NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE CONTRIBUTIONS BILL AND NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE BILL (ALLOCATION OF TIME) (Hansard, 6 March 1961)

HC Deb 06 March 1961 vol 636 cc37-194 37

3 30 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): I beg to move,

That the following provisions shall apply to the remaining Proceedings on the National Health Service Contributions Bill and the National Health Service Bill—

5	National Health Service Contributions Bill
	1. The remaining Proceedings in Committee on the National Health Service Contributions Bill shall be completed in two allotted days, and shall be brought to a conclusion or interrupted, as the case may be, at the times shown in the following Table:—

	Proceedings	Time for conclusion or interruption
10	Clause 2, new Clauses (if any) and First Schedule.	(a) To be interrupted at 11.30 p.m. on the first allotted day.
		(b) To be brought to a conclusion at 9.30 p.m. on the second allotted day.
15	Second Schedule, new Schedules (if any) 15 and any other Proceedings necessary to bring the Proceedings in Committee to a conclusion.	To be brought to a conclusion at 11.30 p.m. on the second allotted day.

20	2.—(1) Any Proceedings which, by virtue of this Order, are interrupted at a particular time on the first allotted day shall not thereafter be resumed on that day, but without 20 prejudice to the resumption thereof on the second allotted day.
(2) On any such interruption by virtue of this Order the Chairman shall leave the Chair without putting any question, and shall report progress and ask leave to sit again.
25	3. The Proceedings on Consideration (if any) and the Proceedings on Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in one allotted day, and shall be brought to a conclusion at eleven o'clock on that day.
4. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule.
30	5. If, on any of the said allotted days, a Motion is made under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), the bringing to a conclusion, or interruption, of any Proceedings which under this Order are to be brought to a conclusion, or interrupted, on that day shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the Motion under Standing Order No. 9.
35	6. Any Private Business which has been set down for consideration at seven o'clock on any of the said allotted days shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion (or, in the case of the first allotted day, at the interruption under this Order) of the Proceedings on the Bill on that day, and shall be exempted by this paragraph from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for a period of three hours, or, if the Proceedings on the Bill are concluded before half-past ten o'clock, for a period (from ten o'clock) equal to the time elapsing between seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.
40	7. When the Order of the Day is read for the House to resolve itself into Committee on the Bill, Mr. Speaker shall leave the Chair without putting any question, notwithstanding that notice of an Instruction has been given.
45	8. On the conclusion of the Proceedings in any Committee on the Bill, including a Committee to which the Bill has been re-committed (whether as a whole or otherwise), the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any question.
50	9. This Order shall have effect notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders, and notwithstanding the Practice of the House relating to the intervals between the stages of any Bill, and Standing Order No. 41 (Business Committee) shall not apply in relation to this Order in so far as it relates to the National Health Service Contributions Bill.

	National health Service Bill
55	10.——(a) The Standing Committee to which the National Health Service Bill is committed shall report the Bill to the House on or before the twenty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and sixty-one;

	(b) at a sitting of the Standing Committee at which any Proceedings are to be brought to a conclusion under a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee the Chairman shall not adjourn the Committee under any Order relating to the sittings of the Committee until the Proceedings have been brought to a conclusion;
60	(c) no dilatory Motion with respect to Proceedings on the Bill or the adjournment of the Standing Committee shall be made in the Standing Committee except by a Member of the Government, and the question on any such Motion, if made by a Member of the Government, shall be put forthwith without any debate; and
65	(d) on the conclusion of the Committee Stage of the Bill the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any question.
70	11. The Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in one allotted day and shall be brought to a conclusion at half-past ten o'clock on that day; and for the purpose of Standing Order No. 41 (Business Committee) this Order shall be taken to allot to the Proceedings on Consideration such portion of that day as the Resolution of the Business Committee may determine.
75	12. The Business Committee shall report to the House their recommendations as to the Proceedings on Consideration, and as to the allocation of time between those Proceedings and the Proceedings on Third Reading, not later than the twenty-third day of March, nineteen hundred and sixty-one.
	13. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule, but the recommendation of the Business Sub-Committee may include alterations in the order in which Clauses, Schedules, new Clauses and new Schedules are to be taken in the Standing Committee.
80	14. On the allotted day referred to in paragraph 11 of this Order Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) shall have effect with the substitution of references to half-past ten of the clock for references to ten of the clock, and Proceedings which under this Order or the Resolution of the Business Committee are to be brought to a conclusion on that day shall not be interrupted under the provisions of the said Standing Order.
85	15. If, on the last-mentioned allotted day, a Motion is made under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), the last preceding paragraph of this Order shall not apply, but—
90	(a) any Proceedings on the Bill exempted under paragraph (2) of that Standing Order shall be so exempted for the period mentioned in that paragraph and a further half-hour; and
(b) the bringing to a conclusion of any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or under the Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion on that day after seven o'clock shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the said Motion under Standing Order No. 9.
95	16. If, at seven o'clock on the said allotted day, any Proceedings on the Bill which, under the Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion at or before that time have not been concluded, any Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance) which, apart from this Order, would stand over to that time shall stand over until those Proceedings have been concluded.
100
105	17. Any Private Business which has been set down for consideration at seven o'clock on the said allotted day shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion of the Proceedings on the Bill on that day, and shall be exempted by this paragraph from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for a period of three hours or, if the Proceedings on the Bill are concluded before half-past ten o'clock, for a period (from ten o'clock) equal to the time elapsing between seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.

General
110	18. Standing Order No. 12 (Motion for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business) shall not apply to any allotted day.
19. On an allotted day no dilatory Motion with respect to Proceedings on either of the Bills shall be made except by a Member of the Government, and the question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith without any debate.
115	20. For the purpose of bringing to a conclusion any Proceedings which under this Order (or, in the case of the National Health Service Bill, under this Order or under the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or of the Business Committee) are to be brought to a conclusion at a particular time and have not previously been concluded, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall, at that time, put forthwith the question on any amendment or Motion already proposed from the Chair, and, in the case of a new Clause or new Schedule which has been read a second time, also the question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill, and subject thereto shall proceed to put forthwith the question on any amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules moved by a Member of the Government of which notice has been given (but no other amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules) and any question necessary for the disposal of the
120

125	Business to be concluded, and, in the case of any amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules moved by a Member of the Government, he shall put only the question that the amendment be made or that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.
130	21. The Proceedings on any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order or of the Resolution of the Business Committee shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion two hours after they have been commenced, and the last preceding paragraph of this Order shall, so far as applicable, apply as if the Proceedings were Proceedings on one or other of the Bills:
135	Provided that if the Proceedings are interrupted by a Motion for the adjournment of House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on efinite matter of urgent public importance), the time at which they are to be brought to a conclusion shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the Motion for the Adjournment.
140	If any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order or of the Resolution of the Business Committee is under consideration at seven o'clock on a day on which any Private Business has been set down for consideration at seven o'clock, the Private Business shall stand over and be considered when the Proceedings on the Motion have been concluded.
145	22. Paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business) and paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance) shall not apply to any Private Business exempted by virtue of paragraph 6 or paragraph 17 of this Order.
	23. Nothing in this Order or in the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or the Business Committee shall—
150	(a) prevent any Proceedings to which the Order or Resolution applies from being taken or completed earlier than is required by the Order or Resolution, or
(b) prevent any Business (whether on one or other of the Bills or not) from being proceeded with on any day after the completion of all such Proceedings on the Bills as are to be taken on that day.
155	24. In this Order "allotted day" means any day (other than a Friday) on which one or other of the Bills is put down as the first Government Order of the day, "the Bills" means the National Health Service Contributions Bill and the National Health Service Bill, "the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee" means the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee as agreed to by the Standing Committee on the National Health Service Bills, "the Resolution of the Business Committee" means the Resolution of the Business Committee as agreed to by the House, and any reference to Proceedings on Consideration or Proceedings on Third Reading includes a reference to any Proceedings, at those stages respectively, for, on or in consequence of re-committal.
160

§ Mr. Hugh Gaitskell (Leeds, South)
On a point of order. I wish to seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on the Motion standing in the name of the Leader of the House and other right hon. Members opposite. It is a very long Motion, occupying three-and-a-half pages of the Order Paper, and it covers two quite distinct Bills. It seems to me that, in principle, it is quite wrong that a single timetable Motion should deal with two Measures. Surely this puts the House in a very difficult position. Hon. Members may take different views on these two Measures. Some may wish to support or abstain on one and vote against the other. There is no possibility of their doing so under the Motion introduced by the Government.
I am well aware that there are many precedents where more than one Bill has been grouped with another in the case of a timetable Motion, but I believe that in most of those cases the two Bills were at least very closely associated. For instance, it may be that the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill and the Land 42 Values (Scotland) Bill, in 1908, were connected with one another. Similarly, it is quite obvious that the Local Government Bill and the Local Government (Scotland) Bill, in the 1928–29 Session, were closely connected. The same could be said of the Military Training Bill and the Reserve and Auxiliary Forces Bill, in the 1938–39 Session. That cannot be said of the two Bills with which we are concerned.
Perhaps the best argument in favour of what I am saying is this. Whatever our views may be on the merits of the two Measures, the Government have not brought them in together in the past. In fact, they have introduced quite distinct Bills relating to National Health Service charges in some years and relating to contributions in other years.
Finally, here we have two Bills which are not only quite distinct and separate, but one of them is in Standing Committee and the other is being taken on the Floor of the House. Moreover, one of them is a tax Bill and could be 43 regarded as a finance Bill in the ordinary sense of that word.
In these circumstances, Mr. Speaker, may I ask you whether it is right that the House should be forced to consider them together and whether it would not be appropriate to ask the Government to withdraw their Motion and to introduce two separate Motions if they must proceed with this arbitrary procedure?

§ Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)
Further to that point of order, May I recall to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House, that on 3rd March, 1947, there was a Motion in which two Bills, one the Transport Bill and the other the Town and Country Planning Bill, were grouped together?

§ Mr. Speaker
I think that there is some difficulty in an invitation addressed to the Chair in this context. No such difficulty attaches to any address made to the Government in this context. I appreciate the force of what the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has said. I can only say that I do not think it possible to rule this Motion out of order. If it were, it would not have been placed on the Order Paper.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick)
Further to that point of order. Are we to understand that, under your Ruling Mr. Speaker, any number of Bills of any kind and unrelated in any way can be put together in a timetable Motion? If so, I should like to know whether this is creating a precedent, because it would make a great deal of difference to the rights of hon. Members and all parties in the House. Have we no way of questioning the number of Bills or the relationship between Bills which might be put down in a timetable Motion?

§ Mr. Speaker
I suppose that it would be possible to table an Amendment to the Motion, abstracting some part of it from it if that case arose. That is not this case. I would not wish, nor think it right to try to rule, on what would be the extremities of this doctrine. If we had something which, in the view of the Chair of the day, would be patently an abuse it would be a different matter I do not think that this Motion has reached that stage.

§ Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I direct your attention to that part of the Motion which deals with private Members' time. There are Sessional Orders of the House which provide at what times and on what days there can be Motions by private Members and Private Business. In a timetable Motion concerning other matters, is it in order to interfere with the established practice of the House, laid down in its Standing Orders, regarding its business not connected with either of the Bills included in the Motion?

§ Mr. Speaker
Would the hon. Gentleman be good enough to direct my attention to the specific paragraph or paragraphs that he has in. mind?

§ Mr. Silverman
Yes, Mr. Speaker. It is paragraph 6, on page 2288 of the Order Paper, which states: Any Private Business which has been set down"——

§ Mr. Speaker
I am sorry. What the hon. Gentleman was talking about was private Members' business. I think that it is fair to say that this is common form nowadays. It is only a regular part of allocation of time Motions.

§ Mr. Hector Hughes (Aberdeen, North)
Further to the point of order raised by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. He has referred to the fact that two Bills were taken separately in Committee—one on the Floor of the House and the other upstairs. There is, however, a further point. No doubt these two Bills are connected in some way, but if they are as closely related as the Leader of the House indicates, so closely related that they can be the subject of one Motion, surely they should have been the subject of one Bill.

§ Mr. Speaker
With respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, I do not think that that is a point which arises on the Motion.

§ Mr. Desmond Donnelly (Pembroke)
One point in your answer, Mr. Speaker, to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition puzzled me. Did I understand you to say that the Motion must be in order because otherwise it would not have appeared on the Order Paper? If so, does this mean that everything that appears on the Order Paper in future will always be in order?

§ Mr. Speaker
No. If it was out of order in a technical sense it would not have been put on the Order Paper, unless I approved its situation there.

§ 3.40 p.m.

§ Mr. R. A. Butler
I shall shortly be dealing with the point raised by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell). Perhaps I might deal with it in the order that I have arranged my few remarks.
The Motion sets out the timetable for the remaining stages of the National Health Service Contributions Bill and the Bill relating to Health Service charges. Before introducing a timetable Motion, a Government have to be satisfied about three things: first, that it is not possible to get the business done by agreement, secondly, that under the proposed timetable there will be adequate time for discussion and that the most efficient use is made of Parliamentary time—we attach great importance to that —and thirdly, that the use of the Guillotine is essential.
As regards the first, we have approached the Opposition with a reasonable offer of time within which we should agree to finish the contributions Bill. They have said, through the Leader of the Opposition, that they are not prepared to discuss any offer. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear. That is understood and that disposes of the first point, upon which I shall not dwell any more.
On the second—that the Government have to be satisfied that under the proposed timetable there will be adequate time for discussion and that the most efficient use is made of Parliamentary time—it has never been taken by the most erudite and respectable Parliamentarians that the introduction of such a procedure necessarily militates against the better discussion of a Bill. This is particularly true in the case of a short Bill—and the right hon. Gentleman, in his intervention, indicated that this is a short Bill—in which there is not a mass of Clauses to be gathered up and passed without discussion as the Guillotine falls each time.
Let me examine the procedure suggested, first, for the health contributions Bill, and, secondly for the health service charges Bill. I claim that by our arrangement that three more days should be devoted to the remaining stages of the con- 46 tributions Bill we can offer hon. Members on both sides of the House an opportunity to put their points and have them answered, and to put them at a time of day when adequate publicity can be given to what they say, if that proves to be desirable, and when the proceedings are conducted with due regard to the importance of the points they put [Interruption.] It is not always the case that the national Press awakes in the early hours of the morning.
During the Committee stages of the Bill, we shall sit from 3.30 to 11.30 on each Committee day. This means eight hours each day. If we add to this the 12 hours taken on the last all-night sitting, we find that the Bill will occupy about 28 hours in Committee, as compared with eight hours which the Opposition thought sufficient for the previous Bill in 1958, which was of similar character, namely, to raise the contribution under the National Health Service.
There was another contributions Bill relating to National Insurance in 1957, which took only five hours in Committee. I do not think that the House or the country can regard it as unfair to allow over three times as much time for this Bill as its predecessor in 1958 and correspondingly more than the equivalent Bill in 1957.
In drawing up this timetable, we realise that the major time may be required for the Schedules—in fact, the right hon. Gentleman said so in the middle of the all-night sitting and all that he says has our immediate attention—particularly the First Schedule, to which he drew attention. In fact, having examined the Order Paper carefully and read all the Amendments and discussed them with my right hon. Friend and with the Financial Secretary, we are quite aware that the major discussion will be on the First Schedule, when a great many points are likely to be put forward. While Clause 2 may well be debated, it may not be regarded as so important as the Schedule. That is why we have drawn the timetable so as to allow the main time for the First Schedule on which the main debates are likely to take place.
The First Schedule relates to the rates, and I believe that the time can be found far the debates on the issues involved without unduly inhibiting the degree of 47 expression of hon. Members opposite, or, indeed, of hon. Members on this side of the House. The Opposition, if they so desire, will be able to spend precisely as long as they like on Clause 2 and the First Schedule, that is, the whole of the first day, as set out on the Order Paper, up to 11.30 p.m. and the whole of the second day up to 9.30 p.m. I hope that most of this, from the point of view of what is on the Order Paper, will be on the First Schedule, after disposing shortly of Clause 2. The issues of the Second Schedule are not so important, although we have allowed adequate time for them.
It was thought, when drawing up the timetable, that the Opposition and those taking part in the debates could best decide themselves how to spend this time rather than a Business Committee, consisting mainly of the Chairman's Panel. We are, therefore, trying to adapt our procedure to the needs and urgency of the Bill in question, with particular regard to the Amendments which we have studied and which are on the Order Paper.
I do not think that I need go into great detail on the whole length of the Motion. Paragraph 3 allots one day for the Report stage, if any, and Third Reading. Paragraph 4 excludes Motions to alter the order of the Bill. Paragraph 5 provides for the possible contingency of adjournment under Standing Order No. 9. Paragraph 6, to which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) drew our attention, deals with Private Business when it is set down for one of the allotted days for the Bill. It enables such business to be taken after the proceedings on the Bill for that day and exempts it from Standing Order No. 1 for the period necessary to allow it a maximum of three hours. Private Business, therefore, is not excluded, but this is a contingency which may well not arise and it is put on the Order Paper only because it is common form to make reference to all contingencies that may arise and to make allowances for them.
It may be asked by some hon. Members why there has not been a Business Committee appointed on this Bill, and I draw attention to two precedents-the National Health Service Bill, 1952, and the Licensed Premises in New Towns 48 Bill, 1952. Here, the main Business Committee was not appointed and I have told the House why we thought that this adequate time is better left to those who will take part in the debates than on this occasion having a Business Committee. The Business Committee was set up after the Bills to which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) has referred in his intervention as a new device, and it will be noticed that we propose to use the Business Sub-Committee in dealing with the Bill upstairs in Standing Committee.
These are all points that are debatable and I simply wish to bring them out clearly in my opening remarks. I claim, therefore, in drawing attention to the time available for discussing these Amendments, that the second matter on which I have to satisfy the House, namely, that there is time to consider these matters at a suitable hour, is met.
I will deal later with the National Health Service Bill. I should now like to deal with the third point, that a timetable Motion is essential. This depends largely on the attitude of the Opposition and I would use these words: …This is, I understand, a contentious Measure.… The Opposition have declared, as is their right, that they will fight and oppose this Bill from the beginning to the end… We seek to get this Bill through. That is what it was introduced for.

Hon. Members
Hear, hear.

Mr. Butler
These are not my words, although they have been cheered by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. They were used by Mr. Herbert Morrison, now Lord Morrison, as reported in HANSARD, col. 1429, 25th November, 1948, when introducing the Guillotine on the Iron and Steel Bill. It will be seen that, as he said in col. 1438: There is plenty of precedent and eminently respectable precedent, too, from all quarters for a Motion of this kind.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
What did the right hon. Gentleman say on that occasion?

§ Mr. Butler
Perhaps the hon. Member and his hon. Friends will be able to quote, as history has a curious habit in this matter of Parliamentary procedure of repeating itself. Mr. Morrison said on that occasion: We had better be realistic about the situation."—[OFFicIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1948; Vol. 458, c. 1429–38.] 49 That is precisely what the Government are being on this occasion.
On this occasion, we have an absolutely clearly indication of the attitude of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition, answering me in the early hours of the morning on 23rd February, said that the Opposition intend to fight every line that we can of the Schedule when we return to it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd February, 1961; Vol. 635. c. 1049.] His henchman, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) said in a party political broadcast, on 1st March: Friends, our fight in the House is part of a battle to throw them out. The Labour Opposition will be fighting Tory legislation Clause by Clause and line by line. The right hon. Gentleman's whole broadcast was devoted to an uncompromising attack on the two Measures which are the subject of the timetable Motion. The right hon. Gentleman added: At the moment, of course, we cannot defeat the Government by our votes, but we can, and will, go on fighting. I should like to make it equally clear to the right hon. and, if I may so call him, gallant Gentleman that we, too, intend to go on fighting. We shall go on fighting for what we believe in: that is. the rights of the country and the future of its social services. The Government are, therefore, satisfied that a Guillotine Motion is essential and that it will operate fairly.
I now come to the National Health Service Bill, which has had three sittings in Standing Committee. It has been clear from quotations on the first day in Committee by the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) and the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) that the Opposition, to put it mildly, intend to take a very long time discussing the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East said that the Minister had his constitutional remedies which Parliament, in its wisdom, had ensured were available to him. namely, the Guillotine and the Closure.
I am glad that the hon. and learned Member called them constitutional remedies, because that is exactly what they are. We regard these as constitutional remedies and we propose to give up to 21st March before the Committee 50 should report. This should give the opportunity of, altogether, eight days in Committee. Furthermore—this is a matter which we cannot decide here today—if the Business Sub-Committee which meets to allocate the business finds it good to advise that there should be a third meeting in the week, there will be an opportunity of extra meetings up to ten days or so in Committee when the Bill will have been discussed.
The procedure following the pattern of the other Bills is set out in the latter part of the Motion. The Leader of the Opposition asked why, if it was a small Bill, we needed to adopt this procedure. The Opposition have tabled nearly 60 Amendments, occupying nearly ten pages of the Notice Paper. So far, in three sittings, two Amendments have been disposed of. The Opposition spent two hours debating that the Committee should sit only one day a week, in the course of which the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins), whom I see in his place and who questioned me following my business statement on Thursday, made the following observations, which are perfectly sincere but which make one think. The hon. Member said: we are … trying to ensure that the Bill shall be delayed for the maximum period of time which it is constitutionally possible for us to delay it. That was in column 7.
In column 35—the leap from colmun 7 to column 35 shows the extent of the hon. Member's intervention—he said: There is no reason at all why we should not debate this Bill in Committee right up to the end of the Session and, as I should prefer, even beyond it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 23rd February, 1961; c. 35.] The hon. Member cannot object to the spirit in which I have read out his statement.

§ Mr. W. A. Wilkins (Bristol, South)
I meant it.

§ Mr. Butler
I believe that the hon. Member meant it. I believe that the Opposition meant it. I do not question the sincerity of any of these observations. I do not call that into question.
We must, however, acknowledge the actuality of the situation, as my predecessor from the other side of the House when Leader of the House himself once acknowledged. The Bill might 51 be delayed, and it is vital for us to get it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Therefore, while no calendar date is written into the Bill, it has to go into effect a week after the Royal Assent. When I am asked "Why?", my answer is why should my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health introduce a Bill unless he wishes to carry it through for the very good patriotic reasons which he has adduced in its support?
The Opposition have made it clear that their purpose is to frustrate the passage of the Bills altogether. If the House has decided, in principle, that this extra money shall be raised in this way for the National Health Service, it must be obvious to hon. Members that the Government could not tolerate undue delay in the implementation of this decision.
So much for something about the two Bills. I would not be doing my duty as Leader of the House if I did not consider whether there were adequate precedents for all this besides quoting one of my predecessors as Leader of the House and the precedent of the Iron and Steel Bill. I have before me—any hon. Member can look them up—the precedents in the period 1945–1951, when the Opposition used the Guillotine in relation to three Bills. I support what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely: there is precedent for one Motion dealing with two Bills, which the Leader of the Opposition did not quote in seeking your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I refer to the case of the Transport Bill, 1947, and the Town and Country Planning Bill, 1947, which were included in one Motion. Then, there was the Iron and Steel Bill, 1949. In the latter case, the Guillotine Motion appeared on the Paper before the Bill was started in Standing Committee, in the former two cases after some attempt had been made to make progress in Standing Committee.
In the present case, we have thought that there is sufficient indication of the attitude of the Opposition and the small progress made hitherto that we should introduce this Motion after an attempt to make progress on the Floor of the House and in Standing Committee. We take precedents from the period of the Socialist Government of 1945 to 1951 52 or later, because there are respectable precedents also during our time. We find that there are plenty of precedents for the course we are taking.
My final justification for the Motion must be the facts concerning the Bills themselves. The Government intend that the Bill concerning contributions should, if possible, be passed into law by Easter. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has already announced, the Government intend that the new rates of contribution shall be effective from 3rd July. As the House knows, the preparation, printing and distribution to post offices of a new series of National Insurance stamps is a fairly substantial operation. It takes about three months. It involves printing some 250 million stamps in 31 varieties and their distribution to 25,000 post offices by, at any rate, a week before the new rate of contribution can start. The Bill relating to charges is wanted as soon as it can reasonably pass through Standing Committee and return to the House.
I move this Motion because these Bills take their place in an important Government programme. In my opinion, and in that of my colleagues, the Motion will make discussion on the Bills fairer, clearer and better than under any alternative procedure that we are likely to see. I take my full responsibility, as Leader of the House, in moving the Motion. I do it in the hope that the Bills may be properly discussed, I do it according to respectable precedent and I do it in the belief that it will be accepted by the House.

§ Mr. Hector Hughes
Before the right hn. Gentleman sits down, may I ask him a question? He apparently thinks that he has covered every aspect of the Motion. Will he tell the House why he has mixed up Clause 2 with the new Clauses and the First Schedule? Why has he not given separate time for each of these separate items? Would that not be reasonable?

§ Mr. Butler
I mentioned in my speech that there are various methods of organising this. It was not thought by us that Clause 2 was likely to present the most controversial debate, or would necessarily take up a great deal of time. It was thought by us that the controversial debates would be on the many positive 53 Amendments to the First Schedule which need discussion. New Clauses, if any, are included and according to present signs they are not likely to take up any time. Therefore, the whole of the time is to be allotted to debate on the First Schedule relating to a series of different types of people in relation to rates, and for that the best part of two Parliamentary days have been allotted.

§ Mr. Hector Hughes
I concede that there may be no new Clauses and that, therefore, it might be reasonable to associate Clause 2 with the new Clauses, if any, but would it not be more reasonable to allocate a separate period of time for the First Schedule, which is of cardinal importance, as the right hon. Gentleman admitted, to that Bill? In my submission, it would be reasonable to give a separate period of time for the First Schedule.

§ Mr. Butler
I explained in my speech that Guillotines in the past have operated—and some hon. Members may not have seen them operate—on a good many Clauses. The Guillotine has sometimes fallen so that Clauses were not discussed at all. On this occasion we are giving a long time primarily for one main Schedule so that those hon. Members participating in the debate can make the best use of the time. There will be no falling of the Guillotine to cut off any portion of the time allotted to this matter under this arrangement, which is meant to be a fair system.

§ 4.1 p.m.

§ Mr. Hugh Gaitskell (Leeds, South)
I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof: this House declines to assent to the arbitary curtailment of debate upon two measures which vitally affect the welfare of the nation". It is common form, in debates on timetable Motions, for the Government to remind the Opposition of what they did when they were the Government, and for the Opposition to remind the Government of what they said when they were in opposition. The Leader of the House has given us one or two illustrations of this kind, but let me say straight away that it is no part of my case this afternoon that the Guillotine is never justified in our proceedings.
There are circumstances, in my view, when the Government are entitled to 54 introduce timetable Motions of this character; but they are all, from their very nature, grave infringements of the rights of Members, and particularly of the rights of the minority. The Guillotine Motion is worse than a Closure Motion. It is worse than a Closure Motion, because it is a series of prearranged Closure Motions covering the whole debate, or the whole of the remaining debate, on a Bill.
I cannot accept for one moment that the right hon. Gentleman, in his argument in favour of this Motion, put in any way the fundamental points. I cannot accept that it is justifiable to introduce a Motion of this kind merely because the Opposition have declared that they intend to oppose a Bill. This is really a most monstrous notion, that every time we decide that we dislike something right hon. Gentlemen opposite do, and we say so, and we argue in debate, and we do our best, as we are entitled, to delay a Bill, despite the fact they have a majority of 100 against us—that every time this happens, on the right hon. Gentleman's argument, the Government are entitled to introduce a Guillotine Motion. That is really ridiculous, and it is quite contrary to the previous statements which have been made on this particular subject.

§ Mr. Dudley Williams (Exeter)
Before today?

§ Mr. Gaitskell
I agree, I repeat, that there are circumstances when a Guillotine Motion is legitimate, but only when it is used as a last resort on a very urgent, very necessary Bill which cannot otherwise be passed in a reasonable time and where failure to do so would involve serious consequences to the nation. It is our contention that no such case can conceivably be made out in respect of these two miserable little Bills which form the subject of the Motion.
Let us consider for a moment, first, the question of urgency. What is the urgency in this matter? No date of coming into force is specified in the Bills. For the National Health Service Contributions Bill the Treasury fixes an appointed day. So the Government are in no way tied down to having to get it through by any particular day or week or even month. As for the National Health Service Bill, all that is provided 55 is that it shall come into force seven days after it is passed. So there is certainly no technical requirement whatever about urgency. It is true, of course, that the Government have already brought into force the higher prescription charges—and, believe me, they will be hearing all about it from the public in the days and weeks to come.

Hon. Members
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Dudley Williams
Not one letter.

