EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL

HC Deb 15 November 1961 vol 649 cc494-627

Again considered in Committee.

Mr. A. Evans

I was touching upon the point about a notice to quit being inoperative as soon as a reference has been made to a tribunal. My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham also mentioned that a tribunal can give three months' security of tenure, and that this period may be extended on application by the tenant. If any poor person in furnished or semi-furnished accommodation, or accommodation where some service is provided, finds himself in difficulty, he should go to the local rent tribunal, knowing that any notice to quit will not operate while the tribunal has the matter in hand, and that in all likelihood he will be given at least three months' security of tenure.

It is also necessary to make clear that the Act lays it down that once a tribunal has decided upon a case and has fixed the rent of the accommodation, it is unlawful for the landlord to extract more than that rent. I point out these simple things which the Act contains because I have come across case after case where landlords, possibly through ignorance and certainly through the desire to possess more money, have ignored rents fixed by the tribunals and have charged more. They have even made additions to the rents for extraneous purposes.

It should be made clear to all landlords that to charge more than the rent fixed by a tribunal, and to add any additional sum to the rent, is committing an offence, and that the offender can be fined up to £100 or given six months' imprisonment or both. I hope that the landlords in my area who rent out this wretched, so-called furnished accommodation bear in mind that, if they offend against the law, there are penalties.

Although the matter is not contained in this Act, it is important to remember—and chairmen of tribunals have remarked upon this from time to time—that it is now compulsory by law for every landlord to provide his tenant with a rent book. There are thousands of cases where rent is paid, but no rent book is provided. That is also an offence.

We should remind ourselves that a large percentage of the homeless families in our great capital city have come from furnished accommodation. A sample has been taken and it has been found that 68 per cent. of the homeless families do so. If hon. Members opposite were to spend a little time talking to some of those families and finding out what kind of people they are, they would sit on those benches with less complacency than they now show when these questions are discussed.

This is happening because landlords know that more money can be obtained by selling a house which is vacant, or partly vacant, than by letting it, and that more can be gained by letting furnished rather than unfurnished accommodation. So this business goes on and week after week the plight of the more unfortunate of our citizens becomes even worse.

There are desperate cases. A good, honest man who served his country for twelve years in the Navy, and who has a wife and three children and no home to go to, came to see me and told me that he earned £12 10s. a week and was prepared to pay £4 a week for a room. He asked me where he could get one. I had no answer to give him. The right hon. Gentleman who is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has sat here full of complacency year after year while most of the agony arising from the housing situation in London has arisen from his acts and his omissions. It is my duty to say that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham reminded us of the Report of the Franks Committee—the Committee on Administrative Tribunals and Enquiries which was set up by the Lord Chancellor in 1955. The Report was presented to the House of Commons in July, 1957, four years ago. The Committee said that in its view the chairman of each tribunal should be someone with legal qualifications. My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham did not agree, but, from my experience of these tribunals, I believe that it is right that a chairman should be someone with legal qualifications. Can the Parliamentary Secretary tell us what action his Ministry has taken during the last four years to implement that recommendation?

The Report went on to discuss the fees paid to the chairmen and members of the tribunals and said: We are not satisfied that the fees paid hitherto have been adequate to attract enough people of the right quality and we recommend that the fees be reviewed. … Have the fees been reviewed? If so, perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will give us such information as he has on the subject.

A number of these unnoticed people who serve on these tribunals and who do valuable work have been at the job for 15 years. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us now, or let me know in due course, what arrangements have been made about their superannuation. After 15 years any civil servant is entitled to some consideration in respect of superannuation.

I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will inform the House as fully as he can on those points and that in due course he will let my hon. Friend and myself have other information which he has not with him tonight.

Mr. Fletcher

I am glad to have the opportunity to say a few words in support of what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans). I am grateful for the presence of the Leader of the House, because I feel that the fact that he has listened attentively to criticisms about the homeless in London will be of some advantage to the House.

It is significant that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West thought it necessary—and I am sure that he was right—to remind the Committee of the provisions of the Act which we are being asked to renew, because in some quarters, particularly among poor people living in unfurnished accommodation, people are not aware of such limited protection as the Act has given. My hon. Friend has rendered a service in putting on record the circumstances in which some people living in furnished accommodation can go to the tribunals and get some relief for a very limited period. What is much more important is that my hon. Friend has exposed fully and in detail the weaknesses and limitations of this Act. I think that it is scandalous that we are asked to renew the Act, unamended, for another twelve months. The fact that the Government have asked us to do so is an indication of gross complacency over an aspect of civilisation in London, the plight and the tragedy of thousands of homeless people, which is a very serious reflection on the Government's capacity and intentions.

May I summarise some of the points which my hon. Friend made? The Act was passed in 1946, fifteen years ago, and was intended to have a limited operation for a limited time. It has been renewed annually. But let us reflect upon the circumstances in which it was passed in 1946 and the circumstances in which the Government are asking us to renew it unamended. In 1946 there was a large measure of rent protection under the Rent Restriction Acts for tenants of both furnished and unfurnished premises. In those days, fortunately, the majority of tenants had security of tenure.

The condition today is totally different. As a result of the operation of the Rent Act, 1957, circumstances have arisen in London and in other large cities in which for hundreds of thousands of people there is no longer security of tenure. The one thing which is required if we are to save these poor unfortunate people from being homeless and from having their families broken up is that there should be some security of tenure. It is not a question of how much rent they should pay but a question of having security of tenure.

There are 3,000 homeless people in London, and the figure is mounting week by week. I do not know how many there are in the other big cities, but I know a number of cases in Islington of people living in furnished accommodation who have been to the rent tribunal and have had their rent fixed, and their three months' security is ending. They have scanty accommodation and are paying a very high rent. They do not complain of the rent.

10.15 p.m.

A woman came to see me the other day. She had two or three children and was expecting another shortly after Christmas. Her time will be up and she will have nowhere to go. She and her husband told me that they had spent night after night for weeks tramping the streets trying to find accommodation. They have visited estate agents and their neighbours. They do not mind paying a reasonable rent. They are prepared to pay more than they can afford if they can get any shelter. What they want to avoid is being sent to either Newington Lodge or Hillside. If they go to either of these places the family will be broken up and they will have to live in an institution which was not built to cater for families like this.

There is an institution like this in my constituency. It was built many years ago as a workhouse. In recent years it has been used for elderly people. I make no complaint about that. Some of them have been moved out. They now have temporary improvised accommodation. If families are sent to such places, the father is not allowed there. He has to shift for himself. In this accommodation, such as it is, they are herded together with a number of other mothers and children. They have this institutional life forced upon them because they cannot get anywhere to live.

The reason why they cannot get anywhere to live is partly the failure of the Government's housing policy and partly that they have no security of tenure where they are at present. They are forced out because the landlord, be he rapacious or not rapacious, wants the accommodation. Perhaps he wants it in his possession so that he can let it again unfurnished at a higher rent.

This is the result of the Government's policy. The consequence is real dire distress for the honest people living in these institutions. The number is increasing by about forty-five a week. This was a golden opportunity for the Government to do something in a temporary manner. One thing which would assist, as a temporary immediate measure, the homeless people in London and elsewhere would be to give them security of tenure for a time. If the Government adopted even one of the half-a-dozen remedies suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham—if, for example, rent tribunals had power to extend the time not for three months but for six months or twelve months—it might give the Government time to introduce far-reaching housing programmes and make reforms. Equally, to adopt another of my hon. Friend's suggestions, if rent tribunals were given the power to fix the rents of unfurnished houses as well as furnished houses, as I proposed in the Bill I introduced last Session, it would provide protection in a large number of cases.

I am more distressed than I can say. I find it difficult to find words sufficiently strong to express my horror, indignation and disgust at the heartless attitude of this Tory Government, who sit there in such apparent complacency condemning so many hundreds of families to live in homeless conditions and have their family life broken up in this way.

Mothers in great distress come to me. They have been used to having their own homes, small and humble though they may be, and bringing up their children in them—looking after them, cleaning them, clothing them, and giving them parental attention. They now have to live in institutions. The father cannot go there except late in the evening or at weekends. They are herded together in institutional life. This is a shocking comment on the state of British civilisation in our affluent society. It calls for urgent and desperate remedies. This was an opportunity to do something about it. Some remedial measures could have been introduced into the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946, to prevent the position getting worse.

I do not know whether the Government are aware that unless something is done the situation will get worse week by week. Family after family will have to be told that there is no hope but for them to go into an institution. The point is that the institutions do not exist. It is all very well for the Minister of Housing to say that the L.C.C. has powers and resources, and so on, but resources to do what? Is it to turn out-of-date workhouses and institutions into temporary refuges for the homeless? That is not the solution.

No doubt the L.C.C. does its best, but this is a matter for which the Government must accept the prime responsibility. These people should be given security of tenure so that they will not be turned out of premises in which they are at present living. I do not want to detain the Committee, but I must emphasise what I have said by reminding hon. Members—and this experience is not common to me—that every Friday two or three constituents come to me to speak of their plight and ask what should they do. I feel so helpless, for there is nothing much they can do, and when their time expires they have nowhere to go. They fear that they will be on the streets.

I have been to these institutions and I can understand their reluctance and resentment towards them. In the meantime, they are suffering at the prospect before them. It is a frightful situation that so many families should be condemned to live in these places. What can I say to them when they come to see me? I do not want to paint the Government any blacker than is justified, but I am appalled at the wickedness of a Government which allows these conditions to continue.

Mr. G. Thomas

I rise because I do not want the Committee to think that this is only a London problem. I regret to say that it is a very grievous problem in the City of Cardiff and, I believe, in every great industrial centre. People are accepting conditions in furnished apartments that no family should be called on to accept. They do so simply because they know that if they protest they will be homeless.

Last Saturday, at my "surgery" in Cardiff, a family came to me; mother, father and six children living in unfurnished rooms. They have lived for twenty-one years in the same place without owing one penny rent and they are to be homeless because of the Rent Act. The only prospect they have is to split up the family and go into one of the institutions that we are providing in Cardiff.

We talk a lot about family life in this House; about it being a cornerstone of our way of existence. Is it not terrible humbug to go on speaking in this way and should this whole problem not have a No. 1 priority so that our people are provided with homes? There is no problem more grievous to any hon. Member who holds a "surgery" than to deal with people who are living in such conditions.

Recently, a family came to me in Cardiff and told me about a three-storey house in which a family lives in each room. The landlord lays down his own conditions in these furnished apartments. He says that there will be no television, no smoking and that visitors will be allowed only when he gives per mission. This is true. Who would think that it is 1961 in Cardiff? It is only made possible by the Act about which we are speaking. By not altering this Measure the Government are giving an all-clear to the most unscrupulous people to exploit good, honest—

The Deputy-Chairman (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray)

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. He talks of altering this Measure. That is not, in fact, what the Committee is discussing. We are debating continuing the Measure, or not continuing it.

Mr. Thomas

It is my fault, Sir William. I quite realise that I should not have used the word "alter". We want this Measure to be deleted from the list of those to be renewed. Mine was only a slip of the tongue, as I would have thought you would have realised.

To get back to my point, it is thoroughly intolerable that good, honest, hard-working people should not be given the protection of the law in their family life. That is why I am glad that my hon. Friends should seek to delete this Measure from the renewal list tonight. The position is made the more offensive by the fact that local authorities are not able to offer the usual ordinary rehousing. The lists are getting longer and longer, and unless some forceful step is taken, such as a new Measure to deal with the rehousing of these people in furnished apartments, the problem will get even more aggravated.

The Leader of the House made a notable speech recently on the brotherhood of man. The brotherhood of man has obligations and responsibilities for us all. The television programme the other night about London families turned my stomach. When, within the last few nights, I saw those mothers with babies in their arms protesting violently that they would not go into these institutions, I thought, "How far can this House of Commons have its priorities so upside down that it cannot give the attention it should to this major social scandal?"

I do not want the House of Commons or the country to believe that because London has had its grievous, homeless families spotlighted this is a Metropolitan problem only. It is not; it is one that concerns all our people, and that is why I think that action is urgently called for.

Mr. R. J. Mellish (Bermondsey)

I am glad that we have this chance to revert to some of the problems we discussed last Monday. I make no apology for intervening again on this subject; I would regard myself as a poor Londoner if I did not do so. This Amendment seeks to delete this particular Act, so that it can be strengthened in certain respects.

Why is it that people go into furnished accommodation today, and what sort of accommodation, in London generally, do they get? I speak from a fair knowledge of the subject. The average furnished accommodation in London makes an absolute mockery of the word "furnished". As a rule, but not in every case, the furniture consists of two broken-down chairs a scant bit of carpet and some lino on the floor. That is "furniture". Every estate agent knows it, the Government know it, and everyone associated with housing knows it, and that occurs not only in London.

There is the furnishings-and-fittings racket. It is illegal, but when someone is in desperate need legality does not come into it. If someone wants a roof over his head he will do anything he can to get it, and will not tell anyone of what goes on. First, therefore, in order to get furnished accommodation one has to pay someone, usually the agent, the furnishings-and-fittings racket. In some cases it is called key money. That means that a family in desperate need, with nowhere to go, and at the bottom of the borough council housing list, has to seek furnished accommodation. That is the accommodation they get, and I am not over-stating the case when I say that they have to pay anything up to £50 in what is called key money. It is illegal, but they pay the money in order to get in.

10.30 p.m.

It is fair to say that, having got in, if they object to the amount of rent that they are having to pay they can take the matter to a tribunal. But if a person is living in that sort of accommodation, having paid that sort of money to get in and probably paying an exorbitant rent, he dare not go before a tribunal, as the Act now stands. Certainly one can take the matter to a tribunal, but one can get only a certain period of security of tenure. If a person wants to be certain of being evicted from furnished accommodation he only has to go before a tribunal. There he is given three months' security of tenure. With a bit of luck he may get another three months, but after that he is out. Where can such a person go?

I put down a Question to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and I got a Written Reply yesterday. I called attention to the homeless families in London and asked whether he agreed that the Rent Act had anything to do with the situation. This Act that we are debating relates very much to the situation created by yet another Act. That is why I want to delete this one. The effects of the 1957 Rent Act are such that persons living in these conditions have no hope of getting accommodation elsewhere.

Last week we heard one good thing, which is to the credit of the Minister. We know that it is not the coloured people who are causing this shortage of accommodation. So the Leader of the House can carry on with his "brotherhood of man" speech. The coloured people are living in accommodation so overcrowded as to create almost a public health menace. They are not concerned with this problem of finding homes. But, again and again, people have to take this sort of accommodation because there is nowhere else for them to go.

I say emphatically that not only in my constituency but throughout London, and certainly in areas like Chelsea and Fulham and that type of area, there is far more furnished accommodation than we have ever had before. A house which a tenant leaves, for whatever reason, becomes decontrolled and the landlord can then do what he likes. He is in business for private profit. He is not concerned with putting a roof over the heads of people because he likes them. He is in business because he likes money. That is the finest Tory philosophy that I know. He turns the house into furnished accommodation, with a few old sticks of furniture tucked into different rooms. I could point to houses in the better districts of London—this does not happen in Bermondsey—where there are as many as ten rooms, each of which are let, with three or four people in each room. In fact, if there were eleven rooms there would be eleven families living there.

As I suggested in my Question, the Rent Act has a relationship to this situation. But the Minister says "Ah, he is trying to make political capital out of it." Could the Parliamentary Secretary tell us how much more furnished accommodation there is today than there was, say, four years ago? Is it too difficult for him? How much more of this sort of accommodation covered by this Act is now being made available to those in need as compared with three, four or five years ago? He can take it from me that this so-called furnished accommodation arrangement is a great racket. It is far greater than it was before, and it makes the housing position worse than it was.

I live for the day when this furnished accommodation racket will be abolished. It is an absolute scandal. It is very prevalent. Everybody has to live with it. How can anyone justify some of the things which we all know are going on? The Leader of the House must know about them. I am sure that they happen in Enfield and that there is furnished accommodation there which he would not put a pig in, yet thoroughly scandalous rents and rates are being asked for it. Nothing is done about it.

We are told that people can go to the tribunal and can appeal, as of right, against the rent. What happens if they do? If they do go to the tribunal, they very soon join the ranks of the homeless.

I do not know what my London County Council colleagues have said to the Minister or what they will say in the future, but I can tell the Parliamentary Secretary that I do not intend to stand for the nonsense which has been issuing from his Department about all this being the responsibility of the county council. Are the Government completely abrogating their responsibility in the matter? In my constituency, I have thousands of people who have, perfectly justifiably and properly, been on the waiting list of the London County Council for years. Am I now to understand that it is Government policy that anyone who is made homeless should be given one of these so-called re-lets? If that is the idea and that is the decision adopted by the London County Council, aided and abetted by the Government, they will hear a lot more about it from me. What about the people who have been waiting their turn on the list?

The Chairman (Sir Gordon Touche)

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he is going rather far from the Amendment.

Mr. Mellish

No, Sir Gordon, with great respect, I am not. I can show that I am in order. If the Amendment were carried and the Act were taken away, and then there was brought back something in the form which I wish to see, we should not have the problems which now face us in regard to homeless families generally.

The Chairman

We are not discussing a new law but an Amendment proposed to the Bill before the Committee.

Mr. Mellish

I am speaking to the Amendment before the Committee, which would have the effect of discontinuing the Act under discussion. That is the purpose of our argument, Sir Gordon. I say that it should not be continued. We should take it out, allow it to expire now and, having allowed it to expire, we should then require a great Leader of the House, a man with bags of imagination and tremendous initiative, well able to lead us, to say to the Minister of Housing, "Bring back to the House an Act which is worth while". That would be the consequence of what I am asking now.

The situation is far too tragic to make party politics out of it. I do not have to make party politics out of it. I have nearly a 20,000 majority. I just cannot stand by and see these things happening. It has been argued that the power is vested in the county council. We have heard about the problems of Cardiff. We shall probably hear later from other hon. Members, too. Will the county council solve those problems as well? I do not know how the London County Council is to solve the problems of Cardiff, but even that idea I would not put beyond the present Government. It is as bad as that.

The Government think they have been really clever. Now, they say, they have twisted our argument completely. One can almost hear the Leader of the House and his right hon. and hon. Friends glorying in having turned the political argument right against the London County Council itself. They may have done for a moment, aided and abetted by the Press to some extent, but the problem will not end tonight. Some of us, whatever else we may do or say during the rest of our Parliamentary careers, will keep up the pressure in the House and in every possible way, and we shall prove to the people of London where the responsibility lies.

The people of London are not all that foolish. Those who have a roof over their heads in London tonight are very lucky. It is a good job that they do not live in furnished rooms or have to ask for a home anywhere in London today. They would have no chance at all. We shall keep this fight going until every Londoner knows where the responsibility lies—on the shoulders of the Government who introduced an Act which has made the Act now before us worse than it ever was. That is why I am determined that the present Act should not be continued.

Mr. Julius Silverman (Birmingham, Aston)

Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I must comment on the inadequacy of the present Act for which continuance is sought. I hope that the Government will soon think of an entirely new Measure to replace it, provide adequate security for the people affected and also extend the limit of protection beyond furnished accommodation to unfurnished accommodation.

I well remember when the Act now before the Committee was passing through the House because I made my maiden speech on it. Even then, although the Bill was intended as a purely short-term Measure, I suggested that the weakness of it was that it did not provide adequate security for the tenant. I am quite sure that this problem applies not only in Birmingham but in the whole country. Of the number of tenants of furnished accommodation who are being exploited today, those who go to the tribunals must be an extremely small proportion of the whole. I am quite sure that in Birmingham, of the many of the worst cases of exploitation and of high rents for furnished and unfurnished accommodation, the vast majority of the exploited tenants would not think of going to the the tribunals because they know, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) said, that the inevitable result would be that in six months they would go out.

Mr. Mellish

Six months at the maximum.

Mr. Silverman

Yes, in six months at the maximum, supposing they got an extension. That is so throughout the whole country. The first thing wanted is adequate security in order that tenants may go to the tribunals without fear. That is the only way we can make this Act really effective.

I hope that any new legislation will incorporate that. Six months might have been adequate when we were dealing originally with the Measure, which was intended as a purely temporary Measure, as it was in the first instance. Now fifteen years have passed and it is quite obvious that this legislation is far from being temporary. It may be needed for another fifteen years and probably more than that. Therefore, the Government should think in terms of more security, adequate security, in order that tenants may go without fear to the tribunals to get their rents reduced. Clearly, this should not extend merely to unfurnished accommodation, even—

The Chairman

The hon. Member is not addressing himself to the Amendment.

Mr. Silverman

With great respect, Sir Gordon, I think you misunderstood me. I was suggesting that instead of this legislation, which should be deleted—that is the suggestion before the Committee—for the purpose of introducing another Measure, which provides for the extension of the present legislation—

The Chairman

The hon. Member is suggesting alternative legislation, and that is out of order.

Mr. Silverman

No. The Amendment before the Committee is for the deletion of this Measure from the Bill. I am simply saying that I believe it should be deleted.

Mr. Denis Howell (Birmingham, Small Heath)

We cannot leave a vacuum.

Mr. Silverman

Yes, if this Measure is deleted further alternative legislation will be introduced. In order to do this, this deletion is being proposed.

The Chairman

It is not in order to discuss further legislation.

Mr. James MacColl (Widnes)

On a point of order. The Scottish Undersecretary of State said that he would consider some point in connection with the Scottish Act. Surely, if it is in order to ask the Scottish Under-Secretary to consider a Scottish Measure in this way, it is not out of order or unreasonable to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the English Ministry upon a similar Measure for England to do precisely the same thing? We want to find out from him whether he will make the same review of this problem in England as was promised by the Scottish Minister for Scotland.

The Chairman

I cannot comment on something which happened when I was not in the Chair, but the rules of order are that we cannot suggest alternative legislation. We can discuss continuing or discontinuing the Act, but not amending it.

Mr. Silverman

I am not proposing to amend the Act. Of course I cannot. What I am saying is that this Measure, though it has certain satisfactory aspects, is not strong enough to do the job of giving the security which is necessary. This is not a London problem. It applies to Cardiff, it applies to Birmingham—

Mr. Mellish

Just worse in London, that is all.

Mr. Silverman

It is pretty bad in Birmingham. I am quoting now from the Birmingham Evening Despatch of this Monday, which quoted the housing manager of the Birmingham Corporation. Under the heading: Higher rents—and city homeless—total soars the paper says: New Rent Act cases are pushing up Birmingham's list of homeless families, Mr. J. P. Macey, the City Housing Manager said today. Some landlords have raised rents and families unable to pay have been put out on the streets, he said. Mainly due to the Rent Act, he said, the number of homeless families passing through Corporation hostels had already risen from 550 to 750 a year since 1957. The people who go to the hostels are the worst and most desperate cases who cannot find even one room. They are reduced to the last resort, which is the hostel, where in many cases families are broken up and separated. In 12 months there had been pleas for help from 1,200 families in the City. These are really homeless families, not people who simply have no house, but people who have no roof over their heads. 'Now we are getting cases where the three-year rent agreement period fixed under the Act has expired' said Mr. Macey. 'Some families already paying higher rents fixed when the Act came into force are now being told to pay more or they must leave. People unable to pay have had to get out.' Mr. Macey said those families with nowhere to go tried desperately to get lodgings, but this was nearly impossible if they had children. 'They come to us as a last resort, and we are doing what we can to help them' he added. I need hardly say that, apart from anything else, this is a burden on the housing register and an imposition on the people who have been waiting their turn for many years on the ordinary register for houses, because it deprives them of a proper place in the queue. This delay is caused by the Government's housing legislation. Clearly, new legislation should be introduced.

10.45 p.m.

The Chairman

We cannot discuss new legislation at present.

Mr. Silverman

I am not discussing new legislation, except to say why the present legislation should be deleted. In view of what has been said tonight, in view of the position in Birmingham, the lack of security, the increased rents for unfurnished as well as furnished accommodation, the impact of the Rent Act—

The Chairman

The Act applies only to furnished accommodation.

Mr. Mellish

On a point of order. Is not the whole point that we are arguing that it is necessary to delete the present Act because of the implications of the Rent Act? Therefore, is it not relevant to argue that part of the Rent Act has made this Act not the sort of Measure that is worth keeping on the Statute Book?

The Chairman

One can argue that the Act should be deleted, and only that. One cannot argue that there should be alternative legislation.

Mr. Silverman

I am saying why the present Act is inadequate and why it should be deleted in order that adequate legislation might be introduced to deal with these points. I think that the Committee will agree that, in view of the facts given in the debate, such legislation is necessary and is needed very soon to relieve the present extremely difficult situation. I hope that the Minister will consider withdrawing the Bill and introducing adequate legislation to cover these points.

Mr. Laurence Pavitt (Willesden, West)

I rise to reinforce the arguments of my hon. Friends. I am certain that the Government have not a clue about the intensity of the problem in some areas, and not only in London. My constituency is in Middlesex.

