THE COINAGE

HC Deb 28 July 1961 vol 645 cc886-98

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mr. Whitelaw.]

3.56 p.m.

Mr. Martin McLaren (Bristol, North-West)

I have been much interested to read the recent Annual Reports of the Deputy-Master of the Royal Mint. They are written in a refreshing and frank style and I believe that they contain some points about coinage on which it would be worth having a brief discussion in the House.

There is nothing in our everyday life that concerns the whole population more than our coinage system. We want a coinage which is both convenient and attractive. We all realise that the fundamental question affecting our coinage, on which all other questions depend, is whether a change should be made to a decimal system, but I do not intend to discuss that today because it would not be appropriate in an Adjournment debate. I take our present system of pounds, shillings and pence as I find it and leave the decimal issue to Governments who have now been debating it among themselves for rather more than one hundred years.

The first point which I should like to discuss is whether the denominations and values of our coins are convenient having regard to their diminished purchasing power. The only change made so far, and it has been in recent months, is the abolition of the farthing. That has not been regretted save perhaps for the purposes of libel actions. Otherwise, we have the same system that used to obtain in Victorian days. The highest value of coin in general circulation is a half-crown. After that there is a gap until we come to the ten-shilling note.

Mr. Tom Driberg (Barking)

It is not quite the same as in Victorian times. There were four-shilling pieces then.

Mr. McLaren

I am much obliged. That is quite true, but I do not know Whether those coins circulated in very large numbers.

It is also true that last year the Mint coined 1 million crown pieces. Although that sounds a great many, it is a relatively small number. Those coins are perhaps inconveniently large for general circulation and tend to be regarded as collectors' pieces. I feel that there is a case for new coins of higher denominations and I should like to see those coins made of silver alloy to distinguish them from the cupro-nickel coins which we now have.

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. Noble.]

Mr. McLaren

Last year the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) asked two Questions about a smaller silver five shilling piece, but on neither occasion did he get any very definite reply. Perhaps the Government will be able to tell us something further today. I should like to see not only a new smaller five shilling piece but perhaps a ten shilling piece as well.

After all, countries in Europe such as Austria, France, Italy and Western Germany now have silver coinage again, and one wonders why we should not, too. If we did, we should revive a tradition which until 1946 had existed in this country for more than a thousand years. It is true that silver coins would have a higher initial cost, but account should be taken of the very small loss of weight that such coins suffer during their working life.

On any such silver coin I should like to see again the famous design by Pistrucci of St. George and the dragon which we used to see on the gold sovereign. It is a curious paradox that people all over the rest of the world are able to have a look at these coins, but we in the United Kingdom are not.

The next point that arises is the size of the penny. Possibly the demonetisation of the farthing may pave the way for a reduction in what Lord Keynes described as the preposterous size and weight of the penny. It is really too much for a coin which is now of such small value.

My third point is the co-existence of the florin and the half-crown. No other important system of coinage has in its upper range two coins which are so near each other in size and value. It is interesting that the florin was introduced more than one hundred years ago in order to facilitate the change to a decimal system.

All the changes which I have so far mentioned are referred to in the 1958 Report of the Deputy-Master, and in his Report for 1959 he said that comment on those suggestions have been preponderantly in favour of some rational change in our conservative habits. He spelt "conservative" with a small "c."

Another suggestion is that there might be experiments in the use of coins made not of metal but of plastic. They would be cheaper to produce. They would be lighter. One could have different denominations in different colours. On the other hand, admittedly, they might be easier to counterfeit. I am not necessarily suggesting that we should try this experiment in the United Kingdom, but it might acceptably be tried in some part of the dependent Commonwealth.

There is a passage in the 1960 Report of the Deputy-Master, which was published only a short time ago, which is headed "Artistic defects of coinage today." In previous centuries, a good deal more scope was left to the designers of coins than has been so in recent decades. For instance, there are coins of King Henry VIII showing him seated on a throne of State with his sceptre and orb, and others showing him standing in a ship. There were equestrian portraits of coins of James I and Charles I. But the modern portrait heads of sovereigns are perhaps relatively conventional and dull.

I should like to see a kind of renaissance of coin design and perhaps some of our most distinguished artists encouraged to enter this rather specialised field and allowed to be more adventurous in designing coins. After all, the great Leonardo da Vinci spent a year in the Mint in Rome.