§ Mr. Gaitskell
The hon. Member can wait. He will get plenty of letters, if our experience is any guide, because, believe me, going round the country during the last two weekends we have encountered a great deal of feeling about this matter.
How can it possibly be claimed that either the nation or, indeed, the Government would be adversely affected if these Bills were passed, not at the end of March, as is the desire of the Government, but, say, at the end of April or even at the end of May? It cannot possibly be said there is any degree of urgency here whatever.
Of course, the Government will, no doubt, say—or certainly it will be in their mind—that they wish to get the Bill through before the Budget and before the Finance Bill comes before the House; but it is part of our case against—particularly—the Contributions Bill, but also against the other Bill as well, that these should never have been introduced, if they were introduced at all, except at the time of the Budget, for even the Chancellor of the Exchequer admits that the contribution to the Health Service is not an insurance payment: it is, of course—he himself admitted it—a poll tax.
It is a tax Measure, and as a tax Measure it should be considered, if considered at all, when taxation as a whole is being considered, so that the House and the country can compare and contrast what is being done in the way of imposing this tax on the workers and employers of the country in comparison with what is done in other directions.
We have every reason for suspicions, when the Government deliberately introduced that Bill well in advance of the Budget, that they are very anxious to 56 get it out of the way before the Budget comes along, because if we are to judge by precedents, it is typical of their mentality that they would impose by stealth a higher tax on the workers, and then give away openly a large amount of public money to wealthier people.
The second question we have to consider is whether these Bills could be passed without a Guillotine Motion. Here, I am bound to say that I think length is very relevant, for though these Bills are of the greatest importance nobody can say that they are long and complicated Bills. They are, indeed, extremely short. One of them consists of two Clauses and two Schedules, and one Clause, Clause 1, the main Clause, has already been passed in Committee of the whole House; and the other of five Clauses, of which three are more or less formal. From the way the Government are talking, and judged by the precedents for Guillotine Motions, one would assume that these were long Bills of 20. 30 or 40 Clauses.
But not a bit of it. They are tiny little Bills, and how the Government can really claim that they would not have been able to get these Bills through passes my understanding. It certainly seems to be—I suppose one may say—something of a tribute to the Opposition. It is a tribute which we would gladly be without if we could avoid this arbitrary curtailment of debate.
Moreover, the Bills have made substantial progress. There have been no complaints from either the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary or the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in their interventions during our debates, that we were going unduly slowly. They seemed to be perfectly happy. The Leader of the House, at the end of our last debate on Clause 1, said that we had got Clause 1 and that that was satisfactory. He did not say that it had been very slow in coming or that we had been obstructing. He said nothing of the kind. Indeed, it would be very hard for the Government to argue seriously that there have been obstructions by the Opposition on these matters.
It is true that on the National Health Service Contributions Bill we have had a very short debate arbitrarily curtailed on the Ways and Means Resolution, on that 57 famous occasion when the Chief Whip ventured to give us his views with such disastrous consequences for the Government, on that night when the Leader of the House preferred to stand behind Mr. Speaker's Chair rather than come into the House. We had on that evening about two hours of debate. It is true that we had an all-night sitting on Second Reading, but what is wrong with that? This is a Bill of great importance, affecting the lives and living standards of the whole population, and it is right and proper that the House of Commons should debate a Measure of this kind at length.
The fact that we sat up all night is not, of course, the direct responsibility of the Opposition. We were prepared to do so if required. It is simply that the Government chose not to adjourn the debate. We had one other debate in Committee, which, I admit, took the greater part of the night, and the Leader of the House was satisfied to get Clause 1. One cannot speak as if getting Clause 1 meant little progress. It is a great deal of progress. It is the heart of the Bill. It is the main thing. Everybody knows that when we have a short Bill of this kind, and even sometimes when there is a long Bill, it often takes some time before we pass Clause 1.
The expression "filibustering" is sometimes used in connection with an all-night sitting or attempts on the part of the Opposition to delay Government legislation. But filibustering in the American sense of reading out irrelevant passages from literature plays no part in our proceedings. On the contrary, throughout the two nights we had serious and effective speeches from this side of the House. I only wish that we had had them from hon. Members opposite, but that is not our fault. It is simply because they are gagged by the Patronage Secretary, and precious little good it did him or them for that matter. But I recall the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) speaking at five o'clock in the morning after the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I venture to say that that was one of the most effective and able speeches I have heard in the House. So it was on the first night, and so on the second occasion.
The Leader of the House has argued that he has to get the Bill through. 58 Let us not forget that, after all, this is a tax Bill and I would remind the House that it is now nearly thirty years since a tax Bill was guillotined. This is a very serious matter. There was such a Guillotine admittedly in 1932 on the Import Duties Bill, but at least one could say at that time that the country was still involved in a very grave economic crisis. I do not know whether the Leader of the House is claiming that the economic situation is so critical today that the Government must get this Bill through with a timetable.
Let us look at what is involved. The National Health Service Bill has had only three sittings in Committee. It is true that a large number of Amendments have been put down. There is nothing unusual in that. It is common form. The Leader of the House knows perfectly well that, unfortunately, it is only too likely that not all the Amendments will be selected. The Chairman has power to select and he uses that power. The fact that we are still on Clause I is again completely irrelevant since it is certainly one of the only two vital Clauses.
Nor can we overlook the fact that the Bill contains enabling powers for the Government. This is not merely something that is past and done with when it has passed through the House of Commons and the other place and has received the Royal Assent. It gives the Government power to vary charges at any time. This is something that the House should not allow to go through without very serious debate. I suppose that the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends may feel that there is something derogatory about the all-night sittings which they have endured recently. They endured them because the Government insisted on rushing this business through.
We on this side of the House have no objection. We are prepared to stay. I do not accept the argument that there is anything derogatory to the House of Commons in having all-night sittings. It is absolute nonsense to suggest it. On the contrary, it is a well-established tradition of the House that from time to time we have to sit late. As for our reputation in the country, I believe that this does far more good than harm. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I see that hon. Members question that. I find the 59 country interested in parliamentary proceedings as a result of the fact that we have stayed up late in the last few weeks.
What people dislike about the House of Commons is when we have a dull time, when there is nothing to report and we seem to be doing nothing. But when we argue fiercely, as we do in our party system, with live debate and with real argument, it does nothing but good in the country. I know that hon. Members opposite do not like such a thing. They want to keep everything as quiet as possible. They want to be able to stay away as long as possible. They want to avoid all-night sittings so that they can go off to their other jobs in the morning. It is different on this side of the House.
The next question is whether the Bills are necessary. Emphatically, in our opinion, they are not necessary. In our opinion, there is no case whatever, indeed quite the contrary, for taking either Bill before the Budget. If the Government are really arguing that it is necessary to have these Bills to stop the appalling economic situation into which they have plunged the country, it is difficult to understand how the saving of £1¾ million by means of the Bill which imposes new charges will help them. It is even suggested in some of the newspapers that in their desperate straits the Government may have to drop the Road Safety Bill to get these Bills through. What a sense of priority to drop the Road Safety Bill to get passed a Bill imposing charges on the Health Service!
Another question that must be asked is whether the Government have any mandate for the Bill. There is certainly no mention of it in their General Election manifesto and not even a word about it in the Queen's Speech. In view of what the Leader of the House says, and because it is right that we should draw a distinction and argue for what we have done in the past, I should like to contrast with these Bills the three Bills on which we on this side of the House, when we were in power, introduced a time-table Motion. First, all those Bills were long Bills. We had for all of them a clear electoral mandate; and we had every reason to expect prolonged obstruction by the then Opposition.
60 The right hon. Gentleman queried whether it was really justifiable for us to introduce a Guillotine Motion on the Iron and Steel Bill. I remember that occasion very well, and I remember why that decision was taken. It was taken because the Opposition so obstructed another Bill which was then going through—the Gas Bill, of which I happened to be in charge—that they forced the Standing Committee to have a 50-hour sitting. Indeed, so considerate were they of the reputation of the House of Commons at that time that they finally produced the following situation.
According to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond), who was unfortunate enough to be Chairman of the Committee at that time, there was a moment in the early hours—about 5 a.m., I think—during the second night, when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) was addressing the Committee in his usual lucid manner, explaining exactly why we could not accept some frivolous Amendment tabled by the Opposition, when my hon. Friend found himself nodding—going off to sleep—and he woke and observed my right hon. and learned Friend addressing an entirely sleeping Committee. This contrasts very ill with these ideas of looking after the reputation of the House of Commons.
Moreover, those Bills were all badly needed and very necessary. If one has any doubts about that, one has only to consider the disastrous consequences which have fallen upon us since they were repealed or amended by the Tory Government. The rise in land values resulting directly from the repeal of Part II of the Town and Country Planning Act, the uncontrollable sprawl all over the countryside; the shortage of steel and, indeed, the enormous capital gains made by private individuals in steel shares; the wrecking of the Transport Commission—all those things which have happened since then show only too clearly how justified we were in insisting at that time that the Bills should go through.
The real reasons why the Government have introduced this Motion are quite different. We can get some guidance by considering the previous Bills which they have guillotined. It is an interesting fact 61 that they seem always to introduce the guillotine when they are either attacking the Welfare State or transferring money from the State or from the poor to the rich. These guillotined Bills really make a remarkable list. First, there was the earlier National Health Service Bill. Then we had the Licensed Premises (New Towns) Bill—what I prefer to call the "Brewers' Benefit" Bill. Then we had the Rent Act—the "Landlords' Loot" Bill. Then we had the Transport Act—the "Road Hauliers' Racket" Bill. Then we had commercial television, the biggest plum of all—the private television take-over bid.
The truth, of course, is that hon. Members opposite do not like the publicity given by late sittings, because there are always headlines in the newspapers next morning about what they are trying to do in the House, and they want to get this over especially before the Budget for the reasons which I have given. They are unable to stay up all night or unwilling to stay up all night.
Most important of all, I believe that the real motive behind the Motion is an attempt on the part of the Leader of the House and the Patronage Secretary to restore their drooping prestige among their hon. Friends. For everybody knows what a fool the Chief Patronage Secretary has made of himself, and everybody knows the kind of strain that is imposed on their relations with their hon. Friends when they are subjected to the kind of attack that we have been making upon them. Of course, especially with the members of the Suez Group, a show of force of this kind will endear the right hon. Gentleman to his hon. Friends below the Gangway. If they cannot have gunboats abroad, they will have guillotines at home.
I am sorry that the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) is not here this afternoon, because I am sure that he would have agreed entirely with what I have just been saying. His mutterings and his threats across the Floor of the House have been very evident to us recently, and, obviously, he has had his way with the Leader of the House. I must quote to the House the record of the noble Lord in this matter. In 1948, when the Labour Government introduced a time- 62 table Motion, the noble Lord spoke of this as being the ugly thrust of dictatorship into our British Parliamentary system … With his customary courtesy, he went on to say: Consequently, their hand"— He meant the hand of the Labour Government— on public events is capricious in timing and brutal in application. They are gorillas plunging about in the garden of English democracy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1948; Vol. 458, c. 1493–4.] Of course, when it came to 1954 the noble Lord was in a different mood altogether. He said: Of course, the very word portrays the knife which is supposed to come down upon legislation, and the public outside is wont, from the use of that word, to get the idea of a violent affront to Parliamentary proceedings. But if we think of it in relation to a timetable, it becomes more normal. A timetable, so far from being revolutionary, is a thing of habit. The noble Lord then went on to say—I hope that the Leader of the House will listen to this the noble Lord was defending the imposition of a Guillotine in those circumstances when the Government had a small majority, about 20, I think— There is no purpose in a Guillotine when there is a substantial majority of 100 or more.…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th May, 1954; Vol. 527, c. 1046–9.] The fact is that none of the reasons advanced by the right hon. Gentleman can possibly be accepted as valid. Honestly, I have never known a Guillotine less justified by any reasonable argument. The truth is that this Motion is inspired by fear, by idleness, by hurt pride and by vanity. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman should have so tarnished his reputation as to support it, and I ask the House to reject the Motion and support the Amendment.

§ 4.28 p.m.

§ Sir Robert Grimston (Westbury)
I venture to address the House on this Motion because I have been a Member of Parliament for about thirty years and have experienced many Guillotine Motion debates. These debates take a common form.
With respect to my right hon. Friend and to the Leader of the Opposition, I would say that the debate so far as it 63 has gone at present has more or less followed common form. My right hon. Friend recited the list of precedents—what our opponents did when they were in office—and I propose to say a little more about that later. The Leader of the Opposition has been engaged in reviving his drooping prestige by showing a commendable amount of indignation, but he has really said nothing new. Having heard this debate so far, there still goes through my mind, as on previous occasions, the lines from "The Jackdaw of Rheims" so far as the Opposition are concerned: Never was heard such a terrible curse! But what gave rise To no little surprise, Nobody seem'd one penny the worse! I want to look, for a few moments, at the timetable from the point of view of the functioning of our Parliamentary democracy and briefly to mention a little of the history of the matter. The House will agree that it is necessary to strike a fair balance in order to ensure the rights of the Opposition to be heard and to influence policy, but what is even more important is the carrying on of the business of the government of the country. There is no doubt that if an elected Government could be completely frustrated, Parliamentary democracy would break down, and that would be the road to dictatorship.
There was a time when debate in the House was completely unrestricted. Indeed, the first time the Closure was moved, it was done not under a Standing Order, but by one of our previous Speakers who got up and said, "I am going to put the Question", having got "fed up" with the proceedings, and he did so. Now, of course, the Closure is part of our procedure.
If hon. Members will think for a moment, they will recall that at ten o'clock, unless Standing Order No. 1 is suspended, it has become the normal practice for the Closure to be accepted, if it has to be moved, even though many Members may be shut out of the debate. Every day we accept a certain restriction on debate in the interests of the government of the country being carried on and of the business of the Government being effectively pursued.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
Who has objected to that?

§ Sir R. Grimston
I am glad to hear that the hon. Member does not object to it.
Later, to prevent the Irish Members, who held the balance, from completely frustrating proceedings, the system of the Guillotine was introduced, and has been used by Governments of all complexions since then. It is more recently that we have introduced another restriction—that on Prayers. Nowadays, the Question on a Prayer must be put from the Chair at 11.30 p.m. That is a comparatively recent innovation, introduced when we on this side of the House were in opposition, and were keeping the House up night after night on such Motions. The matter was considered by an all-party committee, and it was decided, in the interests of the House, that that particular Guillotine should be introduced.
The use of the Guillotine, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House pointed out, has quite a respectable history. Every Government have used it from time to time, and every Opposition have opposed it vehemently. But it is no exaggeration to say that without its use from time to time we could not carry on Parliamentary democracy. Let us face the fact that a bunch of obstructionists could hold up practically the whole of the government of the country.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has made the usual attack today, and has referred to one or two previous debates. I propose to refer to what the late Mr. Arthur Greenwood said, in introducing a timetable Motion for the Transport Bill and the Town and Country Planning Bill in 1947. It was a passage which the right hon. Gentleman conveniently forgot. Mr. Greenwood said: I am saying that the progress on these two Bills is too slow. Therefore, we propose to apply the new procedure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 3rd March. 1947; Vol. 434, c. 67.] The new procedure was, for the first time, to introduce a Guillotine to Standing Committee proceedings. It was introduced as a result of the Report of a Select Committee in 1945. There we have the precedent of Mr. Greenwood not only introducing a Motion which covered two very different Bills but, for the first time, introducing the system whereby the Guillotine was imposed in Standing Committee.
65 In 1948, we had a timetable Motion for the Iron and Steel Bill, to which the right hon. Gentleman has also referred. Lord Morrison of Lambeth—then Mr. Herbert Morrison—referred to the fact that there had been obstruction upstairs on the Gas Bill, of which the right hon. Gentleman the present Leader of the Opposition was in charge. A great many points of order were raised by the then Opposition as to whether Mr. Morrison had any right to talk about obstruction. It is interesting to read what he said about obstruction. They"— the then Opposition— seem to get into their heads the idea that if anybody charges them with obstruction, he is using unparliamentary terms. It is laid down in Erskine May with the greatest firmness that the charge of obstruction is a perfectly fair Parliamentary charge. I make the charge, and I stick to it, that there was obstruction. [OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1948; Vol. 458, c. 1434.] On this occasion, I find myself in company with Mr. Morrison. I make the charge that the Opposition are obstructing, and I stick to that charge. That is the main reason for the production of this Motion. I have been looking up the sittings of the Standing Committee on the National Health Service Bill. I have myself, as a member of the Chairmen's Panel, presided over many Standing Committees, and I have never known practically a whole morning to be devoted to discussing whether a Committee should sit on what are the two normal days for sitting. If that is not obstruction, I do not know what is.

§ Mr. Kenneth Robinson (St. Pancras, North)
If the hon. Gentleman is charging the Standing Committee on that Bill with obstruction, can he explain why the Government never once even sought to apply the Closure to any of the debates in the three sittings which the Committee has had?

§ Sir R. Grimston
I charge the Opposition with obstruction, and say that the Minister in charge of the Bill was extraordinarily patient in not applying the Closure. I have had some experience in this House, and have presided over many Standing Committees. Never have I known any time taken up at all on the Motion that the Committee should sit on the normal days, Tuesdays and Thursdays, though there might be debate 66 on a Motion that the Committee should sit on Wednesdays as well. I accuse the Opposition of obstruction.

§ Mr. S. Silverman rose——

§ Sir R. Grimston
I am not giving way to the hon. Member. He always interrupts everybody, so he can just "pipe down".
The Leader of the Opposition spoke of the effect of this Motion on the country at large. The last time that a timetable was imposed was in 1957, on the Rent Act, to which the right hon. Gentleman has also referred. There was a terrific hullabaloo on behalf of the Opposition, which showed great indignation—about the same as today. The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) moved an Amendment to the Motion which I shall quote in part to the House. It was that this House declines to accept a Motion which seeks to stifle discussion on proposals which vitally and directly affect many millions of Her Majesty's subjects …" —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th February, 1957; Vol. 564, c. 48.] What did the country think of that? It will not have escaped the notice of hon. Members that, within little more than a year after that, we were returned by the country with a greatly increased majority.
I suggest that my right hon. and hon. Friends need not fear the hullabaloo which will go on about this timetable Motion and the Bills, and that we have every right to bring in and to support the Motion. It strikes a fair balance between the rights of the Opposition, on the one hand, and the carrying on of essential Government business, on the other, and I commend it to my right hon. and hon. Friends. Further, I hazard the guess that in their heart of hearts quite a few hon. Members opposite are not unrelieved that this Motion has been tabled.

§ 4.41 p.m.

§ Mr. W. A. Wilkins (Bristol, South)
Apart from any other consideration. I object to the timetable Motion on the ground that it is offensive to those of us who have been sitting on the Committee dealing with the National Health Service Bill. According to the proceedings of that Committee, which are available to any hon. Member to peruse, there has been no obstruction of any 67 kind. [HON. MEMBERS: Nonsense."] To those hon. Members who said, "Nonsense", I would point out that there is not one Government member of that Committee present in the House while we are discussing the Guillotine Motion, apart from those on the Ministerial Bench.

§ Sir Hugh Linstead (Putney) rose——

§ Mr. Wilkins
I notice that the hon. Member has just arrived.

§ Sir H. Linstead
I have been here throughout Questions and throughout the whole of the opening of the debate.

§ Mr. Wilkins
I withdraw the words "not one" and substitute "only one". Only one member of the Government benches in Committee upstairs has deigned to come to the House on an occasion when we are discussing the time which is to be alloted to us in order carefully to scrutinise the provisions of this very important National Health Service Bill.
Listening to some of the reasons given both by the Leader of the House and by the right hon. Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston), I wondered who has been advising them. The truth is to be found in two facts. First, it is obvious to anyone who is a member of the Committee that our proceedings have been interfering with the private interests of some hon. Members and that they are desperately anxious to get away from the Committee altogether, or to complete the proceedings of the Committee, which are apparently interfering with either their professional or their business interests. That has been made clear to some of us sitting on the Committee by hon. Members who ask whether we will accommodate them with pairs in order that they may get away. As they are not accommodated with pairs, they find themselves in difficulty.
The second reason is the obvious reason which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition stated this afternoon. This is a budgetary Measure. It is true to form with all that has happened in the last five or six years, by which the unpalatable parts of the Financial Statement, which ought to be incorporated in the Budget, are forced upon the country two or three months before the Budget. In this way the 68 Budget is made to look a little more palatable to our people than it otherwise would. That is why we have this panic Motion this afternoon.
What are the facts? Standing Committee A, which is charged with carefully examining the National Health Service Bill upstairs, has been sitting for seven and-a-half hours. The interest of those on the Government benches is shown by HANSARD. The Members on the Government benches, who, according to the Leader of the House, should have an adequate opportunity to discuss these Measures, have spoken what amounts to 77 lines of HANSARD in seven-and-a-half hours.

§ Sir Spencer Summers (Aylesbury)
Will the hon. Member also inform us that one-third of the seven-and-a-half hours in Committee was taken up in debating not the merits of the Bill, but whether the Committee should sit in the afternoon?

§ Mr. Wilkins
The first morning sitting was spent debating whether it was necessary for us to sit twice a week to discuss the Bill, or whether once a week would be adequate. We pleaded with the Minister of Health to agree to one-day sitting on a Wednesday, as distinct from a Tuesday or a Thursday, to permit the villain of the piece, the Prime Minister, who has put the Minister of Health in office as a "stooge" to carry this Bill through, to be present at our meetings. That was the reason for our suggestion that we ought to sit on one day a week.
Apart from those on the Ministerial bench—and they have not said very much—Members on the Government benches of that Committee have spoken 77 lines, or about 539 words, most of which have been encompassed within points of order. This is the contribution which Government Members have made to the deliberations on a Bill which will have a great impact upon the economic circumstances of our people. Although they have shown such an utter lack of interest, the Government nevertheless come here, with audacity, to try to curtail the time available to those members of the Committee who are willing to give consideration to an examination of the Bill. It does not make sense.
But it does not end there. Within the very first hour of the Committee meeting 69 on the first day, I found it incumbent upon me to direct the Chairman's attention to the fact that Government members of the Committee were showing no interest whatever in our proceedings and were conducting their correspondence in the Committee. The Chairman gave a Ruling that it was improper to do so.

§ Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford) rose——

§ Mr. Wilkins
The hon. Member has only just arrived and he has not heard what has gone before.

§ Mr. Lewis
I was in the Chamber, but had to go out. I was in Committee at the time which the hon. Member has mentioned. The House ought to know that it was pointed out that hon. Members opposite were making an assumption which they had no right to make—an assumption that we were doing our correspondence. In fact, we were making notes on the speeches which hon. Members opposite were making.

§ Mr. Wilkins
The hon. Member is thinking of another occasion, on the third sitting of the Committee, when, again, I had to direct the Chairman's attention to probably the most important factor of all in this matter of our sittings—that, had it not been for members of the Opposition, the Committee would have had to cease its deliberations. For about one and a quarter hours there would not have been a quorum if, not all, but some members of the Opposition had left the Committee, and for a substantial part of one hour only four Government back benchers were present.
Rather than obstructing the proceedings of the Committee, we have been enabling the Government to carry on with the Committee's deliberations. We have been responsible for sustaining a quorum, which is normally a responsibility of the Government. We discussed whether we should accept that responsibility, and we decided that the Bill was so important that someone had to stay in the Committee and pay some attention to the Bill and try to amend it so that it could be made more acceptable.
I do not know whether the Motion will appeal to the House in general. Generally speaking, hon. Members dislike Guillotine Motions. I certainly do, 70 and I do not agree that the precedents quoted by the Leader of the House in any way justified the action which he has proposed that the House should take. How can he claim that, after three sittings on the Bill in which, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) pointed out, there was not even a question of a Closure, there should be a Guillotine Motion in order to ensure that Government business should go through?
I seem to have made a false reckoning. The Leader of the House will recall that he said that even by the terms of the Motion we should have eight sittings of the Committee available to us. He went on to say that, in addition to that, we could probably have a third sitting in each week. However, according to my diary, if discussions in Committee on the Bill are to end by 21st March, we shall have only five sittings left to us and not the eight which the right hon. Gentleman suggested. The right hon. Gentleman may have intended to say that if we were prepared to sit on Wednesdays we could then have eight mornings to discuss the Bill.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will pay some heed to our appeals to him. We do not believe that the Bill is as urgent as has been suggested. Apart from fiscal and financial considerations, the Bill could well be left until at least after the Easter Recess, and we think that there would be plenty of time even if it went right up to the Summer Recess. This is a three-Clause Bill with one Schedule, and with only two of its Clauses operative. I doubt whether there can be a precedent for a Guillotine Motion on so short a Bill, and I hope that the Leader of the House will listen to our appeals and withdraw the Motion.

§ 4.55 p.m.

§ Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)
The Leader of the Opposition was particularly careful to make it clear that he did not oppose Guillotine Motions as a matter of principle. It is as well that he did that, not least because he appears to have been a Member of a Select Committee whose recommendations we debated in 1947 and which dealt with the use of this sort of procedure.

§ Mr. Gaitskell
The hon. Gentleman has probably overlooked the fact that, although I was originally a member of that Committee, I resigned from it on becoming a Minister and was not responsible for its conclusions.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
I appreciate that, but the right hon. Gentleman will agree that his name appears at the beginning of that Committee's Report and that he was a member of it when it first sat. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman will want unduly to diverge from the opinions of Lord Morrison of Lambeth. The right hon. Gentleman must be careful not to take the Lambeth Walk to Wardour Street, or we shall soon have an "X" certificate given to our debate.
The right hon. Gentleman has destroyed his own argument by his reference to the fact that he does not oppose Guillotine Motions in principle. He has endeavoured to make this Motion offensive on the ground that there is no need for it and no need for Bills of this kind. But he seems undecided about whether this is a wretched Bill or a terribly important Bill. At one moment he referred to Bills of this kind as miserable little Bills, and then at the next he said that this was a matter which would affect all the community and our standard of living and that it was taxation on the whole population. Sooner or later, he must make up his mind whether it is a miserable little Bill, for which we should not bother to have a Guillotine Motion, or a Bill that is so important that it adversely affects all taxpayers and our standard of living. He tried to use both arguments and they are self-destroying. The right hon. Gentleman should have made a better case than that.
The right hon. Gentleman's argument about taxation raises a far bigger issue, because the right hon. Gentleman himself knows that he visualised a revenue of about £12 million as the result of a charge for spectacles. I think that he is the man who imposed a maximum of £400 million on the Health Service when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

§ Mr. Gaitskell indicated dissent.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
Yes, he is. He said that he did not wish the Exchequer contribution to the Health Service to rise 72 above £400 million. It is nearly £900 million now and it will be £1,000 million in a year or two. The right hon. Gentleman cannot argue that when he is Chancellor he is right to put a lid on, but that another Chancellor has no right to do so.

§ Mr. Gaitskell
The hon. Gentleman should do his homework a little better. I was not Chancellor of the Exchequer when the £400 million so-called ceiling was imposed. It was imposed by Sir Stafford Cripps, my predecessor. However, it is quite true—and I may as well deal with this as the hon. Gentleman has raised the issue—that when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer during the Korean War when defence expenditure was increased by £300 million——

§ Sir Kenneth Pickthorn (Carlton)
Before the Korean War.

§ Mr. Gaitskell
It is not the business of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) to question whether I am in order. That is a matter for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
I did not say a word about order.

§ Mr. Gaitskell
In 1951, when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer and during the Korean War when defence expenditure had to be increased by at least £300 million, with the support of hon. Members opposite, and when taxation, both Income Tax and Surtax, had to be increased, for a temporary period of three years a small charge for teeth and spectacles was introduced. Those are the facts.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
There is nothing inconsistent in what I said and what the right hon. Gentleman said. I am extremely grateful to him for underlining and under-scoring what I have said about his own views on these matters. The moment he accepts the argument that an increase of any sort in the Health Service charge is a tax he destroys the argument which his own party has made over and over again when it refuses to accept that the whole of the social welfare contribution is a tax. I have always believed it was. The right hon. Gentleman has now conceded the point in regard to the Health Service charges.

§ Mr. Gaitskell
The contribution is a tax.

§ Mr. E. G. Willis (Edinburgh, East)
The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) is very confused.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
The fact remains that we are discussing a matter of taxation. A person who retires today at the age of 65, with a wife who is aged 60, will have contributed the equivalent of 9s. a week for the rest of his life, but he will get 92s. 6d., by way of pension. The argument that it is taxation is not a case for imposing this charge in the Budget; it is much better that a Chancellor should know what other Departments will demand of him or impose by way of compulsory contributions before the Budget rather than become involved in the question himself at the time of the Budget. In this connection I cannot help being reminded of an eloquent passage from the General Epistle of Jude. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has read it. The House will see its relevance in a moment. It begins These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmerers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. The phrase "clouds without water" is a good description of the right hon. Gentleman. As my right hon. Friend said, he is the person who has talked about fighting again. He must take care about that. The hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) who is now chairman of the Labour Party, told the right hon. Gentleman many years ago that in the Labour Party the minorities unfortunately had to bow to the majority. Surely that is precisely what we are faced with here. The minority must bow to the majority.

§ Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West):
Incomprehensible gibberish.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
With so many hon. Members sitting opposite it is difficult to know which one is addressing me. If anybody wants to say anything, he should get up and say it.

§ Mr. Pannell
I am saying that the hon. Member's speech has reached that stage of incomprehensibility at this time in the afternoon that I should not have expected of a speech from an hon. Member opposite before nine o'clock tonight.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
It is obvious that the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) has not studied the General Epistle of Jude. I am sorry that he has not. He would find a lot in it.
As I was saying, the chairman of the Labour Party warned the right hon. Gentleman many years ago—and he has repeated the warning several times since—that the minority takes unkindly to the majority's opinion being thrust upon it, and it is obvious that the minority in the House is taking unkindly to what the majority is trying to thrust upon it now. But it is recognised that we have to take the rough with the smooth in these matters. Much has been said about the effect of the Guillotine upon people outside the House. I would ask what is the effect upon them when we have all-night sittings. My view is that the average person who thinks for two minutes about this says to himself, "If Parliament cannot manage its affairs better than this it is not fit to run the country." I have heard that said over and over again.
Those Members who have been in the House for a number of years realise that there are some forms of our procedure which are as incomprehensible to the public as my remarks are to the hon. Member for Leeds, West. Nevertheless, they are vital safeguards to the freedom of our country, and there are worse ways of proceeding than the ways we adopt to prevent the Government from getting their business. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman to the extent that I am not against Guillotines in principle. I also agree that we must be guarded as to their use. But there are times when the opportunities for unrestricted debate are grossly abused.
75 Of the right hon. Gentleman's two points of view about the two Bills which are affected, I plump for his argument that they are trivial ones. They merely alter the effect of an imposition which is already in existence, and they are nothing like as important as the Measures which we were debating when the Opposition were in power, when we tried to speak throughout the night. The party opposite were then altering our whole Constitution. The Bills we were concerned with then were nationalisation Bills, and there was a case for fighting them line by line and word by word. There is no such case for fighting these Bills. The Leader of the Opposition referred to them as miserable little Bills.

§ Mr. F. H. Hayman (Falmouth and Camborne)
Does the hon. Member agree that the two days and nights spent in continuous sitting in Committee on the Gas Bill did not constitute a gross abuse of the privileges of the House? Before he answers that question, will he remember that one of these Bills imposes a poll tax upon the whole of our working population?

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
I agree that it imposes a tax, but it is a very small one in relation to the total amount of taxation, and we know that the people whom we wish to protect against its effect are already being protected in respect of the present prescription charges and will in fact continue to be so protected against the increased charges. It is a matter of opinion whether we should protect more people, but as a question of constitutional importance these Bills are nothing like so vital as was the question whether a certain industry should be nationalised. We must keep a sense of proportion about the use of all-night sittings and obstructionism.

§ Mr. Hayman
Does not the hon. Member agree that since the gas industry has been nationalised it has been vastly improved, as compared with its bankrupt condition formerly?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche)
We are straying rather far from the terms of the Motion.

§ Mr. C. Pannell
On a point of order. While your predecessor was in the Chair, 76 Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the opening speakers from both Front Benches referred to the Gas Bill and all the questions which flowed from it. It will be most unfortunate if, the tone of the debate having been set by the Front Benches, the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) or any hon. Member on this side of the House is not to be allowed to follow up. Mr. Speaker has said that these matters are in order, and I do not think that it falls to other occupants of the Chair to rule them out of order.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I do not think that I have said anything to narrow the scope of the debate.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
I am sorry if I have strayed too widely, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but an incentive was provided by the earlier remarks of the Leader of the Opposition and those of the hon. Member for Leeds, West. If we have gone unduly wide, I hope to bring the debate back to a narrower front. I think that I have made my point. Sometimes big constitutional issues are at stake, when it may be the duty of the Opposition to fight every line for as long as they can, but on a matter of varying a charge which is already being levied it can hardly be said that the same consideration applies. We must keep a sense of proportion in this matter. We must consider what the country thinks of our procedure and have some sympathy with the many members of the electorate who find our procedure inexplicable.
There are umpteen precedents, as the Leader of the Opposition reminded us, of Oppositions reminding Governments what those Governments said when they were in Opposition and of Governments reminding Oppositions of what those Oppositions said when they were in power. As the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) is in his place I would remind him——

§ Mr. Ede (South Shields)
Is that a grievance?

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
He said on 3rd March, 1947: The difference between the two sides of the House is this: We think that this is a good Bill, a necessary Bill. He was then interrupted, after which he went on: … adequate opportunities for discussing it can be found within the terms of the Guillotine 77 Motion, and we intend to get the Bill this Session"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd March, 1947; Vol. 434, c 131.] If it was fair for the right hon. Gentleman to say that on such Bills as the Transport Bill and the Town and Country Planning Bill, I think that we are entitled to say it on these Bills.

§ Mr. William Ross (Kilmarnock)
The Government want the Bills this month, not this Session.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
If the hon. Gentleman wishes to interrupt, I think it would be better if he were to rise in his place.

§ Mr. Ross
Would the hon. Gentleman be prepared to support an Amendment altering the date to "this Session" instead of insisting on "this month"?

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
No, I certainly would not, because, here again, it is a question of the relative importance. At that time we were discussing a Bill the purpose of which was to nationalise transport, whereas now we are merely varying charges already in force. I think that the relative importance of the two Bills is of great relevance to this debate. To me, the two Bills with which we are dealing are nothing like as important as were the Transport Bill and the Town and Country Planning Bill.
I know that hon. Members opposite are using what they allege the country will say about these charges as one of the main reasons to justify their action over this Guillotine Motion. It so happens that, purely by chance—I assure hon. Members that it was purely by chance—I ran into one of my constituents while he was in Cambridgeshire the day before yesterday. He is rising 80 years of age and he told me that his father reached 90 years of age and that he had a grandfather who did the same. His comment on the charges was, "Everyone knows that there is absolute abuse of the present use of prescriptions."[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh.") "The bill is getting completely out of hand." He definitely supports the Government in what they are doing.

§ Mr. Michael Stewart (Fulham)
Will the hon. Gentleman allow me——

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
No, I will not give way. No doubt, hon. Members who wish to speak will seek to catch your 78 eye later in the debate, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.
I honestly believe that hon. Members opposite lack one thing above all others in these matters, and that is a sense of proportion. They are making themselves absolutely ridiculous, and I am anxious that they should not make Parliament ridiculous at the same time. [An HON. MEMBER: "Who threw the penny on the Table?"] The hon. Member asks who put the penny on the Table. I did and I will tell him exactly why I did so. It was because a then Minister of the Crown, Mr. Herbert Morrison, accused the Tory Party of wanting a world war. I thought that such an accusation was beyond words and that a gesture was the only thing necessary.

§ Mr. C. Pannell
The hon. Member is now referring to an incident for which he was ordered out of the House by Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown, and on his return made an abject apology. Are you prepared, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to allow the hon. Member to justify now what he did then?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The hon. Member was asked why he threw the penny, and he has given an answer.

