HC Deb 25 July 1963 vol 681 cc1819-25

Lords Amendment: In page 9, line 48, leave out from first "as" to end of line and insert so far as practicable having due regard to—

  1. (i) the desirability of securing and maintaining reasonable access to premises;
  2. (ii) the effect on the amenities of any Locality affected; and
  3. (iii) any other matters appearing to the Council to be relevant,
to secure".

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)

I beg to move, That this House both agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

The purpose of this Amendment is to set out explicitly some of the matters to which the G.L.C. must have regard in carrying out the traffic duty laid on it by Clause 9(2) and to remind the Council, if that should be necessary, to have regard to other relevant matters. At an earlier stage, my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) referred to doubts about the original phraseology. He thought that it might prevent the G.L.C. from taking into consideration anything except traffic matters. He was afraid that this might override all other considerations. My hon. Friend the then Parliamentary Secretary ex- plained that these fears were groundless and that if one set of considerations were specified there was no reason why all sorts of considerations which the G.L.C. ought to have in mind should not also be specified. I think this explanation partially satisfied the Committee.

The matter was not pressed to a Division, but the point was raised again in another place. Although, as my predecessor explained, there was no logical reason to amend the subsection, the Government recognised that there was something to be said for making quite clear that the G.L.C. will be required to consider amenity and other non-traffic matters in every case. Probably in many cases amenity is the most important, but it would be wrong to specify amenity and exclude all the others. The G.L.C. must have regard to the maintenance of reasonable access, the effect on amenities and the general reference to any other matters appearing to be relevant.

In requiring the Council to have "due" regard what is meant is that the Council must have neither too much nor too little regard to each. There must be no priority. The Council must take into account all aspects of the case and try to strike a fair balance. It is this striking of a balance between conflicting interests, traffic, amenity, whatever they may be, and weighing one against another, which amounts to having "due" regard to the matters concerned. I hope that with this explanation the House may feel disposed to accept the Amendment.

Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth (Hendon, South)

I wish to thank my hon. Friend and the Government for this change. I think it is a very great improvement and it shows precisely what is intended.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish (Bermondsey)

I support the Amendment. It goes to show what can happen in the course of discussion of a Bill. We were told that it would be quite impossible to change the wording and that it would be futile to do so. We were told that our fears were groundless, but now we have all these words in. We have had a change of Parliamentary Secretary and all sorts of things have happened since then.

The important part of this Amendment is the reference to amenity. Those concerned with traffic matters felt that there is often an attitude of mind that in order to get traffic moving faster and more smoothly amenity can be ignored. It appeared that sometimes the public point of view was almost disregarded. Although it may sometimes be difficult for the Ministry of Transport to execute some of its plans, nevertheless this provision is necessary from a public point of view and I welcome the suggested words.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords Amendment agreed to.

Lords Amendment: In line 10, leave out from "satisfied" to end of line 13 and insert: having regard to any matters appearing to him to be relevant, that the Council's duty aforesaid is not being satisfactorily discharged by the Council and that it is necessary for him so to do in order to secure compliance with that duty.

Mr. Galbraith

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

This Amendment to Clause 9(2) restricts the Minister in the use of his reserve powers. He will be able to exercise those powers only when it seems to him that the Council is not satisfactorily carrying out its duty laid upon it by Clause 9(2) and that it is necessary for him to intervene to ensure that the Council complies with that duty.

This matter was discussed very fully in the earlier stages of the Bill. In Committee my hon. Friend the then Parliamentary Secretary introduced an Amendment to try to meet the difficulty of hon. Members opposite. That Amendment was couched in strict legal terms and was in consequence found to be rather difficult to understand. The Government gave the matter further thought and introduced this additional Amendment in another place. I hope that it will remove the doubts of hon. Members opposite expressed at earlier stages and make it absolutely clear that the Minister's reserve powers really are reserve and are strictly for use in the last resort only.

Mr. Mellish

I think that the only people who can have objection to this Amendment are the lawyers. The previous Amendment to which reference has been made was undertood by no one. We were seriously worried that the Minister of Transport would be taking reserve powers of enormous magnitude. A large regional body was being created and we quarrelled about this with the Government. It would be out of order to go into all that now, but, even with the regional body as large as it is to be, the Minister was to have powers which could hamper Greater London Council from doing a first-class job. The proposed arrangement meets the point we had in mind. It adds up to the fact that the reserve powers given to the Minister can be used only in extreme circumstances. For that reason, we welcome the Amendment.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords Amendment: In line 14, leave out subsection (3) and insert: (3) The Greater London Council shall before 1st April 1965 consult with the Minister of Transport with regard to the administrative arrangements to be made by the Council for the discharge of the Council's functions by virtue of sections 10 to 15 of this Act.

