HC Deb 20 March 1963 vol 674 cc386-93
The Secretary of Slate for Scotland (Mr. Michael Noble)

With permission, I should like to make a statement about a matter raised by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) on 14th March during discussion of the business of the House for this week.

The hon. Member referred to Press reports that the Government proposed that Clause I of the Children and Young Persons Bill should be extended to cover Scotland.

The history of the matter is briefly as follows. Clause 1 of the Bill, as drafted, is designed to implement a recommendation of the Ingleby Committee on Children and Young Persons—a Committee which dealt with England and Wales only—to the effect that there should be a general duty laid upon local authorities to prevent or forestall the suffering of children through neglect in their own homes". The Clause, as introduced, was not framed to cover Scotland because the matter in relation to Scotland was being considered by a committee of the Scottish Advisory Council on Child Care under the chairmanship of Mr. J. McBoyle.

It was indicated to the House, however, by my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, during the course of the Second Reading of the Bill on 27th February, that the Report of the McBoyle Committee had recently been submitted and would shortly be published; that its main recommendations were on much the same lines as those of the Ingleby Committee for England and Wales; and that I had asked the Scottish local authority associations to let me have their views on them as a matter of urgency.

I am sorry that the intention that Clause 1 would be extended to cover Scotland if the local authority associations agreed was not stated more definitely, though I think that the implication of what was said was clear enough.

Subsequently, all the local authority associations supported the view that the main recommendations of the McBoyle Committee should be implemented by the extension of Clause 1 of the Bill to Scotland; and the Report was published as a Command Paper on 12th March, with an accompanying Press notice which indicated that Amendments designed to achieve this end would be tabled.

I very much regret that it was overlooked that the effect of this procedure was that the announcement of my intentions was made to the Press before they had been precisely stated to Parliament—although, as I have mentioned, the general indication of what was in my mind had, in fact, been given during the Second Reading debate on the Bill.

The Bill is, of course, to a considerable extent on a Great Britain basis and a large part of it already applies to Scotland. It now seems appropriate, by this proposed extension of Clause I to Scotland, to implement as soon as possible the most important part of the McBoyle Committee's Report and to that end the necessary Amendments to extend Clause 1 to Scotland will be tabled today.

I should have thought it unnecessary for this one particular point to be discussed in the Scottish Grand Committee when there has already been a very full debate in this House on the principles of the Bill, and there is no particularly Scottish problem arising out of the general issues involved in the Clause.

I apologise to the House. It would have been more appropriate to have answered a Parliamentary Question about my intentions and I am sorry that this was not done.

Mr. Ross

We are grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his apology to the House for his belated recognition that it is unusual that in a matter as important as this a Bill which has been through all its stages in another place, and has had its Second Reading in this House, should then be so drastically altered in Committee, and for his recognition that this is a matter for announcement in the House.

The Secretary of State is rather unfair to us on this side and to the House as a whole in stating that his intention was not quite clear. I suggest to him that it simply was not declared. Indeed, does he appreciate that if his mind had been made up, his hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary had the opportunity to reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan), who asked the point-blank question about Clause 1 and Scotland? No answer was forthcoming, either then or at the end of the debate, although my hon. Friend's speech was referred to by the Home Secretary.

Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the Clause concerned was reckoned by everybody who spoke to it to be the most important Clause in the Bill? From that point of view, it could well be regarded as worthy of consideration by the Scottish Grand Committee.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about full debate. Does he consider that a full debate, certainly on a matter as important as this affecting Scotland, is one in which one Scottish back bencher takes part? It is certainly not our idea. Will the right hon. Gentleman think again, not only about having a Second Reading debate and preserving our rights but about this second point? Many of his difficulties may well have arisen from the fact that while having the Report of the McBoyle Committee he consulted local authorities without giving Members of the House and the public the opportunity to see the Report. Why did he not publish the Report? Then we could have had our debate in the light of the McBoyle Report, which we on this side welcome and accept.

Mr. Noble

It is true that my intention was not stated during Second Reading, but it is also true, if the hon. Member will think back to what was said on that occasion, that, in referring to Clause 1, my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department said that my right hon. Friend has asked the local authorities' associations to let him have their views on them as a matter of urgency, He went on to say: As regards the remainder of Part I of the Bill, we cannot at present foresee the possibility of comparable Scottish legislation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th February, 1963: Vol. 672, c. 1267.] I should have thought that that was at least a very broad hint.

To deal with the second point made by the hon. Member, it would have been difficult without being discourteous to local authorities—and we moved very fast in this matter, because we realised its importance—to have announced something to the House as my intention before all the local authorities' replies had been received. The McBoyle Report was submitted to me on 31st January, the local authorities were circulated an 15th February and the debate took place on the 27th.