I am glad to see that there are one or two other hon. Members present who kindly take an interest in this subject, and therefore I do not wish to take up more of our valuable time. I end by saying that I feel that the Mint itself does some very good work. There are few Government Departments which are exporters, but the Royal Mint is one of them. It does a considerable business for foreign Governments by way of making coins for them, and it secures that business in the face of severe world competition. We do not often discuss the work of this Department, but I hope that the House will feel that it has been worth while to do so this afternoon for a few minutes.

4.7 p.m.

Mr. Tom Driberg (Barking)

I want briefly to support what the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) has said in his most interesting and informative speech. The point of design which he raised is very important, and I am glad that he suggested that design might perhaps be improved and that distinguished artists in this kind of miniature work should be given greater opportunities for showing what they can do.

I therefore specifically ask the Economic Secretary to the Treasury whether the Council of Industrial Design is consulted, or perhaps will be consulted, on this matter. The Council has, after all, now got a special interest in ensuring that Royal portraits at least shall be worthy and becoming.

It is true, as the hon. Member said, that I asked some Questions last year, and also had some correspondence with the Treasury, about the proposal for a small silver crown piece, which was originally, of course, proposed by the Deputy-Master of the Mint himself and might, therefore, have been expected to commend itself to the Treasury and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer who is himself Master of the Mint.

I am a little puzzled by the course of these exchanges last year, because at first, the Chancellor seemed reasonably well disposed towards this suggestion, but, after a good deal of postponement and deferment and perhaps inevitable delay, he seemed rather to cool off. I wonder whether we can be told this afternoon whether the pro- posal is, after all, acceptable. I hope that we can.

If one of the objections today should be that it might be difficult to distinguish in a hurry between a small silver crown piece and perhaps a shilling, or some other coin, there is no absolute reason, surely, why it should be circular. The dodecagonal 3d. bit is a precedent for departing from absolute rotundity or circularity, or whatever it is, and I do not see why we could not do so in the case of a small crown piece.

4.10 p.m.

Sir Godfrey Nicholson (Farnham)

I am particularly interested in taking part in this debate, because twelve or more years ago, when a coinage Bill was passing through the House, I secured the inclusion in it of specifications for the crown, which, at that time, was not in production. Even in its present size, the crown is not an unpopular coin and I am sure that there could and should be some sort of crown. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) said about St. George and the dragon. It is interesting to note that it was just 101 years ago that the present penny was introduced, and I should be sorry to see its size reduced.

Apart from those minor details, a numismatist or ordinary layman interested in artistic matters could not fail to see that the standard or design of our coinage has steadily declined over the last sixty years. When I introduced a short debate about the crown, twelve years ago, to fortify my argument I produced in the House a tray of examples, which I had borrowed from a numismatist, of all the crowns ever produced in this country. It was shattering and depressing to see the very high standard of the medallist's art which we had had in the past compared with that of today. We now have a very low relief and dreary design.

I have in my pocket a half-crown dated 1938. The armorial bearings, the coat of arms, are lamentable. The portrait of King George VI is not too bad, but the coat of arms is lamentable. I believe that there is an advisory artistic panel at the Mint. I am not sure of whom it consists, but it does very poor work. Even as recently as Queen Victoria, both the obverse and reverse of many of our coins were things of intense beauty, but no one would claim that for our present coins.

Coinage has great publicity value for a country. If foreign tourists coming here could find that our coins were articles of genuine artistic beauty and craftsmanship, it would have a very good effect upon the country's reputation.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will consult his right hon. and learned Friend the Master of the Mint and point out that there is just cause for complaint about the steady deterioration in the artistic merits of the English coinage ever since the turn of the century. I hope that the debate will not have been wasted and that my hon. Friend will not treat this as an occasion when he does a little stonewalling. I appeal to him, as I know that he is sensitive and artistic himself.

4.13 p.m.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Anthony Barber)

At the end of a week during which we have been debating the whole range of economic and financial affairs, it is not inappropriate that we should conclude our proceedings with a discussion of our coinage.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) for having taken the initiative in this matter and to you, Mr. Speaker, for selecting this subject for debate. I am not suggesting that the physical appearance of the coins we use and which, as has been pointed out, is important to the whole community, is not a matter of controversy, but at least the atmosphere of the House this afternoon is somewhat calmer than it was yesterday evening.

