.
    Mr. MacColl: That is a horrible point of order which leaves me breathless because, if it does not deal with what, after all, are not petty sessional courts, but courts in the Metropolitan magistrates' area under the Chief Magistrate, staffed by Metropolitan stipendiary and other magistrates, which historically have stemmed from the ordinary stipendiary courts, who has power to spend money on these miserable and unfortunate victims of the present situation?
    If it is true that the Bill does not cover Metropolitan juvenile courts, the position is appalling. It means that the Receiver is responsible for providing the buildings. They are not petty sessional courts that come under the ordinary arrangements for petty sessions. They are clerked, run and staffed in every way by the Metropolitan courts.
    3.30 p.m.
    The Deputy-Chairman: I understand that juvenile courts are outside the terms of the Bill and therefore cannot be discussed.
    Mr. MacColl: I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman has been misinstructed. I have not got a copy of the Metropolitan Police Courts Act, 1840, so I do not know the definition of a magistrate's court. It is not defined in the Bill.
    It is a fantastic situation. Where one has courts that are under the Chief Magistrates, are staffed by officers from Bow Street, clerked by Bow Street clerks, and are in every way an integral part of the service provided by the Metropolitan Police Court, in the old use of the word, and now the Metropolitan magistrates' courts, I cannot believe that by some kind of failure in draftsmanship, because that is all it can be, the Receiver is to have no power to borrow money to build properly constituted courts. The overcrowding and the difficulties encountered, and I use a blunt word, are scandalous. These courts are worse than anything in an adult court. If it is out of order to discuss juvenile courts, the moderateness with
    1642
    which I started in my desire not to get involved in controversy in this matter is very rapidly evaporating.
    Is it the intention when Metropolitan police courts are provided to include facilities in those buildings for juvenile courts? The present practice is not to do so. That practice is a very good one, but if nothing can be done about juvenile courts, under the present position—and I speak purely as an individual—I am not sure that it would not be better to have them included as an integral part of the adult court buildings. That would be better than the existing situation where in some cases—and I am not grinding a personal axe because the court which has the misfortune of having my services most frequently is one of the better ones and I have not much to complain about—the courts are deplorable.
    We have the extraordinary situation of people coming from all over the world, and from all parts of the country, to see our juvenile courts and to assess the high reputation that they have earned. Modesty forbids me from assessing the benefit derived by these visitors, but people are brought from the confines of the Empire and the Commonwealth to see how these courts work. On arrival these people are appalled at the conditions under which the children are kept and under which the juvenile courts function.
    It is unfortunate that when the hon. and learned Gentleman produced this Bill to borrow money to provide a court, he did not take the trouble to include juvenile courts. That is something which I find very difficult to believe. It indicates an indifference to the problem that I am extremely surprised to find. I did not rise with the intention of criticising the hon. and learned Gentleman, because I have always found his Department sympathetic in this matter.
    In one well-known court we have the situation where, when the bench wants to deliberate and to consider its decision, it has to retire behind curtains. Every word of the discussion about whether there should be a finding of guilty, or what treatment should be given to the child, can be heard by the rest of those in the court. There is no proper retiring room.
    Mr. Renton: I hope that I have not done the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) an injustice by making it clear that his remarks are irrelevant to the Clause. The point is that we are not taking power under the Clause for the Receiver to borrow money for the purpose of building, extending, or improving juvenile courts because, although he is responsible for providing such courts, he has advised us that he can do so out of his current expenditure, and does not need borrowing powers for that. The Clause deals only with borrowing powers.
    Mr. MacColl: If the Receiver has said that, will the hon. and learned Gentleman ring up the Receiver or write to him and ask him why he has not done this for the fifteen years that have elapsed since the war?
    The Deputy-Chairman: That would be out of order.
    Mr. Renton: I rise for the second time to deal briefly with the two points which have been raised by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas). He asked, first, whether prior consultation had taken place with local authorities. I dealt with that point in my original reply and I had hoped that he would accept what I said about the degree of consultation which has taken place, and accept my argument that it is adequate, bearing in mind the fact that we have had no demand from local authorities for an extension of the present arrangements.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: I accept the statement of fact that the Minister makes, as I accept statements from all Ministers. What I do not accept is the adequacy of the statement.
    Mr. Renton: Secondly, the hon. and learned Member asked whether or not ratepayers should pay half the expenditure of the police, and so on. This raises a fundamental point of constitutional principle which does not arise on the Clause, but the hon. and learned Member would gain great enlightenment if he had a word with his right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who has already expressed the correct constitutional position in this House and whose wisdom on this matter is well known.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: That is no answer. The Minister cannot ride away with that remark. He gave a considered reply, and I gave a considered reply to his reply. If he proposes to inquire further, I would ask him not to wave his hand but to deal with the arguments on their merits, which, in his latest remarks, he has completely failed to do.
    Mr. Lipton: I agree with my hon. and learned Friend. The Joint Under-Secretary has not attempted to deal with any of the more important points that we have been allowed to make. We cannot part with the Clause without making one further and most respectful attempt to secure from the hon. and learned Gentleman some kind of assurance. I will not press him too hard, because he is not in a position, on a Friday afternoon, in Committee on a comparatively minor Bill—minor only in comparison with more important legislation—to make an important statement of Government policy affecting constitutional principles.
    I first raised some of the points discussed today as long ago as January, 1952. On that occasion the then Home Secretary said:
    "They are matters for inquiry, and that inquiry I shall make."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT. 29th January, 1952; Vol. 495, c. 127.]
    The Deputy-Chairman: That debate cannot have been about this Clause.
    Mr. Lipton: It raised exactly the same constitutional point. If you require to be satisfied about that, Sir Gordon, I shall have to go through the whole debate, which will take up even more time. I do not wish to presume upon either your patience—and you have been very patient with me today—or that of the House, but it was promised in 1952 that this matter would be the subject of an inquiry. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman say whether the matter has ever been inquired into and, if it has not, or if the inquiry is still going on, tell us when we are likely to know something more about it?
    The fact that this point has not been raised very often, and that there have been no representations from the Metropolitan borough councils in the last year or two does not affect the point. There is still a very considerable feeling about it, and there is no earthly reason why