§ Mr. M. Stewart
On a point of order. The hon. Member was not asked why he had thrown the penny, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. He was giving us a lecture on the dignified behaviour of the House and some of my hon. Friends reminded him of his misbehaviour in the House in the past. They did so with the words, "Who threw the penny?" Nobody asked him why he did so. We all know the reason for that. The hon. Member himself chose, quite gratuitously, to bring in a justification for something for which he had previously apologised to the House. What you are being asked, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, is whether that behaviour is in order.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
As far as I know, the hon. Member has said nothing which is out of order.

§ Mr. George Brown (Belper)
Further to that point of order.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
I am on a point of order. [HON. MEMBERS: "No".] Perhaps we could clear up the misunderstanding. I thought that what was 79 shouted across the Floor of the House was who threw the penny. I think that the hon. Member meant to state that I threw the penny. I admitted that I did. I am sorry if I misunderstood a statement for what I thought was a question.

§ Mr. G. Brown
I want to pursue the point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, with which you have twice—and I say this quite respectfully—dealt very shortly indeed. It is a very important point, made first by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) and then by my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart).
The point is that at some stage an hon. Member is engaged in an incident which is regarded by the Speaker as disreputable, and has to leave the House. That hon. Member subsequently returns and makes an abject apology. But at a subsequent stage, as has happened this afternoon, he then proceeds to make a confident justification for the incident for which he had to make an abject apology.
We asked you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether, in fact, that was in order. May I put this to you before you answer? If you are going to reply as you have twice done, then obviously the whole business of respect for the House and of enforcing respect goes out of the door, because then, presumably, one merely makes an abject apology and then seeks to justify it later on and relies on the Chair to say, "You are perfectly entitled to do so." I think that we are entitled to ask for your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether it is in order for the hon. Member to seek to justify today something which was regarded as disreputable before and for which he then had to apologise.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
I did not apologise to the House. May I remind hon. Members that, in fact, I apologised privately to Mr. Speaker at that time but not to the House. In answering the question thrown across the House at me I was not attempting to justify the incident one way or the other, but only the reason why I did what I did, and it was not intended as a discourtesy to yourself, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to the Chair or to any hon. Member. I was simply trying to answer a question which I thought I had been asked. I am extremely sorry if I have in any way trespassed on your 80 indulgence, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, or if I have done anything remotely out of order.

§ Mr. C. Pannell
On a point of order. The hon. Member said that he had apologised to Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown but not to the House. An hon. Member cannot apologise to the Chair without apologising to the House. For this purpose the Chair is the House. I ask you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, not to take this affront lightly. You appear to be taking it rather casually, and we on this side of the House feel very strongly about it.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I object to that reflection on the Chair. I think that far too much fuss is being made about this matter.

§ Mr. Pannell
No.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I personally do not remember what the hon. Member did on that occasion some years ago or whether an apology was made or not. It is not my business. I suggest that we get on with discussing the Motion.

§ Mr. Pannell
Further to that point of order. I was here at the time. The Hon. Member tossed a penny across the House.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
No point of order arises on it.

§ Mr. Pannell
Further to that point of order. A point of order is involved, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, when you seek to rebuke me for something I have said. The point is—if I may say so in parentheses—that you said you did not know what had happened. But the fact is that the hon. Member, in a crowded House, was ordered out by Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown. He cannot repudiate an apology once made, and, if I may say so, it is for the Chair—I withdraw the word "casually" I did not mean it in that way—to maintain the dignity set up by its predecessors. That is what we are asking now.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I am not concerned with what happened in the incident some years ago. The hon. Member has not repudiated at all any step he took then.

§ Mr. Stephen McAdden (Southend, East)
On a point of order. Is it in order, 81 Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for the hon. Member who raised the point of order to say while you are giving your Ruling that you are not concerned for the dignity of the House?

§ Mr. Pannell
On a point of order. I did not say that. Whatever is said about political parties, no one can accuse me lightly of not telling the truth. While you were speaking, I said that it is the dignity of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] We must take it that, in referring to an hon. Member, we mean that he is an honourable one. We do not impute dishonour to a Member lightly. [Interruption.] I am dealing with Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I am not being ruled by the rump of the Lobby fodder opposite.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
If I might try to bring the discussion back to the Motion, without re-arousing what has become somewhat irrelevant to the issue before us today, what I said was that I did apologise personally to Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown by letter. I have never apologised in the House for what I did. I certainly do not wish in any way to repudiate the apology which I made in writing to the Chairman, and, of course, that stands. I am sorry if anything I have said this afternoon has in any way led anyone to suppose otherwise.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has made considerable play with the fact that the Korean War was on when he imposed a charge on spectacles. If there is this great interest in the amount of money spent on defence, which has to be spent on defence, how conies it then that when we had the Navy Estimates the other day, concerning a sum in excess of £500 million, there were never more than twelve hon. Member's opposite during the whole of that debate?

§ Mr. Hayman
Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that at 11 p.m., when my hon. Friend rose to reply to the debate on behalf of the opposition, there were still hon. Member's on both sides of the Committee who wanted to speak?

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
Of course, I accept that. All I say is that if there is this great interest in the safety of the 82 public purse, to which the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who has now disappeared from the Chamber, referred, how comes it that when a sum in excess of £500 million is being levied on the people to pay for the Royal Navy not more than twelve hon. Members from the other side of the House were present in Committee of Supply during the day? That I know because I was here myself.

§ Mr. G. Brown
On a point of order. It will obviously now be a matter of great importance, when this point is subsequently replied to, that those who seek to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, should be allowed to do so now that you have allowed a discussion of what happened during the debate in Committee of Supply on the Navy Estimates. May I get it quite clear that you do not propose to rule later that any discussions of what went on in the debate on the Navy Estimates is out of order?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I cannot give a Ruling on what someone else may say later on. A reference to the number of people present in the House at a certain time does not seem to me to be very relevant to this debate.

§ Mr. Ross
Further to that point of order. You will appreciate, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that we are now in a difficult position if we try to criticise what happened during the debate when the hon. Gentleman was in the Chair. What do we do then? What protection shall we have in future debates from remarks about the conduct of hon. Members from an hon. Member who was actually in the Chair?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a point of order with which I am concerned at the moment.

§ Mr. Brown
Further to that point of order. Is not the whole debate out of hand?

§ Several Hon. Members rose——

§ Mr. C. Pannell
On a point of order. I understand and I always have understood that the antecedents of the Chair must never be referred to, however lurid they may be, and in the same way anyone occupying the Chair should not refer to the conduct of hon. Members when he was in the Chair. You can rebuke 83 me now, Sir Gordon, and I must take it, and the hon. Gentleman could have rebuked us then, but cannot now use his position in the Chair, in which position he had to be in the Chamber, to refer to matters which arose when he was presiding over the Committee. That is really an infraction of impartiality on the part of the Chair, with which we are not prepared to acquiesce.

§ Sir Spencer Summers (Aylesbury)
Further to that point of order. Surely it is quite clear that the Chair cannot cast reflections on those hon. Members who are not present. It was the absence of almost every other hon. Member from that side of the House to which my hon. Friend referred.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
Further to that point of order. The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) has done two things which in my submission are unprecedented and, I submit, are out of order. One is that, having committed a defiance of the House so as to be called upon to leave the Chamber until he had done some sort of penance by withdrawal, he has now sought to justify that, and now proceeds within two minutes to use knowledge acquired while sitting in the Chair in order to make a point about a specific debate when he did not sit in the Chair. Is not the whole thing now becoming so completely out of order that very soon we shall have no rules at all?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I think we had better return to the Motion before the House.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
The remarks I was making, I assure you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, were not in any way intended to imply——

§ Mr. Silverman
Then, why on earth did the hon. Gentleman make them?

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
Let me finish. They were not intended to imply that I thought that those hon. Members in the Chamber at the time were doing anything wrong. Nor was I in any way referring to the merits of what was being discussed. All I am saying is that it seemed to me rather extraordinary that so few Members were present.

§ Mr. Silverman
On a point of order. I ask you whether you will rule for or 84 against the proposition that any hon. Member of this House who occupies the Chair of the House during a debate is not entitled to use what he then observed or what he thought about it while sitting in the Chair in order to influence a subsequent debate. Is that right or wrong?

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
Before you give your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, may I say that I was not in the Chair when the Civil Lord of the Admiralty introduced the Navy Estimates, and the remarks I made were based on that. I think that it would probably be acceptable to the House to say that a majority of hon. Members turn up for a Minister making a speech, but when the Minister was making his speech, only 12 hon. Members opposite were present.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I think that we should get on with the Motion.

§ Mr. Silverman
No.

§ Sir H. Legge-Bourke
I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I apologise humbly if anything that I have said today has embarrassed you.
May I conclude my remarks. I am sure that it will relieve the House if I do. I believe that a Guillotine Motion should be used only sparingly. I believe that the Leader of the House made an absolutely irrefutable case for its use on this occasion. Whenever any opposition is made to any Motion for a Guillotine, it seems to me to be absolutely essential that a sense of proportion should prevail. I believe, however, that the Opposition have no idea how ludicrous they are making themselves look in the country by protesting against this Guillotine Motion.
I do not believe that they have any idea what the real opinion of the country is about a Bill dealing with Health Service charges. I do not think that they have any idea how the country fails to understand why they should want to keep the House sitting night after night protesting against a Bill which is proposing to raise prescription charges from ls. to 2s. and other small increases in the contributions by means of insurance stamps in order to ensure that the bill does not go on rising until it is well above £1,000 million for a National Health Service which everybody knows many people are tending to abuse.

§ 5.29 p.m.

§ Mr. Ede (South Shields)
The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) did me the honour to quote from a speech I made in a similar debate when I was speaking from the Treasury Dispatch Box. The Leader of the House quoted it against me once before, and on that occasion I frankly accepted what I said. I said that I stood by it. I only wish that the Government had as good a case for the line they are taking today as I had on that occasion. Then we were carrying through a revolution. The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely has virtually said that this afternoon. He did not like the revolution and, therefore, he opposed it.
The Leader of the House is carrying through a counter-revolution, and this is one of the phases of it. It may not be a very important phase, but it is a phase of his counter-revolution which is designed to destroy what we did between 1945 and 1951. I have as much right to feel indignant at the way that counterrevolution is working as had the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely at the way in which our revolution worked. It all depends on which side hon. Members are sitting. I have been here long enough to know that, and I have taken part in a good many debates on this issue from both sides of the House. If I were sitting on the benches opposite today, and had the same power as the right hon. Gentleman has, and if hon. Members of his party were on this side of the House obstructing what I waned to do, I should have no twinge of conscience about adopting the same line as the right hon. Gentleman has adopted today.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) who had an article on this matter in yesterday's issue of Reynolds News. I was brought up always to read Reynolds News before I went to Sunday school. It was always my first reading on Sunday morning——

§ Mr. Frederic Harris (Croydon, North-West)
Does the right hon. Gentleman feel any better for it?

§ Mr. Ede
Oh yes, and I think that the hon. Gentleman would be a great deal better if he had followed my example
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock drew attention to the way in which we hold views according to the attitude 86 we have toward people who indulge in all-night sittings. He quoted from the issue of the Evening Standard of 16th February, which said, referring to my right hon. and hon. Friends: The danger is not so much that Labour M.P.s will exhaust themselves. It is that they will exhaust public patience with their party and Parliament. By keeping the House of Commons awake they will send their audience outside Westminster to sleep. That is supposed to be a condemnation of right hon. and hon. Gentleman sitting on this side of the House who continue to stay until the Chief Patronage Secretary agrees that it is time we should all go home.
Then my hon. Friend quoted from the Evening Standard of 1st March: For the Tory minority group on the L.C.C. the sitting was a minor triumph. It had kept the Council sitting for the longest period since the Labour Party took control of County Hall 27 years ago. When this game is being played simultaneously by the Labour Party here and by the Tory Party on the other side of Westminster Bridge, if one is a Tory, one thinks the Labour Party wrong and the Tory Party right. So do not let us have any more hypocrisy about it. I have said that what I said in 1946 was quoted against me a few years ago by the Leader of the House, when he was moving a Motion of this sort, and I then accepted it. So long as I sit in this House, and when my party is in power, I shall support the efforts of the Government to get their business. But if the party opposite is in power, I shall oppose the Government getting their business, and I hope that no one will have any illusions on that score.
The trouble is that the Leader of the House does not now participate in our proceedings in Standing Committees. It might be a good thing if sometimes he would discard the Olympian aloofness which he displays towards us and descend to the level of ordinary mortals. He will not get anywhere near Olympus by coming to a Standing Committee. During this Session and the last Session I have been a member of Standing Committees which discussed Bills of which the right hon. Gentleman had moved the Second Reading. We have had the astounding spectacle, during the Committee stage discussions, of seeing three junior Ministers from the right hon. Gentleman's Department present to deal 87 with the Bills. Even Lord Morrison, with all his dreams of empire in the administrative sphere, never got higher than two junior Ministers. For six-and-a-quarter years, including a period when I was Leader of the House as well as Home Secretary, I had only one.
So far, because of the reasonable attitude adopted by the right hon. Gentleman's subordinates, we have been able to discuss very important legislation in Standing Committee. There was the Charities Bill, which later became the Charities Act, and the Betting and Gaming Bill, which became the Betting and Gaming Act—they should not be confused. We completed the Committee stage of both those long Measures without any need to use the Closure Motion or to Guillotine the discussion. So well was the Committee conducted that the right hon. Gentleman has taken one of its members to become his P.P.S., that hon. Gentleman having, so to speak, served his apprenticeship on the Committee. We have just completed the Committee stage of the Criminal Justice Bill. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to bear in mind the treatment accorded to his Ministers by the Opposition during 1960 and 1961 with the treatment which I received from his hon. Friends in 1948, when I was Home Secretary and attempting to get a similar Measure through the House.
We must realise that the chief enemy of a Government is time. I do not mind how reactionary a Government may be, they still do something which makes a demand on the time of the House and for that reason the House has equipped Governments with means to extend Parliamentary time by suspending the Ten o'clock Rule. Surely Governments do not bring in Bills which originate in the Committee of Ways and Means and are not amenable to the Ten o'clock Rule without having thought it out.
A Government also can lessen the time of the House by moving the Closure Motion. The astounding thing about the Health Service Bill is that although we have heard complaints about what happened in Standing Committee, the Closure Motion was never moved. I have been reading carefully the OFFICIAL REPORT of the debates in the Standing Committee and I see no indication that the Minister or his Parliamentary Secretary, who were leading the Committee, as 88 it appears to me, on some of the occasions, gave any hint that they thought the time had arrived when such a Motion ought to be moved.
If there was this alleged delay and obstruction on the part of my right hon. and hon. Friends, why was no such hint dropped? We had such a hint often enough during the proceedings on the Criminal Justice Bill. Why was not the Closure Motion moved? So far as I know, no hon. Member in the Committee which discussed this Bill had any hint, until Monday afternoon, when the right hon. Gentleman announced it, that this Motion would be before the House today, or that such a thing was contemplated.
If any Government are being obstructed, and they have exhausted the powers that the House has already given them to end obstruction in a Committee, I defend their right to come to the House with a Guillotine Motion. However, I cannot see why the House should be troubled with this when the Closure has never been moved during the three sittings there have been in Committee. We know that the Government will get their way. They have lost a day. They have given away a day by tabling this Motion for debate. I suppose that that is what the Evening Standard would call a minor triumph for the Opposition. When dealing with a Government as iniquitous as this one is, getting even one day from them is more than a minor triumph.
The Government will get their Bill, but they will get it with the maximum of irritation to hon. Members on this side of the House. They will make the country understand that they cannot get their own supporters so to support them in Committee that they can get the Bill by ordinary means. In spite of my lurid past in this respect, I shall vote gaily and confidently for the Amendment moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) and only regret that what happened in the latter part of 1959 makes it certain that the Leader of the House will get his way, despite the weight of the argument against him.

§ 5.41 p.m.

§ Sir Spencer Summers (Aylesbury)
I very much preferred the straightforward remarks of the right hon. Member for 89 South Shields (Mr. Ede) to the mixture of arrogance and smugness which characterised the first two speeches from the benches opposite.
It is all very well for the right hon. Member for South Shields to argue that the Motion should not have been tabled until the Government had tried the use of the Closure in Standing Committee, but whenever the Closure is moved, at any rate in the Chamber, there are always shouts of "Gag" from hon. Members opposite. That negatives any merit which the right hon. Gentleman may think that his argument has.
There is another reason. If the Government table a timetable Motion, everyone concerned knows what amount of time is left for any part of a Bill. Because of the uncertainty of the Closure, hon. Members who are not within the confidence of the Patronage Secretary cannot adjust themselves or their consideration of the Clauses because they have no knowledge of the time which will be allotted to each Clause. For these two reasons the right hon. Gentleman's argument has no merit.
It has been said by hon. Members opposite that the Motion is misplaced because it will curtail discussion of the subjects dealt with in the two Bills. The public will be very much more interested in examining the merits of that aspect of the problem by seeing how much time has been and will be spent on these subjects than by listening to quotations by either side of what the other side did when it was in power. I am very glad that the right hon. Member for South Shields said that we should not have any more of those comparisons.
This morning, I did some research work to find out what time has been allotted and what use has been made of it. No mention has yet been made of the fact that shortly before the Bills were introduced a Motion of censure was tabled which provided opportunity for six and a half hours' discussion and nine speeches on the broad pattern of the policy represented by these Bills. Then the National Health Service Contributions Bill was introduced. Two hours were taken up on the Ways and Means Resolution. One hour was spent on the Money Resolution. Twelve hours were spent on Second Reading, involving thirty-six speeches. A further nine hours have already been taken up in Com- 90 mittee, making so far a total of twenty-four hours and no less than ninety-one speeches. My right hon. Friend told us earlier that the time forecast in the Motion will enable a further twenty-four hours to be spent on that topic.
I will give the House the figures for the National Health Service Bill. Two hours were spent on the Money Resolution. Five and a half hours were spent on Second Reading. Seven and a half hours were spent on the Committee stage, with a total of fifty speeches. There will be ten or more hours, with relevant speeches, from the time allotted under the Motion.
Because the subject dealt with is not confined to the powers granted by the two Bills, there was a further opportunity through Prayers to draw attention to other aspects of this broad policy. The power to vary the pharmaceutical charges requires different authority from the power to vary the hospital charges. That is why there will be another Prayer this evening, notwithstanding the fact that there were four hours and twelve speeches on the other aspect of these charges a short time ago.
Six and a half hours were spent on the censure debate. Twenty-four hours have so far been devoted to the National Health Service Contributions Bill. Fifteen hours have so far been spent on the National Health Service Bill.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
That is what Parliament is for.

§ Sir S. Summers
If the hon. Member wishes to interrupt, he should rise to his feet and do so.

§ Mr. Silverman
I am obliged to the hon. Member. I do not quite know what the recital of the number of hours and the arithmetic has to do with it.

§ Sir S. Summers
I will explain.

§ Mr. Silverman
The hon. Member has given way to me, but he is now on his feet. This is the very stuff of Parliament. It is what Parliament is for.

§ Sir S. Summers
It is precisely because the hon. Gentleman has not the courtesy or patience to wait until I have finished making my point that he must needs interrupt. When I have finished making 91 my point I shall expect him to have the intelligence to follow why I am making this "recital". I cannot expect the hon. Member to follow my argument when I have only got half way through it. [Interruption.] The hon. Member has thwarted any further prospect he might have had of interrupting me by the discourtesy he has just shown and by his ill manners in failing to stand up when speaking in the House. He has been here much longer than I have and it is time he learned that that is the method adopted in the House for asking permission to interrupt a speaker.
I was reciting the time that has already been taken on these subjects. This is relevant to the merits of the Motion, which it is alleged will unreasonably curtail consideration of the Measures. Six and a half hours were spent on the Censure Debate, twenty-four hours on the National Health Service Contributions Bill, fifteen hours on the National Health Service Bill, five and a half hours on the Prayers, and there will be about thirty-four hours to come from the opportunities provided by the Motion. That makes eighty-five hours and scope for about 260 speeches.
I echo the remarks made by an hon. Friend behind me. The public thinks that it is "daft" that we cannot arrange our affairs better than having to stay up all night to give consideration to important matters long after a reasonable day's work has been done. In parenthesis, I would say that it is really remarkable that so experienced a man as the Leader of the Opposition should imagine that he is entitled to credit from the public for sitting up, and encouraging the "troops" to stay up, to deal with these matters at such unreasonable hours.
If this previous use of time is translated into reasonable hours—3.30 to 10 p.m., with an Adjournment debate to follow—it is roughly equivalent to twelve normal Parliamentary days. If we consider what other matters properly come before Parliament in the economic sphere, in foreign affairs, in matters dealing with the social services, and in all manner of things, it is really completely out of proportion—and, in my judgment, we are already out of proportion—in allotting the equivalent of twelve full Parliamentary days to a topic like this.
92 I do not want to say anything to suggest that we know the Opposition's policy better than they know it themselves. I can only say that the Government are in no way suffering from having this timetable brought in, because the public knows perfectly well that if better use had already been made by the Opposition of the time available to them this Motion need never have been moved.

§ 5.50 p.m.

§ Dr. Horace King (Southampton, Itchen)
My only comment to the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers) is that he did not argue as he has been doing for the last ten minutes when he was fighting the Steel Bill tooth and nail.
I want, briefly, to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke). I am sorry that he is not here, but I think that I understand just why he is not—he is probably revising his speech. Of that speech I would say only three things——

§ Mr. C. Pannell
Making another apology, perhaps.

§ Dr. King
I am certain that the Leader of the House——

§ Mr. B. T. Parkin (Paddington, North)
He has gone to help the hon. and gallant Member to revise his speech.

§ Dr. King
—listening to his hon. and gallant Friend's speech, must have thought, "Heaven preserve me from my friends."
The hon. and gallant Member suggested that my right hon. Friend had not read the Bible. He then proceeded to quote Scripture, and I may say that I have never heard scripture quoted with such venom as he used when he was quoting Jude in one of his off moments. I must say that if that were the only bit of Jude that had come to us, then St. Jude would be very inferior to Jude the Obscure.
I do not want to refer to everything that the hon. Gentleman said, but will simply say that he is the last hon. Member in this House from whom Her Majesty's Opposition will take the charge that we behave ridiculously. It is within the recollection of, perhaps, most hon. Members that when the hon. Member was in opposition he used his power and his place as an Opposition Member to resist the Government of that 93 day in all the conventional ways—and, indeed, in some unconventional ways, too. I leave it at that.
At the very outset, let me say that I believe in the Guillotine as a necessary part of British Parliamentary government—and may I ask HANSARD to print "Guillotine" in inverted commas for fear of any misunderstanding outside this House—but that it should be used only when it is fully justified. I believe that the Government's introduction of the Guillotine Motion today is not only unwarranted, but will do them more harm than all the good they hope to get from the timetable.
The tactics of Conservatives are always to play down opposition. The hon. Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston) referred to the Ingoldsby Legends and told us of the Jackdaw of Rheims. He said, with a contented smile, that when the Opposition had finished at the end of the day no one would be a "penny the worse." All he meant was that the Government, with their 100 majority, will carry this Mition despite all that the Opposition may say.
I would remind him that there was someone in that poem who was a penny the worse, and that was the guilty person. In the poem sometime the curse is put on, in comes a very wretched, very bedraggled and very miserable jackdaw, on whom the curse has fallen. The Government will come out of this debate, as they will in all Health Ser- vice debates, as did that sorry jackdaw.
Conservatives believe in the rights of minorities and in the sacred duty of an Opposition to oppose, provided that they themselves are the minority and that they are the Opposition. As my right hon. Friend has already mentioned, Tory newspapers last week were praising to the sky the valiant fight of the Tory minority in the Labour-controlled London County Council, and the all-night sitting that they managed to spend there. Tory councillors, if in a minority, demand their share of aldermanic seats and mayoralties, and the like.
When in Opposition, Lord Boothby told the world that the Opposition's sacred duty was to harry the Government, and to keep the Labour Government up until physical exhaustion would make them succumb. When the Tories are in opposition, to fight the wretched 94 Socialist Government is something British, and they have at their resources most of the weapons of radio and Press publicity to help them in their duty of resisting the work of a Labour Government.
The Conservative in power is a different animal. His is, after all, the ruling class, and has been for centuries. To oppose him—at least, beyond a mild protest—he regards as improper. It is not cricket to oppose a Tory Government—it is 'not British. Wherever Tories have an overwhelming majority——

§ Mr. C. Pannell
Or, if I may say so, to question the umpire.

§ Dr. King
I will pass that, because I do not share my hon. Friend's views about the umpire in that case to which he refers.
Wherever Tories have an overwhelming majority, either in local or in national government, they treat the little Labour group as non-existent, and prate about no-party politics in local government. Nor is there any question of minority rights or proportionate allocation of aldermanic seats for the Labour minority—always provided that the Tory majority is big enough and certain not to be shifted within a foreseeable period of time——

§ Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)
The hon. Gentleman's case is that it is different when the Conservative Party is in opposition and when it is in power. Instead of saying "Conservative Party". might he not substitute "all parties"?

§ Dr. King
I hope to deal with that before I sit down. As the hon. Gentleman no doubt heard, I began by saying that I believe in the Guillotine. We will talk about that when I come to that part of my speech.
There are two reasons for this Guillotine Motion. One is that the Government, in pursuit of their traditional acceptance of the belief that the Labour Party is an intruder in this House of Commons, thought that their vast majority in the House entitled them to fill the early part of their period of office with a mass of important legislation, and drive it through the House. Somehow, they believed that the Opposition, like good Britons, would either take it lying down or, if not, would be swamped night after 95 night in the Division Lobbies. That is especially so as they believed that the Labour Party was split from top to bottom—split so drastically that it could not fight and fight and fight again in the House of Commons.
The Government were wrong in their interpretation of the Labour Party's position. During the last three or four weeks, we have not only proved that we are a united party but, also, that we are determined to fight and fight the Government, and that unity means strength. That is why the Leader of the House, who was to take us for a ride on the tiger finds that, instead of a smile, there is a very anxious look on the face of the tiger when he looks wanly at the mass of legislation which he had hoped to dragoon through the House this Session. There are too many Bills and too little time to get them through the House if the House behaves like a real Parliament and the Opposition fight. And the Opposition are fighting.
The second reason for the Guillotine is that the Government have lamentably failed to appreciate the strength of feeling on this side of the House which is aroused by the attack made by the Minister of Health on the National Health Service, on the one hand, and the failure of Her Majesty's Government to realise the Parliamentary competence of the Opposition, on the other. I do not know whether they really appreciate the depth of feeling that we have about the National Health Service. I am certain, in my own mind, that they did not think that we were parliamentarily competent to stage the kind of battle against Government Measures that they carried out in the days when we were in power and they were in opposition.
A Government need a Guillotine. The majority have rights just as the Opposition have rights. In the last resort, the Government must govern, but while it is excellent to have a giant strength, it is even more excellent to use that strength wisely, with judgment and discretion, and to use it only as a last resort. This present use of the Guillotine is anything but that. It is the reaching of a panic-stricken man for a big stick when a boy begins to put his fists up.
Consideration of the National Health Service Bill in Standing Committee has hardly begun. The battle of the two 96 Bills, the one in Standing Committee and the one on the Floor of the House, is a real battle. It is one of argument, conviction and discussion. It is one in which the Opposition have speech after speech to make, none of which can be regarded as filibustering. There has been nothing in this Parliament like the outrageous filibustering of public school boys out on a rag that we witnessed in the days when the Gas Bill was in Standing Committee, or the nightly Prayers which marked the 1950 Session of Parliament, and which led me, in my first year in Parliament, when I used to give lectures to people about the House of Commons, to talk about the normal time for ending the day's debates being ten o'clock, but to add that I had not had a normal day in that first year.
I, too, have been looking at the attitude of Her Majesty's Government to the question of the Guillotine in the debate on the Iron and Steel Bill on 25th November, 1948. I would remind the House that we were giving not a miserable two or three days to the discussion of the Bill we were giving 35 days to the Measure under the timetable. The Tory Opposition at that time called it a "miserable 35 days".
The late Oliver Stanley, whom all of us loved, dived off the deep-end and plunged into the debate, so far as so gentle a man could wax violent. He said: Frankly, I intensely dislike the Guillotine procedure in any circumstances. A Tory in opposition, he was opposed to the very principle of the Guillotine. Warming up, he continued and said that it would … lead to the complete disruption of the functions of the House as anything more than a body of people, called upon to register broad decisions, aye or nay, on Government Measures which are put before them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 25th November. 1948; Vol. 458, c 1534–5.] This was a powerful opening from the Tory Opposition Front Bench—an attack on the Guillotine itself.
Sir Anthony Eden wound up for the Opposition. He was always a bonny fighter and he waded in, in forthright fashion.
He said, I think, very wisely: This House has never been a mere assembly for registration. It has never been a mere 97 debating society. It has never merely been a House which the Government used as an instrument of registration. Where certain Members oppose the Bill in principle they take an active part in trying to make it workable. He told the House that what he had said so far was a quotation from a speech by the present Lord Attlee. He went on to say: How can we do that under this ridiculous Guillotine procedure! The right hon. Gentleman said, of the Guillotine, that it takes a Bill out of the reach of five-sixths of the House and brings it back in front of us for only four days."— only four days. Again, I would ask the House to compare the times allotted our Guillotine procedure when the Labour Party was in power, with the times under the present timetable.
Sir Anthony Eden continued: Of all the Government's actions in defiance of parliamentary democracy, this is the worst they have done yet. Before any detailed discussion of the Bill has commenced, the Government have laid down their inadequate timetable."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1948; Vol. 458, c, 1446–52.] That is exactly our charge against the present timetable. Erskine May tells us that the usual procedure for the Guillotine is that it should be introduced after there has been some evidence of delay and obstruction in the work of the Committee. Nobody can argue that that is true of the present Standing Committee or the National Health Service Bill. It certainly cannot be argued about the Committee on the Floor of the House. But those two right hon. Members were, after all, grave Front Benchers speaking. Let us look at the Conservative back benchers in that same debate.
The noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) also had a go. From his aloof, patrician viewpoint, he scornfully looked down on the Socialist parvenu Government and read them a lecture on how to govern. He said: … I do not believe they yet understand the essence of parliamentary government, that Government by discussion is the secret of liberty and that minority rights must extend very far into parliamentary time, if Britain is to remain free. Then, with characteristic and aristocratic fervour, he said what my right 98 hon. Friend has already quoted from the Front Bench: They are gorillas plunging about in the garden of English democracy."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 25th November, 1948; Vol. 458. c. 1494.] In the same debate we had the passionate eloquence of that very fierce advocate, the present Minister for Science, who said some very wise things and some not so wise. He uttered the profound sentence: … truth cannot prevail without adequate discussion. Then, a little more like an advocate in a law court, he said: … the Government are murdering parliamentary democracy and those who support the Government are either their accomplices or their dupes. I do not charge anyone on the Government Front Bench or on the back benches with being innocent dupes. I believe that they all know just what they are doing.
The Minister for Science warmed up and said: … if ever there came a time … when the Government of the day were able to say to the Opposition, 'We are going to get our Measure, whatever you say, by a particular day, in accordance with a particular time table.' we should then have passed over the line which divides Parliamentary democracy from a dictatorship. With Hitler fresh in his mind, he added—at col. 1479 of the OFFICIAL REPORT—the word "Reichstag."
Here, then, were the Opposition denouncing the Guillotine on principle, although the only real reason was that the Tories objected to the Labour Government's existence. But the Minister for Science also said in that debate some very searching things on the function of an Opposition. He said: … it is in the nature of any Opposition to anger the Government, and if it does not anger the Government and impress it with its mischievousness, irresponsibility and obstruction, it is not fulfilling its proper part as an Opposition."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1948; Vol. 458, cc. 1476–82.] Although I would not accept some of what Mrs. Malaprop would have called the soft impeachments, we are indeed fulfilling over the National Health Service Bill our proper part as an Opposition. I would ask the Minister for Science, if it were possible and if he were not remote from this place, why he is allowing the Leader of the House to 99 turn the House of Commons into what the Minister for Science once called a Reichstag, simply because we are doing our faithful duty to those who sent us here, to our Socialist principles, and to the pattern once laid down by the Minister for Science.
I regard this Guillotine as a confession not of strength, but of weakness. It informs the county that so deep is the cleavage between both sides of the House about the National Health Service that the Government have had to abandon all pretence at arguing the matter out fairly and fully and they have had to use for this Measure the weapon which other Governments have used only as a last resort and after serious delays and obstructions. I regard the introduction of this Guillotine as a moral victory for the Opposition.
I confess that what matters to me most today is not the Guillotine but what is being guillotined. In this debate, the Robespierre is the Minister of Health, and what is being guillotined is not merely a set of debates, but the Health Service itself. I regard this as far more grave, and it will cause far more unhappiness for the poorest people in the country than the mere carrying out of what is now proposed by the Government in their Motion.
I believe that the Government know that the attack on the Health Service has already received such a drubbing in the House of Commons and it has aroused such anger and distress in the country that they feel that the sooner the crime against the Health Service is completed the better. Their motto is: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly I say to the Government that it will not be done, it will not be finished, when the Bills are carried. The Opposition will continue to fight these and similar Measures of the Government. Some day. we shall bring back the National Health Service to what it was. This Guillotine is enabling the Government to shift more of the burden which ought to be borne fairly by people according to their capacity to pay by one poll tax on to all people including the poor and by a second poll tax on to only the sick. The Government ought to be ashamed of this 100 Motion, but even more of the Bills which necessitate its being brought in.

