Commons Sitting of 16 March 1961

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  CLERICAL MEDICAL AND GENERAL LIFE ASSURANCE BILL

    SHELL BRAZIL BILL
    WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL CLOSE BILL
    Read the Third time and passed.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  MALTA

    Television Service
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement on the scope, control and future organisation of the television service in Malta.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Hugh Fraser): I have nothing to add to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) on 23rd February.
    Mr. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman must know that there is great discontent in Malta about this and that it has not been consistent with the legitimate aspirations of the people of Malta, and will he, in conjunction with other Ministers, take steps by election to determine the wishes of the people of Malta and to act in accordance with those wishes?
    Mr. Fraser: This has really very little to do with the organisation of a television service in Malta.
    Mr. Ede: Is the Under-Secretary of State aware that there is a tendency among all parties in Malta to develop strong censorship, and can he say
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    whether these regulations will provide for reasonable freedom of speech?
    Mr. Fraser: This essentially will be an independent statutory authority, rather similar to the authority which we have in this country.

    Dockyard
    Mr. Wallasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can now make a statement about the development of the dockyard in Malta.
    The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. kin Macleod): I am not yet able to add to the reply which I gave on 8th March to my hon. Friend's supplementary question on my statement on the Constitutional Commission's Report.
    Mr. Wall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is very difficult for the new Constitution to get off to a good start unless the anxieties about the future of the dockyard are allayed? Will he use the strongest measures in his power to bring to a conclusion the financial discussions now going on so that the dockyard conversion can be proceeded with, since it has now been delayed for about eighteen months?
    Mr. Macleod: Yes, I agree that it is important, and I will do that.
    Mr. Awbery: Is the Minister aware that the negotiations with Bailey (Malta) Ltd. have been going on for two years and practically no progress has been made? Since one of the difficulties facing men in the dockyard is that they have no assurance of employment in the future, is not this one cause of the trouble? Will he look at this again and hurry on the negotiations?
    Mr. Macleod: As I said, I will hurry on the negotiations. Very recently, I had useful discussions with representatives of the trade unions on both sides in Malta and arranged some procedures for the future with them.

    Public Meetings
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that the present application in Malta of the Public Meetings Ordinance, 1931, is discriminatory and causes dissatisfaction; and if he will now take steps to ameliorate the application, administration and enforcement of this ordinance.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I do not accept that the Public Meetings Ordinance, 1931, is discriminatory.
    Mr. Hughes: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept anyhow that an important contribution to the peace problem and constitutional development of Malta, as elsewhere, is the full and free expression of public opinion by means of public meetings and otherwise, and does he realise that that is not occurring in Malta at the present time? Will he, therefore, take the constructive steps adumbrated in my Question with a view to seeing that there is a free and full expression of public opinion in Malta?
    Mr. Macleod: I would certainly accept the generalities in the first part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's supplementary question. As regards the practical application of this Order, which has been in existence for a very long time, very few requests indeed are refused, and these are, of course, most carefully considered.

  KENYA, NORTHERN RHODESIA AND NYASALAND

    Education
    Mr. Swinglerasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what long-term plans have been made for the establishment of universal primary and secondary education in Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland; and over what period it is aimed to realise these plans.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: There are no such formal long-term plans in these territories, but each aims to extend primary and secondary education facilities for Africans as far as available resources will allow, until universal primary and secondary education are achieved.
    Mr. Swingler: Is this really not one of the most vital questions of all on which some immediate research should be concentrated? Is it not a fact, of which the Secretary of State is aware, that the present plans provide for a very slow rate of progress, involving in all cases 5 per cent. or less of the children, and that really no long-term plans have been made for the introduction of universal education, which is the most important basis for democracy?
    Mr. Macleod: Of course, I agree with the importance of this subject, and each of the three territories which the hon. Member mentions devotes a large proportion of its revenue to education. Where we possibly can, through C.D. and W. and other methods, we aim to help.
    Mr. F. Harris: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that Kenya, in particular, has an outstanding record in this education matter compared with other Colonial Territories?
    Mr. Macleod: Kenya has certainly a very fine record. We have been considering the problems of Kenya's budget with her Finance Minister during the last few days.
    Mr. Swinglerasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what are at present the limiting factors on the expansion of the school-building programmes for Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: The limiting factors in these territories as elsewhere are the availability of money for capital and recurrent expenditure, the rate at which teachers cam be trained or recruited from overseas, and the building capacities of the territories.
    Mr. Swingler: Could the Colonial Secretary expand that Answer a little by saying what he is doing immediately to try to overcome these limiting factors, that is, to get a bigger grant of money and a more rapid training of teachers?
    Mr. Macleod: There are really three main ways in which Her Majesty's Government can help. The first, as I have mentioned, is through the assistance we give through the C.D. and W. Acts; the second through the recently announced scheme for the overseas aid scheme, and, thirdly, through the various schemes which have been developed very recently, schemes for enlisting education co-operation. I think that this is a very good three-pronged attack on this immensely important subject.
    Mr. P. Williams: Will my right hon. Friend say whether the utmost effort will be put into trade and technical training, because this seems to be the right thing to do at the moment?
    Mr. Macleod: I try to do that all the time. My hon. Friend will know the sort of trailer of the announcement which I gave about technical aid from this country. I am sure it is right to concentrate our help to the newly developed countries in the form of technical aid which by and large, as far as this country is concerned, means technical people. We think that this is the best service that we can give.

  BRITISH GUIANA

    Constituencies
    Mr. Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what action is proposed on the recommendations of the Hallett Boundary Commission for constituencies in British Guiana.
    Mr. H. Fraser: The Governor of British Guiana made an order on 8th February under the provisions of the British Guiana (Electoral Provisions) Order in Council, 1960, dividing the Colony into the thirty-five constituencies recommended by Sir Hugh Hallett, the Electoral Boundaries Commissioner.
    Mr. Brockway: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is a good deal of feeling in British Guiana that these constituencies are unfair, not only between party and party but, what is more unhappy, between race and race? For example, is he aware that one constituency has less than 10,000 electors while another has more than 20,000 electors? While this problem is difficult, in old-fashioned constituencies as in this country, is it not desirable that as far as possible under the new constitution there should be equal electorates?
    Mr. Fraser: No, Sir, I do not think so. We have looked into this very carefully, and perhaps I could just quote that in the 1959 election in this country Horn-church had 87,000 electors and Ross and Cromarty had 25,000 electors. What we are trying to do is to see that the electorates in British Guiana can be got round by individuals and that the terms of reference which were laid down have been carried out.

  NORTHERN RHODESIA

    Federal Troops
    Mrs. Castleasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will instruct the Governor of Northern Rhodesia not to permit the employment of Federal troops in Northern Rhodesia to enforce law and order in the Protectorate.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: No, Sir, but Federal troops would not be used except at the request of the Governor, who is himself responsible for the maintenance of law and order in the territory.
    Mrs. Castle: Is it not very important at this crucial time to let Sir Roy Welensky know that this country remains responsible for constitutional advance and maintenance of law and order in the Protectorate and that we have no intention of handing over that responsibility to the Federal Government?
    Mr. Macleod: I am sure that Sir Roy Welensky knows the position very well. Indeed, in a recent television interview he said that he would not use Federal troops for internal security except at the request of Northern Nigeria.

  KENYA

    Government
    Mr. Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement on Ministerial appointments in Kenya following the elections of the new Legislature.
    Mr. Stonehouseasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will meet leaders of the Kenya African National Union and the Kenya African Democratic Union to discuss the formation of a Government during his visit at the end of March to East Africa.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I would refer the hon. Members to my reply to the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) on 9th March. As I made clear in a supplementary reply on that occasion, I do not intend to intervene—although naturally I am closely consulted—in the Governor's task of forming a Government.
    Mr. Brockway: Whilst I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman wants to see

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    the new Constitution of Kenya get off to a good start, is he not aware that the situation there now is that both the African parties that have a majority are declining to take part in the Administration? Will he take advantage of his coming visit to Tanganyika to spend some time on this problem in Kenya and, in particular, to see Mr. Kenyatta, about whom the trouble largely concentrates, in order to seek to find a solution which will enable a good beginning to be made with the new Constitution?
    Mr. Macleod: I should like to answer the hon. Gentleman in words which I hope will go beyond this House and to people in Kenya. The Governor knows perfectly well that he could today form a strong, able and stable Government from people of all races if he released Mr. Kenyatta. There is nothing that Kenya more desires than a strong and stable Government, and I share that desire to the full, but I made it absolutely clear from the first that matters of law and order are not matters on which one can bargain. I hope, therefore, that men of all races who have studied the Governor's statement and have seen the conditions that he has laid down will be able—and feel themselves doing right for Kenya—to take up the portfolios that will be offered to them.
    Mr. Stonehouse: The Colonial Secretary will know that we wish to be fair to him on this question—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Is he aware that the attitude he is now adopting may well be regarded as a sop to the extreme right wing in Kenya and that he is flying in the face of reality? A stable administration in Kenya can be formed only if the right hon. Gentleman releases Jomo Kenyatta. Is he aware, first, that 95 per cent. of the population of Kenya want Jomo Kenyatta to be released; and, secondly, that the release of Jomo Kenyatta will, in fact, be a contribution to achieving stability?
    Mr. Macleod: The House will recognise that I have been asked this question about many men during the eighteen months or so I have been Secretary of State for the Colonies. I have always given the same response; I will in no circumstances bargain about a matter that is fundamental to law and order in the territory.
    Sir H. Oakshott: Will my right hon. Friend recognise that most of us regard the consideration of law and order in respect of the future of Jomo Kenyatta as absolutely cardinal and fundamental, but that at the same time, now that the elections in Kenya have taken place—with the result that I think many of the Africans had hoped for beforehand—every step should be taken to encourage them to do what he has just said: to accept the responsibility which those elections have placed upon them and take their part in trying to govern the country in which they live?
    Mr. Macleod: I very much agree with that, and I know that it is in that spirit that the Governor is approaching his present consultations.

    Coastal Protectorate
    Mr. Wallasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what proposals he has with regard to the future of the coastal protectorate in Kenya.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: I have nothing to add to the reply made on this subject by the then Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations on 5th April, 1960.
    Mr. Wall: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that probably the best solution might be found within the context of an East African Federation? Will he discuss this matter when he goes to East Africa next week? Will he visit Zanzibar?
    Mr. Macleod: I shall visit Zanzibar, and it may be that this will come up in discussions; but it is a matter which will have to be resolved at some time in the future. I am inclined to agree with my hon. Friend that this and many other problems in East Africa could be more easily solved in the context of federation.

    Jomo Kenyatta
    Dr. D. Johnsonasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make available Command Paper No. 9081, 1954, Memorandum on the Mau Mau Oath Ceremonies, at present only available in the Library of the House of Commons, to the list of persons submitted to him by the hon. Member for

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    Carlisle; and if he will meanwhile withhold further advice to the Governor of Kenya relative to the release of Jomo Kenyatta.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Copies of the document concerned were distributed to public libraries, where they are available at the discretion of the librarian on application. As regards the second part of the Question, I have already made the position clear in the House.
    Dr. Johnson: Although, on the one hand, from the point of view of its obscene content, this paper is not far outside the bounds of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", there has, on the other hand, never been any suggestion at any time that the late Mr. D. H. Lawrence should be made Prime Minister of Great Britain? Is not that analogous to what has been suggested in the House today, and is it not repugnant that anyone associated with those ceremonies should occupy a responsible position in the Commonwealth?
    Mr. Macleod: My hon. Friend need not prove to this House that Mau Mau was a bestial movement. We all know that. I made it quite clear in my Answer that copies of this document were not, as my hon. Friend's Question assumes, restricted to the Library of the House of Commons but were distributed to public libraries as well.
    Sir A. Hurdasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if, in view of the recent attacks on Europeans in Kenya, reminiscent of the Mau Mau days, he will amplify the reference in the Governor's broadcast of 1st March to the security risk involved in releasing Jomo Kenyatta now; and if the Kenya police force have traced any organisation behind these attacks.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: There is no evidence of political motivation nor of any organisation behind the recent increase in serious crime in Kenya which arises mainly from the present economic depression aggravated by the widespread and serious drought and consequential food shortage in many areas, and Europeans have been neither the sole nor even the principal victims. I consider that the Governor's reference in his statement of 1st March to the security risk involved in releasing Jomo Kenyatta puts the position clearly.
    Mr. Stonehouse: Is my right hon. Friend aware that stability and law and order in Kenya will be undermined if he continues to detain Jomo Kenyatta, and on this issue will he not also accept the wise advice of Mr. Nyrere, who says that Jomo Kenyatta should be released?
    Mr. Macleod: There can be no swifter way of destroying the prospects for the future of Kenya, which I think are very encouraging at the present time, after the elections than by retreating from a position so carefully and deliberately taken up by the Governor of Kenya and Her Majesty's Government.

  JAMAICA

    Industrial Development
    Mr. Fisherasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what encouragemetn is being given by Her Majesty's Government to private investors to assist in the industrial development of Jamaica.
    Mr. H. Fraser: The encouragement of private investors to assist in the industrial development of Jamaica is primarily a matter for the Jamaican Government. But Her Majesty's Government keep in touch with the office of the Jamaica Government's Industrial Development Corporation in this country and are always anxious to help in any way possible. The Colonial Development Corporation's commitments on housing and industrial projects in Jamaica, supplementary to private investment, total more than £6·5 million.
    Mr. Fisher: Although industrial development is going extremely well in Jamaica—with one new factory erected every month—is my hon. Friend aware that it is nevertheless the fact that of this capital a large proportion comes from the United States, a much smaller proportion from Canada, and only a very small proportion indeed from the United Kingdom? Can he and the Jamaican Government together devise a means of correcting this discrepancy in our capital provision?
    Mr. Fraser: As long as capital comes from a friendly Power and from this country, I believe that our official sources of capital formation should be devoted to the more backward areas where the need for capital is even greater than it is in Jamaica.

  WEST INDIES

    Colonial Development Corporation
    Mr. Fisherasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what plans he has regarding the future rôle of the Colonial Development Corporation in the West Indies after the Federation becomes independent.
    Mr. H. Fraser: The Colonial Development Corporation will, after independence, be able to continue with projects approved prior to independence, and also to undertake advisory and managerial functions at the request of the West Indian authorities.
    Mr. Fisher: My hon. Friend will be aware, as most hon. Members possibly are, of the C.D.C. conditions of operation in countries like Ghana and Malaya when they emerged to independence, but am I not right in thinking that there has never been laid down any immutable policy on this, or any firm statement that C.D.C. conditions of operating will necessarily and rigidly be applied in any and every country exactly as they were in those two countries? I hope my hon. Friend will not say that today but that he still has an open mind on the extent of C.D.C. operations.
    Mr. Fraser: We are bound to a large extent by the 1958 Act. There are, of course, other means of helping emergent territories which are more effective and appropriate—Commonwealth assistance loans and the various promises we have made to the West Indies in what is called the Manley Agreement, which continues to 1964.
    Mr. G. M. Thomson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that very inadequate answer is a reflection of the delays in coming to a decision about the future policy of the Colonial Development Corporation, and in the statement of future policy, promised very shortly, will not the Government seriously reconsider the policy of allowing the Colonial Development Corporation, which has played a very big role in the Caribbean, to go on beyond independence and to extend its operations?
    Mr. Fraser: I do not want to anticipate my right hon. Friend's statement.

  SIERRA LEONE

    Arrests
    Mr. R. Edwardsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the state of unrest in Sierra Leone and the arrest of the executive committee of the All People's Congress; whether he is aware that elected members of the House of Representatives have been arrested by the police and their homes searched; and whether he will make a statement on the present situation in Sierra Leone.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Recently a campaign has developed under the auspices of the All People's Congress in favour of a general election before independence. In the course of demonstrations organised by the party, a number of arrests were made and certain people, including some leaders of the party, have been charged before the Sierra Leone courts with certain offences.
    These events in no way imply a general state of unrest or any change in the general support of the country for independence on 27th April, 1961.
    Mr. Edwards: Is the Minister aware that I have in my hands, received today, a resolution carried by the Sierra Leone Council of Labour, a non-political, moderate body representing 30,000 trade unionists in Sierra Leone, threatening passive resistance because of an anti-trade union law which is now before the House of Representatives? Is he aware also that the Member of Parliament for Kono, one of the two opposition Members of the House of Representatives, has been sentenced to six months imprisonment merely for criticising a Paramount Chief. Further, is the Minister aware that Wallace Johnson, a well-known African figure, who was on his way to London, has been arrested and has been compelled to put down bail of £700? Is he aware also that the Constitution has not been published—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's question is out of order because of its inordinate length and composition. Will the hon. Member deal with it in this way? Will he stop there and allow the Minister to answer at this point whatever the question is?
    Mr. Macleod: Taking the question up as best I can, the resolution from a labour movement to which the hon. Member has referred is obviously a very different matter from the Question which he has put down, but if he would care to send me details about it I will, of course, look into it.
    It is true, as I said, that certain leading members of the All People's Congress have been charged, but the charges have been made in accordance with the ordinary processes of law and they mill be dealt with by the courts in accordance with the ordinary procedure.
    As regards the Constitution, there has been close consultation, of course, between Her Majesty's Government and the Sierra Leone Government. As a matter of fact, the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth this morning unanimously gave informal agreement to Sierra Leone becoming a member of the Commonwealth after independence.
    Mr. Marquand: Does the Minister realise that some of the disquiet which does exist to a certain extent in Sierra Leone is caused by the absence of a copy of the Constitution which citizens may study? Will he accelerate the laying of the order, or whatever the required formality is, in order that copies of the Constitution can be available for study in Sierra Leone? How long have we to wait for the Bill?
    Mr. Macleod: That is a very good point, and it is something about which I have been in correspondence with the Sierra Leone Government. Obviously, it would not be appropriate to publish a draft Order. The Order in Council will be published very soon. I believe that it is intended to present the Bill tomorrow to the House of Commons.

  HONG KONG

    Electricity Supply Companies
    Mr. Thorntonasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will give the date of the appointment of the Hong Kong Electricity Supply Companies Commission, the date of the publication of the Commission's report and recommendations, the dates of the electricity supply companies' counter-proposals
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    and the Governor's rejection thereof, and the final date by which any further counter-proposals from the companies have to be submitted.
    Mr. H. Fraser: The appointment of the Commission was announced on 10th June, 1959. Its report was published on 20th January, 1960. Counter-proposals by the two electricity supply companies were put forward on 24th October, 1960, and were rejected by the Government on 27th January, 1961. On 18th February the Hong Kong Government put fresh proposals to the companies, whose reply is expected in the near future.
    Mr. Thornton: Is this not a disturbing state of affairs? Is it not a fact that the Commission took six months to find that there was a need to nationalise the electric power supply companies, and is the Minister aware that in evidence to the Commission the power companies made it quite clear that there was no halfway house between private enterprise and public ownership? Are not the Government now going unduly out of their way to find a method by which these private enterprise undertakings which have fallen down on their responsibilities can be allowed to continue?
    Mr. Fraser: No, Sir. It is very important that these negotiations should go on, and I hope that there will be a very satisfactory conclusion to them.

    Foodstuffs (Imports from China)
    Mr. Teelingasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how much rice and other foodstuffs have been imported into or passed through Hong Kong coming from China since the famine conditions started on the Chinese mainland.
    Mr. H. Fraser: Imports of rice, frozen meat and poultry, fresh fruit and soya beans in the last four months showed no significant changes from imports in the same period in 1959–60. There has, however, been a noticeable falling off in imports of fresh meat and poultry, eggs, fish and fresh vegetables. The shortfall has to a large extent been made good from other sources. There are no significant re-exports of food imported from China.
    Mr. Teeling: Does my hon. Friend not think that it would be a kindness and a

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    help to the people of China if these imports were for the moment discouraged while there are famine conditions in China, so that food could be diverted to the famine area.
    Mr. Fraser: No, Sir.

  ADEN

    Health and Welfare
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what precise inducements are being offered to girls in Aden Colony to become student nurses; what progress is being made in this respect in the Aden Protectorates; to what extent progress in improved sanitation in working-class accommodation has been effected; and what further action has been taken to suppress the sale and usage of qat and to publicise its deleterious consequences to health.
    Mr. H. Fraser: Intending student nurses are offered accelerated increments during training, and six additional increments on the completion of training. There are good prospects of early promotion and opportunities for further training in the United Kingdom to qualify for the posts of assistant matron and matron.
    In Aden Protectorate training facilities are provided for up to 27 nurses. So far, 12 girls have passed; 10 more are under training.
    In recent years, all Government working-class houses have been provided with water-borne sanitation. All new private working-class houses in the municipal area must be similarly provided, but in certain areas a general conversion to water-borne sanitation is not possible until planned improvements to the drainage systems have been completed.
    No action has been taken to suppress the sale and usage of qat since the ban on its importation was removed in 1959.
    I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having combined three completely diverse subjects in one Question.
    Mr. Sorensen: I thank the hon. Gentleman for the personal eulogy. Does he agree that the number of trained nurses and nursing trainees in Aden Colony is altogether inadequate and that much more must be done in order to overcome prejudice and secure the number of nurses required for the hospital service in Aden?
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    Reverting to the last part of my Question, is the hon. Gentleman aware that qat is recognised to be a very deleterious drug, and something should be done to prevent its use, which has been estimated to cost the Colony about £2½ million a year?
    Mr. Fraser: In reply to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, there are, of course, 27 vacancies for trainees and only 22 people so far have come forward. We are broadcasting to try to bring more people in.
    As regards qat—however the word is pronounced—I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Qat Commission's Report published in 1958 showing that its effect was deleterious only if it was taken in excessive quantities.
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what political parties now exist in Aden Colony; which of these accept the present constitution; what developments have been initiated by the Ministers in charge; and approximately how many persons are now unemployed.
    Mr. H. Fraser: Three organisations which are primarily political are registered; the South Arabian League, which does not accept the present constitution, and the United National Party and the Independence Party, which do. I am placing in the Library a copy of the Aden Government's Administrative Survey for 1960, which describes developments during the year under the various Government Departments for which the Colony Ministers are responsible. The number of unemployed registered with the Labour Department is 2,644.
    Mr. Sorensen: Could the Minister add a word about the work of the Ministers in charge and say whether these Departments are now working satisfactorily and whether progress has been registered at all by any one of them?
    Mr. Fraser: If the hon. Gentleman will look at the Report in the Library, I am sure that he will be satisfied.

  NYASALAND

    Nyasa Prisoners, South Africa
    Mr. Marquandasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what requests he has received from the eight Nyasas recently imprisoned in South Africa for

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    repatriation to Nyasaland; what information he has received from the Government of Nyasaland about this matter; and what action he intends to take to ensure that these men receive the appropriate protection.
    Mr. H. Fraser: Neither I nor the Governor has received any request direct from the persons concerned. The representation of the interests of persons from the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is in any event the responsibility of the Federal Government through the Federal High Commissioner in the Union.
    Mr. Marquand: If the hon. Gentleman has not seen copies, will he accept it from me that the affidavits made by these eight Nyasas constitute a terrible record of arbitrary arrest and shocking cruelty to prisoners? May I send him a copy and will he undertake to consider and discuss with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what action has been taken to repatriate these men, every one of whom has expressed a desire to go back to his own country of Nyasaland?
    Mr. Fraser: Yes, Sir.
    Mrs. White: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that many of us in this House are deeply disturbed at the position of British subjects in the Union of South Africa and their subjection to arbitrary arrest? While the responsibility for this territory does not lie with him, can he assure us that adequate arrangements are made to safeguard the position of people from other territories who may be in South Africa and subject to this form of arbitrary arrest?
    Mr. Fraser: Until 31st May this is a matter for the Commonwealth Relations Office and such questions should be addressed to that Department.

  COLONIAL TERRITORIES

    Governors
    Mr. Grimondasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many colonial Governors in the last 10 years have been citizens of Commonwealth countries other than Great Britain.
    Mr. Iain Macleod: Seven Governors have come from outside Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
    Mr. Grimond: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer. Is it the policy to encourage the appointment from other Commonwealth countries, and has this been discussed with the representatives of the Commonwealth now here?
    Mr. Fraser: No, Sir, not specially. A large number of people from the Commonwealth join in the overseas service, but in general the largest number come from this country.
    Mr. G. M. Thomson: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether any of these recruits come from the newer Commonwealth countries and, if not, will he give consideration to encouraging recruitment from those countries?
    Mr. Fraser: They have their own local problems and there is a shortage of civil servants in these territories.

    Colonial Service
    Mr. Grimondasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will expand the Colonial Service into a Commonwealth service available for administrative and technical assistance anywhere within the Commonwealth.
    Mr. H. Fraser: For the reasons given in the Command Paper on Service with Overseas Governments my right hon. Friend does not consider that it would be practicable to change the present Overseas Civil Service into a general Commonwealth Service based on the United Kingdom and ultimately employed by Her Majesty's Government. But we still have before us the recommendation of the Select Committee on Estimates that there should be a study of the possibility of a Commonwealth Advisory and Technical Service and, as my right hon. Friend told Parliament on 19th December last, we hope that this can be examined further after a decision has been reached about the setting up of a joint Department concerned with technical assistance for countries overseas.
    Mr. Grimond: May I ask first, when the hon. Gentleman may be in a position to give us further information on this project and, secondly, whether he

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    would also consider making this service available outside the Commonwealth in places where technical assistance is wanted, for instance, in the Congo?
    Mr. Fraser: I think the hon. Gentleman should await the statement from my right hon. Friend.

  FIJI

    Population
    Mr. LI. Williamsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what was the rate of increase of population in Fiji for the Fijian and Indian population, respectively, at the last available estimate.
    Mr. H. Fraser: At the last census in 1956 the Fijian population was 148,134 and the Indian population 169,403. These figures showed increases of 26 per cent. and 41 per cent., respectively, over the previous census in 1946. Since 1956 it is estimated that the Fijian population has increased by a further 13 per cent. and the Indian population by a further 17 per cent.
    Mr. Williams: Will the Minister agree that in Fiji, as in many other territories, economic development is well-nigh impossible unless the population increase is controlled? Will he undertake to implement one of the major recommendations of the Burns Commission by setting up family planning facilities in Fiji and not yield to the minority religious opinion in this country which is hostile to the idea of family planning?
    Mr. Fraser: I happen to be part of that religious minority. But this is quite a different matter in Fiji, where the main answer to the Fijian problem is to increase agricultural production and bring in new industries. In addition, we have increased the number of family planning centres from five to seven; but I still believe our main purpose must be to see that the resources of Fiji are properly used so that it can sustain a larger population than there is there today.
    Mr. G. M. Thomson: Does the Minister say that he does not accept the recommendation of the Burns Commission on this matter?
    Mr. Fraser: Family planning centres and birth control facilities are entirely different matters, as the hon. Gentleman must know. One of the recommendations of the Burns Commission which we accepted was that there should be advice on family planning, but the further recommendation, or suggestion, that there should be a free issue of contraceptives has not been accepted.

    Land and Industry
    Mr. LI. Williamsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what proposals he has in mind for bringing unused land into use and for establishing new industries in Fiji.
    Mr. H. Fraser: With regard to the first part of the hon. Member's Question, the declaration of reserves is being accelerated and the Land Reserve Commissioners are concentrating on areas best suited to development so that land may be made available for long-term leases at the earliest possible date. Proposals for a Land Development Authority are in draft and increased funds are being made available for agricultural loans.
    With regard to the second part of the Question, I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) on 31st January.
    Mr. Williams: Is the Minister aware of the substantial opinion in this country and indeed in Fiji that the recommendations of the Burns Commission which are being implemented are the minor ones and that the major one—the bringing of unused land into use, the establishment of new industries, and the recasting of the Fijian Administration—are not being implemented and that the latter are obviously the important ones?
    Mr. Fraser: I must disagree. I think that what are being implemented are of great importance—the development of land, the development of industry and also these new long leases and other improvements in addition to improvements inside the Administration. I believe that these are very important recommendations. The last thing we want to create is violent hostility between the Indian and the Fijian population.

  AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

    Flooding, Stanley and Methley
    Mr. A. Robertsasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will take steps to minimise flooding in the Stanley and Methley areas by demolishing the Penbank Weir on the River Calder, which is not required for navigable purposes.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. W. M. F. Vane): The Yorkshire Ouse River Board, which is the responsible authority, has started work for the alleviation of flooding at Methley. This work is receiving grant-aid from this Department. I understand from the board that the removal of Pen-bank Weir would have little effect on high flood levels in this area.
    Mr. Roberts: Is the Minister aware that the interested parties many years ago agreed that if this artificial barrier were destroyed it would reduce to some extent the flooding in that part of the country?
    Mr. Vane: The river board has looked into this. I understand that this weir is "drowned", as it is technically described, during times of high flood. The lands which are flooded behind the weir are washlands, which, of course, frequently help when there is flooding.
    Mr. Popplewell: Will the Minister cause further inquiry to be made into this, because the information tendered to him is not quite accurate? Is he aware that this weir serves no useful purpose at all and that many acres of land by the river are flooded? Is he aware that farmers who work on the land and market gardeners who have had a very hard job are thoroughly saddened when year by year their crops are ruined? Is he aware that this may be prevented if this weir were destroyed?
    Mr. Vane: I will look into this matter again, but the hon. Member's information is not entirely the same as mine. The hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. A. Roberts), with whom we have been in correspondence, knows that we have been in close touch with the river board and the local authorities.

    Advisory Officers (Exchanges)
    Mr. B. Harrisonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what exchanges are proposed between advisory officers of his Department and New Zealand district officers.
    Mr. Vane: My hon. Friend will, no doubt, remember that a proposal to exchange advisory officers was discussed with the New Zealand Government when he accompanied my right hon. Friend's predecessor on his visit to New Zealand in 1959. Although agreement in principle on many points was reached last year, it has not been possible to make firm arrangements as yet.
    Mr. Harrison: Would my hon. Friend take advantage of the visit to this country of the Prime Minister of New Zealand to press this matter, because it could be of mutual advantage to both countries?
    Mr. Vane: We appreciate, and I think that the New Zealand Government appreciate, that it would be of mutual advantage, but a number of practical, financial and personal questions have to be overcome before this could be put into operation.

    Grain Pits and Bins
    The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:
    Sir JOHN MAITLAND: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will introduce legislation to amend the Agriculture Act, 1957, to ensure that grain reception pits and pre-holding bins, of a kind that a prudent landlord, having regard to their cost and all other circumstances, would make himself or pay compensation to a tenant for making, are eligible for a grant.
    Sir J. Maitland: Since putting down this Question I have discovered that I have an interest in it, which I now formally wish to declare.
    Mr. Vane: If pits and bins conform with the tests my hon. Friend describes they are already eligible. Many are ineligible because they are movable or form part of the grain handling equipment that a tenant would normally provide, as he does much other working equipment.

    Intensive Production (Calves and Chickens)
    Dr. Kingasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will institute an inquiry into the intensive methods of food production now being used to provide white veal by the Dutch method of rearing calves and chickens by the broiler and battery systems, with a view to ending unnecessary cruelty.
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Christopher Soames): No, Sir, I do not think that an inquiry is necessary. It is already an offence under the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, to cause unnecessary suffering to animals including calves and chickens.
    Dr. King: Is the Minister aware that most people, including most farmers, would agree that the creatures we kill for food have a right to live naturally before we take their lives? Would he not agree that under new intensive methods of food production there is unnaturalness and unnecessary cruelty?
    Mr. Soames: The hon. Member referred to living naturally, but the whole process of domestication of animals can be regarded as to some extent an interference with Nature. There is a difference of opinion about the degree of interference, but the experiments which have been carried out on this type of rearing of animals show that it certainly can be done without cruelty. What we should bear in mind is that if this is to be a successful operation the animal must thrive and that if there is a question of cruelty and the animal is suffering it does not thrive—and there is no evidence to show that.
    Commander Maydon: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in my constituency there is an example of this form of rearing of veal calves and I should be very happy to arrange for any hon. Member to visit that establishment to see that this mode of rearing veal can be done without cruelty?

    Ploughing-up Grants
    Mr. Scott-Hopkinsasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many applications he received for ploughing-up grants in the county
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    of Cornwall during the years 1959–60 and 1960–61; how many were paid; and what was the total sum so disbursed.
    Mr. Vane: The current ploughing grant scheme does not end until 31st May, but during the calendar year 1960 £324,800 was paid out on 7,029 claims. For 1959 the figures were £287,300 and 7,018. I regret that the number of applications received is not readily available but it will not differ greatly from the number of claims on which payment was made.

    Toxic Chemicals
    Mrs. Butlerasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what consideration he has given to the report on the deaths of birds and mammals connected with toxic chemicals in the first half of 1960; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Soames: The issues raised by this report have already been considered at a meeting which my Department held on 20th December last with representatives of the interested organisations, including the societies responsible for the report. I have sent the hon. Lady a copy of the statement issued after that meeting which records the measures agreed for dealing with this problem, including a special survey of wild life casualties, with post-mortem examinations. The report is also being considered by the Research Study Group which is examining the need for further research into the effects of toxic chemicals used in agriculture. I trust that these arrangements will provide valuable evidence on which to base any further action which may seem necessary.
    Mrs. Butler: But does the Minister appreciate that since 22nd February over 40 cases not only of pigeons but of song-birds, pheasants and hares believed to have been killed by seed dressings have been reported to one of these societies? Would the right hon. Gentleman therefore, as a matter of urgency while these other measures are being considered, send out a circular as a supplement to his list of approved chemicals, drawing attention to chemicals like Dieldrin which are particularly dangerous and need very special care in handling?
    Mr. Soames: As to the numbers of animals which have been found dead, we have instructed our pest officers in every region to try to collect any bodies of animals or birds which might have died from poisoning and we will have an examination made of them. A circular has been sent to members by the National Farmers' Union, and a circular is being sent out by the Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants to their people about the dressing of seeds. I think that during this year we shall be able to make considerable progress in education in the use of these seed dressings and I hope that we shall have valuable information on which we shall be able to consider future action.

    Bacon Industry
    Mr. Haymanasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what reply he made to the memorandum on the bacon industry in Great Britain submitted to him recently by the British Bacon Curers' Federation.
    Mr. Soames: The memorandum mainly concerned matters affecting the Annual Review about which I shall be making a statement at the end of Questions.
    Mr. Hayman: Has the Minister taken into account in that Price Review the fact that bacon factories in this country are working at less than half capacity and that more than three times what is there produced represents imports from outside the United Kingdom? Will the right hon. Gentleman see that there is stability for production in the bacon factories, because that in its turn produces stability for the pig producers?
    Mr. Soames: I must ask the hon. Gentleman, broadly speaking, to await the statement which I shall make, but he will appreciate that there is a limit to the extent to which guarantee arrangements can be modified in the interests of one section of the industry.

    Annual Price Review
    Mr. Gowerasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from what organisations in Wales he has received representations in connection with the Annual Price Review.
    Mr. Soames: There have, as usual, been consultations under the Agriculture
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    Act, 1947, with the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales. I have also received representations from the Farmers' Union of Wales.
    Mr. Gower: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that reply, might I ask him whether some of the representations do not remind him that there are in Wales peculiar agricultural problems in addition to the problems which obtain all over the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Soames: I am well aware of the problems among agriculturists in Wales.

    Fishing Fleet
    Mr. de Freitasasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what estimate he has made of the cost of re-equipping the fishing fleet to meet the different conditions which will result from the agreement with Iceland.
    Mr. Soames: Decisions on the best way to re-equip the distant water fleet are a matter for the industry in the light of experimental work that has been and will be carried out with Governmental assistance. No estimate can be made until the views of the industry have been formed.
    Mr. de Freitas: Did not the Government consider this, seeing that it was one of the factors which they brought into calculation when they agreed to the Iceland terms? Surely they cannot now say that they agreed blindly to the Iceland terms without knowing what the rough cost would be?
    Mr. Soames: The two things can be linked too simply in the hon. Gentleman's mind. Whether the Iceland agreement lasted for three years or whether it lasted for more, the fact remains that the industry appreciates that there is a good deal to do in the way of new ships—new freezing ships and the like—and in experimentation with different types of ship, and that is being proceeded with.
    Mr. Wall: Can my right hon. Friend at least say when the distant-water section will come within the ambit of the grants and loans scheme?
    Mr. Soames: As my hon. Friend knows, that is being considered along with many other matters arising out of the Fleck Report.

    Damage by Pests
    Mr. Kershawasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on how many occasions in 1959 and 1960 he has served directions on commodity owners and custodians requiring them to carry out treatment prescribed by the Prevention of Damage by Pests Act, 1949.
    Mr. Vane: None, Sir.
    Mr. Kershaw: Is my hon. Friend aware that owing to the increasing habit of the use of bulk storage, both on farms and in depots, there has been a great deal more infestation recently than in the past? Does he not think that the regulations need strengthening?
    Mr. Vane: I could not agree with the whole of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, but it must be admitted that bulk handling and storage provides greater opportunities for infestation. However, our officers are advising farmers and others about how to deal with this problem.