Pressure on furnished accommodation there is arising especially because the Landlord and Tenant (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1958, made it possible for a number of my constituents to secure a three-year lease. Those leases are terminating this year, and the tenants are being forced out. The result is that the number seeking furnished accommodation is considerably higher than last year. Because of the intensity of the problems caused, the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946, should cease and make way for a Measure which would deal with the real problems which exist.

I want to instance cases of people now seeking furnished accommodation in my constituency. Last Friday week a family came to see me; the young mother had children of 9 years, 5 years and 18 months. The family had a three-year agreement finishing in September, and the eviction order terminates next Monday. They have five more days in which to find accommodation. They have trudged from estate agent to estate agent, looking at the kind of furnished accommodation for which one one pays £80 key money and which contains a little linoleum and a wooden chair, which constitutes furniture.

The local authority is inundated with such cases. It will make sure that the family has accommodation, but the mother and the youngest child will be in one hostel, the 9-year-old child at Walthamstow, the 5-year-old child at Chingford and the father in a men's hostel. The mother says that she would rather walk the streets to get enough money to pay for accommodation than have her family split up. All she wants to do is to keep her family together, and she will go to desperate measures to do so. The Government and the House of Commons seem unable to help her. While the Act remains, the Government will still be complacent about such cases.

Week in and week out we get such cases. Similar cases have already been mentioned. What do we do about the pressure on the gas stove on the landing of a place built sixty years ago where the tenants of the separate rooms each morning have to prepare their breakfast? I have a constituent who is a hire-car driver earning £11 10s. per week, and he has a furnished room for which he has to pay £3 10s. weekly. He has a baby, and there are three other children who are in homes elsewhere. Fifty-five per cent, of the accommodation in my constituency is shared. One in every two of my constituents have to share bathrooms and lavatories.

The pressure on these people is enormous. The consequence is that they seek in any way possible to keep their families together even if it means paying exorbitant rents which cripple them financially. The result is that they are unable to make both ends meet and eventually have to go to the various charitable services in the area.

Mr. Mellish

It is said by the Government that in London this is entirely a matter for the county council, and the Government could not care less about it. My hon. Friend comes from Middlesex. I understand that Middlesex is not a housing authority. Perhaps my hon. Friend will get more sense out of the Government than I have done about what he is supposed to tell his constituents seeing that they cannot blame it on to the Middlesex County Council.

Mr. Pavitt

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Each week I send on to the Minister three or four letters from my constituents, and I ask him to tell me what I am to tell them. In the borough council, we have tried loan sanction in order to buy old houses for families who cannot get a home or furnished accommodation, but we have exhausted the money. We have looked for other provisions whereby we may save these people. We considered whether it would be possible to make them 100 per cent, loans, but we have had to stop that because we had no more money, and the rate of interest makes it impossible to get more.

We see the break up of family life in my constituency, but the Government, because they have prepared magnificent statistics showing that over the whole of Great Britain housing and accommodation total such-and-such, see no reason to do anything substantial in areas where the problem is acute, and year after year they continue this Act.

This is also the problem of people forced into furnished accommodation by a kind of blackmail. When their three-year tenancy ends, the landlord is prepared to give them another year—never another three years—for an additional rent. I am talking now of people who have lived in the same house for 20 or 30 years; they pride themselves on their respectability, and they are getting on in life. When the 1957 Act arrived, they managed to get a three-year agreement. This stretched their resources to their limit, but they managed somehow. But then comes the new one-year agreement, and their means are stretched even more, with the certain knowledge that when twelve months is up they will have the rent raised again. What sort of situation is that, to have constant fear and anxiety hanging over the heads of families? In any other situation, this would be called blackmail, and society would condemn it.

Mr. Mellish

When these people finally have to get out, the Government say that it is nothing to do with them and that it is the responsibility of the county council.

Mr. Pavitt

I invited the previous Minister to visit my constituency on a Friday night, not to address a public meeting but to listen to the heart-breaking stories of these people as they come to me. I asked him merely to sit in private and listen to these people who try to live in decency. I extend that invitation now to the present Minister.

If this Act is further continued, the Government will continue in complacency. They are satisfied with their record and will pass the buck to the-local authorities. Until there is legislation providing security of tenure, we shall be faced with this breakdown in housing, with all its affects on family life, causing juvenile delinquency and the evils which stem from lack of stability in the home.

I recently heard a speech by the secretary of the National Council of Social Service, who said that the social problems of the 1960s in all their aspects stemmed from the break up of the home because of the housing situation in some areas. I hope that the Committee will not let the Government continue this Act. If it is cleared out of the way, then there may be fresh hope for the local authorities and county councils and others who want to do something for families suffering under this situation.

11.0 p.m.

Sir Barnett Janner (Leicester, North-West)

For many years I have endeavoured to point out that one of the most important features of the protection of the home rested in the security provided by the Rent Acts, including the Act which we are discussing. I cannot understand why the Government have not yet been able to see that the continuation of this Measure is nothing more nor less than a smokescreen, as must be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the position.

Anyone who studies the list of cases coming before the tribunals—I believe that the reports come out monthly or quarterly—will see that the numbers are getting fewer and fewer. That leads the Government to pride themselves on: the view that the cases are disappearing.

Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)

The Report of the Minister of Housing has already been quoted, and that shows that the number of cases coming before the tribunals has recently increased. Why does the hon. Member say that they have decreased?

Sir B. Janner

I invite the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) to study the lists for himself. He will find, for instance, that there was a tribunal in Leicester which was doing excellent work. The Government thought that it was not necessary and decided that there should be one tribunal for a number of districts because there were not enough cases for one tribunal for Leicester.

What is the use of asking someone to go before a tribunal so that the tribunal can say that his rent is excessive, when it is known that the landlord has power to turn him out within a limited period? It is true that once the standard rent has been fixed for furnished accommodation, the landlord cannot charge more than that amount for precisely the same furnished accommodation; but what is the use of that when the landlord knows that when he has turned out the tenant, he will be able to get three or four times that amount?

I am sure that with his knowledge of these matters the hon. Member for Crosby will not disagree with me when I say that the tragedy of the situation is that that is what happens when the house becomes vacant. I accuse the Government of having destroyed the homes of the people—never mind the houses—by deliberately making a house decontrolled when it becomes vacant.

That is the essence of the whole position. The Government have ruined what was built up years ago by the Labour Party—and some of their own supporters—by deliberately misleading the country into the belief that sufficient housing would be available if people were turned out of their homes. It applies everywhere in the country. That is why we are critical.

All other circumstances being different, the Act was a good Act. I supported it, as did every other hon. Member who appreciated the need for it. It was important to prevent people from charging exorbitant rents simply because they had put in a few sticks and pieces of furniture. The country was up in arms about it and compelled the House to pass the Act to prevent that kind of thing. If the landlord exercised the right to turn a tenant out, he had to re-let the premises furnished at the rent fixed by the tribunal, or to sell them, or to let them at a rental controlled under the Rent Act.

But the Joint Parliamentary Secretary realises—he would be foolish if he did not—that today there are hundreds of homeless families who do not know where to go. There is not enough available accommodation which people are prepared to offer to give the homeless roofs over their heads. They are given separate roofs over their separate heads, but what is the use of providing separate homes for the father, for the mother and for the children? What right have we in this age to permit that kind of scandal to prevail? It is a scandal—an undeniable scandal.

Sir Gordon, you said a moment ago that it was not relevant to discuss the Rent Act. I do not hold that view, because if the Rent Act had not been passed—

The Chairman

I said that hon. Members could not discuss alternative legislation. They can discuss the Amendment.

Sir B. Janner

But if we did not use that kind of illustration it would be impossible to examine the effect of the Act under discussion. The Act by itself sounds wonderful; taking it in a vacuum, everyone would ask, "Why are they arguing against it? It sounds reasonable. A landlord ought not to be allowed to charge more than is reasonable. What are hon. Members complaining about? "We can complain only if the other circumstances affecting the homes of the people are such as we have described.

I make an appeal to the Government. It is not too late even for a Conservative Government to think again on this subject. By all means let them keep this Act if they are prepared to take such further action as will make it effective and not a farce.

They should do that. After all, this is not a party issue. Human lives are at stake and it is difficult to talk about this subject without being emotional. One only has to see some of these people and talk with them. They come to hon. Members—and my hon. Friends have pointed this out—and ask what they are to do. If they are told to find furnished apartments they reply that they cannot.

But if they find furnished accommodation, do not the Government realise that nobody with a grain of sense will to give up the little security he has by going to a tribunal and asking whether the amount of rent being charged is correct? That is the whole point. The Rent Acts were not produced just out of the air. The Government know that when men went to the First World War, and to subsequent wars, in the interests of the country, rents were raised, there was an outcry in the country and the hand of the Government was forced and, fortunately, security was obtained.

It is a farce for anyone to suggest today that there is security in the provision of houses. It is a scandalous thing and I lay the blame at the door of the Government. What right had they to withdraw any protective measures, unless and until they knew that people would not be wandering about homeless? What are the Government doing? With whom are they playing? With whose lives? Are they here for that purpose? Let them go to these people and ask how good things are for them—people who are constantly being told how good things are. Why do not the Government ask the magistrates how good it is that the homes of our people are being broken by the actions of this Government? Let them think again, for there is still time to repent over the line of action they have taken.

I appeal to the Government—this will probably fall on deaf ears, but we live in hope—to realise the disastrous condition in which the country finds itself. I urge them to reduce interest rates, give local authorities a chance to build and wait until every person has a home in which to live. Allow this capital expenditure. It is worth it because, in the long run, everyone will benefit. Let the homes be provided so that we have a fair, economic market and so that the Government will have carried out their job of seeing that the citizens of this country are housed.

Mr. Richard Marsh (Greenwich)

It has been obvious during this debate that the question of furnished accommodation is second to the problem of housing generally. For London hon. Members it is a problem near to their hearts but, as several of my hon. Friends have said, this difficulty is not confined to any one area. If it were there would be some hope, because people could say that while the position in London is tragic, perhaps some day they might find jobs elsewhere and be offered alternative accommodation.

The tragedy is that there is no real hope for these people. It is not that they are in difficulties for a limited period; that they can go into furnished accommodation and then look forward to getting something more reasonable. There is no hope for them. Week after week they go to the advice bureaux and to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee with the most tragic stories.

11.15 p.m.

Every hon. Member has had the experience where constituents turn after after half an hour's discussion of tragic circumstances and point their fingers at the hon. Member concerned, saying, "Can you deny that I have a good case?" Of course, hon. Members know that they cannot deny that a good case has been made. We say to constituents "No, the position is terrible," and the constituent asks what is to be done about it. We have to tell our constituents that there is nothing we can do; that there is no future for them.

Yet there is an even more serious problem. We have discussed tonight the problem of human lives and the breaking up of families in a completely one-sided atmosphere; an atmosphere which shows clearly a complete lack of interest, of humanity, and of compassion on the part of hon. Members opposite. They are completely disinterested. They sit there—that is, those who are still here—and say nothing while hon. Member after hon. Member on this side gets up to make specific points. There is no answer from: the Government, or even from the Government side of the Committee, not only because the Government have no answer to offer, but because they have no interest. They do not care.

Mr. G. W. Reynolds (Islington, North)

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that we have had no answer from the Government, or any speeches from hon. Members opposite, but the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) is present and he argued about this on television the other night. Perhaps he can answer some points if we put the questions to him.

Mr. Marsh

It would be unfair to say that among hon. Members opposite there is no interest in housing, and this evening we have had the odd giggle or the odd interjection. We have had the appearance on television of the hon. Gentleman opposite, as my hon. Friend says—

Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)

Nauseating—well paid.

Mr. Marsh

Well, it is not for me to say anything about the reasons, but we have from time to time had the smart reply from Her Majesty's Ministers on this matter of housing and the results of the difficulties which arise from the legislation governing furnished accommodation—legislation which we on this side would like to remove.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) recently asked if he could interrupt the Minister because the L.C.C. had four thousand re-lets a year and the Minister had suggested that the L.C.C. could rehouse families of homeless people in some of those re-lets. The answer was that all these re-lets were being used to cope with slum clearance.

The Chairman

I do not see how this can arise on this Amendment.

Mr. Marsh

What I am seeking to do, Sir Gordon, is to demonstrate that the legislation which we on this side of the Committee are anxious to remove contains a number of deficiencies. There are deficiencies inherent in it and one of those deficiencies is responsible for aggravating the already tragic housing situation in this country. What we suggest is that, far from receiving from the Government any reasoned replies to the objections which we put, in fact what we receive from hon. Members opposite—apart from the odd interjection and the superb, workmanlike performance on television—and from Ministers are really not answers at all to the problems arising from this legislation. They do not assist the homeless people at all and are only given to show what a clever man the Minister is. With your per mission, Sir Gordon, I should like to give this demonstration. The Minister had suggested that the L.C.C. should use those 4,000 re-lets a year for those families who were rendered homeless. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North pointed out that that accommodation was necessary for slum clearance, for people removed as a result of new road construction—

The Chairman

I do not see how this affects the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946.

Mr. Marsh

Sir Gordon, if the Act was worth while and had the effect we would like it to have, these problems would not be so serious because fewer people would be on the housing lists. The present problem arises largely because of the working of the Act; because of its inadequacies and the number of people still rendered homeless. One gets the impression, Sir Gordon, that you are not very happy with this line of argument, so I shall not pursue it further except to say that the Minister's answer was: I am saying that this is the London County Council's own decision."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th November, 1961; Vol. 648, c. 661.] That was very clever. We are talking of the shortage of homes, and the Minister, whose mellifluous tones we were once accustomed to hearing on the radio, talking about people's stomachs, can only make the smart reply.

In my constituency, on the sunny heights of Blackheath, there are a lot of very large houses. During the war much of that property was requisitioned and was of considerable assistance to our housing problem. Now, of course, it has been derequisitioned and put on the market. This is the very type of property that is freely available. It is now furnished accommodation—and there is quite a lot of furnished accommodation in Blackheath.

In Greenwich, we have 1,800 families on our A list—the priority people—and 250 of them have urgent medical priorities; their accommodation has been certified as seriously affecting their health. The national average earnings at present amount to something under £15 a week. When these people consult me on Friday evenings I can say, "Yes, there is accommodation. You go up the hill, where you can have a furnished room at Blackheath, with a beautiful view, if you pay six or seven guineas a week." Of course, they cannot pay that amount. It is completely out of their reach.

What does the Act do? It gives them protection. It says that if the rents are unreasonable they can go to the rent tribunal—a wonderful idea. They can go to a rent tribunal set up by a Labour Government to enable people to get justice, but today they have no security of tenure. They can say to the tribunal that one room is not worth seven guineas a week, and the tribunal will probably agree with them. The following week they get a letter from the landlord saying, "Sorry—out you go." They go to court and get a three months' extension, and they can go back later and get another three months' extension—if they are very lucky.

We have a situation in which the price of furnished accommodation in this great Metropolis is out of the reach of a large number of people who are living in the worst conditions; people who, because their incomes are so low, find it impossible to buy homes. They are right outside the market for house purchase, so they are forced into accommodation they cannot afford. A beneficent Government has, of course, provided legislation designed to protect them from being exploited, but if they dare use that course they stand a chance of losing even the accommodation which they already have.

One can have all sorts of arguments about how this situation arises. From comfortable accommodation enjoyed by hon. Members, very few of whom—including myself—suffer from the problems of bad housing conditions, one can suggest all sorts of alternatives, but I come back to the original point that I was making. Not one hon. Member opposite even cares sufficiently—

Mr. Graham Page

Nonsense.

Mr. Marsh

If the contribution of the hon. Gentleman, who is either asleep or ill, to London's housing situation, after a debate which has continued for something like four hours, is "Nonsense" from a supine position, it will not give very much confidence to his constituents. Surely he has something constructive to say. Perhaps he may even have a word of sympathy. Perhaps he can explain how his Government got the people into this position. I will give way to the hon. Member if he wishes to say anything. Apparently, he does not. I am sorry, but I thought that no hon. Member could confine himself to merely saying "Nonsense" and having nothing to say to back it up. I thought that he was making a comment on my speech rather than on the barrenness of his own mental processes.

We are faced with a situation where there is no other accommodation available for people within the Metropolitan area, except furnished accommodation. That accommodation is perfectly appalling. All one has to do in order to call it furnished accommodation is, not to make it habitable—oh, no—but merely to put some sticks of furniture into it, and perhaps some curtains and linoleum so that it has the appearance of being furnished. It can be rat-ridden and bug-infested. Having supplied the vestiges of furniture, one can take the potential tenant on one side and say, "But, of course, before you move in, it is customary to pay the odd few pounds". We are told that this is against the law. There cannot be an hon. Member who has not been faced at some time with a constituent complaining bitterly about the fact that the was charged £40 or £50 key money, who took no receipt for it—indeed, none was offered—and who paid it willingly because it was the only way of getting in.

Mr. John Diamond (Gloucester)

It is universal.

Mr. Pavitt

Has my hon. Friend met constituents who, when they pay the money, are told that if they leave they are sure to be able to get it back from the next tenant? Then they come to the constituency bureau to find out what redress they have because they have not been able to get the money back again.

Mr. Marsh

This is, of course, a very common process. I think it is a confidence trick. It is easy to be critical of these people and say that they should read the small print and find out what their rights are. When I first came down from Oxford with one wife and a small baby, I lived in one room—[An Hon. Member: "Only one wife?"] I think it is always essential in a Commonwealth Parliament, where it is not always accepted that a Member necessarily has only one wife, to make the position quite clear. After all, reports of debates here go to other Commonwealth countries where this may not always be the rule.

In those circumstances, we all lose interest in the small print and the details, for the most important thing is to get accommodation and to get the family together. If somebody asks for an exorbitant amount of key money or an illegal payment, it is something that one worries about later, after one has got into the accommodation. Even worse than the sort of thing referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt), I have had people come to me who, after paying out £40, £50 or £60 key money to get into a flat, have then wanted to know whether there was some way in which they could borrow the money because they were in serious difficulty about paying it back.

Should we allow the Act to continue for a further twelve months and sit back, saying that this is what happens, we can do nothing about it and, after all, Parliament is really powerless? If that were true, it would be very serious. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South, for whom I and, I think, most hon. Members have the deepest affection, appeared on a television programme—

Mr. A. Lewis

My hon. Friend should speak for himself.

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Marsh

I have a deep affection for all my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee, and I find that there are hon. Members opposite who are misguided rather than basically evil-intention. [Interruption.] It would take a long time to go through them all, but there are some hon. Members who are well-intentioned.

Mr. Pavitt

Would my hon. Friend say that they see according to their lights, but their lights are rather dim?

Mr. Marsh

I agree with my hon. Friend; they have always struck me as a rather dim lot as well. But to return to the serious point. Parliament is not in a position to say that it has no responsibility for the situation which now exists. There are in this country and the London area not hundreds but tens of thousands of people with no reasonable accommodation at all. In the London area there are people living in workhouses. They may be called all sorts of nice names. Call them lodges or whatever name one chooses, they are workhouses. Although the hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary may look pained about it, that is what they are.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon)

That is not fair to the London County Council.

Mr. Marsh

The Minister should not try to make that sort of clever debating point. He knows very well that he would not spend a night in one of them if he could possibly help it, and he would not allow any member of his family to do so. He cannot shift the blame on to the London County Council because, as he knows equally well, the London County Council cannot avoid it, since it has no alternative. These places are establishments in the Western world where husbands are separated from their wives and families at the gateway because they may not enter with them, where families, if they are lucky, live in barrack accommodation. If the Parliamentary Secretary has been inside one of them, he will know what they are like. He knows that the London County Council cannot pull them down and rebuild, and he knows also that the problem is not the London County Council's but is the result of the complete collapse and failure of the Government's housing policy.

It is high time that hon. Members opposite, and particularly Ministers, stopped sheltering behind the slick reply and getting one over on the London County Council and told us what they intend to do. That is what we want to know.

The Deputy-Chairman

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear in mind that we are discussing an Amendment which deals purely with the continuance or discontinuance of one Act of Parliament.

Mr. Marsh

I appreciate that, Sir William, and I am grateful for your guidance. But it is impossible to consider our legislation governing furnished accommodation except as part of the housing situation which exists today. If the Act were abolished, which is what we on this side of the Committee are hoping may transpire, what would be the effect? At some stage, of course, someone would have to put something rather different in its place, but one cannot discuss that now.

Our objections to this legislation and to this situation which arises from it are, first, that the policies of the Government force people into accommodation covered by this legislation and leave them with no alternative. It is the housing policy pursued by the Government which makes inevitable many of the abuses of this piece of legislation to which we take exception this evening. Having been forced to shelter under the rather leaky umbrella of this legislation, they then find themselves in accommodation frequently of a sub-standard nature, accommodation in which the furniture is a mockery, accommodation of which the cost is in many cases excessive.

The legislation is alleged to enable these people to have redress against excessive charges for inadequate accommodation, but the moment they attempt to take that remedy another deficiency in the legislation reveals itself, in that there is no security of tenure, and they find themselves in the rest centre accommodation we were discussing. The path they tread, the route they take, finishes in some of this barrack-like accommodation.

It is a path which leads to a situation where children find themselves separated from their families and in the care of the London County Council's Children's Committee, where husbands are divided from their wives and are told to find accommodation elsewhere, where wives are living in the sort of accommodation we have been describing. That is a path which starts in many cases with the inadequacy of this legislation.

Mr. Reynolds

In 60 per cent, of them.

Mr. Marsh

As my hon. Friend says, who is an expert in these matters, something like 64 per cent, of these cases are the result of the inadequacies of the legislation to which we on this side of the Committee take exception this evening.

What we are hoping is that we have reached a stage where the tragedy of this in personal terms is obvious to both sides. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), I am not looking for votes. There is no immediate party advantage to be made of this situation, but it bewilders us that we find a complete lack of interest in this subject among hon. Members opposite. Is it unreasonable that we ask the Minister, when he replies to this debate, to tell us that the Government will withdraw this legislation because it clearly does not work, because it results in thousands of ordinary decent people, who work for their living, who fight for their country, who send their kids to school, who go out decently dressed, having to live like animals?

Mr. A. Evans

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Act we are discussing does not expire till April next year, and that it would be possible for the Government to agree to the amendment of the Act, if not its repeal, and between now and April to prepare permanent legislation to deal adequately with the really horrible and distressing situation which faces many thousands of people in London and the other great cities?

Mr. Marsh

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. This is, of course, the point. The Government can at this stage do something. This is not just an entertaining exercise we are embarking upon this evening. This is a request to the Government, in the time they now have, to try to find an answer to the problem—which surely hon. Members on both sides agree exists. There is no dispute between us, I would hope—though I do not know what are the views of hon. Members opposite, for they have not given us the benefit of their opinions—

Mr. Diamond

They are not allowed to.

Mr. Marsh

I do not know, but one would admit that there is no dispute between us as to the seriousness of the situation, as to the unwholesomeness of the situation. We talk a great deal nowadays about the need to defend freedom. This is not a metaphysical argument about abstract freedom.

How can the Government persuade our people that the Western way of life is a good one, that it is superior to that of other ideologies when in the Western way of life, in Westminster itself, children live in children's homes because there are no houses for their parents, when husbands live in doss houses because they cannot go in with their wives, and when wives live in barrack-like buildings where they queue up each morning for their meals? This is not an abstract argument but a serious one to which the Government, if they take a serious view of this problem, should, at some stage, apply themselves. It is no good saying to thousands of people who have no homes and no possible hope of having a home in the foreseeable future, "Ah, yes, but just think: you are free."

We pass this legislation year after year. We have had debates month after month on these tragic conditions and 'the situation has got steadily worse. It is getting even worse now. I feel sure, Sir William, that you would not allow me to develop the effect of Britain's possible entry into the Common Market at great length, but I do not think that there is any doubt that, whatever the rights and wrongs of going in, the effect is likely to involve us in a greater strain on our housing resources than there is even at present.

The people of London and other parts of the country are asking the Government to give some lead, to give them some light and some ray of hope in the morass of unhappiness in which they have been plunged. It is no good blaming London County Council, because the council is dependent for many of its resources on governmental assistance. The situation which exists as a result of this Act is aggravated by the Rent Act. They are inseparable things. The situation is the direct result of the policy of Conservative Governments and Conservative Members of Parliament.

At the General Election they may get away with it again. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Yes, as hon. Members say, they may yet do so. They have very good public relations. Our hope is that, even if they get the votes, at some stage some of them may wake up to the facts, have a twinge of conscience, and make the odd contribution to debates on this subject, get some idea of what the Government intend to do, and show some real feeling about the matter. It would be a tragedy if it were thought by large numbers of people that the British Government did not care about the circumstances in which thousands of people live. This does not happen by accident. It happens by Government policy, and one would hope that at some stage the Government would begin to agree.

Mr. A. Evans

On a point of order. I should like some guidance on procedure. The House is in Committee. Would it be in order, therefore, for any hon. Member on this side who has already spoken to catch your eye, Sir William, on another occasion or other occasions?

The Deputy-Chairman

It would be in order for any hon. Member in any part of the Committee to catch the eye of the Chair.

Hon. Members

More than once?

The Deputy-Chairman

More than once.

