Clause 9.—(PIPE-LINES.) (Hansard, 14 May 1963)

§ Mr. Barber
Perhaps I should follow the good example of my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary and give a brief explanation on the purpose of the Clause.
The Clause simply supplements existing provisions in the Customs and Excise Act, 1952, relating to the transport under bond of dutiable commodities on which duty has not been paid so that pipelines of the types which are likely to be constructed in future under last year's Pipelines Act can be used for that purpose with Customs' approval and proper Revenue control. The alternative of requiring duty to be paid in all cases in advance of the conveyance of goods through a pipeline would be an unreasonable restriction on the natural and very important development of this trade.
The Clause is introduced this year because it is reasonable that the prospective operators should have firm knowledge at the planning stage of these ventures of the Customs' requirements which they will have to observe for the conveyance of dutiable commodities under 1274 bond. The publication and the passing of the Clause will, I hope, make it possible to have detailed discussions with these people.
The commodity immediately in question is, of course, oil, but, in the longer term, pipelines for the transport of other dutiable goods may well become a commercial proposition and therefore the Clause is framed in terms of dutiable goods generally.

§ Mr. Mitchison
I stand much refreshed by the Financial Secretary's last remark. I have many times climbed to the top of hills on a hot day and wished that there was a pipeline leading beer or a similar beverage, in a cool and drinkable condition, to that exhausting place.
I am a little puzzled about the Clause. What it does can be summarised in this way. We are turning pipelines into bonded warehouses. That is what the Clause does, no more and no less. I should have thought that this was an extremely difficult thing to check. Has the Financial Secretary noticed the habits of tits with regard to milk bottles? They knock a little hole in the top of the bottle and drink the milk. I suppose that it would require more than a tit to knock a hole in a pipeline, but I should have thought that it was difficult to prevent people, if they were so minded, from getting dutiable goods—perhaps the beer that I have mentioned—out of the pipeline, and a great deal more difficult than to deal with a bonded warehouse.
These pipelines are going over very considerable distances. We know the thirsty souls who live in the countryside and for whom we provided in the Clause entitled "Brewers not for sale". But a pipeline passing by them in a tappable condition would be an almost irresistible temptation.
We should be told why the Government consider it necessary to do this. I can see that from the point of view of the pipeline owners it has certain conveniences, and I suppose that it must be a question of balance, but, on balance, I should have thought that, unless we are to have very stern and strict regulations about how the pipeline would be constructed, we were providing a hit of machinery which it might be extraordinarily difficult to enforce.
1275 I suppose that in many cases the answer will be, "Who will take the trouble to tap a pipeline in order to get half a pint of petrol out of it?" But there are people who tap other things than pipelines. There are gentlemen who tap safes, for a sufficient consideration. What might happen on a dark night in the wilds of Wiltshire? A criminal gang may tap a pipeline full of petrol, beer, or whatever it may be, or may find that it is full of dutiable whisky on which the duty has not yet been paid.
The old-fashioned smuggler will not be in it with the modern pipeline tapper when he gets going. I had better not make too many suggestions or those who are criminally disposed will, no doubt, be prompted to exercise their nefarious activities. But surely the Government will either have to take precautions about someone else's pipeline for which there appears to be no sanction of machinery, or, failing that, will have tappable pipelines full of unknown valuable fluids all over the countryside.
I repeat again, has the Financial Secretary really considered what happens on a dark night in the wilds of Wiltshire? It was, I think, in another county that there was lately a little amateur witchcraft. If we can have witchcraft, surely pipeline tapping is quite a simple and easy matter. I wonder whether this has been given enough consideration.