    Bulk Feed Storage Bins
    Mr. Loughlinasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will reconsider his refusal of a grant in respect of bulk feed storage bins made by Mr. F. J. Chamberlayne, details of which have been given to him; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Vane: No, Sir. I am advised that bins of the kind that Mr. Chamberlayne proposes to install fall outside the provisions of the Act since they are of a kind normally provided by a tenant and not by a landlord.
    Mr. Loughlin: Does not the Joint Parliamentary Secretary realise that these bins are a permanent structure, that bins of this kind fall within the Act and that grants have been made on such bins; that they are the most up-to-date, most economical and most labour-saving, according to the National Farmers' Union; and that we can save money for the public by applying a grant to these bins instead of to more costly methods? Will the Joint Parliamentary Secretary explain why his own Advisory Service is now advocating the building of feed bins of this type?
    Mr. Vane: I am not disputing that what Mr. Chamberlayne is installing is up-to-
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    date, but in my original reply I gave the reasons why these fall outside the provisions of the Act, where it is very clearly stated that these grants are designed for the longer-term improvement of agricultural land and not for the provision of miscellaneous equipment. However, if the hon. Gentleman feels that an injustice has been done to his constituent, I hope he will get in touch with me and supply the details.
    Mr. de Freitas: When the officers recommend that these bins should be installed, do they also point out that they do not come within the Act?
    Mr. Vane: I am sure they do. I think that sometimes in the early stages of a scheme like this approval has not been entirely consistent—I will admit that—but today it is entirely clear which form of equipment falls within and which without the Farm Improvements Scheme.

    Bracken
    Mr. Kimballasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what reports he has had from the Agricultural Research Council about the progress of the chemical control of bracken; and when he expects to have sufficient evidence to allow chemical spraying to rank for Government grant under the Eradication of Bracken Scheme.
    Mr. Vane: My right hon. Friend has been kept in close touch with the trials carried out by the Agricultural Research Council's Weed Research Organisation. They do not as yet provide conclusive evidence of the degree of effectiveness of chemical control of bracken. I am afraid it is not possible to say when or whether the evidence from these trails will justify grant-aid for this method of bracken control.
    Mr. Kimball: Will my hon. Friend give an assurance that, as soon as he gets a satisfactory report about any one of the chemicals with which experiments are now being carried out, he will allow it to be used under the Eradication of Bracken Scheme?
    Mr. Vane: I can tell my hon. Friend that we are as anxious as he is to secure effective control of bracken, but I cannot give the specific assurance for which he asks in such a case. The House will

    1745
    realise from my reply to an earlier Question how careful one must be with any form of chemical spray.
    Mr. Woodburn: Will the hon. Gentleman consider other forms of control such as the use of cattle and pigs on the land to destroy the bracken?
    Mr. Vane: All these various methods—including both good husbandry, such as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, and control by various methods of cultivation are well known.

    Fertilisers (Subsidy)
    Mr. Loveysasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will consider making arrangements whereby the fertiliser subsidy far agricultural use is paid direct to the manufacturer instead of to individual farmers, with a view to saving administrative costs.
    Mr. Vane: This has been considered on a number of occasions. If it were done it would be difficult to ensure that the full benefit would go to agriculture as required by statute. It is therefore thought that the present arrangement is the best.
    Mr. Loveys: Is my hon. Friend aware that it was because I considered the previous replies unsatisfactory that I have raised the matter again? Is it not the case that at present the Ministry has to supply forms to the merchants, the merchants have to send the forms to the farmers to complete part of them, the farmers then send them back to the merchants to complete the other half, the merchants then send the forms to the Ministry to be checked and the Ministry then pays the individual farmers separately? Surely there could be a considerable saving in administrative costs?

    Water Supplies, Canwell
    Mr. Snowasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he is aware of the anxiety of smallholders and farmers in the Canwell area of Staffordshire, arising out of shortage of water for milk production purposes; whether he is aware that the leakage in the existing water supply system, referred
    1746
    to in correspondence with the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth, has now been discovered and rectified; and what steps he proposes now, in conjunction with the Birmingham Corporation and the South Staffordshire Water Board, to improve the overall supply of water to this area which is still inadequate.
    Mr. Vane: My right hon. Friend is aware that there have been seasonal shortages of water on the Canwell Smallholdings Estate. As the hon. Member says, the Birmingham Corporation, which owns the estate and is responsible for its management, has repaired the leakage which was aggravating the trouble. I understand the corporation is considering plans to improve the supply to this area generally.
    Mr. Snow: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these smallholders, numbering twenty-one, feel that they have been neglected by the Smallholdings Committee of Birmingham Corporation? Is he also aware that already this year one supply of milk has been rejected because of lack of cooling water? Will he ask Birmingham Corporation to expedite and increase an overall supply and not continue to neglect these smallholders?
    Mr. Vane: Leaving aside the question of neglect, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are in touch with Birmingham Corporation, which is responsible for the management of these smallholdings. The hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. Friend is not responsible for water supplies, not being the statutory undertaker. As I have said, we have been in touch with the Birmingham Corporation, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that improvements are now being planned.

    Afforestation
    Mr. Boydenasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will instruct the Forestry Commission to refuse to approve grants or loans to private afforestation concerns proposing to plant in national parks until their afforestation schemes are approved by the local National Park Committee.
    Mr. Vane: No, Sir.
    Mr. Boyden: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that there has been very considerable dismay among farmers' committees since they have heard about the scheme for private afforestation, particularly in the South-West? Would not this method be a most effective way of controlling private afforestation?
    Mr. Vane: No, Sir. I know that there has been certain concern, though "dismay" is rather too strong. It is certainly not the Forestry Commission's responsibility to make or to withhold grants other than in pursuance of its duty to promote the interests of forestry. The Forestry Commission and the National Parks Commission have recently entered into a voluntary agreement with the interests concerned under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and it is hoped that that will solve the difficulty.

    Foot-and-Mouth Disease
    Mr. Moreasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will make a statement as to the cause of the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease at Bridgnorth, Shropshire.
    Mr. Vane: This primary outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurred among cattle and pigs on premises at Bridgnorth on 10th March. The pigs had been fed on swill which may well have contained infected imported meat which had not been properly treated.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I trust that hon. Members will make their conversations a little quieter so that we can hear the Questions and Answers.
    Mr. More: Is my hon. Friend aware that, following the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Sir A. Hurd) on 2nd March, there is the gravest concern in the Bridgnorth area regarding this danger from swill? Would he consider if additional safeguard can be introduced against this danger?
    Mr. Vane: We are always considering additional safeguards, but I hope my hon. Friend has noted the last words of my original reply, which were that the infected meat had not been properly treated.

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA (WITHDRAWAL FROM COMMONWEALTH)
Mr. Gaitskell(by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement on the decision of the Union Government to withdraw its application for South Africa's continued membership of the Commonwealth as a Republic.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): The House will know that the Prime Minister of South Africa yesterday decided to withdraw his application for the Union of South Africa to remain a member of the Commonwealth after that country becomes a Republic on 31st May next. Until then, South Africa will remain a member of the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister of South Africa will, therefore, continue to take part in the deliberations of the present Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.
I am sure that I speak for many of us on both sides of the House when I express our deep regret that the Commonwealth ties with South Africa, which have endured for fifty years, are shortly to be severed, and our regret, also, for the circumstances which have made this unavoidable. Remembering that the Commonwealth is an association of peoples of all races, colours and creeds, we must hope that, in the years to come, it will be possible for South Africa once more to play her part in the Commonwealth.
The Prime Minister of South Africa has said that he hopes to co-operate in all possible ways with all those members of the Commonwealth who are willing to maintain good relations with South Africa. He has also said that South Africa will remain a member of the sterling area. We, for our part, welcome these statements, and intend to cooperate fully in matters of common interest.
The House will wish to debate the various implications of the situation with which we are now faced. No doubt arrangements can be made through the usual channels for a debate next week.
The House will appreciate that I do not feel free to go into further details

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until the Conference is over, and the final communique has been agreed.
Mr. Gaitskell: We welcome the Prime Minister's suggestion that there should be a debate next week. I think that it is clear to all of us that the Commonwealth, in the last few days, has passed through a great crisis, perhaps the greatest crisis in its history, whose impact was bound to be very great, very decisive, not only in the Commonwealth itself, but far beyond it.
I realise that some take the view that what has happened is a step towards the dissolution and decay of the Commonwealth. For our part, on these benches, we take the contrary view. To us, the outcome, bearing in mind all the circumstances, strengthens our faith that the Commonwealth is an institution of great potential value for humanity.
I hope that I may be permitted to put my remarks in the form of a statement—I think that that is usual on such occasions—and not simply as questions. It can hardly be denied—can it?—that the theory and practice of apartheid—the advocacy of a permanent division of men according to the colour of their skin, and involving, in practice, different rights, opportunities and status—is a continuous affront to the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth.
Sir K. Pickthorn: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should be glad to know what rights other hon. Members may have to express their opinions on this occasion.
Mr. Speaker: At present, I shall have to see. Strictly speaking, what I am allowed to permit on these occasions is some questions, but I do not wish to complicate the situation. I confess, having heard what the Prime Minister has said, that I think that the House might think we should not, perhaps, be as long about this as on another occasion.
Mr. Gaitskell: I fully agree with what you say, Mr. Speaker, but I think that you would agree that it is usual on such occasions to allow a few preliminary observations before one puts the questions to the Prime Minister.
Hon. Members: No.
Mr. C. Pannell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is the very point
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that I raised with you yesterday—that is, that there are many precedents for the course which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition claims to follow. This was particularly so when the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) was Leader of the Opposition, in the 1945–50 Parliament, in which the then Speaker ruled in his favour. I am sure that you would not wish my right hon. Friend to be treated with less advantage than his predecessors.
Mr. Speaker: I have not treated him in any such way. If the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) agrees with what I am doing about it, I hope that we can now get on.
Mr. Gaitskell: I regret that hon. Members should have misunderstood my intentions in this matter. I will confine myself simply to saying this: we wish profoundly that the dilemma thus created had been resolved by a change in the attitude of the South African Government, but, as this apparently proved to be impossible, it was perhaps best that the Prime Minister of South Africa should recognise the hopeless contradiction of South Africa's staying in the Commonwealth under his Government.
I should like to join with the Prime Minister, if I may, in saying to the people of South Africa, whatever colour they may be, that we hope that, in time, the racial theories and policies adopted by the Union today may be changed and brought into line with those practised in the rest of the Commonwealth, and that they will then return as welcome friends to the Commonwealth.
Viscount Hinchingbrooke: On a point of order. Has it not been recognised, from time immemorial, Mr. Speaker, that the Leader of the Opposition has the perfect right to put a question arising out of a Private Notice Question, but not to indulge in moralising on debatable propositions at Question Time? Is he not exceeding the rights usually accorded to him?
Mr. Speaker: Owing to some noise, I did not myself hear the last sentence the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition uttered. My view about this is that it is wisely left to the discretion of the Chair to determine whether the occasion be one on which the right hon.

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Gentleman should be required strictly to adhere to questions, or whether it is of a more formal character, when some observations in a non-interrogatory form have been permitted.
Mr. Gaitskell: I will, then, repeat what I said before—that I trust that they will one day return, with different racial policies, as welcome friends to the Commonwealth.
Does the Prime Minister expect that the Prime Minister's Conference will, nevertheless, be issuing a statement on the question of racial policies? Secondly, in view of the decision of the Prime Minister of the Union Government, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that our attitude to the High Commission Territories remains unchanged, and will he reaffirm our responsibilities to those territories?
The Prime Minister: The communiqué will be settled tomorrow. Of course, I am in the hands of my colleagues as a whole as to how they wish the communiqué to be drawn.
It is the case that the withdrawal of the Union of South Africa from the Commonwealth will have no constitutional effects upon the relationship between the High Commission Territories and the United Kingdom, nor will the withdrawal of South Africa affect our responsibilities and obligations towards those Territories, which have repeatedly been made clear.
Sir J. Duncan: Without anticipating the debate next week, will my right hon. Friend say that the door remains wide open to the Union of South Africa to come back into the Commonwealth if there should be a change of heart?
The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I said that, and the Leader of the Opposition repeated it, and I am glad that my hon. Friend has brought it up again.
The tragedy of this event is that we are a comradeship of peoples. There will be very many sad people in South Africa, our friends, our relations, men who have lived there for several generations, others who have only recently gone out. There will be sad people of every kind and every race, and do not let us forget them. We are not a combination of Governments. We are a combination of peoples.
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Had it been possible to reach agreement, I think that it would have been reached, but it proved not to be so. This seemed the only dignified way out, and I hope that I may be allowed to pay a tribute to the dignity and courtesy of the Prime Minister of South Africa, which was appreciated by all his colleagues, in what was a very good discussion of a very high level. There we are; I agree that we must look to the future.
Mr. Grimond: Is the Prime Minister aware that there will be widespread agreement in this country with the feeling of sympathy which he has expressed with the people of all races in South Africa who, no doubt, regret this decision as much as anybody and also regret the policies which have made it inevitable?
May I ask two questions which the Prime Minister might consider before the debate? Will he consider giving us information, by a White Paper or in some other way, about his view of the position in the Mandated Territories and British citizenship as it affects South Africa? While I appreciate what he has said about the Protectorates, what will be the position of the High Commissionership of the Protectorates which is now situated in South Africa?
The Prime Minister: I have already dealt with the question of the High Commission Territories. A number of questions will have to be dealt with and some of them would have had to have been dealt with anyway, probably by legislation, owing to the change from a monarchy to a republic. There will now have to be another set of questions which are being studied by the Departments concerned. The change does not happen until 31st May, and I hope, in the course of the debate, to explain, at any rate in outline, what our major legislative and administrative problems are following from this event.
Sir H. Oakshott: Will my right hon. Friend recognise that there are many of us who fully share his sorrow at the outcome of this issue, and, if I may say so respectfully, who have watched with great admiration his tireless efforts to try to bring about an accommodation satisfactory to everybody? Is he further aware, as he has indicated, that there are many of us who see a distinction between

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Governments and peoples, and that if the effects of this decision can be mitigated in the way of trade and commerce, to the advantage of all the peoples of the Union, of all colours and races, that will be very much welcomed by many of us?
The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.
Mr. M. Foot: In the light of this decision, will Her Majesty's Government review some of the votes which they have cast at the United Nations in recent weeks, in particular their vote this week about South West Africa, since we owe obligations to the people there as well as to those in other parts of Africa?
The Prime Minister: Certainly, but this is a very complicated question, part of which is a question of the interpretation of the legal position and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, given in 1950. Apart from the substance, there are quite complicated legal questions which we are also studying.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS
Mr. M. Foot: On a point of order. May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether any application was made to you by the Home Secretary to answer Question No. 66 and Question No. 75, if they were not reached at Question Time?
Mr. Speaker: The answer is in the negative.
Mr. Foot: May I not ask through you, Mr. Speaker, whether the Home Secretary would give an answer to those Questions now?
Mr. Speaker: No.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business of the House for next week?
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for the next week will be as follows:
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MONDAY, 20TH MARCH—Supply [11th Allotted Day]: Report stage of the Civil Estimates and Estimates for Revenue Departments Vote on Account.
A debate will take place on Housing in England and Wales.
At 9.30 p.m. the Question will be put from the Chair on the Vote under discussion and on all outstanding Votes required by the end of the Financial year.
Consideration of Motions to approve the Import Duties (Temporary Exemptions) (Chemicals) Order; and the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) (Colliery Workers Supplementary Scheme) Amendment Order.
TUESDAY, 21ST MARCH—SeCOrid Reading of the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill.
A debate will take place on the Minister of Transport's statement on the British Transport Commission, until about seven o'clock.
Afterwards there will be a debate on the Report of the Southern Rhodesia Constitutional Conference, until about ten o'clock.
WEDNESDAY, 22ND MARCH—Second Reading of the Sierra Leone Independence Bill, which is being presented tomorrow.
There is some urgency for this Bill and it is hoped that the House will be good enough to facilitate its progress. We have, for example, to publish the constitution for the new independence of Sierra Leone and obtain formal approval of the Commonwealth Governments for the admission of Sierra Leone to the Commonwealth, and to do that, if possible, before Easter.
Report stage of the Criminal Justice Bill.
Consideration of a Lords Amendment to the Betting Levy Bill.
THURSDAY, 23RD MARCH—Committee and remaining stages of the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill.
A debate will take place on the Iron and Steel Industry, with particular reference to the disposal of holdings by the Iron and Steel Holdings Realisation Agency, until about 8.30 p.m.

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FRIDAY, 24TH MARCH—Consideration of Private Members' Bills.
MONDAY, 27TH MARCH—The proposed business will be: Second Reading of the Housing Bill and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Mr. Gaitskell: Will the right hon. Gentleman care to make plain that the references in his statement to Tuesday's business ending at 10 p.m. and Thursday's business ending at 8.30 p.m. did not mean that all debating would stop at those points? In other words, will he remind the House that the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill and the Committee and remaining stages are excepted business?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that my hon. Friends will no doubt wish to raise a number of other matters after the business on those days has been disposed of? While we are prepared to do what we can to help with the Sierra Leone Independence Bill, which we, too, wish to see made law quickly, nevertheless his idea of concluding the Report stage of the Criminal Justice Bill on Wednesday seems to us to be out of the question.
Mr. Butler: It is a well-known tradition of the House that on the Consolidated Fund Bill there is an opportunity for general debate and for private Members to bring forward matters in which they are interested. My reference to those two subjects was at the request of the Opposition. Particular times were mentioned in both cases not exactly by agreement, but simply as an indication that there would be more than one debate and that the debates would have to be partitioned out. Nothing I have said in any way inhibits discussion on the Consolidated Fund Bill.
I expect that we shall make some progress with the Report stage of the Criminal Justice Bill. It is a constructive Bill about which we must be reasonable, and although we have preferred not to have to take the Sierra Leone Bill before it we must do so for constitutional reasons; but in the circumstances we will pay due attention to the need for adequate time for the Criminal Justice Bill.
Mr. P. Williams: I thought the Prime Minister said that there would be a debate on South Africa. This appears to
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have passed by my right hon. Friend. Is there an indication that it is to be next week or the week after?
Mr. Butler: No. Things do not usually pass by me. The reason I announced it like this—I say this for the benefit of my hon. Friend—was that that was business agreed before. If we are to fit in a debate on South Africa, conversations will be necessary through the usual channels. There is an opportunity and I will have to let the House know the arrangement so that hon. Members will know.
Mr. Williams: For how long? The whole day?
Mr. Butler: That will be a matter for discussion.
Mr. Shinwell: Did I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that on Tuesday next a debate on the announcement we heard yesterday from the Minister of Transport will take place until seven o'clock? On the Consolidated Fund Bill, when it is unlikely that any vote will emerge, if I table a Motion of censure calling for the resignation of the Minister of Transport, and if I am supported by other hon. Members, will the right hon. Gentleman find time to debate it?
Mr. Butler: I must wait and see what the right hon. Gentleman puts down, but this is a request from the Opposition and it seems to me to provide a good opportunity for discussing this subject. As I have already told the Leader of the Opposition, I have simply indicated how time might be settled between this and other subjects on the Consolidated Fund Bill.
Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. On the debate on Tuesday on the Consolidated Fund Bill, is it not your function, Mr. Speaker, to decide who shall be called during that debate, and for the hon. Member whom you select to decide what subject he will raise? Is there any convention or rule of the House which enables the usual channels, or anybody else but you, to decide who shall be called, when he shall be called, or what he shall talk about?
Mr. Speaker: Nobody decides who shall be called except myself, and in the circumstances mentioned by the hon.

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Member the hon. Member so called would no doubt talk about the topic which he thought most appropriate. On the other hand, I would not like to give the impression that I should be wholly unaware that it might be for the convenience of the House in general to group certain topics at certain times.
Sir T. Moore: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many hon. Members are deeply interested and concerned about the Report stage of the Criminal Justice Bill? Will he ensure that we are not, I will not say fobbed off—that we are not restricted to debate at a late hour, when none of our mental equipment is at its brightest and best, but that, should we not stop at a reasonable hour he will give us a further opportunity to continue this very important discussion?
Mr. Butler: The undertakings I gave to the Leader of the Opposition obviously apply to my hon. Friend and to the whole House. I was not simply giving undertakings to one side of the House. If hon. Members wish to raise topics on the Bill, and they are called by the Chair during the Report stage, we must discuss them and come to decisions on them.
Mr. Dugdale: Would I be right in deducing from the Prime Minister's statement that there may be some readjustment of the business next week to discuss South Africa?
Mr. Butler: I think that we must have a discussion on this matter through the usual channels, since a good deal of the available time next week is at the disposal, so to speak, of the House and the Opposition. I think that conversations are essential before we decide.
Mr. John Hall: Has my right hon. Friend's attention been called to the proceedings last Tuesday, when we were able to debate only the Navy Estimates and a small part of the Army Vote, and were unable to debate the Air Force Vote? In future, may we have more time to discuss these very important Votes?
Mr. Butler: The matter was raised on the Floor of the House before the debate started. Now that the debate has taken place I think that there is every reason to look at the matter with a view
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to full consideration of this question, but in view of recent practice I cannot give any undertaking today.
Mr. S. Silverman: On a point of order. May I respectfully submit to you Mr. Speaker, the bearing which the question just asked has on the point of order I raised a few minutes ago? Various Estimates and like the Consolidated Fund Bill and the Appropriations Bill, are traditionally occasions when private Members can raise their own particular questions on all sorts of matters which are not covered by agreement through the usual channels, which are not matters of general debate, but are questions which there is no other opportunity to raise.
One of the reasons why the situation developed about which the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) and some others of us complained was the effect given to the unofficial agreement to devote ourselves to general questions of policy yesterday afternoon at the expense of the matters which were dealt with. What I am submitting is that these occasions are not the appropriate occasions for agreement for long debates lasting many hours about general questions of policy which can be debated on other occasions, but that the rights of private Members ought to be protected.
Mr. Reynolds: Further to that point of order—
Mr. Speaker: I do not think that it was a point of order. I am sure that what the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) was saying will have been heard.
Mr. F. Noel-Baker: The Leader of the House cannot be unaware of the deep shock, alarm, and frustration felt by rail-waymen at all levels by yesterday's appalling statement by the Minister of Transport. Can we not urge him to give time for a proper debate on that statement and all the grave implications arising from it? Will not he reconsider the timetable for next week?
Mr. Butler: The timetable has to be looked at in the light of the statement made by the Prime Minister this afternoon. I do not think that we can easily go back on the request by the Opposition that this matter should be aired and discussed in a perfectly free way in the manner suggested.
Mr. Prior: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the Motion on the Order Paper dealing with decimal coinage?
[That this House calls attention to the need for decimal coinage, recognises the increasing and once-for-all cost of the change, notes the number of Commonwealth countries which have changed, or are changing, believes it to be a practical business decision, and urges Her Majesty's Government to introduce a decimal system of coinage at an early date.]
Would not this subject provide a more stimulating debate, both inside and outside the House, than some others we have had recently?
Mr. Butler: We are rather pressed for business, and this Motion must take its place in the queue.
Mr. C. Pannell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of us are deeply disappointed that we have not had a statement on the subject of Timothy John Evans? As we are to consider the Criminal Justice Bill next week, will the right hon. Gentleman give his attention to belated justice to a man whom most of us believe was wrongly convicted?
Mr. Butler: I have answered in written form Questions which are on the Order Paper today. I am sorry that they were not reached at Question Time, but the Answers will be available for the hon. Members who asked the Questions. I was in difficulties because the Questions were postponed from last week. For reasons connected with this man's family, I did not feel it right to postpone the decision any further, and under the circumstances I have made my reply.
Mr. van Straubenzee: Can my right hon. Friend say when the Crown Estates Bill may be set down for Second Reading, bearing in mind the anxiety with which the areas affected are awaiting it, and, also, that it was the first casualty of the campaign currently mounted by the Opposition?
Mr. Butler: No, Sir. I cannot make a statement about that at present.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: Further to the point raised by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) about the time devoted to the Services Estimates, is the Leader of the House aware that because of allocation of time Votes on
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both the Army and Navy were not discussed, that £1,000 million of public money was involved, and that the House is wondering what control it now exercises over this immense expenditure? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that last night two-thirds of the hon. Members of the House did not vote on the question of £1,000 million? Can he say that he is in earnest about getting this vast amount of public expenditure properly examined?
Mr. Butler: I cannot comment further on the business of Supply.
Mr. Ede: I want to revert to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell). Does the right hon. Gentleman think that he will be able to dispose of the matter of Timothy John Evans without coming to the Dispatch Box and answering the questions which are causing grave uneasiness to hon. Members on both sides of the House?
Mr. Butler: No, Sir. I never thought that at all. I had to give an answer to the Questions which are on the Order Paper, and I did it in the best way I could. I have sent notes to the right hon. Gentleman and to the two hon. Members who put Questions down, explaining what I have done. I am fully aware that when I have to answer Oral Questions again there may be opportunities for cross-questioning by other hon. Members. This is a very poignant and difficult case, and it is not unreasonable to ask that my statement should be read quietly and pondered over. Then, if hon. Members wish to raise further Questions on the matter, they can do so.
Mr. M. Foot: The right hon. Gentleman, when referring to this question, seemed to imply by his previous answer tha he was put in some difficulty by the postponement of the Questions last week. That did not put him into any difficulty. Is it not the fact that he was intending to make a statement, and would it not have been quite simple for him—and much fairer to the House generally—to have made a statement, in the same way as has happened in many other cases? Why did not he do so today?
Mr. Butler: Because I gave precedence to the Questions of hon. Members on the Order Paper which had been

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postponed, and who had not seen my Answers to their Questions.
As for making a statement today, I realised that the Prime Minister was making a statement on Africa, and that we had the business statement, and the statement on the Price Review. I knew it was a difficult day for a subject like this to be ventilated. In the circumstances, and upon consideration, when hon. Members have read my statement they may think that this is the best way of doing it.
Mr. Awbery: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it will be impossible to govern the Island of Malta unless we get the fullest co-operation and support of the people of Malta? They are opposed to the constitutional proposals put before the House by the Colonial Secretary. Will the right hon. Gentleman provide time for a discussion of the Report of the Committee?
Mr. Butler: I will give consideration to the hon. Member's request.
Mr. Hamilton: Is the Leader of the House aware that the Minister of Labour made one of his usual unsatisfactory speeches in Glasgow yesterday, on the subject of youth training? Is he also aware of the Motion on the Order Paper in the names of all hon. Members on this side of the House who represent Scottish constituencies?
[That this House, recognising that the increase in the number of school-leavers in Scotland in 1961 and 1962 will greatly exceed the anticipated net increase in jobs and recognising further that the number of apprenticeships available in recent years has fallen far short of the number of youths offering themselves for apprenticeship training, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take steps immediately to bring about a substantial increase in employment in Scotland, and in particular to take steps to ensure that our most valuable asset, the potential skill of our young people, is not lost to the nation by a failure to provide adequate employment with training for skill.]
Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an opportunity to debate the subject of the Motion? If, as I suspect, his answer is that we might debate it during our discussion of the Consolidated Fund Bill, may I now give him notice that we may
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do so, and that we should like the Secretary of State for Scotland to be in attendance?
Mr. Butler: I will take note of what the hon. Member has said.
Mr. S. Silverman: Reverting once again to the case of Timothy John Evans—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I make no apology for doing so. The right hon. Gentleman is surely not unaware that one convenient way of giving precedence to Questions on the Order Paper, even when they are not reached, is to ask permission of Mr. Speaker—which is regularly given on these occasions—to answer the Questions at the end of Oral Questions?
Will he bear in mind the fact that a great many hon. Members have been very anxious to discuss the matter in the House and have exercised a good deal of restraint, so as to give the right hon. Gentleman a proper opportunity of studying it? If a mistake has been made it should be acknowledged as generously and as early as possible.
Mr. Butler: I do not complain of the tone in which the hon. Member speaks, but I have told the House of the considerations which moved me. It was rather a difficult situation. If hon. Members wish to look into the matter they will now have every chance of reading my reply.

AGRICULTURE (ANNUAL REVIEW)
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Christopher Soames): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to report the results of the Annual Agricultural Review.
As forecast by my predecessor when he announced the last Annual Review, the industry's income has been maintained. The forecast of actual net income for 1960–61 is £359 million compared with the revised estimate for last year of £356 million. When adjusted for normal weather the forecast figure is the record one of £373 million compared with £355 million for last year.
The net increase in costs on review commodities is £19 million, The lamentable weather of last autumn has yet to show its full effect.

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The Government's main objective this year was to tackle the problems of beef and milk, which are to some extent connected, pigs, barley and marketing. Too little beef is being produced, and the market could take more. The guaranteed price is to be raised by the substantial amount of 10s. a cwt.
Milk presents the opposite problem. An increasing quantity of milk is being produced which the milk boards can sell only at low prices for manufacture. Under the present system these receipts are pooled with those for sales of liquid milk, and the more that is produced, the lower the farmer's pool price. He, in turn, increases his output to keep up his income. We must try to break this vicious circle. What is needed is a system which brings home to the individual producer that beyond a certain point he only gets the manufacturing price for the milk he produces. The unions have agreed to do their best to devise with the boards a satisfactory scheme. Meanwhile, on this understanding, we are raising the guaranteed price for the standard quantity by a little over ¾d. a gallon. Should it not prove possible to get such a scheme, this increase will have to be reconsidered at the next Review.
Pigs present another problem. We want more pigs, but also, in the longterm, a greater stability. We are, therefore, increasing the basic price by 3d. a score and undertaking not to reduce this at the 1962 Review. Far more important, we are altering the structure of the guarantee. The basic price will be increased automatically by stated amounts when we have too few pigs in prospect, and reduced when we have too many. The immediate effect of this flexible guarantee will be to increase the new basic price by a further 6d. a score.
On crops, our main decision is on barley. Production has almost doubled over the last six years, and the rate of subsidy is now nearly half the market price. This is out of all proportion to the support for any other commodity. We are reducing the price by the maximum amount of 1s. 2d. a cwt. Wheat will be left unchanged. Oats will be increased by 3d. The only other changes are that we are increasing the guaranteed price of potatoes by 5s. a ton and reducing the fertilizer subsidy by about £2½ million.
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In sum, we are increasing the value of the guarantees by £14 million. Of this, about £7 million is to be charged to the Exchequer. Following normal practice, the other £7 million required to raise the guaranteed price of milk will be found by leaving the retail price at a level 8d. throughout the year instead of reducing it by ½d. per pint in three of the summer months.
On the marketing side, we are introducing arrangements to give barley growers an incentive to hold their crop from harvest till later in the season. We have new plans for strengthening the potato market in years of heavy surplus and low prices. To encourage co-operation among farmers, we also intend to make grants towards the cost of buildings for machinery syndicates.
In addition, the Government proposed a joint effort with the industry to finance market research and development. The unions themselves are, of course, giving a lot of thought to marketing, and I understand that they have plans of their own. They were not ready to accept our suggestion this year, but are anxious to discuss it further.
Full details of the Review will be found in the White Paper, which will be available in the Vote Office.
Mr. de Freitas: Why should the housewife have to pay the milkman an additional £7 million a year for the milk that she buys retail? As for milk producers, the Minister appears to have boldly launched out trying to tackle what he called the vicious circle, but why has he passed the buck now to the National Farmers' Union and the boards? Will not the producer have to wait with a good deal of apprehension until the new scheme is announced? The pig scheme sounds ingenious, but will not we have to wait for some time before we see whether or not it works?
What is meant by the statement that the national farmers unions are not ready to join the Ministry in market research? Is this because the Government are not encouraging the co-operative method of marketing, or because the unions have other ideas?
Lastly, on the fundamental point of encouraging efficiency in agricultural production, does this Review give the producer a larger share of the benefit of

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increased efficiency? If it does not, does it not go right back on what everyone understood was the purpose of the December White Paper.
Mr. Soames: On milk, the hon. Gentleman asked why the cost should fall upon the consumer. There is nothing fresh in this. Under the arrangements which have been going for many years now, the consumer pays the price of milk produced up to the quantity of liquid milk consumed plus a reserve, and, as the guaranteed price of milk has been increased or reduced, so have the number of months in which milk has been reduced in price to the consumer been increased or reduced.
The hon. Gentleman asked why we should place the responsibility on the boards and the industry. The answer is because it is the responsibility of the boards and the industry. The present scheme of the pooling of milk prices was a scheme worked out by the boards, and the responsibility rests with the industry. Although, of course, the Government and the agricultural Departments will be glad to give any assistance they can in the formulation of such a scheme, the responsibility rests with the boards and the industry.
Mr. Chetwynd: On a point of order. We seem to be on fire here, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Would the Serjeant-at-Arms take steps to extinguish the fire before hon. Members are subjected to risk.
Mr. Soames: The hon. Gentleman asked me about marketing. We offered to the unions in this Review that the Government should make a contribution towards the financing of marketing research and development of £500,000 a year for three years. As I said in my statement, they have plans of their own and do not yet see how this might fit in, but there will be further time for discussions.
On the efficiency factor, the hon. Gentleman will see, when he does the sums, that the lion's share of the efficiency factor will be left with the industry.
Mr. J. Morris: May I ask the Minister a question about the system which he desires to make known to the individual milk producer? He has said that we
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must break the vicious circle and has suggested that a satisfactory scheme would be devised. But what has he in mind? Will a scheme be started on a differential payment based on gallonage, not unlike the wartime bonus system? Will the interests of small farmers, who, in Wales, produce nothing else but milk, be protected? He has said that this matter should be the responsibility of the industry. Have the Government no responsibility at all in the formulation of such a scheme?
Mr. Soames: Yes, Sir. We hope that, with the agreement of the unions and the boards, a solid effort will be made to work out the scheme. It is our opinion that if such a scheme could be worked out it would be of great benefit to the small producer.
Sir A. Hurd: This seems to be a more fundamental review of the guarantees than we have had in recent years and so is to be welcomed. Will my right hon. Friend say whether the N.F.U. agrees to the concept of limiting the price guarantees for set quantities of milk and pigs, which I take it is what is about to happen, and that they will be sold according to market requirements? Will he confirm from experience that keeping the retail price of milk steady at 8d. a pint is more likely to encourage rather than discourage a further increase in the consumption of milk? It is the jobbing about with the price from month to month that is most unsettling to the consumer.
Mr. Soames: The N.F.U.s have agreed this review, and have also agreed—as I have already informed the House—about our endeavours to work out a new scheme for milk, and also our new flexible guarantee for pigs. From the experience which we have had already, we do not think that holding the price steady will in any way reduce the amount of milk consumed.
Sir R. Glyn: Will my right hon. Friend consider the question of the help he is rightly giving to beef, and see whether some of this could be channelled, more particularly, to beef fattened on grass rather than beef fattened on concentrates, as I think that it would be agreed that grass is the cheaper way?