Mr. Diamond

Would it be in order if any hon. Member opposite attempted to catch your eye provided that he has the permission of the Whips to do so?

The Deputy-Chairman

I have just said that it would be perfectly in order for any hon. Member to catch the eye of the Chair, more than once if the hon. Member desires.

Mr. Mellish

On a point of order, Sir William—a serious point of order. [Hon. Members: "Oh."] I was not sure about the second point of order, but the first one was very good.

Sir William, we have been debating this matter for three or four hours, and it is of some importance. I have previously referred to the relationship of the Chair with hon. Members. If this is a debate which you consider to be important and worth while, is there anything that you can do to compel the Minister to be here to answer it?

The Deputy-Chairman

I think the hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a point of order for the Chair to deal with.

11.45 p.m.

Mr. A. Lewis

As I understand your advice to the Committee, Sir William, the Amendment can be discussed only if we refer to whether or not the 1946 Act should be continued, and we cannot suggest any alterations to it. So I want to explain why I feel that the Act should not be continued in 1961.

I am not against the Act as it was framed and introduced. In 1946 it was a very good Act. We then had a very good Government who did their utmost to see that it was operated and the people advised how to obtain its benefits. Every help was given to tenants in furnished and unfurnished accommodation.

I seek to show that, although in 1946 there were certain circumstances which made the Act of value, the changed circumstances of today make it useless. In 1946 there was a huge housing programme initiated by the Government to encourage local authorities to build houses to rent, and every help was given to local authorities by subsidies and in other ways. Especially in the blitzed areas, such as Bermondsey, Deptford. Greenwich and West Ham, every help was given to enable local authorities to get on with rehousing so that those who had no accommodation could be put into decent council dwellings. But since the present Government have been in office there has been a complete change. So far from their trying to help local authorities, from 1950 they have put every obstacle they could in the way of local authority housing.

In 1946, the circumstances were very different. There was then no such thing as the speculative building which we see all round us now. There was no such thing as huge garages going up within every hundred yards or so. There was no attempt by the Labour Government to prevent local authorities getting the money for housing. The position today is completely reversed. It is a speculator's paradise for the Clores and Cottons who are making huge fortunes and are able to get materials for offices, betting shops and bingo halls. This is the "bingo paradise", and it is what the Government have encouraged. Every assistance is given to the speculative builder and the big financier at the expense of the poor devils who have no homes.

Hon. Members smile, but that is true. They should come to areas like mine and ask these people about the difference between 1946, when every assistance was given local authorities, and now, when the Government hamper the local authorities. In my area, we lost more than one-third of rateable property in the blitz, and the rest was damaged. The council was pleased when the Government of the day gave it the chance to requisition the large number of empty houses. But then this Government derequisitioned those houses, giving them back to the landlords, many of whom had fled from the blitz to safe areas like Bournemouth, Boston and Bath.

These landlords sold the houses at huge profits or rented them out as furnished rooms to make a fortune that way—again at the expense of those who stayed in West Ham during the blitz. Not only have the Government cut or abolished subsidies but they have also raised the Bank Rate to such a figure that neither local authorities nor private individuals can afford to borrow money to get on with housing.

West Ham was lauded and praised during the War for having stood up to Hitler, but now, when it needs money to replace houses destroyed in the blitz, it cannot get it. The young couples find that they cannot even get money from building societies or banks with which to buy private houses.

Mr. Philip N. Hocking (Coventry, South)

Last night was the anniversary of the big raid on Coventry. That city, like the hon. Member's constituency, was badly blitzed. The strange thing is that there we have managed to carry on with building work in spite of the restrictions that he suggests have been imposed.

Mr. Lewis

I agree that building is going on. I am not suggesting that it has all stopped. Speculative building is going on. But I am suggesting—and the facts are proved—that every obstacle has been put in the way of local authorities wishing to get on with the job. I have given evidence that private individuals have been affected as well as local authorities.

It is now almost impossible for the lower paid worker to get a mortgage from a building society. If hon. Members do not believe that, let them go to their constituents and interview people earning £10 to £14 a week who have a family to support and try to get them a mortgage through a building society. They will find it almost impossible. The Government have given every encouragement to the private speculative builder as against the local authorities. It will be found in my constituency and, I am sure, in the rest of the country that this Act is not now serving the purpose for which it was originally intended. It was a good Act when it was introduced and when those who were suffering from exorbitant rents were encouraged to go to the rent tribunals, but since hon. Members opposite have been in office, every obstacle has been put in the way of those unfortunate people.

The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) interrupted my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) to say that the Minister had said that more cases had been going to rent tribunals since the Government began to close them down. If that is the case, why are the Government closing down and amalgamating rent tribunals? In my constituency there was a rent tribunal which did a good job and which was kept busy. It was situated in the Barking Road. In order to save a few shillings, the Government decided to amalgamate the tribunals in West Ham with others. They amalgamated them with Islington tribunals. Do you think, Sir William, that a tenant with a complaint against his landlord charging him £5, £6, or £7 a week rent for one room will go from Barking Road in West Ham to Islington to make his complaint, knowing that he will probably be turfed out if he does? The amalgamated tribunals have been sited in districts to which the tenants will not and cannot find the time to go, not to mention the cost of a journey which may be from one end of London to the other.

I think that the hon. Member was right when he said that the number of cases was increasing, but, far from cutting down the number of tribunals, the Government should be increasing them.

Mr. Mellish

My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. A. Lewis) will appreciate that if someone takes advantage of his right to go to a rent tribunal to complain about his rent, it necessarily follows that he must lose his flat, or house, or room, because he will get only three months' security of tenure. I suggest that in West Ham, as in Bermondsey, there are people who would like to use the rent tribunals, but who know that if they do, they will eventually be evicted and have nowwhere to go. The question we have to put to the Government is how those people are to overcome that.

Mr. Lewis

I was about to come to that and I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me of it.

Far from the Act being of any use, tenants are scared of using it because of their fear of eviction. These great patriotic landlords are now getting to the stage of ordering evictions whatever the tenants think and whether or not they are scared of eviction. They are turning them out into the streets, and they are being assisted and encouraged by the Government in doing so. The Government are responsible for the problem of the homeless in London and all the other big cities and in the suburbs. They are deliberately creating the problem of the homeless, because they have given every help to the landlord. The Minister may jeer at the L.C.C.

12 m.

Mr. Rippon

I was not jeering at the L.C.C. I said it was unfair to the L.C.C. to describe its accommodation as workhouse accommodation. Whatever one may say about the L.C.C. in other respects, it does its best to keep its existing accommodation up to the highest standard possible.

Mr. Lewis

The L.C.C. officers do their utmost for the ratepayers and do a wonderful job, but it is not easy to convert a workhouse into a decent place in which people can live. We have a number of homeless people in West Ham, mainly ex-Service men and other young couples. Men who have done their National Service have no homes after they return from the Services and have to go into workhouses. The West Ham Council does its utmost to make these places pleasant to live in, but it is not easy to convert a workhouse—whether it is called a workhouse, a hospital or anything else.

It is right that a husband should have to go into one part of the building, that his wife should have to go into another part and that their children should have to go elsewhere? They have no normal family life, through no fault of their own. It is not their fault that they have been turned out of rented accommodation or that their house has been decontrolled by the Rent Act and they have been turned out into the streets. They go to a welfare officer, who says, "I am sorry. The half-way house, the workhouse, the hospital"—call it what we will—"is full, and the only suggestion which I can make is that you go to the police station and ask them to put you up for the night." That is happening in an area where people suffered night in and night out for weeks on end during the war. But the Government are not only perpetuating that situation, they are encouraging it.

I read in the Press today that the Chancellor is alleged to have said that the pause is likely to be ending. I wish to God, if that is a Parliamentary expression, that the Chancellor or one of the other Ministers would ask some of the landlords to make a pause.

Mr. Marsh

Before he quotes the Chancellor, my hon. Friend should be careful to make sure that the Chancellor has not been misrepresented or misreported in the Press. He should wait for the Treasury version.

Mr. Lewis

That is another point. We can never trust the remarks of Ministers, because we do not know whether what they say is true or whether they have been misreported or whether they meant what they said when they said it. Ministers say one thing today and another thing tomorrow.

Mr. Mellish

May I take my hon. Friend back to the point on which he was interrupted by the Minister? There has been a suggestion that the expression "workhouse" is a slight on the L.C.C. Will he take it from me that these places were designed for what were called the genuine problem family, who needed a half-way house; some even had to learn how to live a married life. It was never envisaged that they would be used for the genuinely homeless. It is because they are trying to meet their difficulties in buildings which were never designed for this purpose that the L.C.C. is being criticised by the Government and even on television by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith).

Mr. Lewis

I agree with my hon. Friend. The West Ham Council is being blamed by people who do not know—and by Conservatives. The truth, of course, is that the Government are really responsible.

If sufficient houses are not available because of the restrictive policy this Government have adopted towards the actions of the local authorities, it is quite obvious that these authorities must put these people somewhere—in halfway houses, hospitals, workhouses or whatever one likes to call these establishments. What else can the authorities do?

I do not intend to argue whether the word "workhouses" should be used to describe these places. It is immoral, unjust and highly unfair to tell a chap who has been serving his Queen and country that when he comes home the best we can do for him and his family is to offer them a space in a half-way house, a workhouse, a rest centre—any term one likes to adopt to describe these establishments.

I have dozens of constituents who are in this position. They should realise that this Act, which is supposed to help people living in furnished houses, is of no use whatever because of the actions of the Government. The poor devils about whom I am speaking are being turfed out of their homes because of the Government. As I say, I am not going to blame the L.C.C. the Tory council of Holborn or any other Tory council. The fault rests squarely on the shoulders of the Minister of Housing and the Government.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has made many appeals for restraint. There have been wage pauses. People have been asked to go carefully. But I cannot recall a single occasion during the ten years this Government have been in office when any Minister, past or present, has once asked the landlords to have a pause with regard to rent increases, or at least to go a bit more carefully. Although no hon. Gentlemen opposite have taken part in this debate many Tories are, in fact, directors of property companies. Many hon. Gentlemen opposite are associated with the various property owners' protection societies. Even if the Government will not act, surely some of those hon. Gentlemen could ask their boards of directors of these property protection societies to help.

They could do it, and I can tell them how. Plenty of flats and houses are available. One has only to pick up a copy of the Sunday Observer—any issue—to find vacant dwellings in Park Lane for 40 guineas, 60 guineas, even 70 guineas—and 25 guineas too. Others are available in Berkeley Square at similar prices. I do not know how anyone can afford to pay 40 or 50 guineas a week for such accommodation. They probably write it off for tax purposes and put it down to their companies.

Here is a chance for the Government to step in and requisition these places. I would be willing to send some of my tenants from West Ham to these flats. I am sure that they would be quite pleased, even though the accommodation is not in the salubrious area of West Ham.

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but to discuss all the alternative things that could be done would not be in order on this Amendment which deals with either the continuation or discontinuation of one Act of Parliament.

Mr. Lewis

When I started my speech, Sir William, you may recollect that I said I wanted to point out that while this Act was good in 1946, when it was passed, and that while from 1946 to 1951 it was right to keep it on the Statute Book because the Government of the day were then helping and assisting people, I went on to say that from 1951 up to 1961 there has arisen a completely different set of circumstances. That now makes this Act not only obsolete, but quite unnecessary. I was explaining why I was supporting the Amendment and why I think that the circumstances now do not warrant this Act.

In 1946 there were not all these vacant places in Park Lane. There were not the speculators, the Clores and the Cottons, getting rich at the expense of the ordinary people. I explained that the circumstances are quite different from what they were in 1946 and tried to prove that they show that this Act, while a very good one then, is now of no use at all. I do not suggest what the Government should do; for one thing, I should be out of order if I did. I do not even suggest that the Government should amend the Rent Act, or even abolish it. I do not suggest any new legislation, but only that the Government should see that the circumstances which obtained in 1946, and which made this a good, workable, and sucessful Act then, should be applied today.

All the circumstances operating in 1946 should be operating today. Then I would support the Government. I would support the continuance of this Act. If the Government controlled speculative building and stopped the garages and so on, and put the position back to what it was in 1946, then I would say to my right hon. and hon. Friends, "I cannot support this Amendment", but, as things are, I must. I say that, not because I particularly object to the content of the Act, as such, but because this Government have so played about with the destinies of the homeless people that this Act is of no use at all.

The Government must do something to help the homeless people. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich has said something about people coming to see him on this tragic issue. All hon. Members for every constituency which has any industrial or commercial background have literally thousands of people coming to their "surgeries" each week complaining of this matter of housing. Some of them are actually homeless.

Mr. Pavitt

Is it not a fact that nine out of ten of the housing cases are problems and that hon. Members opposite have heard them as well? One hon. Member has said he has a constant stream of people, so that this is obviously something shared by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, but we cannot get hon. Members opposite to take part in this debate. We cannot get them up to say whether they think that the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act should or should not continue. If only they would get up and say it should, then that would help. They do not, but they can go on television and get well paid for it. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) laughs and smiles. Hon. Members opposite do not take part in debates here, but if there is fifteen or thirty guineas payment attached to it, then they are there.

12.15 a.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Johnson Smith (Holborn and St. Pancras, South)

I do not know whether the hon. Member attended the housing debate we had a week last Monday but, if he did, I hope that he will recall that I took part in that debate.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, I sat through the whole of that debate—

Mr. Johnson Smith

Withdraw.

Mr. Lewis

I will not withdraw. I sat through the whole of that debate. I asked Mr. Speaker whether I could be called. I have only spoken in eight debates in sixteen years—including my maiden speech and two Adjournment debates—but I was not called. I repeat that there are hon. Members, not now present in this Committee—some have not even troubled to attend—who, if there is a chance to go on "Any Questions?" on television, will be there. In "Any Questions?", for which they get thirty guineas, they would explain why this Act should or should not be continued. They will debate it there, but they will not debate it here.

They will not even interject here. No hon. Member opposite has given any logical reason why this Measure should or should not be continued or why he will vote for or against this Amendment. They are not interested. They may interject, to safeguard what they regard as their honour, to say whether or not they were on television. I am not interested in whether they get thirty or fifty guineas. I only know that I shall never get that opportunity. I have been in Parliament for sixteen years, and have never been on radio or television. Perhaps it is because I am too much the Joe Blunt. I say what I want to say in the House or in the Committee and I am not afraid to do so.

I am not concerned with what hon. Members may have said in the earlier housing debate—this is another debate—

Mr. A. Evans

During the whole course of this debate not a single hon. Member opposite has given the Committee the benefit of his knowledge. In the face of this tragic problem, it is rather shocking that the Government benches should remain silent.

Mr. Lewis

And not only have there been only about half a dozen hon. Members opposite present but, to the best of my knowledge and belief there have never been more than two Ministers present, and—with great respect to them—two junior Ministers at that. Except for the Leader of the House—who is, of course, the servant of the House—not once has there been one Minister present to support the Minister of Housing in his desire to have this Act continued. A few hon. Members have been sitting on the back benches opposite, smiling and sniggering on occasion, but why has no Minister been present? Yet tomorrow night, on another issue—and I use this only in passing, as an illustration—they will talk about the terrible housing problem confronting the people because of coloured immigrants. They will not say tonight the extent to which this problem has been aggravated by this Government and these Ministers.

The Government have deliberately accentuated the problem. They have made it more difficult for the local authorities to build, but they have made it easier for the big landlords to evict tenants from these rent-controlled premises. They have made it easier for them to evict people from non-furnished accommodation and, of course, they have made it more difficult for the man who wants to become an owner-occupier. And then they have the audacity to say that they mean to get on with this housing job.

Sir William, who has stopped them doing just that over the last ten years? Nobody has prevented them. If they were to say that because they wanted to continue this present rent control Act they would come forward with a huge programme to provide 400,000 or 500,000 houses a year, not a person in this Committee would stop them. We would all support them. But now they put every obstacle, difficulty and restriction in the way of the councils and the private owners.

Mr. Denis Howell

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary is not listening to my hon. Friend. It is a gross discourtesy.

Mr. Rippon

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I would not miss a word of what he is saying.

Mr. Lewis

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I can assure him, however, that whether the Minister wants to listen or not, he cannot fail to hear me. I have such a voice that if he goes to the end of the Chamber he can still hear what I am saying. I would point out that there is no senior Minister here at all. Both the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department who are present are, with respect to them, junior Ministers. No senior Minister is interested in the subject.

I was dealing with the reason why I support this Amendment. I want to emphasise that I am not opposed to the object and the principles of the Act. Indeed, I am in favour of the Act. I should like to see it continued, if I could receive an assurance from the Minister that he is going to see that it is operated and acted upon. I am not asking for any amending legislation, but if the Minister will see to it that every assistance is given to the tenants who want to avail themselves of it, if he will see that the Act is carried out by increasing the number of tribunals, that tribunals are established in those areas which have the biggest problem, then I shall be quite willing to reconsider my view. I might even toy with the idea of voting against my own Front Bench. I would consider that. That would be very unusual for me, but I would be quite willing to change my view. But at the moment I must say that I cannot for the life of me see what is the purpose of keeping this Act on the Statute Book if, as has been proved over the years, the Government have no intention of seeing that it is implemented and acted upon.

Mr. John Mackie (Enfield, East)

While I do not wish to detain the Committee too long, I feel that anything that I can say to emphasise the shocking housing situation should be said.

I am not so slick-witted as some of my colleagues on this side of the Committee, and before going any further should like to protect myself from any intervention, Sir William, by reminding you of the story of the student who, before entering the examination room, was so certain that there would be a question about Napoleon that what he did not know about Napoleon was not worth knowing. But, to his horror, he found that he had to answer a question about Wellington. So he started his answer to the question by saying that before one could fully understand Wellington one had to know all about Napoleon. In order fully to understand this furnished housing situation, one needs to understand fully the whole housing situation.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt), I am prepared to issue an invitation to any Member on the Government Front Bench to ac-company me when I meet my constituents once every three weeks and hear the harrowing tales that I have to hear. I am sorry that the Leader of the House, who represents the other half of the town of Enfield, is not here to support me in my remarks about the situation in that town where we have 3,000 families, out of a total population of 110,000, with no housing accommodation. It is all very well for the Government Front Bench to talk about how much has been done for housing in general. They should come down to see what the true circumstances of people are and tell us what they will do in particular cases. That is the problem which faces the Member of Parliament in his constituency today. It is really pathetic.

During the past few months, the number of cases of people being put out of furnished premises has greatly increased. I am quite sure that, often, they are not put out because they could in the circumstances be put out but because they have accepted a solicitor's letter or something of the kind as being an eviction order. Often, it is too late for a Member of Parliament to help. They have accepted notice to quit. I have no doubt that the increase in the number of people put out is due to the effect of the Rent Act. Houses are being sold over people's heads and the tenants of furnished accommodation have to go.

I ask people what rent they have to pay, and I am appalled at the rents which are asked for single rooms with absolutely no facilities at all, with lavatories outside the back door, without hot water or cold water. Often as much as £3, £4 or £5 a week is paid. One of the most tragic reasons for eviction, of course, is that a baby is on the way. Yet it is just the families with children who are most in need. What can I tell them? I appeal to the Government to listen to this. I have to tell such people that it will be five, ten or, in many cases, fifteen years before they are properly housed.

In Enfield, as in any other Middlesex borough, the borough council is the housing authority, of course, but the Middlesex County Council is the welfare authority. It is not easy to have to tell people that they must be evicted before the welfare people can do anything for them. "Wait until you are evicted and out on the street", the Member of Parliament has to say, "and then the Middlesex welfare people will do something for you"—and that something, of course, is to divide the family, telling the husband to go and look for digs, probably, while the mother and children are put into a half-way house or workhouse, whatever it be called. I hope that, when the Greater London Authority Bill comes before the House, we shall find that the boroughs are given more power to deal with those things themselves, without the present split in authority.

Although much has been said about London and the big towns, this is a problem which affects the whole country. I can give the Committee some instances from my home district in a rural area of north-east Scotland. I myself had a condemned house on my premises. My workman reminded me that the house should be knocked down now that another one had been built in its place, but then a man came to me and asked for somewhere to put his old mother who was living in furnished rooms and was to be put out. This was about twelve years ago. I let that old lady have the house. She was then 70, and I think she is now 82. There she has had to stay all those years, in that house without water, electricity, inside sanitation or anything. That is in a rural area in Scotland.

Recently, I bought a small house in a local town in order to provide, I thought, a house for an old employee who was retiring. I thought I would let it on a service tenancy before I needed it for the employee, but then I had to let it to an old couple who had been turned out of furnished premises and who had nowhere else to go. I have let that house to them. I do not know how long they will live and, so far as I am concerned, it is out of my hands. Recently, again, I changed my system of farming and I had two service houses to let. I was nearly eaten alive, such was the demand for those houses. The number of people turned out of furnished premises in a rural area in north-east Scotland is quite appalling.

The Chairman

I do not think that this comes within the scope of the Amendment, which relates to an Act dealing with England and Wales.

12.30 a.m.

Mr. Mackie

You were not in the Chair, Sir Gordon, when at the beginning of my speech I made a plea for guidance, because I wanted to give instances of how the situation was based on the whole housing problem throughout the country. I am sorry if I was out of order. This separation of Scotland is always a bugbear to a Scotsman representing an English seat. Nevertheless, I put that to the Committee to show what the problems are.

The Act, good though it is, is totally inadequate, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. A. Lewis) said, and I cannot put it better than he did. Of course, the whole problem rests upon the inadequacy of housing. Only last week I looked at on advertisement on the back of The Times. It said there were 600,000 sq. ft. of office building to let. That was on one day. Flats to accommodate 1,200 couples in my constituency could be provided in that much space. That sort of thing has been going on year after year. I hope that the rumours which we hear, that the Minister is at long last going to take control of that sort of thing, are true.

The Chairman

That does not really arise on this Amendment.

Mr. Mackie

I am sorry if I am digressing. The subject is of such importance that it is difficult to keep to the narrow point.

I would emphasise the necessity for a drive for more and more houses. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North talked of 400,000 or 500,000. I would say it should be 600,000, to help house the people who now have to wait for ten to fifteen years.

Mr. Denis Howell (Birmingham, All Saints)

I want to spend some time at the beginning of my speech, if I can, in examining the Act we are being asked to continue. I find it a rather disgraceful piece of Parliamentary manoeuvring that we are not given any information at all about how the Act is working—information about what the local authorities are doing, information about the penalties, information about the register, information about all these relevant matters, to which I think we should turn our attention for a few minutes before coming again to the general principles which my hon. Friends have quite rightly been emphasising tonight.

First of all, can we be told about the register of rents? Under the Act—Section 3, I think it is—local authorities are bound to keep a register of rents of accommodation affected by the Act. In 1946 and 1947 and 1948, just after the Act was passed, there was a rush of enthusiasm and a desire to do social justice to the population, at a time, just after the war, when the building indus- try—indeed, all industry—which had been geared to war-time necessities, was being changed to peace-time potential, and the local authorities, under Labour control, set about doing their duty, and the register of rents became effective.

How many of the rents which were registered in those days are relevant to this day? Those of us who represent large cities know perfectly well that the rents then registered are completely irrelevant. Further, it is extremely difficult to see the registers. What inquiries does the Ministry make from time to time of local authorities about the registers? When once a house has been registered the rent is established, and therefore the register should be firmly available to succeeding tenants. But it is very difficult, and tenants do not know their rights in these matters. Indeed, I am forced to say that there have been so many political changes in local authorities since 1948 that a great many members of local authorities do not know their obligations.

Mr. A. Lewis

Is not my hon. Friend aware that one of the reasons for that is the complete neglect on the part of the Government in advising tenants and in advising the public and in advising local authority representatives what the Act lays down? No action has been taken by the Government.

Mr. A. Evans

May I also point out that under section 8 of the Act the Minister must make regulations covering a number of points and that one requirement is that he must make regulations generally to give effect to the provisions of the Act? The onus, therefore, is on the Minister.

Mr. Howell

I agree. I intended to deal with Section 8, but both interjections have been helpful and relevant.

It is a serious matter in our democracy if tenants do not know and are not allowed to understand their rights and are not encouraged to satisfy themselves about them. If the register of rents is not properly kept and is not properly available, it is a serious situation. I do not believe that the Minister is listening to a word I am saying. I do not know, Sir Gordon, whether you have any powers to make him listen to what hon. Members are saying.

The Chairman

I have no powers to make any hon. Member listen to another hon. Member.

Mr. Howell

I rather suspected it, but I have not heard it laid down officially before. If the debate has done nothing else it will have put on record that the Chair has no powers in these matters.

Mr. A. Lewis

I hope that my hon. Friend will get one point right for the record. He keeps referring to "the Minister". Will he make a note of the fact that the Minister has not been here during the whole of the debate? I want to make it clear that it is the junior Minister who is sitting on the Front Bench opposite. The Minister does not even think it worth while to be here. Will my hon. Friend refer to the Parliamentary Secretary as "the junior Minister" or "the under-Minister"?