    1645
    this feeling should be ignored or why an attempt should not be made to deal with what I think are the legitimate representations or complaints of ratepayers in the Metropolitan Police District. I think the hon. and learned Gentleman should be a little more forthcoming than he has been so far.
    Mr. Sparks: I do not wish to prolong the proceedings unduly, but I had hoped that the hon. and learned Gentleman might have held forth a glimmer of hope that at least this matter would be reconsidered or looked into. The fact that at the moment no representations have been made by any of the local authorities in the Metropolitan Police District is probably due to the fact that they have made so many in recent years that they are sick and tired of making any more. I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that this is not a dead issue at all. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) who spoke earlier referred to the standing joint committees of the county councils, upon which there are equal numbers of county councillors and other representatives of the police authority and the Home Secretary looking after these matters. It has been suggested, I understand, on previous occasions that a Standing Joint Committee for the Metropolitan Police area might be considered.
    The Deputy-Chairman: Order. That does not arise on this Clause.
    Mr. Sparks: No, Sir Gordon; I cannot pursue that matter any further. I am trying to point out to the hon. and learned Gentleman, who says that no representations have been made, the fact that there have been, and that this is one of them. All I wish to ask him, as we all have done, since we are concerned about future expenditure arising from this Clause under the wide powers given to the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police to raise a lot of money, is that, since there is plenty of time and this expenditure will not come about for several more years, he will consult with the representatives of the people who will have to pay half of the cost. That is all we are asking.
    Plans will have to be put forward for this money, which will have to be borrowed, presumably, on a plan which
    1646
    will be developed over a period of years. I would not have thought that there was any insuperable obstacle to an authority saying "We will borrow the money and do quite a lot of building over a period of years, and we will consult with those local authorities whose ratepayers are to pay half of it." What we are asking does not concern this year, but what is done next year, the year after and the year after that. All we are asking for is that the people who will have to pay half the money shall be taken into consultation before the estimates are finalised. When the figures are final and brought here, we will be banging our heads against a brick wall, because we cannot unscramble the egg that has already been scrambled.
    That is all we are asking the hon. and learned Gentleman to do, and I am very disappointed that he has given us what appears to be a blank refusal to do anything about the matter. I hope that as it is not too late for him to make representations, wherever he is able, to have the matter reconsidered, because I can assure him that this is a live issue and that the local authorities and the ratepayers in the Metropolitan Police Area are by no means satisfied.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 5.—(INTERPRETATION, SHORT TITLE AND CITATION.)
    Mr. Renton: I beg to move, in page 3, line 8, to leave out subsection (4).
    This is a subsection included by the Lords for the purely technical reason for avoiding questions of privilege, and in accordance to the custom, I beg to move that it now be left out.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
    3.45 p.m.
    Mr. Lipton: I wish to ask the Parliamentary Secretary a question. This is a definition Clause, and the only person defined in it is the Receiver. My hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) put a point earlier, and I am wondering whether there should not be in the Clause some definition of what is

