HC Deb 11 April 1960 vol 621 cc1035-43

Motion made, and Question proposed. That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session (hereinafter referred to as "the new Act") to facilitate the enforcement and administration of the law relating to road traffic and to vehicles on roads by providing for the punishment without a prosecution of offences in connection with lights or reflectors on vehicles, or with obstruction, waiting, parking and kindred matters, and for the employment of traffic wardens in aid of the police, it is expedient to authorise—

  1. 1. The payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—
    1. (1) any expenses incurred by the Minister of Transport—
      1. (a)in making grants towards the cost of the provision and maintenance, in the metropolitan police district or the City of London, of off-street parking places;
      2. (b) in placing traffic signs on or near roads in the London Traffic Area;
      3. (c) in exercising default powers in respect of duties with respect to obstructions or traffic signs;
      4. (d) under arrangements entered into by him for the temporary provision of parking accommodation for vehicles in the metropolitan police district or the City of London, elsewhere than on the highway, in respect of the following matters (including his expenditure in making payments to any other person in respect of expenses incurred for those matters by that person), that is to say—
        1. (i) obtaining or making available a site for use as parking accommodation;
        2. (ii) preparing or adapting a site for use as parking accommodation, or restoring it after that use;
        3. (iii) controlling and managing the site during its use as parking accommodation, and meeting any liability arising out of that use or out of anything done in the course of that use;
      5. (e) in executing works for the improvement of a highway in the metropolitan police district or the City of London;
    2. (2) any increase in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under section four of the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Act, 1955, or section two hundred and thirty-six of the Highways Act. 1959, being an increase attributable to any provisions of the 1036 new Act enabling the Minister of Transport to make, under subsection (1) of section eight of the Development and Road Improvement Funds Act, 1909, or subsection (1) of section two hundred and thirty-five of the Highways Act, 1959, grants for the improvement of classified roads in the metropolitan police district or the City of London.
    3. (3) any increase in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under subsection (1) of section ninety of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, being an increase attributable to any provisions of the new Act extending the power of the Minister of Transport to make orders under subsection (5) of section eighty- five of the said Act of 1960;
    4. (4) any increase in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment, being an increase attributable to any provision of the new Act providing that the widening of the carriageway of a highway shall not be treated as being otherwise than an improvement by reason only of the fact that it involves diminution of, or or removal of, a footway thereon;
    5. (5) any increase in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under section three of the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Act, 1950, being an increase attributable to any provisions of the new Act relating to the appointment of traffic wardens;
    6. (6) any increase attributable to the new Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided by way of Rate-deficiency Grant or Exchequer Equalisation Grant under the enactments relating to local government in England and Wales or in Scotland;
  2. 2. The payment into the Exchequer of any sums received under or by virtue of the new Act by the Minister of Transport or any other government department and of any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable into the Exchequer under any other enactment. —[Mr. Marples.]

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)

Before the Committee passes this Money Resolution, may I point out to the Home Secretary that a number of suggestions have been made during Second Reading, notably by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) and other hon. Members on that side of the House, and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), that, while supporting the Bill, they wish to suggest improvements in Committee.

The Minister of Transport himself, I think, indicated that one of the reasons why certain provisions in the Bill were deliberately left vague was because the Government wished to hear the views of hon. Members. Speeches have been made on both sides of the House welcoming the Bill, but hoping that it could be extended, and, in particular, suggestions have been made that before the Minister is given these powers there should be additional provisions dealing with road safety.

It has been emphasised in the debate over and over again that it is not enough merely to speed up traffic on the roads, but that it is equally important to do something to stop the frightful carnage on the roads. The hon. Member for Crosby went so far as to say that, without wishing to lead another Tory revolt, he, for one, was not prepared to support the Bill on Third Reading unless a number of provisions were introduced dealing with road safety.

As far as 1 can see, the Money Resolution, in its present form, is somewhat limited in scope. It does not seem to be nearly wide enough to enable the Committee to consider either the Amendments which would be desired by the hon. Member for Crosby, or those desired by some of my right hon. and hon. Friends. I think that that may also be true in connection with grants to local authorities.

For example, I observe that in paragraph 1 (1, a) of the Resolution, payment out of moneys provided by Parliament would be authorised for making grants in the Metropolitan Police district or the City of London, but not elsewhere. Similarly, paragraph 1 (1,b) is limited to operations in the London traffic area. Local authorities outside London have a good deal to say about the grants which they think they will be entitled to receive with regard both to minor improvements and to the provisions of the Bill generally.