§ 6.12 p.m.

§ Sir Kenneth Pickthorn (Carlton)
I am a little sorry that the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) did not turn his attention for part of the time to what I hope it is not patronising to describe as the very impressive speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers). It is not always easy at this stage of a debate to bring, I do not say new thoughts, but at any rate a new exactitude of fact into a part of the subject hitherto rather neglected in the way that my hon. Friend did it this evening. I regret that the hon. Member for Itchen did not take that up.
I begin by saying that not because as one pedagogue to another, I take the chance while I am on my feet to correct or rebuke the hon. Member for Itchen I say it partly as a kind of anticipatory excuse for the sins I am about to commit: I shall speak, if the House will permit me, in the rather chance order of notes which I have taken of previous speeches and the very chance notes which I have taken of previous occasions like this. Several hon. Members have done that part of their homework much better than I did mine, and the effect will be, I am sorry to say, that I shall not have a continuous argument. I hope that I shall be forgiven for that.
I think that the hon. Member for Itchen was subconsciously impressed by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, when he referred to all the Health Service debates: he did it with great emphasis on "all". I think that my hon. Friend had brought back half way up from his subconscious the fact that we have already had a great many hours, amounting to a great many days, of Parliamentary time if Parliamentary time be divided by the ordinary six hours or so, devoted to debating the Health Service. The hon. Member had that in mind, I suspect, and I wish that far more people in the House would have it in their minds.
I wondered where the hon. Member for Itchen got the stuff about the way the Tories talk about this and that not being cricket and so on.

§ Mr. J. T. Price (Westhoughton)
By reading.

101

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
He attached great importance—almost as much importance as my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) attached to the General Epistle of Jude—to the testimony of Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Boothby. I am bound to say that I should not myself have thought that what Lord Beaverbrook or Lord Boothby said about the Tory Party was irrefragable testimony about its character either as a party or as a collection of individuals.
I thought that the hon. Member risked his position a little when, towards the middle of his speech, he worked up his courage to say, "We are a united party". I felt a little tempted to tell him that he had better be careful or he would find himself sent to Coventry. I had not meant to go back to this, which is the small change of party politics at the moment—it is not my fault—but I think that hon. Members opposite should not begin to be cock-a-hoop about it yet. There are many teams large and small—I was going to even teams of two, one man and one woman, thinking particularly of a marriage—which can be induced to stop biting each other's Adam's apples or scratching each other's eyes out for just long enough to turn and damn the eyes of a bystander. It would a great mistake to think that every menage of which that can be said is a united menage.
The right hon. Member the Leader of the Opposition told us that it was merely because the Opposition mean to oppose the Bill that the Guillotine was being erected. That will not do. It is not merely because the Opposition mean to oppose the Bill. It is because already many hours have been occupied, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury indicated, and because there was plainly the possibility of very many more hours being occupied.
I seem to be almost unique now, after the death of the spokesmen to whom the hon. Member for Itchen, quite rightly, so kindly referred, Oliver Stanley, because, like Oliver Stanley—if I may dare to compare the smallest things with the greatest—I dislike Guillotines as a matter of course and as a matter of 102 principle. What is more, I dislike closures, too. I am a sufficient racialist not to like French words until they have been in the English vocabulary for at least three generations, and I do not think that "clôture" has got so far yet.
One principle which we all tend to forget but which we really cannot leave out of account, because it makes the Parliamentary drama into "Hamlet" without the Prince of Denmark, is that, of course, the minority has rights and each minority within minorities and minorities within the majority ought to have rights, but the essence and the principle of the thing upon which all procedure depends—nowadays we have no constitution except our procedure; that is all the protection anybody has—is that in the end the majority gets its way, and the majority must decide when the end comes.
I do not want to exacerbate the debate, very much—[Laughter.]—but I thought that we had a little too much of this stuff—which, incidentally, I think was out of order—about our motives and how we are all aristocrats and look down our noses. If hon. Members opposite were as obscure as I am and sat far enough back, they would have to look down their noses. It is the only way one can see anyone. The Leader of the Opposition's remarks about Tories wanting to go to bed so that they can earn money in the morning were pretty nasty, rather dirty. [Interruption.] Of course they want to earn money in the morning. Who does not want properly to earn money in the morning? Why not? [An HON. MEMBER: "Then what are you grumbling about?"] I am grumbling about the way in which the Leader of the Opposition used the innuendo that there was something almost improper, quite corrupt, and which, in his judgment, should reasonably be disqualifitatory about people wanting to get a night's sleep in order to do a day's work. We have had too much of that.
We had a very helpful intervention from the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who told us truthfully that they were carrying out a revolution. Some of us felt it very deeply. If anyone in some other sphere lives long enough to be able to observe and weigh the events of the century after 1945, perhaps in a century or two people will 103 know, first—what everybody must admit—how great were the disadvantages of the revolution and of carrying it out, which is true of all revolutions, and, secondly, perhaps people may in some eternity look down long enough to know whether it was worth it.
But they were carrying out a revolution and in rather odd circumstances. They were carrying out a revolution with a Parliamentary majority which was the result of a sort of khaki election in reverse. If they are entitled to be emotional, as the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) told us the other day—she said that we ought not to complain if they get over-facetious; whenever a matter concerning the Health Service, which touches them so deeply is raised, they naturally get excessively emotional—it was, perhaps, not unforgivable if there were some people on the Tory side who felt pretty emotional about the way two wars have been used—I dare say it is inevitable; it always should be so—as the petrol in the engine of Leftish progress and, as the right hon. Member for South Shields said, should feel pretty moved about the revolution that was taking place. I think that that is a help in understanding the argument.
Why is it that to people like me who detest Guillotines—and I genuinely detest them—this Guillotine seems rather more bearable than most Guillotines—[Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite need not laugh. Anybody who finds himself in such a predicament and finds the Guillotine bearable, will have great reason to congratulate himself. I find this Guillotine a little more bearable than most.
I want to say two or three things about it which I do not think have been said. First, we have had a good deal of talk—we had some from Southampton Water; I have forgotten the constituency—about how naughty the Tories were when they kept the Socialists up. The bit of that which is generally prayed in aid, again largely in reliance on Lord Boothby— I was then going to trespass, I think, on Privilege—the incident generally mainly used is the opposition to the Finance Bill —the Budget, and so on, in 1951, was it not?—the famous harrying——

§ Mr. K. Robinson
The "furniture" Prayers.

104

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
I am not talking about them. The thing generally quoted, I thought, is the famous harrying thing. Therefore, that is the one which I have looked up. As a matter of fact, there were not so many late nights in the month which that lasted as there were in the last three weeks of this February. The average lateness was much less. I think that there were only eight then to ten recently, and on that occasion, only once was the House kept up until six and only twice until two. I dislike very much, from all points of view—whether the active or the passive, the hammer or the anvil—keeping of people up late for party purposes.
Hon. Members opposite ought not to use that so much against us, especially when we consider what it was we were then opposing—Income Tax up by 6d., double Purchase Tax on a whole list of things, Profits Tax up from 30 per cent. to 50 per cent., petrol tax up 4½d. a gallon, entertainments tax raised for racing and cinemas—quite a considerable dog's breakfast of nastiness——

§ Mr. Robinson
If the hon. Gentleman consults his memory and the records, he will find that the famous "Boothby harriers" speech had nothing to do with the Finance Bill but referred to a number of prayers moved night after night by the late Sir Herbert Williams, at least one of which dealt with prices of furniture and another with the meat content in sausages.

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
I am sorry if I have the wrong incident, but it is one which is very frequently quoted as a very bad instance of obstruction by the Tories—that of the 1951 Finance Bill. It was not nearly as bad as what we are now used to.
I want to come to what seems to me the really characteristic difference between this occasion for the Guillotine and earlier occasions. The difference—I have lost my notes now; however, the argument will be quite clear in the end, I think. I should have hesitated to refer, or to refer more than perhaps very shortly, to the debate on the Ways and Means Motion in the House, if it had not been referred to with a good deal of emphasis by the Leader of the Opposition, and even with a good deal of pride. That is the clearest case—I say this with great hesitation and quite understanding 105 that I may be sounding priggish and inviting rebuke—of what seems to me to be the worst thing which has been happening to Parliamentary procedure in recent years, worse than the use of the Closure, which has been almost infinitely less under the Tories than under the Socialists—in six years they had the Closure 180 times—worse than the Closure and the Guillotine, which I agree is merely an elaborate form of Closure—what has done and is doing the House and its procedure far more harm is the immense development for purposes of putting people off their stroke or obstructing—I do not use the American word "filibustering"—the immense development of the use of what I hope it is not offensive to call the bogus point of order, and of what I hope it is not too offensive to call it the fraudulent supplementary question either at or immediately after Question Time, or by way of exchange across the Floor of the House.
If anyone looks at that debate he will see that it reads a little oddly. I agree that the essence of the work done in this House is government by discussion, and I care far more for that than I care for democracy. Parliamentary government was a great achievement, and it performed great achievements long before democracy ceased to be a term of abuse in this country. This is an institution which cannot stand still; it is no use thinking that it can produce a complete and absolute Parliamentary democracy and that it will go on spinning like a top on the same axis and on the same spot. It will not. Much the greatest danger to this institution recently has been this development of a certain kind of disorderliness.
When we look at that debate, which lasted about three hours, we find that practically every sentence which was continuous and followed by anything like another continuous sentence was uttered from the Opposition side. On that occasion, the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) made quite a good speech, in my judgment, anyway it was a reasonably longish speech with little or no interruption. So did his political friend who seconded him. In that debate before the moment when the Financial Secretary rose in the hope of making a speech to wind up the debate there had been—I think I have counted them correctly—about two dozen points of order in which I would bet hardly more than 106 two were in order and nearly half were consciously disorderly because they were in the form of, "Further to that point of order", when it had already been pronounced that the original point of order "was not a point of order.
The point on which I want to get the agreement of the House, if I can, is this. When to what the right hon. Member for South Shields called the normal machinery or ammunition—I will not say obstruction—of opposition and delay, used with extreme rigour—and hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have announced that it was going to be used with extreme rigour, when there is added the use of a device which in the strictest sense makes discussion impossible—if anyone reads this three hours' debate in HANSARD he will see that discussion was absolutely impossible.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury was, if I may venture to say so, quite right in blotting out the technical distinction between what has taken time on the Resolution and on the Second Reading, and what on one Prayer or another and so on. Whatever the importance of those distinctions, the main part in this argument is this: adding up all the hours spent on this topic under various procedures, the House had been reduced to a condition in which no Government could any longer have delayed moving an Allocation of Time Motion. If anyone has any doubts at all about that he need do no more than read that debate that was no debate, or whatever one likes to call it, in HANSARD, mark it with a cross every time someone says: "On a point of order", and with a red cross every time someone continues to pretend it was a point of order when obviously it was not.
I think that every candid person will agree with me that something ought to be done to try to get us back to orderly debate in this particular debate on health, which is a profoundly deeply moving subject. I think that any candid person who has any knowledge of our past or care for our future would agree with me that unless something generally effective is done about it, and in the long run is done with the consent of most on both sides of that House, the whole of this institution will develop in ways which we cannot predict but which will certainly be most harmful.

107

§ 6.36 p.m.

§ Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West)
I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn), who used to deal with history before he came to this House but who is very selective about his history when he addresses the House. One might have thought from his remarks that disorder happened only on the occasion when Health Service Bill charges were discussed.

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
I never said anything of the sort.

§ Mr. Pannell
The hon. Gentleman referred to anyone reading HANSARD. When he reads HANSARD tomorrow he will judge his own selectivity. When he was speaking of what happened on the famous night which gave rise to all the uproar, he was, of course reading it; we were there and we lived in those moments of exasperation and outrage, when we had the Patronage Secretary coming to the Box—[Interruption.]
The hon. Member was protesting a little while ago about disorderly interruption and "phoney" points of order and the slimy supplementaries, all of which he indulges in from time to time, usually from a recumbent position. He is a difficult man to follow because his type of speaking is rather staccato and he hops from one thing to another with a remarkable degree of selectivity. We were there that night and we saw this situation. We were exasperated by it. We remember that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury was on his feet. The hon. Member probably has not noticed it in HANSARD, but in fact the Patronage Secretary stopped the Financial Secretary replying to the debate after an undertaking had been given that the Financial Secretary would reply to the debate.

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
I always feel slightly drunk after making a speech. The hon. Member says that hon. Members opposite were exasperated. They must have worked up their exasperation very quickly because within the first four minutes there were six obviously disorderly points of order.

§ Mr. Pannell
The hon. Member says that he feels slightly drunk following his speech.

§ Mr. Pickthorn
I am quite sober now.

108

§ Mr. Pannell
He reminds me of Gladstone who, when rebuking Disraeli, said that the right hon. Gentleman derived his inspiration from sources denied to Her Majesty's Government. The hon. Member seemed to wax very indignant because my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said that Tories wanted to go to bed in order to earn money in the morning. He somehow thought that that was a deadly insult. I thought that everyone of us was elected to put this House first. This House cannot work unless there are 250 to 300 hon. Member's present. The idea that someone who gets up in the House, blows up and blows out, renders better service to the House than all those who staff the Committees in the morning seems to be rather an odd argument.
I thought that the hon. Gentleman made two curious remarks. What did he mean by his reference to the two world wars? He took us up on the point that it was a khaki election in reverse which allowed us to usher in the Welfare State. Then, the hon. Member indicated the First World War as well. I somehow thought that it was his people, the hard-faced men, between 1918 and 1922 who were responsible for what happened after World War One. What did the hon. Member mean by that? Surely, there was no parallel between what happened after World War One and what happened after World War Two. It was simply the shocking example of what happened after World War One that made the electorate choose a Labour Government in 1945.
In the twenty years between the wars, there was never, on average, less than 1,700,000 people out of work and 6 million people permanently on the poverty line. That was a state of affairs to which people were not prepared to return. That is something that the Conservatives try to make the electorate forget. The reason why we were defeated was that a generation had grown up without the memories of what happened during that period. Now, people take full employment for granted.
I can remember what happened in those days. I remember the indictment in July, 1949. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) went down to Wolverhampton to make a speech about Weary 109 Willies and Tired Tims, and every effort taken by the Labour Government from 1945 to 1951 to set the country on its feet and to allow the £ to look the dollar in the face was sneered at by hon. Members opposite. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the Press."] And the Press. When hon. Members opposite got back into power, all the comedians and all the sneers about the Labour Government went off the air.
We remember, too, the speech of the former Member of this House who is now Lord Boothby. The hon. Member for Carlton repudiates it now, but, presumably, the gift of a peerage was within the hands of the Prime Minister.

§ Sir K. Pickthorn
That has nothing to do with me.

§ Mr. Pannell
Perhaps not, but in repudiating his hon. Friends, the hon. Member repudiates the bright star of television and radio who did so much for his side. Lord Boothby went down to Banstead—the nearest place he could get, I suppose, to a mental home—and said that he would harry us to death. What people do not appreciate was that he succeeded. I remember Fred Cobb, George Woods and Adam McKinlay, all of whom went through the Lobby once too often and died. I have no doubt that hon. Members opposite were far more expertly trained in night clubs than we were on night shifts. They harried us and we remember what happened at that time.
The hon. Member for Carlton is selective in his history as if, somehow, disorder happened only the other night. Of course, he tends to forget all history. One has only to refer to Mr. Asquith, who was no mean judge, who said that all the real rows and disorder in the House started long before the Labour Party was born. Mr. Asquith himself had the experience of standing at the Box for over an hour while the Tory rabble kicked up hell and did not allow him to speak. The hon. Member for Carlton has the sauce to suggest that disorder has only just occurred. Why, this place has become a well-mannered assembly since we have been here.

§ Miss Jennie Lee (Cannock)
Cissified.

§ Mr. Pannell
Almost pansified.
110 What did hon. Members opposite do when they got back to power in 1951? Some of my hon. Friends do not seem to appreciate what was the first piece of legislation that hon. Members opposite brought in. The first great denationalisation Measure which they introduced gave the brewers the right to have pubs in the new towns. It may be remembered that under the previous legislation, the joint planning committee and the local justices had to agree to a licence. It was necessary to repeal that requirement. Why did hon. Members opposite repeal it and why was it at that time that the representative of the brewers, the former hon. Member for Wokingham, was swopped on Standing Committee for the president of the Band of Hope Union? We all remember that.
I suggest that the answer was to be found in the Tory Party's war chest. The Tory Party never published its balance sheet, however, so that we could not know the figures. But how much did the Brewers' Society give to the Conservative Party war chest in 1951? Nobody knows. We all know that some figure was paid, but we do not know how much. It paid off at the time, but it was in spite of the fact that from 1945 to 1951 the party opposite campaigned to set the people free and to remove austerity. Its first effort at removing austerity was to set the brewers on the racket in the new towns, which had been built with public money. The hand of the brewers was at the helm. There is no question of where the interests of hon. Members opposite at that time were.
We appreciate that minorities have rights, but majorities must govern; and the Government must either have the "guts" to govern or the grace to get out. The rights of minorities, however, are not secondary considerations. We must consider the issues on which the arguments are founded. The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) is not in his place, but he derided this sort of thing contemptuously by saying that the Bill was only a small one. He said that all that is being done is to increase the degree of imposition. That is a rather curious phrase. An imposition is something which one does not want to pay for anyway.
The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely suggested that the Bill was only a small 111 one. I have already said—I stand to be shot at on this—that if I had to choose between full employment and cuts in the social services, I would certainly face that. But we are not speaking now in the context of 1949, when this sort of thing started, when the Conservatives were ringing out the cry not only for more social services, but for increased expenditure with lower taxation. We are dealing now with a period when the Conservatives have been in power for a great many years and when they claim that we have never had it so good.
The power to make a charge of Is. for an individual prescription is one thing, but since those days it has become a charge of ls. per item. We have had an increase in the charge during years of abundance. Now, we face a charge of 2s. per item. I can declare no personal interest in a Health Service debate except that I am one of the half dozen diabetics in the House. Nevertheless, I put this to the Minister.
There is not a single thing that the diabetic now needs, except insulin, for which it is worth while to go to the doctor. A diabetic can buy the cotton wool and the surgical spirit cheaply and he gets the needles three for that price. Even though a diabetic does not find it worth while to go to the doctor for a prescription for anything other than insulin, he is given a prescription containing four or five items at a time. The Minister of Health, who is on the lookout for anomalies in these matters, had better consider that.
I often hear references to this disease thrown over from one side of the House to another in a rather careless sort of way, and I hope that hon. Members will do their homework about it before they express opinions. I am one of those to whom no particular hardship is presented, but the facts which I have given to the Minister are such that he had better give them some thought. Difficulties may well occur for some people with other diseases who must have, not one or two, but three or four prescriptions at the same time. What I anticipate the result of that Bill will be is that people will again be very selective about the sort of things they take from the chemist.
Now we turn to the question of the priorities of this Government. In the 112 Queen's Speech there was mention of a road safety Bill. I think we are entitled to ask when we are going to have that and whether we are going to have it this Session, bearing in mind that the National Health Service Contributions Bill was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech at all. I should have thought that road safety was at least as important a matter as this, because 370,000 people will die or be injured on our roads in the next twelve months. I should not have thought that something the Government would wink at. It is a predictable problem.
Some of my hon. Friends march from Aldermaston and get very excited about the wrath to come, but we know, even although everyone hopes it will not happen, that as surely as the sun rises tomorrow people will die and be maimed upon the roads of our country. I should have thought that a matter of health just as much as this business, and the sum total of all those deaths on the roads is a greater loss to the national economy, and a far more savage loss than this sort of expenditure the Government are fiddling about trying to offset by means of the Contributions Bill.
If all this is so, why are we not having that Measure about road safety? I will tell. I will make an intelligent guess. It is because of a dispute between the Home Secretary and the Minister of Transport. The Minister of Transport, in his usual businessman's fashion, wants to have the breathaliser and all that sort of thing under the control of his Department. The Home Office does not want that. So there is a row between two Government Departments, and because of that we are now in the position in which we shall probably not get that Measure on the Statute Book this Session.
The Government had far better compose all their differences and get down to their proper job of work of carrying out what was forecast in the Queen's Speech instead of fiddling about with the things which they have no mandate at all. Nobody doubts that if the Government had come out candidly at the last Election and told the people that there would be a charge of 2s. per line and that there would be a poll tax of ls. per head the people would have had some pretty savage things to say about it. There is no question at all about that.
113 This is complete deception. The Home Secretary brings this forward in the nicest way. He is a very saponaceous performer. He always talks, especially in his perorations, as though the Lord were permanently at his side and as though everything he says were revealed from above. He is fundamentally a very lazy man. He never does his stint in Committees upstairs like his Lobby fodder are expected to do. Whenever a question is asked in Committee there is a lot of thinking and turning round to civil servants because nobody can make any decision at all. He is far too busy at the Tory Party centre giving directives about the by-elections to get on with the legislation before the House. I think he is a pretty sloppy Leader of the House and that the sooner he finishes his liberalising holier-than-thou perorations the more likely we are to get such Bills as that about road safety. He would have us believe he is a great liberalising Home Secretary, but his performance never matches up to his perorations. We do not believe in him any more. An hon. Gentleman opposite was talking about arrogance and smugness. He must have been referring to the Home Secretary.
So I think we had and we have a right to object to that Bill. We have a right to object to the Bill because the Government have got their priorities wrong. We have a right to object to this Bill because the Government have no man- date for it, because the reasons for its being introduced are completely phoney, because it was not announced in the Queen's Speech, whereas things which were announced in the Queen's Speech, such as that Measure about road safety, have not been brought forward because of disputes between Ministers.
More than anything else we object to that Bill because we do recognise that this is a dismembering of the Welfare State. The Government started with it because, presumably, they thought they had to face a divided Opposition. They proceeded with a great deal of arrogance with that Bill. There is no question at all, as this Motion today indicates, that they have been brought up at the foothills to this adventure. There is no doubt at all that when the country comes, as it will, to realise what the Government are up to it will turn again to this party, and put us in. The reason why it put the Tory Party in is fundamentally that the boys 114 and girls who have grown up since did not know the nature of Conservatism in the 'thirties. But the Government are taking us back again to all that, and they are already talking about it in the Bow and Arrow Group, talking about charges for primary school education, and a great, regressive Budget.
There are young men in the party opposite who do not remember the 'thirties. They are, presumably, ready to take us back to disaster. The older men—they have been young men far too long—do remember the 'thirties, remember non-intervention, and perhaps they thought they might go quiet and slow, but things are overtaking them, and I have no doubt that the electorate will catch up with them, and that when the electorate does catch up with them the landslide of 1945 will be as chicken-feed compared with the support we shall have next time.

§ 6.56 p.m.

§ Sir Hugh Linstead (Putney)
We have all enjoyed the robust speech of the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell). When some of the arrows of a rather prehistoric type which he was firing came over to this side of the House I began to wonder whether he was a recruit to the Bow and Arrow Group himself.
However, to anyone who has listened to this debate there may have been the feeling that a good deal of the discussion has been somewhat artificial, and just an exchange of Parliamentary comments between the two parties. Nothing would be farther from the truth than that, because there is a real Parliamentary purpose behind a debate of this kind. I could not help regretting that in the obviously deeply felt contribution which the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) made, he felt it was necessary to let off a few of the traditional Parliamentary blows. He talked about the Tories as the ruling class always doing this sort of thing. There came to my mind a comment Lord Shawcross once made: We are the masters. …" —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd April, 1946; Vol. 421, c. 1231.] now. At the time when he said that he was the Attorney-General.

§ Mr. C. Pannell
And you have made him chairman of the Press Commission.

115

§ Sir H. Linstead
A question which such a debate as this raises is the Parliamentary question of what are the Opposition to do within the limits of Parliamentary procedure when they find them- selves faced with some Government proposition which they feel must be prevented if it is humanly possible for it to be prevented from becoming law. That is a problem which is essentially a problem for the Opposition, but to some extent, of course, it is a problem faced by every back bencher in this House, because to some extent the Guillotine and the Closure are weapons of the Government of the day against Parliament as much as against the rights of the Opposition.
I do not think we have recognised clearly enough during this debate that Parliament has worked out in a very pragmatic way a series of rules which are to be adopted by the Opposition almost as a matter of course when they find themselves in a position such as that in which the Opposition find themselves at the moment. Those rules are perfectly well-known and accepted by both sides of the House. It is unfortunate that they have not come more clearly to the surface in the debate. As far as I can make out, there are six rules which the House provides for the use of the Opposition if they wish to obstruct as far as it is Parliamentarily possible any Measure put forward by the Government.
The first rule is that the Opposition must prolong the Second Reading debate as long as they possibly can. The Opposition try if they can to prolong it into an all-night sitting. The second rule is that they try to provoke the Government to move the Closure in order that hon. Members may say that the freedom of Parliamentary speech has been limited. The third rule is to try to get the Bill taken in Committee on the Floor of the House and not sent upstairs, because it is known that it can be a greater embarrassment to the Government on the Floor of the House since the Opposition can take up more time.
The fourth rule is that when the Bill goes to Committee as many Amendments as possible are tabled. The fifth rule is to discuss those Amendments for as long as possible. The sixth and final rule is 116 to force the Government, if possible, to apply the Closure or the Guillotine.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
So we have won.

§ Sir H. Linstead
I am glad to see that some of the older hands in the House know that these are the rules which apply and, as the hon. Member for Leeds, West said, we are now at the final stage. The great advantage of that final stage is that it enables the Opposition to attack as lightheartedly or as seriously as they wish the Patronage Secretary and the Leader of the House.
It seems to me that neither side of the House has cause for complaint about the situation as it is today. The question has been asked why the Closure was not moved upstairs. The question that goes with that is whether there has been obstruction upstairs. It is difficult to say what is obstruction. I would not use the word "obstruction" for the extremely delicate, clever, carefully organised debates that we have had in Standing Committee. I would pay a compliment to the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) for the way he conducted those debates. They represented not obstruction but a group of rather elderly ladies strolling sedately over a pedestrian crossing engaged in animated discussion.

§ Mr. Silverman
So right hon. Members opposite mow them down.

§ Sir H. Linstead
One cannot call it obstruction but nevertheless it is a very refined form of dignified delay.
Both sides of the House understand the procedure that is being adopted and that it is inevitable in a situation of this kind, when they find themselves up against a brick wall, that the Opposition should use these six rules to spend as much Parliamentary time as possible, to make their views known, and to embarrass the Government. But in the end, the Opposition find that the situation must be determined by the Guillotine or a series of Closures, and when that situation arrives I cannot see that hon. and right hon. Members opposite have a great deal to complain about.

§ 7.4 p.m.

§ Mr. B. T. Parkin (Paddington, North)
The hon Member for Putney (Sir H. Lin-stead) has given his interpretation of 117 proceedings in Committee upstairs. In the debate it seems to me that hon. Members have agreed on two main points. One is the plea that we should get things in proportion and the second is the plea that we should return to orderly debate. I think that getting things in proportion was effectively and finally done by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who pointed out that we on this side of the House are engaged in resisting as far as we can a long-term counter-revolution planned and conducted with great skill by the party opposite over the last ten years.
As for orderliness of debate, that is indeed a proposition which is very attractive to me. The difficulty that we are in at present is that we are discussing two quite separate things at the same time in two separate Bills. According to the hon. Member for Putney, we have reached the final in a contest conducted in the six stages which he outlined. It is, of course, true that there is deadlock. The Leader of the House complained that he can obtain no guarantees from the Opposition, and I was glad to hear him saying it. The right hon. Gentleman says that, therefore, he has to use this machinery which was previously worked out for this purpose.
It is generally said on these occasions that democracy works only if we agree on fundamentals. Clearly on one of the fundamentals we are not agreed, and there is likely to be deadlock. But there is one thing on which I hope we agree, and that is that this place and its Parliamentary machinery provide the way in which the country ought to be governed and its problems ought to be sorted out. Both sides are in the position that if we fire our deterrent we may destroy that which we are attempting to defend. In other words, there comes a point where the Government of the day would have to devise another weapon if the technique of Parliamentary obstruction were carried a little further towards its logical conclusion.
This is what has happened in the past, as freedom of debate, as it once was, has been eroded by Closure, Guillotine and timetable. I said that this is one point that we have in common. I hope that this is the view of the party opposite and its Front Bench at the present time. It would be too kind of me to praise 118 the party opposite for having been those who built up this working Parliamentary democracy. We are always in favour of the extension and use to the full of the machinery of Government. The opposite view to that could be put, but I will not put it now.
When this battle is over, even if the Leader of the House comes to some kind of agreement with the Opposition Front Bench he cannot guarantee that all Government business will now go smoothly for the rest of the Session— because there are some things which the Opposition Front Bench is not in a position to trade in. This was the essential point behind what was called a breach of agreement in the course of these debates when a debate did not cease at midnight but went on. It was the feeling of some of us that the question of private Members' time on the Consolidated Fund Bill could not be part of a deal between the two Front Benches.
There is a seventh rule which the hon. Member for Putney did not mention. This rule for any Parliamentary Opposition is to read the Order Paper. You will be uneasily aware, Mr. Speaker, that I try to find it possible to relate the business of the day to my constituency and sometimes I have to be guided in order that discussions of these problems can be kept strictly within the framework of the Motion before the House. But this is the position that an hon. Member finds himself in, and how frustrating and exasperating it is to find oneself spending a day, as we are now doing, in a discussion which could have been devoted to a more profound examination of the problems before us. Like other back-benchers, I have to find a way to raise prblems that present themselves to me which seem to me to show the symptoms of a social disease that may break out in the future. I have to present them on such occasions as I can find by following the seventh rule which is, as I have said, to read the Order Paper. What I should much prefer to see is a co-ordinated discussion of the social problems of the country.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers) gave us details of the hours spent during these debates. I believe he spoke of eighty-four hours and 200 or so speeches. But the exasperating thing is that we have been discussing 119 two things at one and the same moment. I happen to be on the Standing Committee also, and so I can compare the Committee stages of the National Health Service Contributions Bill and of the National Health Service Bill. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury has freely admitted that one of these Measures is a budgetary operation intended to impose a poll tax. The hon. Gentleman has never attempted to obstruct the discussion, and he has never referred to the discussion as in any way time-wasting. He has taken up with the greatest courtesy, as he always does, all the points that have been raised. He has been willing to discuss and explain hypothecated taxation and the elements of poll tax in the Government's policy.
But how much better it would have been if the Leader of the House had paid more attention to the suggestions which I made to him in the course of last Session and to which he responded with a certain courtesy—the suggestion that we should have some co-ordinated debates on the development of the country's social services. I submitted the proposition that it would be sensible if we had each Session a "social survey" introduced by the Home Secretary as the co-ordinator of different aspects——

§ Mr. Speaker
I appreciate the difficulties of the hon. Member, but I think that at this point he is obliged to read the Order Paper.