It is a useful exercise to compare the coins now in use with some of the pleasing and well-designed coins of former centuries, and also to consider how far our coins meet the currency requirements of modern times. I think that it will be generally accepted that no radical change in our present coinage should be embarked upon until we have decided whether or not to adopt the decimal system, to which I want to refer later.

Subject to that, I agree with my hon. Friend that it is a pity that a crown piece is not in general circulation, and there is little doubt that the size of the present coin has been a deterrent to its every-day use. It was made freely available for ten years up to 1937, but, except for the Jubilee and Coronation years, demand never exceeded a few thousand pieces a year. We will certainly bear in mind the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend.

Sir G. Nicholson

When my hon. Friend says that the demand never exceeded a few thousand pieces a year, does he mean that the banks never demanded them? I remember having crown pieces. I used to try to get as many of them as I could. If I produced one from my pocket, other people used to say, "Do you want that? I will give you two half-crowns for it". They were anxious to have it. The Mint is barking up the wrong tree if it thinks that demand can be judged by demand from the banks.

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

Why are 1936 crown pieces of enormous value to crown collectors? What happened to all the others minted in that year?

Mr. Barber

I cannot answer the last question, but I will try to find the answer, and write to my hon. Friend.

As regards the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Sir G. Nicholson), I think I am right in saying that the demand for coins must inevitably reflect the views of the banking community, because it is through them that the coins eventually come into the hands of the public. My hon. Friend may well be right in thinking that in this case there was a greater demand by the public than was shown in the requests made by the banks. This is the useful sort of point which a debate like this brings out, and perhaps I might say, in passing, that I know that the Deputy-Master of the Royal Mint and those who work with him are pleased that this topic has been chosen for discussion this afternoon.

Sir G. Nicholson

It is not a question of demand from the public. The question is whether the public would welcome it if it were available. I have no doubt that it would be welcome, Think of the joy of a child who was given a "five-bob" piece instead of two measly, ugly half-crowns.

Mr. Barber

I do not know whether I should comment on that last point. We will certainly bear in mind the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West and the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) that there should be a smaller crown piece.

Mr. Driberg

A silver crown piece.

Mr. Barber

I would not like to raise false hopes that at present it would be appropriate to reintroduce a silver alloy into our coinage as suggested by the hon. Member for Barking.

My hon. Friend referred to the half-crown and the florin. He is not the first person to voice a certain amount of criticism about the matter. The sterling coinage system is probably unique in having two denominations in its higher range so close to one another in value, and the historical background to this situation has been referred to by my hon. Friend.

The half-crown, like most of our other denominations in use today, dates from the sixteenth century or even earlier, but, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the florin was introduced more than 100 years ago, in 1849, when there was talk of a possible move to decimalisation. At the same time, the minting of half-crowns—this will bring joy to the ears of my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham—was suspended. Of course, it was of a different design in those days.

In 1874, after several attempts to obtain a view in favour of one or the other, the line of least resistance was taken and the minting of half-crowns was resumed and the two have been in circulation side by side ever since. It is an interesting fact that demand for the two coins today is about equal and that there are approximately 400 million of each in circulation. We are faced with the same problem as our predecessors, but I hope that in a general review of the coinage we would next time grasp the nettle firmly and make up our minds finally in favour of one or the other.

As for the bronze coinage, the sizes and weights of the penny and halfpenny date back to 1860, when the purchasing power of these coins was fairly considerable. It is obvious that in any coinage review these coins will have to come up for special consideration. I should add that it would not be possible to make any appreciable change in the size of the penny, as suggested by my hon. Friend and by Lord Keynes, without also reducing the halfpenny or dispensing with it altogether.

My hon. Friend also raised the interesting question of a possible plastic coinage. He mentioned some advantages, such as different colours. Certainly, metal is by no means the only material from which coins have been made in the past and from which we may produce coins in the future. But the remarks made by the Deputy-Master of the Mint about plastic coins, in his Report for 1959, have been widely misconstrued. He was not suggesting that the British people would welcome some new form of aesthetic tiddlywink into the coinage. But circumstances are not the same the world over. It is not merely a question of trying the matter out in one of our Dependencies.