Therefore, I suggest to the Home Secretary and the Minister of Transport that they should not ask the Committee to accept this Resolution tonight, but that they should consider, in the light of the debate, whether, in fact, the Resolution is adequate to enable the Committee to debate the kind of Amendments which Members of both sides of the Committee have said they wish to debate.

11.2 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis (Edinburgh, East)

Surely we are to get a reply to the points which have been raised by my hon. Friend. The Money Resolution is exceedingly tightly drawn. My hon. Friend did not go through the various items mentioned in the Resolution, but if one cares to go through them one finds that it is almost impossible to put anything else into the Bill that has a bearing on the matter contained in the Bill because of the detail in which the items of expenditure are categorised.

Paragraph 1 (1, a) relates to off-street parking; sub-paragraph (1, b) deals with traffic signs; sub-paragraph (1, c) concerns the exercise of default powers; and so on right through the Resolution. There is no elbow room at all in it to enable one to try to improve the Bill to any considerable extent, if, in so doing, it involves any extension of the provisions of the Bill. It seems to me that, in those circumstances, the plea made by my hon Friend is quite reasonable.

I, too, have sat through a great deal of the debate and have listened to various speeches, and in practically all the speeches suggestions have been made for the improvement of the Bill, almost all of which would be out of order in the light of this Money Resolution. That is not good enough. I am certain that if there are any Scottish Members on the Committee they will probably want to raise matters connected with traffic in Scotland. We have not heard much about that.

Once again, we are tightly bound by a Money Resolution. We ought at least, out of courtesy if for no other reason, to have some explanation from the Minister or the Home Secretary as to why the Resolution is drawn in this fashion; and we ought to know- whether it would permit some of the matters which my hon. Friend has mentioned being raised, and, if not, whether the Government would reconsider the matter.

11.4 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay)

May I say a word about the two points which were raised by the hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher), who complained a little about the terms in which the Money Resolution has been drawn? His first point was that it was drawn in such terms that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for hon. Members who wished to table Amendments in Committee dealing with pure road safety matters to do so.

I must tell the Committee that our difficulty here is timing, There may be all sorts of reasons why a road safety Bill or provisions relating to road safety might be considered by the House. I do not propose to traverse again the ground already covered during the debate relating to the marginal road safety effects that the Bill and its provisions will have, but I must tell the Committee quite honestly that if the field were open to all manner of road safety Amendments the prospects of our getting the Bill by the end of this Session would be remote. It is important that the House should have this in mind.

During the Second Reading debate, there has been general acceptance that we need these powers to get on and deal with the difficult situation with which we are faced in London and elsewhere. Because of the mounting volume of traffic coming on to the roads, we do not have much time. For that reason, there is a good deal of urgency about the Bill.

If, in Committee—I put the problem fairly and squarely to the party opposite—we are faced with a mass of Amendments and a large number of new Clauses, the way having been opened by an extension of the Money Resolution, to deal with road safety matters, I doubt very much whether we would be able, with the best will in the world, to get the Bill out of this House and into another place by the early part of July. If that is the case, it is clear that we would not get the Bill by the autumn.

The hon. Member's second point concerned whether we would so alter the Money Resolution as to enable grants for minor road improvements to be made to local authorities outside the London area. Possibly, the hon. Member is under a misunderstanding. In London, as has been made clear during the debate, the Minister of Transport is technically the traffic authority. The highway authorities are the 28 Metropolitan boroughs inside the London County Council area and the other local authorities outside the county area but still within the London and Home Counties traffic area. There is, therefore, a dual situation with the Minister as traffic authority and the local authorities as highway authorities.

Outside the Metropolitan area, however, the situation is entirely different. There the local authorities—the county councils—are both highway and traffic authorities. The purpose of Clause 14 of the Bill is to enable the Minister to make grants for minor road improvements to the highway authorities in London to link up with the traffic schemes which he, as traffic authority, wishes to see made. Outside London, the case is not nearly so great, because there already the highway authorities, being traffic authorities as well, are in receipt of the general grant under the Local Government Act which contains an element to deal with minor road improvements of all kinds. I hope, therefore, that in the light of this explanation, the hon. Member and his hon. Friends will not press the matter tonight.

The hon. Member's second point is really a false one. His first one, about road safety Amendments, would jeopardise the whole of our timetable on the Bill. Since the House as a whole has indicated in the debate on Second Reading that it wishes the Bill to have a reasonably unobstructed passage, I hope that we can get on.