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Will he also agree that selling milk at a level price throughout the year is really as much in the interests of the consumer as anyone else, and that this move, which will be generally welcomed, will be likely to increase liquid milk consumption, rather than otherwise? Finally, could he consider extending the help given to machinery co-operatives to other forms of farmer co-operatives, particularly marketing?
Mr. Soames: On the beef point, we have made a flat increase of 10s. per cwt. on fat beasts. I agree with my hon. Friend about the profitability of producing beef off grass. Where it can be done succesfully, it is higher than producing it off concentrates.
I should not like to hazard a guess one way or another whether more or less milk will be consumed, but we have no reason to believe that the levelling out of the price will have an effect on the amount of milk that is consumed. I think that we shall be of substantial help and encouragement to the machinery syndicates in what we have done, but it is limited to the machinery syndicates and not extended to the co-operatives.
Mr. Paget: Is it not a fact that if both the agricultural and the industrial forecasts are fulfilled, the effect of this Review will be to still further reduce agriculture's share of the national income? Further, is it not also the fact that since the Conservative Government came in, which is a period over the last ten years, in spite of the fact that agricultural efficiency has increased considerably more than in industrial efficiency, agriculture's share of the national income has fallen to about half what it was before the Government came in?
Mr. Soames: It is our belief that this Review will put the agricultural industry in a good position. I see no reason to suppose that there will be any falling off of its share of the national income following after this Review.
Lieut.-Commander Maydon: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this level retail price for milk throughout the year will be most welcome in the dairy industry? Is he further aware that the prudent housewife recognises that the retail price for milk has remained about
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the same for many years, and that it represents today perhaps the best value for money in the food market?
Mr. Peart: The Minister did not mention overall production in his statement, although this is usual in the Price Review. Can he say whether the home producer will have an increased share of our food markets? Is it not a fact that this Price Review on marketing means that the Government are passing the buck to the N.F.U.; and that the Government are also passing the buck back to the consumer, and that, in that sense, it is a very bad Price Review?
Mr. Soames: I find it very difficult to understand what the hon. Gentleman is getting at. This is not passing the buck. It is for the industry to work out its own marketing arrangements. We have made an offer to contribute financially towards securing a greater degree of market research and the like. As to passing the buck on to the milk consumer, it has been our system of support for the milk industry, and has been for many years now, that, as I said earlier, the consumer pays the price for liquid milk, plus a reserve.
Sir P. Agnew: May I ask a question about the impact of this Price Review on the horticulture section? In view of the statement of my right hon. Friend that the fertiliser subsidy is to be reduced by £2½million, are we to understand that horticulturists who use fertilisers will have to bear the increased cost of buying that raw material without being recouped anywhere else in the Review?
Mr. Soames: All we are dealing with in this Review is the review commodities, and one of them is fertilisers. It happened that last year also the subsidy was reduced. The cost of the guarantee has been rising over recent years—last year it was £29 million, this year it is £32 million—and we have reduced it by £21 million, which will have an effect on the price paid for fertilisers by all users.
Sir L. Plummer: Does not the Minister appreciate that the reduction of 1s. 2d. per cwt. on barley is infinitely more severe than it would appear on the surface? Recently, it was announced from his own statistical department that about 900,000 acres less of winter wheat were planted last autumn because of the appalling

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weather conditions, to which he also referred. Therefore, willy-nilly, this year farmers will have an excessive increase in the spring barley sown so that they will suffer considerably by this reduction. Since cereal growers have had a bad time in the last three years through floods and droughts, should they suffer as severe a cut as 1s. 2d. per cwt.?
Mr. Soames: As will be seen in the White Paper, we are endeavouring to get a better balance in price as between the three cereals. We have to face the fact that the production of barley has increased from 2½ million to 4½ million tons per annum over the past six years. The amount of subsidy which the farmer gets for his barley today represents a high proportion of the price and it is out of balance with the subsidy for any other commodity.
Mr. Prior: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Price Review, broadly speaking, will give great satisfaction to the farming industry? Is he further aware that proper provision for the marketing of barley could very largely compensate for the cut in the subsidy? Will he confirm that were milk being sold at the equivalent pre-war price it would be 10d. a pint, and, also, that in the last two years the price of milk to the consumer has actually fallen?
Mr. Soames: There were more months last year when the consumer was paying 7½d. instead of 8d. a pint for milk than in the year before, and to that extent my hon. Friend is right. I cannot tell him what the price of milk should be today to compare with pre-war prices, as I have not the figures with me. It is our hope that farmers will benefit by the more orderly flow of barley on to the market which we hope will result from this new marketing system.
Mr. Wilkins: May I ask the Minister whether he will suggest to the Conservative Central Office that it might produce a new slogan, "Milk or medicine—the consumer always pays the increase"?
Sir J. Duncan: Speaking on behalf of Scottish farmers, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on raising the price of beef, which will help hill farmers in particular. May I ask, first, whether there is any change in the price of lambs and wool? Secondly, can he give a figure
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to compare with the figure in the Estimates of £256 million? What is the figure for this year?
Mr. Soames: There is no change in the price of lambs or of wool at this Review. The estimated out-turn for 1960–61 is £266 million. My hon. Friend will have to wait for the Financial Secretary's Memorandum to learn the Estimates for next year.
Mr. Thorpe: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman about the intended effect of his Price Review on the small farmer? Does he recollect that in a Written Answer to me last week he said that the average net income of farms of between 50 acres and 300 acres had declined by over 15 per cent. in the years 1958 and 1959? Is it the intention of the Review to arrest this process, or perhaps to restore the cuts which have taken place? Reverting to paragraph 31 of the White Paper relating to the share of efficiency being given to farmers, what is the percentage of the assessed efficiency which will be retained by the industry this year?
Mr. Soames: Regarding 1958 and 1959 about which the hon. Gentleman asked last week—as his Oral Question was not reached he received a Written Answer—he must bear in mind that the figures fell considerably from 12½ per cent. to 17½ per cent. and that the year was extremely bad weather-wise. We were talking about actual incomes shown in a period which, though not identical, was the nearest we could get. The official statistics compare a year where there was no less than £40 million, which is very unusual, between the actual net income of the industry and the net income adjusted for normal weather conditions. It was an unusual year from that point of view. It is the belief of the Government that the Review will be of benefit to the industry as a whole and not exclude the small farmers in any way.
Referring to efficiency, we said in the White Paper which was published at Christmas that we did not regard £25 million as the exact figure which would come year by year but from the Estimates and last year's figures, it looks as if it works out at about that. If we take £25 million as the efficiency factor for this year, they will be left with a very

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high proportion indeed, about £20 million out of £25 million.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot debate this matter now. The hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) gave the House notice of an application that he wished to make.

COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTERS' CONFERENCE
Mr. Fell: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance—
Mr. E. G. Willis: What, again?
Mr. Fell: Yes, again—namely,
the failure of Her Majesty's Government to maintain, and at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference to establish, the convention that Commonwealth members have no right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign member States.
I do not wish to take up the time of the House, particularly after the long time spent on this subject at Question Time this afternoon. It is certainly unnecessary for me to say anything about this wish of mine to adjourn the House on the grounds either of definiteness or public importance. For that it is definite is beyond all doubt that it is of public importance is, I should have said, also beyond all doubt. The only matter, therefore, which I particularly ask you, Mr. Speaker, to consider is the question of urgency.
I realise that the Prime Minister has said this afternoon that there will be a debate on an unspecified day next week, but it is my belief that the British Parliament—which, on a matter of this gravity, has always shown its greatness in being able to give full and steady advice—should have an opportunity of meeting to discuss this matter before the Prime Ministers' Conference finishes on Monday next week. If the debate is not to be held until a day, which at the moment is unknown, next week the Prime Ministers will have gone back to their countries and will never meet
1772
again before South Africa has left the Commonwealth on 31st May.
This is a matter of such overwhelming importance, it is of such tragic complication, it holds so many complexities for the future, that I appeal to you to allow the House to give its views whilst the Commonwealth Prime Ministers are still here in London and still meeting. If those views are given when they have dispersed and gone home, they will not have the impact that they would have if it were possible to have done so whilst they were still in London. I beg you to consider giving an opportunity for this matter to be debated.
Mr. Speaker: I have a copy of the Motion, but I think that, strictly speaking, the hon. Member has to bring it to me. Therefore, will he be good enough to do so?
Copy of Motion handed in.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely,
the failure of Her Majesty's Government to maintain, and at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference to establish, the convention that Commonwealth members have no right to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign member States.
I wish to express my gratitude to the hon. Member for giving me warning of this Motion and, in particular, of the precise amended terms of his Motion, but I am clearly of the opinion that I have no power to treat it as being one within the Standing Order, so I cannot accede to his application.
Mr. P. Williams: Further to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order to ask for any particular reasons? It seems that my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) has put forward a case well sustained in logic and argument—
Mr. Speaker: I have endeavoured to maintain a position in which I do not give reasons, because I know from experience that that results in argument. I can think of at least three reasons why this Motion is bad in order. I do not think that it would assist the House for me to suggest them.

SCOTTISH AFFAIRS
Arrangements for distributing and generating electricity in Scotland, being a matter relating exclusively to Scotland, referred to the Scottish Grand Committee for their consideration.—[Mr. Redmavne]
WELSH AFFAIRS
Report on Developments and Government Action in Wales and Monmouthshire, 1960 (Command Paper No. 1293), being a matter relating exclusively to Wales and Monmouthshire, referred to the Welsh Grand Committee for their consideration.—[Mr. Redmayne.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE CONTRIBUTIONS BILL
  [3RD ALLOTTED DAY]
  Order for Third Reading read.—[Queen's Consent on behalf of the Crown, signified.]
  4.34 p.m.
  The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Anthony Barber): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
  In view of the time, I shall not take long in moving the Third Reading of the Bill, but I should like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) who led the Opposition throughout consideration of this important Bill. I am happy to see around me one or two familiar faces of others who played a prominent part. The hon. Member for Sowerby, I am sure the whole House will agree, regaled us with arguments from time to time with his accustomed courtesy. He once again showed his encyclopxdic knowledge of the way in which our system of National Insurance is financed and of the financing of the Health Service.
  If the temperature of the Committee was from time to time raised by the Member for Kilmarnock, I can only say that having once spent a night with him in the desert I know that his heart is in the right place. Everyone will agree that on any ground we have had a full series of debates on this Bill. We had a censure Motion which took six hours, we had a debate in Committee of Ways and Means which took three hours—
  Notice taken that 40 Members were not present:
  House counted, and, 40 Members being present—
  Mr. Barber: I was pointing out that the censure Motion took six hours and three hours were spent in debate in Ways and Means. Then we had fourteen hours on Second Reading and twenty-eight hours in Committee. If we assume that half the censure debate was devoted to this Bill and that we shall be dealing

  1775
  with the Bill for more than six hours today, we shall have spent on the Bill all told fifty-four hours, a period which some people would consider a normal working week. I ask the House to remember, in comparison with that fifty-four hours, that twenty-three hours were spent on the 1958 Bill and only fifteen hours on the 1957 Bill.
  Our discussions have been both long and full, and as far as I am concerned they have also been interesting and useful. The debates we have had during the last two days of the Committee stage of the Bill were particularly useful and if I may answer the hon. Member for Kilmarnock—for my part very educative, a consequence perhaps not entirely unconnected with the fact that the debates were taken on the basis of a timetable. I do not think anyone could seriously pretend that enough time was not provided for the Committee stage of the Bill because, whatever else hon. Members opposite say, they cannot complain that they have been prevented from dealing fully with the detailed aspects of these proposals. There have been debates on all of what I might call the special groups of contributors. It was particularly valuable for all of us to have the very extensive views of hon. Members opposite on the intricacies of the drafting of Bills.
  The general case for these disposals has been stated on a number of occasions from this side of the House. Perhaps I can best sum it up in this way. This Government cannot be accused of having neglected either the Health Service or the social services in general. The cost of the Health Service has more than doubled in the last ten years. That is an undeniable fact. It is true that this is in money terms, but in real terms also expenditure on the Service has gone up by something like a third. Expenditure from the Exchequer on the social services as a whole has nearly doubled in the last ten years.
  As hon. Members opposite have said, the argument on this Bill is an argument about the financing of the Service. They say it is an argument of principle; we say it is not. Certainly there is nothing new in the principle that the Health Service should be financed in part from contributions income. The hon. Member for
  1776
  Sowerby came what seemed to me a long way towards agreeing with us that there always has been a sense in which the National Insurance contribution provided a portion allotted in aid of the National Health Service.
  We do not say that we should impose a contribution just because the Labour Government did so. We ask that our actions should be judged on their merits and say that the Opposition cannot claim that these proposals are an attack on the principles of the Service. Indeed, the hon. Member for Sowerby was most helpful in his intervention on Second Reading when he quoted to the House a passage from paragraph 430 of the Report of the then Sir William Beveridge which, I must confess, had not gone completely unnoticed by the Government. I will read the passage again, because it is very relevant:
  "There is no obvious reason, apart from a desire to keep the insurance contribution as low as possible, why insured persons should be relieved of the burden wholly, in order that they may bear it as tax-payers. If importance attaches to preserving the contributory principle for cash benefit, it attaches also to contributions for medical treatment."
  At other times hon. Members opposite seemed to despair of being able to convince us on this side of the House of what they regarded as the simple truth that there was not National Health Service contribution before 1957. I ask the House to consider the facts. The only difference in the arrangements made by the 1957 Act, was that before that Act the health element in the contribution came to the National Health Service by being transmitted through the National Insurance Fund. Since that Act it has been transmitted through the Exchequer, and I will say something about that later.
  My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary and I have certainly heard nothing in the lengthy debates we have had to shake our belief in the fact that this is all a question of judgment—in other words, what is the right proportion of the Health Service to be financed by the Exchequer and how much by the contributor, and how much is it reasonable to ask the contributor to pay?
  The hon. Member for Kilmarnock was concerned at one point that we had not turned our attention to the question whether it was right to ask the contributor to pay. That is exactly what these

  1777
  debates have been about. We on these benches do believe that it is right for the contributor to pay, and, what is more, the Labour Government also thought that it was right for the contributor to pay.
  Mr. Douglas Houghton: I am allowing some provocative comments to pass uninterrupted, but I warn the Economic Secretary that I shall deal with them in my speech.
  Mr. Barber: I shall be very happy to hear what the hon. Member has to say, because the reference I made to him was, in fact, as he realises almost a quotation from his speech.
  In the debates we have had on this subject, which have extended over a number of days, hon. Members opposite have questioned our judgment as to whether the total contribution is reasonable. They are entitled to do so, and we are entitled in our turn to say that we believe that the total contribution is reasonable.
  I promised a few moments ago to say something about the business of the contribution passing through the Exchequer. During one of our debates in Committee the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) asked me whether all the money that will be raised under the Clause will be devoted to the National Health Service. He also asked me this question:
  "Will all the money raised in Scotland be devoted to the Scottish Health Service?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March, 1961; Vol. 635, c. 707.]
  The hon. Member for Kilmarnock answered his hon. Friend, but I am afraid that he got it somewhat wrong. He intervened to say this:
  "…one lot"—
  that is, the insurance contribution—
  "goes into the National Insurance Fund and the other"—
  that is, the health contribution—
  "gets lost with the rest of the moneys going into the Exchequer."
  I have looked this up, and that is not the position. I refer the hon. Members for Kilmarnock and Fife, West to Section 1 (4) of the National Health Service Contribution Act, 1957, which states that contributions, having been
  1778
  paid to the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, shall
  "be taken to be so paid for the benefit of the Minister of Health, towards the cost of the national health service in England and Wales, and of the Secretary of State, towards the cost of the national health service in Scotland…"
  The subsection goes on to state—I hope that these words will not strike too much terror into the hearts of hon. Members opposite who sit for Scottish constituencies—
  "in such shares as the Treasury may determine."
  Mr. William Ross: It is as well to get the history straight. I should be very glad if the Economic Secretary would quote the column from HANSARD where I gave this information in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton). My recollection is that the hon. Member himself told my hon. Friend that it had nothing to do with Scotland but was a United Kingdom Measure. I corrected him from my sedentary position.
  Mr. Barber: I quoted exactly what the hon. Member said. It is column 707 of the OFFICIAL REPORT for 9th March. The hon. Member intervened to say:
  "Does the hon. Member appreciate that this money is collected with and cannot be separated from National Insurance contributions? It goes into what is referred to as a combined contribution. After that "—
  the next passage is what I quoted—
  "one lot goes into the National Insurance Fund and the other gets lost with the rest of the moneys going into the Exchequer."
  That is what I was dealing with. As the hon. Members knows, it is true that I dealt with the matter on the basis that it was concerned with the United Kingdom. That is why I am dealing with the Scottish point. The point I was trying to make was that it is not quite true to say, as the hon. Gentleman did say, that
  "one lot goes into the National Insurance Fund and the other gets lost with the rest of the moneys going into the Exchequer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March, 1961; Vol. 635, c. 707.]
  That is not the case. The split made by the Treasury between Scotland and England is made after consultations between my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Health. Since I was asked this

  1779
  question, the hon. Member may like to know that it is settled on the basis of a share of nine-tenths for England and Wales and one-tenth for Scotland, which I think the hon. Member will consider fair.
  Mr. E. G. Willis: No.
  Mr. Barber: The hon. Member doubts it, but it is exactly the right distribution according to the number of contributors in the two parts of Great Britain. It is based on the Ministry of Labour regional analysis of employed persons as adjusted by the Government Actuary's estimate of self-employed and non-employed.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: I want to understand the Economic Secretary's position. When the Bill is enacted, every insured contributor will know the contribution he will have to pay to the National Health Scheme. There will be no doubt about that. In view of what the hon. Member has said, will he tell me what an insured contributor paid out of his wages each week prior to 1950?
  Mr. Barber: I cannot without notice, unless I hold up the work of the House, give an answer off the cuff to that question, but I am sure that it is one of the facts that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary will consider. I have the information here, because it is a matter which we dealt with during the Committee stage, but time is moving on and we started rather late.
  I want to turn to some of the more serious criticisms which hon. Members opposite made of these proposals in Committee. The first general criticism, apart from the major criticisms of the Opposition to the increase in the contribution as a whole, was made by the hon. Member for Sowerby in a closely reasoned speech criticising the fact that the relationship of the health contribution to liability to pay the insurance contribution caused a number of anomalies, and he returned to this point on one or two occasions.
  In his first intervention the hon. Member mentioned three of them—older men and women over 65 and 60, respectively, who go on working, married women, and of course students. This so-called anomaly arises because the health
  1780
  contribution is tied to the insurance contribution. In other words, anyone who opts to pay, or for special reasons has to pay, the one also has to pay the other. To put it the other way round—it is just as fair to put it this way anyone who chooses not to pay the insurance contribution is excused paying the health contribution. In a sense, this is an anomaly. It has existed ever since 1946.
  It is true that there was an opportunity to reconsider the matter and put it right in 1957. As those hon. Members who followed our debates in that year will remember, the Government decided that if the arrangements for collecting National Health contributions were to continue, it was essential that the liabilities for the two contributions should move in parallel, and, indeed, to have made any other decision would have caused very considerable administrative difficulties which the House would not have wanted to face.
  Each of the various groups to which the anomaly applies is such that quite separate considerations apply in each. The anomaly, if there is one, with the over 65s is not an anomaly in the same sense as that with those classes who choose to pay or not to pay insurance contributions, for example, married women. The tie-up between insurance and health was criticised as imposing on the married woman who opts to pay an insurance contribution a further liability for the health contribution, but, as I tried to point out during the Committee stage, the anomaly is the other way round, because the Health Service contribution is a flat rate contribution, which is what it has always been. Logically, there is a case for submitting that all married women in work, whether or not they opt out of paying National Insurance contributions, should continue to pay National Health Service contributions and that only that is the real anomaly.
  Last week, we had a long debate on the position of those people earning less than £9 a week. Hon. Members opposite will agree that in a way that was the core of the Opposition's criticism of the proposals. My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary dealt with the matter fairly fully on that occasion, and I do not want to do more than to say that in the Government's opinion the new rates of contribution will not be oppressive.

  1781
  I know that hon. Members opposite take a different view, but at least they must give us credit for holding with sincerity the view which was expressed by my hon. Friend on that occasion.
  To paraphrase the case which hon. Members opposite were making, they did not like the contribution and they said that if we were to go on levying it it ought to be related to income. Some hon. Members opposite may have in mind—and it was clear from some of their speeches that they did—the idea of a middle course by which the Health Service contribution would be related to ability to pay but would be collected separately from Income Tax. That would be one step in the direction of a social security tax, and I am not at all sure that that is what hon. Members opposite want. In any event, to set up a new graduated tax in this way would be extremely expensive in administration and would certainly need many more officials to administer it.
  Hon. Members opposite have suggested—quite fairly—that it is not enough simply to consider the health contribution and they have said that one must consider the total National Insurance and National Health contributions. That is a perfectly fair argument. They pointed out that the total contribution, which they regarded as particularly onerous for the lower paid worker, would rise in July, whereas, it was said, under the 1959 Insurance Act the contribution for the lower paid worker would have fallen. That was a point made by several hon. Members in Committee.
  Mr. Willis: It is very true.
  Mr. Barber: Of course, something of considerable significance has happened since then, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) knows, because the Government have increased the benefit and to pay for the benefit it has been necessary to increase the contribution. I will say more about that in a moment. My point is that but for the new arrangements under the 1959 Act the contribution for the lower paid worker would have been considerably higher. It is perfectly fair to continue to claim, as we do, that the Government are concentrating help on the lower paid
  1782
  worker. We do not agree that we should have raised insurance benefits without raising contributions to pay for them, and I do not believe that in their hearts hon. Members opposite disagree with me.
  I can best state the position in these terms and I am sure that the whole House will agree with this—there is a limit to the amount which the taxpayer—including the working-class taxpayer—is prepared to pay in taxes. We are convinced that it would be unwise to take pensions out of National Insurance and make them non-contributory.
  Miss Jennie Lee: Will the hon. Gentleman explain something to me which, even after all our hours of debate, I do not understand? How is he able to make a distinction between the taxpayer as one class and the insured worker as another? Does he not know that even the poorest insured worker pays in all kinds of indirect taxes and makes a contribution?
  Mr. Barber: I follow the hon. Lady's argument, and I am trying to deal with it now. I say that there is a limit to the amount of tax which the taxpayer, including the working-class taxpayer—and I am not talking just about Income Tax—is prepared to pay, and we are convinced that it would be unwise to take pensions out of National Insurance and make them non-contributory. Although, of course, the State should makes its contribution towards financing them, the main burden must be borne in the future, as in the past, by contributions from the employer and the employee. As hon. Members will recognise, that was a quotation from the Labour Party booklet, "National Superannuation", and I believe that it sets out the position very clearly.
  Over the last ten years there has been a great expansion of the Health Service. The cost of the social services as a whole has been growing year by year and, at the same time, wages have increased considerably, in both money and real terms, and the people of this country have never been so prosperous. In those circumstances, we believe that it is right to ask the contributor to pay something more, and we believe that it is reasonable to ask him to pay the level of contributions which are set out in the Bill.

  1783
  It is nonsense to say that this Measure is an attack on the social services. The truth is that in passing the Bill we are providing a part of the means to enable us to go on improving the social services, and this we mean to do.
  4.57 p.m.
  Mr. Douglas Houghton: I wish to thank the Economic Secretary very warmly for his kind references to my hon. Friends and myself. We in turn should express appreciation to the hon. Member and to the Financial Secretary for their unfailing courtesy and admirable patience throughout these long debates. They helped both the House and the Committee very much on many complicated matters which we had to discuss, and we are grateful to them.
  Until the Economic Secretary told us, I had not realised that, assuming that we go on to the limit of time allowed us today, our debates will have lasted for fifty-four hours. That is a very long time, and it is very difficult after fifty-four hours, or even fifty hours, to find something new to say. That does not mean that there is nothing more to say, or that we should refrain from saying more about the Bill.
  All I will say about the Guillotine is that it was premature and unnecessary and that we would have gone along very well if we had been left alone. Quite naturally, when the Committee is working under a timetable there is a psychological reaction against the conditions under which we have to work. Our debates would have been the better if they had been uninhibited by the fear of curtailment of discussion at particular points in our proceedings.
  According to Parliamentary theory, the fate of the Bill is still undecided until the vote is taken at the appropriate time tonight. In Parliamentary theory, we do not know whether our arguments have triumphed over those of the hon. and right hon. Members opposite. But, of course, we know in advance what the result will be. The Government will get their Bill and probably nothing that he or I or any other hon. Member will say in the course of the debate will change opinion within the House. But I hope that it may mould opinion outside the House.
  1784
  For all I know to the contrary, electors are at this very moment going into the polling booths in a number of by-elections to register their disapproval of this Bill. I hope that when the results are known later we shall see some signs of that disapproval. But whether we do or not, we intend to continue our own opposition to the Bill and in further debates, after it has passed into law, to reveal as best we may the fundamental difference of opinion and of approach between hon. Members opposite and my hon. Friends and myself to these matters relating to our social services.
  One thing can be said about the Bill which distinguishes it from its two predecessors. There have been fewer pretences about the Bill than there were about its two predecessors. In 1957 and 1958 they were Departmental Bills in the charge of the Minister of Health. It was repeatedly stressed that the money collected by contributions would pass through the usual financial channels but would be made available directly, explicitly and wholly to the Minister of Health for the purpose of financing his enterprises and for the expansion of the Health Service.
  The presence of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury here this afternoon and of his hon. Friend the Financial Secretary clearly shows that this Bill is acknowledged to be a taxing Measure. The National Health Service contribution is a tax levied on National Insurance contributors and on no one else. The Economic Secretary defends that on the ground that to do otherwise would raise serious administrative difficulties, but I have yet to hear that we should judge the principles of our system of taxation mainly or wholly by considerations of administration.
  We think that this discriminatory tax is wrong in principle and that administrative convenience cannot justify its operation. Taxes have been called by various names—a plain tax, a levy, a duty and a contribution. There are precedents for them all, but this tax, like all general taxation, is not linked with specific benefits received or available. Tax evasion in this field may lead to certain penalties, but disqualification from the Health Service benefits is not among them.
  The insurance contribution is quite different, and that is why we think that

  1785
  it is a mistake to saddle the insurance contribution, which is a contribution, with a National Health Service contribution which is a tax. In the case of the National Insurance contribution, benefits depend upon contributions and avoidance of their payment not only attracts a penalty in law but a disqualification from benefit or a reduction in benefit on account of failure to pay the appropriate contribution.
  I believe that this method of taxing people for the National Health Service has been adopted in order to make it more acceptable to those who pay this tax. I believe that though it is made more acceptable, it is done by deception, because this tax has nothing whatever to do with ability to pay or with benefits received. It is a flat-rate tax, duty, levy or contribution.
  It is interesting to look at the reasons given at different times in support of this Measure. This Bill is a simple extension of the principle introduced in 1957 and extended in 1958. The Bill, in its operative Clauses—and the amounts of the contributions are set out in a Schedule to it—is almost identical in form to that of previous Bills. In 1957 when this form of contribution was first introduced, the justification for it rested upon the total cost of the Health Service and the proportion which the Exchequer would have to bear of the total cost unless some steps were taken to relieve it.
  In 1957 the total cost of the Health Service was £690 million and the proportion which the Exchequer would have borne but for the 1957 Bill would have been 80 per cent.—£555 million. Having regard, first, to the total cost to the Health Service, secondly, to the burden falling upon the Exchequer, and thirdly, to the proportion of one to the other, the Government then said:
  "The Government, therefore, have decided that this heavy and growing burden is more than the taxpayer can reasonably be expected to bear.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May, 1957; Vol. 569, c. 989.]
  That was, I think, the fundamental basis of the 1957 Act, and the contributions which were then introduced reduced the burden falling on the Exchequer from £550 million to £531 million.
  1786
  In 1958 the total cost of the Health Service had risen to £740 million, of which £555 million would have fallen on the Exchequer unless steps had been taken to relieve it. That amount, the Government said, was in excess of the £550 million which in the previous year they had regarded as the limit which the Exchequer should bear of the cost of the Health Service. In the course of the discussions on the Bill, the Government spokesman said:
  "The need for this Bill arises, as the House knows, from the hard fact that the Exchequer is spending as much on health as can be afforded in the national interest, and we need more than that.—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 24th March, 1958; Vol. 585, c. 82.]
  It seems to me that the ground had shifted somewhat from 1957 to 1958. In 1957 it appeared to be the desire to restore an earlier proportion between the amount which the Exchequer should bear and the total cost of the Health Service. In 1958 it seemed to be that the Exchequer was spending as much as could be afforded in the national interest. I would remark in passing that it seems to me to be a strange doctrine that the Government should announce in advance of the budget statement what the country can or cannot afford in the national interest. That is what has been done on two occasions, notably in the course of the introduction and extension of National Health Service contributions.
  Alongside the declaration of 1958, one had to notice that a few weeks later the Government found that in the national interest a substantial tax relief could be afforded on earned incomes. They discovered a year later that relief of taxation amounting to £360 million could be afforded in the national interest, and as that happened to be the election year I refrain from any comment on what other interests might then have been involved.
  Now, we come to the grounds given for this Bill in 1961. The total cost of the Health Service is now estimated to be £867 million, of which £663 million will be met by the Exchequer unless steps are taken to relieve it. There is no reference this time to a ceiling of £550 million. There is no literal reference to the limit which the Exchequer can afford in the national interest. We get something different.

  1787
  When the Minister of Labour made his announcement on 1st February, he said:
  "The Government are determined to continue their policy of developing the Health Service and, in particular, to carry through a long-term programme of modernising our hospitals. These objects will be in danger if the cost of the Service to the Exchequer were allowed to go on increasing at so high a rate. The Government have, therefore, decided that certain steps to reduce the net estimates are necessary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st February, 1961; Vol. 633, c. 988.]
  That is a different preamble and a different form of words at the end, but the effect is presumably the same.
  Therefore, the total of all measures that are being taken, not only in this Bill but otherwise to reduce the Exchequer burden on the National Health Service, amounts to about £65 million in a full year. That means that the Exchequer burden for a full year will be reduced from £663 million to just under £600 million.
  That is the history of the matter. The House will notice that this year there has been no attempt to define either what the country can afford, as in 1958, or what is the limit of the burden the taxpayer can be reasonably expected to bear, as in 1957. In these two respects, little has been said in our debates.
  What comes out more prominently this year is, first, how heavily the Government rely on the principles that the Labour Government is supposed to have written into the 1948 scheme—relying for virtue, respectability and justification upon what they say the Labour Government did. Secondly, they have relied more heavily than before on what I would call the cult of the proportion sums.
  On both of these, it seems that the Government pronounce a sort of benediction—"As it was in the beginning, so it shall be for ever more, world without end"—
  Mr. Charles Loughlin: Only more so.
  Mr. Houghton: What was done in the beginning? Here I come to something that the hon. Gentleman said in the course of his speech. It is not always that a Conservative Government justify their actions by reference to what a Labour Government did. They say it
  1788
  about National Health Service contributions but not about nationalisation. They distinguish very clearly between those acts of the Labour Government which they think were wise and sound and those upon which they pass a harsh judgment. They rely on the one and denounce the other, but it was the same Labour Government—the same wise men were there, and it was the same minds that evolved Labour Government policy both on social services and on nationalisation—
  Mr. Barber: I did say specifically that my reference to the position before 1957 was not used in justification of what the Government were doing. My purpose in mentioning it was that it seemed a fair point to make that so many hon. Members opposite made speeches against the principle of what we were doing which, in my view, despite what the hon. Gentleman said, is much the same kind of principle that the Labour Government applied before 1947, and certainly before 1948 and 1951.
  Mr. Houghton: The hon. Gentleman may say that now, but earlier in our debates it has been very difficult for him to keep his seat when an opportunity has occurred to quote from a Labour Government White Paper or from the scheme that the Labour Government introduced and, with a smile on the face of the tiger saying, so to speak, "That is the answer to you." I just say that the Government are very selective in their choice of the acts of the Labour Government upon which they rely in justifying subsequent actions of their own.
  At the risk of boring the House on this matter, I still want to say a little more about what happened in 1946. The House will remember that before the new scheme of National Insurance there was a National Health Insurance scheme, which was contributory and covered medical benefits for doctor and medicine as well as providing for sickness benefit in money.
  The time came when the insurance for money benefits was to be separated from a scheme of provision of medical benefit; in other words, National Insurance was to be separated from National Health. Up to then, the National Insurance scheme had borne out of the contributions the cost of paying doctors,

  1789
  prescriptions and other treatments provided by the old National Health Insurance scheme. It was natural, therefore, that when the two schemes were separated some provision should be made for part of the cost of the new National Health Service to be borne by a grant-in-aid from the National Health Insurance Fund which had previously borne the whole of the cost.
  The National Health Service was to take over from the National Health Insurance scheme all the responsibilities of medical treatment, and a lump sum grant in aid of £40 million a year was paid from the new National Insurance Fund to the Health Service in the nature of a transfer payment—even of a transitional payment. When one found that one was to be relieved of all future liability for doctors and medicine and that the liability was to be taken over by the National Health Service on a non-contributory basis, it was only natural and right that some transitional arrangements should be made for the one fund to help the other.
  All I want to stress is that there was no commitment to increase. There was not even a commitment to review it. The truth of the matter is that the Government themselves brought that to an end in 1957. On 8th May, 1957, the Minister said:
  "Hitherto the contributory element towards the cost of the Health Service has had no separate existence from the insurance contribution and the money has been paid over in the form of a lump sum from the National Insurance Fund."
  Then he used these significant words:
  "This Measure will rid the National Insurance Fund of responsibility towards the Health Service."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May, 1957 Vol. 569, c. 991.]
  That ended the transitional arrangements which had started in 1946.
  When those arrangements were ended, the Government had a choice: should the cost of the National Health Service be borne by the Exchequer, which, in my view, is what was originally intended, or should they impose a separate charge specifically for the National Health Service? They chose the second alternative, and that was the birth of the National Health Service contribution. We now have something new, something different, a separate National Health Service contribution which can be in-
  1790
  creased, and which is being increased, quite apart from any considerations of National Insurance. The principle is entirely different. I wish that the Economic Secretary could see the point of my argument in this connection.
  Mr. Willis: He does not want to see it.
  Mr. Houghton: This is not something which comes out of the National Insurance Fund any more. It is not something which comes out of the National Insurance contribution any more. It is something levied on top of the National Insurance contribution and it is quite separate now from the National Insurance Fund. It is no longer an element in the National Insurance contribution. It is a separate tax. Those are my last words on the controversy about 1946 and what happened then.
  I come now to the cult of the proportion sums. In 1946, the proportion of the total cost of the Health Service borne by the Exchequer was estimated to be 72 per cent. In the first full year, that is to say, 1949–50, it was 76·3 per cent. By 1950–51 it had risen to nearly 81 per cent. By the time the 1957 Act was introduced, it had fallen slightly to 80.2 per cent. The contributions imposed by the 1957 Act and the 1958 Act pulled the proportion down from 80 per cent. to 75 per cent. In 1960–61 it was an estimated 75·4 per cent. This Bill and other Measures connected with it will reduce the Exchequer proportion of the total cost to 70·7 per cent., which is the lowest Exchequer proportion yet in the whole history of the National Health Service.
  The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends hark back to 1946 to the percentage that never was. It never was 72 per cent. They hark back to that percentage that never was, they make it a form of worship, and they then write it down by 2 per cent. That gives them the answer in the Bill and other Measures connected with it. That is the first part of the cult of the proportion sums.
  The next part is the proportion which the total combined contribution bears to average earnings. In 1946, we are told, the proportion which the total combined contribution bore to average earnings

  1791
  was 4·3 per cent. Now, for a contracted-out employee, the combined contribution will be just over 4 per cent. That, say the Government, equals justice. Q.E.D. They do not dwell on the comparison between the proportion which the Health Service contribution now bears to the total contribution because it does not help them. That element in 1946, in proportion to the total combined contribution was, I estimate, 14½ per cent. Today, it is 20½ per cent. or it will be when these Measures are completed. Nor do they dwell upon the proportion higher than 4 per cent, which the National Health Service contribution and the combined contribution will bear to below average earnings. It would be much higher than 4 per cent. in many cases.
  What sanctity have these proportions? Are they gospel or are they guff? Are they excuses—I was going to say the straws which are clutched by men of straw, except, of course, the Financial Secretary—to justify the extension of this form of taxation? The Financial Secretary, with his customary honesty, says that there is no principle here. He probably attaches no particular importance to these or any other proportions. They are for him merely supporting evidence, something to which he can refer if external justification is necessary to support a matter of judgment.
  Of course, when we are dealing with a Government who have no principles, who regard matters of principle for us as matters of judgment for them, it is extremely difficult to come to grips with them. They are so slippery in these matters. They grease themselves with false precedent and proportion sums of questionable validity to avoid being pinned down to anything resembling a principle.
  Will these proportions which are relied on in justification for the present increases govern future Government policy? Will the limit of the Exchequer burden on account of the National Health Service always be limited to 70 per cent.? Will the contributions be kept in line with the 1946 and 1961 percentages of average earnings? Are these the criteria which the Government will take in arriving at future decisions
  1792
  on these matters? Clear answers to those questions are called for.
  I come now to the question: If we do not have this Bill, what do we have? I wish to refer to one point which was notable for its omission from all the Government speeches on this Bill but which was very prominent in the debates on the Bills in 1957 and 1958. On 8th May, 1957, the then Parliamentary Secretary said that:
  "The alternative to placing on the general taxpayer the burden of higher expenditure is either to ask for greater contributions in the way of further charges, which we must reject, or that people should be asked to contribute when well towards the cost of the burden which would otherwise fall upon them when they are sick."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May. 1957; Vol. 587, c. 1097.]
  Charges on prescriptions were rejected. Increased contributions were recommended to the House then as being preferable to imposing charges on people when they were sick.
  On the 1958 Bill, the Minister said:
  …we have preferred an increase in contributions to an increase in charges, because of the principle"—
  we heard something then about a principle—
  "because of the principle that it is better, if take we must, to take from those who are earning and well rather than from those who are anxious and sick."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th March, 1958; Vol. 585, c. 145–6.]
  We have heard nothing this time about the principle of not taking from those who are anxious and sick. We have heard nothing of that sanctimonious argument in discussing this Bill because, as the House knows, the Government are proposing charges on the sick as well as increased contributions from those who are well.
  What, in 1961, did the Minister of Health say in this context, if there is one? On 1st February, he said:
  "…I should have been betraying my trust if I had agreed to an increase in the budgetary cost of this Service, for it would inevitably have resulted in the development of the Service itself having to be curtailed or limited if these steps had not been taken."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st February, 1961; Vol. 633, c. 990.]
  We had never really been told whether the Minister of Health resisted proposals from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to meet the whole cost or more than the cost of the Health Service by Exchequer payments. What I suppose