    1647
    a magistrates' court. It may be a matter of some importance, and I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to say whether he is satisfied—
    The Deputy-Chairman: I think that the hon. Member is asking for a definition to be put into the Clause. That does not arise on the Question "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
    Mr. Lipton: May I put this point to the Parliamentary Secretary, Sir Gordon? Is he satisfied that the Clause as it stands will not involve us in some difficulties at a later date by reason of the fact that there is no definition of what constitutes a magistrates' court? I put that point to the hon. and learned Gentleman because certain remarks were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes.
    Mr. Renton: There is no difficulty if the previous legislation mentioned in subsection (3) is referred to.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Schedule agreed to.
    Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, considered; read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

  RIGHTS OF LIGHT BILL
  Considered in Committee.
  [Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]
  Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

  RIGHTS OF LIGHT BILL

    Clause 2.—(REGISTRATION OF NOTICE IN LIEU OF OBSTRUCTION OF ACCESS OF LIGHT.)
    3.48 p.m.
    Mr. A. J. Irvine: I beg to move, in page 2, line 21, to leave out from the beginning to "any" in line 22.
    This is merely a drafting point. The words proposed to be left out seem to us to add nothing useful to the Bill. If they have any effect, I suppose it might be to invalidate an application in a case where an applicant had not at the time of making his application formed a firm purpose of the kind referred to in the Clause. But an owner
    1648
    who had not formed such a purpose might yet want, so it seems to me, to safeguard himself. He might desire to make application in that way to safeguard that position and wish to remain free to change his mind at a later date. He could then cancel the notice. As far as we can see, there is no objection to him so behaving. On this view of the matter, either the words which we propose to leave out of the Clause are otiose or, if they have any effect at all, it is an effect which is undesirable. It is upon those grounds that I move the Amendment.
    The Solicitor-General (Sir Harry Hylton-Foster): I share the objection of the hon. and learned Gentleman to inessential and otiose words. We notice them especially in the speeches of other people, but certainly not in the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman. We do not take the view that the words are restrictive because we think their purpose covers what lawyers would call a quia timet purpose.
    We agree that the words are inessential but we think they help the reader and that is why they are there. For reasons which will be known to the hon. and learned Gentleman, lawyers tend to disregard the marginal notes when reading the text of a statute. But in reading the text of this Bill without the words which the hon. Member seeks to leave out, the object of getting the notice registered is not made clear until we get to Clause 3 (1). It was in a desire to help the reader to read the Bill that the words were put in. One always gets into trouble when trying to help but I hope that with that explanation the hon. and learned Gentleman may think it right to leave the words in the Clause.
    Mr. Irvine: It having been clearly manifested that the whole object of these words is explanatory, I feel content with the proposition of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 4.—(REGISTRATION OF AGREE MENTS AS TO ACCESS OF LIGHT.)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.
    The Solicitor-General: The only way in which I could induce the hon. and learned Members for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) and Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) to put their names to my Amendment to leave out Clause 4 was to put down an Amendment on the Order Paper which was out of order. But since the effect is so salutary, I now ask the Committee not to agree that this Clause should stand part of the Bill.
    During the Second Reading debate I explained what this Clause was meant to do, but I must indicate the difficulties which have arisen. When this Bill becomes law it will still be possible to prevent the adverse acquisition of light against one's land by agreement which must be in writing and signed. It looked tempting to get rid of the danger that an agreement of that kind, which would not be required to be registered or publicised, might not meet the eye of a purchaser and result in hardship to him. So we thought that we would make an attempt to register such agreements. But representations which have reached us since the Bill left another place, in particular from the Law Society, which for many reasons is entitled to great respect—particularly in this case, because it knows all about the matter—indicate that it would prove in practice to be unsatisfactory and unworkable. For that reason, we ask the Committee to leave out the Clause.
    The points are that first, we have been able only to make the Clause relate to future agreements, so that the protection will in any case not be complete, because otherwise people would have to undertake the most dreadful searchings through old deeds to see what was involved. Secondly, regarding even future agreements, as the Committee will know, it is not the practice nowadays to make separate agreements about light and air. The relevant provisions for such agreements are found in conveyances or leases and it would be quite impracticable to put the whole conveyance or lease on the Register. A scheme for putting a bit of it only on the Register would be
    1650
    equally unworkable. Also we must not overcrowd the Register and it is common practice in the sale of building plots nowadays to include agreements or consents of this kind.
    In the circumstances, therefore, we think, however well-intentioned we were in including the Clause in the Bill, we must ask the Committee now to delete it.
    Question put and negatived.
    Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 6.—(POWER TO MAKE RULES.)
    Amendment made: In page 6, line 20, leave out from "Tribunal" to end of line 21—[The Solicitor-General.]
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 8.—(INTERPRETATION.)
    Amendment made: In page 7, leave out lines 13 to 16.—[The Solicitor-General.]
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, considered.
    [Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Duchy of Cornwall, signified.]—Bill read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