§ Mr. Parkin
I am endeavouring, Mr. Speaker, to reply to the remarks of the hon. Member for Aylesbury, who seemed to be indicating that we had spent more than adequate time on the discussion of these Measures. The hon. Member seemed to be implying that that time could have been more usefully employed. The hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) was also making a plea for orderly debate. I am also making a plea for the sort of orderly debate which could have been arranged within the framework of all these hours and days which have been spent on a process which almost appears to be a deliberate entanglement of two different propositions.
The Minister of Health, in his treatment of this subject, has at every point insisted that the Measure concerned is for the benefit of the Health Service. At 120 each point he has said that this is the better way of dealing with whatever it may be—dentures, consultations, prescriptions or whatever charges they may have been. He has tried to show us that the needs of the Health Service itself could best be met in this way.
This is the theme of the National Health Service Bill, a discussion of which is on today's Order Paper. It is referred to in the Motion. At the same time we have a parallel debate, a discussion of a budgetary proposition which seems to my hon. Friends and myself to be connected with a long-term shift in the weight of taxation, a counterrevolution against the attempt of the Labour Government after the war to redistribute income favourably towards the poorer element through the functioning of the Welfare State.
It may well be that that is a good policy, but it has never been discussed as such. We have never had an opportunity to discuss in isolation, as it were, the grand design of the Conservative Party for the welfare services of the future. If the Conservative Party were able to say that its budgetary policy for the shift of income was as I have described it, or if it were able to argue—we should be glad to listen—that the method of redistribution advocated before the war and attempted by the Labour Party after the war was neither just nor effective and had not had the effect that was foreseen in redistribution, that would at least be an argument which was worth listening to, but it is never put in relation to a coherent and continuous policy on behalf of the Government——

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I have given the hon. Gentleman as much licence as I properly can. I must now ask him to relate his observations to the Allocation of Time Motion or the Amendment.

§ Mr. Parkin
I am sorry if I have not made myself clear, Mr. Speaker, I had no other object in my speech than to discuss the proper allocation of time.
We have been reproached for the fact that, although a great deal of time has been made available for the discussion of these two Measures, we are complaining that it is inadequate, and it is said that we ought to have made it adequate. I suggest that the debate has ranged 121 widely over the technique of Parliamentary obstruction and the question of what happens if this procedure has to be attempted again and again. It is perhaps fair to mention again that the Government have lost a day on the Floor of the House which they might have devoted to other business—which is unfortunate—because the Guillotine Motion has been brought before us today.
I am speaking now as one of the back benchers who will be reading the Order Paper, because that is all that we are able to do in face of the Government's attitude. It is the only way we have of raising our own criticisms and grievances, whatever the Opposition may agree officially in relation to the Government's own policy. Much of the guerilla warfare could be avoided or be made much more sensible and constructive if the Government could so arrange their business as to give us an honest picture at the beginning of the Session, saying what they want, and why.
I submit that we have here two separate issues and two separate Bills. One is concerned with a poll tax and redistribution of income, as the Financial Secretary has been very willing to admit during our discussions. The other purports to be concerned with the efficient operation of the Health Service. They ought not to be discussed together. They ought not to be presented together out of the blue—without notice in the Queen's Speech—as if they were completely connected, unless the Government wish it to be clearly understood that they are dismembering the social services. If the Government are not doing so and have a plan of their own for reviewing different aspects of the Welfare State along the lines that were built into the National Insurance Act with its quinquennial review, they ought to make it clear in a calm and impartial debate which is concerned with the broad sweep of events, and not leave it until we get tangled up, as we have done on this occasion, in bitterness, hostility, confusion and deadlock which can do no good either to the institution of Parliament or to the operation of the Government's programme.

§ 7.18 p.m.

§ Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth (Hendon, South)
I wish to touch on two matters which have been mentioned during the 122 debate. A good deal has been said about what happened in 1951. The Opposition have tried to draw a comparison between what happened then and what is happening now and to justify their present tactics by what they claim were the tactics of the Conservative Party when it was in opposition. They are, in effect, arguing that this is a sort of tit for tat—not a very noble argument, but, nevertheless, one which I shall try to answer.
At that time the position was entirely different from what it is now. There are a number of hon. Members in the House at the present time who will remember vividly what happened in 1951. At that time there was a Labour majority of six of seven. There was also a very serious financial situation developing. There was a rapid increase in inflation, and very great anxiety was felt throughout the country. There was a great demand for action to be taken.
At that time the Labour Government were proceeding with measures such as the Highways (Provision of Cattle-Grids) Act, the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, and a number of other similar measures, which were, perhaps, of great interest to those whom they directly affected, and were, maybe, of importance, but were, nevertheless, not in any way directed to dealing with a situation which everyone recognised needed to be dealt with urgently.
It was not because of what the Labour Government were doing but because of what they were not doing that the Opposition were driven to take action in order to try to bring to the attention of the country the utter inertia of the Government. We were—and let us state this frankly—demanding a General Election, and the Labour Government knew perfectly well that as soon as that election came about they would be out of office—although they did not know then that they would be out for ten years, and perhaps for twice as long as that.
In those circumstances we were, not unnaturally, inclined to be obstreperous with the Government. But when I consider the degree of obstreperosity—my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pick-thorn) has referred to the incredibly small extent to which we kept the House up late, and the short period during which we did it—I stand like a greater man than I astonished at my own moderation.

123

§ Mr. Elwyn Jones (West Ham, South)
Does the hon. Gentleman ascribe greater virtue to an Opposition attacking a Government for what they are not doing than to an Opposition attacking a Government for what they are doing?

§ Sir H. Lucas-Tooth
When a Government are taking action, it is right and proper for the Opposition to criticise that action, but when a Government are taking no action, as was the case with the Labour Government, then the Opposition cannot criticise the Government's action because there is nothing of it to criticise. It is then driven to the sort of activity complained about in 1951. The circumstances were wholly different, and there is no comparison between what happened then and today's situation.
The Leader of the Opposition put the issue in this way: he said that the Guillotine is only permissible in the case of an important and urgent Bill, when the delay would have serious consequences for the nation. That was the burden of his argument. He contended from that that this Motion was not justified. That argument is complete nonsense. It stands self-condemned as nonsense.
If it were valid, it would mean that every Bill not both urgent and important could be ruthlessly held up by any Opposition and not allowed to get through at all merely because it was of a controversial type. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman could have wished to put his case as high as that. In addition, by holding up minor legislation, the Opposition could hold up the whole legislative programme of the Government.
Things have been said by Members opposite in the last week or two which clearly show that they have it—or had it—in mind that by their actions they intended to hold up the whole legislative programme of the Government. In the discussion on the Consolidated Fund Bill, we were not concerned in any way with the particular matters to which the Opposition are taking objection in the two Measures mentioned in this Motion. They were merely seeking generally to hold up the Government's programme. What the Government are now doing is no less than what They must do—ensure that the programme that they believe to be the right one is carried out in spite 124 of opposition, and in spite of excessive opposition.
Apart from that, it is justifiable to ask whether this particular legislation is important. I would not like to say very much about its urgency in this context. I do not think that urgency is a matter we have to consider very much today. But I make a comparison here. In 1947 the Labour Government brought in a Guillotine Motion for the Transport Act and the Town and Country Planning Act. I was a member of the Standing Committee on the latter Bill and remember its proceedings extremely well.
We had had four days in that Committee. It was a Bill of immense length and we had made quite a bit of progress. On the last day before the Guillotine Motion was put down the Committee rose early, on the Motion of the Minister, for the convenience of members of the Labour Party who wished to go somewhere else. Not a single Closure had been moved in that Committee, and there was no suggestion of urgency. The Guillotine Motion was utterly irrelevant to that Committee's proceedings.
My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) has clearly stated the dilemma of the Leader of the Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman must make up his mind. is the National Health Service Bill important or is it not? He cannot have it both ways. He argues that it is a trifling and mean measure, and then says that it is of great importance, affecting everybody in the country, and something about which everyone should have their arguments ad lib. That is nonsense. This is an important Measure.

§ Mr. K. Robinson
The hon. Gentleman is misrepresenting my right hon. Friend, who said that these were wretched little Bills—and both of those epithets are true. They are little Bills because one has only two Clauses and the other only five. My right hon. Friend said that they were important Bills because they affected a large number of people. There is nothing contradictory in those statements.

§ Sir H. Lucas-Tooth
I am glad to have the right hon. Gentleman's hon. 125 Friend telling us that these are important Bills. I think the hon. Member will agree that they must form a substantial part of the Government's legislative programme and that the Government are entitled to see them passed without undue obstruction. At any rate, we have made that much progress.
Is the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) saying that the question of whether there should be a Guillotine or not depends on the length of the Measure concerned? Does he not know that about 100 Amendments, in his name and the names of his hon. Friends, have been put down to the National Health Service Bill? If only half or a quarter of those Amendments are selected by the Chair, it will be possible to hold up discussion of the Bill for days on end, wrecking the Government's whole programme.
The Government are fully justified in moving this Motion. The question of when such a Motion may be put down must depend on whether the Opposition show undue obstruction to a measure and to others with a view to holding them up, I am satisfied that the case for the Motion is proved over and over again. No member opposite has even attempted to disprove it. I hope that the passing of this Motion will be a sign that the Government do not intend to have their programme spoilt by quite unnecessary opposition.

§ 7.30 p.m.

§ Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)
The hon. Baronet the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) began his speech with his version of the events which took place in 1951. Those events were not, I think, connected with any Guillotine Motion, and therefore I do not propose to dwell upon them for more than a sentence or two, but out of courtesy to his argument, may I summarise it for him?
He said that in 1951, there then being a Labour Government and a Conservative Opposition, the Conservative Opposition thought that they were a very bad Government and that the proper thing to do was to turn them out as quickly as possible, especially in that there was some prospect of defeating them at the General Election.
126 They thought that as the Government had a majority of only seven, it might be easy by a variety of Parliamentary manœuvres to harry them, worry them, make life difficult for them, obstruct their business and do everything in their power to make it impossible for them to carry on.

§ Sir H. Lucas-Tooth rose——

§ Mr. Silverman
I will give way to the hon. Member in a moment but I hope that he will not be in a hurry to contradict my summary of his argument, because, before I give way to him, I want to say that I thought that it was a fair argument and that I see no objection to it at all, if the Conservative Opposition were inspired by those motives. The hon. Member as he then was, but Lord Boothby as he now is, made it clear what his intention was; and he organised it with great diligence, great skill and ultimately with complete success.

§ Sir H. Lucas-Tooth
The hon. Member did not quite make my argument correctly. I said that the then Government had a majority of only seven and that, owing to the smallness of their majority, they were failing to introduce legislation which they should have introduced and therefore we were not able to discuss the things which we should have discussed.

§ Mr. Silverman
It was for that, among a number of other reasons, which the hon. Baronet gave, that they thought that they were entitled to harry the Government and to use every legitimate Parliamentary weapon at their disposal, because they thought that it was a thoroughly bad Government and an unrepresentative Government, and they wanted to defeat the Government at a General Election as quickly as possible. I will make one concession to the hon. Member's intervention. He did not say that the fact that the Government had a majority of only six or seven made it easier for the Opposition to do it than it is for us today, when the Government have a majority of a hundred, but I am sure that he will not expect me to believe, and he did not say and I am sure that he would not say, that that consideration was wholly absent from the mind of the Opposition at that time.
127 It is quite right. There is nothing wrong with it. We think that this Government are a very much worse Government than the Labour Government of 1951. The hon. Baronet will not be surprised to hear me say so. By parity of reasoning with his own argument, the Government have no manner of objection to anything we have done in the course of the passage of these two Measures so far. I do not know what it is that the hon. Baronet complains about, or why he does not propose to come with us in the Lobby on the Guillotine Motion tonight in defence of his own argument. I do not say that I expect to see him there, but I live in hope.

§ Sir S. Summers
The hon. Member said that the tactics of the Opposition were reasonable at that time. Those tactics led straight to the Guillotine Motions of that day. As it follows that the tactics of the present Opposition lead equally clearly to the Motion on the Order Paper, on his own reasoning he ought not to complain about it.

§ Mr. Silverman
I hope that the hon. Member will not accuse me a second time of ill manners if I say that he must do his homework before he takes part in debates of this kind. There were no Guillotine Motions in the Parliament of 1950–51. Whether the Government of that day would have liked to introduce them is not for me to say. Whether it was necessary for them to introduce them, again is not for me to say. But it is obvious from the arithmetic that they could not have introduced a Guillotine Motion and have hoped to succeed by it. There was no Guillotine Motion in that period. The parallels which the hon. Member has sought to draw were not parallels between 1950–51 and 1960–61. They are parallels between 1947 or 1948 or 1949 and the present day. Those were the days when, once or twice, we had Guillotine Motions. I will contrast—not compare, as hon. Members have said—the use of the Guillotine on the two sides in a moment, with particular reference to the Motion before us.
A little while ago I heard my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) make a very frank speech, full of common sense. I agree entirely with him that a good deal of nonsense is talked on both sides of the 128 House on these occasions. There is a certain amount of common form about it. Every Government who introduce a Guillotine think that they are bound to do so in the interests of Parliamentary democracy. Every Opposition think that they are bound to oppose it in the interests of Parliamentary democracy. But because the two parties, when their positions change in the House, are apt to approach the question of the Guillotine with this kind of defence or this kind of attack, it would be a great mistake to draw the conclusion that all Guillotine Motions are alike, that they all have equal merit, that they are all equally blameworthy and that there is no distinction whatever to be drawn between some Guillotine Motions and others.
Nobody has ever denied that a Guillotine Motion, like the Closure, like a timetable Motion, is a legitimate Parliamentary weapon to use. Sometimes it is the only weapon which a Government can use in order to carry out their fundamental, basic duty of governing—because that is what Governments are for—against an active or fractious or obstructive Opposition. Certainly there are occasions on which it is justified and on which the Government are entitled to say, "We have a majority here, we have retained the confidence of that majority, and, while we retain it, we will do what we have to do to make sure that we get our way". When we are the Government, undoubtedly we shall do the same.
But having a giant's strength is one thing and using it like a giant is quite another. The point is that a Guillotine Motion must be justified on its own merits in the context of the Parliamentary situation which it is introduced to meet.

§ Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington)
My hon. Friend is making a good point of great substance. If it could be argued that the opposition by the Labour Party had been of a frivolous character, I could understand the Motion, but surely nobody suggests that the opposition to the National Health Service Bill is of a frivolous character.

§ Mr. Silverman
I am obliged to my right hon. Friend. I shall examine the Parliamentary situation from just that point of view to see what justification, 129 if any, there is for the use of the Guillotine on this occasion. It is useless to say "Oh, well, you did it when you were in power", unless one is prepared to go further and to say that the Labour Government of those days used it as unnecessarily as it is being used—as I contend—on this occasion.
I do not mean any disrespect to any of the other supporters of the Motion, but it will not be regarded as unfair if I direct my argument to that argument which the Leader of the House addressed to the House when he moved the Motion, and if I see what substance there was in his case. Most surprisingly, he began as his first reason by complaining that the House was not making enough progress with these Bills.
With the greatest respect in the world, I think that was an astonishing thing to say. On the last occasion when either of these Measures was in Committee, the Leader of the House himself intervened at about 4.15 a.m. in order to move, "That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again". He was supported by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition.
I opposed that Motion. I pointed out that it was still only four o'clock and that we had all night before us. True, the corridors and Committee Rooms were littered with the bodies of Tory deadbeats, but that only enabled us to get on faster. They were not interfering and they turned up at the right time when the Division bells rang—[HON. MEMBERS: "Most of them."]— I think that they all turned up. They were in complete ignorance of what the Division was about and a little doubtful about which Lobby to go into, but they knew that they wanted to support the Government and when the Patronage Secretary and his minions were there to guide them, they went into the right Division Lobby and shuffled through and went back to bed.

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle)
The hon. Gentleman will agree that points of order about the sleeping Tories occupied a full forty minutes. It is a slight exaggeration to say that they hastened the speed of the debate.

§ Mr. Silverman
The points of order were not about the sleeping Tories. We 130 believed in letting sleeping Tories lie. The points of order were about the way they littered up the place and prevented more active Members from carrying on with their duties in the conference rooms and libraries and other places appointed for them. Indeed, if they had decided to order a fleet of taxis and drive home and continue their sleep comfortably at home, the Committee would have gone on quite happily without them.
The point is that there was plenty of time, and when I asked the right hon. Gentleman why he did not get Clause 2 and leave the Schedule to be dealt with later, he resisted my suggestion, saying that there was no hurry. He said that there was plenty of time and that we could take up the matter when we were fresher. There was no indication that he thought that we were taking too much time. I was offering him further time that very night, suggesting that we should get Clause 2 and even part of the Schedule.
I am not saying that he was wrong, but he must have been wrong if he then had it in mind to move a Guillotine Motion before ever we came back to Clause 2, because what he did on that night was completely inconsistent with the case he made today when he said that his first reason for wanting this Guillotine Motion was that we were taking too much time and going too slowly. We would have gone much faster and he would have had more of his Bill that night if he had not moved the Motion which he then moved. There was no urgency and no waste of time or misuse of Parliamentary methods, according to his case then.

§ Sir H. Lucas-Tooth
On that argument, if my right hon. Friend had not moved to report Progress, the Committee could have sat for another three weeks and got the Bill right through. There must be a limit on the time. How often should we have to sit until four o'clock before there is any need for a Guillotine Motion? Will the hon. Gentleman particularise?

§ Mr. S. Silverman
I am sorry not to be clear and it must be my fault. What I was trying to point out was that we were already staying up and it was then four o'clock and that if we had sat up 131 for another three hours, we would have got Clause 2 and, may be, part of the Schedule, and that if we did not get it, it was because the Leader of the House moved to report Progress. What I am saying is not that the right hon. Gentleman was wrong then and not necessarily that he is wrong now, but that he must have been wrong then unless he is wrong now. He cannot use the argument that on one occasion we will not continue because we are getting on fast enough, and then on the next occasion say that we have to have a Guillotine Motion because we are not getting on fast enough. I am sure that if the hon. Baronet will make the effort, he will be able to follow that argument.

§ Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)
The hon. Member has related to the House how on that occasion he himself intervened to suggest that the Committee might possibly get Clause 2. Apart from his own statement, what evidence is there that we were even remotely likely to get that Clause?

§ Mr. Silverman
I am not saying for a moment that we could possibly have got the Bill on that single occasion, the Schedule and all the Amendments as well. I have not said that, but I hope that it does not require a great deal of evidence to persuade the hon. Member that if we had sat until seven o'clock instead of stopping at four o'clock, in the succeeding three hours we might have been able to get a little more of the Bill. That is all I am saying and I should have thought that that was an argument which, without distinction of party, might be generally acceptable to the House of Commons.

§ Sir H. Lucas-Tooth
Will the hon. Gentleman explain how, if at any time the Leader of the House moved to report Progress, that argument cannot be used? In other words, is it not his argument that once a Committee stage has been begun, we can never have a Guillotine Motion?

§ Mr. Silverman
I am afraid that this time the stupidity is mine. I cannot follow the point of that. I thought that I was making a perfectly simple case which was non-controversial and which was merely that if we go on three hours longer, we do a little more. That is all 132 I am saying. Is there anything wrong with that?
What I am saying is that the fact that we did not get any further on the last occasion was due to the intervention of the Leader of the House, who threatened to use his majority because we were going too fast. That is what it amounted to. "Let us stop now," he said. He said that there was no need to go on and get Clause 2, that there was no urgency, no hurry, that there was plenty of time. He even persuaded me, because I did not divide the Committee against it. We all went home believing that we were to have another day.
However, in the meantime the Leader of the House changed his mind and decided that, whereas in the middle of the night he had thought that we were getting on reasonably fast, when he had time to think it over, it turned out that we were not getting on fast enough, and so he would not give us another opportunity, and he introduced this Motion.
What I am saying is that the conduct of the Leader of the House on those two occasions, contrasted the one with the other, destroys any claim of urgency in support of the Motion. He may have other and better reasons and I will examine those in turn, but it does not lie in the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman to speak of urgency or slow progress.
His second argument was urgency in another sense—the absolute necessity of getting through before the Budget. Stamps had to be printed. The Government wanted to begin on 3rd July. How in the world were we to know that they wanted to begin on 3rd July? The right hon. Gentlemen did not explain. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, the Bill contains no reference to the date of commencement. There is no mention of 3rd July. It could be 3rd August, or 3rd December. The Bill gives an absolutely unfettered discretion to the Treasury to decide the operative day.
Surely the House sees that the argument linking these Bills with the Budget is an argument for delaying it and not hurrying it. Much as hon. Members opposite try to deny it, it was conceded throughout the debate by Members on the Front Bench; the Financial Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Minister of Health—all those best 133 qualified to judge—that what they were dealing with was taxation, and not charges, or a premium, or an insurance payment. It was a poll tax.
If, at Question time, we ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or any Minister, about his intentions with regard to forthcoming taxation, he always tells us that he cannot anticipate the Budget. In other words, the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants to present a complete Budget so that it can be judged as a whole rather than dealt with by way of piecemeal proposals throughout the Parliamentary year. It irritates many of us who allow our curiosity to outrun our discretion when we receive such an answer, but on reflection we all agree that if taxation is going to be interfered with it is a very good thing to present the whole picture together.
Is not that what the Government have always maintained to be the proper way of proceeding? In that case, why was the Budget anticipated on this occasion? Why impose this tax in advance of the Budget without our being able to compare it with the other fiscal proposals? Whether a tax, or an alteration in a tax, is a good or a bad thing will often depend not upon its merits alone but on its merits as compared with those of other alterations which the Chancellor proposes to make or refuse to make. It would make some difference to the argument if we knew what the Chancellor was going to do about Surtax or Income Tax in the Budget. It is quite clear that he wants to get these Bills through before the Budget because he knows that there can then be no equitable comparison between the charges he is imposing by these Measures and the reliefs he intends to give to other people in the Budget.
That is not a good reason for getting these Bills through before the Budget. It is a bad reason. If the hon. Member or his right hon. Friend wants to parade up and down like a kind of inverted Robin Hood—robbing the poor to pay the rich—he should do it openly and wait until it is time for his Budget, when he can introduce all the proposals together so that we can see what he is up to. The argument about timing it to get it through before the Budget is an argument against and not in favour of the Motion.
His other reason was that it was much better for the Government to use the 134 Guillotine Motion now than it was for the Labour Government to use it between 1945 and 1950. That is the flimsiest argument of all. Hon. Members opposite have made some play with my right hon. Friend's description of the Bills as being, on the one hand, miserable little Bills and, on the other, Bills that would do a lot of harm. It is a miserable thing to steal the pennies from a blind man's tin, but it is a very serious thing to the blind man. There is no discrepancy between the arguments. This is a wretched, pitiable, miserable little method of filching pennies out of the pockets of people who cannot afford to pay them, in order to provide funds with which to relieve people who do not need to be relieved. It is quite possible to have miserable little Bills doing a great deal of social mischief. That is what I understood my right hon. Friend to be saying, and it is a perfectly good argument.
On every occasion on which the Labour Government introduced a Guillotine Motion they did so in order to get through the House Measures which they had previously put to the country in a General Election and for which they had received the authority of the electorate. If use is made of the Guillotine procedure it should be in respect of something which the electorate has already sanctioned, at least in principle. It is a very different thing to use the large majority obtained by pretending that one is not going to do something in order to do the thing that one has promised not to do. That is cheating. It is not in the service of democracy, and it is not enhancing the prestige of the representative Parliamentary system.
It is a bad thing to get power by force and to maintain it by force, but to get it by fraud and to maintain it by false pretences is a much more serious and tragic attack on the principle of democracy.

§ Mr. Gower
A moment ago the hon. Member said that these were tax Bills. He went on to complain shortly afterwards that this proposal should have been put to the electorate. The two things do not go together. The proposals of any Chancellor are never known to the House of Commons, let alone to the electorate. I am merely pointing 135 out the inconsistency in the hon. Member's argument.

§ Mr. Silverman
I do not think that there is any inconsistency in it. If the empty threat which is being bruited about in newspapers about a General Election in the autumn were to come true, and if the Government intended to reduce Income Tax by 5s. in the £ not in the 1961 but in the 1962 Budget, they would not hesitate to make that proposal known in their election manifesto. When they intended to double the prescription charges and to increase the contributions, in the form of a tax, there was similarly nothing to prevent them from putting it into their election manifesto and saying, "You have never had it so good; see what will happen to you after you have elected us."
On every ground this is one of the most unjustifiable uses of a piece of legitimate Parliamentary procedure, which should be used only rarely and on proper grounds, that I have experienced in the House of Commons. The Leader of the House should be ashamed if it, but he does so many things that he should be ashamed of but is not that I express absolutely no confidence that we shall sue him rise in a white sheet or make a confession of sin before the end of the debate. I hope that those who care for Parliament and for our institutions will join us in the Division Lobby at ten o'clock.

§ 8.0 p.m.

§ Sir John Barlow (Middleton and Prestwich)
When I came to the House this evening I had no intention of taking part in the debate, but as time has passed I have become convinced that those of us who had experience of the Parliament of 1945–50 should tell something of our experiences of those days and make a small contribution to the debate.
I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), but I agree with his statement that a timetable must be justified in its own context on the merits of the case. That is fundamental and essential. A timetable is not welcomed by hon. 136 Members on either side of the House, but it is an essential weapon in the hands of the Government when the Opposition make it necessary to use it.
We have had very little experience of the Guillotine in recent years compared with our experiences in 1945–50. At that time major Bills were repeatedly guillotined. They were major Bills in every way. They were revolutionary Bills for this country. They changed nearly 20 per cent. of the business of this country from private enterprise to nationalised industry. That was a fundamental change.

§ Mr. Elwyn Jones
Is it not the case that only three Bills were subjected to the Guillotine at that time?

§ Sir J. Barlow
I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that they were mighty Bills. They changed the commercial face of the country substantially. I remember only too well sitting for very long hours and then the Bills being subjected to the Guillotine at the end.
The Leader of the Opposition was not quite right in saying that the long hours we have been sitting in the past few weeks are welcomed in the country and are a sign that Parliament is doing its work. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne may be interested to know that I was in my constituency last Friday night and some people asked me in no uncertain terms, as they do in Lancashire, why we were sitting such late hours. They said that no business could be run in that way, with which I fully agreed.
There are two important considerations. First, is it an important Bill? Secondly, has there been undue obstruction? I believe that it is an important Bill for the Government to press on with. The Opposition think that it is an important Bill, so we are agreed about that. What we seem to be disagreed about is the necessity for applying this weapon for this Bill at present. Anyone reading with an open mind the debates we have had upon the Bill will have very little doubt that there is good reason for adopting a timetable for the Bill.
I will give one instance, apart altogether from the general abuse of points of order. I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton 137 (Sir K. Pickthorn) that, if hon. Members abuse the procedure of the House by taking bogus points of order, the whole atmosphere of the House will change, it will be thoroughly bad for the House as a whole, and both sides of the House will suffer. I do not know what the remedy is, but a remedy must be found. Bogus points of order will bring the House into disrepute in the course of time.

§ Dr. Barnett Stross (Stoke-on-Trent. Central) rose——

§ Sir J. Barlow
I want to continue, because I do not propose to go into the subject of points of order at great length. I want to refer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel) at 12.30 a.m. The hon. Member mentioned that some of the interview rooms were being used by recumbent sleepers. Points of order arising out of that initial point of order, which was a bogus one, carried on for 45 minutes to an hour. That was a deliberate attempt to hold up the business of the House of Commons.

§ Dr. Stross
Has the hon. Member looked at column 554, from which it appears that I, making the last real speech before the Financial Secretary was to have risen and answered, declared that I had difficulty in hearing. I said: Then I heard correctly, in spite of the Patronage Secretary who was sitting behind the hon. Gentleman at the time."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 8th February, 1961; Vol. 633, c. 554.] Does not the hon. Gentleman think that these "bogus points of order" were due, in part at least, to the fact that it was so apparent that the disturbance was first created by the Patronage Secretary, who was giving his orders in an audible voice whilst I was speaking and whilst the Financial Secretary was speaking?

§ Sir J. Barlow
No, I do not agree with the hon. Member. The point I am referring to was raised at 12.30 a.m. The Deputy-Chairman ruled it out of order, but in spite of that many other hon. Members raised further points of order on what was a bogus point of order to begin with. Both sides of the House must face that and deal with it. That sort of thing cannot go on indefinitely.
Near the end of his speech the Leader of the Opposition drew attention to what he said was one of the finest speeches he 138 had ever heard from the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), which was made at about five o'clock in the morning. I looked the speech up. The Leader of the Opposition seems to be two hours out in his timing, but at that time of the morning we could all be two hours out. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman if he regards that speech as a good contribution to such a debate.
When Parliament discusses timetables it is remarkable that similar expressions and statements issue from the mouths of whoever are occupying the benches. I deplore timetables, but the timetable is an essential weapon in the hands of the Government, and it is undoubtedly being used rightly on the present occasion.

§ 8.9 p.m.

§ Mr. Laurence Pavitt (Willesden, West)
I am rather sorry that the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow) did not address himself a little more to the very cogent points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). The hon. Member made a great deal of play with the procedure of the House and with what he describes as the obstructive attitude of the Opposition to the two Bills for which the Guillotine is being imposed. The hon. Member fails to realise how deeply incensed hon. Members on both sides of the House become when they feel that flagrant injustice is going on, especially when it is not the fault of the Chair, which is behaving perfectly correctly, but outside the Chamber unfair advantage is being taken of organisational arrangements which gives one side in the argument a little advantage over the other.
The hon. Member referred to the point of order about the interview rooms. We on this side felt that the Government Whips, perhaps by organising a shift system, had seen to it that while we were battling over every word of a Bill that we thought to be extremely important, hon. Members opposite were being organised on a shift system which enabled them to sleep downstairs and not really to participate to the full in the debate——

§ Sir J. Barlow
Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that that point of order 139 was not a bogus one and that there were not other ways of raising the matter?

§ Mr. Pavitt
I am trying to explain——

§ Mr. S. Silverman
Perhaps my hon. Friend will allow me to intervene? I do not know whether the hon. Baronet was there, but while it is perfectly true that when the point of order was originally raised the occupant of the Chair was inclined to think that it was not a good point, after representations had been made to him, and after his attention had been drawn to a Standing Order which covered the precise point, he ruled in favour of the point of order, and steps were taken to put the matter right.

§ Mr. Elwyn Jones
And is it not the case that the occupant of the Chair sought the assistance of the Serjeant at Arms, who pursued inquiries into a situation that was then corrected?