11.8 p.m.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn (Bristol, South-East)

I am grateful to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for being so candid with the Committee. If my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) had not raised the matter, we should not have been clear about the situation. The position is that the Bill has been introduced—it is a rag-bag of a Bill—with a lot of provisions covering different road improvement and traffic management subjects brought together. I do not complain; I welcome the Bill. Nobody, however, can say that it has a central theme so tight as to exclude road safety from it.

Whenever the Minister speaks to the House on the subject, he gives the figures of road casualties. Today, he gave the number of people who would be killed in the course of our debate. Then, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary explains that the Money Resolution is drawn specifically to prevent road safety matters from being introduced as new Clauses. He said that if it were drawn so widely as to permit us to put Amendments covering road safety, the Government might not get the Bill. I will deal presently with the attitude of the Opposition in Committee.

The Minister said that he regards himself not only as an executive, but as a suggestion box and that these debates should give him ideas. Many hon. Members, on both sides, have come to the House on Second Reading with ideas for improving the Bill, and we shall go into Committee after Easter. We are told that the Committee will meet three days a week. We do not complain about this. Then to be told, however, that the Money Resolution has been drawn specifically tightly to exclude us from offering Amendments that would give the Minister power, seems to me to be monstrous and an abuse of the procedure of the Money Resolution. If the Minister wants to exclude it, let him exclude it by the Long Title of the Bill. The Money Resolution should not be used to prevent constructive Amendments to the Bill in Committee.

I come now to our intentions on this side of the House with reference to the Bill as it passes through Committee. There have been comments about this matter in the Second Reading debate. Our attitude is that this is a good Bill as far as it goes, but that we want the Minister to have more powers. After all, we introduced before Christmas a Bill which would have given the Minister powers to act by Statutory Instrument so as to achieve these things. Under that Bill, introduced under the Ten Minutes Rule procedure, his powers would have included power to take emergency action in road safety matters as well. Our attitude throughout has been that the public wants action here, and we are prepared to give the Minister the powers he needs.

What we have had in mind since before Christmas has been, when the Minister's long promised Bill was presented to the Committee, to offer him the powers we think he needs, to keep and use whenever the appropriate time comes. I read in the Press that the Minister has another Bill coming along next Session. With the pressure of legislation, no Minister can guarantee that he will get the Bills he wants next Session because Bills are not easy things to have accepted by the Leader of the House and the Legislative Committee of the Cabinet. There is a busy pro.-gramme.

We are prepared to offer the right hon. Gentleman powers to deal with the problem of the drunken driver, even though it may take time to prepare and lay the regulations and even if it be necessary to proceed on a scientific basis. We are prepared to give him power to require medical opinions when applications are made for driving licences, and so forth.

We are now told that these matters are to be excluded for fear that the Bill will be lost. What do the Government think our motives are? Does the Minister think that we shall prolong the Committee proceedings so that the whole Bill will be lost? Of course not. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I are anxious that the Bill shall go through. I cannot guarantee that we shall accept every Clause and line of it, but we desire to see the Bill passed in a strengthened form.

When we ask the question, we are told, quite by chance—the Minister did not mention it during his speech—that the Money Resolution has been deliberately used to prevent our giving the Minister the powers we believe he ought to have, and it is said that the Opposition might prolong proceedings on the Bill so that it is lost. This is really to do less than justice to our attitude throughout progress of the Bill so far. I ask the Leader of the House to look at the matter again.

In view of the unusual information which has been given to us by the Parliamentary Secretary, I wonder whether it would be in order to move a manuscript Amendment to the Money Resolution, to leave out from line 8 to the end of line 25, which would make it read: The payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of— (1) any expenses incurred by the Minister of Transport"— and to leave out—

The Deputy-Chairman

I think that it might simplify proceedings if I said at once that I could not accept a manuscript Amendment of the type which the hon. Member mentioned.

Mr. Benn

I offered it only as a short way out of the difficulty, Sir William. This is a serious matter. Our attitude throughout has been very serious, and we are anxious not to find ourselves hamstrung in Committee and prevented from being able to offer the Minister the powers we think he ought to have in order to legislate for road safety. That is the simple issue. I am sure that the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) would be with us on this. I see that he is not in his place at the moment.

The Opposition are willing to give the Minister powers to deal with road safety matters this Session and we want to get the Bill through Committee. I very much hope that the Leader of the House, who is responsible for part of the expenditure here, will say something about the interpretation to be put upon the Money Resolution before the Committee passes it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.