  FIRE SERVICES BILL [Lords]
  Bill read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]
  Committee upon Monday next.

  FIRE SERVICES [MONEY]
  [Queen's Recommendation signified.]
  Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).
  [Sir GORDON TOUCHE in the Chair]
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of this Session to amend the Fire Services Act, 1947, and make further provision as to the pensions of persons transferring to or from the fire

  1651
  service and as to members of fire brigades becoming temporary instructors in training establishments, it is expedient to authorise—

  (a) any increase attributable to the said Act of this Session in the sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament under any other enactment;

  (b) the payment into the Exchequer of any sums that may be required to be so paid by any rules made by virtue of the said Act under section two of the Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948.—[Miss Hornsby-Smith.]

  Resolution to be reported.
  Report to be received upon Monday next.

  HOUSE OF COMMONS MEMBERS' FUND
  Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre appointed a Managing Trustee of the House of Commons Members' Fund in pursuance of Section 2 of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act, 1939. — [Mr. Hughes-Young.]

  RAILWAYS (NORTH BUCKINGHAMSHIRE)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]
  3.57 p.m.
  Major Sir Frank Markham: I value the privilege of raising a constituency point today, and I believe that all of us who have served in the House for some years feel great pride in the fact that, however busy Parliament may be with international affairs, with colonial affairs or with great questions of defence, there is always time to be found, under your guidance, Mr. Speaker, to raise a constituency grievance.
  The grievance I wish to raise affects at least 10,000 of my constituents and many others in adjoining constituencies. The grievance is that the British Transport Commission has made proposals to abandon a dozen railway passenger stations in North Buckinghamshire and another score of stations in adjacent counties. These proposals include the closing down of the Oxford-Bletchley, Bletchley-Cambridge passenger services, the Bedford-Northampton line in its entirety, and, in my constituency alone, the
  1652
  villages or towns of Swanbourne, Winslow, Verney Junction, Marsh Gibbon, Brickhill, Woburn Sands, Fenny Stratford, Castlethorpe, Padbury, Buckingham, Water Stratford and Olney will have no further railway passenger services if the present proposals of the British Transport Commission go through.
  The first complaint of my constituents, with which I heartily concur, is that the notice sent out to the Press on 15th May about these proposals calls this total abolition of these local lines a plan for streamlining the passenger services.
  It being Four o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Gibson-Watt.]
  Sir F. Markham: The British Transport Commission called this part of a long-term plan for streamlining its passenger services in order to provide an overall more reliable service. That is demonstrably untrue. The total abolition of passenger services is not streamlining and it cannot by any degree be called a means of making a more reliable service.
  These proposals can only be made for one reason. That is that the British Transport Commission thinks that it can make some saving by closing down the Oxford-Bletchley line, the Bletchley-Cambridge line and various other local lines, including the Bedford-Northampton line. It is very evident from information in my possession, and I believe in the possession of the British Transport Commission, that the abolition of these lines, while it might produce a little saving now, would not mean real saving in the future.
  Our contention is that, if the British Transport Commission were to wake up to the opportunities that there are locally for improving services, it would be able to make a paying proposition of these local lines. I should like in this respect to mention that already protests have been made from at least thirty local authorities. Those in my constituency that have already protested include the Buckingham Rural District Council, the Bletchley Urban District