§ Mr. Pavitt
If the hon. Baronet the Member for Middleton and Prestwich is correct, it is a reflection on the Chair, because the Chair took note of the point of order and the Serjeant at Arms took action.
I do not want to dwell on this matter, because far more important contributions have been made to this debate into whether or not the Government are justified in gagging the Opposition in their attempt to fight two Bills that they loathe and detest. Our opposition has a very good basis in our constituencies. We are getting a flood of letters, and our trade union branches are inviting us to explain the position to them. We are merely trying to put the point of view of our constituents to the Government to ensure that before these Measures are passed every aspect of them will have been considered, whether in relation to dentures of spectacles, or to the "poll-tax" financial measure of the Exchequer in relation to National Health contributions.
We have heard a good deal today about Parliamentary procedure. The hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich has said that people do not like the idea of Members doing an over-full day's work; of Members taking their duties so seriously that they feel it necessary, if need be, to sit here all night and 140 return again at 10.30 the following morning for Standing Committee work.
I very much resent the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) that it is perfectly right to treat this as a part-time job; that we are justified in undertaking other work and that this job of representing our constituents should take its place with other duties. He asked why hon. Members should not go out in the mornings to earn money. To many of us this is a full-time job. We are quite prepared to debate important issues, and we resent the Government's gagging Motion that will prevent us giving these Measures the attention we think that they deserve.
The hon. Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) described this as a kind of game with six rules. This is not a game to my hon. Friends. We are not playing a game of bridge, or chess with moves and countermoves; we are fighting in order that the health of the people shall be preserved. We do not believe that these Bills will do that but will operate entirely in the contrary direction. The National Health Service is facing the death of a thousand cuts, and we regret that the Guillotine is to be used as an additional means to secure further cuts in the Service and in the provisions originally brought in to safeguard the health of the nation.
The hon. Member for Putney suggested that we have now reached the final stage, but we have not. This legislation will be debated under the timetable. There is no doubt that we shall lose in the Division—and in spite of protestations from hon. Members opposite that none of them likes the Guillotine they will all vote for the Government—but we shall still have a limited amount of time in which to oppose these Bills.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said that the Government were murdering Parliamentary democracy. The problem facing back benchers on both sides is that, increasingly, we have to look at Measures like this in the context of our Parliamentary year. Since this Government came into power in 1959 we have seen more and more power go to the Government and a more rubber-stamp attitude expected on the part of back benchers. This is yet another step by the Government to impose willy-nilly, their will on the House.
141 I have charged the Government previously with this, particularly on health matters. Today, there was a Parliamentary Question about the Cranbrook Report. The only way that that important Report can be discussed is for a Member to put a Question to the Minister and follow up with supplementary questions. We have had about fifty Reports on the Health Service, yet the only way in which we can get a debate is by keeping the Government up until the early hours of the morning. We therefore have to think not only of these two Bills but of the rights of back benchers on both sides to discuss and amend Bills.
One hon. Member opposite accused us of obstruction and spoke of the Consolidated Fund Bill which we debated into the small hours of the morning. The amazing thing there was that hon. Members opposite, who claim to be so keen on being watch-dogs of public expenditure, allowed the authorisation for the spending of £42 million, though very few of them knew exactly to what purpose's that money was to be put. except that it was a result of the Report of the Royal Commission on the pay of doctors and dentists. They knew little of the effect it would have on the Health Service; on how it would affect the relations between hospitals, local authorities and general practitioners; on how it would be used to improve relations between teaching hospitals and regional hospitals. The House only had a chance to discuss such questions when it debated the Consolidated Fund Bill, and during a brief debate on the Supplementary Estimates on 5th December. Inevitably, therefore, when faced with a Motion like this, we must protest to the maximum and seek to safeguard the rights of the back bencher to debate these very important issues.
A number of hon. Members opposite have made great play of the "You did it first" technique. I am getting a little tired of never hearing anything from them except references to debates in the years from 1945–1951. Whatever may be the issue, the only argument we get from the other side is, "Well, we have had three General Elections, and have won them in a row." They do that, instead of addressing themselves to basic arguments on the actual matter under discussion.
142 This Motion refers to two Bills. First, there is the "poll-tax" Bill, which is already being discussed in a Committee of the whole House, and has made some progress. No answer has been given to the reference by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne to the ham-fisted way in which the Government have 'handled the business of the House. In this Session we have seen Bills presented that were inaccurately drawn up. We have had Bills that we thought were on the Order Paper but which we have found later to have been withdrawn. In short, we have very little confidence that the Government are treating this House with the respect it deserves. Our opposition to the Measures presented by the Minister of Health has revealed a number of instances where the Government have been slipshod in the way they have dealt with their business. Particularly is this evident from the manner in which this Bill is being hurried through. It was not mentioned in the election manifesto of the Conservative party, nor was it mentioned in the Gracious Speech. Yet it suddenly becomes so vitally important that it has got to be forced through the House before we rise for Easter.
We have had no answer from the Government to the suggestion made by several of my hon. Friends that this "poll tax" Measure, this regressive legislation, as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury called it in a previous debate, is being pushed through all its stages to allow the Chancellor of the Exchequer a clear run when he makes his Budget speech after the Easter recess.
We on these benches are concerned with the way in which this matter is being handled. I should like to pay a tribute to the way in which the Financial Secretary handled the National Health Service Contributions Bill in Committee. At no time did he seem to lose his temper. We are well aware of the iron fist in the velvet glove, but all the points which were raised were effectively dealt with by the Financial Secretary. At no time was he put out of countenance, and the sincerity with which we stated our arguments was met with equal sincerity on his part. That is the kind of thing that should happen, instead of the Government saying, "We will have a rigid timetable, irrespective of what stage the debate has reached".
143 I cannot agree with those hon. Members who have said that their Conservative friends do not like the way in which our business has been conducted in the last three weeks. It has been greatly welcomed in my constituency. It seems to us that the Government constantly try to play down the importance of Parliament and seek to take their decisions elsewhere, whereas we, believing in the importance of this assembly, try to bring everything on to the Floor of the House or into Standing Committee in order that the full light of debate and of argument may come into play. So far, this approach has been effective in our debates on the "poll tax" Bill on the Floor of the House and some useful contributions have been made.
I am not surprised that the hon. Member for Carlton said that he felt that the use of the Guillotine was not too bad in this instance. The reason is that in the three sittings of Standing Committee A there has been absolute silence from the Government side, except for the Minister of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary. I was under the impression that when a Bill is discussed in Committee both sides put their case, those in favour of the Bill stating why it is necessary and how best it can be put into operation, while those who are against the Bill state their reasons for their opposition. In the Standing Committee proceedings on the National Health Service Bill there are twenty hon. Members on the Government side, but they have worked a shift system. They send five in at a time, and all the burden and heat of argument rests with the Minister of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary.

§ Dr. Stross
We must not be unfair to those who face us in the Standing Committee. There was a contribution made by one hon. Member opposite—I believe it was the hon. and gallant Member for Ripon (Sir M. Stoddart-Scott)—who declared that a charge of 5s. for dentures was only the price of a packet of cigarettes.

§ Mr. Pavitt
I thank my hon. Friend. I agree we did have that intervention at one time. Also I think the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. K. Lewis) made a short interjection of two sentences on one occasion.
144 If Parliamentary democracy is to work, the Committee stage of a Bill should carry greater weight than it is being allowed to do in this instance. To introduce a Guillotine Motion at this stage when we have had only three sittings makes one think that the Government must be very unsure of their case. They must be scared of the possibility of a searching debate in Committee, and of hon. Members on these benches having an opportunity of examining all the provisions in minute detail.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, this is an important Bill, but an extremely small one. We are dealing only with dentures and spectacles. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne has pointed out, these are vital matters. I suppose that blindness is one of the greatest scourges that could happen to anybody. I believe it is one of the things that most of us fear. We see these inroads being made by the Minister of Health and his Department into the National Health Service, and naturally we want to give the Measure the most searching examination and to put forward constructive suggestions. Having failed to obtain reductions into these inroads, we have made suggestions on how the Minister can get out of the dilemma with which he is faced—at one and the same time to help his Department to prosper and to have a National Health Service worthy of the name, while on the other hand obeying the dictates of the Treasury which is demanding cuts in the Service at all costs.
This imposition of the Guillotine at this stage is ill-timed. The Government should have the courage to let the matter go on a bit further before seeking to impose the Guillotine, particularly as the Bill has had only three sittings in Committee. They are, in fact, running away from a situation which they themselves have created. They are bringing in a series of Measures which seek to destroy the National Health Service bit by bit. It is our task to preserve that structure, not only because of our historical connection with it and because we have sought to improve it constantly, but also because the welfare of the nation is at stake.
145 Our debate today has been concerned with Parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary democracy will be better pre- served if hon. Members opposite are prepared to let the full weight of argument and debate come into play rather than seeking to shelter behind this Parliamentary procedure of curtailing discussion.

§ 8.28 p.m.

§ Mr. Geoffrey Wilson (Truro)
I have not been present throughout the whole of the debate, but I have heard a great deal of it, and I should like to begin by referring to the speech of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). With his usual felicity of phrase, he advanced what appeared to be a quite strong argument, but there was really only one thing he said with which I could agree. He began by saying that each of these cases must be judged on its merits, and a Guillotine Motion, of course, depended on the particular circumstances. That is perfectly true. The House of Commons can work only by agreement, and our Parliamentary democracy could not exist at all unless there was a good deal of give and take between the two sides.
The Government of the day must recognise that the Opposition has a point of view and they are entitled to put it. Their intention and their point of view must be respected. On the other hand, the Opposition must recognise that the Government have a mandate to govern and they must get on with their job. It is not right that the Opposition should delay endlessly the business of the House by raising points of order.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
The hon. Gentleman will probably agree that the Government's case for their Guillotine Motion would be very much stronger if they really did have a mandate for it. Part of our case is that they have not, and they deliberately avoided seeking one.

§ Mr. Wilson
They have a mandate to govern the country.

§ Mr. Silverman
Not for this Bill.

§ Mr. Wilson
Not for this particular Bill because, in our view, it is merely an extension of something which already existed. I find it very difficult to understand why the Opposition have made such a fuss. To go from Is. to 2s. does 146 not raise a very important principle. One can only suppose that the Labour Party is so tied to slogans that it must find its position very awkward at the moment. It must be very unfortunate for the Labour Party to have to go on praising the nationalisation of all the means of production, distribution and exchange when no one cares a hang about it. If the Opposition can find a slogan which looks plausible, no doubt they are glad to use it and, on this occasion, to say that we are grinding the faces of the poor is easy and it looks as if it might have something to do with the Bill.
There are many other important events in the world. The Congo is going up in flames, Rhodesia is in trouble, and for us to spend hour after hour debating whether it should be ls. or 2s. seems to be taking matters to extremes.
The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne referred to the incident in the middle of the night when we spent the best part of an hour discussing points of order about whether someone was sleeping downstairs. He questioned the use of the word "bogus" applied to the original point of order. No doubt, the Chair did ask the Serjeant at Arms to inquire what was going on, and a report was made, but it will be within the recollection of hon. Members that the point as it was first put was that there were hon. Members downstairs preventing visitors talking to their Members of Parliament. I find it very difficult to suppose that there were many visitors wishing to speak with their Members of Parliament at that time of the morning. At any rate, there were several interview rooms which were empty. I think, therefore, that the word "bogus" with regard to those points of order had some justification.
We have spent a tremendous amount of time on these two Bills. It is high time we got on with them, and I think that my right hon. Friend is justified in bringing in his Guillotine Motion.

§ 8.32 p.m.

§ Mr. Michael Foot (Ebbw Vale)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) on one thing at least. He began by saying that he would 147 attempt to answer what had been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), though I hardly think that he lived up to his original boast. He claimed that one of the reasons for thinking that the National Health Service Bill was not of great importance was that it was merely the extension of something which existed. He regards the increase of a charge from ls. to 2s. as no more than the extension of something which exists. I wonder what he would think if the Government multiplied Income Tax on exactly the same scale. He would hardly regard that as merely the extension of something which existed which should not be debated in the House.
Despite his experience in the House, the hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand how the business is arranged. He talks about the Congo going up in flames and he refers to the importance of what is happening in Rhodesia. We could give him a very long list. It is not the Opposition who decide that those matters should not be more fully debated in the House. The Government do that. Nothing would have pleased us more if the Government had agreed that we could have an extensive debate on the Congo or a longer debate on Rhodesia than the one we have had.
Every Thursday for weeks, perhaps for months, my hon. Friends, after the Business has been announced, have drawn to the attention of the Leader of the House Motions on the Order Paper and they have asked for time for them. On every occasion, the Leader of the House has said that there is no time. There would have been time if these three Measures had not been introduced. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman must direct to the Leader of the House and not to the Opposition his complaints about the failure of the House to discuss many of the most important subjects which we would all wish to discuss. It is not our fault that these matters have not been debated much more fully.
During the debate it has been suggested by many hon. Members on both sides of the House—chiefly from that side but also hinted at from this side—that the arguments about the Guillotine are formal and trivial arguments which merely run 148 according to the pattern followed in all such debates and therefore we need not take much notice of the discussion which we are having. The pattern was set by the Leader of the House, who referred, as we all expected, to the previous occasions when the Guillotine was imposed. I suppose that the Home Office, or the Leader of the House, or whoever it may be, must have a file for occasions like this. Whenever a Guillotine Motion is proposed, they get out the old file and the old list of quotations, and they are trundled along here and read by the Leader of the House. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the Central Office."] Yes. I do not know whether the Central Office and the Home Office combine. No doubt they have similar files.
I am sure that we shall get more of this in the winding up speech. I hope that the Minister of Health, who is the real criminal in this matter, will wind up. If he does perhaps we will have something more original. The Leader of the House has treated the House in the most cursory fashion. I am sure that he did not write his speech. I would not charge him with that. I would not make such an accusation against him as to suggest that he wrote the speech which he read. It was obviously done for him, and was taken out of the pigeon-holes. That is the way in which the House is often treated in these Guillotine Motions.
I do not think that that is a proper way to deal with the matter, for two or three reasons. First, I should have thought that everyone who has had experience of it would agree that any debate conducted under the shadow of the Guillotine is a dead debate. When the proceedings take place all the life, fire and cross-examination which should be part of a Parliamentary debate is gone. No one will deny that. The reason for it is that every element of surprise is removed and every real possibility of putting pressure on the Minister is gone. The Minister has only to sit there and to get up at the regular time provided and read the brief with which he has been supplied by his Department. The debate goes ahead without it having the slightest effect whatever on the legislation before the House. This is what happens when the Guillotine operates. Nothing can be worse for the House of Commons than for it to sit day after day with it being 149 known in advance that the whole of the discussion will not have the slightest effect on the legislation passed during the proceedings.
It may be said by some hon. Members that this happens, not only when the Guillotine is operating, but on other occasions. No one could deny it. It is happening today. This Motion is not subject to the Guillotine, but no one would claim that it has been a real debate. The Leader of the House has not listenend to it. No one has attempted to answer the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition, my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Come or other of my hon. Friends who put forward a formidable argument about how the issue should apply to this Guillotine.
I think that it is extremely improbable that whoever replies for the Government will make any real effort to reply to the debate. The whole thing is regarded as a day lost because this is how a Guillotine Motion has to be put through. Therefore, the Government go through the motions. Not one hon. Member opposite would dare to get up and say that he thinks that any hon. Member on that side will be influenced by the merits of the argument in the debate. I think that that is a deplorable state of affairs for the House.

§ Mr. Gower
Is it not a fact that, when the late-night debates were taking place, hon. Members on this side were so impressed by the experience of the excessive delaying tactics of the Opposition that they have no desire to oppose the Motion.

§ Mr. Foot
That is not what I am arguing now. It may be that all hon. Members opposite were so outraged by what they saw in the House of Commons during the night of the debate that they came to the House absolutely resolved to vote for the Government anyhow. A much simpler explanation of why they came to the House today determined to vote for the Government would be that the Government had told them that they had to. Everyone knows that.
It is a fact that debates under the shadow of the Guillotine are the worst of all; but this happens frequently. Frequently in the House of Commons issues are not debated on their merits. The merits of the arguments have no 150 influence whatsoever on the result of the voting. Every hon. Member knows this. We are all agreeing to it, accepting it, and thinking that this is the right way for the House of Commons to conduct its affairs. I do not think that it is the right way for the House of Commons to conduct its affairs.
Many more issues ought to be decided on the Floor of the House than in other places where issues are decided. More and more, the Cabinet exerts its power over the House of Commons. That has been going on for years, but it is getting worse all the time. More and more committees outside the House of Commons decide the issues before they are brought to the House, and more and more we have this huge proliferation of committees, groups and meetings which go on in the House of Commons and which prevent, or impede, proper discussion on the Floor of the House. I do not believe that a single hon. Member would deny these charges.
It is a very serious state of affairs because if we go on in this fashion it will soon mean that it is commonly accepted that we do not have government by discussion in this country; that we have government by secret committee, with the Whips on, deciding all the issues that have to be decided. I think that there ought to be many more debates in this House with the Whips off. Whenever the Whips are off, the House is fuller. Why? Because people have to listen to the merits of the debates. Why should we not say these things. Why should we not do something about it? During the past few months that I have been in the House, I have seen vitally important debates conducted with only a handful of Members opposite and on this side of the House. Everyone knows that is true. Yet here we are supposed to be deciding issues. My complaint against what the Government are doing today is that they do not want to have real decision by the House of Commons.
The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health wrote a book recently about famous occasions in the House of Commons. It was a very good book in which he picked out through the centuries the great occasions when the House of Commons had become alive. Those occasions are getting fewer and fewer. No one is doing anything about it. I do not mean to say that we can do anything 151 about it merely by rejecting Motions like this one. I think that both sides of the House ought to examine very carefully the whole way in which the Whips operate, in which secret meetings decide the issues before they are brought to the House of Commons, and the way in which the real issues in which the country is rightly interested are decided outside the House of Commons instead of inside this House. Anyone concerned with real Parliamentary democracy ought to be interested in these matters.

§ Mr. Godfrey Lagden (Hornchurch)
I honestly believe at the moment that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) is being carried away by his enthusiasm and that he is sincere. He advocates the Whips being off on more and more occasions. Can he tell the House how many three-line Whips there have been on his side during the last month, forcing his hon. Friends to be here as against the two-line and one-line Whips on this side?

§ Mr. Foot
If the hon. Member had listened he would know that my complaint is just as much against the Whips being operated by my own side as by his side. Indeed, very often I have bitter reasons against the Whips being operated on my own side. I am against the whole system of the Whips being operated by either side. The reason that I am against it is because tremendous battles had to be fought for great decisions made by Parliament to be taken in public. That is denied if the choice and the decision is removed from the House of Commons into secret meetings either of the Labour Party or of the 1922 Committee. Therefore, I am against the whole system. If we want to have real Parliamentary democracy, it is time that people started to argue about the real reasons why we get such apathy in this House. The hon. Member spoke about being carried away by enthusiasm. It is better to be carried away by enthusiasm than deadened by apathy and deadened by predetermined decisions. What is killing confidence in the House of Commons is pre-determined decisions whether pre-determined by the Cabinet or by the private party meetings of one side or the other, or by the whole apparatus of private meetings which are draining the life out of the House of Commons.
152 Let us try to get some life back into the House of Commons. That is why, among other reasons—there are plenty of other good reasons—I welcomed the attack made upon the Minister and the Government for these Measures which they are introducing. In the House of Commons, there must be an element of surprise. There must be an element of ambush, an element of being able to upset Government timetables. If Government timetables go through exactly as Governments want, there will be a kind of dictatorship by consent. Therefore, Government timetables ought to be liable to be upset every day of the Parliamentary week.
The Leader of the House ought to be spending all his time in the House of Commons. It is a full-time job being Leader of the British House of Commons, which is supposed to be the greatest House of Commons in the world. It is not something for the Leader of the House to do in his off moments when he has finished off his job elsewhere. It is a full-time job. He ought to be here, listening to what is happening, seeing whether he should be influenced by the debate. Instead of that, even on a Measure which is supposed to be concerned with the conduct of Parliament, the Leader of the House has other business—oh, he is here now. I am glad to see him, but he has not been here so very long. I have no doubt that he has a perfect excuse for being able to say, "I have had a lot of other business that had to be faced."
We all know that this Guillotine Motion was rushed through at the last moment. The Leader of the House did not know last week when it would happen. I suggest seriously that if he took the House of Commons a little more seriously, he would give up some of his other duties and be here much more often and try to see whether he could listen to some of the debates, to try to see whether the Government should be influenced by debates, as Governments should be.
Consider what has happened on these Measures. I have sat through most of the debates on the three Measures that the Minister of Health has introduced. During whole hours on end, we have had one speaker after another from this side, but none from the Government side. How has that happened? Has it been 153 done by telepathy? Has it happened because even the most garrulous of hon. Members opposite did not want to talk? No, it has happened because it suited the Government. It suited the Government to injure or suppress the debate. So the Government exerted their influence to try to prevent the House of Commons from doing its duty of trying to settle these great issues by discussion.

§ Mr. G. Wilson
The hon. Member chided me for not being familiar with the customs of the House. Would he not agree that the duty of an hon. Member who speaks is to keep his own House and that if he cannot be interesting enough for people to listen to him, it is his own fault?

§ Mr. Foot
There may be cases that come in that category, and it would be most unparliamentary of me to name them. I think the main reason why hon. Members attend the proceedings of this House only when they intend to speak themselves is precisely that they know that the debate will not influence the decision.

§ Mr. H. Hynd (Accrington)
May I point out to the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) that there are just about three or four times more hon. Members here listening to my hon. Friend than there were here when he spoke?

§ Mr. Dudley Williams
When the Leader of the Opposition was replying to my right hon. Friend at the beginning of this business there were only eighty-five Members opposite who thought so strongly about this Measure that they troubled to turn up.

§ Mr. Foot
The hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) has so little followed what I was saying that he does not understand that in so far as I was on this part of the argument I was not differentiating between one side of the House and the other. I think that both sides of the House, in the way they operate the affairs of the House of Commons, are killing the House of Commons, and I think that on both sides of the House we ought to make an effort to stop that, and that when the Government resort to measures of this nature they are plunging one more knife into vital Parliamentary democracy.
154 That is why I am opposed to this Measure. As I was saying, every day when the Leader of the House comes into the House he ought not to be certain that his business will go through that day; there ought to be a perpetual element of surprise, and the possibility of pressure on Ministers. That is why I am so opposed to those rules introduced for stopping the proceedings at 11.30, because that helps to kill the element of surprise. That is why we protest so often when the Speaker, although we have to abide by it and accept it, operates so narrowly, in our view. Standing Order No. 9. There ought to be much more pressure of this nature, because then there would be government by discussion—at any rate, discussion would be entering into government—instead of government by edict, which is what we have to have so often now. It so happens that I think that the collective wisdom of the House of Commons is superior to the collective wisdom of the Cabinet.

§ Mr. Lagden
I thank the hon. Member for his courtesy in giving way to me. I was just wondering whether the undoubted influence which the hon. Member has could be extended to getting the Leader of the Opposition also to attend this debate to hear the words of wisdom which are pouring from him. The hon. Member has criticised the Leader of the House for not being here. Now my right hon. Friend is in attendance. I am wondering whether the hon. Member's influence would be sufficient to enable a message to be sent out to the Leader of the Opposition to attend.

§ Mr. Foot
The hon. Member should well understand that the Leader of the House has special obligations to the House as a whole, obligations which are not necessarily shared by the Leader of the Opposition—[An HON. MEMBER: "Or by the Prime Minister."]—or by the Prime Minister even. As for my making recommendations to the Leader of the Opposition, he does not always accept the recommendations which I make and which the national interest requires. However that may be, I go on pressing him, and often, after two or three years, he agrees to the proposition I was putting to him.
I say quite seriously that I think that when this House is debating as it is 155 today, or as it claims to be debating today, the procedures of Parliamentary democracy, hon. Gentlemen, and even more right hon. Gentlemen, on both sides of the House should recognise that Parliamentary democracy is being debilitated by many of the operations which they conduct and by many of the methods by which they conduct the House of Commons.
As for the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health, he should not be surprised at seeing these Measures so bitterly fought. Does he not understand yet why we hate them so much? Does he not understand the detestation of these Measures which exists not only on this side of the House but throughout the country? If he does not understand, we shall have to teach him.
There is a bitter detestation against these Measures not only because of the hardship that they impose but because of their squalor. Here we have built something fine in this country and all the right hon. Gentleman and his friends can think of is to start tearing it down. They protest, "We do not intend to do that. We want to build it up in a different way," but that is not what the right hon. Gentleman said ten years ago nor what his friends in the Crossbow organisation are saying today.
They say quite frankly what I think the right hon. Gentleman also believes in his heart—that they want to destroy this Service. We will fight them and we will use every proper method we can in the House. We will use those methods not only to fight these Bills but the whole range of Government legislation in order to be able to fight them. We intend to do it. What the right hon. Gentleman and his Government have been doing is to deface and defile one of the most splendid achievements of this country. Therefore, when we fight them, we are doing something that we believe to be in the highest interests of the country.

§ 8.56 p.m.

§ Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)
About three quarters of the speech of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) could have been supported in large degree by hon. Members on both sides of the House, because three-quarters of his remarks were not so much directed at criticism of the Motion but consisted of 156 interesting suggestions for the alteration and possible improvement of the procedure under which we work in the House. I do not disagree that there may be sad defects in our procedure, though I hesitate to think that we could easily remedy what has been built up by the experience of so many people and so many of our predecessors over such a long time.
I respectfully suggest to the hon. Member that implied in his remarks was a criticism of the present attitude of Governments to defeat in the House of Commons. In other words, all Governments whether Labour or Conservative construe defeat in the elected House of Commons as a somewhat serious matter. Certainly in a matter affecting a Bill which has financial aspects it has meant in most cases by convention a decision by that Government to go to the country. It is difficult therefore to see how on matters of great importance Governments could easily permit an extension of the free vote on the wide scale that the hon. Member advocates.
It has been said that the Government have put this Motion on the Order Paper when there was no improper or excessive opposition from hon. and right hon. Gentleman opposite. If my experience is at all typical, my hon. Friends have been convinced in the last few weeks that there has been something more than the opposition that one might expect to a Bill to which an opposing party objects. When my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health made his announcement and subsequently introduced the Bill, we had good reason to think that it would be fought firmly and hardly at all stages with all the ingenuity that could be mustered by hon. and right hon. Members opposite, but the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale has given the game away. He has said that the party opposite will fight every Bill that the Government bring forward. Surely that gives the game away and demonstrates more effectively that any words uttered by hon. Members on this side of the House the nature of this opposition.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
Is the hon. Member arguing that because the Opposition regards it as its first duty to oppose, the Government are entitled to apply a Guillotine Motion to every Measure that we oppose?

157

§ Mr. Gower
Not at all. The hon. Gentleman is far too old a Parliamentary hand to suggest for a moment that he really thought I was saying anything like that.
The hon. Gentleman has implied—it is not what he has said—that not only would the opposition continue along reasonable lines but that there would be something extraordinary in the way of opposition, the sort of opposition which might be calculated to wreck the Government's programme.

§ Mr. Silverman
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Gower
By his "Hear, hear" the hon. Gentleman gives the game away just as his hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale did.
The position is that hon. Gentlemen have been saying—the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) said this—that we could have got this business if we had gone on longer through the night and perhaps on successive nights. On the night to which he was referring I saw very little evidence that there was any likelihood of getting a single Clause of the Bill passed. When forty minutes or more were occupied on points of order as to who was sleeping downstairs and who was not, I do not think there was much prospect of getting a single Clause.
Like all hon. Members on both sides of the House, I have a natural distaste of methods to curtail debate. The Closure and the Guillotine are not popular. As many have pointed out tonight, it is true that they are regarded in a very different light by parties when they are in Opposition and when they constitute the Government. That goes back even to the great days of the Liberal Party, which when it was in office used methods to curtail debate more effectively and more often than practically any other Government in the history of the country.
What it amounts to is that it is proper, correct and fully consistent with the constitutional history of the country that the Opposition should oppose a Measure to the very best of its ability, but if that opposition tends to bring the whole machinery of Government to a halt and tends to wreck the whole legislative programme as we saw it even a few weeks 158 ago, it would surely be unreasonable for the Leader of the House and his colleagues not to come forward and say, "We must take the effective measures at our disposal to ensure the smooth passage of Government business." I should have thought that that was not a matter at which hon. Gentlemen opposite could really be surprised. In their speeches today they have expressed surprise that this should have been done, but I imagine that many of them will be as disappointed as others of us who were extraordinarily tired in the early mornings a little while ago if the Motion does not go through.
Many hon. Members have said that it is a good thing to be debating in the early hours of the morning. They more than implied that that is a sound thing. The Leader of the Opposition even spoke in terms of praise of that kind of procedure. For my part, although it is natural that perhaps occasionally the House should be kept here until the early hours of the morning or even till daybreak, I suggest when that happens three times in a fortnight after not having happened for more than a year something unusual is happening.
I do not conceive it a sound way to run the affairs of this Parliament and nation that Parliament should be sitting to the early hours three or fours clays in one fortnight. As a constituent of mine put it to me when I returned after the second week of that kind of thing, "You cannot run a very small business on that basis, and we as electors do not expect the country to be run in that way."

§ 9.4 p.m.

§ Mr. George Brown (Belper)
As far as I understand it, the contention of the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) is that it is the duty of the Opposition to oppose but that if they intend to oppose at all strongly it is the duty of the Government to introduce some measure which will prevent them from doing it; in other words, that Parliament shall be allowed to operate and Parliamentary democracy shall be allowed to apply within very tight limits which the Government of the day shall themselves decide. This put as crudely as the hon. Member has done it is the very same thought with which the Leader of the House opened his speech this afternoon.
159 The right hon. Gentleman gave us three reasons why this was necessary. His third reason was that the Government had approached the Opposition to see whether the business could be obtained by agreement, but as the Opposition had said that they were not prepared to make such an agreement the Government had to introduce the Guillotine Motion. This has been a very poor debate. It has been poorly attended, and the speeches we have heard from Members opposite have been directed to a limited point. But the terrifying thing is that we now have on that side of the House a built-in belief that if Parliament is ever to sit long and late and argue and oppose there is something the matter with the State of Denmark which immediately the Government should put right by introducing a Guillotine Motion.

§ Sir Douglas Glover (Ormskirk)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Are we debating the legislative programme of Great Britain or of Denmark?

§ Mr. Brown
That remark is in keeping with the level of the debate and of the approach of hon. Members opposite to it.
The other leg on which the Leader of the House stood—and the only leg on which most of the Members opposite who have taken part have tried to stand—is that this is all part of the game—that everybody has introduced Guillotine Motions in their time, that everybody opposes it in Opposition but supports it in Government. This is an argument which my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) dealt with very well in a speech which I was sorry so few Members were present to hear, and I hope that the Leader of the House will read it tomorrow. [Interruption.] I am in no hurry. The argument that everybody has done it at some time or other is one that does no justice to the issues we are supposed to be discussing or to the merits of the case.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne pointed out, the merits of the issue on which the decision has to be taken can affect very much the issue of whether a Guillotine Motion has the same enormity entailing the same consideration at all times and they have not been taken into account by Members opposite. The suggestion that this is the 160 same game played by all parties has been very much overdone. As it was played by the Conservative Party in opposition it was nothing like the same game as played by us.
Today, the Leader of the House made a gentle reference, with a smile, to what he called the statesmanlike words of Mr. Herbert Morrison, now Lord Morrison of Lambeth, but anybody who wants to see how this has been done by the two sides should look up, as I have done, the debates of 1947 and 1948. When we were introducing Guillotine Motions then we did not get the kind of criticism which the Government have faced from us today. We did not get a debate of the kind which we have mounted today. We were then called Fascists. The right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) set the pace with his reference to the "police Gestapo". The present Minister for Science designated us as people turning Parliament into a Reichstag, and there were references to "Fascists" and "murderers of democracy" from other Members opposite—from the people who are making today gentle references to this all being the same sort of game on whichever side of the House one is sitting. That is not the case. In 1947 and 1948 Members opposite raised uproar and indulged in abuse and interventions that do not fit in with their attitude today. Frankly, I have found a lot of this so-called decent, old boy stuff which we have had today rather nauseating. When I remember what was said then and the way in which reputations were smeared and torn to shreds then, without any regard for decency, and then I hear this appeal to us to play the game like decent, old boys, I find it very nauseating, and I want the House to know that.
The Tory Party in the House give themselves all the latitude all the time. They seek to patronise us, as they have done today, for being moderate, and they seek to rebuke us at any time when we are not being moderate. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is sitting on the Front Bench, was one of the offenders. They give themselves all the latitude and commit all the abuses all the time.
We have heard about harrying. If that is the right word, we have been at it for no more than a couple of weeks. Let us not forget that when we had a majority it was not then a game. Sick 161 men were harried into their graves. We remember the names of some of our hon. Friends for whom pairs were refused. Ministers were out of the country, in New York or Paris, on the business of the country. They were refused pairs and had to come back in order to maintain the Government. This talk of, "This is just the same game" is not true.
I will come to the merits of the case in a moment, but I warn the Tory Party that they must understand that this attempt to flannel—that is the only word I know to fit it—does not fit the memory which some of us have of the way they have played the game in the past. I will come back in a moment to some of the precedents. The Bills on which we used Guillotine Motions followed a very great deal of obstruction. They were Bills which had been held up for a very long time.
I agree with the hon. Baronet the Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston), who told us earlier that in his view obstruction is not unparliamentary. If the Government are relying in any part on what they think was some obstruction from us—the hon. Member for Barry, who has left the Chamber after a short speech, seemed to think that it was—then they should recollect some words used by the late Colonel Oliver Stanley on the Allocation of Time Order on the Iron and Steel Bill. They are apposite today. He said: Hon. Members opposite, some of whom have not yet been in Opposition, will learn that, although it is quite easy to generalise about it and make it look absurd and antiquated, obstruction is sometimes the only defence which an Opposition possesses. If it is found that a Minister, as Ministers with large majorities behind them do, fails either in courtesy or efficiency, brushes aside queries and neglects criticism, the only weapon which an Opposition can bring to bear is to make that Minister's life more difficult and his work more prolonged and, finally, through this method, to bring to the House, the Leader of the House, the Chief Whip and the country the realisation that some changes are required." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1948: Vol. 458. c. 1533] All of the things that the late Colonel Oliver Stanley referred to in that passage are things which we now face. We are faced with a lack of courtesy and with inefficiency. Am I not right in thinking that three Bills or Orders have had to be withdrawn in the last fortnight 162 because they turned out to be incompatible with the rules of the House? We have had the brushing aside of the Opposition, and this time mostly by the Patronage Secretary who was mentioned by the late Colonel Stanley, a very respectable precedent—and the Leader of the House kept using the word "respectable"—for what we have recently had to do.
But our fight, our opposition, at this stage has hardly begun. The fact is that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, who attend our debates so sparsely, cannot take it. This Motion has come, not as in 1947 and 1948 at the end of a long, sustained, all-out Parliamentary fight, but right at the beginning when we have never once gone right through the night and when the Government have withdrawn legislation night after night and given up. We have spent only a couple of days on one of the Bills and on the other there have been only three sittings of the Standing Committee; but immediately the Government have said, "Good heavens! We are facing intense Parliamentary argument and we must withdraw now and stick in a Guillotine Motion and prevent Parliament from getting on with its job".