  1793
  the Minister meant, although it is an extremely ambiguous statement, was that had he insisted on a higher proportion of the cost of the Health Service being borne by the Exchequer he would not have got as much as he requires; but presumably he would have got something more. I am still puzzled by the actual relationship between the Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this matter when the Minister said, "Had I agreed to an increase".
  It looks almost as if the Minister had insisted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should not make more budgetary provision for the National Health Service, and, knowing the Minister of Health, I think that a not unlikely explanation. He was determined not to have more from the Exchequer towards the cost of the Health Service. That is not surprising, because we know that of all the Ministers of the Crown the Minister of Health is the one who prefers to live his Ministerial life in sack cloth and ashes.
  Having dealt first with the reliance on what the Labour Government is supposed to have done and, secondly, with the cult of the proportion sums, I want to deal with a further matter not so prominently referred to in our debates this year but which, nevertheless, I am sure is at the back of some of the speeches made from the other side of the House, although not very many speeches have been made. I refer to the question whether there shall be an unlimited charge on the Exchequer.
  In the debates on earlier Bills, the Government spokesman challenged my hon. and right hon. Friends to answer the question "Are you in favour of an unlimited charge on the Exchequer for the Health Service? Answer yes or no." I do not understand the significance of the words "unlimited charge". The same question could be asked about defence, at twice the cost of the Health Service, or education, or roads, or anything we like. What is the limit of budgetary provision for anything? It is largely a matter of priority; one item can be cut to make room for another. The Labour Government had to make some cuts to make room for expenditure then believed to have a higher priority years ago. Surely
  1794
  the limit of any expenditure is the Government judgment of what the limit is.
  In bringing forward this Bill, the Government are not saying that they have reached the limit of the total cost of the whole Service. They are saying that the taxpayer cannot afford to pay the lot so the contributor must pay an extra share. It is not a matter of limited resources but of the distribution of costs. The Government are transferring part of the additional cost from me to me and from you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to you. It is not easy to distinguish the taxpayer from the contributor, but we know that what falls on the taxpayer is much more likely to be fair than what falls on the contributor, and we object to it being done in this way. It is not a fair way. We do not accept the doctrine of what the taxpayer cannot afford the contributor can.
  This Bill is the Government's National Health Service hat trick. They may have caught out the mass of the people by underhand bowling, but we think that the by-election results, which we shall see in due course, will show that the spectators are now beginning to see through the hat: they will observe that the tendency in this Bill, to which we so strongly object and which we may see extended in the future in this and other fields, is to transfer from the fair basis of taxation to the unfair basis of contributions.
  5.37 p.m.
  Mr. A. E. Cooper: At the commencement of his remarks, the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) referred to the Guillotine. He suggested that it was premature and that had we not had it we should have got along very much better. I should like to point out to him and to his hon. Friends that, notwithstanding that we had the Guillotine in the last two days of the debate, when the Guillotine was enforced the hon. Gentleman forced no fewer than nineteen Divisions in two days, with the result that out of the time allotted for debate no fewer than four hours were spent in trudging in and out of the Division Lobbies.
  Mr. Houghton: When we had no time to debate the Amendment separately, is the hon. Member suggesting that we

  1795
  should have allowed them to go by default? We decided to register our opposition to the Bill without debate rather than to see it passed without debate or without opposition.
  Mr. Cooper: I am not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends should not have divided the House on a number of occasions. I am simply suggesting that to have taken out of two days about 25 per cent. of the debating time by going in and out of the Lobbies shows the sense of great irresponsibility which has activated the Labour Party throughout the debates on these Measures since they were first introduced in the House. [Interruption.] Every time I get on my feet in these debates I have to suffer a running commentary from hon. Members opposite. It is a great pity that hon. Gentlemen cannot take what they are so ready to give out. To them the National Health Service is a sort of sacred cow, something to be equated with unilateral nuclear disarmament and Clause 4. The prospect emerges of the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) leading a deputation of Labour Members of Parliament from Westminster to the by-elections as a kind of latter-day Excelsior, holding aloft a banner showing a medicine bottle rampant on a bed of aspirins, edged with cotton wool.
  Really and truly, the National Health Service is not sacrosanct. The economic life of this country is not static; it moves on from day to day. Throughout the political life of this country, long after the Government have gone and other Governments have taken their place, there will be modifications in the National Health Service.
  Miss Lee: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Cooper: During the debate the hon. Member for Sowerby and his hon. Friends have made great play with the words that these new proposals represent a poll tax, and one hon. Member after another used the expression until, in the end, it really became a sort of dirty word. The fact is that throughout our taxation system we have a whole collection of poll taxes. There are, for example, the Road Fund licence, the petrol tax, the radio and television licences, the tax on cigarettes and
  1796
  tobacco and on liquor, the charges on gas and electricity, coal and water. All these are poll taxes in so far as they are a flat charge which everybody has to meet if they consume that particular article, irrespective of their incomes.
  Dr. Barnett Stross: Would the hon. Member not admit, however, that there is some freedom of choice? We are not compelled to have a television set or a motor car, but this type of poll tax is in a different category. We have to pay it whether we like it or not.
  Mr. Cooper: The hon. Member must have gas, electricity and certainly water.
  Dr. Stross: One can use paraffin.
  Mr. Cooper: Even paraffin has its price. A wide variety of goods purchased in the shops all bear certain prices. Do not let us try to create the idea that a flat charge is something which is utterly immoral. It is not. On the general question of a flat rate, the Labour Party itself, in spite of what the hon. Member for Sowerby has said, accepted the principle of a flat-rate contribution for this Service. What we are now arguing and what is really the nub of this problem is whether an individual contribution should be levied and, if so, whether the present figure is too high.
  There is obviously room for differences of opinion between the two sides of the House. The hon. Member for Sowerby dealt with the question of an unlimited contribution by the Exchequer to the Health Service and he asked what we meant by that. Let us put the matter in another way. A Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer himself said quite clearly that there had to be at that particular time a ceiling on the National Health Service as far as the Exchequer was concerned, and in order that it might be developed beyond that figure certain charges were introduced.
  We do not need to go into the history of all these charges, but the fact remains—and I took the trouble last night to look up the debates—that at the time these were introduced by the Labour Government only one Division took place. Therefore, hon. and right hon. Members opposite must accept the fact that their own party in the past has accepted that where the Exchequer is concerned

  1797
  there must be a ceiling on the Service and that if it is to go beyond that point funds have to be found in other directions.
  Some hon. Members opposite, and indeed, I think, the majority who have spoken, have suggested that the whole cost of the Health Service should be financed out of taxation, whether direct or indirect. I put it to them that if this is to happen, with the present cost of the Health Service, there will be thrown on to the taxpayer, if the contributions are withdrawn, a figure of about £160 million in a full year. The Chancellor, of course, has his traditional ways of raising that money. I suggest to hon. Members opposite that if £160 million, or whatever the sum may be, is raised by taxation, old-age pensioners, for whom they express so much regard will be forced to make some contribution out of taxation which they do not have to pay at present by reason of the current rate of contributions.
  It seems to me, therefore, that the idea of transferring all this to taxation must inevitably affect adversely those people who are least able to bear it. It is fair to point out that when the charges were introduced in 1957 the words used were precisely the words as used by Sir Stafford Cripps when he announced the ceiling as Chancellor of the Exchequer. There was no difference on this subject between a Labour Chancellor and a Conservative Government. It happens that at present the Labour Party is in opposition and this is a very good political stick with which to beat us. I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Sowerby about the by-elections. I am sure that he will have cold comfort tomorrow when he reads the results.
  I now come to a question which we must all look at objectively in the years ahead. The sum of about £800 million which the Health Service is to cost is only about half what it will cost in fifty years' time. Future generations will have to give their serious consideration to how this massive Service, which we all want to see developed, will be developed.
  It is my firm belief that the average man in the street expects to make some contribution directly towards the Health Service, but the real question is whether the figure which we are now asking him
  1798
  to contribute is too much. We can have honest differences of opinion about that. It is my view that, having regard to the present wage structure, the figures are all right for the generality of earning people. Reference has been made at length in these debates to one or two sections of the population, but only slight reference has been made to two other sections which I have in mind and which should be mentioned again tonight.
  We have heard a great deal about the £9-a-week man. I would say to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary that there is a great deal of worry in all parts of the House about the proportion of income which people in that income group have to pay to meet these costs.
  Mrs. Harriet Slater: The hon. Member did not vote for our Amendment.
  Mr. Cooper: The reason my hon. Friends did not vote for that Amendment was simply that it was shown in argument to be quite impracticable of operation, and we had to find other means. I do not profess to say exactly what are the means of dealing with this problem. It may well be that an entirely new system of financing the Health Service will have to be devised to take care of these categories.
  Nobody has said very much about the self-employed. When they are mentioned, the view is sometimes taken that the people we are talking about are the professional man or somebody who has a big shop or a practice of some sort and who is earning a substantial income and is able to look after himself, but there are in the self-employed category large numbers of people who have a real job to make ends meet. To mention just two sections, there are news-vendors and jobbing gardeners, and they make up a large part of the people in the country. Something must be done in due course to take account of these lower earnings.
  On balance, and within the context of our present economic situation, I feel that the Bill is about right. I would again draw the attention of the Government to the fact that there is considerable perturbation in the House about the lower income groups, and I sincerely

  1799
  hope that something can be done about them before it is necessary to introduce any other Measure of this sort to the House.
  5.50 p.m.
  Miss Jennie Lee: The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) deserves credit for being a good tryer. Not many hon. Members opposite are prepared to put themselves on record quite so recklessly. He has said, "I really appreciate the point that you make about the low paid worker and the old-age pensioner, but it is beyond the intellectual resources of my party to think of ways of meeting this point of view, and it is beyond my modest resources to be able to advise my party how it could even up these grosser forms of injustice."
  In case the hon. Member is worrying too much about all this, I should like to answer his point about the old-age pensioner. The hon. Member told the House that if we were not prepared to raise about a quarter of the funds for the Health Service by the proposed special impositions and if the entire charge was met by the Exchequer, one of the first persons to suffer would be the old-age pensioner. The hon. Member is not as daft as all that. He must see through that fallacy.
  Mr. Cooper: I recall that not many years ago the television licence was raised from £3 to £4 a year. The first cry that we had from the Opposition was that the first people to suffer from this imposition would be the old-age pensioners. The fact that they had spent £80 on a television set had gone over the heads of hon. Members opposite.
  Miss Lee: I fail to see the precise relevance of that point, but if the hon. Gentleman says that we might look very carefully into the way we finance television, particularly commercial television, I should like to follow up the point at some other time.
  To get back to the "aching heart" about the old-age pensioners, which the hon. Member has been exposing to the House, what the hon. Member is really telling us is that if the full cost of the Service is to be borne by the Exchequer, the Chancellor dare not
  1800
  think in terms of raising direct Income Tax, Surtax, death duties or capital levies, dare not think in terms of the more buoyant economy, dare not think of bringing under public ownership and control some of the more lucrative monopolies so that he could be raising revenues from those sources, and dare not think in terms of raising extra money by taxing luxury goods.
  What the hon. Member was saying was that the only person to whom the Chancellor could possibly turn was the old-age pensioner, and he would say, "I am sorry, old fellow; you are already paying for the boots on your feet, the chair in which you are sitting and practically every little comfort that you possess, but we shall have to add 1d. or 6d. more." I had a sneaking regard for the hon. Member, but I just cannot believe that he does not see through the shoddiness of that argument.
  I can help the hon. Member in respect of the low paid worker and the imposition of what my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) called the poll tax. I was much impressed by my hon. Friend's speech, because he explained with his usual brilliant clarity that in the early stages there was a transfer from the old workmen's benefit arrangements to the new Health Service. However, I was delighted when he said that it should be remembered that this was a transitional Measure and that in all likelihood it was a temporary one.
  I look forward to future debates in the House, preferably when some of us are speaking from the opposite side. I feel that the present debate and what has gone before will have served an extremely useful purpose and contributed to the transfer of power inside the House, provided that we have all learnt the lesson that we dare not make compromises with principle, even to the most limited extent, when we are dealing with the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party of Great Britain is an old party.
  Mr. W. A. Wilkins: And an artful one.
  Miss Lee: Yes, an artful one, and it knows precisely when to praise a Labour Party when it falters in its Socialist principles. I am not professing to be by any means a perfect Socialist, and I do not claim that for my party. However, the debate has more and more brought

  1801
  out in the open the fundamental differences between the two sides of the House.
  The more steadfastly we base our case on Socialist ethics and economics, the clearer it will be for the great mass of the people to understand the argument which is going on between the two sides of the House. The argument is not just one which raises our compassion because it is concerned with men, women and children in times of illness. The argument is also a challenge to us because it is asking in what way the wealth of the country is to be distributed? The original Act was, and always was, understood to be a redistributive Act as well as a compassionate one. It was based not only on the ethics of the good Samaritan but on the economics of the sound Socialist planner with right priorities.
  But hon. Members opposite come to the House and say, in effect—they have been more open during the discussions on this Bill than ever before—"The more buoyant the economy of Great Britain, the less necessary is it for us to have a Health Service paid for by the Exchequer." They have changed their views several times. As has already been brought out in earlier stages, they have advanced rather more cautiously. They have been feeling public opinion very carefully. But—maybe it is our fault—they have become a little arrogant. A great deal of complacency has crept into their attitude towards the House, and they have now reached the stage when they think they can say quite openly to us, "We believe that the individual citizen should pay directly for the health benefit at the moment when he is in need of medical and hospital attention."
  Part of the Opposition's anxiety is because we know that we have not reached the final solution. We believe that a permanent tug of war goes on. This is power politics. There is the struggle of the time, in which we on this side of the House inevitably obey the tugs that have propelled us into public life. We try to serve the particular interests which have led to our being here at all. Hon. Members opposite are doing the same.
  1802
  I cannot separate for a moment the attitude of the Government towards the Health Service, towards education, towards housing and towards public ownership. Indeed, during the hours in which we have been discussing whether it is right and proper to raise about £20 million by harassing people with additional prescription charges and increased welfare charges, which seem so petty to those with large incomes, the full armoury of the money market has been rallied in seeking to persuade private investors to buy steel shares that were public property and were bringing profit to the nation as a whole—profit that could, among other things, have been used to ease taxation
  The Government have been offering bargains to the investors. They have been throwing away tens of millions of pounds of public money for the ideological reason that they do not believe in the public ownership of our great basic resources. Members opposite are skilful at changing their ground. There was a time when they said that their objection to public ownership was that it was inefficient and that we should leave these things to private business. That is not how they are talking now. In the same way, there was a time when, in their attitude towards health charges, they were a little more careful. Now they come out openly and say, in effect, that they want the maximum burden to be placed on the shoulders of people when they are sick.
  More than that—and this is something I utterly fail to understand—if one is a lady or gentleman of leisure one may be living on a pound or two a week, or one may be a millionaire, but one need not pay any contribution to the National Health Service, though one gets the full service. Yet if one is an insured worker or an employer, one has to be singled out and put into a special category in the community in order to pay special taxes. That is my answer to the hon. Member for Ilford, South, who was worried about the low-paid workers. A worker is a worker, and whether he is paid £9 or £90 a week he should not be paying this contribution at all.
  I hope that one day we shall have a debate in the House when the Conservatives will stand their ground on the full weight of their own philosophy and when we will stand on our philosophy. I am certain that it will come, and that we

  1803
  on this side of the House will rally public opinion for a National Health Service financed 100 per cent. by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It will then be the responsibility of the Chancellor to decide whether Income Tax, Surtax, Purchase Tax, or certain other taxes—on wine or cars or anything else—should bear the burden. Priorities have to be arranged as between tax and tax.
  I have not heard one argument in the debate which has in any way modified my point of view that there is far too much blunting of this issue. Not one single penny should be raised by special impositions on the industrial workers. Not one single person should be charged when hospital service is needed.
  Hon. Members opposite also say—and this goes to the root of the differences between us and hon. Members opposite—that the more buoyant the economy the less we need the Health Service. We say that the more buoyant the economy the more easy it is for us to afford the Health Service. We go further and say that if a National Health Service, paid for by the Exchequer, is essential during a period of buoyant economy, it is doubly essential during a period of trade recession. In all humility, I ask my colleagues to consider the argument I am putting, for we argue inside our own party. Hon. Members opposite are beginning to follow our good example, and I congratulate them. There is everything to be said for argument within parties, as there is for argument between them.
  We on this side of the House are going to rally the public on these issues, and I ask my colleagues to consider that if it is right to place the burdens of this great Service on the shoulders best able to bear them in a time of expanding economy, then, if ever again we are faced by difficult and stormy weather—and we have to look forward to the fact that it is when times are difficult that the public is most likely to turn to the Labour movement; Members opposite usually get the better end of the stick—and if we are faced by a depression for reasons beyond our control, or by a period of special difficulties, that is an additional reason for saying that no part of the charges on the National Health Service shall fall on the wounded.
  Let the able-bodied soldiers in the front line of battle stand their ground,
  1804
  and let them apply to these great issues of peace what every brave and honourable man and woman applies in time of war, when one is not only willing to carry the wounded but is proud to carry them, and would be ashamed if one tried to pass part of one's burden on to their shoulders.
  6.7 p.m.
  Mr. Percy Browne: I spoke on the Second Reading of the Bill and I had not intended speaking again, but I should like briefly to say one or two things.
  I think that the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), who spoke with her usual sincerity and passion, was really pin-pointing what this debate has been about. I think that at times she was speaking more to her own benches in saying that they should get down to basic Socialist principles. When one is the party responsible for administering a service such as the National Health Service, it behoves one to be responsible about if. The hon. Lady said, at the end of her speech, that it was necessary for those who were able-bodied to bear the wounded. I agree with that. Through this Bill we are asking that those who are working and able-bodied should pay towards the National Health Service.
  The hon. Lady also said that it was essential, should there be a recession, that the Health Service should be safeguarded. Again, I would have thought that it would be safeguarded much better if we took the responsibility for its being made safe. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health said on Second Reading, one cannot necessarily depend upon getting a sufficient sum from the Exchequer to allow the National Health Service to go on expanding. In this case, what we have done is to go on doing what was done before. But I do not hold, as I have said before, that it is a good thing to say that, because somebody else did something, we should go on doing it.
  I make no apology for having voted entirely with the Government on this issue. I have had various reservations about the Bill, but no part of the country can opt out of inflation. I appreciate the argument that this is a national Measure. In my part of the country the average wage is low. The level of

  1805
  contributions we are imposing this time is the level that we must stick at. We must not go any higher. These debates will have been useful if they mean that many of us who might not otherwise have thought deeply about this problem will have thought more deeply about it.
  It is no good going on with variations on the same theme—that is to say, putting up contributions by a little bit one year and prescription charges at another time; in other words, using the same measures and saying all the time, "This is the proportion that we kept before. Therefore, we must go on keeping the same proportion." I believe that the time has come when we must rethink not just our National Health Service policy, but the programme for roads, schools and everything else, and allocate specific priorities.
  As a very new politician, one of the disadvantages seems to me to be that at election time the parties promise a great deal, if productivity can rise and we can fulfil all that we promise all the time and take the money out of general taxation, well and good. To my mind, the argument in favour of contributions and other measures as they are with the proviso that I have made is that they make people realise that it is impossible to have something for nothing.
  Having said that, however, it is time that we rethought the way that we will pay for the National Health Service. As the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) said—
  Dr. Stross: Before the hon. Member leaves the point, will he deal with this fact? He is speaking of the rise in proportion of the contributions as the years have gone by. Does he not agree that if we go back to 1951 the rise in the cost of the Service as a whole can be accounted for to the extent of 70 per cent. by inflation, and that only the remainder can be allocated to other reasons? The contribution, however, has gone up times four since then. Speaking, as he does, so sympathetically, does not the hon. Member agree that his Government have grossly overdone it?
  Mr. Browne: I entirely follow the hon. Member's argument. Since he tripped me up, quite rightly, last time when I spoke without having looked at the figures, I took the trouble to get out some figures. I admit that I was
  1806
  surprised at the various proportions, in that in 1946 the proportion paid by way of contributions—I have taken these details from the speech of my right hon. Friend in HANSARD—was about 21 per cent. It dropped for reasons of inflation, because the contribution was not put up, to a percentage of 8·9 of the cost of the Health Service in 1950–51. and it has risen gradually since then.
  These arguments, going back over history, seem rather pointless, because we are still at 16·7 per cent. today for the contribution which is still less than the 21 per cent. in 1946. I do not think that that proves anything. That is why I say that, having listened to much of the argument about this matter, it leaves me cold, to use a colloquial expression.
  Dr. Stross: Of course, the 1946 figure was guesswork. The only figure that we can take that is reasonable is the figure for the first year of working the Service. Then the hon. Member will find that the question which I put to him rhetorically is correct.
  Mr. Browne: I agree. That is one way of putting it. In, say, 1949–50, the actual percentage of total contributions towards the cost of the scheme was 11·8 per cent. It has now risen to 16·7 per cent. The hon. Member has proved his point. He has also helped my point of view that while it is right that people should pay a certain amount towards the Health Service individually so that they realise that they cannot get anything for nothing, the time has come when I have a fear that this spiral will continue and the cost of the Health Service must go on increasing. It may get up to, possibly, £100 million a year.
  Whichever Minister, of whatever party, is in power, he must come back to the House of Commons and say that more money is wanted for the Health Service contributions. I suggest that we must think about how we are to get it. There are various possible measures. We can go back to the suggestion of the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock that it should all come out of the national Exchequer. One could adopt the suggestion, put forward by the Liberals, that there should be a social service tax, as I believe there is in France, which is kept entirely separate and is graded according to means.

  1807
  There is a great deal of sense in that sort of suggestion. I am not producing a ready-made solution, because there is not such a thing.
  All that I wanted to do tonight was to ask my right hon. Friend, much as I dislike inquiries, whether the time has not come when we should consider setting up an inquiry to look into the financing of the Health Service, whether it be done on priorities from general taxes, whether we are to leave the present level of contributions irrespective of the level of wages in the future, or whatever else is to be done. I feel certain that something will have to be done, and I am sure that unless there is a great increase in the national wealth in the next two or three years we shall find ourselves in difficulties by about 1965.
  6.15 p.m.
  Dr. Horace King: The kindly introduction of the Economic Secretary to this debate was most disarming as he paid compliments to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. I ought to begin by paying tribute to what I might call the twin Secretaries of State, who are able and kindly hon. Gentlemen, and say that nobody could have more pleasantly failed to answer the arguments that have been put throughout our long debates on the Bill. Nobody could have defended so mean a Measure so sweetly and with such an air of outraged innocence. We thank the two hon. Gentlemen for their courtesy and, as persons, we say nothing of them but good. Politically, however, we have no kind words for either of them or for their Government.
  I once more congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) on excellent Front Bench leadership. We on the back benches are proud of them. We are pleased with the teamwork that we have been able to put in under their leadership. Indeed, but for the Guillotine, back benchers would have played a much more elaborate part in subjecting the Bill to scrutiny in Amendment after Amendment which the Guillotine prevented us from debating. Even had we succeeded, however, it would not have made any difference. The Government had made up their minds to
  1808
  raid the pockets of some of the poorer people to get most of the £50 million that is needed.
  Hardly anybody has spoken on the Government benches throughout these long debates. Indeed, we shall not have too many speeches from the Government side today. One would except the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper), the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe), who always makes a reasonable contribution, and the noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel), who has just joined the debate and who is so keen on the subject of the Health Service that he even did his best to prevent the Opposition from stating their case on a recent Prayer tabled by the Opposition on one aspect of the matter.
  The Bill to which a Third Reading is being given today has been guillotined through the House. I believe that the reason for the Guillotine is that the Government preferred a day's academic debate on the Guillotine to a day more in which to hear unpleasant truths about the Bill. They would sooner vote down our undebated Amendments and tramp through the Lobbies, as we were compelled to do, on the Amendments than hear arguments for the Amendments. Under a timetable in which the Government had the supreme decision of allocating stages, they generously allocated us a day for Third Reading, because they know that nothing that we say today can in any way alter the fate of the Bill.
  I understand that Oxford and Cambridge scholars are engaged in translating the Bible. If I may interject the only remark which may be out of order in my speech, I am sure that we are all delighted to know that the new New Testament is a best seller. I suggest that the Government could help the scholars in translating the Old Testament. I have turned it up and in Exodus, 30, I read a Law of Moses:
  "The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel…to make an atonement for your souls."
  That might indeed be called the Moses Spiritual Health (Contributions) Bill. Moses and Aaron were good Tories. They invented the poll tax. All that the Bill is doing is translating what I have quoted from Exodus into modern language.

  1809
  The Bill continues the cold war against the National Health Service which the Government have waged ever since they voted against it on Third Reading in 1946. We refuse to believe that the leopard has changed its spots. Those who will vote for the Third Reading of the Bill will include all those who are still in the House who spoke against the Third Reading of the Bill which set up the National Health Service. The hon. Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead), who is not here now, will be here tonight to vote for the Bill, because he opened the debate against the Third Reading of the other Bill. The hon. Member for Horncastle (Sir J. Maitland), the present Minister of Education, Lord Amory, Lord Conesford, and the then Member for my University, who, like a good university man, did what University Members have always done, voted against every progressive course, all voted to prevent the Health Service from coming into existence and spoke against it.
  Included in those who voted against the Third Reading of the Bill which set up the Health Service are the present Leader of the House, the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, the Minister of Aviation, the ex-Minister of Health, the Attorney-General, and, of course, the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). They all voted against the Third Reading of the Bill.
  Miss Lee: I hope that my hon. Friend will not forget the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has been so conspicuous by his absence.
  Dr. King: I am sorry that I omitted the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who played such an active part in fulminating against it. The two Ministers taking part in this debate and the other Ministers of the Government Front Bench did not vote against the Third Reading of the National Health Service Bill simply because they were not here.
  The Government have never liked the Health Service. They believe that money ought to be able to buy everything. They believe that it ought to be able to buy health and medical care, just as it can buy superior education. The Government do not like graduated taxation. If they
  1810
  were powerful enough, they would set the patient free. They would set up a two-tier system of national health, just as we have a two-tier caste system of public and State schools.
  The Government, however, depend on the votes of millions of ordinary people, and to the millions of ordinary Tory voters socialised medicine has become very precious and popular. Thousands of devoted members of the Tory Party voluntarily serve in this great National Health Service. Even their supporters in the House, like the hon. Member for Putney, now believe in a Health Service, so they dare not embark on the destruction of the Welfare State or the abolition of the Health Service. They must just nibble at both, and the Bill is one of the nibbles.
  I would be out of order if I described their other parallel attacks by the group of Measures which are before the House at the moment, the prescription charges, and so on, although the Bill can be appreciated to the full only if we join it to its predecessor of 1958, which raised charges two years ago, and the various charges which the Government are imposing by other Measures. The effect of these nibbles is cumulative, and it is meant to be, but I suggest that £50 million is quite a big nibble against the principle of the Health Service.
  I regard the Bill and its predecessor as part of a grand Tory strategy. Everybody complains about the burden of taxation under a system of graduated taxation. Those who pay most, naturally, complain the most. We were told yesterday about a gentleman who is to receive £24,000 a year. It was pointed out that he would pay £17,000 a year in tax. The Tories argue, and this is the principle behind the argument in support of the Bill, why should such a man not have more of his own money to spend on himself? This is what a lady said on the radio the other night in a Tory political broadcast with the President of the Board of Trade.
  Is it not better, ask the Government, that we should all pay a "bob a nob"—or at least 8d. to 10d. a "nob"—to relieve the very rich taxpayer of £1,000 or so of this terrible burden which he carries? That is what the fight is about. That is what we have fought during the fifty-four hours' debate to which the Economic Secretary referred. Just how

  1811
  far is it right to impose further flat-rate burdens on everybody, and how far is it right, on the other hand, to impose any new financial burdens which the Health Service demands according to one's capacity to pay?
  There is no argument about one simple fact. The Bill shifts some of the burden of graduated taxation into a poll tax burden. It will make things easier for the £24,000 a year man. It will make things harder for the 10s. widow. The Government believe that that is both right and necessary, and that they cannot build the hospitals we need unless they relieve the taxation burden of the £24,000 a year man and make a flat-rate charge on the 10s. widow and the old gentleman of 65 who goes out to work to increase his pension when he retires at 70.
  We on this side of the House think that the flat-rate element in taxation is already large enough. I believe that it is too large. We also believe that the £50 million which the Bill provides ought to come out of general taxation. The burden of flat-rate taxation is already very heavy. Let those who moan about the burdens of direct graduated taxation remember—as, indeed, was pointed out by the hon. Member for Ilford, South during the short time that he was present in the Chamber, but I see that he has since departed—that a tremendous amount is levied on the citizens of this country by way of flat-rate taxation.
  In the indirect taxes, a flat-rate tax on tobacco and beer, and Purchase Tax, are borne equally by the millionaire and by the poorest workman, except that the poorest workman does not consume as much as the millionaire. From the Chancellor's point of view they all have one advantage. They are concealed flat-rate taxes, but these indirect taxes, all of them flat-rate, together with the now enormous portion of his weekly wage that has to go in a stamp, are, I believe, greater than they should be for the poorest wage earners of the country.
  The case is a moral one. The man worth £24,000 a year, even if he has to pay £17,000 a year in taxation, will have £7,000 a year, or about £150 a week, to live on. I believe that he will be able to get by fairly comfortably on that sum. On the other hand, the man with
  1812
  £8 a week, after paying his National insurance contribution, and after paying the new levies which the Government are imposing, will have less than £7 10s. a week to live on. I have always believed that this disparity between the richest people and the poorest is too great, and that the Bill is bad because it widens the gap instead of narrowing it.
  Mr. P. Browne: This is a dialectic argument. Does the hon. Gentleman think that he would get people to accept the responsibility in the higher managerial levels if they were penalised by more taxation?
  Dr. King: The hon. Gentleman begs the question by using the word "penalised". He refers to people in the higher wage groups of taxation as being penalised because they pay more tax.
  Mr. Browne: I asked the hon. Gentleman a direct question. Will he give me a direct answer?
  Dr. King: The difference between the hon. Gentleman and myself is that I believe that the burdens imposed on the lower income group have reached such a level today that further taxation is penal.
  Mr. Browne: I am not disagreeing with the hon. Gentleman. I asked him a question.
  Dr. King: If we had to choose between imposing further direct flat-rate burdens on the lowest-paid income group in this country, and stiffening graduated taxation. we should not hesitate at all.
  Mr. Browne: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point of view, but I asked him whether he thought that he would get these people to take on these responsible jobs if the taxation were increased.
  Dr. King: I am sorry that I misunderstood the hon. Member's first question. It is much easier to answer now that he has repeated it. Every Royal Commission report on taxation that has been published has shown that there has been no such disincentive. Nobody will refuse a £24,000-a-year job, even if it carries a tax of £17,000, if such a job is available. If such a post were advertised today there would be a rush of people willing to accept the responsibility of paying £17,000 a year in Income Tax when

  1813
  they have £7,000 left, and the hon. Gentlemen himself might be one of them. I am sorry to have been so long over the interruption.
  The Government have put forward during our debates, when we have shown them that group after group of unfortunate people are caused hardship by the Bill, only two arguments: One is that average wages are up to £15 a week, so everybody ought to be able to pay this extra poll tax. Even if that were true, there are better ways of securing the extra £50 million than by a poll tax, even considering the motive of the Government. Wages are not the only things that have risen in the last few years. Profits, dividends and unearned incomes have risen much more dramatically than wages, and if it is morally right that people should pay more to the Health Service because they have more money to pay with—which is one limb of the Government's argument—why not allow Income Tax to take care of that? Income Tax will do so. The yield of Income Tax today is higher than it has ever been, although the rates of Income Tax have been lowered steadily by the Government, because people are receiving bigger incomes.
  That is why my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, in the last General Election campaign, that it might be possible to meet all the demands of the expanding social services without raising the level of taxation. What we may be deciding in this debate is not whether a new graduated tax should be imposed, but whether the Government can get £50 million with which to reduce graduated taxation.
  Moreover, the biggest increases in income have not gone to those who work by hand or brain. I am much more sympathetic to the Minister of Transport's action in paying the market price for the administrative brain than I am to the wealth that has recently gone to those who have done nothing beyond owning property and scrip, who receive increases of unearned income vastly out of proportion to any conception of social justice.
  We have shown, during our curtailed debates on the Bill, that there are millions of people who get nothing like an average of £15 a week. As I wander round among my trade union friends at the weekend in Southampton I even find
  1814
  it difficult to find anyone who is earning that average, and I am certain that that goes for other industrial towns. If we meet someone who is earning more than £15 a week we can be sure that that figure is not his basic rate, but that he is getting it by working excessive overtime.
  There are thousands of disabled people—excluding ex-Service disabled—thousands of widows, thousands living on small fixed incomes; millions in industries which are not prosperous enough, or whose workers are not adequately organised in their trade unions; thousands faced with short time through the shrinkage of an industry, and all the young students in universities, technical colleges and training colleges that we need to encourage the creation of the intellectual, technical and scientific cadres that we need to match the problems of the next fifty years; there are millions of women doing drudgery work. Most of the drudgery work is done by the women of England—London's splendid army of charwomen among them.
  All these people will pay the new increased flat-rate charges under the Bill, merely to save those of us who are much better off a few miserable pounds a year. Many of us think that when the Finance Bill comes before us in April it will be found that the purpose of obtaining this £50 million is to relieve the Surtax payers of some of what hon. Members opposite call penal taxation.
  The other argument addressed to us has been, "Well, you did it when you were in power." It is true that the Labour movement has advocated and also legislated for a flat-rate element in National Insurance and in the Health Service. It is worth pointing out the historical reason for that. We had to fight for our existence. The trade union movement had to fight to build up a standard of living, and when we fought to establish insurance some things weighed in our minds—one the fear, often expressed, that a reactionary Government might take away the benefits provided under any State system unless the worker had made a contribution towards them. In National Insurance, the worker has all the benefits as of right although he does not pay the actual cost of all of them. He pays a

  1815
  portion, but the portion he pays in a flat-rate contribution secures him his State benefit as of right, and no Government can take it away from him.
  We still hold that view on insurance, in general, but I am glad that we are moving away from it in relation to the Health Service. I hope that the Labour Party will adopt ultimately the position put so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock, that all Health Service charges should be borne by the Treasury, and that we should receive from the citizen, according to his capacity to pay, the finance we need for the Health Service. But if we do not go as far as that, even if we concede the principle of the flat-rate, there is a limit beyond which, I believe, we should not go.
  The hon. Member for Ilford, South thinks that the limit has now been reached. I think that the limit should be judged not by any sweeping reference to average income, but by what is a fair charge on the poorest person in the country. It must be remembered that this Government have quadrupled the flat-rate charge on the poorest person. I am certain, from my knowledge of the poorest people in my constituency, that that limit has long been reached, and that this new burden should not be imposed on the poorest people in Britain.
  These people, faced with the high cost of their weekly stamp, will have to deprive themselves of some of the things they ought to have in order to meet it. I believe that poor people are poor not because of something sinful in their nature, or because they are necessarily incompetent, but because society rewards its citizens inequitably, and flat-rate taxation of this kind emphasises the injustices instead of moderating them. When we remember that this Bill has to do with national health it therefore becomes even more objectionable. The health of the citizen is not only a personal possession of his own; it is part of our national wealth. The fact that we have the healthiest generation of children that Britain has ever known is a matter of pride and of real wealth, not only to parents with children but to people who have no children, to the nation as a whole.
  The fact that old people live longer, that the poorest people, when they get old, live more happily and more
  1816
  healthily than they have ever lived before, is again a matter of real wealth to Britain. The fact that the devoted labours of general practitioners, consultants, surgeons, nurses and all the voluntary and professional workers in the great National Health Service—the fact that this army is winning year after year great victories against disease—the destruction of rickets, the almost complete victory against tuberculosis, the conquest of pneumonia and of diabetes—all this is a matter of national wealth, national well-being and national pride.
  I believe that it is the negation of all decent thought and feeling to add, as this Government have done, new financial burdens on the sick. It is the negation of all good progressive financing to spread the £50 million of this Bill over rich and poor exactly alike. National health contributes to national prosperity, and those who get the most out of national prosperity ought to be glad to pay most for it.
  We have opposed this Bill with determination and with unity, but it will be carried. I would say to my hon. Friends on this side that I believe that if we can show the same unity about other questions affecting our great Labour movement, and tackle them in the spirit which we have shown in these debates, it will not be very long before we move over to the other side of the House and restore the National Health Service to what it should be. I believe that the appropriate quotation for this Bill comes not from the major classics, but from a minor one—from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Gondoliers";
  "The Earl, the Marquis and the Dook
  The Groom, the Butler and the Cook
  The Aristocrat who banks with Coutts
  The Aristocrat who cleans the Boots
  The noble Lord who rules the State
  The noble Lord who scrubs the Grate
  They all shall equal be."
  This Bill makes them all pay the same flat-rate of contribution. I believe that that is egalitarianism gone mad.
  6.42 p.m.
  Lord Balniel: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King). Although he has just been engaged in a piece of party political warfare, we all appreciate his sincerity and the knowledge of the National Health Service

  1817
  which he shows in our debates. In following him, I apologise to the House for the fact that I have not been present during the course of the debate owing to an engagement outside the Chamber, a difficulty in which, I might say, other hon. Members found themselves at the same moment. I should, however, like to refer directly to the hon. Gentleman's speech. It seems to me that his speech, in common with other speeches made by hon. Members in opposing this Bill, contained two absolutely basic fallacies.
  The first fallacy is that there is between the two sides of the House a great difference of principle on this Bill. The hon. Member indeed nods his head to that. I venture to express doubt that there is any great difference of principle between us, and I would like to argue that in rather more detail. The other basic fallacy exemplified very clearly in the speech of the hon. Member for Itchen is that it is desirable, as advanced by him, that the contributory element of the Health Service should, in fact, gradually dwindle away. I think I understood him rightly to say that, ultimately, he wished to see the Opposition adopt as its policy the elimination of the contributory element altogether. That seems to me also to be a basic fallacy, and certainly a disadvantage to the Health Service. I should like to deal with that argument also.
  Before I do so, I should like also to say that what rather surprises me is that during the course of the debate, hon. Members opposite seemed to have been blinded to the trap which has been laid for them by what may be described colloquially as the Left wing of the party. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. M. Foot) has already torn his party asunder on the question of defence, and has also torn his party asunder on the question of nationalisation. Now, behind this great façade of unity, which was the word used by the hon. Member for Itchen, this façade of total opposition to the Bill, the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale with his associates is reopening the great question which tore the party opposite asunder in the early 1950s. I am surprised that hon. Members opposite have been blinded to the trap which has been put before them.
  There is one hon. Member of the party opposite who has not been blinded, and
  1818
  it is the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. He has not been blinded; I think he has been hypnotised. He sat there like a petrified rabbit, not taking any part—and I understand the historical reasons for that—waiting for the knife to be plunged into his back by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale and his associates.
  Dr. King: The noble Lord comments adversely on the fact that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, for what he regards as a mysterious reason, did not take part in the debate. Will he tell us for what political reason the Prime Minister is not taking part?
  Lord Balniel: The Leader of the Opposition began this series of debates by referring to this Bill. I think I am quoting his words correctly, although "off the cuff", by saying that he stated that this was the beginning of the dismantling of the Welfare State. In these circumstances, it is slightly surprising that we have not had the benefit of a speech from the Leader of the Opposition. However, I do not want to get too involved in party dispute on this matter.
  What I should like to do is to revert to the argument that there is a great difference of principle between us. I do not want to spend too much time on the slightly arid argument that what we are doing is basically unchanged from what the party opposite did when it was in office. Normally, this is a view which does not commend itself to me in the slightest, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Torrington (Mr. P. Browne). This kind of argument is the kind which leaves me absolutely cold, but hon. Gentlemen opposite must appreciate that the furious indignation which we have witnessed during the past few weeks would be slightly more impressive, both to the country as a whole and to hon. Members on these benches, if, in fact, we were not in this Bill putting forward proposals which are entirely consistent with the proposals which they put forward when they were in office.
  Mr. Wilkins: The noble Lord was not here for the opening speech.
  Lord Balniel: I have already apologised for not hearing the opening of the debate.