Sir K. Joseph

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

As the House will realise, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and his predecessors have had since 1924 responsibility for London traffic. I do not think, therefore, it was surprising that in the Bill as originally drafted we wanted to make absolutely certain that the Greater London Council would take the mounting and intensifying traffic problems of the Greater London Area with due seriousness. For that reason the Government introduced into the Bill the requirement for Greater London Council to have, as a chief officer, a director of traffic.

More and more as we discussed the Bill it became apparent that by this special requirement of an individual chief officer, the freedom and the responsibility of the Greater London Council was being invaded and that, possibly, its chief officer arrangements might be distorted and frozen. The purpose of the Government in stressing the importance of somebody very responsible taking charge of London's traffic was acknowledged on both sides of the House. But the Government later decided that the right thing to do was to leave the job of deciding exactly how to tackle this responsibility to the Greater London Council, and the House will see now that the Amendment which was accepted in another place and which we are now considering simply requires that the Greater London Council shall, before 1st April, 1965, consult with my right hon. Friend about the arrangements it proposes to make for the discharge of its traffic functions.

I think, therefore, that we are accepting the substance of what we all agree to be important while freeing the Greater London Council to take any action it thinks necessary to meet the need. But there is another reason also, I feel, for rejoicing that we have now changed the arrangement and removed our previous requirement of a nominated chief officer, namely, the director of traffic, because the nomination of that officer led to a whole lot of other professions requesting that their representative also should be nominated either on the Council or the London borough.

Here I should, perhaps, take the opportunity to explain that while wishing to leave full responsibility to the new London authorities as to chief officers, town clerks and treasurers, and, indeed, one or two others, and as to how they should make their arrangements, I recommended to the Committee, and the Committee accepted, that in the case of the London boroughs there should be a chief architect as a chief officer. I explained that this was not only because I saw that development was going to be such a major job of the boroughs but, unlike other functions, the design and layout of architecture was not a political matter which could be brought forcefully to the attention of the boroughs which would not give it enough status. Therefore, I thought that an exception should be made and that the London boroughs should be urged to recognise the importance of quality in all the developments they did by having a chief architect. But this, of course, led to further troubles and several other professions felt that their claims had been overlooked. Indeed, many other professions will have an important, an extremely important, part to play in the work of the London boroughs.

Many London borough councils will be faced with pressing problems of urban redevelopment. Some will acquire large responsibilities for estate management. It goes almost without saying that where boroughs have these problems their councils should, from the outset, give careful thought to the form of organisation which they will need in order to cope satisfactorily with them. But I am confident that the borough councils, in devising their organisations for these purposes, will recognise that a number of professional specialisms need to be brought to bear.

Fears have been expressed to me on behalf of estate surveyors that they might not be given an appropriate place in the boroughs' organisations. I feel there is no ground for uneasiness on this account. One obvious method of securing that the estate surveyor's distinctive professional contribution is brought to bear effectively in cases where there are large-scale activities of a kind requiring his advice is by establishing a separate professional department, as many county boroughs of a size comparable with the new London boroughs have done. But the form of the organisation must depend on each borough's judgment of the needs of its own area, and that will vary considerably from one borough to another.

I hope that the House will accept that the arrangement produced is the substance of what we all want.

Mr. Mellish

It is getting monotonous to have to say "We support this.". Let me put this on record. I think that the Government's original intentions were very honourable and understandable. It would be right to envisage, when the traffic problem is looming so large, that there should be the appointment of an individual with knowledge of the subject. But we do not feel it right to put it into the Bill. In fact, the new G.L.C. would be compelled to appoint such a person. It would be right, therefore, that it should consult with the Minister of Transport and discuss with him how best traffic can be controlled. Indeed, the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary will know that there is an enormous survey going on now of London's traffic, costing a vast amount of money. I do not know when it will be completed, but certainly when it is completed there will have to be another look at the matter to see how the whole of these traffic arrangements are to be dealt with.

To take the point of the Minister about the arrangement of London boroughs, I do not think that we should write into the Bill anything about what sort of officers they ought to have. Certainly in London a different status is given to different departments. For example, in some London boroughs the borough engineer is written down whereas the housing manager or director is considered to be a much more important person. They give them differenttitles. There is going to be a lot of argument when the new boroughs merge concerning which of their departments are the most important. I can think of some boroughs where they already have very large labour forces and where the housing director comes into the picture in a much greater and more important way than the engineer's side in another borough.

I am sure, therefore, that the Minister is right here and that we must give the London boroughs freedom to decide for themselves the sort of officers they want. It would be madness for any new Greater London boroughs not to have first-class surveyors and architects. They will be given these greater powers and will need experts. The only doubt we have is from where they will get the staff. I very much hope that the people in the present L.C.C. surveyors and architects department, which, I understand, is running down, will be given the opportunity to carry on the work they are doing for the L.C.C. and will get the chance of jobs with the Greater London boroughs. We need these experts, and if we lose them to local government it will be a great pity. So we support the Minister and think it right that we should not write into the Bill instructions of this kind which are quite unnecessary.

Question put and agreed to.