HC Deb 23 February 1960 vol 618 cc193-206

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £1,370,537,000, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges for the following Civil and Revenue Departments and for the Ministry of Defence for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1961, viz.:

CIVIL ESTIMATES
CLASS I
£
1. House of Lords 75,000
2. House of Commons 520,000
3. Registration of Electors 75,000
4. Treasury and Subordinate Departments 1,400,000
5. Privy Council Office 14,000
6. Privy Seal Office 4,000
7. Charity Commission 50,000
8. Civil Service Commission 197,000
9. Crown Estate Office 52,000
10. Exchequer and Audit Department 300,000
11. Friendly Societies Registry 40,000
12. Government Actuary 18,000
13. Government Hospitality 30,000
14. Royal Mint 10
15. National Debt Office 10
16. National Savings Committee 520,000
17. Public Record Office 48,000
18. Public Works Loan Commission 10
19. Royal Commissions, etc. 110,000
20. Secret Service 2,400,000
21. Miscellaneous Expenses 240,000
Scotland:
22. Scottish Home Department 760,000
23. Scottish Record Office 19,000

3.32 p.m.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke (Dorset, South)

It may seem very strange indeed to the Committee that any back bencher should intervene, even for only four or five minutes, before the Committee automatically nods its acceptance to £1,370,537,000. I venture to make a very short speech of protest before allowing the Committee to pass to the Motion which the Leader of the Opposition has upon the Order Paper.

It used to be the constitutional function of the House of Commons to debate policy before granting Supply. Since the war, largely to suit the convenience of the Opposition, and, even more than that, to suit the convenience of Socialism, we have deserted that ancient and honourable practice, and we now pass these vast sums of money, past recall, and then allow the Opposition to discuss, on an ordinary Motion, a polemical topic of the day.

Today's polemical debate, on which I cannot dwell, because I should not be in order, is on a subject which has been covered many times during the past three weeks. It has been debated ad nauseam, but that is only a small point in what I am trying to say to the Committee.

The Opposition are eager to spend. Therefore, they pass these vast sums on the nod and they relish the ensuing debate in which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen will open their mouths wider than ever before in asking that more State money should be put into their various constituencies.

Mr. A. C. Manuel (Central Ayrshire)

The noble Lord should open his mind.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke

The Opposition are eager not only to spend the taxpayers' money, but to vote. Clearly, they do not want to vote against the passage of £1,370,537,000, so, since the war, they have developed the device of getting these sums passed quickly so that they can go on with an ordinary Motion and have a vote, at the end of it, against the policy of the Government of the day.

I regret to say that my right hon. and hon. Friends have been all too eager to fall in with this idea, because there appears on the Order Paper an official Government Amendment to the Motion which is shortly to be discussed.

The Chairman

I hope that the noble Lord will confine himself to the Vote. He seems to be ranging very widely.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke

I am most grateful to you. Sir Gordon.

The time has come to abandon this wartime procedure. It was not in operation to a very considerable extent before the war, but for convenience, during the war, and because the country at that time was only too happy and eager to pass very large sums of money on a Vote of Account for the war effort, the system has passed into the currency of contemporary Parliamentary history and has been eagerly seized upon by the Socialist Opposition as a device to aid and abet their policy.

Very large sums appear in this Vote on Account—£6,000,000 extra for police and prisons; £7½ million extra for universities; £4 million extra for broadcasting; a £94 million increase in Exchequer grants to local authorities; £21 million extra for the Health Service; £20 million extra for the Board of Trade—of which only £9 million is for local employment services, a subject which is to be debated later today; £16 million extra for aviation and £13 million extra for the Post Office. All those figures are increases.

Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)

What about the Supplementary Votes?

Viscount Hinchingbrooke

We are not debating the Supplementary Votes. We are debating only the Vote on Account.

I have taken these sums from the White Paper. I do not wish to weary the Committee with the very full details which are assembled here of the extra increases. I merely point out that the White Paper shows a total rise of £252 million over the original Estimate of twelve months ago. I do not think that the Committee should pass this vast increase without examining, as far as it can, the procedure under which these things are conducted.