Mr. Howell

On the question of etiquette and of courtesy to the Committee, I would point out that the Minister is now also Minister for Welsh Affairs and is affectionately known up and down the valleys of Wales as "Hill, the Pill". He is the first public man to make his name and fame on the radio by publicly referring to the state of our bowels. That being so, it is appropriate that he should have become Minister of Housing and Local Government in view of the chronic constipation of the housing situation.

Mr. A. Lewis

Would I be in order, Sir Gordon, in calling attention to the fact that there are not forty Members present? If not, would you advise me whether I can move that the debate be adjourned?

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

Committee counted, and, 40 Members being present—

Mr. Howell

Although there are forty hon. Members here at the moment, it is clear that in about two minutes we shall be back where we were because so many are leaving again.

Mr. A. Lewis

I particularly wanted to put this on record because there were only one back-bencher and two Ministers present on the Government side. I thought we ought to have some of the Tories here to listen to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Howell

It was very proper for my hon. Friend to call attention to the fact that hon. Members were not taking an interest in this very important matter.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson (Truro)

On the hon. Member's side.

Mr. Howell

We are glad to see the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) here. We welcome even such a rude and irrelevant interjection as that. It means something. We hope that he will make a sensible speech. He does not usually make sensible speeches.

It is extremely important that tenants should know their rights in connection with rent registers, that local authorities should conduct themselves in a way to make the Act relevant and that the House should be given information about the subject. I suspect that the Parliamentary Secretary will not give us any information. I have an open attitude on whether to support the continuance of the Act or the Opposition case that it should lapse, but I do not know how any hon. Member can reach an independent conclusion in the absence of factual information from the Government. I have sat here for three or four hours and have heard no attempt to deal with the question of registers of rent.

Mr. A. Lewis

The Government have given no information at all.

Mr. Howell

What local authorities tell tenants where they can find the register? What local authorities take the trouble to appoint staff to implement the provision? If local authorities are charged with implementing the Act, we are entitled to know whether the Minister inquires of them about its implementation. I have served on a local authority for twelve years—I have been on the health committee and the general purposes committee—but I do not remember a single inquiry from the Government about what the local authority was doing to implement this.

Will the Parliamentary Secretary tell us when the Department last inquired of local authorities what they were doing about registers of rents, how they were making them accessible to tenants and ensuring that tenants knew their rights and that landlords who were on the registers by virtue of rent tribunal decisions were carrying out their obligations? Is it true that if a tenant who has had a rent fixed by a tribunal dies or moves away, incoming tenants have no chance unless the landlord tells them—which is very unlikely—to know that it is a controlled tenancy? What steps are taken by local authorities to ensure that subsequent tenants know when tenancies are registered? The question of the register of rents is an extremely important one.

12.45 a.m.

Mr. Reynolds

I agree with my hon. Friend, but even if local authorities were to maintain registers of rents, there is another weak point in the legislation. The register could show that the tribunal had fixed a certain rent for a particular room. The snag is that there is no way in which it can also keep a record of the furniture and other fittings in that room, because it is easy for a landlord to juggle the furniture about and put his rooms in a different pattern, thus altering the property and getting round the tribunal's decision and also any register kept by the local authority.

Mr. Howell

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. Three criteria are laid down about the sort of accommodation affected. Section 3 (2), lays down that (a) the prescribed particulars with regard to the contract must be maintained, together with (b) a specification of the premises to which the contract relates; and (c) the rent as approved, reduced or increased by the tribunal, and, in a case in which the approval, reduction or increase is limited to rent payable in respect of a particular period, a specification of that period.

Mr. Diamond

That does not include a provision as to contents, so the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) was most relevant.

Mr. Howell

I see. The Act was put on the Statute Book before the days of television, so that the addition of a television set in the household would mean a change in the contents of the accommodation.

Mr. Marsh

As I understand it, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) made the point that the specification of premises to which a contract relates, referred to in Section 3 (2, b), does not include a specification as to contents. I understand my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) to agree with that view. One would have thought that a specification of a furnished house or furnished accommodation must involve the furniture within that property. If it does not—and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) says it does not—then the specification is of no purpose, since the criterion leaves the furniture out.

Mr. Howell

I do not think that is correct. Section 3 (2, a) specifically refers to the premises to which the contract relates. That must be right, because when a tribunal is fixing the rent, perhaps the biggest single factor must be the state of the premises and the facilities within those premises. I assume, for the purpose of my argument, that what this means is accommodation in terms of premises. Another relevant factor will be the furniture. A pertinent point is the state of the furniture in the original determination in 1947 or 1948. It will clearly have deteriorated since then, and we are entitled to ask the Minister what the situation is now. Can a decision be reviewed by a tribunal or not?

Mr. Mellish

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has a great knowledge of Soccer, but I did not know that he had any knowledge of legal matters. As he has obviously read the Act more closely than I have, will he help me to get this matter clear?

He is complaining that tenants do not know and are unable to find out what are the conditions within the Act itself, and he is saying that the local authorities are not doing their part in helping to inform the tenants of the position. He wants to know what the Minister has done to ensure that the tenants do know what the position is.

I am one of those who believe that the Act is weak because there is nothing to tell the tenants, apart from that which my hon. Friend quoted, that it would be illegal for the tenant to give the landlord, and equally illegal for the landlord to accept, any sum of money for so-called furniture. Can he say whether that is covered by the Act? If not, is not that a very good reason why the Act should not be continued?

Is it not a fact that one of the biggest problems which we face is the furniture and fittings racket which is operated against tenants who apply for this sort of accommodation and who also have to pay these premiums? Am I not right in saying that it is no good the Government saying that it is illegal, when nothing is said to the tenant? In view of his legal knowledge, will my hon. Friend deal with that?

Mr. Howell

I cannot claim any legal knowledge, but I find the intricacies of this Act more difficult to follow than the laws governing football. However, there is one matter on which I am able to give a judgment without any dubiety—that the Government are completely offside in this matter. I am sorry, Sir Gordon, that I am not in your place and able to referee this little match. Had I been, I would have taken some names on the other side of the Committee. I believe my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) to be wrong, but I may be wrong, for I am not a lawyer.

Section 4 of the Act deals with rents in excess of the registered rents and makes premiums illegal. I should have thought that it covered the matter, for it says: Where the rent payable for any premises is entered in the register under the provisions of this Act, it shall not be lawful to require or receive … as a condition of the grant, renewal or continuance of a contract to which this Act applies relating to such premises, payment of any fine, premium or other like sum, or any consideration, in addition to the rent. I should have thought that the word "premium" covered all the abuses to which we have been referring.

Mr. Reynolds

I cannot accept the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell). After that passage which my hon. Friend has just read, Section 4 has a further subsection. It is made an offence for the landlord to receive, or require, or charge a rent which is in excess of that recorded in the register mentioned in Section 3.

However, I cannot see anything in Section 4 which makes it an offence for the landlord to reduce the amount of furniture, to take away a couple of chairs, or take down the curtains, or take up the "lino." That leads me to the conclusion that it is not an offence for a landlord to do those things, which confirms my view that Section 3 does not require the local authority to keep a note of the facilities which are available in the flat. My hon. Friend has raised a complicated issue, but the discussion has been useful. Can the Minister save some time by giving us his views on the matter?

Mr. Howell

Again, I do not agree. Section 12 (2) says: Where separate sums are payable by the lessee of any premises to the lessor for any two or more of the following, namely:—

1. (a) occupation of the premises;
2. (b) use of furniture; and
3. (c) services;

the expression 'rent' shall, in relation to those premises ….

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of order. You will be aware, Sir Gordon, that for the last half an hour we have been discussing some highly technical legal matters. Not one Law Officer has been present. My hon. Friends have been asking for information about the law. Would it not be in order to ask for a Law Officer of the Crown to be present?

The Chairman

That is not a point of order for me.

Mr. Lewis

Further to that. We all want to get home. If my hon. Friends have any doubts about the law, should not the Committee have the advice of the Law Officers?

The Chairman

That is not a point of Order for me.

Mr. Lewis

Can you tell me, Sir Gordon, in what way I can get a proper legal opinion so that we may clear up this difficulty? My hon. Friends seem to be at variance and we have four opinions which seem to be contrary. We do not have one Law Officer present to help and advise us. I have constituents who are interested in the matter. How can I decide on the continuance or rejection of this Act if the legal points are not clear?

The Chairman

That is not a point of order for me.

Mr. Reynolds

On a point of order. I have been differing from my hon. Friend on this matter and I think that he is misleading the Committee, although not deliberately, in his interpretation of the Section. Can we not obtain from the occupants of the Treasury Bench some information about the exact position?

The Chairman

As I have said, that is not a point of order for me.

Mr. Mellish

On a point of order. What is the function of the Chair? Supposing as a matter of argument—anything could happen with this Government—it was decided that the junior Minister could not reply, because he was not capable of replying, that the Minister himself was not available and that therefore there would be no reply to the debate: what is the function of the Chair in making this a genuine debating Chamber where democracy lives? No senior Minister has been here throughout the debate. No Law Officer has been here. Each time we have raised the matter you have said that it is not a matter for the Chair.

The Chairman

That is a purely hypothetical question. It is not for the Chair to decide which Minster replies to a debate.

Mr. M. Stewart

As my hon. Friends have said, we have important legal points affecting the interpretation of the Act and we are attempting to deal with them in the absence of the Law Officers. I therefore wish to move, "That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again." The hour is late. This is a complicated issue. The discussion has aroused a great deal more interest than the Government or their supporters ever expected. The Committee could better continue its deliberations after we have had time for reflection. When we reassemble to deal with the matter we shall, I hope, have the advice of the Law Officers for which my hon. Friends have asked.

The Chairman

The hon. Member cannot move such a Motion in the middle of a speech.

Mr. Stewart

On a point of order. I thought that it was possible to move such a Motion in the middle of a speech, otherwise a resolute Member who could speak for long enough could prevent almost indefinitely a Motion to report Progress from being moved.

The Chairman

It is a question for the Chair whether to accept that Motion.

Mr. Rippon

Further to that point of order. When he rose about five hours ago the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) said he would like me to wait and to listen to hon. Members interested in the subject before I replied. I have done that, I hope, with as much patience as I can muster. I have listened very carefully to hon. Members. If they feel that it would be helpful to have some answers to the points which they have made, I shall be only to happy to try to supply them.

Mr. Lewis

There are three or four hon. Members wanting the help of the Law Officers. That was the point which I made.

The Chairman

That is not a point of order and there is no point in repeating it.

Mr. A. Evans

My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) has moved, "That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again."

The Chairman

That Motion has not been moved. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. D. Howell) has the Floor.

1.0 a.m.

Mr. Mellish

On a point of order. When my hon. Friend has finished his speech—which I suppose will not be too long—will it then be in order for my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) to move a Motion to report progress?

The Chairman

It will be in order for the hon. Member to do so. Whether I accept it is another matter.

Mr. Howell

I realise that the Minister's intervention was designed to be helpful, but I found it impertinent—and I say that in a friendly way—because he wanted to reply without hearing what I have to say. After all, not only had I not been speaking for many moments, but several of my hon. Friends still wish to take part in the debate and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) has been waiting for a considerable time to participate in our discussion.

As to the Law Officers of the Crown being called, I do not want to see confusion made worse by the presence of the Attorney-General. I was making the point that under Section 4, which deals with excess rents and illegal premiums, a great number of questions remain to be asked. For instance, how many prosecutions have taken place? The subject of rackets has already been mentioned. There is the furniture and the key-money racket. Everyone knows that throughout the country these rackets are going on.

If I am right about Section 4 on this matter of premiums we are entitled to some information. This is not mentioned in the definition, although there may he case law on the subject. It would be a considerable argument in favour of the line advocated by the Opposition Front Bench that we should not agree to the continuance of these powers if we found that they were not being used. I suspect strongly, from my local knowledge of Birmingham, that Section 4, which clearly states that premiums for unfurnished accommodation are illegal, is not being enforced anywhere—certainly not in Birmingham.

We are, therefore, entitled to know what steps the Ministry takes to see that it is enforced. Do any local authorities ever discuss it? I do not suppose that even the L.C.C.—and here I join mildly in some of the criticism that has been made of that council, for certainly it is true of my borough council—discuss the matter and try to publicise, as they should, the illegal nature of premiums of this type. It is the function of local authorities to bring this before the public.

Mr. Reynolds

I am a great admirer of the L.C.C. in many respects and I appreciate that that body is criticised in many respects as well. But if my hon. Friend will turn to Section 6 of this Act he will find that the responsible local authority for the area of the ad- ministrative county of London is, in fact, the council of the Metropolitan borough. The L.C.C. is blamed for many things but, in this respect, I think my hon. Friend is being a little unfair to it.

Mr. Howell

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. If what he says is correct I not only withdraw my remarks but come to a further point, since the hon. Gentleman the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) has joined us once again. If what my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North says is correct, and I believe it is, the television broadcast in which the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South took part was not only nauseating, but incorrect—that he should be blaming the L.C.C. when, clearly, his own borough council, a Conservative council, was at fault.

This is an extremely serious matter. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South having gone on television, and having misled the entire nation and been handsomely paid for it, has sat here and not attempted to speak, although, to be fair to him, I thought that at one time he wanted to speak. He had an earnest conversation with the Government Whip and it seemed to me that he wanted to defend the position. It would be interesting, even at this hour of the morning, if he would in fact now try to tell us what steps he intends to take now that it has been ascertained that it is not the responsibility of the L.C.C. but of the Holborn Borough Council and other borough councils. He should correct this gross inaccuracy which he propounded in his television programme last week.

It is a serious matter if hon. Members can put out views for political advantage, they are proved to be wrong, and there is no redress—

Mr. A. Evans

I understand that my hon. Friend is asking the hon. Gentleman to correct a mistake which he made on television. I also understand my hon. Friend to say that the Government Whip has told the hon. Gentleman that he may not speak. Is that so? If the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) has been forbidden to speak in order to rectify a mistake, ought we not to know about it? I can hardly believe that he has been intimidated and not allowed to speak in this debate.

Mr. Howell

The point which I was making was that the hon. Gentleman was apparently waiting to take part in the debate. I was being charitable to him. He did have a conversation with the Government Whip, but then seemed to take no more interest in the proceedings. However, the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South clearly misled the entire nation and he has a moral duty to put that right.

Mr. John Hobson (Warwick and Leamington) rose—

Mr. Howell

I shall give way in a moment. As the hon. and learned Gentleman represents a Midlands constituency I shall not keep him waiting, and, as he is a Queen's Counsel, that is an added reason for giving way. My point is simply that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South should correct statements and should carry out his Parliamentary duties. It is surely more important that he should take care of the families in his borough through his work here than that he should appear on television. I must say that I find other television "stars" in this Committee and in the House are in somewhat the same position.

Mr. Hobson

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. He has said that my hon. Friend has made a misleading statement but he does not say what it is. Does he say that my hon. Friend was discussing on television the registration of houses—or rather, of furnished lettings—and which it is now established is the responsibility of the Metropolitan borough councils?

Mr. Howell

As the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South has not taken issue with us, I do not know. I would say that it is doubtful whether the hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Hobson) should offer free legal advice without being consulted. This would appear to me to be some breach of legal etiquette, but the fact is that he gave that advice. At any rate, I appreciate that the hon. and learned Gentleman has given that advice but I hope that he will consult his colleague—

Mr. Diamond

Surely my hon. Friend will not allow that intervention to go by without answering it completely, as he knows he can, by reference to the Act. The definition of a local authority, appearing in Section 6 (1, b), applies to all Sections of the Act and not just to Section 3, which provides for a register of rents. Is not my hon. Friend, therefore, right in accusing the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) of misleading the nation and, for all I know, if the television broadcast was projected further, of misleading the whole world on this point?

Mr. Howell

There is a considerable amount of substance in what my hon. Friend says, but I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman's intervention was to the effect that his hon. Friend was not, on television, dealing with this Act—

Mr. Hobson

We have not heard the hon. Member's accusation.

Mr. Howell

In that case the hon. and learned Gentleman must read HANSARD tomorrow, because I have already repeated my accusation two or three times and I do not want to weary the Committee with needless repetition—[Hon. Members: "Oh."]—and people making funny noises, Sir Gordon, should be careful, because I know that you are diligently watching the interests of the Committee to see that we do not overstep the mark. It is for that reason that I am anxious to have the Act in front of me. It is relevant that in his television programme the hon. Member may not have been dealing with this Act, but he should have been dealing with it. It is a very serious matter to discuss London's housing and lack of housing and not to deal with the situation created by the Government. Therefore, on balance, I do not think that the hon. and learned Gentleman's intervention was very helpful to his hon. Friend.

Section 5 deals with notice to quit after reference to the tribunal—

Mr. Fletcher

I did not see the television broadcast, but in view of the recent interchange of opinion, would it not be interesting, first, to know exactly what the Holborn Borough Council has done with its powers under Section 3 and the earlier Sections? As I understand it, the Holborn Borough Council has certain statutory duties and certain rights. One of the matters—with which, even if the hon. Member does not deal the Minister no doubt will—is what that council—to take just that as an example, though the same argument applies to the other borough councils—has done to implement the provisions of Section 2.

With regard to the register that local authorities have to keep, what seems to have emerged is that, owing to the uncertain interpretation of what should be put in the register, it is very doubtful whether some of these registers kept by some local authorities are really of any use at all, particularly if applications made to the tribunals were made some years ago and have not been brought up to date. It will be very difficult to formulate a view about the desirability of the continuance of the Act until we have been informed of the kind of register kept by Holborn Borough Council and the other borough councils, so I hope that my hon. Friend will elaborate that matter before he comes to Section 5.

1.15 a.m.

Mr. Howell

I quite agree. That is a matter that I was going to deal with after the Minister had replied. I am asking a series of questions in the hope of getting some information, and if the information that we get is inadequate, or non-existent, then one would have to return to the matter.

In order to satisfy my hon. Friend, I will ask the question direct about Holborn and St. Pancras Borough Council, because the answer would throw a considerable light on the activities of the hon. Member who represents that constituency. If the Minister could give us any information on how that borough council has administered this Act it would be most helpful. May I ask him, if he is going to supply the information, to tell us how the Holborn and St. Pancras Borough Council administered the Act before the change in its political complexion? I have a strong suspicion that the council has not been half as diligent in administering the Act in the last few years as it was under the pre- vious administration. It is relevant to know how the change in the political complexion of the council has changed the administration of an Act of Parliament.

Mr. Marsh

If my hon. Friend is asking this specific question, which is perfectly fair and relevant, about the register of the Holborn and St. Pancras Borough Council before and after the change in its political complexion, can we first get settled—because this is an important issue—whether, with respect to Section 3 (2, b) of the Act, this specification relates to contents and furniture or merely to the premises? Surely it is pointless to ask to what extent information is provided by the register if we are still in dispute as to the information which that register contains. My hon. Friend gave as his opinion that Section 3 (2, b) related purely to the premises per se and did not include the contents and furniture. I should have thought that, as we are dealing with an Act relating specifically to furnished accommodation, it is essential to know what is in that register before there is any point in knowing who keeps the register and how many people are on it.

Mr. Fletcher

Could I help my hon. Friend? This is a most material aspect of the matter, and I hope it can be cleared up either when the Minister replies or subsequently. As I understand, Section 3 requires the local authorities to keep a register, and the register has to contain first of all—and I think this is the first answer to my hon. Friend—the prescribed particulars relating to contents, and secondly a specification of the premises. I had always understood that subsection 2 (b) referred merely to a description of the premises and that particulars with regard to the furniture had to be included under paragraph (a).

Of course, it may be that in a great many contracts between landlord and tenant there is nothing in writing and, therefore, it would be difficult to get precise evidence from the parties as to what the verbal agreement was. But the register, as I understand it, comes into operation only after the tribunal has made a decision. When the tribunal makes its decision, the decision is in writing, and provide that the rent which has been fixed shall be in respect of certain articles of furniture. That is what I should have thought the Act requires. But what is much more doubtful is whether or not these registers kept by local authorities have, in fact, contained in them the particulars relating to furniture. Therefore, it seems to me that what my hon. Friends and, I imagine, the whole Committee are interested to know is not only what is the precise legal interpretation of Section 3—

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of order, Sir Gordon. My hon. Friend is making a point, but surely he is not at liberty to go on and make a speech. He was invited to make an interjection, and, although we appreciate his legal advice, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has the Floor.

The Chairman

I hope that the hon. Member will conclude his intervention and allow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath to continue his speech.

Mr. Fletcher

I was about to conclude my short intervention, Sir Gordon. I was saying that I should expect my hon. Friend not only to want to know what is the precise interpretation of the Section but also to ask the Minister to produce here and now in the Committee some of these registers from the local authorities so that we may look at them and see what they in fact contain.

Mr. A. Evans

Will my hon. Friend allow me to interrupt for a moment? He probably knows from his experience that a tribunal, when it has a case before it, will in most cases visit the actual premises and take a note of the amount of furniture in them. Whether or not the contents of that note are passed on to the local authority is doubtful, though I imagine that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us.

Mr. Howell

If I may now continue my speech, I wish to draw attention to Section 5. Although I agree that Section 4 is relevant, I had passed to a consideration of Section 5, which is, I suggest, the important one in this connection. I noticed that the Minister sent his Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Official Box, and I saw the occupant of that box go away. I can only assume that we are to have some helpful information in the course of the Minister's reply.

Section 5 is the Section which provides that the tribunal may determine that three months' protection shall be given to a tenant who has applied. This is, I suggest, the nub of the matter. We all know—and it is extremely serious—that anyone going to a tribunal to complain has only three months' protection thereafter. There are many unscrupulous people in property today.

Mr. A. Lewis

All Tories.

Mr. Howell

There may be Liberals, too, and I must say that we have not had a single Liberal Member present in the Committee today. Not long ago, I spent several days in a by-election campaign, and I noted the ardour with which the Liberal Party advanced its case.

The Chairman

That is going far beyond the Amendment.

Mr. Howell

I think you may be right, Sir Gordon, and the Liberals went rather far in that election. I shall not refer to it again, except to say that not one Liberal Member has been present during the debate.

Will the Minister tell us whether the three months' protection, with the option of a renewal for a further three months, is proving satisfactory for the protection of tenants? I have a friend who sits on a rent tribunal, and she tells me that she is extremely worried about the lack of protection for tenants. The clerks who faithfully serve the tribunals are extremely worried, too. People come to see them about excessive rents. They investigate and find that there is undoubtedly a prima facie case to go before the tribunal, but they have the greatest difficulty in getting people to bring the cases because, immediately after an order is made, that is the end for the tenants. As soon as the three months and, perhaps, the optional further three months, are up, the tenant has lost his protection.

This might have been all right in 1946 when the Act was passed, one year after the war. There were then a Labour Government and a majority of Labour councillors in the large local authorities, and it was expected, and it was all right to expect, that they would keep the position under review. In any case, in 1946 when the Act was passed it was thought that the housing problem would be solved in a relatively short space of time, and the Act was a temporary Measure to deal with exceptional hardship. It was expected that within a few years the situation would cure itself.

I have not read the debates which took place on the Bill, but I hazard a guess that no one on either side of the Chamber in 1946 would have said that sixteen years later we should still be far from solving a problem which the Bill was introduced to solve. The position has instead worsened, after ten years of Conservatism. In 1951 the Conservatives said that they would solve the problem by the magical figure of 300,000 houses a year. Although they accomplished that rate for some years, it has been on the decline recently, and all the evidence is that it will decline even further. In these circumstances, we are entitled to know the relevance the Government attach to the question of three months' protection.

I was astounded at the figure which one of my hon. Friends gave us, that one-half of the families in his constituency lived in shared accommodation. If that is so it raises in dramatic form indeed the question of three months' protection. The Minister shakes his head, but I think it does. I think that because of the Rent Act there is extra furnished accommodation. Houses have become vacant, houses which used to be occupied by only one family each, as I know is the case in my constituency—and I want to touch on that later on. The amount of furnished accommodation has risen dramatically, and because it has risen dramatically we ask ourselves the question, why have not the numbers of applicants to the rent tribunals risen in the same proportion? They have not risen in the same proportion because the Act says they are entitled to be protected for three months only. The Minister can disagree. I do not know whether he would like to deal with this specifically now, while I am on this point?

Mr. Rippon

If the hon. Member will look at Section 11 of the 1949 Act he will see that there is power to extend security tenure for three months any number of times.

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of order. Is it not the case that we are discussing whether or not the 1946 Act should be extended, not the 1949 Act, and that we were advised that we were to discuss only whether the 1946 Act should or should not be abolished? That is the Amendment we are discussing.

The Chairman

The Parliamentary Secretary referred to an Act which amended the 1946 Act.

Mr. Howell

I have not got the amending Act in front of me, but I take it from the Minister, but I am a little doubtful about it. I can only say, if the Minister is right, that it is a remarkable fact that it is generally understood throughout the country that tenants are protected for a maximum of six months.