  1653
  Council, Winslow Rural District Council, the Newport Pagnell Rural District Council and the parish councils of Marsh Gibbon, Olney, Wavendon, Castlethorpe, Woburn Sands and Steeple Claydon.
  In the case of Steeple Claydon a petition signed by nearly 400 people has been passed to me. In addition Linslade has produced a petition with 116 signatures against the closing of the Dunstable-Luton branch line. There have also been protests or petitions from the National Farmers' Union, the Bletchley Chamber of Trade, Steeple Claydon Women's Institute, the Parents Association of Bletchley, and, to my mind, not least important, the local railwaymen at Bletchley, the Bletchley branch of the National Union of Railwaymen. This is what the N.U.R. Bletchley branch says of these proposals:
  "The Railwaymen of Bletchley are unable by any stretch of the imagination to see where there can be any saving to the Commission to terminate the passenger services between Bletchley and Bedford …"
  They go on to say that if a diesel railcar service were to be provided, this service would not only be remunerative, but there would be a better and speedier service for the public.
  They go on to say much more. I wish there were time to repeat the whole of the letter which the general manager of the London Midland Region will have received from Mr. A. E. Grigg, the convener of the meeting. It is one of the most reasoned documents ever to come into my hands from any trade union branch.
  It will be seen from all this that, certainly from the local branch of the N.U.R., there are great protests against these closures. The Transport Commission, however, in the document issued to the Press, says that these proposals have already been discussed with the unions concerned. Either that is a blatent lie or it means nothing at all. If it means that these proposals have merely been put before the unions and their opinion has not been asked or considered, I could understand the statement. My belief is that the unions have not seen these documents or proposals. They have given no opinion on them. Therefore, my first question to the Minister is to ask whether
  1654
  the unions agreed to the proposals enumerated in the London Midland Region circular dated 15th May.
  I have already had the benefit of talks with the Minister on this subject and I understand that he has no powers of decision on these matters and that all of this must go before the transport users' consultative committees. These committees are suspect. In this House, from time to time, various Members have pointed out that the transport users' consultative committees are regarded as stooges of the British Transport Commission, or, at least, as rubber stamps. The House will remember that it was only on 15th June this year that my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) made a strong protest against the inadequacy and inefficiency of these transport users' consultative committees.
  Over and above all that, this pamphlet entitled "Handbook on Transport Users Consultative Committees", published from the Central Transport Consultative Committee, Bridge Street, London, and bearing no date, itself brings out the point that these transport users' consultative committees are regarded with deep suspicion throughout the country.
  The pamphlet goes on to increase that suspicion by saying, first, that these consultative committees
  "are not legal tribunals and are not meant to be".
  It states, on page 7, that
  "they must not be overburdened with material"
  and that they need not admit the Press to their meetings. It states that even though local councils may be represented by lawyers, they do not have the right to cross-examine and—I fear that this is said almost with a sneer—that they are
  "not … pleaders with the right to cross-examine and display their forensic skill."
  That means that when these protests come before the transport users' consultative committees, the Transport Commission can put certain facts and statistics and a case, but nobody is allowed to cross-examine. The Commission cannot be challenged as to whether the statistics have been deliberately chosen to meet a given point of view. This makes a mockery of something defended by the Minister of Transport in the House of Commons when he has said that these