The fact is that in other parts of the world circumstances are quite different. For example, there are several overseas customers of the Royal Mint who need coins of a face value very much lower than ours, and the cost of these coins in conventional materials greatly exceeds their face value. Consequently, the Royal Mint had the idea that a plastic coin might be acceptable in those different circumstances, and I think that the Mint deserves full credit for experimenting in this field. It is too early to say whether the idea is really practicable, but the Mint will bear in mind what my hon. Friend has said.

On the subject of overseas customers, I would like to thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks about the activities of the Royal Mint in this highly competitive coinage field. He referred to the Mint's record in the export world. If every manufacturer did as well as the Royal Mint our balance of payments difficulties would practically be over, because last year no less than 60 per cent. of the whole output of 700 million coins was exported.

I am not a numismatist, but I can well understand the interest in the question of design, which has been referred to this afternoon, and which, to some extent, has been stirred up by the observations of the Deputy-Master of the Mint in his latest Report. Although I would not suggest that those hon. Members who have spoken did not themselves have any interest before that, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West, the hon. Member for Barking and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham have all referred to this very important question.

Coin production has a very long history. Many of the earliest coins of Greece are today looked upon as great works of art. I know that criticisms have been made of United Kingdom coinage, especially in recent years. But in the past we also have produced coins of very high artistic merit and excellent technical execution—the work of artist-engravers and also of artists and engravers working in close association. But there are some very real problems associated with what I might call the art of coinage. Most of the great coin designs of the past were the work of artist-engravers who conceived and executed their designs in the dimensions of the coins themselves, and often direct in the steel of the working punch from which the dies were struck.

In recent times the practice has developed—and this may account for some of the criticisms made this afternoon about the depth of the relief—partly through the shortage of artists who are capable of working in miniature, but also in response to ever-increasing coinage demands, of reducing, largely by mechanical means, designs conceived and modelled in much larger scale than the coins themselves. The change of scale and the imperfections of the reducing process have at times led to the production of coins which certainly do not give the aesthetic satisfaction of some of the older ones.

The Deputy-Master of the Mint is trying to overcome this weakness by bringing into closer co-operation and association the artists and the Royal Mint engravers. The famous design of St. George and the dragon by Pistrucci, to which my hon. Friend referred, is perhaps the best known of the reverse designs. Its use for both gold and silver coinage in the past and its continued use today for gold sovereigns— of which we do not see very many—are, I think, clear indications of the high esteem in which this design has been held. But art dies if it stands still. It would not, I think, be unreasonable to hope that the artists of this country might produce an equally exciting and satisfying design which could go down to history as a product of the present Elizabethan age.

Mr. Driberg

The Council of Industrial Design?

Mr. Barber

So far as I know, the Council of Industrial Design has not been consulted. But, certainly, the importance of having available expert advice on this matter was recognised some years ago, when the Royal Mint Advisory Committee was set up. That is referred to and its members are set out on page 21 of the Report for 1960. I can assure my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Barking that the suggestions which have been made will be brought to the attention of that Committee.

When the new pound note was issued I learned the hard way that it is not for a Treasury Minister to express an authoritative view on this most contraversial question of design. But it is certainly of the utmost importance, and it is not something which we can ignore. I agree with the hon. Member who said that this is something which makes an impression on the foreigner coming to this country. I can assure the House that it is a matter which is being taken very seriously. This is one reason why the Deputy-Master of the Mint and those who work with him are pleased that interest has been shown by the selection of this topic for consideration today.

I said earlier that in any consideration of the coinage the question of decimalisation was highly relevant. As my hon. Friend has said, it is now 137 years since this House approved a Motion which recommended the application of the decimal scale to coins. Since then, of course, the subject has been under almost continuous discussion. We are now pressing forward with a complete review of the matter and we hope to announce a decision to the House, one way or the other, later this year.

Sir G. Nicholson

I hope that the House will be consulted first.

Mr. Barber

Our conclusions are bound to have important consequences for any future decisions on the coinage. I should like, once again, to thank my hon. Friend for having raised this most interesting topic and for providing me with an opportunity to make some observations on the subject.

Sir G. Nicholson

I hope that my hon. Friend will say that the House will be consulted before any decision is reached about decimalisation.

Mr. Barber

I should not like to give any such pledge on an occasion like this, when we are considering the coinage generally. It was only incidentally that I mentioned decimalisation. I think that it would involve legislation, although I am not sure.

The Question having been proposed after Four o'clock, and the debate having continued for half on hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Four o'clock.