Mr. Pavitt

This is an extremely important matter. In practice the Section works in this way. Once an application to the tribunal has been made there is a period of three months with a possible extension following that. In fact, knowing that he is about to be turned out anyway, what frequently happens is that he finds alternative accommodation himself and does not proceed with the application. The result is that the landlord is able to maintain the higher rent, in that any tenant who follows the first one feels unable to go to the tribunal because he is aware of this threat of eviction hanging over his head. We, therefore, have stabilisation of an unfair rent because of the very existence of the right to go to a tribunal.

1.30 a.m.

Mr. Howell

It may be so, but I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to substantiate the point about the effect this is having in the country. If a tenant can go any number of times to the tribunal to ask for any number of extensions, it means that he can secure permanent protection. We know that tenants do not obtain permanent protection, either because they do not know that they can continually go to the tribunal for these extensions, in which case there is not enough propaganda on the matter, or because the tribunals themselves show a marked reluctance to give extensions after six months. I suspect that the second point is the relevant one. I think that the Parliamentary Secretary will find that most tribunals, when it comes to the point, will not give protection beyond six months.

Mr. Mellish rose—

Mr. Howell

I will give way in a moment, but I think that I am now on the point of getting the Parliamentary Secretary to rise to clear up this question whether the rent tribunals are showing this marked reluctance. He appeared to be shaking his head about it.

Mr. Rippon

I was indicating to the Committee what the power was. I think it is fair to say that the rent tribunals are reluctant to exercise it, except in what they regard as an appropriate case.

Mr. Howell

In that case I am quite right in the supposition I am making. What is the Minister doing about it? If the tribunals are reluctant to exercise these powers, why are they so reluctant? What the Parliamentary Secretary has told us is a very serious matter. He has told us that rent tribunals are reluctant to operate the amending powers which the House of Commons gave them in 1949.

Mr. Mellish

We know that in London of sample cases taken of those who were homeless, the majority had been evicted from furnished accommodation. If that is so, and if what the Parliamentary Secretary has said is true, how were they evicted when the law gives them protection? It is odd that the Parliamentary Secretary should first create one impression and then get up and create quite another.

Mr. Howell

This is perhaps the most important fact that has been elicited in the debate. I take it that the Minister is right in saying that these people can go repeatedly for help, but obviously they are not getting that help. My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey is quite right and his comment is extremely germane to this problem.

Mr. A. Lewis

The Parliamentary Secretary pointed out that the tribunals are extremely reluctant to give this protection.

Mr. Howell

Yes, the tribunals are reluctant. That is the point that we have now adduced from the Parliamentary Secretary. We have now reached a situation where we are being asked to renew an Act of Parliament which the Parliamentary Secretary tells us the tribunals are refusing to operate.

Mr. Rippon indicated dissent.

Mr. Howell

The Parliamentary Secretary cannot have it both ways. He first said that a tenant can go to a tribunal at any time to obtain protection for a further three months, and then said that the tribunals were showing remarkable reluctance to operate this provision. That means that the will of the House of Commons is being deliberately flouted by rent tribunals. That is the logic of the Parliamentary Secretary's case.

Mr. Rippon

I am sure that the hon. Member does not want to be unfair to the rent tribunals, which do their job very carefully and diligently. What I said was that these were the powers which Parliament has given them, but these regular extensions are not given in many cases, except where the tribunals feel that it is appropriate to do so. [HON. MEMBERS: Why?] That is a matter for the discretion of a tribunal in the circumstances of a case. That is under Section 11 of the 1949 Act.

Mr. Howell

I do not want to do an injustice to rent tribunals. I have a healthy respect for the work they have done in difficult circumstances. But we have now found from the Parliamentary Secretary that, for one reason or another, and perhaps for a good reason, rent tribunals are flouting the expressed will of the House of Commons.

I have no doubt that the Labour Government had an entirely different intention when they brought in the 1949 Act. Why did Parliament then decide that extra protection might be given if the Parliamentary Secretary now tells us that it is to be invoked only in the most special cases? I do not believe that the Labour Government intended that this power should be used in the parsimonious way the Parliamentary Secretary has suggested. It is an extremely serious situation.

Mr. Fletcher

It seems to me that the last two interventions by the Parliamentary Secretary have raised an important point which I do not think was clear to some of my hon. Friends. For the first time in this debate references have been made to the 1949 Act. Hitherto the debate has proceeded on the assumption that the Act which we were asked to extend was the 1946 Act.

Sir William, you and your predecessors in the Chair have rightly pointed out to us, over and over again, that we must confine our observations to the 1946 Act because that is the Act referred to in the Bill. Yet at this very late stage in two interventions the Parliamentary Secretary has referred to the 1949 Act, and, not unnaturally, that took several of my hon. Friends somewhat by surprise. Before we proceed any further, we ought to clear up this point and know to what extent we are being asked to deal not only with the 1946 Act but with the 1949 Act.

I have a shrewd suspicion that we shall be told to look at Part II of the Schedule, where we shall find references not only to the 1946 Act but to an Act of: 15 & 16 Geo. 6 & 1 Eliz. 2. to an Act of: 2 & 3 Eliz. 2. and an Act of 5 & 6 Eliz. 2. It is a very interesting academic point, with a great deal of history, but I am sure that you, Sir William, would not think this an appropriate moment in which to explain that what the Parliamentary Secretary calls an Act of 1949 is technically an Act of 12, 13 and 14 Geo. 6. I think that we mean the same thing, but this is one of those interesting examples of the kind of confusion we sometimes get into because of the niceties of Parliamentary draftsmanship. But that is by the way.

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of Order, Sir William. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) was intervening, but he seems to be making a speech. Who has the Floor.

The Deputy-Chairman

I understood that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) had the Floor and was interrupted for an interjection, but that interjection appears to be going on for a long time.

Mr. Fletcher

I will bring it to a conclusion, Sir William. I have made my point. I was hoping that it would be for the convenience of the Committee to know whether we are confined to the 1946 Act or whether we can also discuss these three or four other Acts.

Mr. Howell

What worries me is the sudden emergence of Members opposite whom we have not hitherto seen during the debate. I hope that this does not mean that the Whips are busy at the telephone rousing Members from their beds to force us down. That would be a serious matter and would constitute despicable tactics.

Mr. A. Lewis

They are a despicable party.

Mr. Howell

In case I am unable to register a protest later, I register it now.

Mr. Marsh

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) raised the valid point that we had now discovered that the Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act, 1949, was also related, to some extent, to what we are discussing. I am in a quandary and would like the point settled. To what extent are we now involved in the amending Acts in addition to the 1946 Act? My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has been making a number of points—and perhaps you, Sir William, may be able to assist—arising out of the 1946 Act.

We have now been informed by the Parliamentary Secretary that this also involves a number of other Acts. There is reference to the Crown Lessees (Protection of Sub-Tenants) Act, 1952, as well. Section 11 (5) of the Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act, 1949, states: This section shall be construed as one with the Act of 1946, and reference in this section to that Act shall be construed as references to that Act as extended by section seven of this Act. I am in a quandary about the extent to which we are able to discuss the 1949 and 1952 Acts as well as the 1946 Act. If at this stage we are able to pursue that sort of argument, it seems very late in the evening and I am left in the difficulty of wondering what happens if these laws are not continued and whether, if the Bill is not passed, all or some of them will fall.

1.45 a.m.

The Deputy-Chairman

The position is that, in so far as the 1949 or other Acts amend the 1946 Act, they are part of the 1946 Act whose continuance or discontinuance we are discussing.

Mr. Howell

With respect, I thought that that would be the position, Sir William. It puts us in this difficulty: when I tried to get copies of the relevant Acts, I could get copies only of the 1946 Act. The amending Acts were not available in the Vote Office. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) has yet to speak, and in four hours he has not succeeded in getting a copy.

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of order. Is not that a point for you, in the Chair, Sir William? I, too, have been to the Vote Office and tried to get copies of the Acts, but I could not get one. Is it not the duty of the Chair to see that hon. Members are supplied with, or have readily available in the Vote Office, the various papers which they need for their Parliamentary business? I am told that there are no copies in the Vote Office. Is it possible for you to do something to see that we get the papers which are necessary for us to carry out our duties?

The Deputy-Chairman

There are copies of the Statutes, both in the Library and the Division Lobbies, of which hon. Members can avail themselves—more than one copy.

Mr. Fletcher

Further to that point of order. Is not this a matter for the Leader of the House? Am I not right in recollecting that on a number of previous occasions hon. Members have had to protest that they have been unable—I did not realise that the Leader of the House would come into the Chamber at what I might call the psychological moment. It was a well-timed arrival and I am sure that the whole Committee is grateful. May I now address my remarks to the Leader of the House?

The Deputy-Chairman

The hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) must bear in mind that he is now speaking on a point of order. I will do my best to reply.

Mr. Fletcher

On a point of order. Some of my hon. Friends have drawn attention to the fact that they have been to the Vote Office in order to try to obtain copies of the relevant Acts mentioned in the Schedule to the Bill. At a relatively late hour in our discussions, it has emerged that we are being asked to extend for a further year not only the Act of 1946, but four amending Acts. This matter was brought to our attention for the first time by the Minister himself, and a number of my hon. Friends, not unnaturally, then went to the Vote Office to try to get copies of the Acts which the Minister had mentioned.

On previous occasions when this difficulty has arisen the Leader of the House has always given an undertaking that an adequate number of copies of the relevant Acts would be available in the Vote Office for the convenience of hon. Members. It is not enough to say that there is a copy in the Library, because the copies there are bound. For the convenience of hon. Members, it has hitherto been arranged for printers' copies, unbound, to be available to facilitate discussion.

My point of order is whether it is reasonable in those circumstances to ask hon. Members to continue with consideration of this Amendment until sufficient copies are available for the benefit of hon. Members.

Mr. Diamond

Further to that point of order. As you have already ruled, Sir William, that the 1946 Act is to be deemed the Act as amended by subsequent Acts, and as you have said that it is possible to get bound copies of it from the Library, may I draw your attention to the fact that I am informed that there is only one annotated copy of the Act, which is in my possession, and that therefore no other hon. Member is able to see the Act which we are discussing? They will be misled in everything by thinking that the Act is that which some of them have in their possession, when that is far from being the case.

The Deputy-Chairman

The Committee will recollect that I did not refer to bound copies of the Act but to copies of the Statutes.

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of order. We are pleased to see that 30 or 40 hon. Members opposite are present. Are there sufficient copies for them all and for my hon. Friends? I was told that there was a limited supply.

Mr. Howell

I can understand your not wishing to reply to that point of order, Sir William, for it should be obvious to my hon. Friend that hon. Members opposite wish to take no interest in our proceedings and do not want copies of the Act. In the course of the debate my hon. Friends can share the copy which we have.

I want to return to Section 6. If the local authority so resolves, the powers under this Act may be exercised by one of their officers". Section 6 (3) states that a local authority shall have power to publish information regarding the provisions of this Act. Will the Minister tell us how many local authorities operate this Section, particularly Section 6 (3)? How many local authorities publish information about the Act? How many local authorities published the information in 1946 and have done nothing about it since? How many local authorities published information about the Act when it was amended in 1949? That is the Amendment which most of us have not in our possession. What does the Minister think about publicity?

Since the Rent Act was passed in 1957 the amount of furnished accommodation has risen astronomically. There is a very strong case for a wholesale propaganda campaign and publicity campaign throughout the country to make the position known to new tenants. Some of those now occupying rented accommodation were only 6 years of age when the Act was put on the Statute Book in 1946, and in those youthful years they could not be expected to follow the publicity which no doubt was put out in 1946. They have grown older and married and the publicity has been forgotten. There is clearly a very strong case for the Government to take urgent steps to see that if the Act is given a further lease of life, local authorities fulfil their obligations about publicity. We are not asking for too much; merely that the Minister, in justifying his demand for a further lease of life for this Act, should give us information on how it is working.

I will leave that Section for the moment, because I want to come to Section 9, which deals with offences under the Act, Section 9 (1) states: A person who requires or receives any payment or any consideration in contravention of section four of this Act shall be guilty of an offence and be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months or to both such fine and such imprisonment, and, without prejudice to any other method of recovery … This raises the general question of penalties to which, surely, the Committee is entitled to give consideration. As abuses by landlords of furnished accommodation are generally accepted to be on the increase, we are entitled to know whether a fine of £100 and the term of imprisonment stated are in line with this day and age, for those penalties were fixed in 1946, a considerable time ago.

I will not go into an economic dissertation on the fall in the value of the £ under this Government, although it is quite fair to consider whether £100 in 1946 should still be the penalty in use today. One does not want to trespass unduly on these occasions. Suffice to say that all hon. Members know that many of our better newspapers have been vigilant in drawing attention to some of the sharks in the landlord field and have long lamented that when, on the odd occasions, some of these fellows are caught, the amount of the fine and imprisonment seem to be negligible.

Remembering that these penalties were determined in 1946, can the Minister say how many prosecutions have taken place in these years? Will he relate the figures to the amount of furnished accommodation available, particularly since it has been on the increase, and can he say what is the feeling of the rent tribunals about the powers and penalties available to the courts?

Mr. Mellish

I think that my hon. Friend is asking for the impossible, even from this Minister. The question of penalties does not arise, because people are no longer complaining about these landlords. They cannot complain, because if they do they lose their tenancies. My hon. Friend is missing the main burden of the argument—that this Act was introduced in 1946 and is no longer of value. That is why we do not want it. Its purpose has become abortive. My hon. Friend can be given all the figures he likes, but until we get an amended outlook on the whole question of housing—and, if possible, a new Government as well—we will get nowhere. My hon. Friend rightly talks about shark speculators and asks for the figures, but I can assure him that, even if the Minister can supply the details, I shall not be interested in them.

Mr. Howell

That is an interesting intervention by my hon. Friend. It appears that he has made up his mind. He does not want this Act under any circumstances. But, as I have said, I do not quite share my hon. Friend's view. My point is that this Act should be done away with or, at any rate, we should be told how it is working. There is an obligation upon the Government to give us this information before we reach a final conclusion.—[An HON. MEMBER: "It is not relevant."]—Until we have heard the information, we cannot decide the question of relevance.

2.0 a.m.

For my part, if I was convinced by the Government that the Act was protecting the interests of tenants, and that the penalties were sufficiently severe, then I would be well disposed to the continuance of the Act. But if that is not the case, then I must agree with my hon. Friends that the sooner we get rid of the Act the better. That is all I have to say on offences.

Mr. Diamond

Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, I suggest that he is probably looking at the Act as he has it in his book of Statutes, but I am looking at it in its annotated form. The Section dealing with offences has been amended. Whereas in 1946 it was an offence for a person to require or receive any payment or a consideration, it is now an offence only to require or receive a payment.

A landlord or lessee could get round this by asking, not for any cash, but for something just as valuable. So, any question raised on this should really be in two parts: what was the position in 1946, and what has happened since the Act was amended in 1949? Very likely the information which my hon. Friend would be given would be utterly meaningless because the transaction could be carried on by means of a "consideration."

Mr. Howell

I know that my hon. Friend wants to speak, and I should like him to elaborate that point. What is worrying me is that I suspected a little time ago that the Government might be attempting to put the Closure. Looking round the Chamber, it seems that hon. Members are being brought in for that express purpose. I hope that we can have an assurance from the Patronage Secretary that the Government are not going to stifle debate on this extremely important subject.

Hon. Members have obviously been aroused and brought in, and it is a most serious matter if attempts are to be made to interfere with our discussion on this involved and important topic.

I was about to say that Section 10 deals with the question of legal proceedings. It lays down that these must be instituted by a local authority. Only a local authority can do it. If a local authority institutes proceedings, then the Committee is entitled to some very detailed information. For example, has there been any reluctance on the part of local authorities to institute proceedings? Is there any reluctance on their part to having matters referred to the sort of officers who are vigorous in the carrying out of responsibilities imposed by Statutes of the House of Commons?

The Birmingham local authority delegated this Section to the health committee. We have some first-class officers in that department and they are very zealous in their work, but even in Birmingham—and I suspect that this will be true of other local authorities—the number of cases coming before the rent tribunals in no way matches up to the requirements of the situation. How does the Minister feel about the way in which local authorities are exercising their powers?

I want now to turn—

Mr. Mellish

My hon. Friend has spoken for well over an hour, during which time he castigated county boroughs until he found out that what he meant were the local authorities. He has been asking the Minister how much the local authorities have done, as if the Minister would know—he does not even know what his own Ministry has done. Does my hon. Friend expect the Bermondsey authority to find the time or the staff to deal with the requirements of this Act, enacted in 1946, when it is already at full stretch trying to find houses, let flats, and so on? The local authorities just have not the staff to do it, and they have not the time, either.

Mr. Howell

If that is so, it is another serious matter which has been exposed by what I hope is a searching cross-examination. If local authorities have not the staff necessary to protect their tenants, the Act is worthless. I would at once concede to my hon. Friends the Members for Bermondsey and for West Ham, North (Mr. A. Lewis) that if local authorities cannot enforce the Act it is a considerable argument for not granting the Government what they are seeking. If the Act were enforced with the enthusiasm envisaged when it was passed there might be a case, and one of my main objectives has been to find out the facts. I do not want to judge the Government prematurely, but I suspect that when we get the evidence we will be led to my hon. Friend's conclusion.

I turn, now, to the Schedule—and I hope that hon. Members opposite are not getting impatient—

Mr. A. Lewis

It does not matter if they are.

Mr. Howell

At the moment, I am dealing only with the bones by referring to the Act; we can yet put the flesh on the bones. The Schedule deals with the setting up of tribunals. I think that all the Minister has so far told us is that the tribunals are very fair. We all accept that. They do their job very diligently, fairly and honestly. At the same time, the impression is gaining ground that their members are drawn from a very cloistered section. The chairman is usually found to be a semi-retired barrister or someone of that ilk, while the other members do not faith- fully represent a cross-section of the community.

If that were so it would be extremely serious, because the members must be in touch with life at many points. They must understand what this is all about, and be able to bring to bear a wealth of experience and common sense on the problems of today. May we have an assurance from the Minister that these tribunals are, in fact, composed of such people, that the consumers—for example, the Co-operative movement and certainly the trade union movement—are being fairly represented on these tribunals? I am not sure by what method the Minister chooses the people to sit on these tribunals. If I may draw on my local government experience, for some five or six years I had the task of recommending members of a local authority and other people of similar standing to serve on all sorts of committees, and I cannot recall ever being asked in the Birmingham City Council to make a recommendation in respect of a rent tribunal. I do not know whether any of my hon. Friends who have had experience in the matter have discovered the secret of how people get on to these tribunals. It seems to be more secretive than the way in which people get on to benches of magistrates, and, in all conscience, that is an extremely elaborate and secretive procedure.

Mr. Reynolds

I agree that the appointment of magistrates is a very secretive affair, but my hon. Friend will agree that there are many more magisterial divisions in the country than there are rent tribunals. Would he not admit that in so far as a petty sessional division is concerned, the vast majority of the magistrates—

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. I am not clear how the question of magistrates can be in order on this Amendment.

Mr. Reynolds

I am trying to make the point, with which I think my hon. Friend will agree, Sir William, that rent tribunals as at present constituted cover such wide areas administered by so many local authorities that it is hardly surprising that my hon. Friend cannot remember having been asked, as a member of a local authority, to assist in the nomination of such persons. Would he not agree that with the comparatively small number of tribunals which we have got, each one covering a vast area of the country, it must be very difficult for the members of rent tribunals to have that detailed and intimate knowledge of a particular area which is necessary before they are in a position to sit in judgment and decide on the exact sort of rent which ought to be charged for a particular room in a particular house in a particular street which is probably twenty miles away from where they live, and a street in which they have never had the opportunity of walking because the area is so big?

Mr. Howell

That is an extremely relevant interruption. I agree that the method by which persons become magistrates is deserving of considerable sociological study, and the attitude of mind of people who serve on rent tribunals is, of course, extremely relevant to the decisions that they take. They have got to apply their minds to the individual circumstances of each case. We are entitled to know how people come to serve on rent tribunals. Even after the helpful intervention that we have had from my hon. Friend, I do not think anyone knows who makes the nominations.

Mr. A. Evans

My hon. Friend may know that the Franks Committee stated in its Report that the Committee was not satisfied that the fees paid to members of these tribunals were adequate to attract enough people of the right quality. In that connection, my hon. Friend will notice that in the Schedule to the Act it is laid down that the Minister has power to appoint the chairman and power to arrange for the salaries that these people shall have. I hope that he will bear in mind that the quality of the personnel will to some extent depend upon the salaries paid and that this matter has been commented upon by the Franks Committee in expressing its doubt about the adequacy of the fees paid. In his consideration of the Schedule, will my hon. Friend keep that factor in mind?

2.15 a.m.

Mr. Howell

I am receiving so much advice that it is difficult to know what course to take. I agree that the Report of the Franks Committee is relevant. I was coming to the point in the Schedule to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention. It provides that the Minister shall make such orders as to payments for the chairmen and members of the tribunals as he thinks fit. We are, therefore, entitled to know what the chairmen and members of tribunals draw today. When was the current rate of payment fixed, and what were the circumstances taken into account in fixing it?

Mr. Diamond

And expenses?

Mr. Howell

And what are the expenses paid.

Mr. A. Lewis

Has the pay pause had any effect?

Mr. Howell

I hardly suppose that the Government's pay pause has affected that.

Mr. A. Evans

Why not?

Mr. Howell

There is no logical reason why not, I agree, but we hope that the Government have not in fact done that. This is a serious matter, and I hope that the Minister will tell us what are the principles governing the rates of pay laid down. How many members serve in a voluntary capacity, if any do? Is the rate of remuneration which the Minister has laid down having an effect upon the quality of people coming forward to sit on tribunals? All these are very important questions.

Mr. Mellish

Is not the amalgamation of many of the tribunals another way of saving money at the expense, in the long run, of the people who need their help?

Mr. Howell

I have completed my review of the Act. The Committee will be glad to know that I have not really started my speech. However, I do not want unnecessarily to detain the Committee because I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) and for Islington, North have not yet spoken.

Mr. Reynolds

Before my hon. Friend leaves the Act, may I remind him that he made a point which brought forth an intervention from the Parliamentary Secretary, who referred him to Section 11 of the 1949 Act? He said that that, apparently, would make it possible to give more or less perpetual security of tenure: in other words, an occupier of furnished premises who had been to the rent tribunal would be in roughly the same position as the occupier of a rent controlled dwelling. I notice that in the case of Regina v. St. Helen's and District Rent Tribunal ex parte Pickavance, in 1952, the Lord Chief Justice in the Divisional Court said that this most definitely was not the intention of Section 11. It was not intended to give the occupier of furnished property a similar sort of protection to that which the occupiers of ordinary rent controlled dwellings have.

It would appear from that judgment of the Lord Chief Justice in the Divisional Court, which, to the best of my knowledge, was upheld by the Court of Appeal and by the House of Lords, that there are many ways still in which the owner of property can get round Section 11 of the 1949 Act. One method is to wait till one day after the three months' security given under the Act of

1946 has expired and then to give notice to quit, and then, as I understand the judgment. Section 11 of the Act of 1949 no longer applies and there is no further protection whatever that the rent tribunal can give to the tenant. I think my hon. Friend would agree with me that the Parliamentary Secretary, in his interjection in my hon. Friend's speech, gave the impression that once a tenant had been to the tribunal and got three months' security he could keep going back to the tribunal, but it would appear from this judgment, which the Parliamentary Secretary has probably heard about, because it has been discussed before here and elsewhere, that the Parliamentary Secretary was mistaken in this context.

Mr. Hughes-Young rose in his place, and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 116, Noes 9.

Division No. 5.]	AYES	[2.21 a.m.
Agnew, Sir Peter	Grant, Rt. Hon. William	Page, Graham (Crosby)
Aitken, W. T.	Green, Alan	Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Allason, James	Gresham Cooke, R.	Pilkington, Sir Richard
Atkins, Humphrey	Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R, G.	Prior, J. M. L.
Balniel, Lord	Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)	Pym, Francis
Batsford, Brian	Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)	Ramsden, James
Biffen, John	Hay, John	Rawlinson, Peter
Bossom, Clive	Hendry, Forbes	Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin
Bourne-Arton, A.	Hiley, Joseph	Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Box, Donald	Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)	Ridsdale, Julian
Boyle, Sir Edward	Hinchingbrooke, Viscount	Rippon, Geoffrey
Bryan, Paul	Hirst, Geoffrey	Roberts, sir Peter (Heeley)
Buck, Antony	Hobson, John	Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Bullard, Denys	Hocking, Philip N,	St. Clair, M.
Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)	Holland, Philip	Shaw, M.
Carr, Compton (Barons Court)	Hughes-Young, Michael	Shepherd, William
Carr, Robert (Mitcham)	Hutchison, Michael Clark	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn
Channon, H. P. G.	Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)	Skeet, T. H. H.
Chataway, Christopher	Johnson, Eric (Blackley)	Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'rd & Chiswick)
Chichester-Clark, R.	Johnson smith, Geoffrey	Spearman, Sir Alexander
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)	Kerr, Sir Hamilton	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Cooke, Robert	Leburn, Gilmour	Stodart, J. A.
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill	Lindsay, Martin	Studholme, Sir Henry
Corfield, F. V.	Longbottom, Charles	Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Lucas, Sir Jocelyn	Taylor, F. H. (M'ch'st'r, Moss Side)
Deedes, W. F.	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh	Temple, John M.
Digby, Simon Wingfield	McLaren, Martin	Thomas, Peter (Conway)
Doughty, Charles	Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)	Turner, Colin
du Cann, Edward	Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)	van straubenzee, W. R.
Elliot, Capt. Waiter (Carshalton)	Maddan, Martin	Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John
Elliott, R. W. (Nwcstle-upon-Tyne, N.)	Mathew, Robert (Honiton)	Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)
Emery, Peter	Mawby, Ray	Walder, David
Farr, John	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.	Wall, Patrick
Fisher, Nigel	Mills, Stratton	Whitelaw, William
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	More, Jasper (Ludlow)	Wilson Geoffrey (Truro)
Foster, John	Nicholson, Sir Godfrey	Worsley, Marcus
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)	Nugent, Sir Richard
Gammans, Lady	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Gibson-Watt, David	Osborn, John (Hallam)	Mr. Graeme Finlay and
Goodhart, Philip	Page, John (Harrow, West)	Mr. Michael Noble.
NOES
Evans, Albert	Mackie, John (Enfield, East)	Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
Fletcher, Eric	Marsh, Richard
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)	Mellish, R. J.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
MacColl, James	Pavitt, Laurence	Mr. Arhbur Lewis and
		Mr. John Diamond.