  1655
  committees are independent and quasi-judicial tribunals.
  I therefore ask the Minister whether the transport users' consultative committee, the London Midland Region or the Commission itself, will provide the protesters—that is, the local authorities, and so on—with the fullest details as to past finances of these railway lines and the individual stations and with particulars of improvements that were to be introduced, such as dieselisation, but which have not yet been carried out owing to lack of time or lack of drive.
  My impression is that if in the past these committees have had such information, it has been given to them privately. It has seldom been given to the Press or to protesters. The case of the protesters has been taken formally and the Press has never been admitted to many of the major deliberative sessions.
  I should like to know to which transport users' consultative committee these various branch line protests will go. I have already pointed out that there is the Oxford-Bletchley branch line, the Bletchley-Cambridge branch line, the Verney Junction-Brackley branch line, and the Bedford-Northampton branch line, which includes the station at Olney. In addition, there are the main line stations of Castlethorpe and Cheddington. Which transport users' consultative committees will deal with protests relating to these stations?
  I should also like to know whether any members of the transport users' consultative committees reside in North Buckinghamshire or the near vicinity. Locally, our impression is that nearly every member of these committees resides so far away that he can have no local knowledge of our particular problems. I have already stated that we do not think that the transport users' consultative committees are independent, although I know that the Minister will probably defend the opposite point of view. We are not so much concerned with whether they are independent, but that the protesters against railway policy should have a real chance of knowing what is said by the railways and that these hearings should not be in camera.
  1656
  Finally, the area which I have the honour to represent in Parliament, usually known as the Buckingham Division, includes Bletchley, which has doubled its population in the last nine or ten years. It is an area with practically no employment and is very thriving. It is linked with Oxford, and I do not think that any hon. Member will contradict me when I say that Oxford is a thriving area. In addition, Bedford and Northampton are thriving areas. This is one of the industrially growing areas of England where the British Transport Commission should provide better services, instead of cutting out local branch-line services in the area. The Bletchley Gazette of 13th June published figures which showed that the local railway lines do pay. According to figures there given these lines are remunerative, and with dieselisation and other improvements they could be made far more remunerative.
  We, therefore, feel that we have a great grievance against the British Transport Commission for wanting to close down these services. We are not satisfied that we shall have a fair hearing through the transport users' consultative committees.
  I take the opportunity which you, Mr. Speaker, have afforded me in raising this matter in the House to say that if these branch lines are closed down it will cause grievous damage not only to the amenities of our area by almost completely denuding the area of its railway services; it will also provoke the most grave problems of transport and will create future losses for the British Transport Commission. I therefore hope that we shall have an assurance from the Minister that he will do everything he possibly can to retain these services for the Buckingham division.
  4.13 p.m.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Richard Nugent): I must congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) on his good fortune in securing the Adjournment to deal with this problem which so gravely affects his constituents. I well know the care and attention which he gives to the interests and convenience of his constituents, and

  1657
  I can understand the anxiety that is felt from what he has told us. Further, the House is aware of my hon. and gallant Friend's personal experience of the railways since he was himself once a railwayman. The saying is, once a railwayman always a railwayman. I have therefore listened with all the more attention to his comments on this very difficult topic of closing down branch tines and other rail services.
  I have to confirm that his impression is correct that the British Transport Commission has been considering making these closures, and has issued a Press notice outlining what its intentions are in that area. I am grateful to him for telling me so lucidly and cogently just how this will affect his constituents, and I do accept that it is a serious matter for those who still use these services. I do know that the transport users' consultative committees, despite his qualifications, will give full weight to this aspect when they consider these proposals.
  My hon. Friend asked me certain questions. First of all he asked me about the trades unions' attitude to these proposals. In the Press notice the Commission did not say more than it had discussed these with the trades unions. The Commission discusses these proposals with the trades unions not in order to seek their agreement, which it has no obligation to seek, but primarily to cover personnel considerations for the men who would be affected if these closures were made, such matters as, perhaps, the movement of some of the men to other areas, to other duties, and then, exceptionally, in some cases. redundancy, where it occurs.
  The measure of agreement on this matter is, of course, that there has been agreement at national level between the Commission and the trades unions as to what arrangements should be made when closures of this kind occur. That is the measure of the discussion which has taken place. I listened, of course, to what my hon. Friend had to say about the reaction of the local trade unions, and, of course, I have heard such comments before. Naturally, the local railwaymen are entitled to their opinion, and I do not doubt, if it has gone as far as the Commission, that it will pay attention to it.
  1658
  With regard to my hon. Friend's question about which transport users' consultative committee will consider the case, in this instance the proposals cover the area of two transport users' consultative committees, the East Midland and the East Anglian. In such cases both consultative committees are notified of the proposal, and they decide between themselves how they will deal with it. They may decide that one should deal with the whole of it, or that the other should deal with the whole of it, or they may decide that each of them should deal with part. They will decide that themselves on the basis of what seems to them most likely to be satisfactory to all concerned.
  When they have reached their conclusions, after hearing the Commission's proposals, objections, and so on, they then make their recommendations to the Central Committee. The Central Transport Users' Consultative Committee considers each recommendation from the area committees and then, having considered it, they may confirm, vary or reject it, or send it back again for further consideration before finally making a recommendation to the Minister as to what should be done in each case. At the same time the Commission is notified.
  My hon. Friend also asked about the arrangements which were made to supply the objectors with financial details of the proposals and financial details of losses on the services as at present. The answer is that, following the famous Bluebell line case in Sussex, an agreed form was drawn up as to how the Commission should present its financial case, showing what the savings would be and so on in regard to the proposal it was making. This form will be followed in this case, as indeed it is in all other cases, and that is made available to the objectors and to the public generally.
  The consultative committee itself, if it so wishes, can go further than this. It can, in private session, question the Transport Commission further about the possibilities of reducing the loss, or indeed of turning the loss into a profit if it thinks such a thing is possible by alternative development. That is the form in which the financial picture is shown to the objectors and the general public.