§ Sir R. Grimston
On this theme, will the right hon. Gentleman kindly comment on the fact that the Government of which he was a Member introduced a timetable Motion on the Steel Bill before the Bill had been discussed at all?

§ Mr. Brown
That was exactly the point I made when the hon. Baronet was nodding. That was exactly the issue on which I tried to get his attention when he was asleep. That Motion was introduced at the beginning of that Bill, but after a long period of obstruction on the Bills which went before it. The issue is not that the Government cannot get the Bills—that might or might not turn out to be true—but that they will not try to get the Bills and have not tried to get them and in the past few weeks have not tried to get other legislation. They have preferred to pull out.
I now come to the point made by several of my hon. Friends, although I 163 did not agree with the form in which it was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot), but there is a good deal in it. From the Leader of the House we have had many suggestions about the way in which we ought to arrange the business of the House—within proper hours and in an orderly way, picking the right things to discuss and not leaving them until the early hours of the morning and so on.
I do not accept that that is the right thing to do, nor that it is good for Parliament to do it. Nobody—not the Government, the Opposition nor a business committee—can know about this. As Sir Anthony Eden wisely said in one of our debates in 1947, who can tell what will turn out to be the important issue in a Bill before discussion of it begins? How often in our experience have we found that the vital changes which have had to be made have been on issues which were discussed least at the time the Bill was before us? The way to proceed is to allow Parliament to go through a Bill. Attempting to arrange our business in a nice cosy way leads to a good deal of weakness in legislation which would otherwise not be there.
What becomes of Parliament when we arrange our business to be nice and cosy? This Parliament ceases to be the great centre of English democracy and the great protector of our liberties, and it ceases to hold the attention of the people the moment we start arranging it all nice and cosy and tidy in here. Anyone with a minute to spare can monkey about with the precedents relating to this matter, but again, as is so often the case, the right hon. Member for Woodford put the whole business of relying on precedents very well when he referred to the late A. J. Balfour in 1904—and he could have been referring to the Leader of the House today—in these terms: He made a fascinating speech which did not contain any justification of his proposal but was full of all sorts of animadversions upon precedents from other Governments established under totally different circumstances at other times. He went on to say that he would not bother with them.
I turn now to the issues raised in connection with the justification of this 164 Motion. Little successful attempt has been made to justify it. In terms of a block in the Government's legislative programme or of the difficulty of the Government in getting through its Measures, there has been no justification. One hon. Member opposite did some sums and added up the number of hours or minutes spent at particular times on particular Bills but they merely proved that there has been a certain amount of discussion. There has not been and there cannot yet be any justification for this Motion.

§ Sir S. Summers
The figures to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred proved that if the time taken up on this subject had not been mis-spent on points of order and other irrelevant matters we should not be debating this Motion now.

Hon. Members
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Brown
I was here when the hon. Member spoke, which is more than can be said for most of those who are now saying "Hear, hear." In any case, that was not the point which the hon. Member was then making. He simply referred to the amount of discussion there had been. I say that that simple proposition proves nothing. The point is that if we want to justify, in Parliamentary terms, the use of this kind of Measure in order to get through the Government's business, there must be evidence that the Government are unable to get their business through. That evidence does not exist and cannot yet be produced. I do not know whether it can ever be produced in the future.
I believe that the justification for this Motion lies in the attitude of the Tory Party, which believes that the devitalising of the House of Commons is an essential matter. The reason for this Motion and what has happened in the last three weeks is not what has become of the Government's programme or even what has happened to our party in taking the action that we have done. It is a question of the effect on the public outside. When there is drama in this place and when politics are exciting, the conditions for adult political controversy exist. It is in those conditions that the public becomes interested and that we have adult discussion and create exactly the situation which the Left in politics needs. [Laughter.] Yes, indeed.

165

§ Mr. Geoffrey Hirst (Shipley) rose——

Hon. Members
Sit down.

§ Mr. Dudley Williams rose——

Hon. Members
Sit down.

§ Mr. Brown
It is when ideas are being argued about that there is a place for the Left in politics. it is in a situation in which there is a complete dead hand, in which there is complete dumbness, that the Conservative Party can flourish, because that is the situation that the ad-men and the hidden persuaders can use. That is the situation when Coleman Prentice & Barley come into their own.

§ Mr. Hirst rose——

§ Mr. Brown
I will not give way to the hon. Member, because he has not been here throughout the debate and he has done nothing but interject ever since he entered the Chamber.
That is why the Conservative Party reacts so quickly to the fact that Parliament is again becoming excited. It has reacted very quickly—within three weeks—to the existence of drama and political argument in the House of Commons. The Tories want quiet meetings. They want it all arranged. They like a situation when Members come into the House either only to make a speech or to vote. That is the situation the Tories like. It is a situation which fits in with their whole outlook and philosophy. It is a situation in which Ministers can behave as the Leader of the House does, as was mentioned during the debate—not even bothering to attend the Committees in which the Government's major Bills are being dealt with.
A great deal of contempt is being shown for the House of Commons on the Treasury Bench, and it is being shown by nobody quite as much as by the Prime Minister himself. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"] The late Dr. Macnamara, a notable member of the House, once said of A. J. Balfour that there were painful considerations in his mind when he thought of him. He elaborated as follows: The first was that the Prime Minister, who should be the guardian of the liberties, privileges and functions of Parliament, had ostentatiously raised indifference—indeed, he might go to the length of saying contempt—for the deliberations of Parliament to a fine art … 166 What was then said about Balfour is very true of the present Prime Minister and is being taken as a pattern by those on the Treasury Bench and their supporters behind them. It is shown in their attitude in debates. It is shown by their staying away. It is shown by the distaste they have for staying up late and arguing for their Bills and facing the Parliamentary occasions.
The final and big issue in the consideration of a Guillotine Motion is not even the forcing through arbitrarily of the Measures it covers. It is what is being forced through. We heard from the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), reflected later on by another hon. Member, the most blatant and open evidence of the difference between us on the merits of what is being forced through. The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely said, referring to these Bills, that they have nothing like the importance of a Measure nationalising an industry. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am glad that that is supported, because that betrays the whole philosophy of the Tory Party and the whole gulf between us. When it is somebody's private property, when it is somebody's right to levy profit on an essential service or industry, that is of crucial importance to the Tories; but when it is a Measure laying tax upon a large part of the nation, upon the poorer part of the nation, and upon the sicker part of the nation, that is not a matter of crucial importance to the Tories.
We fundamentally disagree with them about that. We regard the forcing through of these Measures as particularly bad because to us the very nature of the Measures for which Ministers are responsible—the "poll tax" for the Health Service, the National Insurance scheme, with its huge increases to provide the Government with more money, the prescription increases, the increased Health Service charges—all hurt folk who cannot afford to be hurt, or who can afford much less than others to be hurt.
It is for those reasons that we seek to claim our Parliamentary rights—rights that go much further back in the history of the nation and of this Chamber than hon. Members opposite ever seem to have thought about. We claim these ancient and traditional party—Parliamentary rights—[An HON. MEMBER: "Party?"] Yes, party as well, because we have a 167 party system in this House and have had for many years. We claim these Parliamentary rights to oppose—and to frustrate, if we can—the forcing through of Measures which we regard as harmful to so large a section of Her Majesty's poorer citizens—as these Measures are——

§ Mr. Hirst
The right hon. Gentleman will get the job yet.

§ Mr. Brown
It is easy, late at night—only too easy—for the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Hirst) and others to come in to the Chamber and just keep up a continual interjection—noises that hardly make sense, even if one can disentangle one remark from another——

§ Mr. Hirst rose——

§ Mr. Brown
A Guillotine to force these Measures through is only possible because of the arrogance of the Front Bench, backed by the docility of the interjecting back benchers. No doubt with that docility, the Government will get their Guillotine tonight. No doubt, they will force these Measures through. We will still fight them. There are many things that cannot be guillotined, and the Chancellor, who looked so shaky at 3 o'clock the other morning, may find that he and the things he has to handle will be victims of the arrogance of the Treasury Bench tonight. We will divide against the Government, because we are sure that this is the wrong thing to do for these Measures.

§ 9.33 p.m.

§ The Minister of Health (Mr. J. Enoch Powell)
In the course of the very-wide ranging and, at a number of points, very entertaining debate one characteristic has been outstanding. It was recognised by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) by the very fact that he protested against it. That characteristic has been that this debate has throughout been remarkable for its good humour. That, I believe, is due to the fact that there is an underlying agreement between the two sides of the House about the constitutional position in regard to the Guillotine procedure.
My right hon. Friend quoted, and I should like again to quote, remarks made by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed- 168 Thomas) in the Standing Committee considering the National Health Service Bill. Addressing me, he said: If the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about time and thinks that he is not getting his Bill quickly enough, then, of course, he has his constitutional remedies. If he thinks that the Bill is being unduly delayed he has got the Guillotine, the Closure and the constitutional remedies which Parliament in its wisdom has ensured are available to him."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 23rd February. 1961; c. 26.] My hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) reminded the House that the procedure and the constitutional rules of this House are not static. They develop; they evolve, and I believe that one of the aspects of the evolution of our procedure in the last ten or fifteen years has been a recognition—and I think, too, that that recognition has been marked in today's debate—that the Guillotine has a place in our procedure; that although effective quotations against the procedure can be made from both sides of the House—and this has been referred to on a number of occasions—nevertheless the Guillotine has a function to perform and is recognised as such by both sides.
I believe the House recognises that it is always within the power of an Opposition, if they so desire it, to use ingeniously, with determination, skill and persistence, the procedure of this House in such a way as to hold up not only the business against which this activity is immediately directed but the business of the Government as a whole. I believe that the House equally recognises that when such a situation arises, it is the duty of the Government, and that it is not inconsistent with Parliamentary democracy, to follow the precedents and apply the procedure of the Guillotine.
It is, therefore, a practical decision on the part of an Opposition whether they will proceed in such a way against one or more of the Government's Measures as to force the Government to resort to these proceedings, and it is the duty of a Government to decide whether and when their overriding obligation to carry out their programme and to carry through the business of the country makes it necessary to bring in such a Motion as the House has before it tonight.
I shall refer later to the tactical decision which the Opposition took in 169 deciding—and they made it clear that they decided—to proceed in such a way against a number of the Government's Measures that a Motion of the kind before the House tonight would be unavoidable. But although I believe that it is recognised on both sides of the House that a Guillotine Motion, the imposition at a certain point of a timetable, is part of our procedure and has become, as it were, part of our constitution, nevertheless there are a number of things which any Government ought to show if they are to be justified in putting such a Motion before the House.
First, it seems to me they must show that the occasion for it has clearly arisen, that the Opposition are clearly using the legitimate procedure of the House in such a way as to frustrate the progress of business, and with the intention of doing so. At a number of points in today's debate it has been reccgnised very candidly from the opposite side of the House that that position indeed does at this moment exist. The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), candid as often when he draws upon his experience as a past Leader of the House, declared in forthright terms that he would have had no twinge of conscience in adopting the same line as my right hon. Friend if he had been in the same position as my right hon. Friend.
Of course, the Opposition for the last three or four weeks have made no secret at all of what their intention is. They have made on secret at all of the way they intend to use the procedure of the House. They have made no secret at all of their intention to bring things to the point where such a Motion as we have before us tonight would be unavoidable.
Of course, the Motion is not before the House for the reason given initially in his opening speech by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, merely because the Opposition say that they intend to oppose the Bill. It is be-for the House because the right hon. Gentleman and the whole party behind him have made it perfectly clear that they intend, to use his words again, to fight the Bill line by line. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] I am not suggesting for a moment that they are not within their constitutional rights in attempting to do so. What I do say is that their avowal on this occasion makes it perfectly clear 170 that the case has arisen when the Government also have their duty to perform.
The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot), with a great deal of whose speech, if I may say so, I had much sympathy, made it clear that this decision on the part of the Opposition relates not only to a determination to oppose and to defer an individual Measure but it must, to be effective, be carried out by opposing and deferring other elements of the Government's programme. He said, "We will fight the whole range of Government legislation in order to defeat these proposals". [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Precisely. Indeed, from our experience with the two Bills with which the Motion is concerned, it is perfectly clear that this decision is being carried into effect.
I remind the House that the principle underlying the two Bills and the other Measures associated with them was discussed in the Censure debate. On each of them, the House approved on Second Reading the principle. During the Committee stage of the National Health Service Contributions Bill, Clause 1 was debated for a longer time by far than the whole of the previous Bills of the same character which have been before the House in previous Sessions. During three sittings of the Committee on the National Health Service Bill, two Amendments have been disposed of and over two hours were spent in discussing the Motion that the Committee should sit only on one day a week. There is no doubt at all—hon. Members opposite have made no secret of it—what the purpose is. The purpose of these proceedings was not a deliberate and detailed examination of the Bill but an intention to prevent the Bill getting through.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins), who has been referred to before in this debate, used very clear words in the Committee, which, I think, have characterised the point of view of the party opposite, when he said that he would like to try to ensure that the Bill would get no further. He said: … We are performing a public duty by"— and this is what they are doing— trying to ensure that the Bill shall be delayed for the maximum period of time which it is constitutionally possible for us to delay it". That is what he said. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Exactly. The purpose 171 is delay. The Opposition are using their constitutional rights of procedure, but they are using them with the deliberate intention not of amending the legislation but of defeating it. As the hon. Member for Bristol, South said: There is no reason at all why we should not debate this Bill in Committee right up to the end of the Session and, as I should prefer, even beyond it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 23rd February, 1961 c. 7 and 35.]

§ Mr. Wilkins
Just as we were exercising our constitutional rights, so the right hon. Gentleman had a constitutional right which he failed to exercise—that of the Closure.

§ Mr. Powell
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman, in one and the same breath, can say that the Government are being hasty in introducing a Motion of this sort and at the same time accuse them of not having previously closured the business.
I think that the Opposition have made it clear beyond peradventure—indeed, they have not sought at any stage really to conceal or deny this—that it is their declared intention to use all the resources available to them to prevent the passing of these Bills. Therefore, the situation arises in which the Government are constitutionally entitled to take the appropriate measures for getting their business through.
It seems to me that the second thing which a Government presenting such a Motion as this ought to make clear to the House is that, under the Motion which they propose, the time available for discussion of the Measures will be adequate. My task in establishing that has been rendered very easy by the course of the debate, because at no point in the debate has any criticism been raised against the allocation of time proposed in the Guillotine Motion. Indeed, I do not think it could be seriously disputed that in allowing a fortnight for the remaining discussion of the only two operative Clauses in the National Health Service Bill——

§ Mr. Ross
A fortnight?

§ Mr. Powell
A fortnight until 21st March.

§ Mr. Ross
How many days in Committee?

172

§ Mr. Powell
That remains for the Committee itself and for the Business Sub-Committee to decide.

§ Mr. Ross
Is the right hon. Gentleman really suggesting that there are fourteen days still available for discussion?

§ Mr. Powell
All that I have a right to say to the House is what is in the Motion, and the Motion is that the Committee should report a fortnight tomorrow. I say, therefore, that a fortnight—I think that this is clearly understood by the House—is available for considering the rest of the only two operative Clauses in the Bill.

§ Mr. Hugh Delargy (Thurrock)
Is the right hon. Gentleman seriously telling the House that he has no news to give us about the exact number of days we are to spend on the Bill?

§ Mr. Powell
When a Motion is before the House which instructs a Business Sub-Committee to consider that very point, and when that decision is within the power of a Standing Committee, it would be a breach of propriety and of courtesy for me to make any such statement. What I am saying is what is in the Motion before the House, namely, that the Standing Committee is allowed until 21st March to deal with the remainder of the only two operative Clauses of the National Health Service Bill. For the National Health Service Contributions Bill, sixteen hours are allotted for the remainder of the Committee stage for the consideration of virtually the only operative part of the Bill which remains, and that is the First Schedule.
I do not believe that the terms of the Motion are regarded as unfair. They have not been challenged at any point in the debate and the Amendment which the Opposition have tabled in no way relates to the allocation of time which is proposed. The Amendment is of a very different character. It seeks to found the Opposition's objection to the Motion on the character of the two Measures concerned. It is perhaps pertinent that I should remind the House of the Amendment which we are considering, because remarkably little 173 reference has been made to it in speeches from the other side of the House. The Amendment is to this effect: this House declines to assent to the arbitrary curtailment of debate upon two measures which vitally affect the welfare of the nation. The main contention of the Opposition is that the peculiar nature of these Measures is such that, though in other circumstances the situation might justify a Guillotine Motion and the time proposed in the Motion for their further consideration is not in itself objectionable, nevertheless it is wrong that this Motion and this method should be applied to them. The hon. Member for Bristol, South, in illustration of the Motion, said that these were Measures which would have a terrific impact on the people of this country. The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) referred to it as a dismantling of the Welfare State. It is important that we should regain a sense of proportion and recognise what it is, and what it is not, that the two Measures to which this Motion relates are trying to do.
I will take the case of the Leader of the Opposition. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition in this respect is a man with a guilt complex. He said, in his defence of the circumstances of 1951, that in those days what he had proposed was a small charge on teeth and spectacles. [Interruption.] I am considering the dimensions of a Measure which is now the subject of this Motion. He said that a small charge on teeth and spectacles had to be imposed in 1951—a small charge over three years. The word which he used in his Budget speech was perhaps a little more cautious because in his Budget speech of 1951 he described them as "modest" charges.
Let us compare the "small" charges which the right hon. Gentleman imposed with the charges concerned in this Bill, "which vitally affect the welfare of the nation". The right hon. Gentleman imposed for the smallest size of denture a charge of £2. This Bill imposes a charge of 5s. in addition. For the second size denture, the right hon. Gentleman's charge was £2 5s. This Bill adds 5s. For the next size of denture, the right hon. Gentle- 174 man's charge was £4 5s. That is what he thought small. But an addition after ten years, after all that has altered in those ten years, of 15s. to the £4 5s. has a "terrific impact", and is a dismantling of the Welfare State".
I would be willing to take the right hon. Gentleman all through the charges for spectacles as well where the same proportions would be found to hold good. Of course, it is absolute humbug to argue that the adjustments which this Bill makes are of that character. The right hon. Gentleman, in his own words, has admitted the disparity between what he himself then thought right to do and what he now characterises as an attack on the Welfare State.

§ Mrs. Harriet Slater (Stoke-on-Trent, North)
Is it not also humbug for the right hon. Gentleman to talk in this tone when this is one Measure amongst others in the so called affluent society?

§ Mr. Powell
This Measure is one of the two Measures about which we are having this debate. I will now come to the other Measure which vitally affects the welfare of the country. The Contributions Bill of 1958 increased the National Health Service contribution by approximately the same proportions as the present one. The Opposition thought it right to spend eight hours discussing it in Committee.
The National Health Service Contributions Bill, 1957, doubled the National Health Service contribution and for the first time made it a separate element in the stamp. The Opposition at that time did not think that more than five hours was necessary for discussing a longer Bill for that purpose in Committee. They now say that the maintenance of the National Health Service contribution at the same proportion in the financing of the National Health Service as it held in 1958, and as it was intended by them originally to hold—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—is a counter revolution.

§ Mr. G. Brown
That is untrue.

§ Mr. Powell
In 1957 and 1958, the Opposition were presented with exactly the same proposal as is embodied in this Bill and on both those occasions they did not say that it was something which must be carried to the point of obstruction and the Guillotine. They disposed 175 of it in Committee in, respectively, five and eight hours at a time.
The Opposition have made a serious tactical error. They believed that by forcing the Government to impose a Guillotine upon proceedings on these two Bills, they would draw attention to their arguments and that by all night Sittings, publicity would be given to the Measures to which they objected. It was a complete miscalculation. What this tactic has drawn attention to is the weakness of their own case. [Interruption.] To put the arguments, such as they are, against what the Government propose, it is not necessary to prolong debate to the small hours of the morning, nor to waste hours upon points of order.
If hon. Members opposite have valid arguments which find an echo in the country against what the Government are proposing to do, there is ample opportunity for them to deploy their arguments at the normal times and in the normal procedures of debate. Instead of drawing attention to these Measures, instead of strengthening their arguments by what they are doing, they have admitted that their case is one that they dare not argue fairly and that they must take refuge in obstruction. I believe that the country expects these

176

§ Measures to be got through with reasonable discussion and reasonable expedition and I call upon the House to reject the Amendment and to pass the Motion.

§ Mr. G. Brown
In the minute that we have left, may I ask the Minister whether he really means—[Interruption.]—that the purpose of the Guillotine is to save us from ourselves? If he really meant the argument that he was using—[HON. MEMBERS: Divide."]—he gave the complete case for not proceeding with the Guillotine. The Minister has produced no case for the Guillotine. [HON. MEMBERS: "Divide."] On the contrary, he has produced every reason why we should have been allowed to debate the Bill. I wish to ask the Minister, before he—[Interruption.]—

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Martin Redmayne)
rose in his place, and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

§ Mr. Speaker
The Question is——

Hon. Members
No.

§ Mr. Speaker
If hon. Members will be able to hear me.

§ Question put, That the Question be now put:—

§ The House divided: Ayes 304. Noes 222.

179

Division No. 82.]	AYES	[10.0 p.m.
Agnew, Sir Peter	Burden, F. A.	Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.
Aitken, W. T.	Butcher, Sir Herbert	Doughty, Charles
Allan, Robert, (Paddington, S.)	Butler, Rt. Hn. R. A.(SaffronWalden)	du Cann, Edward
Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian (Preston, N.)	Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)	Duthie, Sir William
Arbuthnot, John	Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)	Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David
Ashton, Sir Hubert	Carr, Compton (Barons Court)	Eden, John
Atkins, Humphrey	Carr, Robert (Mitcham)	Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Balniel, Lord	Cary, Sir Robert	Elliott,R.W.(Nwcste-upon-Tyne, N.)
Barber, Anthony	Channon, H. P. G.	Emery, Peter
Barlow, Sir John	Chataway, Christopher	Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Barter, John	Chichester-Clark, R.	Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Batsford, Brian	Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)	Farey-Jones, F. W.
Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton	Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)	Fell, Anthony
Bell, Ronald	Cleaver, Leonard	Finlay, Graeme
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos & Fhm)	Cole, Norman	Fisher, Nigel
Berkeley, Humphry	Cooper, A. E.	Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Bevins, Rt. Hon. Reginald (Toxteth)	Cooper-Key, Sir Neill	Forest, George
Bidgood, John C.	Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.	Foster, John
Biggs-Davison, John	Cordle, John	Fraser, Hn. Hugh(Stafford & Stone)
Bingham, R. M.	Corfield, F. V.	Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Bishop, F. P.	Costain, A. P.	Freeth, Denzil
Black, Sir Cyril	Coulson, J. M.	Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Box, Donald	Craddock, Sir Beresford	Gammans, Lady
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John	Critchley, Julian	Gardner, Edward
Boyle, Sir Edward	Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.	George, J. C. (Pollok)
Bralne, Bernard	Crowder, F. P.	Gibson-Watt, David
Brewis, John	Cunningham, Knox	Glover, Sir Douglas
Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. SirWalter	Curran, Charles	Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)
Brooman-White, R.	Dalkeith, Earl of	Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)
Browne, Percy (Torrington)	Dance, James	Godber, J. B.
Bryan, Paul	d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry	Goodhart, Philip
Bullard, Denys	Deedes, W. F.	Goodhew, Victor
Bullus, Wing Commander Eric	Digby, Simon Wingfield	Gough, Frederick
Gower, Raymond	Lioyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey(Sut'nC'dfield)	Renton, David
Grant, Rt. Hon. William	Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)	Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.	Longden, Gilbert	Ridsdale, Julian
Green, Alan	Loveys, Walter H.	Robson Brown, Sir William
Gresham Cooke, R.	Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby	Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Grimston, Sir Robert	Lucas, Sir Jocelyn	Roots, William
Grosvenor, Lt,-Col. R. G.	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh	Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Gurden, Harold	McAdden, Stephen	Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)
Hall, John (Wycombe)	MacArthur, Ian	Russell, Ronald
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)	McLaren, Martin	Sandys, Rt. Hon. Duncan
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)	McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia	Scott-Hopkins, James
Harris, Reader (Heston)	Maclay, Rt. Hon. John	Seymour, Leslie
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)	Maclean,Sir Fitzroy(Bute & N.Ayrs.)	Sharples, Richard
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)	McLean, Nell (Inverness)	Shaw, M.
Harvie Anderson, Miss	Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)	Shepherd, William
Hastings, Stephen	McMaster, Stanley R.	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn
Heath, Rt. Hon. Edward	Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold(Bromley)	Skeet, T. H. H.
Henderson, John (Cathcart)	Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)	Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)
Henderson-Stewart, Sir James	Macpherson, Nali (Dumfries)	Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher
Hendry, Forbes	Madden, Martin	Spearman, Sir Alexander
Hicks Beach, Maj. W.	Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.	Speir, Rupert
Hiley, Joseph	Markham, Major Sir Frank	Stanley, Hon. Richard
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)	Marlowe, Anthony	Stevens, Geoffrey
Hill, Mrs. Eveline (Wythenshawe)	Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)	Marshall, Douglas	Stodart, J. A.
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount	Marten, Nell	Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm
Hirst, Geoffrey	Mathew, Robert (Honiton)	Studholme, Sir Henry
Hobson, John	Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)	Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)
Holland, Philip	Maudling, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Talbot, John E.
Hollingworth, John	Mawby, Ray	Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)
Hope, Rt. Hon. Lord John	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.	Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)
Hopkins, Alan	Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.	Teeling, William
Hornby, R. P.	Mills, Stratton	Temple, John M.
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Patricia	More, Jasper (Ludlow)	Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret
Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)	Morgan, William	Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)	Morrison, John	Thomas, Peter (Conway)
Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral John	Mott-Radclyffe Sir Charles	Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)
Hughes-Young, Michael	Heave, Airey	Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.)
Hulbert, Sir Norman	Nicholls, Sir Harmar	Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. Peter
Hutchison, Michael Clark	Nicholson, Sir Godfrey	Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin
Iremonger, T. L.	Noble, Michael	Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Nugent, Sir Richard	Tilney, John (Wavertree)
Jackson, John	Oakahott, Sir Hendrle	Turner, Colin
James, David	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.	Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)	Orr-Ewing, C. Ian	Tweedsmuir, Lady
Jennings, J. C.	Osborn, John (Hallam)	Vane, W. M. F.
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)	Osborne, Cyril (Louth)	Vaughan-Morgan, Sir John
Johnson, Erie (Blackley)	Page, Graham (Crosby)	Vickers, Miss Joan
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey	Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)	Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis
Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)	Partridge, E.	Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek
Joseph, Sir Keith	Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)	Wall, Patrick
Kaberry, Sir Donald	Peel, John	Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold
Kerans, Cdr. J. S.	Percival, Ian	Watts, James
Kerby, Capt. Henry	Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth	Webster, David
Kerr, Sir Hamilton	Pike, Miss Mervyn	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Kershaw, Anthony	Pilkington, Sir Richard	Whitelaw, William
Kimball, Marcus	Pitman, I. J.	Williams, Dudley (Exeter)
Kirk, Peter	Pitt, Miss Edith	Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)
Lagden, Godfrey	Pott, Percivall	Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)
Lambton, Viscount	Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch	Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
Langford-Holt, J.	Price, David (Eatitieigh)	Wise, A. R.
Leather, E. H. C.	Price, H. A. (Lewisham, W.)	Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Leavey, J. A.	Prior, J. M. L.	Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard
Leburn, Gilmour	Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho	Woodhouse, C. M.
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry	Profumo, Rt. Hon. John	Worsley, Marcus
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)	Quennell, Miss J. M.
Lilley, F. J. P.	Ramsden, James	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Lindsay, Martin	Rawlinson, Peter	Mr. Edward Wakefield and
Linstead, Sir Hugh	Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin	Colonel J. H. Harrison.
Litchfield, Capt. John	Rees, Hugh
NOES
Abse, Leo	Bowden, Herbert W. (Leics, S.W.)	Collick, Percy
Albu, Austen	Bowles, Frank	Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)	Boyden, James	Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)	Braddock, Mrs. E. M.	Cronin, John
Awbery, Stan	Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.	Crosland, Anthony
Bacon, Miss Alice	Brown, Alan (Tottenham)	Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Baird, John	Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)	Darling, George
Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)	Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Bence, Cyril (Dunbartonshlre, E,)	Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)	Davies, Harold (Leek)
Benson, Sir George	Castle, Mrs. Barbara	Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Blackburn, F.	Chapman, Donald	Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Blyton, William	Chetwynd, George	Deer, George
Boardman, H.	Cliffe, Michael	de Freitas, Geoffrey

178

179

Delargy, Hugh	Lawson, George	Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Diamond, John	Ledger, Ron	Rogers, G. H. R. (Kensington, N.)
Dodds, Norman	Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)	Ross, William
Donnelly, Desmond	Lever, Harold (Cheatham)	Royle, Charles (Salford, West)
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John	Lever, L. M. (Ardwiok)	Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Ede, Rt. Hon. C.	Lipton, Marcus	Short, Edward
Edelman, Maurice	Logan, David	Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)	Loughlin, Charles	Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Edwards, Walter (Stepney)	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson	Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)
Evans, Albert	McCann, John	Slater, Joseph (Sedgefleld)
Finoh, Harold	MacColl, James	Small, William
Fletcher, Eric	McKay, John (Wallsend)	Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)	Mackie, John	Snow, Julian
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	McLeavy, Frank	Sorensen, R. W.
Forman, J. C.	MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)	Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)	Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)	Spriggs, Leslie
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon, Hugh	Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.)	Steele, Thomas
Ginsburg, David	Manuel, A. C.	Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
Gooch, E. G.	Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.	Stonehouse, John
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.	Marsh, Richard	Stones, William
Gourlay, Harry	Mason, Roy	Strachey, Rt. Hon. John
Greenwood, Anthony	Mayhew, Christopher	Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)
Grey, Charles	Mellish, R. J.	Stross,Dr. Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent,C.)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)	Mendelson, J. J.	Swain, Thomas
Griffiths, W. (Exchange)	Milian, Bruce	Swingler, Stephen
Grimond, J.	Milne, Edward J.	Sylvester, George
Gunter, Ray	Mitchison, G. R.	Symonds, J. B.
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvii (Coine Valley)	Monslow, Walter	Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)
Hamilton, William (West Fife)	Moody, A. S.	Taylor, John (West Lothian)
Hannan, William	Morris, John	Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)
Hart, Mrs. Judith	Mort, D. L.	Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)
Hayman, F. H.	Moyle, Arthur	Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)
Healey, Denis	Mulley, Frederick	Thornton, Ernest
Henderson,Rt. Hn. Arthur(RwlyRegis)	Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)	Thorpe, Jeremy
Herbison, Miss Margaret	Noel. Baker, Rt. Hn. Phillp (Derby,S.)	Tomney, Frank
Hewitson, Capt. M.	Oliver, G. H.	Wade, Donald
Hill, J. (Midlothian)	Oram, A. E.	Wainwright, Edwin
Hilton, A. V.
Holman, Percy	Oswald, Thomas	Warbey, William
Houghton, Douglas	Owen, Will	Watkins, Tudor
Hoy, James H.	Padley, W. E.	Weitzman, David
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)	Paget, R. T.	Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)	Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)	Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Hunter, A. E.	Pargiter, G. A.	White, Mrs. Eirene
Hynd, H. (Aoorington)	Parker, John (Dagenham)	Whitlock, William
Hynd, John (Attercliffe)	Parkin, B. T. (Paddington, N.)	Wigg, George
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)	Pavitt, Laurence	Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.
Irving, Sydney (Dartford)	Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)	Wilkins, W. A.
Janner, Sir Barnett	Peart, Frederick	Willey, Frederick
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas	Pentland, Norman	Williams, D. J. (Heath)
Jeger, George	Plummer, Sir Leslie	Williams, Lt. (AbertillerY)
Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)	Popplewell, Ernest	Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)	Prentice, R. E.	Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)
Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech (Wakefield)	Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)	Winterbottom, R. E.
Jones, Dan (Burnley)	Probert, Arthur	Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.
Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)	Proctor, W. T.	Woof, Robert
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)	Pursey, Cmdr. Harry	Wyatt, Woodrow
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)	Randall, Harry	Yates, Victor (Ladywood)
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)	Reid, William	Zilllacus, K.
Kelley, Richard	Reynolds, G. W.
Kenyon, Clifford	Rhodes, H.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.	Roberts, Albert (Norrnanton)	Mr. Redhead and Mr. Howell.
King, Dr. Horace	Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

§ Questions put accordingly, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Questions:—

180

§ The House divided: Ayes 305, Noes 223.