I am aware that for various Parliamentary reasons I cannot debate at any length what changes should be made. No doubt there will be other opportunities for that. May I very briefly suggest that as a means of approaching a more rational and a more constitutional handling of this matter the Opposition should agree to surrender 10 days out of their 26 allotted days and devote them to financial investigation of the Votes under discussion? I suggest further that on those days the Opposition should put down for their—

The Chairman

Order. The noble Lord is going far from the Vote now.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke

I will draw to a close. Sir Gordon.

I do not think that this is a matter for another investigation by a Select Committee. I hope that the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition—"the usual channels"—will get together and discuss what may be done. It is by no means clear that everyone in the Labour Party is happy with this handling of affairs. All of us in the House of Commons ultimately have the whip hand over the rights of the Leader of the Opposition to continue with this form of debate. We have only to rise in our places, as I have done today, on every one of the 26 Supply Days when this procedure is adopted and we should frustrate the debate subsequently to take place on those days and, in the end, oblige the Government and the Opposition to come together and agree upon a more rational procedure.

Mr. S. Silverman

I do not propose to detain the Committee for more than a moment, Sir Gordon, but I must tell the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) that whatever sympathy one might have had for the constitutional tradition behind his argument, he himself has done a great deal to forfeit that sympathy by the way in which he presented his argument.

To assume that this practice in which we have, as he quite rightly says, been indulging now for very many years was done for the benefit of Socialism is, perhaps, to reveal that he is not perhaps the most expert witness that we might ourselves select on behalf of the cause to which we are devoted. I must, therefore, tell the noble Lord that when we need his advice we shall ask for it.

Perhaps I may say to him at this stage that, being not a less valid witness as to what the cause of Socialism requires than is the noble Lord, I do not agree that this procedure was ever devised in our favour, or is, in fact, favourable to us. I prefer the old method, whereby one discussed grievances before voting Supply, and not afterwards, when it is too late. But what is the noble Lord worried about? He has his opportunity—he has taken his opportunity. He talked as though it were the Opposition's Vote on Account, but we have not put down this Vote on Account. It is his own Government that have done that. We have not increased the expenditure—it is his own Government that have done that. We are not responsible for a single one of the items of which he complains. His own Government are responsible.

It may well be that his Government are wrong—for my own part I believe that they are wrong on most things, and I believe that they are wrong on this, too—but if the noble Lord thinks that his Government are wrong to raise the amounts, or that they are asking for too much on this Vote on Account, or that their policy is wrong, or that, for any other reason, they should not have the money, the noble Lord has a perfectly reasonable, ready, quick and quite effective constitutional method of making his view effective. He can divide the House, and vote against the Motion.

Mr. Peter Thorneycroft (Monmouth)

I rise only for a few moments to support my noble Friend the Member for Dorset. South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). If I may say so, this is a serious matter, and something of interest to both sides of this House of Commons. I do not accuse the Opposition of abusing our procedure. They have put down a Motion on a serious and important matter. At the same time, I think that the Committee might reasonably pause for just a few moments before it passes on the nod a Vote on Account of £1,300 million.

Some of us are deeply concerned at the possible dangers of excessive Government expenditure, and when we see a Vote of this kind, and know that it represents, in part, a published increase of Estimates ranging to about £300 million, I think that we are entitled to say that it would be a good thing if the House of Commons took every opportunity to debate it. After all, Sir Gordon, this House of Commons was largely based, and certainly its power is based, on the control of Supply and, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman)—with whose speech I agree very much, indeed—said, on the insistence of the redress of grievances before voting Supply

There is much to be said for that. It is part of our historic tradition, and it should not be lightly cast aside. I share with my noble Friend a little anxiety over the practice, into which all of us, on both sides, I think, have tended to slip, of passing these huge sums of money without question and then putting down a Motion which, in the end, will, I warrant, ask the Government to spend still more money. I do not regard that as a useful application of the functions of the House of Commons.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, speaking on this the other day, said that there would be other occasions on which we could discuss it—on the Budget, and so on. We cannot really discuss it on the Budget. The Budget is concerned with the raising of revenue, but it will have to be concerned with raising the revenue to met these bills—and some of us would like to discuss the bills. As I say, I do not think that it is right to interfere with the debate that has been planned—we have all to live here together. I accuse no one of abuse of procedure, but I think that my noble Friend is right to take his stand.