§ Mr. Barber
The point which the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) has raised in the context of this Clause is an important one, and I can assure him that Customs and Excise have given very full consideration to it. If the hon. and learned Gentleman will look at the Clause, he will see that the Commissioners of Customs and Excise are given virtually complete discretion as to the conditions which they may lay down before they approve a pipeline for these purposes.
They have also the power for "reasonable cause," which is a pretty general phrase, to vary the terms of their approval and, with a certain amount of notice, to revoke their approval, so I think that it is right to start from that point of recognising the powers which they will have under this Clause. There is something else which I should mention 1276 to the Committee in answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman. The conveyance of goods by pipelines—dutiable goods, I think, is the phrase used here—is not something which is novel to Customs and Excise. In fact, pipelines are already in use for the conveyance of oil which has not yet borne duty, and these pipelines have been approved by Customs and Excise for Customs purposes as extensions of existing bonded warehouses.
The important point is that hitherto the pipelines have always been in the same ownership as the bonded warehouse in which they have either started or finished. Consequently, no practical difficulty of control has arisen. In the future, however, it may well be that pipelines will be constructed and operated by companies which are not themselves the owners of existing bonded warehouses or which are not the original owners of the dutiable goods which are conveyed. On the other hand, these companies will not necessarily be pure carriers but may, in certain circumstances, take over the ownership of commodities conveyed and dispose of those commodities to third parties.
I can, if the hon. and learned Gentleman is interested in this particular aspect, explain at greater length the facilities under the existing legislation, and the gaps in the existing legislation, for which we wish to make provision for the future. But I hope from what I have said that I have given him sufficient information to convince him that this has been thoroughly well-thought out by the Government and our advisers and that he will therefore give us his wholehearted approval and not divide the Committee on this occasion.

§ Mr. Mitchison
Reluctant as I am to divide the Committee on such a grave matter of policy as this, I find two complete absurdities, if the hon. Member will permit me the use of that word, in his explanation. The first is obvious—when is a pipeline not a pipeline? When it is a warehouse. Apparently hitherto the Government have proceeded by calling a pipeline a warehouse and treating it accordingly. Why do they want the Clause if they can always do that? It must have struck them suddenly, in one of those flashes of inspiration which happen particularly in connection with Customs and Excise legislation, that it is 1277 a little absurd to treat a pipeline as an extension of a warehouse. They must have had some scruples about it. Perhaps it is the passion for truthfulness which seizes all political parties just before a General Election.
The other absurdity, although not quite so obvious, is eqally flagrant. We are empowering the Commissioners to approve a pipeline if they think that it is safe. We might as well ask them to approve a safe as immune from burglars. Who knows more about it, the Commissioners of Customs and Excise or the professional pipeline crackers who will soon be upon us? I back the criminal every day in this race. He will give one tap on the approved pipeline and, in spite of the approval, out will come the whisky or the beer.
The Financial Secretary is putting too much of a burden on the Commissioners. I have known them to refuse the simplest administrative task, such as licensing the sale of tobacco from moving vehicles, because it was too much for them to manage. Here they are embarking on the unknown and pitting their administrative wits against these pipeline crackers. The hon. Member is far too confident in his estimate of their powers, and he is confusing sound administration with sound safe cracking. The two things are quite separate. He must remember that when approving a pipeline the Commissioners do not know what can and what cannot be done in dark nights in Wiltshire. The Government have taken on too much in this Clause, and I hope that if we pass it today we shall not find too much mourning about the results tomorrow.

§ The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster-General (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter)
I beg to move,
That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.
We have finished Part I of the Bill. Although we have not made all the progress which some of us perhaps hoped, it is, by the hours of this House, if not 1278 perhaps in these days of another place, comparatively late in the evening. My experience of Finance Bills, which goes back some years, suggests that it is better to proceed, if one can, with the general co-operation and good will of the Committee rather than at an early stage try to drive the Bill through to a late hour. But I am bound to say that if the Committee is good enough to accept my Motion, I hope that we shall feel disposed to make rather better progress tomorrow without, again, I hope, sitting to an unduly late hour.

§ Mr. Houghton
I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for moving the Motion, which I cordially accept on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends. We might have got a little further had there not been unexpected delays at two points in the journey today, but I am bound to say that in my 15 years on Finance Bills, I have never known an occasion when we reached Clause 9 on the first day. So by all tradition we have now made very good progress indeed.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is looking not at the first nine Clauses but at the remaining 53 or 54, though to illustrate the pecularities of this Bill I would mention that on the Notice Paper at the moment there is no Amendment between Clause 15 and Clause 33, and I have never known that before. So we have really nothing to guide us in our progress through the Bill except our application to the task and a reasonable amount of good will because, as my right hon. Friend the Deputy-Leader of the Opposition said—what did he say?—"We are moving on, brothers", I believe he said. Anyhow, there is a more recent utterance of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition—"We are riding high." We can afford to be magnanimous and make good progress tomorrow, because it is the last Finance Bill that the right hon. Gentleman will have anything to do with.