Question, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Schedule, put accordingly and agreed to.

2.30 a.m.

Mr. M. Stewart

I beg to move, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again. I attempted, Sir William, to move this Motion at an earlier stage, but it was drawn to my attention that I was trying to do it in the middle of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell). I think I may be excused for that, for it was very difficult for hon. Members to tell at what point my hon. Friend had reached the end or even the middle of his speech.

The Deputy-Chairman

I am not prepared to grant leave for the Motion to be moved.

Mr. Stewart

On a point of order, Sir William. May I draw your attention to the fact that to our great surprise, and when we had been given to understand by the Parliamentary Secretary that he would reply, we had the Closure moved? In those circumstances, surely it is right that there should be some opportunity for the Opposition to express their view about what has happened. I would urge that after the, in effect, gagging of the Committee on the Question just decided, it would not be justifiable or prudent to put me in a position when I could not even put before you the reasons why I believe it would be right for the Committee to report progress at this time.

I fully appreciate, Sir William, that you have the right to refuse the Motion, but I cannot think it would be right for you to make such a refusal before I had even had the opportunity to put before you the reasons why leave might be granted. I shall be obliged if you will allow me to proceed.

I wish to move the Motion to save the Committee from a repetition of the shocking trick which has just been played on us by the Patronage Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary. [Interruption.] I invite hon. Members who are jeering to consider what they have done. There are some hon. Members opposite who are supposed to represent constituencies which has serious housing problems. For the last four hours, while these problems have been discussed—[HON. MEMBERS: "Nine."] I am speaking with the permission of the Chair. I shall stay until I have said what I have to say. I know what hon. Members are trying to say—that only a small number of my hon. Friends have been here. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That is true, but no one of my hon. Friends who has been here has at any time tried to prevent any other hon. Member who wanted to discuss this subject from doing so.

What is discreditable here is that Members opposite who represent constituencies with serious housing problems will not even come into this Chamber while we discuss those problems for four hours. But, then, when they are told, "Come along and vote quickly and then you can get to bed," they come and fill the Lobbies. That will not look well in the constituencies of some of them. They are saying, "We are not sufficiently interested in the problems of London's homeless."

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. I hope the hon. Gentleman will remember that he is now seeking permission to move to report Progress. I hope he will not make a wider speech than is quite necessary for his Motion.

Mr. Stewart

I will not, Sir William. I want to make two points only. First, if we report Progress, we shall save hon. Members from having to do again the discreditable thing they have done already—that is to say, they have neglected the serious housing problems we have been discussing but have trotted along to prevent continuation of the discussion. That is a discreditable thing to do. Secondly, it will save the Government from a repetition of the injury to their own credit and honour that they have done just now.

We were led to suppose by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that he would reply to the important debate which was then continuing. He received no support during the debate from any of his hon. Friends. Now, with the assistance, presumably, of the Patronage Secretary and, I am sorry to say, of the Leader of the House, he has dodged away from the undertaking he had given to reply. Both of these things are discreditable things to do. The party opposite sometimes makes claim to be the guardian of certain traditions in our national life. One of the developments of the Conservative Party in recent years has been the successive triumph within its ranks—

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. In reply to the hon. Gentleman's request, I acceded to that request in allowing him to give the reasons why he sought to report Progress. I have heard sufficient of the reasons to repeat my former intention that I am not prepared to accept the Motion to report Progress. The Question is—

Mr. Fletcher

On a point of order, Sir William. Before you reach a final decision—[HON. MEMBERS: "He has"]—may I, with great respect, in one or two sentences, amplify one aspect of what my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) was saying?

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. The Motion has not been moved, because I did not grant the hon. Member for Fulham leave to move it.

Mr. A. Evans

On a point of order. My hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) has just given you reasons why he thought you should grant him leave to move to report Progress, Sir William. While he was speaking, he was inaudible to me because of the clamour and shouting by hon. Members opposite who had not been here during the whole of our debate. No doubt you were able to hear what my hon. Friend was saying, but, because of the clamour and shouting of hon. Members opposite, I was not. In those circumstances, would you permit my hon. Friend again to state those reasons? I should have thought that at the time you would have called for order and rebuked the hon. Members who were making the clamour.

The Deputy-Chairman

Had I myself been unable to hear what the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) was saying, or if it had been brought to my notice that some hon. Members could not hear what he was saying, I would certainly have requested silence. I had no such request.

Mr. Marsh

On a point of order. I apologise for raising a further point of order, Sir William. As I understand the position, hon. Members on this side of the Committee, as a minority, have no protection other than yourself. This evening, we have been discussing an extremely serious issue. That is beyond doubt. We were promised—promised—a reply from the Minister, but no Government supporter has spoken and neither has the Minister spoken. The Government have used their majority to stop discussion and prevent any answer from being given. The question I am asking is this—

Mr. Denis Howell

Can there be a Closure before the Government have replied?

Mr. Marsh

If we cannot even present our arguments for a move to enable the Bill to be discussed at some other time, is there anything to prevent the Government from proceeding with the rest of the Bill without any discussion, which would be a complete negation of any democratic process?

The Deputy-Chairman

The hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) is seeking to repeat moving to report Progress, which I have already stated I am unable to accept.

Mr. Reynolds

On a point of order. This is a rather different matter. I can see that you are looking at a piece of paper, Sir William, and I gather that you are about to put the Question, which would preclude my putting this point of order. Is it your intention to call the Amendment in page 3, to leave out lines 39 and 40.

The Deputy-Chairman

That Amendment has not been selected.

Mr. Denis Howell

On a point of order. You have shown considerable patience with hon. Members this evening, Sir William, for which we are grateful. Do you feel able to give the Committee your reasons for accepting the Closure Motion before we had had a single speech from the Government side?

The Deputy-Chairman

That is not debatable at this time. If, subsequently, a Motion is put down, it may be considered, but the reason for accepting the Closure is not debatable now.

Mr. Mellish

On a point of order. So that we can get it quite clear, am I to understand that later on in this morning's entertainment we shall be discussing the Motor Vehicles (Tests) (Extension) Order? May I give you notice that we intend to debate that, Sir William?

The Deputy-Chairman

That has nothing to do with me.

I now propose to put the Question.

The Question is, That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill.

Several Hon. Members rose—

2.45 a.m.

Mr. Fletcher

Surely the Committee first wishes to hear some reasons for and against that Question? In view of our discussion on the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, it cannot be the Government's intention to invite the Committee to allow this Schedule to stand without some answers to the speeches by my hon. Friends on that Act. I speak in the presence of the Leader of the House. This is a new experience for him; he assumed his office only recently. It is right to express some sympathy with him in what must be a very testing time for him, because I do not think that he will look back with much satisfaction on what has happened in Committee.

He was fortunate enough to be here during a substantial part of the debate. I am not sure whether he heard my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart), but he heard a number of speakers. Unlike many other hon. Members opposite, he was present and knows that a number of my hon. Friends have very strong views on this subject. We are deeply concerned about the position of the homeless in London and other big cities. That is why we made our speeches. We fully expected a reply, if not from the Leader of the House certainly from the Minister responsible. But the Government used their majority to move the Closure before any Ministerial reply.

The Deputy-Chairman

If I may say so with respect, the hon. Member has turned from his point of order to me to a point which he is putting to the Leader of the House. May I first reply to the point of order which he put to me?

Mr. Fletcher

With great respect, Sir William, I have not put a point of order. I am trying to give reasons why the Committee should not accept the Motion, "That this be the Schedule to the Bill." I am not raising a point of order. I hope that you will believe me when I say that I am genuinely trying to save the time of the Committee.

The Deputy-Chairman

Perhaps I can meet the hon. Member's wish, and I am sure the wish of the Committee, to save time by stating that it has always been ruled that the merits of any Measure which it is proposed to continue cannot be discussed on Second Reading. Mr. Speaker has ruled since 1887 that in order to discuss the operation of any Act or Order the proper course is to move to exclude that Act in Committee. The whole sense of the Ruling is that an Amendment must be put down. It would frustrate the intention of the Ruling restricting debate if there could be a full, roving debate on any of the several Acts in the Schedule on the Question of the Schedule being the Schedule to the Bill. That is the Question which I have put, and on that Question the only matter to be debated is whether all the Acts cited in the Schedule shall collectively form part of the Bill. On the Question which I have put to the Committee, that is the only issue on which a debate—a very narrow debate—could take place.

Mr. Fletcher

I am sure that the Committee is indebted to you for that Ruling. I had looked up the Rulings of your predecessors as to what was permissible and what was not on the various stages,: of an Expiring Laws Continuance Bill and, with great respect, Sir William, the passage you have quoted with reference to no debate being permitted on Second Reading has been stated by Mr. Speaker in the past.

I think I am right in saying that there has never been a Ruling that the Committee should not discuss the Question "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill". Naturally I accept your Ruling. I am not proposing to have anything like a general debate about the various Acts in the Bill. I was proceeding to say that I am not concerned with the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, 1919, on which we had a lengthy and useful discussion.

I submit, with respect, that when we come to this stage and when we are considering whether the Question which is before us now we are in the unprecedented position that in Committee we have had a debate on a Measure—the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946—to which there has been no Ministerial reply. I am sure that it would be in accordance with precedent if the opportunity presented itself in debate on the Schedule to enable some observations to be made from the Government Front Bench, in general, on the Schedule and, in particular, dealing with some of the observations made during the preceding debate.

The Deputy-Chairman

That is exactly what would be out of order on the Question "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill". It is not in order on this Question to discuss what is in the Amendments that have been discussed and, therefore, I hope that the Committee will allow me to put the Question.

Mr. Reynolds

On a point of order. A short while ago I asked whether you intended to call a particular Amendment which was down on the Order Paper. You replied that that Amendment had not been selected. If I now understand your Ruling—that one cannot at this stage discuss the individual matters, even in a general way—does not that mean that we shall not have a chance to discuss Part II of the Licensing Act, 1953, since the only way to discuss that matter would be through the selection of an Amendment? That Amendment was not selected by the Chair. Therefore, if your Ruling on the Schedule is correct, there is no way for hon. Members to discuss this part of the Bill.

I submit that surely there must be some way to enable hon. Members to discuss this matter. At the moment we shall have to approve—if your series of Rulings are correct—or disapprove of Part II of the Licensing Act, 1953, without any opportunity for a single word of discussion by the Committee.

The Deputy-Chairman

If the hon. Member had wished this Amendment to be discussed he or his hon. Friends could have put it down themselves. In actual fact, the only two hon. and learned Members who chose to put it down both signified that they were not anxious to move it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] In view of that I, in the Chair, decided that I would not select for calling an Amendment which neither the mover nor the seconder wished to move. I abide by that.

Mr. M. Stewart

I understood that it would not be in order, on the Motion, "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill," to have what I think you termed, Sir William, a general or roving debate on any particular Acts mentioned in the Bill, and that the only question before us was whether all the Measures should, collectively, stand part. As I understand that Ruling, it would not then be right to make speeches about any one of the Statutes but that if one made a speech about all of them, that would be in order.

That, I think, is what the words you used mean and I would address my query to you rather than to hon. Members opposite. If I may take it that that is so, I think we might, in your phrase, Sir William, have consideration collectively of the Statutes mentioned in the Schedule. It is a question of whether the Committee should, by a single Measure, continue collectively in existence such a miscellaneous collection of Statutes as we have in this Schedule. It is in order to keep within your Ruling that I make this point.

Mr. Fletcher

I gave way to my hon. Friend because I thought that he was raising a point of order. I was proposing to make my speech when I was interrupted.

The Deputy-Chairman

I think it would be better if the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) were to continue. Does he wish to make a point of order or not?

Stewart

No, not now.

The Deputy-Chairman

Then I call upon him to continue his speech, but not as a point of order.

Mr. A. Evans

On a point of order, Sir William. You did tell the Committee that the last Amendment had not been selected. Subsequently, you made a different statement. First, you said that it had not been selected, and you then said that the two hon. and learned Members in whose names it was tabled had signified that they did not wish to press it. With respect, it does seem that you gave two different reasons and, if you will allow me to say so, it appeared that the two hon. and learned Members mentioned, possibly to avoid inconvenience to their colleagues, had withdrawn. After all, they are the only two hon. and learned Members on the other side of the Committee whose names are on the paper.

The Deputy-Chairman

The reason I gave was that I had not selected the Amendment. When an hon. Member expressed a feeling of doubt as to whether that was fair, I went so far as to give a reason why I had come to my decision not to select it. That reason was that I was aware of the fact that those two hon. and learned Members whose names were down to the Amendment had not expressed any wish themselves to move the Amendment. That strengthened me in my decision not to select the Amendment, and that is why it was not selected.

3.0 a.m.

Mr. Evans

It struck me as strange that, in the first instance, you should state quite clearly that you had not selected the Amendment and that, a few minutes later, you should tell the Committee that the two hon. and learned Members had indicated that they did not wish to press the matter.

You will appreciate that tonight, with the rough treatment we have had from the Patronage Secretary, we feel rather sore, and our indignation is not abated if we have any suspicion at all that you have not held the scales evenly—

Hon. Members

Order.

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. I hope that the hon. Member will not criticise the Chair. If he has a feeling that the Chair is unfair he must put down a substantive Motion on the proper occasion, but the Chair is doing its best to be fair, and it would not be right of the Chair to accept such criticisms as the hon. Member is tending to make.

Mr. Evans

I withdraw any suspicion of criticism of yourself, Sir William, but I now understand from what you have said that the reason we did not debate the last Amendment was that you had not selected it—

The Deputy-Chairman

Yes.

Mr. Evans

—and that your statement about the two hon. and learned Members not pressing it was an irrelevant consideration.

The Deputy-Chairman

I do not think that the hon. Member is entitled to say it was irrelevant. What, in fact, was relevant was that the Amendment was not selected by the Chair. The fact that the Chair had reasons for not selecting the Amendment is a little relevant, and I went so far as to give to the Committee one of the reasons why I, in the Chair, did not select it. That reason was that neither of the hon. and learned Members wished to propose the Amendment which they had put down, and that made it easier for me to come to the decision, to which I came, not to select the Amendment.

Mr. Evans

I am much obliged, Sir William. I am sure you will agree that it was much better that I should clear up the doubt I had about your two conflicting statements.

Mr. Diamond

Further to that point of order, Sir William. You will recollect that you also said that if any hon. Member had been interested in that Amendment he could have put his name to it, but when we saw—as several of us who are interested in the Amendment did see—that two hon. and learned Members already had their names to it, we naturally assumed that it would be called and that there would be no reason for us to add our names. We are not all required to add our names to an Amendment to show that we are interested in it. Could I ask you, Sir William, whether you would be prepared to reconsider your decision, in view of the fact that, quite clearly from what you have said, you decided not to select the Amendment after you had been informed by the two hon. and learned Members that they were not anxious to move and second it?

The Deputy-Chairman

I follow the hon. Member's line of argument, but I think that I had better stick to my selection. The Amendment was, in fact, not selected, and I cannot go back to that point any more.

Mr. Fletcher rose—

The Deputy-Chairman

Is it a fresh point of order?

Mr. Fletcher

No, Sir William, it is on this point of order. I had hoped to make some observations on the Licensing Act if that Amendment had been selected. I am sure that all hon. Members accept your decision not to select the Amendment, and the reasons you have given for not selecting it, but, having said that, it seems to me that it has a bearing on the scope which should now be permitted on the Motion which I understand is now before the Committee, namely, "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill".

It was on that Motion that I was addressing the Committee when several points of order were raised, all of which have now, I think, been dealt with. Therefore, with your permission, Sir William, and for the convenience of the Committee, I would desire to give the reasons why I would ask the Committee to vote against that Motion. I understand the limitations of the debate, some of which have been indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart).

My reasons for asking the Committee not to accept this as the Schedule to the Bill—

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. The hon. Member has now gone further than his point of order. I think we should return to the debate which is proceeding on the Question "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill", bearing in mind the Ruling that I gave on that Question the only matter that can be debated and decided is whether all the Acts cited in the Schedule shall collectively form part of the Bill. Mr. Michael Stewart.

Mr. M. Stewart

With respect, Sir William, I think I "jumped the gun" on my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) on this matter. I rose respectifully to a point of order to ask you to clarify your Ruling about what was in order in the debate on this Question. When you had given that clarification I then proceeded in effect to speak to the Question in the light of what you had said. In doing so, I overlooked the fact that my hon. Friend had already begun to do that, and that if we were debating the Question "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill", the Floor was properly his at that time. I am sorry for any confusion that may have been caused. I hope you may now be willing to regard my hon. Friend as having the Floor, and I might possibly catch your eye on this Question at a later stage.

Mr. Fletcher

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. I think that would keep us technically in order, with respect.

These are the reasons why I submit to the Committee that this Schedule ought not to remain in the Bill. I will try to keep my speech strictly within the limits that you have indicated, Sir William, as to what is relevant and what is not. I would have preferred it if the rules of order had permitted me to make a different kind of speech and to deal in some detail with some of the Acts mentioned in the Schedule. But owing to the rules of procedure, my hon. Friends and I are now driven to this position, that in the absence of any explanation from the Leader of the House—and I am sorry to see that he is now having to leave us—the only course which we can ask the Committee to take is to reject the whole Schedule. We are driven to invite the Committee to do that for one good reason, namely, the discourtesy with which we have been treated by the Government. The Government have behaved disgracefully, because never before in my experience as a Member of this House have I heard a whole succession of speeches on a very serious and important topic made from these benches without a single word in reply from the Government Front Bench before the Closure was moved. That appears to me to be a complete denial of the rights of the Opposition and a complete abuse by the Patronage Secretary and the Leader of the House—

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member must not criticise the Closure.

Mr. Fletcher

With respect, that was the last thing that I wanted to do. I was criticising the fact that no Government spokesman has sought to catch your eye during three or four hours of debate. My hon. Friends and I made a whole series of speeches, which, apart from my own, I thought were very valuable contributions to the debate. I was criticising the failure of any Government spokesman at any time to rise and try to reply to the succession of points that have been made. Therefore, owing to the disgraceful failure of the Government to reply to the criticisms, the only course which we can now adopt under our procedure is to ask the Committee to reject the whole Schedule. It seems to me to be a complete confession of failure on the part of the Minister that he did not rise to his feet during the three or four hours that were available to him, while speech after speech was being made criticising the Government's housing policy, the operation of this Act, the Government's failure to amend it, and the chain of tragic consequences for several hundreds of families—

The Chairman

Order. The hon. Member must not seek to return to the debate on the Amendment.

Mr. Fletcher

I am not returning to the general debate, Sir Gordon, except to say that there was that debate and the Government completely failed to answer it, no doubt because of their inability to produce any answer to the series of complaints which we put to them. In view of that lamentable and deplorable failure on the part of the Government to produce a single sentence in answer to three or four hours of cogent and powerful speeches by my hon. Friends, we have no alternative but to ask the Committee to reject the Schedule as a whole.

I am quite prepared to face the consequences if, as a result of the Schedule being rejected, there are certain inconveniences, the Government will be able to bring forward fresh legislation and try to justify it. What they are not entitled to do, under the guise of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, is to put in the Schedule Acts which they cannot justify, which the Opposition have riddled with unanswered criticisms, and then pass them through by use of the Closure. That is a complete derogation of the rights of Parliament and of the Opposition. I hope that my hon. Friends will take the course which our procedure enables us to take, that is, to reject the whole Schedule.

Mr. Reynolds

I have sat here for about four and a half hours in the hope of explaining some of the problems which arise in my constituency as a result of one of the Acts mentioned in the Schedule. Unfortunately, owing to the rather restricted nature of the debate now on the Schedule, it will not be possible for me to say as much as I should have liked to say about the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, the hardships which are being caused to tenants of furnished property in my constituency and the lack of protection which they can have from the rent tribunals, primarily, of course, because most of them are scared to go to the tribunal knowing full well that, if they do—

The Chairman

The hon. Member is now going out of order.

Mr. Reynolds

I am sorry, Sir Gordon. I was only saying that, if they do, they know that they will get notice to quit. I appreciate that I cannot go into the matter in detail now.

I should like to know what the implications of a rejection of the Schedule would be. I assume that, if the Schedule is not added to the Bill, none of the Acts will be continued and the Bill will be of no use at all. Presumably, it will either not be possible, for instance, for aliens to come into this country or it will be possible for any alien who wants to come to get on a boat and enter without restriction. I should like to know which way the result would go in respect of that Measure.

I must leave the Scottish Measures to my Scottish hon. Friends because I have no detailed knowledge of those matters. Would I be right in assuming that, if we do not accept all the Bills in the Schedule, the Accommodation Agencies Act, 1953, would disappear and—

The Chairman

I am sorry, but the hon. Member may not discuss individual Acts.

Mr. Reynolds

I am not discussing them, Sir Gordon. I am simply asking questions about the Acts contained in the Schedule.

The Chairman

The hon. Member is not entitled to do that under the Ruling.

Mr. Reynolds

I understand that we may not discuss them, Sir Gordon, and I am not attempting to do so; but I thought that it would be in order to ask questions about them. However, in view of your Ruling, it will not be possible for me to pursue that further.

The fact remains that we have not had a full enough discussion about, at any rate, two of the Acts to enable us to agree to include them in the Schedule. Unfortunately, since we must approve or disapprove the Schedule as a whole, I hope that, in due course, the Committee will proceed to a Division to decide whether or not the Schedule should be added to the Bill. I am at a loss to know anything whatsoever about parts of the Schedule because we have had no explanation of what it means. Unfortunately, because of various occurrences during the debate, I do not know whether some of these Acts are necessary and ought to be included in the Schedule, whether their extension is necessary in any shape or form.

3.15 a.m.

The Chairman

The hon. Member cannot now be told that, I am afraid.

Mr. Reynolds

Again I must apologise to you, Sir Gordon. If I cannot get the answers to my questions, and cannot even put the questions, according to your Ruling, in order to get the answers from the Minister, I shall find it very difficult indeed to support the Motion before the Committee. I regret this, because some of the Acts mentioned in the Schedule, despite the fact that they have been very heavily criticised during the last few hours, do provide certain safeguards for some of my constituents. I am sorry that in the circumstances, however, I cannot feel it possible to support the Motion.

Mr. A. Evans

This Schedule lists seven Acts of Parliament which we shall renew for a further period by agreeing to the Schedule. The first one is the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, 1919. It is proposed however, to continue only Section 1 of that Act, and not the other Sections.

The Chairman

I am sorry, but the hon. Member is now discussing an individual Act.

Mr. Evans

No, I am merely going through the Schedule so that we may know what we are dealing with. I think it must be in order to consider the Acts, although they are all taken collectively. They are not one Act. There are seven different Acts of Parliament.

The Chairman

I am sorry, but that is exactly what the hon. Member cannot do.

Mr. Evans

With respect, Sir Gordon, I understood that we were not allowed to discuss the Acts themselves. I have made no attempt to do that. I am merely listing the Acts in order to get clear, in my own mind at least, exactly what it is this Schedule does.

Mr. Denis Howell

Thinking aloud.

Mr. Evans

Although that may be considered time-wasting it is a process of thought some people have to adopt to get their ideas clear. All I am doing at the moment is to look at the Schedule to see what it contains.

Mr. Marsh

If my hon. Friend wants to get his mind clear, let me point out to him that there are not seven Acts of Parliament mentioned but fourteen, because amending Acts are also involved and presumably they come collectively into the Schedule.

Mr. Evans

I am much obliged. They are Acts which, as my hon. Friend says, affect the operation of the seven Acts.

The Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act and the other Acts, all seven Acts, come up year after year to be renewed for a further period of one year, and it is questionable, I think, that all these seven Acts of Parliament—

Mr. Denis Howell

Fourteen.