3.45 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland)

I hope that the Leader of the House will take notice that there is considerable demand not only inside this House, but in the country at large, that there should be more scrutiny of Government expenditure, though whether that is best done by general debate on a very large Vote on Account is another matter.

As it appears to an impartial observer like myself, the Government have now taken over the Labour Party's election policy of buying their way into private business. There is also an urgent need for some discussion of the purposes for which the Government should give money both to private business and to the nationalised industries, and the methods by which such grants should be controlled. In view of the projects now before us, this is becoming rather an urgent matter.

Major H. Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

I, too, should like to congratulate my noble Friend the Member for Dorset. South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) on raising this matter. Erskine May very clearly lays down that one of the principal objects of a Vote on Account is to ensure that money not spent in the previous year, and which would otherwise return to the Exchequer, can remain in the hands of the Department responsible for spending it.

One difficulty is that in the Vote on Account as presented to this House there is no separation of what has not been spent in the previous year from what will additionally be required for the next financial year. If I may make a humble suggestion to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, it is that it would be very helpful to the House if we could have that indicated very clearly in any future Votes on Account. We should know what has been under-spent in the previous year—how much of the Vote on Account is, in fact, a carryover from one year to another, and how much is new expenditure.

I agree with my noble Friend and with my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) that we are slipping into a habit of voting vast sums without nearly enough attention being paid to them. In addition, I think that we were at least entitled to have had present this afternoon at least one Treasury Minister on the Front Bench.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler)

As Leader of the House, I would only say to my noble Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), to my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) and to other Members that this is, of course, a valid point, but the fact is that the procedure of the House has been so conducted for many Administrations—I should put it at between twenty and thirty years. The practice has grown up that the Opposition of the day should not be inhibited in their selection of matters to be debated on allotted Supply Days. We are, therefore, following an absolutely definite tradition that has been used and taken advantage of by our own party when we were in opposition. Therefore, we are not doing anything new from the point of view of the House of Commons.

That does not mean that it was not right for by noble Friend to rise in his place and make this protest, or observation, or that it was wrong for my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members to have taken part in this discussion, but it does mean that if we are to change the situation it could not be done without proper discussion between the usual channels. Certainly, if the Opposition decide to put down on a Supply day matters relating to the Estimates or public expenditure there is nothing unconstitutional or unparliamentary in so doing.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) referred to Erskine May, but, on page 739 of the 16th Edition, Erskine May infers that it is possible to discuss in anticipation, upon a Motion for the grant on account, matters such as those to which my noble Friend referred in his speech, but goes on to say that the proper occasion to examine the grants in detail is when the final grant to complete the sum demanded is proposed to the Committee.

I mention that because it is in the bible of procedure upon which we work, but I do not claim that that solves the problem, because it might well be that in the later Supply days to which Erskine may refers we might have had the main financial business of the year—the Budget.

I do not think, therefore, that the matter is resolved by this short interchange, but I do think that we would be very wrong to alter, without proper thought, procedure agreed between both sides, and take from the Opposition one of the undoubted constitutional rights that they have had. Therefore, while I cannot complain at my noble Friend's intervention, which he is perfectly entitled to make, I do not think that any change should be made without proper consultation.

Mr. F. Blackburn (Stalybridge and Hyde)

Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that the House of Commons, in full Committee, is not the right body to discuss in detail the Estimates and that some other method for detailed examination of them ought to be worked out?

Mr. Butler

That would be quite a novelty, because the House in Committee, with the Mace below the Table, is the usual place where we discuss our financial business. Although I know that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) has made a considerable study of procedure, and took part in our procedure debates, I should not like easily to agree to his proposal.

I will add that if any of my hon. Friends or any hon. Members wish to discuss the matter with me I shall be only too glad to do so.