181

Division No. 83.]	AYES	[10.12 p.m.]
Agnew, Sir Peter	Bell, Ronald	Bromley-Daveriport, Lt.-Col.Sir Walter
Aitken, W. T.	Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos & Fhm)	Brooman-White, R.
Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)	Berkeley, Humphry	Browne, Percy (Torrington)
AliasOn, James	Bevins, Rt. Hon. Reginald (Toxteth)	Bryan, Paul
Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian (Preston, N.)	Bidgood, John C.	Bullard, Denys
Arbuthnot, John	Biggs-Davison, John	Bullus, Wing Commander Eric
Ashton, Sir Hubert	Bingham, R. M.	Burden, F. A.
Atkins, Humphrey	Bishop, F. P.	Butcher, Sir Herbert
Balniel, Lord	Black, Sir Cyril	Butler, Rt. Hn. R.A.(Saffron Walden)
Barber, Anthony	Box, Donald	Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)
Barlow, Sir John	Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John	Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Naim)
Barter, John	Boyle, Sir Edward	Carr, Compton (Barons Court)
Batsford, Brian	Braine, Bernard	Carr, Robert (Mitcham)
Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton	Brewis, John	Cary, Sir Robert
Channon, H. P. G.	Hobson, John	Oakshott, Sir Hendrie
Chataway, Christopher	Holland, Philip	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Chichester-Clark, R.	Hollingworth, John	Orr-Ewing, C. Ian
Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)	Hope, Rt. Hon. Lord John	Osborn, John (Hallam)
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)	Hopkins, Alan	Osborne, Cyril (Louth)
Cleaver, Leonard	Hornby, R. P.	Page, Graham (Crosby)
Cole, Norman	Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Patricia	Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)
Cooper, A. E.	Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)	Partridge, E.
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill	Howard, John (Southampton, Test)	Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.	Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral John	Peel, John
Cordle, John	Hughes-Young, Michael	Percival, Ian
Corfield, F. V.	Hulbert, Sir Norman	Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Costain, A. P.	Hutohison, Michael Clark	Pike, Miss Mervyn
Coulson, J. M.	Iremonger, T. L.	Pilkington, Sir Richard
Craddock, Sir Beresford	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Pitman, I. J.
Crashley, Julian	Jackson, John	Pitt, Miss Edith
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.	James, David	Pott, Peroivall
Crowder, F. P.	Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)	Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch
Cunningham, Knox	Jennings, J. C.	Price, David (Eastleigh)
Curran, Charles	Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)	Price, H. A. (Lewisham, W.)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Johnson, Eric (Blaokley)	Prior, J. M. L.
Dance, James	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey	Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho
d'Avigdor-Galdunid, Sir Henry	Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)	Profumo, Rt. Hon. John
Deecies, W F.	Joseph, Sir Keith	QuenneN, Miss J. M.
Digby, Simon Wingfieid	Kaberry, Sir Donald	Ramsden, James
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.	Kerans, Cdr. J. S.	Rawlinson, Peter
Doughty, Charles	Kerby, Capt. Henry	Redmayfle, Rt. Hon. Martin
du Cann, Edward	Kerr, Sir Hamilton	Rees, Hugh
Duthie, Sir William	Kershaw, Anthony	Rees-Davles, W. R.
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David	Kimball, Marcus	Renton, David
Eden, John	Kirk, Peter	Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Elliot, Capt. Waiter (Carshalton)	Lagden, Godfrey	Ridsdale, Julian
Elliott,R.W. (Nwcstle-upon-Tyne,N.)	Lambton, Viscount	Robson Brown, Sir William
Emery, Peter	Langford-Holt, J.	Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn	Leather, E. H. C.	Roots, William
Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Leavey, J. A.	Ropner, Col, Sir Leonard
Farey-Jones, F. W.	Leburn, Gilmour	Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)
Fell, Anthony	Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry	Russell, Ronald
Finlay, Graeme	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)	Scott-Hopkins, James
Fisher, Nigel	Lilley, F. J. P.	Seymour, Leslie
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Lindsay, Martin	Sharples, Richard
Forrest, George	Linstead, Sir Hugh	Shaw, M.
Foster, John	Litchfield, Capt. John	Shepherd, William
Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford & Stone)	Lloyd,Rt. Hn. Geoffrey(Sut'nC'dfield)	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)	Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)	Skeet, T. H. H.
Freeth, Denzil	Longden, Gilbert	Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.	Loveys, Walter H.	Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher
Gammans, Lady	Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby	Spearman, Sir Alexander
Gardner, Edward	Lucas, Sir Jocelyn	Speir, Rupert
George, J. C. (Pollok)	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh	Stanley, Hon. Richard
Gibson-Watt, David	McAdden, Stephen	Stevens, Geoffrey
Glover, Sir Douglas	MacArthur, Ian	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)	McLaren, Martin	Stodart, J. A.
Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)	McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia	Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm
Godber, J. B.	Maclay, Rt. Hon. John	Studholme, Sir Henry
Goodhart, Philip	Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Bute&N.Ayrs.)	Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)
Goodhew, Victor	McLean, Neil (Inverness)	Talbot, John E.
Gough, Frederick	Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)	Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)
Gower, Raymond	McMaster, Stanley R.	Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)
Grant, Rt. Hon. William	Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold(Bromley)	Teeling, William
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.	Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)	Temple, John M.
Green, Alan	Macpherson, Nail (Dumfries)	Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret
Gresham Cooke, R.	Madden, Martin	Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)
Grimston, Sir Robert	MannIngham-Buffer, Rt. Hn. Sir R.	Thomas, Peter (Conway)
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.	Markham, Major Sir Frank	Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)
Gurden, Harold	Marlowe, Anthony	Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.)
Hall, John (Wycombe)	Marplee, Rt. Hon. Ernest	Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. Peter
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)	Marshall, Douglas	Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)	Marten, Nell	Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)
Harris, Reader (Heston)	Mathew, Robert (Honiton)	Tilney, John (Wavertree)
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)	Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)	Turner, Colin
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)	Maudling, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.
Harvie Anderson, Miss	Mawby, Ray	Tweedsmulr, Lady
Hastings, Stephen	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.	Vane, W. M. F.
Heath, Rt. Hon. Edward	Maydon, Lt.-CmCir. S. L. C.	Vaughan-Morgan, Sir John
Henderson, John (Cathcart)	Mills, Stratton	Vickers, Miss Joan
Henderson-Stewart, Sir James	More, Jasper (Ludlow)	Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis
Hendry, Forhes	Morgan, William	Wall, Patrick
Hicks Beach, Maj. W.	Morrison, John	Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold
Hiley, Joseph	Mott-Radelyffe, Sir Charles	Watts, James
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)	Heave, Airey	Webster, David
Hill, Mrs. Eveline (Wythenshawe)	Nicholls, Sir Harmar	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)	Nicholson, Sir Godfrey	Whitelaw, William
Hinchinghrooke, Viscount	Noble, Michael	Williams, Dudley (Exeter)
Hirst, Geoffrey	Nugent, Sir Richard	Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)	Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)	Woodhouse, C. M.	Mr. Edward Wakefield and
Wise, A. R.	Worsley, Marcus	Colonel J. H. Harrison.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
NOES
Abee, Leo	Hilton, A. V.	Plummer, Sir Leslie
Albu, Austen	Holman, Percy	Popplewell, Ernest
Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)	Holt, Arthur	Prentice, R. E.
Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)	Houghton, Douglas	Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Awbery, Stan	Hoy, James H.	Probert, Arthur
Bacon, Miss Alice	Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)	Proctor, W. T.
Baird, John	Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)	Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Betienger, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Hunter, A. E.	Randall, Harry
Bence, Cyril (Dunbartonshire, E.)	Hynd, H. (Accrington)	Reid, William
Benson, Sir George	Hynd, John (Attercilffe)	Reynolds, G. W.
Blackburn, F.	Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)	Rhodes, H.
Blyton, William	Irving, Sydney (Dartford)	Rippon, Geoffrey
Boardman, H.	Janner, Sir Barnett	Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Bowden, Herbert W. (Lents, S. W.)	Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas	Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Bowles, Frank	Jeger, George	Rogers, G. H. R. (Kensington, N.)
Boyden, James	Jenkins, Roy (Steohford)	Ross, William
Braddock, Mrs. E. M.	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)	Hoyle, Charles (Salford, West)
Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.	Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech (Wakefield)	Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Brown, Alan (Tottenham)	Jones, Dan (Burnley)	Short, Edward
Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)	Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)	Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)	Jones, Jack (Rotherham)	Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)	Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)	Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)
Castle, Mrs. Barbara	Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)	Slater, Joseph (Sedgefieid)
Chapman, Donald	Kelley, Richard	Small, William
Chetwynd, George	Kenyon, Clifford	Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Cliffs, Michael	Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.	Snow, Julian
Cornett, Percy	King, Dr. Horace	Sorensen, R. W.
Corbel, Mrs. Freda	Lawson, George	Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)	Ledger, Ron	Spriggs, Leslie
Cronin, John	Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)	Steele. Thomas
Crosland, Anthony	Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice	Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)	Stonehouse, John
Darting, George	Lipton, Marcus	Stones, William
Davies, G. Kited (Rhondda, E.)	Logan, David	Strachey, Rt. Hon. John
Davies, Harold (Leek)	Loughlin, Charles	Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson	Stross, Dr. Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent,C.)
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)	McCann, John	Swain, Thomas
Deer, George	MacColl, James	Swingler, Stephan
de Freitas, Geoffrey	McKay, John (Wallsend)	Sylvester, George
Delargy, Hugh	Mackie, John	Symonds, J. B.
Diamond, John	McLeavy, Frank	Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)
Dodds, Norman	MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)	Taylor, John (West Lothian)
Donnelly, Desmond	Mallalleu, E. L. (Brigg)	Thomas, Lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John	Matlalieu, J.P. W.(Huddersfield, E.)	Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)
Ede, Rt. Hon. C.	Manuel, A. C.	Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)
Edelman, Maurice	Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.	Thornton, Ernest
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)	Marsh, Richard	Thorpe, Jeremy
Edwards, Walter (Stepney)	Mason, Roy	Tomney, Frank
Evans, Albert	Mayhew, Christopher	Wade, Donald
Finch, Harold	Mellish, R. J.	Wainwright, Edwin
Fletcher, Eric	Mendelson, J.J.	Warbey, William
Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)	Milian, Bruce	Watkins, Tudor
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	Milne, Edward J.	Weitzman, David
Forman, J. C.	Mitchison, G. R.	Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)	Monslow, Walter	Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Galtskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh	Moody, A. S.	White, Mrs. Eirene
Ginsburg, David	Morris, John	Whitlock, William
Gooch, E. G.	Mort, D. L.	Wigg, George
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.	Moyle, Arthur	Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.
Gourley, Harry	Multey, Frederick	Wilkins, W. A.
Greenwood, Anthony	Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)	Willey, Frederick
Grey, Charles	Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Phillp(Derby,S.)
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Lianelly)	Oliver, G. H.	Williams, D. J. (Neath)
Griffiths, W. (Exchange)	Oram, A. E.	Williams, LI. (Abertillery)
Grimond, J.	Oswald, Thomas	Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)
Gunter, Ray	Owen, Will	Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Calne Valley)	Padley, W. E.	Winterbottom, R. E.
Hamilton, William (West Fife)	Paget, R. T.	Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.
Harman, William	Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)	Woof, Robert
Hart, Mrs. Judith	Pargiter, G. A.	Wyatt, Woodrow
Hayman, F. H.	Parker, John (Dagenham)	Yates, Victor (Ladywood)
Healey, Denis	Parkin, B. T. (Paddington, N.)	Zilliacus, K.
Henderson, Rt. Hn. Arthur(RwlyRegis)	Pavitt, Laurence
Herbison, Miss Margaret	Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Hewitson, Capt. M.	Peart, Frederick	Mr. Redhead and Mr. Howell
Hill, J. (Midlothian)	Pentland, Norman

185

§ Main Question put:—

186

§ The House divided: Ayes 305, Noes 223.

187

Division No. 84.)	AYES	10.24 p.m.
Agnew, Sir Peter	Farr, John	Kimball, Marcus
Aitken, W. T.	Fell, Anthony	Kirk, Peter
Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)	Finlay, Graeme	Lagden, Godfrey
Allason, James	Fisher, Nigel	Lambton, Viscount
Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian (Preston, N.)	Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Langford-Holt, J.
Arbuthnot, John	Forrest, George	Leather, E. H. C.
Ashton, Sir Hubert	Foster, John	Leavey, J. A.
Atkins, Humphrey	Fraser, Hn. Hugh(Stafford & Stone)	Leburn, Gilmour
Balniel, Lord	Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)	Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Barber, Anthony	Freeth, Denzil	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Barlow, Sir John	Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.	Lilley, F. J. P.
Barter, John	Gammans, Lady	Lindsay, Martin
Botsford, Brian	Gardner, Edward	Linstead, Sir Hugh
Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton	George, J. C. (Pollok)	Litchfield, Capt. John
Bell, Ronald	Gibson-Watt, David	Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoftrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Goa & Fhm)	Glover, Sir Douglas	Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Berkeley, Humphry	Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)	Longbottom, Charles
Resins, Rt. Hon. Reginald (Texteth)	Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)	Longden, Gilbert
Bidgood, John C.	Godber, J. B.	Loveys, Walter H.
Biggs-Davison, John	Goodhart, Philip	Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby
Bingham, R. M.	Goodhew, Victor	Lucas, Sir Jocelyn
Bishop, F. P.	Cough, Frederick	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Black, Sir Cyril	Cower, Raymond	McAdrien, Stephen
Box, Donald	Grant, Rt. Hon. William	MacArthur, Ian
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John	Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.	McLaren, Martin
Boyle, Sir Edward	Green, Alan	McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia
Braine, Bernard	Gresham Cooke, R.	Mosley, Rt. Hon. John
Brewis, John	Crimston, Sir Robert	Maelean, Sir Fitzroy (Bute & N.Ayrs.)
Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col.Sir Walter	Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.	McLean, Neil (Inverness)
Brooman-White, R.	Gurden, Harold	Macleod, Rt. Hn. lain (Enfield, W.)
Browne, Percy (Torrington)	Hall, John (Wycombe)	McMaster, Stanley R.
Bryan, Paul	Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)	Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold(Bromley)
Bullard, Denys	Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)	Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)
Bullus, Wing Commander Eric	Harris, Reader (Heston)	Macpherson, Hied (Dumfries)
Burden, F. A.		Madden, Martin
Butcher, Sir Herbert	Harrison, Brian (Maldon)	Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.
Butler, Rt. Hn. R.A.(Saffron Walden)	Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Maccles'fd)	Markham, Major Sir Frank
Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)	Harvie Anderson, Miss	Marlowe, Anthony
Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)	Hastings, Stephen	Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest
Carr, Compton (Barons Court)	Heath, Rt. Hon, Edward	Marshall, Douglas
Carr Robert (Mitcham)	Henderson, John (Cathcart)	Marten, Nell
Cary, Sir Robert	Henderson-Stewart, Sir James	Mathew, Robert (Honiton)
Channon, H. P. G.	Hendry, Forbes	Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Chataway, Christopher	Hicks Beath, Mal. W)	Maudling, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Chichester-Clark, R.	Hey, Joseph	Mawby, Ray
Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)	Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)	Hill, Mrs. Eveline (Wythenshawe)	Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.
Cleaver, Leonard	Hill, J. E. B. (S. Nor or)	Mills, Stratton
Cole, Norman	Hinchingbrooke, Viscount	More, Jasper (Ludlow)
Cooper, A. E.	Hirst, Geoffrey	Morgan, William
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill	Hobson, John	Morrison, John
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.	Holland, Philip	Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Cordle, John	Hollingworth, John	Neave, Airey
Corfield, F. V.	Hope, Rt. Hon. Lord John	Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Costain, A. P.	Hopkins, Alan	Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Coulson, J. M.	Hornby, R. P.	Noble, Michael
Craddock, Sir Beresford	Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Patricia	Nugent, Sir Richard
Critchley, Julian	Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)	Oakshott, Sir Hendrie
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.	Howard, John (Southampton, Test)	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Crowder, F. P.	Hughes, Hallett, Vice-Admiral John	Orr-Ewing, C. Ian
Cunningham, Knox	Hughes-Young, Michael	Osborn, John (Hallam)
Curran, Charles	Hulbert, Sir Norman	Osborne, Cyril (Louth)
Dalkelth, Earl of	Hutchison, Michael Clark	Page, Graham (Crosby)
Dance, James	Lremonger, T. L.	Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Partridge, E.
Deedes, W. F.	Jackson, John	Pearson, Frank (Kirkdale)
Digby, Simon Wingfield	James, David	Peel, John
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.	Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)	Percival, Ian
Doughty, Charles	Jennings, J. C.	Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
du Cann, Edward	Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)	Pike, Miss Mervyn
Duthie, Sir William	Johnson, Eric (Blackley)	Pilkington, Sir Richard
Emits, Rt. Hon. Sir David	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey	Pitman, I. J.
Eden, John	Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)	Pitt, Miss Edith
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)	Joseph, Sir Keith	Pott, Percivall
Elliott, R.W.(Nwcstle-upon-Tyne,N.)	Kaberry, Sir Donald	Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch
Emery, Peter	Kerans, Cdr. J. S.	Price, David (Eastleigh)
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn	Kerby, Capt. Henry	Price, H. A. (Lewisham, W.)
Erroll, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Kerr, Sir Hamilton	Prior, J. M. L.
Farey-Jones, F. W.	Kershaw, Anthony	Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho
Profumo, Rt. Hon. John	Speir, Rupert	Vane, W. M. F.
Quennell, Miss J. M.	Stanley, Hon. Richard	Vaughan-Morgan, Sir John
Ramsden, James	Stevens, Geoffrey	Vickers, Miss Joan
Rawlinson, Peter	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)	Vosper, Rt. Hon. Dennis
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin	Stodart, J. A.	Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek
Rees, Hugh	Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm	Wall, Patrick
Rees-Davies, W. R.	Studholme, Sir Henry	Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold
Renton, David	Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)	Watts, James
Ridley, Hon. Nicholas	Talbot, John E.	Webster, David
Ridsdale, Julian	Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)	Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)	Whitelaw, William
Roots, William	Teeling, William	Williams, Dudley (Exeter)
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard	Temple, John M.	Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)
Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)	Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret	Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)
Russell, Ronald	Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)	Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
Scott-Hopkins, James	Thomas, Peter (Conway)	Wise, A. R.
Seymour, Leslie	Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)	Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Sharples, Richard	Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.)	Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard
Shaw, M.	Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. Peter	Woodhouse, C. M.
Shepherd, William	Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin	Worsley, Marcus
Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn	Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)
Skeet, T. H. H.	Tilney, John (Wavertree)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)	Turner, Colin	Mr. Edward Wakefield and
Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher	Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.	Colonel J. H. Harrison.
Spearman, Sir Alexander	Tweedsmuir, Lady
NOES
Abse, Leo	Gooch, E. G.	McKay, John (Wallsend)
Albu, Austen	Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.	Mackie, John
Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)	Gourley, Harry	McLeavy, Frank
Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)	Greenwood, Anthony	MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)
Awbery, Stan	Grey, Charles	Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Bacon, Miss Alice	Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanslly)	Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huildersfield E.)
Baird, John	Griffiths, W. (Exchange)	Manuel, A. C.
Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Grimond, J.	Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Bence, Cyril (Dunbartonshire, E.)	Gunter, Ray	Marsh, Richard
Benson, Sir George	Hall, Rt. Hn Glenvil (Coins Valley)	Mason, Roy
Blackburn, F.	Hamilton, William (west Fife)	Mayhew, Christopher
Blyton, William	Hannan, William	Mellish, R. J.
Boardman, H.	Hart, Mrs. Judith	Mendelson, J. J.
Bowden, Herbert W. (Leics, S.W.)	Hayman, F. H.	Millan, Bruce
Bowles, Frank	Healey, Denis	Milne, Edward J.
Boyden, James	Henderson, Rt. Hn. Arthur (RwlyRegis)	Mitchison, G. R.
Braddock, Mrs. E. M.	Herbison, Miss Margaret	Monslow, Walter
Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.	Hewitson, Capt. M.	Moody, A. S.
Brown, Alan (Tottenham)	Hill, J. (Midlothian)	Morris, John
Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)	Hilton, A. V.	Mort, D. L.
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)	Holman, Percy	Moyle, Arthur
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)	Holt, Arthur	Mulley, Frederick
Castle, Mrs. Barbara	Houghton, Douglas	Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Chapman, Donald	Hoy, James H.	Noel-Baker, Rt.Hn.Philip (Derby,S.)
Chetwynd, George	Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)	Oliver, G. H.
Cliffe, Michael	Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)	Oram, A. E.
Collick, Percy	Hunter, A. E.	Oswald, Thomas
Corbet, Mrs. Freda	Hynd, H. (Accrington)	Owen, Will
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)	Hynd, John (Attercilffe)	Padley, W. E.
Cronin, John	Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)	Paget, R. T.
Crosland, Anthony	Irving, Sydney (Dartford)	Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice	Janner, Sir Barnett	Pargiter, G. A.
Darling, George	Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas	Parker, John (Dagenham)
Davies. G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)	Jeger, George	Parkin, B. T. (Paddington, N.)
Davies, Harold (Leek)	Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)	Pavitt, Laurence
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)	Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)	Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech(Wakefield)	Pearl, Frederick
Deer, George	Jones, Dan (Burnley)	Pentland, Norman
de Freitas, Geoffrey	Jones, Elwyn (West Ham, S.)	Plummer, Sir Leslie
Delargy, Hugh	Jones, Jack (Rotherham)	Popplewell, Ernest
Diamond, John	Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)	Prentice, R. E.
Dodds, Norman	Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)	Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Donnelly, Desmond	Kelley, Richard	Probed, Arthur
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John	Kenyon, Clifford	Proctor, W. T.
Ede, Rt. Hon, C.	Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.	Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Edelman, Maurice	King, Dr. Horace	Randall, Harry
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)	Lawson, George	Reid, William
Edwards, Walter (Stepney)	Ledger, Ron	Reynolds, G. W.
Evans, Albert	Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)	Rhodes, H.
Finch, Harold	Lever, Harold (Cheetham)	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Fletcher, Eric	Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)	Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)	Lipton, Marcus	Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)	Logan, David	Rogers, G. H. R. (Kensington, N.)
Forman, J. C.	Loughlin, Charles	Ross, William
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson	Royle, Charles (Salford, West)
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh	McCann, John	Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Ginsburg, David	MacColl, James	Short, Edward
Silverman, Julius (Aston)	Swingler, Stephen	White, Mrs. Eirene
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)	Sylvester, George	Whitlock, William
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)	Symonds, J. B.	Wigg, George
Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)	Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)	Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.
Small, William	Taylor, John (West Lothian)	Wilkins, W. A.
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)	Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)	Willey, Frederick
Snow, Julian	Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)	Williams, D. J. (Neath)
Sorensen, R. W.	Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)	Williams, Li. (Abertillery)
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank	Thornton, Ernest	Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)
Spriggs, Leslie	Thorpe, Jeremy	Willis, E. C. (Edinburgh, E.)
Steele, Thomas	Tomney, Frank	Winterbottom, R. E.
Stewart, Michael (Fulham)	Wade, Donald	Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.
Stonehouse, John	Wainwright, Edwin	Woof, Robert
Stones, William	Warbey, William	Wyatt, Woodrow
Strachey, Rt. Hon. John	Watkins, Tudor	Yates, Victor (Ladywood)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)	Weitzman, David	Zilliacus, K.
Stross,Dr.Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent.C.	Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Swain, Thomas	Wells, William (Walsall, N.)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
		Mr. Redhead and Mr. Howell.

189

Resolved,

That the following provisions shall apply to the remaining Proceedings on the National Health Service Contributions Bill and the National Health Service Bill

>National Health Service Contributions Bill

1. The remaining Proceedings in Committee on the National Health Service Contributions Bill shall be completed in two allotted days, and shall be brought to a conclusion or interrupted, as the case may be, at the times shown in the following Table:—

Proceedings	Time for conclusion or interruption
Clause 2, new Clauses (if any) and First Schedule.	(a) To be interrupted at 11.30 p.m. on the first allotted day.
	(b) To be brought to a conclusion at 9.30 p.m. on the second allotted day.
Second Schedule, new Schedules (if any) and any other Proceedings necessary to bring the Proceedings in Committee to a conclusion.	To be brought to a conclusion at 11.30 p.m. on the second allotted day.

2.—(1) Any Proceedings which, by virtue of this Order, are interrupted at a particular time on the first allotted day shall not thereafter be resumed on that day, but without prejudice to the resumption thereof on the second allotted day.

(2) On any such interruption by virtue of this Order the Chairman shall leave the Chair without putting any question, and shall report progress and ask leave to sit again.

3. The Proceedings on Consideration (if any) and the Proceedings on Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in one allotted day, and shall be brought to a conclusion at eleven o'clock on that day.

4. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule.

5. If, on any of the said allotted days, a Motion is made under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), the bringing to a conclusion, or interruption, of any Proceedings which under this Order are to be brought to a conclusion, or interrupted, on that day shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the Motion under Standing Order No. 9.

6. Any Private Business which has been set down for consideration at seven o'clock on any of the said allotted days shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion (or, in the case of the first allotted day, at the interruption under this Order) of the Proceedings on the Bill on that day, and shall be exempted by this paragraph from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for a period of three hours, or, if the Proceedings on the Bill are concluded before half-past ten o'clock, for a period (from ten o'clock) equal to the time elapsing between seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.

7. When the Order of the Day is read for the House to resolve itself into Committee on the Bill, Mr. Speaker shall leave the Chair without putting any question, notwithstanding that notice of an Instruction has been given.

8. On the conclusion of the Proceedings in any Committee on the Bill, including a Committee to which the Bill has been re-committed (whether as a whole or otherwise), the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any question.

191

9. This Order shall have effect notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders, and notwithstanding the Practice of the House relating to the intervals between the stages of any Bill, and Standing Order No. 41 (Business Committee) shall not apply in relation to this Order in so far as it relates to the National Health Service Contributions Bill.

National Health Service Bill

10.—(a) The Standing Committee to which the National Health Service Bill is committed shall report the Bill to the House on or before the twenty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and sixty-one;

(b) at a sitting of the Standing Committee at which any Proceedings are to be brought to a conclusion under a Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee the Chairman shall not adjourn the Committee under any Order relating to the sittings of the Committee until the Proceedings have been brought to a conclusion;

(c) no dilatory Motion with respect to Proceedings on the Bill or the adjournment of the Standing Committee shall be made in the Standing Committee except by a Member of the Government, and the question on any such Motion, if made by a Member of the Government, shall be put forthwith without any debate; and

(d) on the conclusion of the Committee Stage of the Bill the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any question.

11. The Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in one allotted day and shall be brought to a conclusion at half-past ten o'clock on that day; and for the purpose of Standing Order No. 41 (Business Committee) this Order shall be taken to allot to the Proceedings on Consideration such portion of that day as the Resolution of the Business Committee may determine.

12. The Business Committee shall report to the House their recommendations as to the Proceedings on Consideration, and as to the allocation of time between those Proceedings and the Proceedings on Third Reading, not later than the twenty-third day of March, nineteen hundred and sixty-one.

13. No Motion shall be made to postpone any Clause, Schedule, new Clause or new Schedule, but the recommendation of the Business Sub-Committee may include alterations in the order in which Clauses, Schedules, new Clauses and new Schedules are to be taken in the Standing Committee.

14. On the allotted day referred to in paragraph 11 of this Order Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) shall have effect with the substitution of references to half-past ten of the clock for references to ten of the clock, and Proceedings which under this Order or the Resolution of the Business Committee are to be brought to a conclusion on that day shall not be interrupted under the provisions of the said Standing Order.

15. If, on the last-mentioned allotted day, a Motion is made under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), the last preceding paragraph of this Order shall not apply, but—

(a) any Proceedings on the Bill exempted under paragraph (2) of that Standing Order shall be so exempted for the period mentioned in that paragraph and a further half-hour; and

(b) the bringing to a conclusion of any Proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order or under the Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion on that day after seven o'clock shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the said Motion under Standing Order No. 9.

16. It, at seven o'clock on the said allotted day any Proceedings on the Bill which, under the Resolution of the Business Committee, are to be brought to a conclusion at or before that time have not been concluded, any Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance) which, apart from this Order, would stand over to that time shall stand over until those Proceedings have been concluded.

17. Any Private Business which has been set down for consideration at seven o'clock on the said allotted day shall, instead of being considered as provided by the Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion of the Proceedings on the Bill on that day, and shall be exempted by this paragraph from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for a period of three hours or, if the Proceedings on the Bill are concluded before half-past ten o'clock, for a period (from ten o'clock) equal to the time elapsing between seven o'clock and the completion of those Proceedings.

General

18. Standing Order No. 12 (Motion for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business) shall not apply to any allotted day.

19. On an allotted day no dilatory Motion with respect to Proceedings on either of the Bills shall be made except by a Member of the Government, and the question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith without any debate.

193

20. For the purpose of bringing to a conclusion any Proceedings which under this Order (or, in the case of the National Health Service Bill, under this Order or under the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or of the Business Committee) are to be brought to a conclusion at a particular time and have not previously been concluded, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall, at that time, put forthwith the question on any amendment or Motion already proposed from the Chair, and, in the case of a new Clause or new Schedule which has been read a second time, also the question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill, and subject thereto shall proceed to put forthwith the question on any amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules moved by a Member of the Government of which notice has been given (but no other amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules) and any question necessary for the disposal of the Business to be concluded, and, in the case of any amendments, new Clauses or new Schedules moved by a Member of the Government, he shall put only the question that the amendment be made or that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.

21. The Proceedings on any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order or of the Resolution of the Business Committee shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion two hours after they have been commenced, and the last preceding paragraph of this Order shall, so far as applicable, apply as if the Proceedings were Proceedings on one or other of the Bills:

Provided that if the Proceedings are interrupted by a Motion for the adjournment of House under Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance), the time at which they are to be brought to a conclusion shall be deferred for a period equal to the duration of the Proceedings on the Motion for the Adjournment.

If any Motion moved by a Member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order or of the Resolution of the Business Committee is under consideration at seven o'clock on a day on which any Private Business has been set down for consideration at seven o'clock, the Private Business shall stand over and be considered when the Proceedings on the Motion have been concluded.

22. Paragraph (5) of Standing Order No. 7 (Time for taking Private Business) and paragraph (2) of Standing Order No. 9 (Adjournment on definite matter of urgent public importance) shall not apply to any Private Business exempted by virtue of paragraph 6 or paragraph 17 of this Order.

23. Nothing in this Order or in the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee or the Business Committee shall—

(a) prevent any Proceedings to which the Order or Resolution applies from being taken or completed earlier than is required by the Order or Resolution, or

(b) prevent any Business (whether on one or other of the Bills or not) from being proceeded with on any day after the completion of all such Proceedings on the Bills as are to be taken on that day.

24. In this Order "allotted day" means any day (other than a Friday) on which one or other of the Bills is put down as the first Government Order of the day, "the Bills" means the National Health Service Contributions Bill and the National Health Service Bill, "the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee" means the Resolution of the Business Sub-Committee as agreed to by the Standing Committee on the National Health Service Bill, "the Resolution of the Business Committee means the Resolution of the Business Committee as agreed to by the House, and any reference to Proceedings on Consideration or Proceedings on Third Reading includes a reference to any Proceedings, at those stages respectively, for, on or in consequence of re-committal.