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  My hon. Friend also asked whether there were any members of the consultative committees who were resident in this area. The answer is that one of the East Midland Committee is resident in the area and one of the East Anglian Committee. There is no significance in this. The membership is drawn broadly from the whole of the area which the consultative committees cover, and it is not intended necessarily to be geographically representative of every area where closures arise.
  The very important point which my hon. Friend made was about the independence of the consultative committees. The answer is that they really are independent. They are appointed by my right hon. Friend, according to Section 6 of the Transport Act, 1947, to represent agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, labour, and the local authorities. My hon. Friend mentioned the number of local authorities which were objecting. There are, incidentally, no fewer than five members representative of local authorities on each consultative committee. The Transport Commission is also represented by two members.
  All these various interests are represented by members who are suggested in consultation between my right hon. Friend and their representative bodies, such as the local authority organisations like the County Councils' Association, the National Farmers' Union, the Trades Union Congress, and so on, in order to ensure a body that is fully representative. In addition, two independent members are appointed by my right hon. Friend, making a total of 20 on each committee. Therefore, by both their composition and constitution they really are independent. The members are just public-spirited citizens who are prepared to give their time and trouble to serve the public in an honorary capacity.
  They are completely the reverse of being stooges. They can reach any conclusion they like and, from time to time, they turn down or modify the proposals that are put before them. Their procedures are informal, it is true, but that is the nature of the bodies. They are not judicial bodies. They admit the Press to some parts of their work and not to others. They have various considerations for which they are responsible and they
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  must exercise judgment. As far as it is possible to appoint bodies of this kind which carry public confidence I think that Parliament has done it.
  My hon. Friend said that when services were well patronised they should be retained. I am sure that there is a great deal of weight in what he has to say to us, but I cannot comment on the merits of these cases. Parliament, in its wisdom, has laid down machinery under the 1947 Act by which these proposals for closures are considered, and if I were to comment on the merits of the case as my hon. Friend has so cogently laid it before me, I should be not only prejudicing the work of the consultative committees in considering the proposals when they come before them but I should be undoubtedly frustrating Parliament's intention that this arrangement should work in this way.
  May I add this comment on the Government's general policy towards the Commission, for which my right hon. Friend and I are responsible. We want the country to have a modernised, fully efficient railway service. We believe that this continues to be an essential service for the life of the country. We, as the Government, have given substance to that decision by providing the greater part of the £1,500 million needed for modernising the services plus the extra £400 million for financing the deficits in the meantime in order to bring about this huge, complex operation which my hon. and gallant Friend well understands.
  At the present time the Commission is running heavily in deficit. The reports for last year, just published, show a deficit of about £90 million. We as the Government are, therefore, naturally and properly urging the Commission to bring its financial affairs into solvency as soon as it can. We, and indeed the whole House, recognise that if it failed to do so, the deficits would become a direct burden on the taxpayer.
  This inevitably means cutting out uneconomic services that are making a loss, uneconomic lines that cannot be brought into profitable running. There is no getting away from it that this is bound to be in some cases a painful affair. Yet all over the country now we can see evidence of modernisation. Diesel engines, diesel sets and so on are now quite commonplace, electrification is going on in certain areas, and there will be a

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  great deal more to come. The overall picture shows that whilst the Government are substantially providing the means by which this can be done, the Commission undoubtedly has the will to bring about modernisation and to bring into profitable operation all the services it operates which have any prospect of becoming profitable. I hope, therefore, that my hon. and gallant Friend will accept my assurance that this is broadly the picture.
  In conclusion, I say to him that much as I sympathise with his anxieties and the anxieties of his constituents, I believe that the transport users' consultative committees, who will be considering this im-
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  portant matter, are independently and adequately constituted; that they will consider these proposals fairly and independently; that they will consider the objections of my hon. and gallant Friend's constituents fairly and sympathetically; and that they will, in the spirit of the Act under which they were set up, reach conclusions and give advice as to what should happen there in a fair and proper fashion. I hope, therefore, that my hon. and gallant Friend and his constituents will have confidence in them doing that in a proper fashion.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.