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell (Leeds, South)

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House for making absolutely clear what the procedural position is. The Civil Vote on Account is an Opposition Supply Day, and it is for the Opposition to decide what they will discuss on that occasion. Frankly, I think that it would be an abuse of the traditions of the House if a debate of this kind were to be prolonged and we were thereby inhibited from going on to the Motion that we have put on the Order Paper. We happen to think that the subject of unemployment areas and the assistance to be given to them is very important. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends are concerned about it, and I believe that even some hon. Members opposite have something to say about it. It is our decision. We have made it quite conscious of our responsibilities.

I myself share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn), that to have a wide-ranging debate on the Civil Vote on Account would not be of much value, and that it would be very different from some other debates we could have of a detailed character. When we are covering the whole field of Government expenditure, I do not myself see that we should really be doing the kind of thing which the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) had in mind.

To the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) and his Friends, I say that the Opposition do use part of their time for doing the kind of thing to which he referred. For example, we shall be debating on two days the Civil Supplementary Estimates.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro (Kidderminster)

But will the right hon. Gentleman be fair and concede that his choice of subject may not be that of my hon. Friends and myself? Are we to be denied an initiative in this matter? Is all the initiative to be on the other side of the Committee?

Mr. Gaitskell

There is a very easy remedy for the hon. Gentleman. He has but to arrange things so that he is in opposition instead of in government, and he will then have his influence upon his own party in deciding what subjects will be debated.

It may be of interest to the Committee to know that we shall be devoting two days to debating the Civil Supplementary Estimates. There will, of course, be four days' debate on the detailed Defence Estimates, and I do not doubt that, as the Session continues, there will be other occasions when we shall put down the Votes of particular Ministries for discussion, when it will be open to hon. Members to raise anything within the expenditure of such Ministries.

If there is to be any far-reaching change, and it is decided that the House of Commons should spend far more time discussing detailed expenditure, I can only say, speaking for my right hon. and hon. Friends, that we are not prepared to give up further Opposition time for the purpose. If the Government want to make time available so that we can investigate in detail the Estimates of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Ministry of Health, or whatever it may be, we should not oppose that in any way at all. It rests with the Government.

On the other hand, if the Government take the view that there should be some further study of the Committee system, I should myself think that that would be pre-eminently a subject for the Select Committee on Procedure. That is something which we should certainly not be averse to considering. I must, however, make it perfectly clear that it must not be at the expense of Opposition time when we discuss the subjects which we believe are of vital interest to the nation as a whole.

Mr. Nabarro

I do not wish to suggest for a moment that a debate on a specific Vote or Supplementary Vote should be at the expense of Opposition time on Supply Days. But there are not only considerations affecting the official Opposition. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I address my remarks to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. It was said to me the other day that if I carried on like this I should qualify for his salary. That may or may not be true, but it is indisputable that some rights and privileges should repose with my hon. Friends and myself on the Government benches to initiate debates on specific Votes and supplementary Votes. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the 1922 Committee?"] No, not the 1922 Committee.

I do not wish to take unnecessary time on an Opposition Supply Day, but this is a vital issue. This year, these Estimates have increased by a total of £360 million. There are items in them about which I am very doubtful. Many of them may be broadly in the public interest, but there are specific items about which I am very doubtful. I wish that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House would give uninitiated back bench Members of his party such as myself—

Mr. Manuel

Uninhibited.

Mr. Nabarro

No—uninitiated members of his party such as myself a clear guide as to when, before the Budget, not after—it is no good to me after 12th April—we may have an opportunity of debating specific Supplementary Estimates.

With very great respect to my right hon. Friend, I do not consider that his answer a few moments ago was conclusive on that point. I feel that sympathy of the Government benches is with me, and I hope that following speakers from this side of the Committee will press my right hon. Friend for a specific statement at an early date about when we, as individual Government supporters, officially Government supporters, may initiate debates on specific Supplementary Estimates.

Mr. E. Fernyhough (Jarrow)

Would not the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) have his opportunity when the Ballot is taken for private Members' Motions on Supply, and—

The Chairman

Order. This is going very wide.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That a sum, not exceeding £1,370,537,000, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges for the following Civil and Revenue Departments and for the Ministry of Defence for the year ending on the 31st day of March. 1961.

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow; Committee to sit again Tomorrow.