Mr. Evans

It is seven Acts plus bits of other Acts. I think my hon. Friend will find that the Acts listed in the Schedule have been amended in certain particulars by other Acts, just as the 1949 Act amended the Act dealing with furnished houses, as mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary earlier in the debate.

The whole question arises whether it is sensible procedure for Parliament to debate each year the renewal of seven Acts. We certainly cannot give adequate consideration on this method to the Acts listed in the Schedule. The Government should consider whether the time has not arrived to end this procedure of annual renewal and to embody some if not all of these Acts in permanent legislation. That is a matter which we have a right to consider here.

The Chairman

No. That would involve an Amendment to the Schedule, which cannot be moved at this stage.

Mr. Evans

This annual renewal is wasteful. The Government should think of embodying these Acts in permanent legislation. They should end this business of annual renewal so that we do not have to experience this difficulty of considering a number of Acts of Parliament at one Sitting. The present procedure is an impossible method of debate. Each responsible Minister should consider whether these Acts should be made permanent legislation.

The Chairman

I am afraid that the hon. Member cannot argue at this stage whether they should be permanent or not, because that is outside the scope of the Schedule.

Mr. Evans

I am arguing that we are compelled to consider at one sitting a Schedule embodying seven Acts. It is a time-wasting and unsatisfactory procedure. The Government should look at this matter, so that we may dispense with this procedure.

The Chairman

At this stage hon. Members cannot argue whether these Measures should be permanent law. It is outside the scope of the Bill.

Mr. Evans

The Schedule provides for the continuance of the Acts. I should have thought it would be a sequence of thought to ask: should they continue?

Whether the yearly renewal procedure for some of the Acts, if not all of them, is bad has been considered by people who have examined this subject, and they have agreed that it is. The Franks Committee on tribunals went into the matter and decided that consideration should be given to embodying one of the Measures in permanent legislation.

The Chairman

The Committee cannot debate that now.

Mr. Evans

I am about to finish, Sir Gordon, but I insist that it is a valid point to raise at this juncture. I appreciate that this procedure raises difficulties for you as well as us, and I think it is timely to raise the whole question whether or not these Acts should be embodied in permanent legislation.

Mr. Diamond

I hope I can call myself a loyal member of the Labour Party, and I hope that my hon. Friends will listen carefully to what I say. Although I am prepared to be swayed by relevant and logical arguments, at the moment I feel that the Schedule ought to be accepted.

Mr. Denis Howell

Why?

Mr. Diamond

If my hon. Friend will be patient, I will explain as carefully as I can why I think that the Schedule should be agreed to. It is divided into two parts, Part I referring to Acts to be continued until 31st December, 1962, 12½ months from now, and Part II to Acts to be continued until 31st March, 1963, three months longer.

Mr. Mellish

On a point of order, Sir Gordon. Might I call attention to the fact that on this side of the Committee we have no objection to Conservative Members sleeping, but it is a different matter when they come over to our benches to do so?

Mr. Diamond

I have no objection to that happening. Indeed, I hope that by the time I have finished all hon. Members opposite will be asleep.

As I have said, one Part of the Schedule refers to the shorter period of extension and the other Part to the longer period. As to the general considerations on the first Part, I hope that my hon. Friends—I address myself particularly to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench—will be reasonable and show their usual flexibility of mind when an hon. Member feels strongly about certain matters, as I do about the Schedule. I was anxious to speak about certain of the matters earlier and waited 4½ hours to do so, but the opportunity was not vouchsafed to me, though I recognise that that was within the rules of order, because that was what the Chair decided. I therefore did not have an opportunity to address the Chamber. Nor did several Members opposite. Two hon. Members opposite had originally intended to speak on a certain matter but subsequently decided not to do so.

3.30 a.m.

Mr. Mellish

They were stopped by the Whips.

Mr. Diamond

My hon. Friend is trying to divert me from the relevant comments I want to make on the Question before the Committee. The Schedule is divided into two parts, and, as I understand your helpful Ruling, Sir Gordon, there is nothing to prevent consideration of the generalities of the Bill affecting the Schedule in its two halves.

The first half deals with provisions continued until 31st December, 1962. It is true that one provision is only part of an Act and the other three provisions are full Acts. I take the view that these Acts should be continued until that date. Some of my hon. Friends may take the view that they should be continued until different dates, such as November, 1963, or possibly December, 1963.

The Chairman

They cannot argue that now. There could not be an Amendment now.

Mr. Diamond

I appreciate that. It supports my argument that it would have been not only wrong in substance but, as you have ruled, Sir Gordon, out of order for Amendments of that kind to have been moved. That supports my view that the date of 31st December, 1962, is the appropriate date to which the three Acts and the one part of an Act referred to in the first half of the Schedule should be extended.

These are as conclusive arguments as one is allowed to apply in the quite properly restricted debate we are having. I bring the same arguments to bear on the second half of the Schedule, which refers to Acts continued until 31st March, 1963. It will be in the recollection of the Committee that on certain of these Acts—one, at all events—there was considerable discussion.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

Committee counted, and, 40 Members being present—

Mr. Diamond

I was addressing the Committee on the wisdom of including in the Schedule the second half, which refers to three Acts continued until 31st March, 1963. This second half is distinguished from the first half in that the Acts it lists are continued for a longer period. It is relevant that we should pay full attention to this distinction. The Government of the time obviously considered the Acts in question to have more far-reaching importance than the earlier Acts mentioned, and therefore decided that they should be continued for a longer period.

Mr. Fletcher

There is one other distinction which, no doubt, my hon. Friend has observed—they are all printed in italics.

Mr. Diamond

I had not observed that. No doubt that is a point of some importance which is why my hon. Friend's eagle eye has observed it. However, I should have thought that it would be more convenient if, in due course, my hon. Friend addressed the Committee and explained in greater detail, for those of us who are interested in these things, the reasons why italics are used in Part II and not in Part I. No doubt that is a relevant consideration. This is something which I have not seen before.

Mr. M. Stewart

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) was suggesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) might explain it, but surely it is for the Government to explain it. We should have something on this subject from the Government Front Bench before we part with the Schedule.

Mr. Diamond

I am sure that we will have a very full explanation from the Government why Part 11 is all in italics. I was only saying that I thought that I was inadequate to put the question fully and that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington. East (Mr. Fletcher) with his legal training and much wider knowledge, could have put the question more fully. A great deal of interest and importance is attached to this and it is a pity that this discussion is going on at twenty-five minutes to four o'clock in the morning, because I am sure that otherwise it could catch the headlines of all the daily newspapers. The question should be fully considered and addressed to the Government, because I am sure that many hon. Members, including those who have been in the House of Commons for a considerable time, will not be fully aware of the distinctions to be drawn, and on similar Bills and on similar considerations might not be aware of the attention which they ought to give to the matter.

Part 11 of the Schedule deals with Bills which are to be continued until 31st March, 1963. That is a considerable period of some 16½ months. Who knows what may have happened between now and then? There may have been all sorts of international events which might have prevented us from giving adequate consideration to the extensions had they been proposed for a shorter period.

Supposing the Berlin crisis were to develop in a most unhappy way six months from now and the Bill said that the Acts should be continued merely for six months; we would then find ourselves in the unhappy position of our six-monthly attention coinciding with that crisis and it being impossible for adequate consideration to be given to further extensions.

However, wisely, the Schedule does not say that. Some of my hon. Friends have indicated that they are against this extension, but I put it to them that it has wisely prevented such a difficulty from arising and has made it possible to deal with this matter with at any rate some consideration, even though not with the fullest consideration which we might like to give this question. For that reason, many of us think it wise that these Acts are to be continued until 31st March, 1963.

Other matters might arise. For example, between now and March, 1963, possibly somewhat nearer March, 1963, and perhaps in January, 1963, there may be the consideration of our entry into the Common Market. That is something which will have a considerable effect upon the time available for consideration of this matter. I appreciate that some of my hon. Friends have views, different from my own, about the wisdom of accepting the Schedule at the time we are entering the Common Market. That might be the over-riding factor in our decision on whether this should be the Schedule to the Bill. However, the Schedule wisely provides that these Acts shall be continued until 31st March, 1963, a period which is likely to fall some months later than our entry into the Common Market. By that time, our entry into the Common Market will have been considered and we shall be able to turn our minds once more to the position which arises when these Acts expire in 1963.

Mr. Marsh

Does my hon. Friend suggest that the Act would take effect three months after Britain's entry into the Common Market?

Mr. Diamond

No. I am sorry that I did not make it clear. I will go step by step. The first step is to be found in line 16 of page 3, Acts continued until 31st March, 1963". The second step is that it is widely accepted that we may join the Common Market on 1st January, 1963. Whether that is so or not, let me make that assumption. If we join the Common Market on that date, then if we take 1st January, 1963, from 31st March, 1963, we have a gap, a hiatus, of three months.

Mr. Marsh

With respect, it is a fallacious argument to assume that Britain will enter the Common Market on a particular date when the Government apparently do not know what they intend to do.

The Chairman

Order. We cannot go into the question of entering the Common Market.

Mr. Marsh

With respect, my hon. Friend made the point, otherwise I should not have pursued it. He based his argument on the assumption that these laws would be affected by Britain's entering the Common Market on 1st January, 1963. If that is not his argument, I apologise. If it is, surely we may discuss whether that is a practical proposition.

The Chairman

I did not interrupt him, but I thought that the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) was out of order at that stage.

Mr. Diamond

I did not intend to develop the argument for and against membership of the Common Market. I was merely giving one or two examples which lead me to the conclusion that 31st March, 1963, is an appropriate date to which the Act should be continued. I pointed to the convenience which this might be if we had joined the Common Market three months earlier, but there are many other examples, and I am sure that my hon. Friend, with his fertile imagination, can think of them. I have given reasons why this is an acceptable date. I cannot hope to have convinced all my hon. Friends to my point of view in so short a time, but at all events I have indicated that I have given the matter some thought in the time available since you, Sir Gordon, were good enough to help us with your Ruling and to indicate the direction which the debate might usefully take.

Mr. Fletcher

I am trying to follow my hon. Friend's argument. He differs from me about this. I expressed the view that the Committee should reject the Schedule. I understand that my hon. Friend is giving reasons why, on balance, the Schedule should be accepted. Will his view be affected by the decision whether we join the Common Market?

The Chairman

Order. That cannot be argued at this stage.

Mr. Diamond

I should have liked to deal with my hon. Friend's interruption, because I treasure his support in any argument which I put forward. If we agree, it is probable that we are right. If we reach different conclusions, it may be that one of us is right.

3.45 a.m.

I listened carefully to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East and realised that he had reached the conclusion that, by and large, this Schedule should not stand part of the Bill. He did not divide his arguments as between Part I and Part II and I was led to the conclusion that my hon. Friend was of the view that both Parts should not stand part. I take a contrary view, for I believe that both Part I and Part II should stand part. It may be that some of my hon. Friends will take a completely different view. Some may support Part I and reject Part II while others may support Part II and not Part I. However, it is difficult for one to be absolutely clear on this question because our observations must concern both Parts. The question is, therefore, that it stands part of the Bill as a whole, or not at all.

Mr. Fletcher

I understand the position to be that on this question that the Schedule Stand Part the Committee cannot divide the Schedule and express a view about Part I and Part II individually. Had hon. Members been able to do that I should have said that I welcomed Part I and not Part II. Nevertheless, it may be that my hon. Friend should bear in mind when discussing the merits or otherwise of the whole Schedule that Part I is in ordinary type and Part II is in italics, the reason being that Part II is governed by subsection 2 of Clause 1, which is also in italics, and for that reason I gather that a question of privilege will arise in another place. When the other place comes to discuss this they may benefit as a result of the observations that are being made by this Committee.

The Chairman

We cannot discuss the Schedule in two parts, because we could not have one part in the Bill and not the other. It must be considered as a whole. I think that the hon. Member would agree with that.

Mr. Diamond

I am grateful, as are my hon. Friends, for that observation. That is the view which I took and I thought that since my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East was not in favour of the Schedule I must persuade him, with such logic as I can muster, that it should be accepted. As I say, the Schedule must be considered as a whole; as a unit. Perhaps it has occurred to some of my hon. Friends, however, that when it returns from another place, half of it may have been removed.

I hope I have convinced my hon. Friend that the right course for us to take, for a variety of reasons, is to allow this Schedule to be added to the Bill and not to vote against it. It may be that other of my hon. Friends may have wished to share my view. Naturally they did not realise that this matter would be left until 3.50 in the morning before consideration was given to it. It is, therefore, impossible to say what the representative view of my hon. Friends would have been at this stage. That is, perhaps, one good reason for not taking the matter too seriously in the Division Lobby.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East will give this matter his further consideration. I will listen carefully, as I always do, to the speech which he will no doubt make after reconsidering the matter. After listening to that speech and to the remarks which other of my hon. Friends may wish to make I will see if they have convinced me to the contrary, in which case I will join with them to press their views.

Mr. Pavitt

I defer to no one in my respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) and I congratulate him on the extremely able manner in which he has put his case for the retention of the Schedule in the Bill, but I remain unconvinced. I suppose that it is inevitable after twelve hours of discussion what a Bill contains that we should get a little weary and it is to my hon. Friend's credit that, while we have been taunted in the Press with the suggestion that the Government have to provide an Opposition as well, tonight the position is reversed. It is we on this side who are doing the Government's work, My hon. Friend is to be congratulated upon the sincerity and ability with which he has stated his case.

Undoubtedly he is right in claiming that if we reject the Motion "That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill", then we are rejecting all the arguments which have been going on since half-past three yesterday afternoon. I do not take my decision lightly when I say that I cannot accept his reasoning. There are so many Measures in the Schedule that it would be irresponsible, even at this hour of the morning, to signify acceptance of the many Acts and amending Acts which operate until 1st December, 1962, or 31st March, 1963.

I was fortunate enough to catch your eye earlier, Sir Gordon, on matters affecting my constituency and there has been a wide-ranging debate, not only on the different Bills, which cover the period from 1919 to 1953. The Bills have their own individual histories, and there have been thoughtful contributions from hon. Members from all parts of the country on different parts of the Schedule. Hon. Members who entered the debate, and who put down their names to Amendments, did so with a feeling of responsibility. They were here, not in order to give power or to withhold power. As a result of the debates on the various sections, I feel that I cannot really discharge my responsibilities to my constituency if, at the unsatisfactory conclusion of all our work, I can only say that we have been unable to achieve more than merely accept a "blanket"—perhaps some would say a rubber stamp—in respect of no fewer than seven Acts and amending Acts.

There has been discussion on whether these Acts are the same as when they were first instituted or whether they have been changed; whether the Acts contained within the Schedule are still relevant to the present day circumstances—

The Chairman

The hon. Member cannot go into that.

Mr. Pavitt

I am looking at the whole of the Acts, Sir Gordon, and the whole of the debate, and if we could say that in the seven Acts before us there was—

Mr. A. Lewis

Will my hon. Friend hurry with his remarks? The Patronage Secretary has sent out for his troops. It looks as if we are to have another Closure Motion.

Mr. Pavitt

I welcome my hon. Friend's intervention. I hope that his fears are misplaced, but I must confess that the previous Motion gives me no cause for confidence.

The point I was making was that this House and this Committee never do anything as a pure formality. We are trying to reach a responsible decision either to vote, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester would have us, to keep this lot in, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) would have us, to keep this lot out. It is because we have not always been able in the course of thirteen or fourteen hours of debate to be satisfied about the exact consequences of passing this Schedule that I hope my hon. Friends will follow the lead given by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East.

I take it that if the Schedule is rejected nothing at all will happen to the seven Measures concerned until December, 1961; in other words, that by rejecting the Schedule we would not immediately find ourselves without the various provisions contained in those Measures—

Mr. Marsh

I think that my hon. Friend is wrong in saying that if the Schedule were rejected nothing would happen to these seven Acts until 31st December of this year. Only four of them would be so affected. The problem before us is that there are three others which would continue till March of next year. The difficulty is that there are two different periods.

Mr. Pavitt

I thank my hon. Friend, but I do not think that he has made the position any clearer. I understand that four of these Acts have a further period of twelve months to run, to December, 1962, and that the other three have an additional fifteen months—

Mr. MacColl

I think that my hon. Friend is wrong. I understand that the second lot of Acts expires in March of next year—not at the end of this year.

Mr. Marsh

Surely, the position is that all seven Acts are continued for a period of twelve months, but from different starting dates. As a result, we get the peculiar situation of four of them going to December and the other three going to March—starting their year from different dates.

Mr. Pavitt

That still does not invalidate my argument that if we now decide to reject the Schedule it does not mean that we are likely to be in an awful mess. The Government still have time to arrange for the continuation of these Measures. Therefore, this would not be a terrifically embarrassing decision. There are those hon. Members who have, on each individual Measure, had constituency and other interests to take care of, so it is quite valid to tell the Government that we reject the Schedule.

4.0 a.m.

Mr. A. Lewis

We are discussing whether this should be the Schedule to the Bill, and, as I understood the Ruling by the Chair, we must not go into the individual Acts mentioned in the Schedule or have a general discussion. I was originally under the impression that I would be able to support the retention of the Schedule in the Bill, until my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. Fletcher) spoke, and now I am convinced to the contrary.

There are two parts to this Schedule. In the first part four Acts are mentioned and in the second part there are three. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East pointed out that the second part is in italics. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) went to great lengths to explain that the Acts in the latter part were to continue until 31st March, 1963. He said that this was probably something to do with the Common Market. Of course, I appreciate that we cannot develop that aspect now. My hon. Friend went on to explain that, in his view, the Acts mentioned in the second part of the Schedule were more important that those in the first part. I should like to know on what authority he bases that contention. We have not got our Scottish colleagues here, but I am sure that if they were here they would say that the first part of the Schedule is much more important to them than the second part, and I think we should have a word from the Minister—

Mr. Diamond

The first part contains the Education (Exemptions) (Scotland) Act, 1947, and the Tenancy of Shops (Scotland) Act, 1949, both of which are continued. Has my hon. Friend had his attention drawn to the second part of the Schedule which contains the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act, 1943? For what reason does my hon. Friend say that the first-mentioned two Scottish Acts are more important than the last mentioned Scottish Act?

Mr. Lewis

I do not for one moment say that they are more important. That is the point that I want to get clear. I want to know on what authority my hon. Friend bases his contention that the Acts mentioned in the second part are more important than those in the first part of the Schedule. He said that they are to be continued until 31st March, 1963, which is some three or four months after the date relating to those mentioned in the first part of the Schedule.

Mr. Diamond

I explained the main reason. They are in italics.

Mr. Lewis

Yes, but that is only my hon. Friend's point of view. Can we have the view of the Minister? Can he advise us whether my hon. Friend is correct? I see that there is no Minister here who is in a position to answer. The Minister who should be here and who could give us an answer has now left the Chamber. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary to the Treasury can reply. Before I make up my mind whether my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester or my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East is right, I want to be sure—

Mr. MacColl

My hon. Friend has rather challenged the competence of the Financial Secretary to deal with these important matters. If he turns to the back of the Bill he will find that the person who is responsible for the Bill is the Financial Secretary and that his is the solitary name that appears on the Bill.

Mr. Lewis

My hon. Friend has misunderstood what I said. I would not challenge the authority or the ability of the Financial Secretary. All I want to get clear is whether he is prepared to reply. Before I can decide whether or not the Schedule should remain in the Bill, I want some clear guidance.

Mr. Marsh

My hon. Friend appears to be perpetuating an error which several of my hon. Friends appear to have done. The distinction between the four Acts which should continue until 31st December and the three which should continue until 31st March has on several occasions been invested with special significance because of the difference in the dates, but I thought that we had, after our discussion, agreed that the difference between them is not of significance. It arises merely from the fact that they start from different points in time, though they are to be extended for the same period.

Mr. Lewis

I accept that point, but that still does not alter my argument that we should have a Minister to reply to clear the matter up. I am still not satisfied in my mind whether to support my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East or my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester. As I explained, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester changed my view when he spoke, and I hope to hear in a moment or two from my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East whether he can persuade me that I am wrong.

Mr. Fletcher

In fairness to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, I hope that my hon. Friend does not suggest that the hon. Gentleman is here for any purpose except to reply to the debate.

Mr. Lewis

I had not thought of that. Naturally, I assume that, as there are only two Ministers on the Front Bench, it must be either he or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport who is to reply, and I cannot imagine that the Ministry of Transport has any interest in any of the Acts referred to in the Bill. As far as I can see, none of them have anything to do with transport.

Mr. Mellish

I should not like it to be said that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport is not a very capable chap. I go further and say that any reply we had from him—if he were to reply to the debate—would probably be very much better than any reply we might have from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

Mr. Lewis

I am not denigrating at all the ability of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, but I am sure that he would not give such an able reply as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury could give, and we know that the Financial Secretary is here for the purpose of giving us his answer.

There is a conflict of opinion here between two of my hon. Friends who are experts in these matters, and no Law Officer is present to give us a legal opinion. We must rely on the Financial Secretary. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl will give us the benefit of his assistance. Apparently, we cannot have an opinion from the Government Front Bench or, for that matter, from the back benches. I hope that you will allow a little more discussion, Sir William, in order to clear the matter up.

Mr. MacColl

My hon. Friend's suggestion is a flattering one, but has he noticed that the hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Hobson) is here, and he is the person best able to give free legal advice? I am sure that he would be able to assist us.

Mr. Lewis

I am much obliged. If the hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Hobson) is willing to give us his advice I should be quite happy, as I am sure my hon. Friends would wish me to, to give way to him so that he can give us the benefit of his advice. Otherwise I would assume that he does not want to usurp the authority of the Law Officer who is probably on his way here to give us the advice we want, and who has not been here during the whole of the debate. I had thought he would have been here to have given us advice on whether or not the Schedule should be agreed to. Hon. Members on both sides are in some doubt whether it should remain. Unless we can get a legal explanation of that question I am afraid we shall have to consider—some of us will, at any rate—forcing a Division upon it.

Mr. Marsh

I was not quite sure at one stage what it was my hon. Friend wanted legal advice upon, although I am sure he should have it if he wants it, because we are discussing a Schedule which continues some seven Acts of Parliament. [HON. MEMBERS: "Fourteen."] With great respect, there are seven Acts of Parliament and fourteen other Acts involved in the discussion of the seven, so that it appears we are discussing a total of twenty-one Acts of Parliament, seven of which, if the Committee agrees, we shall continue in force for a period of one year but from different base dates, and fourteen of which need close study before we take a decision on the other seven.

I feel very strongly inclined to oppose the Schedule on the ground that the discussion which has taken place upon this issue has been totally inadequate in view of the seriousness of the matters we are considering. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond) made several attempts to introduce into the debate the question of the Common Market. With respect, I think that that is not relevant at all, and it would be a pity if hon. Members were diverted from the very serious issues with which they are faced by this Schedule. I think that the remark which my hon. Friend made at the beginning about party loyalties was equally irrelevant, since my objections to the Schedule are based upon beliefs which transcend ordinary party political arguments on this sort of thing.

We have debated these important issues only in a very perfunctory fashion—the whole of them. We have debated some of the Acts in detail and with considerable pertinacity, but there are some, certainly two, upon which there has been no debate whatever. There was a discussion on the 1946 Act, but it was not a debate, because there was no opposition—or rather, there was all Opposition but no Government point of view. A discussion in which no contribution is made from the other side and no Ministerial reply can hardly enjoy the title of debate. On the final issue which we were due to discuss, which is also included in the Schedule, there is Part II of the Licensing Act, 1953, which involves some intriguing issues of local importance. At no stage has the House of Commons given proper consideration to two of the seven Acts which we are asked to continue for another year.

4.15 a.m.

Mr. Pavitt

Does it not add to my hon. Friend's case that the debate has been one-sided and that the Committee has had no opportunity to discuss Amendments tabled by hon. and learned Members opposite?

Mr. Marsh

It adds weight to the argument that there has been no real discussion of part of the Schedule which we are being asked to put into operation. It is a serious Schedule. Nobody would be unaware of the considerable effect it would have on our way of life if these seven Acts expired. We would be placed in a situation of chaos in respect of aliens, children over 13 years of age would not be permitted to assist with the potato harvest in Scotland, rent tribunals would cease, and certain licensed premises in places like Exeter and Coventry would find themselves at a disadvantage.

One must not take lightly, therefore, a decision to oppose the Schedule as a whole. Although the Acts individually may not be the epoch-shattering Measures with which the Committee is sometimes faced, collectively, all seven of them, with the relevant Sections of fourteen other Acts, would have an effect on our way of life, as I have indicated. Be that as it may, I still feel that we should oppose the inclusion of the Schedule, not only because the issues have not been properly debated but for a further serious reason.

Several questions were directed to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government who has since left us. He promised—he did not say "perhaps" or "maybe"—that he would answer them. He did not. The Government once again used the majority which they are always able to fall on to flatten the Opposition and break another promise given to the House of Commons. When this sort of thing happens as regularly as it has happened in recent times, we must protest. One could quote a series of occasions. There was the recent issue when the Government broke firm pledges in connection with the Gowers Report.