  1819
  This Bill increases the contributions for insured persons by 10d., and it increases the contributions of the employers by 2d. The total amount to be paid by the insured person is 2s. 8½d. a week, or a total of about £7 a year. To whatever test we submit this contribution, it is almost identical with the contributions of the past.
  I think the normal reaction of people outside the House—people not steeped in partisanship and party politics—is going to be, "Well now, what does this contribution take out of our overall earnings?" I believe that most people do not distinguish between the National Insurance element and the National Health Service element, although on the stamp it is made quite clear that a certain element goes to the Health Service and a certain element towards insurance benefits. I think most people lump these two together, and that is the common sense thing to do.
  That is their weekly payment, and if we do as they do and lump these two elements together, we see that the stamp in 1949 involved a weekly payment of 4s. 11d. at a time when average earnings were £7 2s. 8d. In those days, the stamp took 3·45 per cent. of average earnings. Today, under the proposals of my right hon. Friend, the stamp is to take 3·65 per cent. of average earnings in the country. That seems to me to be a difference which is so slight that there can be no difference of principle between us. Hon. Members opposite can, of course—I quite appreciate the argument of the hon. Gentleman—say that the contribution formed too great an element in 1949 and therefore it forms too great an element today. But my belief is that the people in the country, having studied these figures, would say that if it was a fair contribution in 1949, when, after all, we could hardly spend anything on luxuries, it is probably, in a rough and ready way a fair contribution today.
  I wish to look at this contribution in a slightly different way. Earlier in the debates on the Health Service I heard what I frankly admit was a moving speech by the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee). She was quoting the words of the late Aneurin Bevan who said that the language of priorities is the religion of Socialism. Those are rather fine and moving words. The language
  1820
  of priorities is not only the religion of Socialism; it is, of course, the daily life of everyone involved in politics or in the government of the country. I also recollect hearing a speech by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Cross-man) on a totally different subject. He said that one of the weaknesses of a capitalist society was the way in which we diffuse our energy over a great variety of priorities, compared with Communist States where there was an intense concentration of effort on a few priorities of great importance to the State. It is quite true that in Communist countries there is this intense concentration on a few priorities; there is something rather stern, aesthetic, rather fine and, indeed, rather strong about this concentration of priorities—although we know at what terrible cost such concentration is achieved.
  If priorities are so very important, as surely we all agree they are, are we quite happy that we have the priorities absolutely right at the present time? If hon. Members examine the figures of expenditure in an average household, they will find that the order of priorities is enlightening. I agree with the hon. Member for Itchen, that there are many people whose earnings fall well below the average and whose expenditure, therefore, is not comparable with average expenditure. Of course I appreciate that, but, none the less, the average is surely significant.
  In this Bill we are asking that families should pay 2s. 8½d. as a weekly contribution towards the Health Service. We are asking that they pay that sum at a time when in the average household 10s. 6d. a week is spent on sweets and ices, £1 4s. on beer and other drinks, 5s. on television, 14s. on pools and betting and £1 8s. on cigarettes. Is there something wrong in our priorities when we ask the average family, in fact all families, to pay 2s. 8½d. a week for the Health Service?
  Mr. Ron Ledger: Yes.
  Lord Balniel: Hon. Gentlemen opposite are entitled to their opinion. If the language of priorities is the religion of Socialism, it seems to me we are not asking too much of an ordinary family that it should pay this amount towards the cost of its health.

  1821
  As I said, I accept that there are people who are unable to afford expenditure at the average level, and throughout the whole of these discussions on the Health Service my right hon. Friend has spoken of the means we shall employ to try to avoid hardship. Here I wish to echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Torrington. I do not generally engage in the arid argument of saying that what was done in 1949 is right today. The time has come when we must look at the whole question of financing the Health Service and at the balance between charges and contributions.
  I wish now to turn to the basic argument of the hon. Member for Itchen. He would like to see the financing of the Health Service borne increasingly by direct taxation through the Income Tax and for the contribution element gradually to dwindle away. The hon. Member is supported in this view by some hon. Members on the back benches opposite. although I think I am right in saying that it does not command the support of the Opposition Front Bench. Perhaps I may quote the hon. Member for Cannock, who said:
  "Let us join issue as the battle develops, and say quite clearly that the whole of the cost of the Health Service must be paid for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th February, 1961; Vol. 634, c. 474.]
  If I may be permitted one further quotation, I should like to refer to the words of 191-ie hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, who said:
  "I hope that in this debate, it will be made clear from the Front Bench on this side that when we get a Labour Government again their deliberate purpose, aim and commitment will be to remove all the insurance contribution element in sustaining the Service."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th February, 1961 Vol. 634, c. 1536.]
  Dr. King: Will the hon. Gentleman read on? My hon. Friend also said:
  "I do not say that it can all be done in one Budget…"
  Lord Balniel: I accept that, the hon. Gentleman did go on to say that it could not be done in one Budget. But the hon. Member for Itchen wishes this to be an objective of the Labour Government.
  If we followed the advice of the hon. Members for Ebbw Vale for Cannock and for Itchen, we should see the contribution element gradually dwindling away. It would be a diminishing pro-
  1822
  portion of the average earnings and play a dwindling part in the financing of the National Health Service. What would happen would be that individuals on the lower income scales who do not pay taxes would not contribute towards the cost of the Service. To them it would become a system of charity. In the words of the Sunday Times article on the subject, it would become a system of universal pauperisation. Individuals on the higher income scales would contribute towards the Service indirectly by means of taxes which go to a general pool of revenue available for distribution at the discretion of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Is this really what hon. Gentlemen opposite wish to see? Indeed, is it a good thing for the Health Service?
  Mr. Ledger: Yes.
  Lord Balniel: The hon. Member says "Yes", but it would be totally contrary to the principles of the Beveridge Report. The hon. Gentleman nods his head. I do not know whether he would extend the argument into the sphere of pensions. Today the individual gets his pension as of right because he has contributed to it.
  Such a course of action would be totally contrary to the principles of the Beveridge Report because it runs like a golden thread through the Beveridge Report that the contribution should be an integral part. It was this sense of financial participation by the individual be it for pensions or the Health Service, this golden thread, combined with a wonderful depth of understanding and compassion for the problems of the people on the lower income scales which, I believe, was so inspiring a feature of the Beveridge Report and which evoked such a response among many persons who grew up in the post-war generation. It was indeed not only applied by the Beveridge Report to pensions; it was specifically applied to the National Health Service. If hon. Members look at page 159 of the Beveridge Report they will see that it reads as follows:
  "If importance attaches to preserving the contributory principle for cash benefit, it attaches also to contribution for medical treatment."
  In this Bill my right hon. Friend is raising the contribution to form 16·7 per cent. of the cost of the Service. That proportion is slightly different from that

  1823
  recommended by the Beveridge Committee because since then a prescription charge has been written into the Health Service. It is worth recollecting, when hon. Members opposite recommend that the contribution should be abolished altogether, that the Beveridge Committee recommended not only that there should be a contribution to the Health Service but that it should not be 16 per cent. which we have in the Bill but 19 per cent.
  Mr. Ross: Before the noble Lord leaves that point, will he read paragraph 287 of the Beveridge Report?
  Lord Balniel: Yes, I shall read that paragraph. The Report says that these proposals are put forward as a fair basis of discussion.
  Mr. Ross: Discussion, yes.
  Lord Baniel: The Beveridge Report was not laying down the principles on which a Health Service should be established but the lines on which the National Insurance principle for pension should be established. The hon. Member invites me to read paragraph 287 of the Report and I shall do so. It reads as follows:
  "If the total contribution by insured persons of all classes is compared with the total Security Budget, it represents about 22 per cent. If their contribution for cash insurance benefits is compared with the total of these benefits it amounts to 29 per cent. If their contribution for medical treatment and rehabilitation is compared with the estimated total cost of these services it amounts to about 19 per cent."
  The hon. Member has proved my point. This was recommended, or taken as a fair basis of discussion by the Beveridge Committee for the financing of a Health Service. I have quoted it at the invitation of the hon. Member. The Beveridge Committee took 19 per cent. and we are taking 16·7 per cent. I have no hesitation in defending this Bill and the principles of the Beveridge Report against the savage onslaughts of hon. Members opposite.
  7.4 p.m.
  Mr. W. A. Wilkins: Mr. Speaker, you and your predecessor have been rather kind to us this afternoon in the range of this debate because, apart from the two Front Bench speeches, I have not particularly noticed
  1824
  anything essentially concerned with the contents of the Bill.
  I was interested in the speech of the noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel). I always think it a mistake to make a speech in this House when one is in complete ignorance of the speeches which have been made.
  Lord Balniel: I did apologise.
  Mr. Wilkins: At least in the early part of his speech the noble Lord had certainly not made himself knowledgeable of the very critical examination and explanations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who answered every point the noble Lord sought to make this afternoon. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you will agree—having gone as I have, when a young man, on the hustings in the open air—that part of his speech could be called a "stump speech". It was retrieved a little by reading from the Beveridge Report, which put a little meat into it.
  I have one regret this afternoon. I should very much like to have had the opportunity of following in this debate my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee). I could not, of course, hope to make such a splendid contribution. I might have been able to introduce emotion, but I could not introduce the logic and reasoned argument she introduced. She said something which appealed to me very sensitively when she made reference to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I am one of those who believe that no one should suggest that by the Christian views they hold people have a right to claim a monopoly of Christian virtues. I have never believed that. I try to give credit to everyone for the views they hold, particularly their religious views.
  I must make this observation because the noble Lord claimed that there is no difference of principle between us. It may be a difference of interpretation, but I would certainly offer a very different interpretation of what I am required to do by my religious beliefs than what is offered to us through the medium of this Bill as a practical contribution to the Health Services of the country.
  Some of my hon. Friends may remember that in the 1945–50 Parliament when

  1825
  we were bringing in this legislation we formed ourselves into an association which we chose at that time to call the Socialist Christian Movement. We formed it with a very definite objective. There were eighty of us who were members of that movement, which is a substantial number in this House. We tried our best to influence this class of legislation which our party was then bringing into operation. I still say that what I address myself to this afternoon—I am coming to the contents of the Bill now—and the observations I want to make about it are conditioned by what I regard as being my responsibility—I am not answering for anyone else towards my neighbour. What am I required to do to help my neighbour? The proposals which we have in this Bill are, in common terms, that we should fight for ourselves and accept the survival of the fittest.
  The hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. P. Browne) made an interesting speech. He is not at present in the Chamber. I make no complaint about that, because I know that a series of meetings is taking place at the moment. I wrote down what he said. He said it was no use thinking that we can get something for nothing. I think we accept that. I have never agreed that we have the services provided for us in the National Health Service for nothing. It has to be paid for. In the main it has been paid for, at least until 1952, out of taxation. I am making the comparison at the moment between the proposals to raise more revenue through the medium of contributions and the method we previously adopted where quite a substantial part of the cost of the Health Service was defrayed out of taxation.
  I favour defraying the whole cost of the Health Service out of taxation. That is why I oppose the Bill. I believe that taxation is the fairest possible way to do it. Indeed, if I could have my way—I know that I cannot—and could one day be Chancellor of the Exchequer I might embark upon the mighty exercise of eradicating indirect taxation from our fiscal system and substituting therefor direct taxation, which is the only fair form of taxation.
  The Bill will increase the contributions of men, women, boys and girls, and employers—in the case of men by 10d., in the case of women by 8d., in the
  1826
  case of boys and girls by 6d., and in the case of employers by 2d. I do not know to what extent other hon. Members, either on this side or on the opposite side of the House, have been consulting their constituents or friends. I discovered during last weekend, following the debates we have had in the House, that certain employers in my constituency are not in the least concerned about the extra 2d. If it is mentioned to them, they laugh. They say, "You do not think that we will pay the 2d. We do not pay the insurance contribution anyway. The Government can make the employer's portion of the insurance contribution whatever they like. We do not pay it. We put it as an on-cost on the product we produce."
  This was not said to me directly by an employer. I was told this by one of my own family who was talking to an employer of labour on Saturday last and learned this from him. The employer said, "It does not matter at all. The worker will pay this increase either directly or indirectly". In other words, he will pay the 10d. directly and the 2d. which is put on the employer indirectly.
  The noble Lord has said once again how easy it will be for workers to meet this contribution if they will only stop their kiddy having an ice cream or a lollipop, or forgo their weekly visit to the cinema, or give up one packet of cigarettes or one ounce of tobacco a week. The noble Lord said that if workers do that the extra contribution will not be a burden upon them.
  This is a threadbare argument. The workers have their pleasures in all sorts of different ways, and it is a shocking mentality which argues that they are not entitled to enjoy themselves as long as they have to meet other commitments. That is a shocking argument to advance in defence of something which I can well believe the noble Lord is ashamed of.
  On Monday, 6th March, I asked the Economic Secretary a question relating to the Bill. I knew that he might not be able to answer it off the cuff. I do not know whether he took much notice of my question. If he did, he may well be able to give me the answer now, because it is very relevant to what we are discussing if taken in conjunction with the arguments advanced by hon. Members opposite that the worker

  1827
  should sacrifice his ounce of tobacco or packet of cigarettes to meet this increase.
  Only yesterday I was advised by people in the tobacco industry in my constituency, which has pretty well the largest factories of this type in the country, that over 3s. of the 4s. ld. cost of a packet of cigarettes is tax. The treasury hopes to get £49 million out of the increased contributions. I asked the Economic Secretary if he could tell us what the loss to the Revenue would be if everyone—men and women, because many women smoke—accepted the advice of hon. Members opposite and sacrificed one packet of cigarettes per week.
  I believe that these figures can be obtained. If he wished to, the Economic Secretary could ascertain before the end of this evening what the loss to the Exchequer in taxation would be if workers followed the advice of the Conservative Party and sacrificed one packet of cigarettes or one ounce of tobacco per week. I should be surprised if it does not exceed £49 million.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby said this afternoon that the Government have no principles. I disagree with him on this. I did not disagree with much of what he said this afternoon, but I disagree with him on this matter. I think that the Government have principles. We have all the evidence possible that the principle which the Government are adopting here and which they have already adopted in a number of similar cases is that when something is being given away the worker's pay packet must be robbed.
  Within three or four weeks old-age pensioners will get a rise. The very same week the workers will pay an increased contribution for graduated pensions, out of which I understand the Government will take about £97 million to pay the old-age pensioners their increase. The Government have a principle, namely, that if it is proclaimed loud enough the public will believe that it is the Government who give these things and fail to recognise the source from which they get their money.
  We have been told almost specifically that the increases which the Bill proposes are being levied to provide more hospitals. The Government want to boast that they are providing more hospitals. They have
  1828
  told us bluntly and blandly that out of this £49 million which they will get from the increased contributions they will provide about £5 million a year for hospitals. In due course they will proclaim to the public that they are building new hospitals, but the Government will not be buliding new hospitals. The workers will be building new hospitals, because they will be providing the money to do it.
  The reason why the Economic Secretary is on the Government Front Bench at the moment and the reason why the Financial Secretary has been there is that the Government have clearly acknowledged that this is a tax Measure. That is obvious from the fact that the Bill has been in the hands of Treasury Ministers. We believe that the Government are following this principle because they are very anxious in the Budget, which is due in four or five weeks, to be able to afford Surtax relief to the new £24,000 a year chief transport boss and people like him who are in receipt of massive salaries. To do that and make good the resulting losses to the Exchequer the Government are increasing the contributions which the workers have to pay for their Health Service. I am beginning to wonder just to what level a Government can sink in these matters.
  The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper), who departed some time ago after making his speech and has not returned, said that the Labour Party regarded the National Health Service as a sacred cow. He went on to say that it was sacrosanct. Up to a point the hon. Member is right. To me and to many of my hon. Friends the Health Service was sacrosanct. To me it still is. I hope that it is still so sacrosanct in the hearts of hon. Members on the Opposition side when the opportunity arises to pass legislation through the House of Commons as soon as we can to redeem the promises we make to the people. We will restore this Service as a free Service so that the people shall have what we have come to regard as probably the first right to which the people are entitled—that is, the right to a doctor when they are ill and to the medicine which is necessary to cure them.
  I apologise if I have become a little emotional. It is not nearly as emotional as I can become and, when I get on the public platform, will become. My hon.

  1829
  Friend the Member for Sowerby commented that whatever we say, however we argue and with all the persuasion that we have tried to bring to bear, the Government will get their Bill. I wish to add a postscript. The Government are bound to get their Bill, but when the opportunity arrives they will get their deserts. When the public are enabled to pronounce about this Measure and the other Measures that go with it, the Government will get their deserts and will wonder what has hit them. They will deserve the condemnation of the people in the ballot box.
  7.23 p.m.
  Dr. Reginald Bennett: Much as I respect the capacity for emotion of the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins), I do not think that this is a topic which is best discussed in a heart-throbbing fashion. It is a matter of seriously trying to find the ways and means on which to build and improve, and cause to grow, a Health Service of which we are all singularly proud. The problem is one which, I am sure, is familiar to everybody. One does not need to harp upon it. The difficulties, however, can be met only by a realistic consideration of why we are trying to raise the money for such a Service.
  As hon. Members will know, I have spent many years working under the Health Service. I certainly regard it as something of which we should all be highly proud. One thing which I certainly know is that there is no improvement that anybody could mention which we do not at once want to try to incorporate in the Service, from the level of qualification or standard of service to the provision of accommodation which people need. That being so, we commit ourselves automatically to a Service which must grow continuously. Every improvement costs money. Every additional public servant helping in the Health Service costs money for pay and, possibly, for accommodation and office space. Every new modification of an instrument costs money in an enormous way.
  When we think of some of the plant, even today, that is used fairly commonly in diagnosis and other such things and compare it with what it was even ten
  1830
  years ago, it is as true of the Health Service as of all walks of private life that the extraordinary innovation of yesterday becomes the commonplace of today. If we allow this to take place—I defy anybody to refuse the right for it to do so—we must provide the money for it. This House has the invidious duty of providing the money.
  Then, we get back in the provision of money to the age-old controversy of whether it is to be done by a contribution or by an extraction of money from the pool of general taxation. The flat rate of contribution has been accepted in principle by both parties. It was introduced by the Labour Party in the original legislation. As the extent of money required has increased, so we have to contemplate whether we shall put a check on the total money drawn out of the general "kitty" of the general tax fund.
  Mr. Stan Awbery: That is not the argument that was put to us when hundreds of millions of pounds were voted during the last day or two for the Armed Forces. We were not told anything about a contribution then. It all came out of the Exchequer. Nobody on the benches opposite said anything about making a contribution. Why not follow the same method with the Health Service?
  Dr. Bennett: That might be relevant if every member of the population was entitled to have a go at driving a V-bomber, or something of the sort. I am talking about a social, and not a military, service, and there is little relevance in the hon. Member's intervention.
  If we are serious, and not jesting, in trying to find money for a Health Service which everybody is entitled to use, shall we try to raise it from general taxation or from a special contribution towards that Service? The principle of a contribution has not been refused by either party. If, as the cost of the Service goes on rising continuously, there conies a time, as the late Sir Stafford Cripps discovered, when the general fund of taxation can no longer be saddled with a continuously rising bill, do hon. Members opposite wish to curtail the growth of the Health Service, or would they

  1831
  give a blank cheque for unlimited taxation from the general fund, as, I understand, the hon. Member far Bristol, Central (Mr. Awbery) proposes?
  Mr. Awbery: Why not?
  Dr. Bennett: All I can say is that a Chancellor of the Exchequer of the hon. Member's party did not find it possible. I do not think that we should find it any more easy than did Sir Stafford Cripps.
  Another point which fits the case is highly relevant. Let us face it without lapsing into crocodile tears and the like. The spread of incomes from the highest to the lowest is a good deal less as time goes by, and has decreased. The upper incomes, even of those in the Transport Commission, are not so astronomically high in relation to the spread of incomes before the war. The lowest incomes, although I think that the dockyard workers in my constituency are, possibly, among the lowest, are still going up, even if not fast enough.
  The average working man's income, however, is not now a disgraceful one. It is a good deal better, relatively, than it was even at the time of the introduction of the Health Service. Therefore, it seems to me that the argument is clear that it is not an intolerable imposition to have a flat-rate contribution from all hands, so to speak, such as was originally agreed in general in the Beveridge Report and by all three political parties. It is not unfair to have the flat rate, and as the distance between the highest and the lowest incomes narrows it is not unfair that the flat rate should be increased in some proportion to the kind of incomes that are being drawn.
  I share, of course, the horror which has been expressed at the thought that what we lightly say from time to time should be taken literally; that it is the price of five cigarettes a week that is in question in all this "hoo-hah". Five cigarettes a week has been mentioned often, but it would be disastrous if everyone thought of giving up the same thing; others will no doubt have to give up something else. For instance, I do not smoke, so it is quite certain that I shall not deprive the Treasury of that amount of tobacco tax. I shall have to deprive myself of something else.
  1832
  We cannot regard as seriously based this somewhat excessive alarm and concern about the average wage earner, who is really doing quite well and, we hope, will continue to do even better. For the reasons I have given, I am absolutely certain that there is nothing inequitable in the increase in these contributions that the Bill proposes. As I say, I have worked in the Health Service for many years, and I do not think that we shall be doing harm to the Service, to the nation, or to the people by the imposition of this modest increase.
  7.31 p.m.
  Mr. Ron Ledger: During the last three and a half hours of this debate I have watched as well as listened. It has been interesting to watch the way in which hon. Members opposite have earned their right to speak. They have arrived just in time to take their turn, have waited the due length of time after they have spoken, and have then disappeared, but I am sure that those people who are interested enough to read their speeches tomorrow or later will gather that they have not paid a great deal of attention to the 54 hours of debate which we have had on this Bill.
  The speech of the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) was completely irrelevant to this debate, and that goes for the majority of speeches coming from the benches opposite. I would exclude from those ranks the Financial Secretary and the Economic Secretary. Their answers have not satisfied us, of course, but, within limits, they have advanced arguments—with which we have disagreed and have attempted to answer our questions. During all these hours of debate they have put up quite a performance. We have hardly seen any senior Ministers at all during all this time, and the two hon. Gentlemen have borne the full brunt of our onslaught.
  As I say, the speech of the hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham was completely irrelevant so I shall not refer to it, but the noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) introduced that wonderful red herring about the amount of money spent by families on such things as sweets, lollipops, television and tobacco. To make his point he gave average figures of consumption of those

  1833
  commodities and in order to destroy his argument completely I propose to deal with just one of those articles.
  He said that the average family spent 10s. 6d. a week on sweets and ice-cream and argued that if they could spend 10s. 6d. a week in that way they should be able to afford the modest 2s. or 2s. 8d. contribution to the National Health Service. There are a number of ways of reaching an average of 10s. 6d. We can take two families, one spending 20s. a week on sweets and ice-cream and the other spending only a Is. a week. The average is then 10s. 6d. per week per family.
  Our argument is that although the difference may be that between £1 and 1s., both families will have to pay the same amount to the National Health scheme. No matter how much a family can afford to spend on luxuries it will still pay the same National Health poll tax. One presumes that the family spending 20s. a week on sweets and ice-cream is in a higher salary range than the family spending only a Is. a week, but they will both pay the same amount of poll tax.
  In an earlier debate the Financial Secretary referred in very nice terms to my contribution to the debate on that occasion, but then referred to hon. Members on this side as part of the stage army for this debate. We do not grumble at that, but I would assure him that the only orders we are receiving in this army are those dictated by our conscience and a sense of social justice. We could not apply the same term to his hon. Friends. It would, perhaps, be more accurate to call them the ghost army, the phantom army. There have been no soldiers, and the general has been absent. We have had a couple of lieutenants who have done the best possible, but it has been a ghost army it has lost the chance of learning something of the economic facts of life.
  We feel very keenly and sincerely about these matters. It is not just a question of Labour Party policy but of individual feelings. Basically, we believe that the nation should provide these public services, and it is fundamental to us that those service should be provided from direct taxation. Much has been said about the increasing cost of the National Health Service. It has been
  1834
  pointed out repeatedly that the cost has gone up by £100 million, or £200 million or £300 million since the inception of the Service, that we have to meet that increased cost, and that these extra charges are justified because the workers are earning far more money now than they did when the Service was introduced. That argument is quite irrelevant. The only important figure to consider is the relation of the cost of the Health Service to the total national income.
  Taking the Government's own figures, we find that whereas in 1950 that cost represented 4·5 per cent. of the national income the most recent figure given by the Government is 4·2 per cent. It would therefore appear that, on that basis, we are spending not more but less on the Service. It means that the National Health Service is less of a burden today on the economy than it was in 1950. Moreover, whatever burden there is, a considerable amount of it arises from the Government's own policies which have brought inflation upon the country.
  I do not believe that this is basically, even on the benches opposite, a question of how the costs are to be met. There is a difference of principle beween us and the Government. This is a matter of principle, no matter what they say and no matter how they try to argue round it. It is a matter of principle and priority. The Government and the Tory Party have as their priorities profits, dividends and rents. They legislate in favour of all those things, and they have done so ever since they have been in power.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): Oh.
  Mr. Ledger: Yes, of course they do.
  Sir E. Boyle: The hon. Member has forgotten that we put up Profits Tax in the last Budget. That is why I said "Oh".
  Mr. Speaker: I do not want to interrupt either hon. Member, but, although great licence has been allowed in this debate, I think that the discussion now is passing beyond the limit.
  Mr. Ledger: I do not want to go out of order, Mr. Speaker, and had I been allowed to finish my comment you would, I think, have realised how much

  1835
  in order I was. It was the Financial Secretary who went out of order by referring simply to the Profits Tax. He ignored all the other things and other benefits which were given at the same time. I was saying that the Government's order of priorities was profits, rents and dividends first and that welfare came next. The attitude of the Government has been that, if there were anything left over in the kitty when they had dealt with the other things, then they would not mind doing something about pensions, about the Health Service and about other public services. We on this side, on the other hand, hold very dearly to the principle that the first priority must be the welfare services and the public services. We must provide them first and then work out ways of meeting the cost.
  Quite another problem is raised by the Bill. The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) painted a colourful picture of the flag which my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) would be carrying into the battle of the by-elections. I suggest that the flag which Government supporters would carry into by-elections at this time in support of the Bill would be a simple and very well-known one, the skull and crossbones, because the Government are embarking upon another campaign of pillage and plunder. The only excuse we have heard from them so far for imposing these charges is that they propose to spend another £5 million a year on building hospitals, but, in order to spend that £5 million, they will extract from the people of this country £50 million. The other £45 million is the plunder that they will extract.
  If the Government had really wanted to do so, and if they had really believed in the principle of the Health Service, they could have used the Service itself to reduce costs. I have recently been reading a report issued by the Ministry of Labour on 19th December, 1960. headed "Health at Work". One of the point made in that report is that during each year more than 300 million working days are lost in Great Britain because of sickness or injury. A similar survey made in 1955 by another organisation produced a similar figure, and it was said at that time that the value of the lost production was about £1,000
  1836
  million. It costs this country £1,000 million in absenteeism from work just for sickness and injury. Yet by this Bill the Government will increase the amount of absenteeism because they will effectively increase the amount of illness and disability.
  There is a fallacy in the way Government supporters argue that 10d. on the stamp will not affect the wage earner. I can understand the argument. Hon. Members argue that a man with his wage packet in his hand on Friday will not miss another 10d. Indeed, it would be difficult to argue that a man receiving £8, £9 or £10 would at that point of time miss a further 10d. out of his wages. But it is nonsense to look at it from that point of view. A man does not retain his wages for the whole week. He will notice very much any further deductions on the following Wednesday and Thursday when all the money has been spent. When the wife has bought the food and other necessities, when all her allowance has gone and on Thursday she says to the family that this and that is finished, that there are no more eggs, there is no more jam and no more bacon, then, at that point, the 10d. becomes a lot of money. It is at that stage, when the family has no money at all, that we begin to hear murmurings in the home and discussions at work which lead to talk about the need for increased wages in order to meet the higher cost of living.
  The Financial Secretary must realise that this increase of 10d. cannot be taken on its own. It comes at a time when there are many other increases, when, for instance, many families will have to pay 5s. or 6s. more per week on prescriptions, and when families with small children will have to pay more shillings a week for welfare foods.
  This morning I gave a neighbour a lift in my car. She was going to the dentist. She is pregnant. On the way we chatted about the National Health Service and I told her about this debate, explaining that we should discuss the Bill which is to increase the stamp contribution. I am not sure which way this lady votes, but I am quite sure that the Financial Secretary would not have been very reassured by her reaction, because immediately I mentioned the contribution on the stamp she went into a tirade about all the other increases which are

  1837
  being imposed. It is nonsense for Conservative Members to argue as though the 10d. itself was the only increase that the workers will have to face. In doing so, they merely exhibit their lack of realism.
  If I were a member of the Government I should not feel very complacent about the public reaction. Only last week I met in this building a deputation which came from my own constituency and from the neighbouring constituency of Hornchurch, which is, or which was, a fairly safe Conservative seat. Those people came to this building with a petition, part of which I have here. The bundle I have beside me on the bench is quite a small part of what was collected. It is a petition against the new charges and increases in contributions under this Bill and other Measures. Nearly 20,000 signatures were collected in two weeks. I am told by those who dealt with the petition that it was almost impossible in the shopping centres to keep up with the demand of people who wanted to sign it. In areas in my own constituency, not notably strong for the Labour Party, there was a continuing demand from residents to sign this petition. I do not think, therefore, that the Government can feel a considerable amount of confidence in their assertion that these new charges will be accepted by the people of this country.
  I should like to give one further proof of this. The hon. Member for Horn-church (Mr. Lagden) is not in the Chamber at the moment, but I am quite sure that if he were he would not be quoting from this paper. It is one of the local papers that he and I share. It is commenting upon the annual meeting of the Hornchurch constituency Conservative Party. After the hon. Member for Horn-church had been discussing the National Health Service, it reports that during the meeting there was general agreement that the Health Service charges should be related to income through Income Tax coding.
  This is quite a departure from the attitude of the Government, because it is precisely what we have been arguing, that the payment of these charges should be related to ability to pay. Here is a constituency Conservative Party annual conference which says precisely this. One wonders, therefore, to what extent the Conservative parties throughout the
  1838
  country are wedded to this idea, and to what extent within the Conservative Party there is likely to he another split to confound the present Government.
  We have had a reasonably long innings on this Bill.
  Mr. Willis: Really? We did not even discuss all the Amendments.
  Mr. Ledger: My hon. Friend, I hope, will get a chance to make my point more forcibly, but first I want to make my point, that though we have had a reasonably long innings on this Bill it would have suited us better to have had twice as long an innings so that we could have said the things that we wanted to say.
  The hon. Member for Ilford, South decried the fact that during two sittings we had nineteen Divisions, which took approximately four hours of debating time. It would have suited us very well, if we had been told that the Guillotine was to drop not at 11·30 but perhaps at 3·30 in the morning. Then we should have had another four hours for discussion, and although the hon. Member for Ilford, South and other Conservative Members would certainly not have made any use of that time, we on this side would have done.
  We served notice on the Government during the debates that have taken place on this Bill that this is not the end of it. This Bill will be dealt with this evening and become part of the legislation, but it is not the end of the fight. I do not think that we shall find in the constituencies, when we argue this case, that there has been the apathy there which has been so apparent on the Government benches. I feel certain that the spirit which has run through the ranks on this side of the House will, as it were, burgeon into action on other matters as well.
  The Financial Secretary would be well advised at this late stage to acknowledge many of the arguments which we have made and which he has dismissed during Committee and other stages of the Bill. If he does not, it is my prediction that this may be the beginning of the end for the Conservative Government and that, very likely, we shall be in a position on the benches opposite to reverse the legislation which is being imposed at the present time.
  7.55 p.m.
  Mr. Arthur Holt: The hon. Member for Gosport and Fareham (Dr. Bennett) seemed to be strongly attached to the contribution system and to think that it was today a principle in all aspects. There is one aspect of it which he did not consider, and which, as a medical man, I am sure that he will appreciate. I will come to that later.
  So much of our taxation system is completely chaotic today that it is rather surprising to find anyone seriously defending it. If one looks at the system as a whole, it appears a little odd that the Conservative Government should, as it were, put a premium on puritan virtues. If one does not smoke, does not drink, and is rather healthy he avoids a lot of tax, whereas if one drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney—
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Member so early in his speech, but I hope that he will remember that we are not discussing the taxation system as a whole, but the Third Reading of this Bill.
  Mr. Holt: Naturally, I pay great attention to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I was developing this argument because I thought that the taxation system, which, of course, acts so indiscriminately in a community, was something which was relevant to all matters impinging on the Health Service. If people are happy and busy in their work, they will not have to call upon this Service. I think that one should look at one or two aspects of this system in passing, but I am not proposing to dwell upon it.
  To return to the point about the poll tax, and the increases which are being put on the contributions by this Bill, the real objection to it—and it was, indeed, supported by one or two of the hon. Member's hon. Friends when it was given an airing in an earlier debate—was that now that the total contributions, including National Insurance and the employer's part of the contribution are getting near to £1, it is becoming a substantial part of the total cost of employing a person who has only a very small skill to offer to an employer. It is becoming an obstacle against the employment of marginal workers.
  1840
  This is a most serious aspect. The hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper), in a previous debate, did, in fact, say that he thought that the contributions had now reached the limit. Some of us believe that they have already gone beyond the limit.
  I should like to come to a point which may have been touched on by the Financial Secretary when he opened the debate, but, if so, I can only say in apology that I was not able to be here then because I was serving on a Select Committee upstairs. A very important statement was made yesterday which has a serious bearing on all these proposals for increasing revenue of which this Bill is one. These proposals, of course, are for increasing contributions and the subscription charges and other charges. Can the Financial Secretary to the Treasury give us some figures bearing on this point? Yesterday, the Minister of Health made a statement about some recommendations from the Cohen Committee on the Classification of Proprietary Preparations. The fact that the Committee had reported, and the nature of its report, was not known to the House until yesterday. When the Government were drawing up their proposals for the Health Service, which they felt they had to make for their own reasons to raise about £70 million which otherwise they would have to find from other sources, did they take into account the kind of savings that might be made in a full year if the advice given by this Committee were accepted by the doctors and carried out in practice?
  I should like to know whether any estimate has been made by the Treasury of what the saving in total cost to the Treasury of prescriptions in a year might be if doctors now prescribed their drugs under the British National Formulary and from the other listed preparations? This is relevant to the Bill. If the point was that the Bill had to make a new contribution to the Exchequer of about £49 million, and if a saving can be made by the doctors by prescribing not very expensive proprietary brands, which are often as much as 50 per cent. more costly than the equivalent drug which is just as good and is listed in these official publications, it might well be that, entirely due to what most hon. Members would agree would be a sensible prescribing by the doctors, there might be a

  1841
  saving of £20 million. If that were the case there would be no need for the House to pass this Bill to raise a sum of £49 million. It would be far better for the Government to withdraw the Bill and prepare a fresh Bill, reducing the figure required to perhaps £20 million.
  I should like to know from the Financial Secretary whether the Treasury has made any estimate of the savings that might result from the doctors carrying out his advice and, if so, what action the Government propose to take. Do they consider this to be extra "bunce" and, if so, are the hospital building programmes to move faster? Alternatively, will this mean that the Government will cut down expenditure?
  Mr. Anthony Kershaw: Before the hon. Member sits down, may I ask him a question? The hon. Member mentioned £20 million and referred to it as a sum which might possibly be saved by doctors adopting a different rule for prescribing. Has the hon. Member any method of calculation whereby he arrives at a figure representing this possible saving? This is a very complicated question and it is very doubtful how doctors will be affected by this advice. If the hon. Member could say how the saving of £20 million is to be achieved I am sure that it would be of real interest to all of us.
  Mr. Holt: I should like to do so. The point is that the Cohen Committee is extremely firm in what it says on this subject. It says that while there should continue to be no absolute prohibition on the prescribing of any drug the indication is very strong that doctors, with few exceptions, can get all they need from the official publications. This is what the Minister said yesterday and he said that the Report went on to advise that a doctor who prescribed other preparations should be liable to be called upon to justify his action.
  In an earlier debate I gave the example of the ordinary aspirin and compared it with a proprietary brand. Whereas the proprietary tablets cost 12s. 1d. for a certain number, the same number of aspirins prescribed according to the British National Formulary cost 8s. Therefore, there was an increase of about 50 per cent. in the cost of the proprietary
  1842
  brand. I do not know whether that 50 per cent. represents the extra cost of a doctor prescribing the proprietary brand.
  Sir E. Boyle: On a point of order. I do not want to be tiresome, but the hon. Member asked me a question and I had a feeling that I should not be in order if I responded to his desire that I should answer it. The exchanges of the last few minutes have made me feel that it is more and more necessary for me to do so.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point of order. The source of the trouble is my allowing the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) to ask a question which prompted the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) to go further than he otherwise would have done. As the hon. Member's speech was finished when he was invited to reply to a question, it would be better if we left that and we got on with the debate.
  Mr. Holt: Would it not be in order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for the Financial Secretary to reply to me?
  I put it as a point of my argument what the Government told the House that it was necessary for them to make a certain total saving on the Health Service. The whole point of what I have been saying is that yesterday the Minister of Health made a very important announcement which hitherto had not been taken into consideration by the House and which, I suggest, will result in an additional total saving of a considerable amount. I was endeavouring to discover from the Financial Secretary whether the Exchequer had made any estimate of what this total saving might be, because the House should know whether that means that we do not have to pass this legislation to achieve the saving because part of it would be made by another method.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The debate must be restricted to the Third Reading of the Bill which we are now discussing.
  8.9 p.m.
  Mr. John Hall: I intervene in the debate for only a short time, and I apologise that my other duties made it difficult for me to attend the debate earlier. I think nevertheless that I shall be able to make the point which I have in mind without finding that to be too great a disadvantage.