Therefore, as the hon. Member will realise, some local authorities would not have had full time to consider it. If, however, there has been a fault, I agree that it is perhaps through my trying to hurry too much to get this desirable feature in our legislation and I have apologised to the House for making this mistake.

It seems to me that a Second Reading debate is unnecessary, because there is in Committee an opportunity for, perhaps, widening the scope of Clause 1 to include other matters which hon. Members want. It is on a Great Britain basis. I do not see that by having a Second Reading debate in principle on this one aspect, we would be doing anything more than having a parallel debate which could take place in Committee.

I think that I have covered the points about consulting the local authorities before telling Members of the House. This, of course, is a very common practice in many of these cases—

Mr. Ross

Before publishing the Report?

Mr. Noble

It is a very common practice in many cases, and if it is wrong at least it did enable this to be brought into this legislation which, I think, everybody wants.

Mr. H. Wilson

The right hon. Gentleman has apologised quite clearly to the House and I think that the House will wish to leave the matter there in the light of his apology, but he has gone on to make a number of explanations, or attempted explanations, and I think that it is only right to ask him whether he is aware that the words which he has just quoted could not have been taken by the House as a broad hint or any other kind of hint. Those words were entirely obscure and gave no indication at all that there was the intention to widen Clause 1 to cover Scotland.

Is the right hon. Gentleman further aware that my hon. Friend made an extremely good point just now when he pointed out to the right hon. Gentleman that, he having received the Report on 31st January, if we were to get broad or obscure hints in the debate on 27th February, we could at least have been given the privilege of seeing the Report even while the local authority associations were being consulted? It is not good enough to get a report, to hold it up for six weeks before publication, to make obscure noises in a Second Reading debate which we are now expected retrospectively to read more into than was expected at that time, and then think that the point has been dealt with.

Will the right hon. Gentleman—and I put it to the Leader of the House, too, since he is here listening—take into account what my hon. Friend has just said about the desirability of debating the principle of this in the Scottish Grand Committee? I think that the right hon. Gentleman will find on rereading in HANSARD the debate to which he has just referred that there was no commitment that a debate would take place when the Scottish Report was available to this House, and I think that, in the circumstances, the best thing now would be to allow the Scottish Members to have the same freedom of discussion on a published Report as the English and Welsh Members had in the debate on 27th February. If he and the Leader of the House would consult about this I think that the House would be well content to leave the matter where it is.

Mr. Grimond

I am sure that he House will be grateful to the Secretary of State for his apology. I am not quite certain why he apologised for not answering a question, or thought that it would be more appropriate to answering a question, because the Government were asked a question and if they wanted to answer it they could have done so.

Apart from the Parliamentary position, I am rather concerned about the status of Scottish administration. There have been suspicions in Scotland before that legislation for Scotland is tacked on to legislation primarily designed for England.

I am rather interested to know what might have been done, or was intended to be done, about the McBoyle's Committee's Report. The Committee did a lot of work on this matter, yet the Bill was introduced and allowed to proceed a long way on its course when it was known that the Committee was on the point of reporting? Was no notice taken of this by the Government in general? Or was it intended to have a separate Scottish Bill? Or how were the findings of the Committee to be dealt with?

Mr Noble

I think that the right hon. Gentleman, who has a long experience of these things, knows that when separate committees are sitting for England, Wales and Scotland and the reporting is not simultaneous, as so often has happened in the past, because the Scottish Committee reports, four, five or six months later, legislation is not brought before the House perhaps until a year or two later. In this case, we have done our very best to hurry this proceeding up and, perhaps, made a mistake in hurrying it too much, but we have done our best to overcome the sort of difficulty the right hon. Gentleman referred to.

The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government were asked a question. This is true, but they were asked a question before the local authorities' reports had been received and the Government's intention at that time could not, therefore, I think, be given.

Mr. H. Wilson

May I press the right hon. Gentleman further, to get it right on the record? He said that he received this Report on 31st January. Is it not a fact that the Report was signed in December, 1962, and then went to the Scottish Advisory Council on Child Care for comment before he formally received it? Is he really telling us that he did not know and no one in his Department knew the contents of this Report in December, 1962? Is it not a fact that in normal circumstances there was likely to be someone in his Department who would have known?

Did nobody in the Scottish Office know? Did not he tell him about the contents of this Report in December, 1962? So it was not six weeks, but 10 or 11 weeks, before publication. In all these circumstances would it not have been possible to have hurried up the printing and had this made available to Members before this "broad hint" was delivered on 27th February?

Mr. Noble

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is probably right in his suspicion that there were people in my Department who had, at any rate, some knowledge of what Mr. McBoyle's Committee was likely to report on some factors, but, as I said, I received the Report on 31st January.

Mr. W. Hamilton

Bumbling.

Several Hon. Members

rose—

Mr. Speaker

I do not think that we can continue with this now.