Mr. Hobson

On a point of order. Is the hon. Member in order in giving on this matter an account of grievances he has had in general against the Government in the past?

The Deputy-Chairman

I think that the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) is tending to range rather wide, and I am sure that he will not do so.

Mr. Fletcher

On that point of order, Sir William. Is it not relevant—[Interruption.]

Mr. A. Lewis

On a point of order. I heard an hon. Member say "scoundrel." Surely it is not in order—

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. I must be allowed to take a point of order when it is put to me. [Interruption.]

Hon. Members

A point of order is being put.

Mr. Fletcher

Arising out of your Ruling, Sir William. With regard to the intervention of the hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Hobson), is it not far more relevant to point out that one of the difficulties confronting my hon. Friends and myself is that we did not have the benefit of hearing the reason which the hon. and learned Member intended to give the Committee why lines 39 and 40 should be omitted from the Schedule?

Mr. Marsh

Further to the point of order. I would not challenge your Ruling, Sir William, but I was faced with a personal decision whether I should cast my vote for or against this being the Schedule to the Bill. I was seeking to explain why, although I recognise the importance of the Schedule, there were certain factors which caused me to wish to vote against it. I should have thought that if I was complaining that a Minister had broken a promise. I should be able to justify that if I could show that Ministers have regularly broken promises.

The Deputy-Chairman

I do not think the hon. and learned Member correctly put what was said in his point of order.

Mr. Marsh

Thank you, Sir William. I will certainly not pursue that point in view of what you have just said.

For a number of reasons, it is my desire that we should vote against the Schedule, and I hope that my hon. Friends will come with me into the Lobby to vote against it.

Mr. A. Lewis

Why?

Mr. Marsh

For some of the grounds that I have mentioned. It is easily possible for some of my hon. Friends to be unnecessarily apprehensive—[Interruption.]

Mr. Stratton Mills (Belfast, North)

On a point of order, Sir William. Has not a Motion just been moved? Has it been accepted?

The Treasurer of the Household (Mr. Edward Wakefield) rose in his place, and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The Committee proceeded to a Division—

Mr. Fletcher (seated and covered)

On a point of order, Sir William. Is there any precedent for the Closure being moved without a single word being spoken in favour of the Question by anyone on the Government benches?

Mr. Denis Howell

In eight hours.

The Deputy-Chairman

I believe there are precedents for it, and I have accepted the Motion.

Mr. A. Lewis (seated and covered)

On a point of order, Sir William. Did I understand that the Motion for the Closure was moved on two occasions? I believe I am right in saying that on the first occasion you would not accept

it because it was being moved while a point of order was being put to you. On the second occasion an hon. Member opposite was also putting a point of order. Might I ask why on the first occasion you would not accept the Motion while a point of order was being raised while on the second occasion you did accept it?

The Deputy-Chairman

I do not think I would be prepared to explain that. The Motion was made and I accepted it.

Mr. Pavitt (seated and covered)

On a point of order, Sir William. Is it to be taken as criticism of the Chair when an hon. Member calls your attention to the fact that a Motion had previously been put? Do you accept this censure on the Chair?

The Deputy-Chairman

Points are often put to the occupant of the Chair and he accepts them for what he thinks they are worth.

The Committee divided: Ayes 111, Noes 9.

Division No. 6.]	AYES	[4.23 a.m.
Agnew, Sir Peter	Goodhart, Philip	Page, John (Harrow, West)
Aitken, W. T.	Grant, Rt. Hon. William	Page, Graham (Crosby)
Allason, James	Green, Alan	Pearson, Frank (Clitheroe)
Atkins, Humphrey	Gresham Cooke, R.	Pilkington, Sir Richard
Balniel, Lord	Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.	Prior, J. M. L.
Batsford, Brian	Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)	Pym, Francis
Biffen, John	Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)	Ramsden, James
Bossom, Clive	Hay, John	Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin
Bourne-Arton, A.	Hendry, Forbes	Ridley, Hon. Nicholas
Box, Donald	Hiley, Joseph	Rippon, Geoffrey
Boyle, Sir Edward	Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)	Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Bryan, Paul	Hinchingbrooke, Viscount	Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Buck, Antony	Hirst, Geoffrey	St. Clair, M.
Bullard, Denys	Hobson, John	Shaw, M.
Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)	Hocking, Philip N.	Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir Jocelyn
Carr, Compton (Barons Court)	Holland, Philip	Skeet, T. H. H.
Carr, Robert (Mitcham)	Hughes-Young, Michael	Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'rd & Chiswick)
Channon, H. P. G.	Hutchison, Michael Clark	Spearman, Sir Alexander
Chataway, Christopher	Johnson, Eric (Blackley)	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Chichester-Clark, R.	Johnson Smith, Geoffrey	Stodart, J. A.
Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)	Leburn, Gilmour	Studholme, Sir Henry
Cooke, Robert	Lindsay, Martin	Taylor, Edwin (Bolton, E.)
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill	Longbottom, Charles	Taylor, F. (M'ch'ter & Moss Side)
Corfield, F. V.	Lucas, Sir Jocelyn	Temple, John M.
Dalkeith, Earl of	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh	Thomas, Peter (Conway)
Deedes, W. F.	McLaren, Martin	Turner, Colin
Digby, Simon Wingfield	Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Doughty, Charles	Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)	Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John
du Cann, Edward	Maddan, Martin	Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)	Mathew, Robert (Honiton)	Walder, David
Elliott, R.W. (Nwcstle-upon-Tyne, N.)	Mawby, Ray	Wall, Patrick
Emery, Peter	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.	Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
Farr, John	Mills, Stratton	Worsley, Marcus
Finlay, Graeme	More, Jasper (Ludlow)
Fisher, Nigel	Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Noble, Michael
Foster, John	Nugent, Sir Richard	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.	Mr. David Gibson-Watt and
Gammans, Lady	Osborn, John (Hallam)	Mr. William Whitelaw.
NOES
Evans, Albert	Mackie, John (Enfield, East)	Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
Fletcher, Erio	Marsh, Richard
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)	Mellish, R. J.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
MacColl, James	Pavitt, Laurence	Mr. Arthur Lewis and
		Mr. John Diamond.

Question, That this Schedule be the Schedule to the Bill, put accordingly and agreed to.

Preamble agreed to.

4.30 a.m.

The Deputy-Chairman

The Question is, That I do report the Bill, without Amendment, to the House.

Mr. M. Stewart rose—

The Deputy-Chairman

I am reluctant to allow debate on this Question, having read Erskine May, page 567, which states that this is now regarded as a formal Question. That being so, I propose to put the Question forthwith.

Mr. M. Stewart

On a point of order. I, too, have consulted Erskine May on this point and I respectfuly draw your attention to the fact that Erskine May says: This is now regarded as a formal question and the Chairman has deprecated debate. The clear implication of those words is that this is not one of those Questions on which debate is forbidden. That is made more clear when we look up the reference given in Erskine May, which is to a debate on 15th May, 1935, when, on the Question, "That the Chairman do report the Bill, as amended, to the House", Mr. Morgan Jones rose and the Chairman addressed him as follows: If the hon. Member is proposing to speak on this Motion, I should like to say that it is a matter which I have had occasion to go into very carefully lately. It is quite true that technically this is a question which is debatable, but, as a matter of order and custom, we have come to the conclusion that it is not advisable in the House to follow a practice which, I believe, sometimes obtains in Standing Committee. The point is that we have been unable at present to think of anything which would be relevant on this question. Now follows the heart of the matter: If the hon. Member can get over that, of course I cannot stop him from speaking."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th May, 1935; Vol. 301, c.1853.] I respectfully submit that this is not one of those Questions on which debate is forbidden and that the one clear precedent which we have, and to which Erskine May refers, is a precedent to the effect that if any hon. Member who wishes to speak to this Question can find anything relevant to say about it, the Chair cannot stop him from speaking. I further submit that the question of whether I have anything relevant to say cannot be decided before I have attempted to say it.

The Deputy-Chairman

The hon. Member will appreciate that I base my Ruling on the matter of order and custom. That is not a bad thing to go on. If the hon. Member has something relevant to what I believe to be a purely formal Question, I am sure that the Committee would be glad to hear it.

Mr. Stewart

I trust that I shall have greater success in being relevant than had Mr. Morgan Jones on the occasion to which I have referred, because, having obtained the right to speak on the Question in the way I have described, he then used his opportunity for the purpose of congratulating the representatives of the Government, who had been present throughout the proceedings in Committee on that occasion, for the courteous and helpful and active way in which they had participated in the debate. At the end of it, the Chairman said that it was all quite irrelevant.

I will set your mind at rest at once, Sir William, by stating that I will say nothing like that. Anything of that kind would not merely be irrelevant to the Question; it would be wildly inappropriate in view of the behaviour of the Government representatives throughout the whole of these proceedings. I shall address myself strictly to the proposition that the Bill should be reported without Amendment to the House.

When a Bill which has been discussed in Committee of the whole House is reported, without Amendment, to the House, the normal Report stage as we call it, strictly called "Consideration", does not occur. If we report the Bill, since it has not been amended it will go straight to Third Reading, on which, of course, the debate is decidedly restricted. The Committee should, therefore, seriously consider whether the Bill should be reported at this stage, if it is so reported, all that will remain in front of us is the very narrow debate on Third Reading.

Why do I suggest that it would be inadvisable to do so on this occasion? It is a Bill of unique character, which is concerned with seven other Statutes. We have had not a debate, but a set of proceedings in the Committee which are as unique as the Bill itself and have created a precedent which I earnestly hope the Government will never follow in future. It is quite outrageous that serious argument should be addressed over a long period on a very serious social problem and that we should have no answer from the Government to anything which has been said.

It will be within the recollection of the Committee that you decided, Sir William, after a time that the Closure should be applied to the debate. We cannot dispute that Ruling now, and perhaps we may admit that my hon. Friends had by that time managed to say the more important things which they wanted to say: [HON. MEMBERS: "No".] But it was open to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary at any time to try to catch your eye. I agree that it would not have been reasonable for him to do so early in the debate, but for him—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order"]. I am always anxious to defer to the Rulings of the Chair, but I remind some hon. Members below the Gangway opposite that they have not yet been elected to that position. It is inexcusable of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary not to have taken an opportunity to reply to any of the arguments advanced during the debate.

In the light of that, it would be wrong to report the Bill to the House. We ought to refrain from doing so as a way of expressing the Committee's disapproval of the Government's neglect of their duty in this matter. We all know that when all-night sittings occur the Committee may go through stages in which the argument becomes a little more light-hearted than at the beginning of the debate, but although we have gone through those phases I seriously believe that every hon. Member who has been diligent in his attendance during the proceedings realises that what we were discussing in the latter part of the debate was a very great and terrible problem. In the County of London alone—

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. The hon. Member is going beyond what I should properly allow on the very restricted question that I should report the Bill, without Amendment, to the House. That Question has been regarded as formal. The hon. Member has brought an example where it might conceivably not be formal, but to argue the points argued in a previous debate would clearly be out of order. I invite the hon. Member to let me put the Question according, as I said before, to the order and custom of the conduct of the House.

Mr. Stewart

If you would be so good to allow me to speak for just a few minutes, Sir William, I can complete my point. I will not repeat all the arguments. I wish merely to state that this is a very grave problem. In the time that we have been debating this matter—at the average rate of the happening of these events—another three families in the London area have been turned out of their premises.

Mr. Mellish

May I refer to this Question being dealt with in accordance with the custom and practice of Parliament? We have had this argument before and I remember an occasion when Mr. Speaker was in the Chair and when he Ruled in our favour when we sat as a House. Thus the customs and practices are made by the House. We are not rigidly bound and as we go along, by trial and error, we improve these customs and practices, for that is democracy.

In the ordinary way, and with an ordinary Bill, and when we do not encounter the sort of problems we have come up against on this occasion, it would be right and proper for those customs and practices to be observed, and we would, on the nod, agree to this stage going forward without discussion. But if we can show, as we can, that in this Bill there is good reason why we have argued as we have, we can ourselves do something about the customs and practices. I am very concerned about this point. The Chairman and Mr. Speaker have the task of protecting the minority. The crowd opposite—the Government—will have it all their own way at the end of the day.

The Deputy-Chairman

The House can certainly change its customs, practices and its orders, but I, in this Chair tonight, am not empowered to change anything at all and I must abide by previous Rulings. I have read them correctly. This is a formal stage and, although it might be argued otherwise, it is a matter of order and custom. I have already allowed a full debate and the Committee would be right to allow me now to put the question.

Mr. Fletcher

We should all agree with our proceeding according to custom in any ordinary circumstances. But in considering this we must have regard to what has gone before. It is also a part of the order and custom of our proceedings that if there are speeches from the Opposition there is a ministerial reply from the Government. Therefore, if the earlier proceedings had followed the normal procedure, in accordance with normal custom, we should have had no quarrel. These proceedings would have been terminated earlier and this stage would have been treated as purely formal. But there was a radical departure from the ordinary procedure, customs and traditions and we feel that we must, on this occasion, exercise our rights to have some discussion on what would otherwise be a formal matter.

I had hoped that the Leader of the House would have realised that we are justified in making this protest at this stage. There has been a glaring departure from our Parliamentary procedure in that there has been speech after speech from these benches without a Government spokesman answering them; but, instead, the Closure. No reply was vouchsafed at any stage from the Government to a series of serious speeches from this side and I think that I am entitled, therefore, to say that what would ordinarily be a formal Question for the Committee is not, in our view, applicable now. We feel that we have been unfairly and improperly treated. The Government have not fulfilled their duty. After all, this is a debating Assembly, and if there is speech after speech from this side—

4.45 a.m.

The Deputy-Chairman

Order. This is not the occasion to make speech after speech. This is normally a formal stage. The hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend, from his own Front Bench, has made his point. I think that I should be allowed to put this formal Question in the normal way.

Mr. Fletcher

On a point of order. I submit that everything I have said has been in order. You are entitled, Sir William, to ask the Committee to come to a decision, but so long as an hon. Member addresses the Committee, and is in order, I should have thought that he was entitled to do so.

The Deputy-Chairman

Why I interrupted was because I thought that the hon. Member was going beyond what is a point of order. A protest has been duly made, and noted, and I should like to proceed to put the Question.

Mr. Fletcher

Whether you are right in saying that my protest has been noted, I do not know, Sir William, but we shall be suffering a further injustice if this debate is concluded without some observations from the Leader of the House, who, I hope, will regard it as one of his functions to maintain the traditions of the House. If not, we shall have to depart from our customs on formal motions. Does the Leader of the House intend to depart from the traditions of this House?

I agree, Sir William, that we are protesting on what is ordinarily a formal Question, but our protest is justified. The House of Commons cannot discharge its functions as a debating Chamber if all the speeches are from one side. I cannot believe that what has happened this morning should be a precedent for future debates.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill reported, without Amendment.

4.50 a.m.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray)

The Question is, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Hon. Members

No.

Mr. Fletcher rose—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Before the hon. Member goes further, I think that I should read from page 529 of Erskine—as other hon. Members may possibly have done during the evening. With reference to the Second and Third Readings of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, Erskine May states, in a footnote: The Chair has even assented to the proposition that there can be no discussion on either the second or third reading of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. I propose to follow that, and to put the Question forthwith.

The Question is—

4.51 a.m.

Mr. Fletcher

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Now that the House is sitting—we have been in Committee for the last thirteen or fourteen hours—I take it that the technical position is that the House, as a House, has no knowledge—until hon. Members see the OFFICIAL REPORT—of what took place during the Committee stage of the Bill. In due course, the OFFICIAL REPORT for yesterday and today will be printed, and the House will then be seized of what occurred during the Committee stage, and will certainly then be in a better position than it is now to decide whether or not this is the appropriate moment to consider the Third Reading. I would therefore submit that this is not an appropriate moment to consider the Third Reading, and I hope that that view will commend itself to the Leader of the House and to the Government.

I am familiar, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, with that quotation from Erskine May. As you will have noticed, the passage which you have read is expressed very cautiously and guardedly. Of course, Erskine May itself has to be interpreted in accordance with the precedents. In the passage from which you read there is only one authority cited for that proposition, and that was on an occasion on 14th December, 1920.

I think that that is the only occasion on which the Chair has ever considered whether or not there should be a debate on the Third Reading of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill but, from the report in HANSARD, two things are quite obvious: first, that the Ruling then given by Mr. Deputy-Speaker was a Ruling "off the cuff", if I may say so. In other words, it was not a considered Ruling from Mr. Speaker that there could be no debate on the Third Reading of the Bill. Secondly, I would submit that it is not a Ruling which should be regarded as a precedent which has any weight or authority in your consideration as to whether this Bill can be debated on Third Reading.

I say that for this reason. The circumstances in December, 1920, were totally different from the circumstances with which we are now presented. On that occasion, there had been a certain amount of debate during the Committee stage. The Financial Secretary's predecessor in 1920 was Mr. Stanley Baldwin, who subsequently became Prime Minister, and who, it is worth observing, had the courtesy on that occasion to address quite a number of observations to the Committee in answer to the points that had been raised by the Opposition. Not only did Mr. Baldwin reply to that debate, but Sir John Baird, who was then the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, had also taken part in the debate.

Mr. Mellish

Could my hon. Friend say who was Leader of the House then?

Mr. Fletcher

The Prime Minister was the right hon. David Lloyd George. Mr. Bonar Law was the Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House—a precedent which I commend to the notice of the present Leader of the House, because I am sure that he is as concerned as we all are that our traditions should be followed and that the rights of the Opposition should be protected.

On that occasion there had been a reasoned debate in which both Mr. Baldwin and Sir John Baird had very courteously—whether convincingly or not is a matter for argument—replied to a series of speeches from the Opposition on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. Therefore, I think that most hon. Members would come to the conclusion that, that debate having taken place, it would have been inappropriate to have had a debate on the Third Reading.

The Deputy-Speaker of the day—obviously without having had time to consider the matter—gave that ad hoc Ruling. I submit that there is no binding authority and no guidance to enable one to come to a decision on this occasion, when the circumstances are totally different, when there has been no debate in the true sense of the word in Committee, when, on the contrary, there has been a series of speeches from the Opposition, to all of which the Government were totally unable to produce a single answer. There was an utter failure to answer a single point made by the Opposition, an abysmal confession of ignorance—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I think that the hon. Member is going further than he requires to make his point of order. He alludes to the Ruling that I quoted from Erskine May as being an ad hoc Ruling "off the cuff" by a Deputy-Speaker. It was indeed a Ruling by a Deputy-Speaker, but it has stood in Erskine May for many years; it has not been questioned, and I believe not only that I am entitled to found my Ruling on it, but that I am in duty bound to do so. I do not accept the hon. Member's contention that I am wrong in seeking now to put the Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

Mr. Fletcher

With great respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I hope that you will allow me, quite briefly, to pursue my argument. I am sure that you would wish to do everything you reasonably can to protect the rights of the minority. I submit that in this matter, which is one of great gravity, the Opposition have a real grievance, and I venture to put two suggestions, in which I hope to have the support of the Leader of the House, if he will have the courage at least to get up and say something.

I suggest that no Ruling on this particular point ought to be given by anyone other than Mr. Speaker himself. I suggest that without any disrespect to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

If I may interrupt the hon. Member at this stage, I should remind him that the Ruling to which I have referred was definitely given by the Deputy-Speaker of that day, and it has stood in Erskine May for all these years and been accepted. I regard myself as bound to accept it.

Mr. Fletcher

With respect, when you say that it has stood for all these years and been accepted, may I say that this is the first time since 1920 when any occasion has arisen to challenge it. Therefore, it is not exactly the case that this particular Ruling has been repeated and followed, observed, challenged, endorsed and ratified. There was that isolated occasion in 1920 when it came up. Since that time, it has not come up again until the present day.

Therefore, although it may have been a Ruling in 1920, I submit with great respect that it is not a Ruling which binds you today in any circumstances, and still less in the circumstances of this particular case. What I urge is that, in view of the gravity of the matter and in view of the rights of the House, a Ruling on this question should be deferred until, first, a time at which Mr. Speaker can be here, and, secondly, until a day on which Mr. Speaker has had a full opportunity to read the proceedings which took place in the Committee and decide the matter.

Being now aware, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that Mr. Speaker has arrived, may I be allowed to summarise what I have said to you? My submission is that there is no binding authority by any of your predecessors which lays down as a Ruling of general application that the Third Reading of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill may not be debated in the House, and that the only precedent which is noted in Erskine May is an isolated observation given, as it appears, spontaneously, in 1920, since when the point has never arisen, and on that occasion it was given in totally different circumstances.

I submit that there ought not to be a Ruling on the point by Mr. Speaker until, at least, Mr. Speaker has had an opportunity of considering the proceedings which took place in the Committee of the whole House this morning and yesterday, when it will be plain that circumstances of a totally different order involving a serious departure from the customs, order and tradition of the House obtain here. I submit that those circumstances justify a reasoned debate on the Third Reading of the Bill.

I appreciate that it will be impossible for Mr. Speaker to give a Ruling on the point without having an opportunity of considering the OFFICIAL REPORT of our debate in Committee, which lasted the best part of fifteen hours, I think. In the interests of the House generally and our procedure, I very much hope that what I have now said will be endorsed not only by my hon. Friends but also by the Leader of the House.

5.2 a.m.

Mr. M. Stewart

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I notice that the words in Erskine May citing the Ruling are that The Chair has even assented"— I draw attention to the word "even" which indicates something surprising or unusual— to the proposition that there can be no discussion". I ask you to consider this, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. One cannot assent to a proposition unless a proposition is made. I believe that on this occasion referred to in Erskine May the point was put to the Chair that there ought not to be discussion, and the Chair assented to that view. What we notice on this occasion is that nobody has made such a proposition to the Chair. Certainly, none of my hon. Friends would put forward the view that there should be no discussion, and I think that the Government, for very shame, could not do so, because the circumstances are that we have had no Government reply to a large part of the debate on the Bill.

Surely, if the Government were now to indicate, even in a word, that a spokesman on the Treasury Bench would be prepared to make even some brief comments on Third Reading, that would be, even at this stage, well received, I think, on this side of the House. If the Government were to indicate their willingness to do that, surely it would be fully in accord with the rules of the House, both the letter and the spirit, for the Chair to agree to a Government spokesman being heard, because then it would not be a question of anybody making a proposition to the Chair that there should not be any discussion: both sides of the House would be putting to the Chair the proposition that there should be discussion, which in these circumstances, I would think with great respect, it would be right for the Chair to accept.

All that is needed, therefore, is for somebody responsible, preferably, I think, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, or, if he thinks fit, the Leader of the House, to say that he is willing on Third Reading to make a reply to the great weight of serious argument which has been addressed to the Bill. Here is the Government's opportunity. I think that perhaps they have learned from the course of the last hour or so that to move the Closure is not the quickest way home for the Government—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—or their supporters, and they may, therefore—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I hope that the hon. Member will bear in mind that he is addressing the Chair on a point of order.

Mr. Stewart

I am obliged. When one looks across there one does get led on occasionally.

I conclude simply then on this point, than on my reading of what is in Erskine May, if a proposition were made by both sides of the House to the Chair that it would be proper to allow a discussion on Third Reading, it would be proper for the Chair to assent to that proposition, and that it is in the Government's hands, therefore, to create that situation, and to make it possible for the proceedings, even now, to end with some degree of mutual respect on both sides of the House

5.8 a.m.

Mr. Mellish

Further to that point of order. Last Session—and I think that Mr. Speaker may recall this only too well—an almost identical point came up when we were dealing with the Consolidated Fund Bill. It was argued that we, the Opposition, could not do certain things because it was laid down in Erskine May many years ago that they could not be done. We argued about this, and it was decided—I think I am right in saying, by Mr. Deputy-Speaker—that the conditions of that day and moment warranted an exception to that rule, and we had a discussion on the point.

I think that then a principle was established, that we cannot say that a decision, made in, say, 1920, and considered right then in the circumstances, and for reasons of good practice and custom, can never be altered by the Chair, no matter what the conditions or the circumstances, and that the Chair must simply say, as you have said, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that that was the decision made in 1920 and it must stand because it has never been challenged. I say to you now, it is now that the challenge is being made, and that the Chair must, in considering it, consider the custom of protection of minorities in this House, and that decisions can be altered by the Chair when it sees fit.

On that principle, will you not allow a debate on Third Reading, bearing in mind that the debate so far has been virtually a farce, since we have had no Ministerial reply to it, and that the only words uttered by a Government spokesman were to move the Closure?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I am sure that the hon. Member and the House will appreciate that I am most reluctant, in the Chair, to depart from custom and practice. The custom and practice that satisfied me was that set out in Erskine May, which referred to the debate of 1920. I read the debate of 1920, also. I am in no doubt that the Deputy-Speaker at that time was convinced that on Second and Third Reading of this Expiring Laws Continuance Bill it was proper not to have a debate. I, having listened to a very large part of the earlier stages of discussion on this Bill, feel myself so convinced. I hope that the House will allow me to do what I think right and to put the Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.