  1843
  If I may follow up the point made by the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) without getting out of order, I doubt very much whether the savings which he envisages are likely to reach a double figure. In considering this matter one has to draw a distinction between proprietary drugs and ethical drugs, and the fact is that a far greater proportion of the cost of prescribing goes on new and expensive ethical drugs than on proprietary drugs.
  The doctors have been allowed, as I understood the Minister's statement yesterday, full freedom in continuing to prescribe such drugs of which there is no parallel in any other form. So I doubt very much whether the savings would be sufficient to make a worthwhile contribution of the kind which the hon. Member has in mind. There will, no doubt, be the £1 saving. If there is, I should have thought that it would have been better applied to the further improvement and development of the Health Service rather than towards the costs involved in the Bill.
  While the insurance principle remains with us, one can understand the logic behind the Bill, and for that reason I support it. But I am driven to ask myself whether we can go on financing the Health Service, or, indeed, the social services as a whole, in this way. I ask myself whether the total cost which has to be met can be met by a worthwhile contribution from every individual throughout the country irrespective—
  Mr. Willis: The hon. Member says that this is based on the insurance principle and has talked about contributions made by every individual in the country. It is nothing of the kind. It is a contribution made solely by the person with an insurance card.
  Mr. Hall: If the hon. Member wishes to make that distinction, he is entitled to do so. The great majority of the people in the country pay a weekly insurance stamp. Those are the people with whom I am primarily concerned at present. There is little doubt that the total cost of all the social services which are covered by the weekly insurance contribution, of which the Health Service charge is £1, is getting to a point where it is becoming a very considerable
  1844
  burden on certain sections of those now liable to pay the contributions. While, as I said at the beginning, we still maintain the principle on which the original scheme was based, one can understand the logic of that, but the time has come when we cannot go through all this exercise again. We should consider the whole of the social services, including the method of financing the National Health Service, in a totally different way.
  I suggest, briefly, that when we look at the National Health Service over the years to come, there is no doubt that, whatever economies we might make in various directions, and however efficient we might make various parts of the Service, the cost is bound to rise inevitably year by year. I cannot see any halt to that. When considering the effect of this on the national finances of the future and when we come to a point where we realise that we have to adjust our method of financing it, I suggest that we ought to consider a form of social service tax which has some relation to the ability to pay and which does not place such a burden on the very low income earners.
  We talk a great deal—both sides of the House tend to fall into this error—about average wages and average earnings. but to have any average one has to have a large number of people below it as well as a large number above it. I can think of a number of examples from my experience, of people employed in the textile industry and male and female personnel employed in shops in the distributive trades at £5–£10 per week. To them the increased cost of the weekly insurance stamp represents a very considerable proportion of their weekly pay, and in some cases it represents a hardship.
  I have supported the Bill because it follows the principles which have so far governed the development of the National Health Service and the National Insurance scheme as a whole, but I should not like to have to go on supporting additional contributions of this kind if we had a similar Bill before us in two years' time. We must consider how we are to temper the increasing cost of these schemes to those with the minimum income.
  That is the point that I wanted to make at this stage. It is, in a sense, a note of warning to whatever party is

  1845
  in power at the time and may be responsible for continuing the financing and development of the National Health Service and other social service schemes. It is a warning to them that if they cannot go on doing it in this way we must find another method.
  8.15 p.m.
  Mr. James Dempsey: I understand that we were debating tonight not the National Insurance contribution, nor a National Insurance Bill. The Measure is called the National Health Service Contributions Bill. The Explanatory and Financial Memorandum indicates that it is expected to raise a certain amount of money as a result of these increases. I notice that it is estimated that £16·1 million of the actual amount will probably be the responsibility of Scotland.
  It seems to me that we are dealing with a subject which is quite apart from National Insurance contributions and that we have apparently reached a stage under the Tory Government where we now fix contributions to be paid by persons who are gainfully employed without any regard to the principle of ability to pay. We have decided, according to the Bill, that employees and employers, self-employed and non-employed persons, of both sexes and all ages, will be asked to foot a bill in order to try to retain the present National Health Service.
  The further we study the Bill the more we realise that successive Tory Governments have time after time increased contributions for this very purpose. I know that we have very often heard from the Government benches great criticism about what happened between 1945 and 1951. But it is interesting to note that even during that period the element which was regarded as sufficient to meet the cost of the Health Service from the point of view of the gainfully employed person was 8½d. However, by July this year, under the Bill, that contribution will have increased to 2s. 8½d. Here we have an extraordinary increase in the contribution of gainfully employed persons towards the provision of a Service which is essential if the human frame is to be maintained in reasonably satisfactory order.
  1846
  When we look at the development of the Exchequer contribution we find that it has not increased correspondingly to the increase in respect of the gainfully employed person. If we hark back to those days, as the Goverment usually do, we find that the Exchequer met £106·8 million of the cost of the Service. This year, the cost will be £187 million, or an increase of 70–75 per cent. If we relate that to the increased percentage cost payable by gainfully employed persons, it indicates a very wide difference between the responsibilities being fulfilled by the Exchequer on the one hand and gainfully employed persons on the other.
  Mr. John Hall: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that the contributions from the Exchequer will come very largely out of the pockets of the gainfully employed persons in any case?
  Mr. Dempsey: At present, as I see it, as long as there is a tax on a section of society, they must pay a specified rate of contribution irrespective of their ability to pay. It means that the higher income level classes, the Surtax payers, are making the identical contribution and getting exactly the same service as others. Under such a system it is the lower income groups who are paying a disproportionate part of their income for the maintenance of the services which are being enjoyed by the better off classes of society who are paying an infinitesimal part of their income for them.
  That is the economic logic of the intervention of the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall). Whereas the Exchequer contribution has gone up only by 70 to 75 per cent., the employed person's contribution has risen by 260 per cent. That is a tremendous increase for a person in the lower income group with a wife and family to maintain. The Government are asking for a disproportionate part of such an incime.
  I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Wycombe pouring scorn on the figures which indicate average earnings. Time and again, since we started to discuss this matter, we have heard right hon. Gentleman referring repeatedly to average earnings. During the period over which the employed person has been asked to pay an increase of 260 per cent. in his contribution, the average wage

  1847
  rate has increased by 74 per cent. In those figures we can again see the validity of the statement that the working man is paying a disproportionate part of his earnings towards the Health Service.
  We recognise that the cost of the Health Service has risen over the last ten years, and that that is why the Exchequer contribution has had to be increased. But it should surely have been increased in a way that would have ensured fair shares of the cost of the Service being borne by the Exchequer and the other contributors. But the converse has happened. The emphasis has been placed on the gainfully employed person, not on the Exchequer, and that is our great criticism of the whole system.
  This concerns not a choice between mental attitudes to the Bill, but a choice between two principles. We believe that the Health Service should be an inheritance of man without regard to his ability to pay. It is for that reason that we have tabled several Amendments to the Government's proposals during the last few weeks.
  It is interesting to note that during that period we have heard very little reference from Members opposite to the question of ability to pay. This is surprising because, when we discuss subjects relating to other social services, we are reminded by the Government that a subsidy should not be passed on to a worker because a subsidy should be based on need. That argument has been adduced time and again from the benches opposite on an issue of this nature, but it has been shelved for this Bill.
  It was a great surprise to me to hear the Economic Secretary adducing, on the one hand, the reasons for this Bill and, on the other, traducing the Opposition as having misrepresented the Bill's purpose. He gave us three reasons. The first was that the burden on the Health Service was growing too great. The second was that, unless this burden was checked, the hospital building programme would be jeopardised. Thirdly, he thought that prescription charges would check waste.
  For those reasons he moved the Third Reading, and the more we analyse them the more we realise that they are not
  1848
  reasons, but excuses, for introducing a Bill, the purport of which is to ensure that in many cases those least able to bear the cost will have to pay up to absolve the Government of the need to tax those who can afford to pay.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Rom-ford (Mr. Ledger) said that if we harked back to the "bad old days" of 1945 to 1951 we would discover that the Labour Government were spending 4·5 per cent. of the national income on the National Health Service. The present Government are spending only 4·2 per cent. of the national income on the Service. In view of that, the Government's argument that the burden is growing so great is a fraudulent attempt not merely to mislead us, but also to mislead the people. It is important that we should remember that argument when discussing the Bill.
  The Government also say that the burden was growing so large that there was a danger of the Service in general being prejudiced. It is well known that of all our social services the Health Service is third in its share of Government expenditure. The Government have relegated it to third place, whereas under the Labour Government it received a larger share. If the facts I am quoting are wrong, I hope that the Financial Secretary will give us the information.
  It seems that in real terms we are spending only a fifth more in pounds, shillings and pence than we spent ten years ago, in spite of the substantial increases in the cost of the services, in doctors' and dentists' salaries and in the pharmaceutical services. Our achievement over the past ten years is a 2 per cent. expansion per annum in real terms. Frankly, it seems to me that there is little reason for the Minister to suggest that the Service is in jeopardy.
  If we look across the English Channel and analyse how other Western European countries approach the provision of a Health Service we find that Britain is spending less on the Health Service than are the majority of the Western European nations. Apart from our relegation at home, we are facing relegation abroad.
  The second argument, that the hospital programme was endangered unless those gainfully employed paid increased contributions per week, was about the weakest of all. If the Minister had had

  1849
  any knowledge of the situation in Scotland he would have chosen wiser words, because in Scotland we have been paying increased contributions for ten years and in the whole of Scotland we have one new, little hospital at the Vale of Leven, with 120 beds. That is the achievement of ten years' hospital provision by a Tory Government.
  I retain membership of a hospital board, and on it I heard one of Scotland's most competent medical authorities state that the hospitals in Scotland are fifty years out of date and are well behind the hospital provisions of many European countries. That statement came from a competent medical source. When we are discussing increased contributions and listening to the arguments which were used to bolster up the hospital programme, it is regrettable that none of the Scottish Ministers is here to take part in the discussion or at least to give an ear to the representations being made on behalf of those who live north of the Border.
  I then examined the Minister's third argument, in which he made some startling statements. He said that unless prescription charges were increased, the present system would lead to considerable waste. With a view to checking wastage we are asking people, whether they can afford it or not, to pay 2s. per prescription item instead of ls. In my opinion, this is a fallacious argument. When the ls. per prescription charge was imposed in 1956, many doctors, to mitigate some of the effects on the patients, prescribed very large quantities of drugs on each form, and the average cost per prescription rose sharply from 4s. 11½d. in 1956 to 5s. 10½. in 1957.
  Doctors were compelled to do this because they had the utmost sympathy with many patients whom they knew were so poor as to be unable to pay the full cost of these prescriptions. If that happened after the prescription charge of Is. had been introduced, what will happen when the charge is doubled? We see that the average cost per prescription rose from 4s. 1l½. to 5s. 10½d. and that the charge of 1s. did not check waste. It resulted in an increased cost to the Health Service for prescriptions throughout the country.
  1850
  It seems to me, therefore, that when we examine these arguments about the hospital programme and the prescription charges, they hold no water, and it appears that in his effort to camouflage the true intention of the Bill the Minister has failed miserably not only to convince the Opposition, but also to convince the country. Most hon. Members have been flooded with resolutions from very strange quarters protesting, for example, about the increased health charges and the increased contributions.
  These have come not only from sources belonging to the Labour movement, but from non-political bodies, from active medical bodies, from independent organisations, and even from associations with Conservative advisers, all protesting, and rightly so, about this appalling imposition on the shoulders of millions of citizens who cannot possibly afford them.
  We should realise that tonight is our last chance to reverse this regrettable policy of this regrettable Government. It is incongruous of the Minister, and, indeed, of Government supporters to ask us for support for the Bill. It is most audacious of the Government to put legislation of this nature through the House to increase contributions to provide these services, because at the last election—and I have here the manifesto and the statement purporting to come from the Central Office—the Tory Party promised to reduce the cost of contributions from 9s. 11d. to 8s. 4d. It promised to reduce the charge to those gainfully employed. It promised to give them more and charge them less, but here we have the reverse of that policy.
  The Government are now charging more and giving less. It is for that reason that the Opposition are endeavouring to try to prevent the Third Reading of the Bill in the hope that this legislation will be reversed by the Government. I am convinced that if, prior to the last election, the Conservative Party had told the people of the country that this is what it intended to do there would have been a different result. The Tories have been dishonest. They had this iniquitous legislation in mind prior to the election, but they made sure that it would be introduced in the post-election period.
  The fact that this legislation is being submitted now is a manifestation of the philosophy of the Conservative Party. It

  1851
  is a most convincing factor to prove to the citizens of this country that Tory promises, on the one hand, and Tory performances, on the other, are poles apart. When we require money to maintain an essential and integral part of the life of our society there are other ways of finding that money than by taxing those who are least able to afford it.
  We have heard the cry: where can the money come from? If anyone cares to study the Budgets over the past few years, they will find not that £49 million had to be found, but that millions of pounds have been given away in Surtax and other reliefs. In the last Budget, reliefs were given to wine manufacturers and cardsharpers. Everybody seems to share in this great beneficial feat except those who matter most, the working people.
  It shows a weak mental attitude to say that this charge—this has been said by several hon. Members opposite—represents only the price of a packet of cigarettes. I have heard that said in relation to the increased contributions, in relation to the housing subsidies when they were reduced, and in relation to the rates when they were increased. I wonder when the Government and their supporters will draw the line and realise that they are sacrificing so many packets of cigarettes, so many plates of ice cream, and so many bottles of beer that the working man will soon have little left unless a halt is called and the Government stop making inroads into his meagre weekly or monthly income.
  Those hon. Members who talk of this being a mere 10d., and who say that we can all afford to pay it, should remember that working people also have to pay other contributions, such as extortionate hire-purchase charges and interest rates. The working man who fortuitously owns his own home has many other commitments which involve deductions from his very limited earnings. When the Government ask where the money is to come from if it is not to be collected in this way they should remember the answer given to a Question asked only a few weeks ago in connection with the National Insurance Fund, to the effect that the Fund has been denuded by £338 million because of investments in gilt-edged securities.
  1852
  If any hon. Member opposite asks me where the money is coming from, I reply by asking another question of him. Where did the £338 million of the Fund go to? That is the sort of question that we should ask the Government. That sum seems to have disappeared overnight. We have spent days in discussions on dozens of Amendments dealing with the object of trying to find £49 million, but how can that sum be compared with the overnight loss of £338 million, due to the very weak and wrong investment policy of those who are handling these contributions?
  When we arrive at a decision in this matter, which is of vital importance to our people, we should remember that there are other rates besides Health Service and Exchequer rates. We should remember that the main rate in such a matter as this is not the Exchequer rate, but the death rate. The Bill will merely achieve a higher death rate, and not a better Exchequer contribution rate. If we were guided by our sincere convictions, as representatives of the people, we could so reorganise our finances as to maintain our excellent Health Service, which is one of the most successful pioneering ventures in the social history of the world.
  We can do this if we make sure that those who are able to pay bear the greatest burden. Although the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland are dealing with the Bill, I can see the hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in it from beginning to end. It is obviously a financial operation, designed to ensure that those who pay taxes will be partly relieved of their burden this year, while those in the lower income groups—people in the distributive trades, local authority employees and the millions of women who earn very small wages—bear most of the burden.
  It is because the burden will be borne by those who can least afford it that we oppose the Bill. We shall continue to oppose it in the country and rouse the people to a realisation of their responsibilities. If the Government do not reverse this legislation, at the next election the people will reverse the Government, and restore the National Health Service to its former greatness, as pioneered by a Labour Government.
  8.45 p.m.
  Mr. Anthony Kershaw: I am not sure that I entirely followed the reference by the hon. Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) to the death rate. I assume that his argument was that the death rate is likely to increase as a consequence of the provisions of this Bill. I think that his fears are rather misplaced, and I am fortified in thinking so by a computation which I recently undertook of the rising expectation of life which we have in these islands today, and it is very different from what it used to be when the hon. Member and I myself were born. In fact, the longer the hon. Member and I remain Members of this House, the longer we may expect to remain Members, provided also that the electorates agree with that proposition in our respective constituencies, because it appears that hon. Members of this House, like everyone else, are living longer and longer today.
  One cannot divorce this fact from the consideration of the circumstances in which the inhabitants of this country are growing up, the food they are able to have, the medicines at their disposal and so on. These things have made a remarkable difference, in the lifetime of the hon. Member and myself, to the expectation of life of the people of this country.
  I freely grant that women in this country live longer than men, but I have never quite been able to understand why this is so. The average expectation of life for women is eight years longer than that for men. Whether it is that they do not work so hard, or take fewer medicines or do not pay so much in National Health Service contributions, I have not been able to discover, but that is the arithmetical fact. They live to draw their pensions and drink their medicines eight years longer on the average than will the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie.
  The hon. Member made a number of perfectly valid and telling points in his speech, and I should like to refer to one or two of them. He mentioned ability to pay and said that although he freely admitted that, perhaps, 10d., 8d. or 6d. a week respectively, as the case may be, was not a very large sum arithmetically, yet, progressively, combined with other additions it might well be the last straw to
  1854
  break the camel's back. However, that is his argument, and it is one to which we must pay attention. Obviously, the time must come when the contributions of various sorts, if not an unreasonable burden, may appear at least to be an unreasonable burden and more than people feel that it is right and just for them to pay.
  At the present time, I think it is difficult to maintain that this particular increase, combined with other increases which have recently fallen upon the budgets of ordinary people in this country, is in fact that last straw which may break the camel's back. We have to admit, and the hon. Member did most fairly say, that average wages during the course of the last few years have risen quite remarkably. In fact, it will be present in the mind of the hon. Member that during the last three years average wages have risen by about 10 per cent., whereas the cost of living has risen by only 2 per cent.
  I know that these figures of percentages are somewhat disheartening when considered in that cold way, and there are many people in this country who consider that their particular expenses, caused by their station in life, their state of health, the climate in which they happen to live and so on, are not exactly the same as the standards by which the Ministry judges what their need may be. Nevertheless, I think we must admit that there is some validity in these figures, and admit that the rise in average wages during the last three years has very considerably outstripped the average rise in cost to the average person. While freely admitting, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) that the average person is in the middle, that there are some people whose income is higher than average and that equally there are some whose incomes are lower, the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie also said, by way of criticism, that during the time of the Labour Government—
  Mr. Ross: Would the hon. Gentleman give us some figures in relation to what he has been saying and relate it particularly to rises in the flat-rate contribution? Will he tell us why he has changed his mind, because on 11th November, 1958, he said:
  "I do feel…that at the moment our flat-rate contribution is about as much as they are willing to pay.'—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th November, 1958; Vol. 595, c. 291.]
  Mr. Kershaw: Certainly. Later I will develop the point that there is a limit, as I have already indicated, which is perhaps not beyond their pocket but beyond the willingness of people to pay for any particular item. Whether they pay money to the State by way of tax, contribution or charge, there is a stage beyond which they are not willing to go, and I think that there is a psychological barrier which we must consider seriously.
  Two years ago I thought that the increases then made were about the limit of what the country would be willing to accept at that time, but we have had an increase since, and in a few moments I shall develop the proposition that we ought to take a look at the matter to decide how in the future we are to meet these increases, as increases they will be. I do not think anyone would suggest that we shall ever see a reduction in the bill for education or for the Health Service or any of the social services. Therefore, as a House of Commons, we have the future task of debating how we are to allocate those extras.
  Returning to the specific point about the National Health Service at one time having been the largest Service in the way of cost and now being the third largest service, that is a valid point to make. In answer to the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie, I say that when the Service first came into being there was a great backlog of medical attention which had to be undertaken. This was after the war and after the period of dislocation following the unemployment of the 1930s. It was only natural, therefore, that many things had to be done which had not been done previously. In those days we should have expected the large increase in expenditure on the Service which took place. The position now surely is that the Service is running well and is a source of pride to the people of this country and commands the admiration of most of the world; despite the criticisms of it which are naturally and properly voiced, especially by hon. Members opposite.
  The education service has now to deal with a very much larger number of children and it is mathematically obvious that if there is a certain expenditure per child per year, that expenditure will rise by sheer reason of numbers each
  1856
  year in which it goes on. We know now that there are more children at school than ever before and it is not surprising that the education service should be taking a large share of the money.
  Similarly, turning to the question of retirement pensions, it is not surprising that as the proportion of elderly people in the population increases and there are more people of retiring age—one knows that there are 5,500,000 of retiring age in the country—expenditure on pensions will go on rising. It does not mean that relatively the Health Service is any worse than it was because, by reason of rising numbers of pensioners and children, education and pensions cost more. The hon. Gentleman would never suggest that any of these other services should be retarded in order to preserve pride of place for the National Health Service.
  Mr. Ledger: I am trying to follow the hon. Member's argument, but surely he is missing a most important point that, as a percentage of the national income, less is being spent today on the National Health Service—I think the figure is 4·2 per cent.—than was spent in 1950 or 1951, when the figure was 4·5 per cent. Therefore, there could be an increase in the amount of money spent on other services without there having to be a proportionate increase in the amount of tax needed to pay for the increase. The hon. Member has not yet mentioned any figures, but I am sure that is a point he would not wish to miss.
  Mr. Kershaw: That is a valid point. I have already given the answer, namely, that the Health Service could be expected to cost a great deal more when it first came into existence because of the backlog of medical attention which it would be necessary to make up at that time. Now it is running more smoothly and there is not the need for the various appliances which it was necessary to provide at the beginning. I think it natural that we should be able to provide a good Health Service standard, which is not below that provided in 1946 to 1948, for a proportionately less amount of the national income. In theory, of course, although we have never reached this happy event, in time the more excellent it is the less the Health Service should be used. I imagine that we have all during the course of our

  1857
  lives to go to the doctor however well we may be fed and however good our working conditions may be. I do not think it extraordinary that the National Health Service, while providing a better service, should nevertheless take a greater proportion of the national income.
  I should say to the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie about the comparison with health services in Europe that I am sure—in fact I know—he is at fault in thinking that the contributions by way of taxes are higher there than they are here. I do not know whether he has ever had the misfortune to fall ill in France or Germany. I have done one but not the other. I may achieve the other in due course. He will find, unless he has taken proper precautions with consuls and insurance, that the incidence of charges in those countries is very much higher than it is here. One should hesitate before drawing a comparison like that.
  Mr. Dempsey: I was very careful about what I quoted. I said that, compared with the majority of other countries in the West, we spend less as a proportion of our national income. That was a quotation from statistics published by the health organisations and the facts are absolutely accurate. I was not dealing with the system of taxation but talking in terms of the proportion of national income spent by this country in comparison with the proportion spent by the majority of nations in the west of Europe.
  Mr. Kershaw: I take the point made by the hon. Member and freely admit that I misunderstood. I am obliged to him for his correction.
  As to hospitals—although I do not know particularly about hospitals in Scotland—it is a pity, and we have to admit it, that the hospitals of our country generally are not up to the standard we should like to see. We know there is a very large hospital building programme which it is necessary to put in hand. That is one of the reasons for this Bill. To save the day-to-day running costs of the Health Service and to invest that money in permanent capital improvements which the Health Service requires was one of the
  1858
  reasons put forward by the Minister for introducing this Measure. I am sure that none of us would disagree that if we had the permanent capital installations, principally in the form of hospitals, which we need, the Service would not only be better but would also run at a cheaper overall rate than it does at the moment.
  Mr. Dempsey: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member again, and I am grateful to him for allowing me to make another intervention. I tried to point out that the general increase proposed in the Bill will raise a revenue of £65 million in the next fiscal year, whereas the Minister is proposing to spend only £5 million in addition to present expenditure on hospitals. He is not using the increased revenue for the purpose of improving hospitals in general as he is to spend only a proportion of it, £5 million, on hospitals.
  Mr. Kershaw: I mentioned the hon. Member's name, so of course I am very willing to give way to him. There are two points there. First, the expenditure next year will be £5 million, but after that it will rise fairly rapidly. The hon. Gentleman knows that the programme for the next four years is a £65 million programme on hospitals alone.
  Mr. Dempsey: An increase of £5 million per year.
  Mr. Kershaw: Secondly, the operation is also designed to try to hold the current costs of the Service fairly steady and not merely to invest all the money in hospitals. The combined objective—hospital building and the desire to hold currents costs steady—is a legitimate one. It is surely legitimate to limit current costs in favour of future capital expenditure.
  The hon. Member said finally that the last effort at putting prescription charges on certainly did not have the effect which the Government now say they desire of checking wastage. He said that the costs actually rose after the imposition of the prescription charge. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's reasoning is correct. The fact that the cost of medicines rose in spite of the prescription charge does not by any means preclude the proposition that they would have risen more if it had not been for the prescription charge.

  1859
  The main item of expenditure in relation to drugs is not so much the amount but the value of each individual prescription. That cannot be very easily controlled. The measures which have recently been taken—for instance, yesterday's announcement by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health—are an attempt to control—"control" is possibly the wrong word, but as a back bencher I can use it more loosely than a Minister can; the better word perhaps would be "influence"—the prescribing of doctors and to bring home to them the costs of various medicines.
  Doctors are not always able to fall in with the Minister's wishes in that way. I can bear witness to that fact, because six or seven years ago I had to have very large amounts of a drug which I believe is now extremely cheap but which was then extremely expensive. The drug is called cortisone. Whilst it is easily prescribed today, I understand that it cost the nation a great amount seven years ago to keep me full of cortisone for about three months.
  That is the practical reason why it is difficult to show that, because the cost of drugs rise, the incidence of the prescription charge has had no effect. I believe that the prescription charge will not have the effect—I certainly hope that it will not—of keeping an individual needing medicine away from his medicine. One effect it will have will be to bring home to prescribers the consequences of prescribing such and such a drug in such and such an amount. Whilst one does not say that doctors should not prescribe exactly what they feel should be prescribed, one is entitled as a public representative to ask that they should at least have in mind—
  Mr. Ledger: On a point of order. I hesitate to interrupt such a courteous Member as the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw), but has the debate on Third Reading of the Bill, which is listed on the Order Paper, now been concluded? When I left the Chamber for the first time half an hour ago we were still on Third Reading. I have been listening to the hon. Member for Stroud very carefully but have not heard any reference in his speech to the Bill. You, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, have been lenient
  1860
  with myself and other hon. Members, but we did refer to the Bill at some time during our speeches. We are very interested to hear what hon. Members opposite have to say about the Bill.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think that the hon. Member is quite justified in his point of order. No doubt the hon. Member who has the Floor will take due note of it. The Chair is paying attention to the course of the debate.
  Mr. Kershaw: I am obliged to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I was attempting to follow the most interesting speech of the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie. I have not yet come on to the remarks I intended to make when I entered the Chamber. I owe you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and the House an apology for not having been here in the earlier part of the evening to hear all the speeches which have been made.
  It will be within the recollection of hon. Members that important arrangements have been going on upstairs which took a great many Members away from the debate. It is surprising how few hon. Members have been able to tear themselves away from those important duties upstairs to hear the debate. To some extent, however, the principles which I have, al perhaps inordinate length, been discussing have been dealt with at such great length during the past fortnight that they are very much present in the minds of many hon. Members whether they are attending this debate or not. There is, therefore, no indication of lack of interest by hon. Members on either side in the fact that larger numbers are not present to discuss this important Bill.
  The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) raised the point that the incidence of contributions must in time reach an unreasonable limit which must bear hardly on those, or, at least, some of those, who have to pay for them. In considering the matter of contributions, we must bear in mind that the other ways of paying for the Health Service are taxation and charges. Contributions came from those who work, charges are paid by those who use the Service and the taxes are provided by the general population.
  It is a justified argument which has been made that we come down to the

  1861
  House of Commons and different Ministers attend. Tonight it is my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Last week it was my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health and anon it will be my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, or some other Minister. He comes to explain the necessity for this or that method to be adopted concerning, for example, the contributions, as in tonight's Bill, or in other ways to raise the money that is necessary to pay for our social services.
  I regret that this evening we are discussing so itemised a matter. I must not stray too far from the Bill, but I regret that we do not have the opportunity more often to have something in the nature of, if I might use the analogy, a defence debate with the Defence Minister in charge and then the Service debates afterwards dealing with each item.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member is getting far too wide of the Third Reading of this National Health Service Contributions Bill.
  Mr. Kershaw: I apologise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I do not wish to take the debate outside the lines which it should pursue, but the contributions for which we are asked to vote tonight are merely one aspect of the method of raising finance for the social services, which I should like to see dealt with by a more general command over the whole social service structure., Then we should be able to relate this debate, only with contributions, to other debates relating to charges and to the amount that the taxpayer can be expected to pay. This debate about contributions covers only one of three ways in which my hon. and right hon. Friends could have come to the House and asked us to provide the money for this social service. Whilst it is an essential one, it is difficult to discuss it as fully as we should like to do without having the others in mind and their relation to the amount to which we are being asked to agree tonight.
  Mr. Ledger: It is amazing that the hon. Member should talk about broadening the scope of the debate and having further opportunities for discussing other aspects. Is he aware that we have debated the Bill for nearly fifty-four hours.
  1862
  during which time there have been periods of eight hours of debate in which no Government supporter has bothered to attend? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is true.
  Mr. William Shepherd: It is drivel.
  Mr. Ledger: I am stating facts. I have sat throughout the Bill and there have been times when—
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. I do not think that the hon. Member should make a second speech. Mr. Kershaw.
  Mr. Kershaw: I hesitate to refer to that intervention as it was out of order, but, of course, we on this side had the pleasure—and, occasionally, were moved to admiration—of hearing the number and the length of the points of order on this Bill that were raised from the other side, and were sometimes left wondering what was their relevance to the Measure. However, I leave the matter there.
  I think that the contributions asked for are not unreasonable when we bear in mind that the average wage has risen since last we discussed this question. If I may say so, I still think that we should have an opportunity not very far ahead to have a slightly different structure of debate so as to bring all aspects of the scheme into its ambit. If we have spent fifty-four hours in discussing this Bill that has resulted from the unfortunate necessity to remain in order by discussing contributions only. I still think it unfortunate that we could not have spent much of that time discussing the charges and the taxation necessary—
  Dr. King: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member constantly to flout your very reasonable suggestion that in a Third Reading debate he might at least talk about the Bill we are discussing?
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am afraid that there can be no doubt that the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) has been getting very wide of the Bill, and I think that we should get on with the debate. Mr. Ifor Davies.
  Mr. Kershaw: I apologise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. It is my interest in the matter that led me astray, and I would not wish to stop other hon. Members speaking.
  9.12 p.m.
  Mr. liar Davies: The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) has made a gallant attempt to try to justify this Bill, but we all realise that he has failed miserably. I can understand his predicament. The last two speeches from hon. Members opposite have been remarkable for one thing. Whatever speeches are being uttered elsewhere—the hon. Gentleman has referred to other meetings—the last two speeches from the benches opposite have been full of apologies. Apologies for the Bill have been the theme running throughout those speeches.
  The hon. Member for Stroud even praised the Health Service, but I would remind him of who opposed it when it was first introduced. I regret that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) is not now in the Chamber, because his speech prompted me to intervene. He, too, was apologetic, but he made one remarkable statement. He said deliberately that he would support the Bill now. That was a very telling phrase—he would support the Bill now but would give no assurance of his support if this went on. Where does the hon. Member draw the line? We have drawn the line. In addition, I thought I noticed a note of hesitance in the voice of the hon. Member for Stroud also as to whether he would go on supporting Measures of this kind.
  This is the real point of the debate. I can well understand my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) speaking with such sincerity and passion. My hon. Friend comes from across the Border, and perhaps the House will understand that as a representative of a Welsh constituency I can speak with equal passion. I hope that I shall not be carried away, but I hope also that the House will understand it if I am, because the man who introduced this Service was a Welshman.
  I would add very sincerely that it is with some regret that I must point out to the House that the two Ministers who are now principally responsible for undermining this Service also claim to be Welshmen. I refer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Minister of Health. The depth of feeling that exists in the Principality as a result of this attempt to undermine the Service should not be misunderstood.
  1864
  I come at once to the Bill, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, before I am ruled out of order. Incidentally, while I am on the subject of order, since the hon. Member for Stroud stretched the limits of the debate to some extent and referred to prescriptions, I should like to say, that, although the Minister said that the cost of each item had risen from 5s. 1½d. to 7s. 4d., that is no justification for doubling the prescription charge from 1s. to 2s. That is the answer to any justification about prescriptions.
  The hon. Member for Wycombe made one remarkable comment. Speaking again about average earnings—we have heard that word "average" throughout the debate—the hon. Member, while saying that average earnings were £14 or £15 a week, was honest enough to recognise that there are many people below that average. Included within the average are as many persons earning less than £14 or £15 as there are persons earning more. Indeed, it is the fact that about half the earning population of Britain receives less than that figure, and I assert that these increased contributions constitute for them a very great hardship.
  It is a fact that about one-fifth of the population, about 11 million people, are members of families having about six guineas a week to live on, and out of that, of course, they have to pay for rent, food, clothing, and all the rest. There is not much left for medicines, spectacles and everything else. Therefore, any increase in contributions will result in a very serious burden upon very many people. It is no use dismissing it by saying that everybody should make a fair contribution. The charges and the increased contributions will be a very great hardship indeed.
  There have been many different quotations during these debates. Even Shakespeare has been quoted, and I have heard quotations from American Presidents. I shall quote the words of another American President, Abraham Lincoln, who said, "You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all the people some of the time. But you will not fool all the people all of the time." It is my belief that there are many people today who are beginning to see the truth of that statement.
  We have been told that the basis of contributions is similar today to what it

  1865
  was when first introduced by the Labour Government. But the economic conditions of the country in those days was different from what it is today. Today, of course, we have the affluent society. We have "never had it so good". We have heard that phrase much bandied about, and with it as a slogan some hon. Members opposite have reached their positions on those benches. Today we do not hear so much about it.
  I emphasise the difference between us on this great issue because it is extremely important that we should have clear in our minds that, whereas we on this side really do believe in the National Health Service, hon. and right hon. Members opposite do not. There are three main principles all of which hon. Members opposite deny. The first is that the resources of the community should be mobilised by the community to help the sick; the second is that everyone should have the same treatment; the third, a medical principle, is that prevention is better than cure.
  We are told that these increased contributions are imposed in order that we may save £49 million. The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) answered that when he said that he felt confident that there were other ways of achieving this saving, giving as an example the drug trade. I believe he estimated that £20 million would be achieved in savings by this means. We say that there is no justification whatsoever for interference with the whole principle of the Health Service by increasing contributions in this manner. That is why we shall oppose the Bill and continue to do so as long as we possibly can.
  9.21 p.m.
  Mr. William Shepherd: I do not think that the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. I. Davies) could seriously support his contention that the increase in contributions which are levied under the Bill will impose any real hardship. He did not produce any evidence that was convincing, and I do not think that such evidence can be produced. Nevertheless, I shall not vote on the Third Reading with any enthusiasm. I shall not vote against the Bill as I did against the prescription charges, but I shall certainly not support it with any degree of
  1866
  warmth, because I consider that the whole approach to this problem is lacking in penetration, is non-progressive, and ought to have been tackled in an entirely different way.
  I have been trying now for four or five years to direct the attention of the House to the need to look at this problem in a different light. Even my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, one of the most intelligent men in the House, said in defence of the Bill that it was the same order of things that obtained in 1946. I do not want to see the same order of things that obtained in 1946. There is no reason why, after a passage of twelve or more years, we should not conceive some different ideas about the way in which we should raise the money for the National Health Service. I am disappointed that we have not made any progress in this matter.
  The Bill raises the employer's contribution only to 7½d. I have never been able to understand why, during the past five or six years, a larger employer's contribution was not obtained. There is to my mind no single reason why a larger amount for the National Health Service should not be obtained from employers. I admit very readily that even an increase in the employer's contribution would not solve the problem in its entirety. I have previously referred to the health service overseas, and I have burdened the House on many occasions with figures to show how it is financed in such obscure countries as Mexico and Bolivia, which sent hon. Members opposite rushing to the Library to find out whether such services existed and they found that they did. I do not want to repeat what I said then because it would be out of order if I attempted to do so. But I say that in looking afresh at this issue we must direct our minds very keenly to the question of whether some percentage on earnings will have to be charged in the future to finance this service rather than by way of a flat rate contribution.
  I hope this is the last time that we shall have a footling Bill of this nature and that between now and the next occasion on which there is a review of the methods by which this money is raised there will be a careful inquiry into sound and sensible ways by which the National Health Service shall be financed, because I am satisfied that this is not an intelligent way.

  1867
  Even when we make these additional charges we shall have next year about £700 million taken out of the taxpayer's pocket to finance this Service. That is a great deal of money, and I see no reason why this burden of direct taxation should prevail.
  There is another important reason why I think that the Government must do something different from what we are now doing in the Bill. It is that all other European countries make their national health service a direct charge upon production. We are the only country in Europe which does not do that. If we are to become associated with the Common Market in any way, those countries will want us to harmonise our social policies. If we are to secure this link with the Common Market and if we are making changes in the way that we finance the National Health Service, would it not be intelligent to start to move in the direction in which we shall be forced to move if we are ever to link ourselves with Europe in the Common Market?
  We shall have to do this in time, and we shall have to harmonise our economic arrangements with others. It seems to me axiomatic that when one makes a change one should not proceed on the basis of what was done in 1946 but one should face the realities of 1961, and, in particular, realise the need to lower the impact of direct taxation in this country and to harmonise our arrangements with the people whom we shortly hope will be our partners in Europe.
  I hope that this footling Bill is the last of its kind and that on the next occasion we shall see an attempt made financially to fashion the Service in the light of the volume of money demanded, which will be getting on for £1,000 million, and that we shall look to the future and look to the need to harmonise our relations with Europe and find some means to finance the Service which would enable it to expand and at the same time to be less of a drag on the taxpayer.
  9.27 p.m.
  Mr. E. G. Willis: The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) has made a speech in which he has repeated the ideas that he has put forward on many previous occasions, but what I cannot understand about the
  1868
  hon. Gentleman is that, in spite of his great dissatisfaction with this method of raising money, of the criticisms that he has made of it, and of his feeling that the Government should be urged to think afresh, he will vote for the Bill.
  I should have thought that the best way to make the Government think about these things would be to defeat the Bill, because they would then be compelled to think about the sum of nearly £50 million which is to be raised on the Bill and they would not be able to put the matter off for an indefinite time. What is more, if the hon. Member pursued that action, bearing in mind that a number of his hon. Friends have also expressed doubts today, we should be really getting somewhere.
  I have heard most of this debate. An interesting thing about it is the manner in which hon. Members opposite have said that this 10d. increase is not very much, but that we must realise that to pursue this course too far would mean to impose a great hardship upon the lower-paid worker. All hon. Members opposite thought that this was about the limit and that next time a Bill was introduced it should be on a different basis altogether. I was not sure whether hon. Members opposite were genuine about this, or whether they were creating an alibi for themselves to present to the electors from whom they must have heard during these proceedings.
  Make no mistake about it; there has been a considerable amount of criticism of the Government's proposals from all sorts of people and organisations. Therefore, I am still left wondering about the speeches of hon. Members opposite and wonder whether they really desire to change this method of taxation or whether they are trying to keep themselves right with their electors; and I am inclined to suspect that it is the latter because none of them is prepared to do anything about it in the House.
  The Bill raises one very simple issue. The Minister of Health has told us that he needs money to proceed with his hospital programme. It has taken the Tories a long time to realise this. I remember when the Tory Party was busy producing prospectuses before 1955 and telling us about the great hospital programme which it would undertake during the life of the last Parliament. Now it has done

  1869
  it again. The Minister of Health now tells us that he will proceed with a great hospital programme, and for this purpose has to make certain changes, one being that he has to raise £50 million through increases in contributions.
  Consequently, the issue is, very simply, this. The Minister of Health wants £50 million For hospitals, and the Treasury has decided to raise it by imposing a flat-rate poll tax on everyone with an insurance card. What we are really deciding today is whether this is the best way to raise £50 million for building hospitals. When I put it to myself in that fashion I am struck by some very curious comparisons. Yesterday, we discussed a gentleman who is to get £24,000 a year. He will pay 10d. per week towards these hospitals.
  Mr. Shepherd: But how much will he pay in tax?
  Mr. Willis: The widow who is out at work cleaning a school in order to supplement her income will pay an extra 8d. per week. That does not seem to be a very ideal method of financing the programme. A disabled man in a Remploy factory would pay 10d. a week, the same as the man with £24,000 a year. The Clores and the Cottons will pay exactly the same as the widows. Surely that cannot be a sensible and fair way to finance the building of hospitals. Are the Government so bankrupt of ideas that they can think of nothing better than this?
  Mr. Shepherd: Does not the hon. Member realise that this is a system which was put into operation by the Labour Party? Does he not realise that the man who is to earn £24,000 a year will pay a very large part of that in taxation? Does he not realise that the taxpayers will be contributing about £700 million as against the £200 million raised in contributions?
  Mr. Willis: Does not the man earning £24,000 a year pay tax in accordance with his ability to pay? Of course he does. So does the widow, the unemployed man and everybody else; we all pay our taxes in accordance with our ability to pay. All I am suggesting is that the Government seem to be so completely bankrupt of ideas that they can only tell the House that to build their hospitals they must charge everyone with
  1870
  an insurance card—it is not even everyone; plenty of wealthy people will pay nothing at all—this flat-rate increase. That is a poor solution to a problem for the Government to present to the House of Commons.
  The hon. Member for Cheadle made another point, which I have forgotten.
  Mr. Shepherd: I said that this idea upon which the hon. Gentleman was pouring such scorn was the child of his own party.
  Mr. Willis: The hon. Member was not here when that statement was rebutted fully, and at length, by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) today. That principle was not accepted by the Labour Government. It was not the principle upon which the National Health Service was based. I agree with the hon. Member when he asks why we must do it now as we did it in 1946. To talk about what we did in 1946, or 1948, or 1952 is rubbish. I have always held the view, as I have said before, that the Health Service was a magnificent scheme, but I do not suppose that anyone in the House, when it was introduced in 1946, thought that it was the last word.
  Every time we have to deal with it in the House we consider whether it is good enough and how it can be improved. It is the duty of the House to ask questions about such matters, and not to say that because we did something in 1946 we should do it again in 1961. We would never get anywhere if we followed that policy. We should never make progress. We would not have sanitation or anything else, simply because we did not have them 150 years ago. The argument is pure nonsense.
  For what it is worth, it was trotted out by the Economic Secretary most pathetically and almost apologetically today, and was fully rebutted by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby, who exposed it in all its nakedness for what it is worth—and it is not worth much.
  To increase these contributions cannot be a good way of financing our hospitals. We are to make a flat charge on everyone. We do not do that with all sorts of other things. Today, the agricultural subsidies for the forthcoming year were announced. They will not be collected by means of a poll tax, yet they run

  1871
  into hundreds of millions of pounds and are higher this year than last year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer does not present a Bill like this to provide for those subsidies, so why do it for the hospital service?
  Is this country so bankrupt under a Tory Government that it is unable to raise £50 million other than by telling the poorest people—the aged, the widows, the youths and the sick—that they must pay so much more through contributions and prescriptionn charges? Have the Government no confidence in their policy to expand production and the wealth of the country? I suppose that the Financial Secretary and the Economic Secretary, having read the latest report about the economic progress of the country, probably have some doubts about that policy.
  Mr. F. A. Burden: Members opposite constantly talk about expanding production. I wish that many of the people who talk about it would realise the difficulties of selling in the export markets, as many of us who are engaged in that job realise them.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I must protect the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) from being tempted to stray out of order.
  Mr. Willis: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. I do not think that I should have wandered further than to remind the hon. Member of the great steel order which was lost this week, at Leipzig.
  We have the ability to raise our productive capacity to take care of the expansion which is necessary. Our total national income is about £20,000 million. If we increase that by 1 per cent. a year, it means an increase of £200 million a year. Cannot the Government follow policies which would achieve this expansion and enable the money to be collected almost automatically through increased revenue?
  The Government have no confidence in their own policy. The Bill is the product of a Government which is not only bankrupt in ideas, but which has no faith in the future of Britain and no faith in themselves. When we consider the categories of people whom we have discussed during the proceedings of the Bill, and who will be affected by the
  1872
  Bill, we realise that this is a Bill which could have been brought before the House only by very mean-minded men. There is no magnanimity of character in a Government which can produce a bill which taxes widows, old-age pensioners and the sick in order to build hospitals.
  I gather that the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) is muttering something about what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition did several years ago, but he should remember that eighteen months ago he and his Government boasted about the affluent society in which we live. They spoke about increasing abundance and never having had it so good, but apparently they forgot to provide an abundance of hospitals. Apparently, that did not come into their calculations. They were so busy that they did not notice that the essential services were not being built up. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) said, we have had only one new hospital in Scotland since the end of the war, and that was a small hospital.
  I am disgusted with the Government's performance over the Bill and I am certain that when they appreciate what is happening, the people of the country will be disgusted, too. It is easy to say, "It is only 10d., it is only ld. on gas and 2d. on electricity and Id. on meat and id. on butter", but at the end of the week it makes a considerable difference to a working-class family. I do not think that hon. Members opposite have any idea how a working-class family live.
  Mr. Victor Goodhew: They live very well.
  Mr. Willis: If the hon. Member knows how they live, then he knows that what I have said is true about the accumulation of 10d. and 8d. and 6d. in the family budget. These are payments which they cannot dodge, nor can they run into debt over them or decide to do without the services. They must meet this obligation. Every time we add expenditure to a household budget of an ordinary family which cannot be dodged, we are creating a hardship and making things difficult. Hon. Members opposite may not appreciate that but it is true.

  1873
  The woman whose household budget is carefully planned each week to cover the rent, the food and many other things, including saving for the summer holiday, is in difficulty if her husband has to meet an extra charge. That leads to hardship. I know that many hon. Members opposite do not know what hardship means. They should think of people living on £9 a week. I do not think that many hon. Members opposite would like to live on £9 a week. It might be a good thing if they did, because they would then appreciate the difficulties of a person trying to live on that sum. It is not only this increased charge which has to be borne by these people. They have to pay increased prescription charges and increased charges for glasses for schoolchildren.
  I am sure that we could find a better way to provide this money to build hospitals than by increasing this poll tax. With an expanding economy, the increase in revenue would almost meet the sum required, and the Financial Secretary knows that. If the country's economy were increased by 3 per cent., 4 per cent., or 5 per cent. year by year, the increased revenue would almost cover the sum required.
  Sir E. Boyle: If the hon. Gentleman refers to the interesting speech made by the Leader of his party in July, 1957, he will see that the right hon. Gentleman said that when production is rising and revenue is increasing through an increase in production inflationary difficulties are not necessarily lessened. I commend that speech to the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Willis: Of course they are not lessened. I appreciate that, but the fact that inflationary difficulties might arise does not destroy the argument that with increased productivity and automatic increases in revenue would almost meet the cost of this, and the hon. Gentleman knows that to be true.
  I do not know what the increases have been over the past few years, but some of them have been fairly substantial. The Government's policy displays a complete bankruptcy of ideas. I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite who have said that this should be the last time we increase the charges are in earnest, because I have no doubt that my hon.
  1874
  Friend the Member for Sowerby is correct when he says that they will be increased again—probably two or three times during the next few years. I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite are in earnest about this, and that they will refrain from voting against us, or vote with us.
  9.47 p.m.
  Major Sir Frank Markham: We have listened with great interest to the eloquence of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), but we are disappointed that there was not a single constructive suggestion in his speech. The nearest he could get to a constructive suggestion was that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, or the Cabinet, or somebody, he did not say who, should increase national production.
  It is obvious that the hon. Gentleman has never turned his hand to that species of hard work, or he would not come out with such cheap, glib, and free and easy phrases. If he had taken part in the struggle for export markets, he would know that it is the hardest work which anybody in the country takes on at present.
  The biggest struggle facing the country is that of maintaining what we have in terms of exports against increasing tensions and struggles all over the world, and to increase it if we can. We cannot increase and develop production by slinging a few phrases across the Floor of the House of Commons. The hon. Gentleman was bankrupt of ideas. He was certainly eloquent, but eloquent with the noise of tinkling brass.
  Mr. Willis: If the country wants to raise £50 million, it can be done by raising the prescription charge. I do not want that. It can be done by raising the contributions. I do not want that. It can be done by being paid for by taxation. That is the best way to do it.
  Sir F. Markham: I am very glad to get a second suggestion from the hon. Member—
  Mr. Willis: It is not a second suggestion.
  Sir F. Markham:—which has a little more substance than the first. He has now changed his ground. He says that the extra £49 million should be raised from direct taxation.

  1875
  I now come to the point which has been made on several occasions by my hon. Friends during the debate, namely, that the talk of hon. Members opposite is now the complete opposite of the talk of the Labour Party when in power. When the party opposite was in power it had the responsibility of finding this money in the best way it could for the nation. Now that it is in opposition it is irresponsible, and it does not have the same approach to the matter as it showed in 1946–51.
  I want to refer to the views of the Labour Party at that time, because they have not been challenged by them, either in the House or at Labour Party conferences. Hon. Members opposite are now contradicting their former views, because they are in opposition. On the question of raising money for National Health schemes, including those covered by the Bill, the Labour Government, both in theory and practice, agreed to a division into four separate categories the whole time they were in office. The categories were, first, the State; secondly, the employers; thirdly, the workmen; and, fourthly, the users. The Bill contains provisions for raising the contributions of the workmen to exactly the same proportion or percentage as existed when the Labour Government were in office.
  At that time they decided that this was a fair division of the burden—and it still is. But certain hon. Members opposite have changed their views, because it suits them at the moment. But the party opposite never sought officially to change the proportions, either at its conferences or in the House.
  It is estimated that the increases in the National Health Service contributions will produce an extra £49 million a year. I agree that the main purpose of that £49 million is to build new hospitals. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East said that the Government had built only one new hospital in Scotland. How unjust! How unfair! How disgraceful! He knows as well as anybody that more extensions and improvements have taken place to hospitals in Scotland since the Conservative Party came to power than occured in the whole period of the Labour Government. He has not the decency to admit that. If this is a case of party politics, it is
  1876
  disgraceful. It is so cheap and easy to say that the Government have built only one new hospital in Scotland, and to shut one's eyes and not admit that there have been more extensions and improvements than occured when the Labour Party was in power.
  While we all approve of the development of the National Health Services, many hon. Members on both sides want to see worth-while economies achieved. Many of us are alarmed at the increasing bill for drugs, and some of us are also alarmed at the occasional unnecessary use of the medical services. Only this week a case came to my notice of a man who went gardening, pulled up nettles, got very badly stung, went straight to the doctors and had the most appropriate and expensive drug prescribed to deal with nettle stings. If he had been country born and bred he would have used the ordinary dock leaf, which is always to be found growing next door to the nettle.
  I think that the Ministry ought to produce what might be called a "Highway Code" of the National Health Service, a simple book dealing with first-aid, perhaps, for burns, sprains, and this, that and the other, and also containing suggestions on how to treat elementary things like constipation and headache.
  Mr. Speaker: We have practically picked all the nettles during this evening, but I think that the hon. Member is now really beyond the scope of a Third Reading debate.
  Sir F. Markham: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, if I have offended, but I thought that by saving money on prescriptions and drugs, and so on, one would be helping to meet the cost of the Health Service, but I bow to your Ruling.
  May I say, in conclusion, that I support the Bill and the principle of having the four separate kinds of contributor for the National Health Service; that is to say, the State, the employer, the working man, and the user. I have no objection to two of these categories sometimes being folded one within the other. It is the fair thing to do, and it was the way in which the Labour Party dealt with it when it had the responsibility of office.
  If ever the Labour Party finds itself back on these benches, which I do not

  1877
  think will be in our generation, it will go back to the principle which it adopted from 1946 to 1951, and which it has now temporarily deserted while in opposition.
  9.56 p.m.
  Mr. William Hamilton: The hon. and gallant Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) should get his facts right about the Labour Government. In fact, the Health Service contribution was incorporated in the National Insurance contribution and remained the same throughout the life of the Labour Government. The simple fact is that the Tories have introduced three increases—the first Bill and two separate increases—as compared with the record of the Labour Party.
  I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) was right to indicate the nub of the problem, which, quite simply, is this. How do we finance the extension of our National Health Service? Do we do it by progressive taxation levied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by Income Tax and Surtax and so on, or do we finance it by regressive taxation such as the poll tax which we are now discussing? To an extent, of course, the whole thing is financed by taxation, and still is one hundred per cent., but there is a proportion of it which is progressive taxation and a proportion which is regressive taxation. The regressive element we are discussing tonight. The proportion that we finance out of progressive taxation ought, in our view, to be increased, rather than the proportion financed out of regressive taxation.
  That is the nub of the problem, and, of course, The Guardian was right when the proposals were first introduced and it stated in its leader of the 2nd February:
  "This Bill represents a significant victory for the Tory Right Wing."
  It is not a matter of necessity, but a matter of principle, with the Tory Party that the burden shall be passed increasingly to the recipients, irrespective of their means, and progressively away from those who pay their taxes according to their means. My hon. Friend quoted the case mentioned in the House yesterday of a man who is to receive £24,000 a year. He will pay 10d. a week, and a man in my constituency—a railway
  1878
  worker in the same industry—on £8 per week will also pay 10d. Where on earth is the morality or the justice of that kind of principle?
  I have not the time to go into all the points that I wanted to make, but I should like to say that all the speeches which I have heard from the Government side—I am sorry I have not heard them all—have had very many qualifications about the welcome which they gave to this Bill. The hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. P. Browne), the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper), and the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd) have all expressed great concern about the lower paid worker.
  Recently we had my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) referring to the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel according to St. Luke in the Revised Version of the New Testament. It was in The Times of yesterday:
  "The Lawyer has asked 'And who is my neighbour?'"
  It is St. Luke, Chapter 10, verses 30 to 37. But it is already out of date with this legislation and I propose to give my own version—I hope it is not blasphemous.
  Mr. Burden: It will be.
  Mr. Hamilton: I do not think it will. Jesus said: A lower-paid worker was on his way from Wolverhampton when he fell in with Tories who stripped him, beat him and went off leaving him half dead. It so happened that one, Enoch, was going down by the same road. But when he saw him he went past on the other side. So, too, a Selwyn came to the place, and when he saw him went past on the other side on his way to Suez. But a Socialist who was making the journey came upon him and when he saw him he was—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."]—moved to pity. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, bathing them with oil and wine. Nor did he ask him whether he could pay for the bandages or the oil, or the wine, at two bob a time. Nor did he even ask him if he could pay the 10d. weekly contribution. Rather he lifted him on to his own beast and cared for him without thought of contributions or charges. Which of these three do you think was neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the Tories? He answered: Not Enoch

  1879
  the Greek; not the Selwyn of Suez, but the Socialist who showed him kindness without thought of contributions or charges. Jesus said: Go and do as he did.
  I say that because we on this side of the House feel very strongly about the action which the Government have taken. The hon. Member for Ilford, South talked about us regarding the Health Service as a sacred cow. We do not, but we are conscious of the fact that every hon. Member opposite when the Bill to set up the Service was introduced voted against it. Every one of them on Third Reading voted against it, and they have always been disposed, not openly to attack it, because they know it is too popular in the country, but to undermine it. At an earlier stage I described them as political woodworms, and that just about sums up their attitude. When the hon. Member said that the flat-rate contribution had not gone too far, if he was referring to the £8 a week, the £9 a week or the £10 a week man, he does not know what he is talking about.
  Many of his hon. Friends have said the same thing. The hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) said it during the Second Reading debate. She asked how were the lower paid workers to pay this money. The hon. Member for Torrington and the hon. Member for Cheadle said the same. Almost every hon. Member opposite has said it. Let them not imagine that this Measure is popular. Let them not imagine that we shall let it rest even assuming that it gets a Third Reading.
  10.4 p.m.
  Mr. William Ross: Slowly, but inexorably, the tumbrils are rolling towards the Guillotine. What has been very interesting about this journey is that there have been few bystanders or witnesses, particularly on the other side of the street. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh"] I am talking about the journey from the moment when we started the Committee stage. Although there have been few witnesses on the other side of the House, there have been fewer who had any comment to make. No doubt as we get nearer and nearer to the hour of execution we shall have some more hon.
  1880
  Members who are curious coming into the Chamber. Even the higher functionaries who are responsible for it may put in an appearance.
  It may well be that the Patronage Secretary will reappear, not smiled upon by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury because he has been a much buffeted man. It was he who was gagged by the Patronage Secretary and he who, on Monday night, was guillotined in the middle of an explanation. It may well be that the Leader of the House will appear. There is no doubt that, certainly since he arranged his timetable, he has been able to have a very much easier time in respect of the Bill. I wonder whether the Guillotine was introduced because back benchers opposite had shown no enthusiasm for the Bill and the Leader of the House wanted to curtail their agony. There has not been a whole-hearted speech in favour of the Bill from start to finish.
  I can well remember a speech by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran) who expressed the strangest and most sadistic sympathy I have ever heard when we were discussing widows. He said there was hardship, so he offered them sympathy and then proceeded to go into the Lobby to ensure that the hardship would be redoubled. That is the kind of thing that we have had all through the stages of the Bill. One thing is very much clearer now that we are reaching the end of this process. All the pretences have been dropped. The Treasury has taken full responsibility for the Measure and has recognised that it has nothing to do with the Health Service; the tenuous connection is only one of accountancy. If he knew the original Bill well enough, the Economic Secretary would appreciate that.
  This is a Bill relating to taxation and to nothing else, for by this Measure and the Schedule—which was not fully discussed —in the coming year the Government will raise £161 million. The increases which are within that amount to £49 million. That is what the Bill is really about. I should like to know where are the fighters for freedom in taxation matters. Not only is this taxation, but direct taxation. Where is the noble Lord the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinching-brooke)? Where are all the others, the

  1881
  freedom first men, who have been proclaiming their antagonism to increases of taxation? Not only have they not raised their voices, but they have not even shown their faces in our discussions on the Bill.
  This is Treasury trickery. It is taxation by stealth. I wonder whether hon. Members opposite who conducted a campaign in the country against taxation during the election appreciate what the Bill means. It has been pointed out more than once that the Schedule has no separate existence. The National Health Service contribution is only part of a tripartite National Insurance contribution. By the beginning of April, as the result of what has already been passed by the House, we are to raise additionally an extra £134 million by fiat-rate National Insurance contributions.
  By a new graduated contribution, which is equally direct taxation to those who pay it, the Government are raising another £202 million in the coming year. By the Bill they will raise yet another £49 mill ion, making an additional total of direct taxation levied in this way of over £400 million. From pay packet and pocket the Treasury will extract in this way during this year an extra £400 million, and this is being done by the party which, at the General Election, did not breathe one word about this.
  I do not ask hon. Members to take my word for it, or accept my decision that this is direct taxation, I have in my hand a book by an objective organisation, namely, the Aims of Industry, which draws attention to the fact that National Insurance contributions are direct taxation. It says it in language which I should not use. It says it equally with diagram, because it lists as direct taxes Income Tax and National Insurance contributions. The first point is that we are dealing with direct taxation to the tune of £161 million.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: What is Aims of Industry?
  Mr. Ross: I do not know, and I shall not go into that now.
  The Government having gained that amount of money in this way, it eases the burden of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in relation to his other taxation problems. The Financial Secretary suggested that we should not con-
  1882
  sider this as taxation. He said that the only things which counted as taxation were the matters dealt with by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget. However, this is taxation. To the extent that it is concentrated where it is, it is a redistribution of the tax burden.
  The stings of taxation are not in the amount. The two stings of taxation are the waste that it may well support and the injustice of its incidence. I do not know why I should limit myself after what we have heard all day, but I should be out of order if I referred to the question of waste. But the incidence of taxation certainly arises on the Bill.
  The Government levy £161 million for a pretended purpose according to the categories listed in the Schedule. People who hold a National Insurance card and pay full insurance are the people who alone have this additional tax visited upon them.
  Who are they and what does the Schedule say? The Schedule lists three main categories—employed, self-employed and non-employed. The categories are then sub-divided into three—men, women and juveniles. There is the additional category of employer. That follows closely the National Insurance pattern.
  I have looked at the Schedule without being able to find what has been referred to by practically every hon. Member opposite who even attempted a justification—and this included the Economic Secretary—that is, any reference to average earnings. The first description is:
  "Employed men between the ages of 18 and 70, not including men over the age of 65."
  There is nothing there about average earnings. What it means is that every man between the ages of 18 and 70, if he has not retired from gainful employment, will pay 2s. 8½d. irrespective of whether he is earning £7 or £70. The man who pays, pays it out not from an average wage packet, but from his own wage packet.
  The light has not yet struck hon. Members opposite that there are many lower-paid workers. There are 7¾ million people who earn less than £9. It is true that most of them are women.

  1883
  They are still included in the Bill irrespective of their wage. Women between the ages of 18 and 65 will pay 2s. 0½d. irrespective of earnings.
  I spent last Sunday at a trade union meeting, sitting, listening. It was an N.U.R. meeting.
  Mr. J. M. L. Prior: A waste of a Sunday.
  Mr. Ross: It was not a waste of a Sunday. Had the hon. Member been there, he might have learned something of how a man had been injured and the claim was being made and the case fought in respect of his future. He could not carry on his usual job and he was being offered a job as a porter at £8 a week. That man, at £8 a week, will pay exactly the same as Dr. Beeching, with his £24,000. This is what hon. Members must face. Is it just or is it unjust that we should raise the necessary money in respect of the pretended purpose that was put forward by the Minister of Health in this way? I suggest that not one hon. Member on the Government side could defend it with enthusiasm.
  When we consider the question of women—I am determined that we should examine the Bill—they can be, and are, divided for National Insurance purposes according to their numbers. There are 7½ million women employed in industry. They do not all pay insurance. There are 3⅓ million single women, of whom ¼million do not pay. There are 3½ million married women in industry and employment and only 1¼ million of them pay. This is where we have to balance justice. This is where the poll tax falls heavily.
  There are 400,000 widows in employment, but only 190,000 of them pay. The hon. Member for Uxbridge said that when discussing this we have to remember that there are poor widows and wealthy widows. Wealthy widows do not go out to work, and because they do not have to go out to work they do not have a National Insurance card. The widows who go out to work are generally those who have to go out to work. Of the 190,000 widows who pay this tax, over 100,000 are 10s. widows.
  Is it right that we should have a system of paying for hospitals which results in the wealthy widow paying nothing but
  1884
  the widow who is so poor that she has to go out to work being compelled—because the 10s. widow cannot opt out of insurance, but is compelled, in order to retain benefit and the right to a pension at the age of 60, to pay this 2s. 0½d. and this additional 8d.?
  Mr. Godfrey Lagden: Since the hon. Member has quoted my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Curran), would he not agree, in all fairness, that my hon. Friend was extremely anxious that something better should be done for the lot of widows in general? Would it not be fairer just to mention that, instead of quoting my hon. Friend completely out of context?
  Mr. Ross: I have already referred to the hon. Member for Uxbridge and I am sorry that he was not in the Chamber. The hon. Member for Uxbridge said that he was fully in sympathy with our case, but that there were wealthy widows and poor widows, and that what we really required was a social revolution and a complete reorganisation of the whole soheme for women. He then announced that he would be delighted to vote against our Amendment, which would help the widows. That was his speech, and that is a fair summing up of it.
  The more we examine the Bill the more we find it absolutely riddled with such anomalies. The same thing is true of juveniles. I wonder whether the Financial Secretary will tell me what will be the cost of the increase for juveniles? Juveniles will pay 6d. more. That means that apprentices will pay 6d. more, but they will also pay more in National Insurance in April. I think that their total increase will be about 1s. 4d.
  What does that mean? We had an announcement in November last from the National Insurance Commissioner pointing out that apprentices aged 15, 16 and 17 were being given new limits of earnings: 84s. 6d. at 15, 87s. 6d. at 16, and 89s. 6d. at 17. As a result, the parents of 30,000 apprentices were able to claim family allowances—30,000 apprentices. What was the reason? The reason was that their net weekly earnings were below this. The Commissioner said that unless they got these earnings they were not provided wholly or substantially with a livelihood.

  1885
  I hope that the hon. Member will appreciate that it is wrong to talk about teenage tycoons, as he did the other night. This generalised affluence that appears in the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite flies in the fact of the facts, and also in the face of the Bill. But for many of these apprentices we are now to reduce that take-home wage, and as a result we will have to pay family allowances for even more of them. So it may well be that, even in respect of apprentices, the Government will find that it will cost them more to have turned down our Amendment than to have accepted it. When one examines these things in relation to all these categories, weighing one against the other, including some and excluding others, one cannot vote on this Bill as a matter of equity at all.
  Hon. Members opposite avoid another point. We are not really talking about 2s. 8½d. for men, or 2s. 0½d. for women. There is no such thing, and there is no such stamp. What this means is that in July a man between 18 and 70 who is within the scheme will pay 10s. 7d. The employer will pay, on his behalf, 8s. 7d. The combined contribution will be 19s. 2d. If he is in the scheme he will pay 19s. 2d. only if he is earning £9 and under. If he has reached the much-heralded average wage, that man's contribution that week will be 15s. 8d. That is a long way from the extra 10d. we have spoken about. A man outside the scheme will pay 12s. 2d. His employer will pay 9s. 10d. The total will be 22s.
  We are not talking about trifles. The same applies to women. Women in the scheme will pay anything between 8s. 8d. and 13s. 9d., and the combined contribution with the employer will be anything between 16s. and 26s. 2d. These are fairly substantial sums. A woman outside the scheme will pay 9s. 6d., the employer will pay 7s. 9d., and the combined contribution will be 17s. 3d.
  What effect will all this have? Will it be worth hon. Members swallowing the Treasury trickery and placing such burdens as those upon individuals and upon industry and, in the end place the country in a very much worse position than perhaps it is now?
  I am not satisfied that the Government have really faced this issue. They have dragged in the Health Service today in
  1886
  a way which they never mentioned at all since Second Reading. They have again tried to respectabilise something of which they are really ashamed.
  It will be exactly fifty years ago, on 4th May, 1911, that the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) sat proudly and defiantly as a Liberal Home Secretary on that Bench while the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, asked leave to introduce a Bill to provide for health and unemployment insurance. That was, within weeks, exactly fifty years ago, and this is how we celebrate. This is the way we mark the occasion, by undermining the other great advance made in those fifty years, the establishment of a free, comprehensive, National Health Service.
  Of course, what we are doing now is only one of a questionable quartet effecting drugs, prescriptions and charges. In no way do the Bill or the other actions of the Government in health matters match the moment or the challenge of social progress. Fifty years ago contributions were related to wages—4d. and 3d. on wages of 2s. 6d. and under; 2d. for 2s. a day and under; and ld. for 1s. 6d. a day; and the balance of the unevenness was made up by higher contributions for the employers. Fifty years the working men of this country get their medicine and medical attention free. Today, we have got a higher contribution than ever we had, and we have a higher charge of 2s. per item.
  Hon. Gentlemen opposite have legislated not to underpin, but to demolish, the Health Service. Some hon. Gentlemen have been working on the Floor of the House on contributions and the rest of the demolition squad have been working in a Committee Room upstairs. It is because they have legislated with prejudice, because they have legislated for privilege, that they are to be condemned by this House tonight; and, certainly, they will be condemned by the country.
  10.31 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): If the late Lloyd George could have been present during the censure debate some weeks ago, and heard the figures which my right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health gave of improvements in the National Health Service in the last few

  1887
  years, he would, no doubt, have felt that the fiftieth anniversary of his work was being celebrated in a worthy manner. It is well worth remembering just how greatly, as my right hon. Friend showed, the Service in all its essential parts has improved in the last ten years.
  The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), if it is not impertinent for me to say so, during our debates on the Bill has added considerably to his laurels in this House as a debater, and I am sure many of my hon. Friends would join with me in the tribute I have just paid to him, remembering in particular the speech he made late at night on Second Reading. But he has made tonight one inaccuracy which I think I should correct at the outset, because if it were quoted outside it would give a misleading impression.
  Talking about the increase in contributions, he said the increase would be £134 million in April, and there would be an increase of £200 million through the introduction of the graduated scheme, and an increase of £50 million through the increase in the National Health Service contributions; but, of course, the hon. Gentleman did not mention that the 1959 Act reduced the flat rate contribution by about £100 million, so the total increase this year is not £400 million but approximately £300 million. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I think it is important to get these figures right, and it is highly relevant to this debate to remember that £200 million of the £300 million is related to incomes, that is to say, will be raised by a form of contribution in which there is going to be an element of graduation.
  Mr. Ross: I agree. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I had this in mind, but I was talking at that time about the campaign which was conducted by hon. Gentlemen opposite during the election when, in relation to rates prevailing then and which they boasted about then, they boasted they would bring them down from 9s. 11d. to 8s. 4d. In that connection my figures are perfectly accurate.
  Sir E. Boyle: Since the hon. Gentleman has raised this point, if I remember rightly, what we promised at the election—I am not trying to play with words in any way on this—was that we
  1888
  would aim to concentrate help where it was most needed, and, accordingly, we concentrated the help to the lower-paid workers in assessing the contributions they would make under the National Insurance Scheme. But we have at no time said that if National Insurance benefits were to go up contributions would not have to go up as well.
  I want to come back to the speech of the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). I must say that I thought he had a point when he said at the start of our proceedings today that there was not very much new to say on this subject now, but that he was sure hon. Members would have plenty more to say about it. I think that a fair comment, possibly, on the debate that we have had today.
  But I cannot agree with the hon. Member or with any other hon. Member who feels that our debate today or our debates at any earlier time in these proceedings have revealed a fundamental conflict of principle between the two sides of the House. I will go on to the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) in a few minutes; she went a good deal further than some of her hon. Friends and stated a conflict of principle not just with the present Government but really with the Labour Government after the war.
  After all, it is not really in dispute between the two sides of the House that the weekly payments made by insured persons under the National Insurance Scheme should make some contribution to the cost of the Service. Ever since the Service began in 1948 some part of the gross cost has been met in this way. Equally, it is not in dispute between us that by far the major part of the cost of the Service has always been met, and will go on being met, from the proceeds of general taxation.
  It is perfectly true, as the hon. Gentleman has pointed out, that something happened in 1957—that in terms of legality the Health Service contribution has had a separate existence only since the 1957 Act. But throughout the whole period between 1948 and 1957—nothing that the hon. Gentleman said this afternoon contradicted this; in fact, he really confirmed it—an element of the weekly insurance contribution was notionally set aside, and the yield from it was actually

  1889
  paid over towards the cost of the Health Service.
  I want again to make the point that just what the balance should be between the proportion of Health Service expenditure financed out of the proceeds of general taxation and the proportion financed by contributions cannot be regarded, I believe, as a major question of political principle. I simply commend the Bill to the House with the reflection that we do not believe that there is anything unreasonable about the balance that we are going to achieve this next year.
  The net yield of the proposed flat-rate contribution for the coming financial year, if the House approves the Third Reading of the Measure, will be £148 million, but even after taking into account the increased charges and contributions, the cost to the Exchequer of the Health Service in 1961–62 will still be £600 million. I just do not see how one could reasonably claim that the Government's proposals are relieving taxpayers in general of paying their fair share of Health Service expenditure. I would just relate this to the total of estimated civil expenditure, because I think that when all is said and done £600 million is a fairly sizeable fraction of a total estimated civil expenditure of £3,530 million.
  There was another point that the hon. Member for Sowerby made this afternoon. He frankly admitted that if one ascertained the fraction of average earnings represented by the combined contribution there was not very much difference between 1946 and today. He pointed out that the percentage was 4·3 in 1946 and 4 today. But he then asked what sanctity these proportions had. There is, of course, nothing sacred about these proportions at all. All I am saying is that when any Government have to make an act of judgment in deciding a question such as this—what should be the amount of the Health Service financed out of the flat-rate contribution and the amount financed out of taxation—it is surely not unreasonable to pay attention to this sort of statistic and see just exactly what is in the Government's view a fair proportion of average earnings for the combined insurance contribution to represent.
  1890
  I do not make any apology at all for the fact that over the years we have tended to keep this figure fairly constant. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to have done and the sort of way any Government is bound to behave when it has to exercise an act of judgment of this kind.
  I come next to the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper), Torrington (Mr. P. Browne) and Cheadle (Mr. Shepherd), who expressed some doubt about the level of flat-rate contribution and asked themselves whether the present rate was not too high. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle went further and said that we should do a good deal more thinking about the whole financing of the social services for the future.
  I do not quarrel with any of my hon. Friends who raised these points. I said earlier on the Bill, and I say it again tonight, that, of course, there is a level of flat-rate contribution that would be manifestly unjust. Certainly, every time we propose to raise the flat-rate contribution it is absolutely right that we should consider carefully what will be its effect on workers of all income levels, and not only of workers but of the self-employed, juveniles and the non-employed.
  Mr. Houghton: The hon. Gentleman is saying that there will be another time.
  Sir E. Boyle: What I am saying is that whenever we are taking a forward look at Health Service expenditure, and are considering the question of finance, obviously it is right that we should consider the social justice of what we are proposing to do. All I claim is that I do not believe that this Measure is in itself an unreasonable one.
  In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle, I would say that we have certainly not closed our minds on this question. I would be the last to say that we should be complacent about our present system of financing the Service. It is one of the biggest problems which face Western Governments at the present time. It is very much easier to suggest large-scale reforms in general than to work them out in particular, and this is, in fact, one of the most difficult problems which would face a Government today.
  Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman said he did not think that this Measure in itself was unjust. But we cannot consider it "in itself" because no one pays this itself. It is part of the combined contribution. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the combined contribution of 10s. 7d. will at all times be just?
  Sir E. Boyle: When I said this Measure itself, what I had in mind was—I am sure hon. Members have all kinds of ideas as to how the services could best be financed—that we are considering one single Measure, and I do not think that this Measure is an intrinsically unreasonable one.
  Mr. Ross: Will the hon. Gentleman answer my question? We cannot consider this matter in a vacuum. This does not exist by itself. It is part of a flat-rate contribution of what will be 10s. 7d. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that sum is fair to the lower-paid worker?
  Sir E. Boyle: Certainly. I think that the 10d. which we are considering, and also the flat-rate contribution paid, are things Which I am right to defend either inside or outside the House.
  I now come to the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock. She delivered a thoughtful and very sincere speech, and I should like to answer two of the several points which she made. She was arguing very strongly that the cost for the whole of the Health Service should be financed oust of the proceeds of general taxation. I am not sure that there was quite such agreement between the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Sowerby as she suggested. I think that on some occasion in the House we ought to hear quite clearly whether the hon. Lady did or did not represent the view of the Opposition Front Bench. However, I should like to lake up one point, in particular.
  The hon. Lady said that social services not only have a social effect, but also a redistributive effect. What evidence has she that Government social policy as a whole in the 1950s redistributed welfare in favour of the better off?—because I do not believe that to be true. When we look at the increased share in recent years of all social services, and when we consider the point which my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary made that social services
  1892
  expenditure in general has nearly doubled in the last ten years, I do not believe that Government social policies as a whole have redistributed welfare in the country adversely. I think that the ordinary workers are enjoying a higher level of social benefits than ever before.
  Miss Lee: My answer, quite simply, is expense accounts. There are two sets of people in the community. There are the schoolmaster, the scientist, the civil servant and all kinds of extremely valuable members of our community who are living on a moderate standard and paying full Income Tax. What has gone wrong with our society, and what is making nonsense of our taxation system, is the fact that there is also another section of the community which is getting away with a great deal of untaxed expenditure.
  Sir E. Boyle: I hope that I will not be out of order if I answer the hon. Lady on this point. I am staggered by her suggestion. Of course, we can discuss at an appropriate time any moral and social issues arising out of expense accounts, but if she will tot up the increases in social service expenditure on health and education and National Assistance—and the fact is that we are spending £168 million a year on National Assistance, as compared with £100 million a few years ago—I do not believe that even the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) would claim that the total amount of money involved in expense accounts, legitimate and illegitimate, is anything more than a small fraction of the extra social service expenditure.
  Miss Lee: I do not think that the Minister would deny that expenditure on the Health Service is less than 1s. in the £ of national income now, and that that figure has remained relatively stationary. On the other hand, there has been an increase in wages, and such a marked redistribution of income that one would expect some increase in production—especially when the Western world in general has increased its production—but this still means that the whole situation is completely lopsided, and that many sections of our people, including the sick and the pensioners, are comparatively worse off.
  Sir E. Boyle: The hon. Lady shows quite clearly that she belongs to that section of her party which thinks that the whole of our British society today is rotten. That is not a view I share; nor, I am glad to say, is it a view which is held by anything like all hon. Members opposite. My point is that not only has Health Service expenditure risen in the last few years, as a proportion of the national product; education expenditure, productive capital spending and social capital spending have also risen.
  I believe that the ordinary wage-earning families enjoy a higher living standard and a higher standard of social benefits than before, and I commend to the hon. Lady the wise words of a former Tory Leader—Arthur Balfour—who used to say that this was a singularly ill-contrived world, but not quite so ill-contrived as that.
  The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) made a very interesting point. I am sorry I was not able to hear his speech, but I had to leave the House. He said that even if we accepted the principle of a flat-rate contribution there remained the level of the contribution to consider, and that we should calculate this not by reference to the average wage of the worker but by reference to the poorest. I go a long way with him on this. If we were considering just the £15-a-week worker I have no doubt we would think ourselves fully justified in putting up the flat-rate contribution by more than 10d. The point is that in deciding on this figure we took into account the lower paid worker—such as, for instance, the agricultural worker with three or four children—and not just the better-paid worker. I agree that we have to take into account all sections of workers.
  My noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel), whose speech I also missed, made an admirable contribution to the debate, as I am informed by some of those who were lucky enough to listen to it. He is quite right when he says that the normal reaction of people not steeped in party politics will be that there is no great difference in principle between the two sides, and that if the level of contribution was fair in 1949, having in mind what has happened since the new contribution is also fair.
  1894
  The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins), who spoke immediately after my noble Friend, made one rather startling remark. He said that if he were Chancellor he would abolish all indirect taxation and substitute more direct taxation, and that that was the only fair method to adopt. I know the strength of his moral convictions, and those of many of his hon. Friends, but if we want to see a community with rising standards of living and better social benefits it cannot make sense, at the same time, to kill all enterprise and initiative in this country. Ultimately—this is not just a party point—the level of social benefits we enjoy must depend on our ability to earn our living in the markets of the world. Other countries will not pay our social benefits for us.
  Mr. J. T. Price: It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman takes my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) to task on this, because surely he is forgetting that the most notable advocate of the single tax who ever spoke in this House—at least since I have been here and that time coincides with that of the Financial Secretary—was Sir William Darling, a former Conservative Member for Edinburgh, Central, who often made impassioned speeches from the benches opposite for the abolition of indirect taxation.
  Sir E. Boyle: When the hon. Member referred to advocates of a single tax, I thought that he was going to refer to the late Mr Richard Stokes. While I used to enjoy hearing him, and also Sir William Darling, I should not have gone to either of them for economic advice.
  The hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Ledger), made two points which I should like to consider. I say to him frankly that the rises in spending by the average family to which he referred are a sign that flat-rate taxes can rise by a moderate amount without creating tremendous injustice. He said the reason why the Health Service cost had increased was inflation. There are two answers to that. The first is, as the Economic Secretary said this afternoon, that the expenditure has gone up by a third in real terms during the last ten years; also during the last few years in Britain increments in salaries have tended to advance at a rather greater rate than increases in wages and that is not a bad thing for the social services. That has

  1895
  helped to bring about a better Health Service than we had years ago.
  The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), who spoke at the end of the debate, thought this was a thoroughly unjust contribution because the Clores and Cottons, and he added one or two more recent characters, would all be paying 10d. Let us be fair about this because I think it is a point which hon. Members opposite often fail to take. Admittedly, the lower-paid worker will also be paying 10d., but it is worth recalling when we are considering advantages and disadvantages of the flat-rate contribution that there is no increase for a man according to the number of his dependants. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It is a good point. Also, the flat rate contribution does not fall on the retired person, the sick or the unemployed, or, of course, on any of those receiving National Assistance.
  While certainly on balance this is a regressive form of getting money, and we have never disputed the point, it is not, in fact, so completely nondiscriminatory as hon. Members opposite often suggest.
  My last point is this. It was suggested, I think by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) in the middle of the night in Committee, that we are financing in general an unfair proportion of our social services through contributions. Let me give the House, very briefly, the figures as accurately as I can for 1961–62. In the forthcoming financial year we shall be getting approximately £1,000 million out of National
  Insurance contribution, excluding National Health contribution. We shall be getting approximately £150 million out of National Health Service contributions. Yet net current expenditure on the social services by the central Government for 1961–62 out of ordinary revenue will total approximately £2,125 million. I do not believe that that is an unreasonable proportion. What the central Government will spend on the social services out of ordinary revenue will be very nearly twice the total gained from contributions. In addition, we must think of the very considerable sums spent on social services by local authorities, which will also be between £400 and £500 million.
  There is absolutely no truth in the theory that the Government has put welfare at the bottom of the queue. On the contrary, there has never been a time when ordinary families have gained more from our major social services—the Health Service and our education system —and when those in greatest need have gone more to the National Assistance Board to have their problems dealt with.
  We on this side are as proud of the social services as any hon. Members opposite. It is precisely because we recognise the need to underpin these services with a sound financial structure that I have no hesitation in asking the House to give the Bill a Third Reading.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 276, Noes 204.

  Division No. 114]

  AYES

  [10.56 p.m.

  Agnew, Sir Peter

  Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. John

  Cleaver, Leonard

  Aitken, W. T.

  Boyle, Sir Edward

  Cole, Norman

  Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)

  Brawls, John

  Cooper, A. E.

  Allason, James

  Bromley-Davenport,Lt.-Col. SirWalter

  Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.

  Amery, Rt. Hon. Julian (Preston, N.)

  Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Corfield, F. V.

  Arbuthnot, John

  Brooman-White, R.

  Costain, A. P.

  Atkins, Humphrey

  Browne Percy (Torrington)

  Coulson, J. M.

  Balniel, Lord

  Bryan, Paul

  Courtney, Cdr. Anthony

  Barber, Anthony

  Bullard, Denys

  Craddock, Sir Beresford

  Barlow, Sir John

  Bullus, Wing Commander Eric

  Critchley, Julian

  Barter, John

  Burden, F. A.

  Crowder, F. P.

  Batsford, Brian

  Butcher, Sir Herbert

  Cunningham, Knox

  Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

  Butler, Rt. Hn.R.A.(Saftron Walden)

  Curran, Charles

  Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)

  Campbell, Sir David (Belfast, S.)

  Currie, G. B. H.

  Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Goa & Fhm)

  Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Berkeley, Humphry

  Carr, Compton (Barons Court)

  Dance, James

  Bevies, Rt. Hon. Reginald (Toxteth)

  Carr, Robert (Mitcham)

  d'Avigdor-Gotdsmid, Sir Henry

  Bidgood, John C.

  Cary, Sir Robert

  Deetles, W. F.

  Bingham, R. M.

  Chanson, H. P. C.

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Bishop, F. P.

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. M.

  Black, Sir Cyril

  Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)

  Doughty, Charles

  Bosom, Clive

  Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)

  Drayson, G. B.

  Bourne-Arton, A.

  Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)

  du Cann, Edward

  Duthie, Sir William

  Lagden, Godfrey

  Prior, J. M. L.

  Eden, John

  Langford-Holt, J.

  Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Othe

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Leather, E. H. C.

  Profumo, Rt. Hon. John

  Elliott,R.W.(Nwcstle-upon-Tyne,N.)

  Leavey, J. A.

  Proudfoot, Wilfred

  Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn

  Leburn, Gilmour

  Quennell, Miss J. M.

  Farey-Jones, F. W.

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Rameden, James

  Farr, John

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Rawlinson, Peter

  Finlay, Graeme

  Lindsay, Martin

  Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin

  Fisher, Nigel

  Litchfield, Capt. John

  Renton, David

  Foster, John

  Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

  Ridley, Hon. Nicholas

  Fraser, Hn. Hugh (Stafford & Stone)

  Longbottom, Charles

  Roots, William

  Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)

  Longden, Gilbert

  Royle, Anthony (Richmond, Surrey)

  Freeth, Denzil

  Loveys, Walter H.

  Russell, Ronald

  Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.

  Low, Rt. Hon. Sir Toby

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Gammans, Lady

  Lucas, Sir Jocelyn

  Seymour, Leslie

  Gibson-Watt, David

  Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

  Sharples, Richard

  Glover, Sir Douglas

  McAdden, Stephen

  Shaw, M.

  Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)

  MacArthur, Ian

  Shepherd, William

  Goodhart, Philip

  McLaren, Martin

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Goodhew, Victor

  McLaughlin, Mrs. Patricia

  Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'rd & Chlewick)

  Gower, Raymond

  Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

  Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)

  Grant, Rt. Hon. William

  Maclean, SirFitzroy(Bute&N.Ayrs.)

  Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher

  Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.

  McLean, Neil (Inverness)

  Spearman, Sir Alexander

  Green, Alan

  MacLeod, John (Ross & Cromarty)

  Speir, Rupert

  Gresham Cooke, R.

  McMaster, Stanley R.

  Stanley, Hon. Richard

  Grimston, Sir Robert

  Macmillan, Rt. Hn.Harold(Bromley)

  Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)

  Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.

  Stodart, J. A.

  Gurden, Harold

  Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Maddan, Martin

  Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm

  Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)

  Maginnie, John E.

  Storey, Sir Samuel

  Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

  Maitland, Sir John

  Studholme, Sir Henry

  Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

  Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.

  Summers, Sir Spencer (Aylesbury)

  Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

  Markham, Major Sir Frank

  Taylor, sir Charles (Eastbourne)

  Harvie Anderson, Miss

  Marlowe, Anthony

  Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)

  Hastings, Stephen

  Marples, Rt. Hon. Ernest

  Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)

  Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel

  Marten, Neil

  Teeling, William

  Henderson-Stewart, Sir James

  Mathew, Robert (Honiton)

  Temple, John M.

  Hendry, Forbes

  Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)

  Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

  Hicks Beach, Maj. W.

  Maudling, Rt. Hon. Reginald

  Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

  Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)

  Mawby, Ray

  Thomas, Peter (Conway)

  Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

  Thompson, Richard (Croydon, S.)

  Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

  Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

  Thorneysroft, Rt. Hon. Peter

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Mills, Stratton

  Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin

  Hobson, John

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)

  Hocking, Philip N.

  More, Jasper (Ludlow)

  Tilney, John (Wavertree)

  Holland, Philip

  Morgan, William

  Turner, Colin

  Hollingworth, John

  Morrison, John

  van Straubenzee, W. R.

  Hopkins, Alan

  Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

  Vane, W. M. F.

  Hornhy, R. P.

  Neave, Airey

  Vaughan-Morgan, Sir John

  Hornsby-Smith. Rt. Hon. Patricia

  Nicholson, Sir Godfrey

  Vesper, Rt. Hon. Dennis

  Howard, John (Southampton, Test)

  Noble, Michael

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek

  Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral John

  Nugent, Sir Richard

  Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold

  Hughes-Young, Michael

  Oakehott, Sir Hendrie

  Watts, James

  Hulbert, Sir Norman

  Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

  Webster, David

  Hutchison, Michael Clark

  Orr-Ewing, C. Ian

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Osborn, John (Hallam)

  Whitelaw, William

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Osborne, Cyril (Louth)

  Williams, Dudley (Exeter)

  Jackson, John

  Page, John (Harrow, West)

  Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

  Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

  Pannell, Norman (Kirkdale)

  Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

  Jennings, J. C.

  Partridge, E.

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)

  Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)

  Wise, A. R.

  Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

  Peel, John

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Johnson Smith, Geoffrey

  Peyton, John

  Wood, Rt. Hon. Richard

  Joseph, Sir Keith

  Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth

  Woodhouse, C. M.

  Kaberry, Sir Donald

  Pike, Miss Mervyn

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Kerans, Cdr. J. S.

  Plikington, Sir Richard

  Woollam, John

  Kerby, Capt. Henry

  Pitman, I. J.

  Worsley, Marcus

  Kershaw, Anthony

  Pitt, Miss Edith

  Kimball, Marcus

  Pott, Percivall

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Kirk, Peter

  Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch

  Mr. E. Wakefield and

  Kitson, Timothy

  Price, David (Eaetleigh)

  Colonel J. H. Harrison.

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Bowden Herbert W. (Leics, S.W.)

  Chetwynd, George

  Albu, Austen

  Bowen, Roderic (Cardigan)

  Cliffe, Michael

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Bowies, Frank

  Collick, Percy

  Awbery, Stan

  Boyden, James

  Corbel, Mrs. Freda

  Baxter, William (Stirlingehire, W.)

  Brockway, A. Fenner

  Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

  Beaney, Alan

  Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

  Cronin, John

  Bence, Cyril (Dunbartonshire, E.)

  Brown, Allan (Tottenham)

  Crosland, Anthony

  Benson, Sir George

  Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

  Grossman, R. H. S.

  Blackburn, F.

  Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Blyton, William

  Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

  Darling, George

  Boardman, H.

  Castle, Mrs. Barbara

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  1898

  1899

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Jones, Dan (Burnley)

  Redhead, E. C.

  Davies, Ifer (Gower)

  Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

  Reid, William

  Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

  Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

  Reynolds, G. W.

  Deer, George

  Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  de Freitas, Geoffrey

  Kelley, Richard

  Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

  Delargy, Hugh

  Kenyon, Clifford

  Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

  Dempsey, James

  King, Dr. Horace

  Ross, William

  Diamond, John

  Ledger, Ron

  Short, Edward

  Dodds, Norman

  Lee, Frederick (Newton)

  Silverman, Julius (Aston)

  Driberg, Tom

  Lee, miss Jennie (Cannock)

  Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

  Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John

  Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

  Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)

  Ede, Rt. Hon. C.

  Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

  Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)

  Edelman, Maurice

  Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)

  Small, William

  Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

  Lipton, Marcus

  Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

  Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

  Loughlin, Charles

  Snow, Julian

  Edwards, Walter (Stepney)

  MacColf, James

  Sorensen, R. W.

  Evans, Albert

  McKay, John (Wallsend)

  Soskioe, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank

  Finch, Harold

  Mackle, John

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Fitch, Alan

  MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)

  Steele, Thomas

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

  Stewart, Michael (Fulham)

  Forman, J. C.

  Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

  Stonehouse, John

  Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

  Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)

  Stones, William

  Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. Hugh

  Manuel, A. C.

  Strachey, Rt. Hon. John

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Mapp, Charles

  Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R. (Vauxhall)

  George,LadyMeganLloyd(Crmrthn)

  Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

  Stross, Dr. Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent, C.)

  Ginsburg, David

  Marsh, Richard

  Swain, Thomas

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

  Mason, Roy

  Swingler, Stephen

  Gourley, Harry

  Mayhew, Christopher

  Sylvester, George

  Greenwood, Anthony

  Mendelson, J. J.

  Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

  Grey, Charles

  Millian, Bruce

  Taylor, John (West Lothlan)

  Griffiths, Rt. Hon. dames (Lianelly)

  Milne, Edward J.

  Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)

  Griffiths, W. (Exchange)

  Mitchison, G. R.

  Thornton, Ernest

  Hall, Rt. Hn. Gienvll (Colne Vailey)

  Monsiow, waiter

  Timmons, John

  Hamilton, William (West Fife)

  Moody, A. S.

  Tourney, Frank

  Hannan, William

  Morris, John

  Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

  Hart, Mrs. Judith

  Moyle, Arthur

  Wainwright, Edwin

  Hayman, F. H.

  Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

  Warbey, William

  Healey, Denis

  Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Phllip(Derby,S.)

  Weitzman, David

  Henderson, Rt. Hn. Arthur(RwiyRegis)

  Oliver, G. H.

  Wells, Percy (Faversham)

  Herbison, Miss Margaret

  Oswald, Thomas

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  Hilton, A. V.

  Owen, Will

  White, Mrs. Eirene

  Holman, Percy

  Padley, W. E.

  Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

  Holt, Arthur

  Paget, R. T.

  Wilkins, W. A.

  Houghton, Douglas

  Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)

  Willey, Frederick

  Hoy, James H.

  Pargiter, G. A.

  Williams, D. J. (Neath)

  Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

  Parker, John (Dagenham)

  Williams, LI. (Abertillery)

  Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

  Parkin, B. T. (Paddington, N.)

  Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)

  Hunter, A. E.

  Pavitt, Laurence

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

  Hynd, H. (Accrington)

  Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

  Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

  Hynd, John (Attercliffe)

  Peart, Frederick

  Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

  Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

  Pentland, Norman

  Woof, Robert

  Irving, Sydney (Dartford)

  Plummer, Sir Leslie

  Wyatt, Woodrow

  Janner, Sir Barnett

  Prentice, R. E.

  Yates, Victor (Ladywood)

  Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas

  Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

  Zilliacus, K.

  Jeger, George

  Probert, Arthur

  Jenkins, Hoy (Stechford)

  Proctor, W. T.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)

  Randall, Harry

  Mr. Howell and Mr. Lawson.

  Jones, Rt. Hn. A. Creech(Wakefield)

  Rankin, John

  Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

  ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL, NORTH HAMMERSMITH
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Finlay.]
  11.8 p.m.
  Mr. Frank Tomney: The subject which I wish to raise tonight is one of great concern to many of my constituents who are members of the Roman Catholic Church. The size of the problem is so great that an answer from the Minister with regard to the provision of further Catholic schools in my constituency would be more than welcome.
  As the Minister knows, my constituency is a dormitory area with a highly concentrated population. There are about 220,000 people there occupying an area of about 2,300 acres. Throughout that entire area, there is only one existing Catholic school, a primary school which is already over seventy years old. As a result of lack of accommodation at this existing school, over eighty pupils have to be refused admission annually, and, as a consequence, their education is interrupted and they have to be fostered out to other schools in the locality.
  Two years ago, the issue was directed to the primary school only, but since that time my researches into the problem have proved that not only is a primary school necessary but a secondary modern school also is urgently needed.
  One of the great difficulties in an area of this character is that almost all the land is built on or claimed for one purpose or another. This matter was taken up two years ago with the L.C.C., through the medium of the Catholic authorities—clergy and school managers. The problem was admitted and its urgency was recognised by the education department of the London County Council. The difficulty of providing a site is still with us, to some extent, although we have at last seen a hope of these children being accommodated.
  Large numbers of Irish immigrants are coming into West London. The Government's open door policy towards the Commonwealth has also to be taken
  1902
  into consideration. The majority of those who come from the Commonwealth are of the Catholic faith, and most of them come to the large cities. A lot come to London. This increases the general problem.
  The prospect of a piece of land being made available came to my notice about three months ago. The open space at Wormwood Scrubs, comprising some 200 acres, has a parcel of land on the south-east corner, at the back of St. Clement Danes Grammar School, of approximately six acres, and it is vested in the L.C.C. I took this up, by Question and Answer, with the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and confirmed that the land was vested in the L.C.C.
  This land was loaned to the War Office in 1939 and has been used for training and storage and as a gun site to this day. This means that for twenty years access has been denied to the public, though it might not have been used much by the public even if it had been available. So far as I can trace by talking to people who have lived in the area for forty years, it has never been greatly used.
  It is an admirable site for building one or two schools, and for the Catholic authorities it would solve the problem of the education of their children. There is no secondary modern school on the west side of the area for over six miles. There is one available at Fulham, over four miles away, and one in North Kensington, which is outside the immediate catchment area. The problem of both primary and secondary education need not, however, be explained any more by me.
  Over eight hundred scholars are being denied the type of education to which they are entitled. In the White City area there is probably the largest conglomeration of flats in any one place in London, housing over 2,000 Catholic families. Mothers have to take their children many miles to a Catholic school, where it is not always possible to admit them.
  I ask the Minister to use his endeavours to acquire this piece of land for the purpose I have outlined. I have mentioned the density of the population and the ever-growing problem of concentration. It may be said that this problem

  1903
  will rectify itself in time and that school places will become available in the existing schools; but the present records do not indicate that. The various Ministries concerned should ask what, in justice and equity, should be the answer to this problem. A large body of ratepayers and taxpayers are being denied what they consider to be the proper type of education for their children, with no possible remedy in the foreseeable future. Here there is a strip of land of six acres which would serve a dual purpose.
  The Catholic authorities are aware of the provisions of the Act and the necessity for them to find their own site and provide the capital outlay, but here there is land available. The local education authories admit that there is a real problem. What should be the attitude of the Minister? These people cannot continue to be treated in this way. There will be an ever-growing concentration of people removed from slum clearance areas in the East End and from other parts of London, and this process will continue for the next twenty or thirty years. This is the only piece of land in the borough which is suitable. All kinds of suggestions have been made, even to purchasing large houses and demolishing them and placing upon the London County Council the responsibility for rehousing the tenants of such properties.
  At a meeting in 1958 the Education Officer of the London County Council said that he would investigate the possibility of using this land, if and when it became available. It will become available within two months. There is no reason why it should not be used for this purpose. The Minister of Education has admitted the existence of this problem. There is no reason why the various Ministries should not get together with the Catholic authorities to remedy this long-standing grievance of my constituents, which will not grow less.
  11.10 p.m.
  Mr. Frederick Willey: My hon.. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) has spoken so concisely that there is time for me to support him, and he has spoken so effectively that I think it right
  1904
  to do so. I have been watching the Parliamentary Secretary and his appearance has been sympathetic. I have recognised on other occasions that he and the members of his Department have tried to exercise the priorities as fairly as they can, and I hope that in this case the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell the House that he will intervene, because the most effective point made by my hon. Friend was the availability of the site.
  One knows that a practical difficulty in a case like this is that, if an opportunity is lost, it will be a long time before another opportunity arises. For that reason I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will say that he and his Department will use their good offices to see whether the site can be made available in this instance. One knows the difficulties when there is another Department interested in it and when the L.C.C. itself is interested in it, but I think justice would be done in this case if this land were made available for this new school. For that reason, I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us, without perhaps committing himself to the result of the negotiations, that his Department is anxious to afford all the facilities and encouragement to see that this site is built upon as soon as possible and a new school provided.
  11.20 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Kenneth Thompson): I have listened with great interest and great sympathy to what has been said in the two speeches which have been made, and I approach this problem with a mind which, I hope, is no less sympathetic now than it has been said to have been on other occasions.
  There are very few more difficult problems and occasionally contentious ones than the problem of making decisions about what kind of new schools we should provide and where they are to be. The needs of local authorities vary from time to time and from place to place. My right hon. Friend starts with an agreed overall building programme for England and Wales within the limits of which be has to try to satisfy some very varied and differing demands in different parts of

  1905
  the country. His first consideration is and must be always to see that there are sufficient school places available for the total known child population. That is his first job. Places have got to be where they are wanted and when they are wanted, and they must be appropriate to the age and educational needs of the children, with a due regard to the wishes of the parents.
  I think: that the House will want to acknowledge the successful efforts the London County Council has made to see that the schools are provided to meet those needs. I am glad to say that in the area to which the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) has referred tonight there is no shortage of school places. Indeed, in some ways, as I shall show in a minute, the particular difficulty to which he has referred is the outcome of the successful efforts of the authority to provide schools to meet the needs before there was any question of establishing a Roman Catholic school.
  I must remind the House that my right hon. Friend has not yet received any proposal from the promoters for the establishment in North Hammersmith of a Roman Catholic school under Section 13 of the Education Act, 1944.
  Mr. Tomney: I understand that has gone in. I have a letter from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in which he says:
  "The Council have not made any provision for this school in the development plan which is now before the Minister but they have said that it has not been possible to define every school site that may be required."
  This matter has been taken up and is in progress.
  Mr. Thompson: I must deal with the statutory position as I know it within my Department, and I must repeat for the benefit of the House, and perhaps for the information of the hon. Member, that there are at this moment no specific proposals in my Department for the establishment of this school under the appropriate Sections of the Education Act. I am aware of the correspondence that has passed between the hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and I have copies of that correspondence with me.
  1906
  I think that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends well know that before the promoters submit specific proposals to my right hon. Friend the recognised procedure is for the promoters to discuss the situation with the local education authority. These initial discussions normally are on such points as the catchment area which the school has to serve, the availability of a site for the proposed school, the estimated numbers of scholars for whom the school would be provided, and so on.
  After submitting proposals along these lines to my right hon. Friend under Section 13, the promoters then have to give public notice of their intention to establish a new school. During the two months' statutory period which follows the publication of the notice, ten or more local government electors or the governors or managers of any voluntary school affected by the proposals have an opportunity to submit to my right hon. Friend any objections they may have. Any objections so received are, of course, taken into account before a decision is reached. Before making a decision my right hon. Friend must also be satisfied that the promoters are able and willing to meet the various commitments that they would incur under the Act. This particular case has not yet gone beyond the stage of discussions between the L.C.C. and the promoters, and it cannot get any further until a site has been found for the school.
  I must remind the hon. Gentleman that it is the duty of the promoters of a new voluntary aided school to find a site, although, of course, it is true—and I am happy to acknowledge it—that local education authorities throughout the country show themselves ready and willing to help in finding sites where they can. This willingness has been no less evident in North Hammersmith than elsewhere in the country, but so far without success. Even before the L.C.C.'s education development plan was drawn up in 1947, the area we are considering this evening was being built up, but the Roman Catholic diocese did not then put forward any proposals to earmark land for a Roman Catholic school site. The subsequent completion by the L.C.C. of the White City housing estate has made the finding of a suitable site even more difficult.
  The hon. Gentleman has given the House a number of figures about Catholic

  1907
  children in North Hammersmith. I have no intention of disputing them tonight. These children, however, have plenty of room in neighbouring county schools, so I am assured. I know, and I willingly acknowledge, that many Roman Catholic families hold strongly to the view that education can be provided only in a Roman Catholic School. I respect that view. I have always been convinced that the dual system upon which our educational provision rests has conferred very great benefits upon our society. My right hon. Friend is bound to have regard to the wishes of the voluntary bodies in considering any proposal under Section 13 so far as these wishes are compatible with efficiency and economy in the education service.
  But, having said that, I must return to the practical difficulties that face the Roman Catholic families in this area at this time. As I have said, when the White City area started to develop as a housing estate no allocation was made for a site for a Catholic school and no suitable site has since been found. The hon. Gentleman has asked me to consider the use of the former gun site at Wormwood Scrubs for this purpose. I have looked into this. I learn that the gun site was dedicated to the Council as part of a public open space, subject only to its temporary use, if so required, for military purposes. When those temporary purposes come to an end the land returns to its original purpose as an open space. That is what is happening now. My right hon. Gentleman does not have the power to direct that this land should be used for educational purposes. There might easily be considerable public opposition aroused against the taking of public open land for any other purpose at all. A good deal of thought has been given to examining this question, but, I am sorry to say, without success.
  Another suggestion that has been made is that since the Catholic children are accommodated in nearby county schools, and since there is obviously, therefore, room for them, it might be possible to re-arrange the distribution of all the children, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, in a way that would free either a whole school or a sufficient part of a school to enable this to be handed over to the Catholic authorities for their use for the
  1908
  Catholic children of the area. This proposal, too, has been considered by the local education authority; but there are great difficulties here. Children are more than numbers on a school registrar. They cannot be moved about like counters without due regard to their personal interests and convenience. I am told that the numbers of children who would be involved in moves in the process to which I have referred would be large and the amount of disruption and inconvenience would be corresponingly great—if indeed the changes could be accomplished at all.
  I must emphasise that any arrangement of this sort must in the first instance depend on the local education authority's initiative. My right hon. Friend has no power to close a county school under Section 13. Nor can he require a local education authority to put part of the premises of a county school at the disposal of a voluntary school under Section 109 as "temporary accommodation". In any case, Section 109 cannot be used to establish an entirely new school in premises provided by the local education authority, but only to extend an existing one.
  I hope that I have said enough to assure both the hon. Gentleman and those on whose behalf he speaks that the L.C.C. has devoted much time and care to their appeal. I can only add that the education authority is at present engaged on a comprehensive review of the school provision right throughout its area. I understand that this examination will include the need for denominational schools as well as that for county schools. The needs of North Hammersmith will be taken into account in the course of this investigation.
  There is, of course, an important general question underlying the case that the hon. Member has presented, although at the same time somewhat distinct from it. Once proposals for building voluntary schools have reached my right hon. Friend, he must bear in mind two sets of considerations.
  Firstly, for those proposals that appear eligible for my right hon. Friend's grant under Sections 102 and 104 of the 1944 Education Act and under various Sections of subsequent Education Acts, the normal building programme priorities, as I have often explained to the House, must apply. I am sure the House will realise that it is just not practicable at

  1909
  present to programme proposals to meet denominational needs which at the same time are not essential on grounds of general needs in a particular area. My right hon. Friend cannot give preference to such proposals as these over those needed, for example, to provide additional places in areas of new housing or to reorganise all-age schools.
  Mr. Tomney: The existing schools in North Hammersmith more than meet the situation regarding scholars. In regard to the availability of land, I would point out for the Minister's information and for the record that there are two other sites in the borough, one of about two acres which is occupied by prefabs, and one in Wood Lane which is occupied by the Parachute Regiment.
  Mr. Thompson: I am pressed for time, as the hon. Gentleman realises, but what he says illustrates how vitally important are these stages which I have gone through, and which may seem a little long drawn out, and how essential they are. It is precisely because proposals of that kind might come forward that the matter should be discussed with the local authority in the first place. Quite clearly, any site occupied with prefabs, for example, at the present time cannot possibly be the concern of my right hon. Friend unless it is that the powers of the Education Department are much wider than have so far been revealed to me. These are very much matters that concern the promoters and the local education authority.
  I was coming to the second of the two considerations that my right hon. Friend has to bear in mind in considering proposals of this kind. My right hon. Friend has to consider voluntary school
  1910
  proposals that are not eligible for his grant and that do not, therefore, have to find places in annual building programmes. In considering these proposals my right hon. Friend has to be guided by the wording of Section 76 of the Education Act, 1944. Precisely where the balance is struck between the parents' wishes, efficiency and economy, must depend partly on the facts of the particular proposal, partly on the circumstances of the time when it comes forward, including just how much of the national resources we can devote to educational building.
  My right hon. Friend's practice is to examine each of these outside-theprogramme proposals very carefully and see what the additional cost of maintaining the new school would be. He has, as I have said, to be satisfied that they would be consistent with reasonable economy and efficiency. My right hon. Friend is not in a position to predict what the circumstances will be ten or twenty years hence, or where his successors will strike the balance.
  I can only repeat the assurances that I have given before to the House about our determination, as expressed in the White Paper "Secondary Education for All," to see that the denominations continue, and are helped to continue, to play their full part in providing educational facilities. I am sorry that I cannot add anything that will be immediately helpful to the hon. Gentleman's constituents, but I hope that he will believe that their wishes are not being overlooked or lightly cast aside.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes to Twelve o'clock.