HC Deb 18 November 1963 vol 684 cc763-74 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Peel.]

10.13 p.m.

Sir Cyril Black (Wimbledon)

On 29th July last, Dr. Peter Henderson, Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Education, addressing a seminar of teachers at Cambridge, said: I do not myself consider that a young man and woman who plan to marry and who have sexual intercourse before their marriage are unchaste. I simply cannot convince myself that they are immoral.

Mr. Speaker

Order, order. In appealing to hon. Members to make less noise as they leave the Chamber, I would remind them that on some occasion when speaking here they may require equivalent indulgence.

Sir C. Black

Put briefly, simply and in a sentence of two or three words, Dr. Henderson condoned fornication.

This statement by Dr. Henderson was made against the background of deep concern about juvenile delinquency, lowered moral standards and pregnancy on a serious scale among girls and young women in schools and colleges. These conditions, known, of course, to Dr. Henderson, make his statement even more reprehensible than it would otherwise have been.

It is not surprising that this statement provoked a public outcry on a scale not often experienced. Archbishops, bishops, ministers of religion, churches of all denominations, school teachers, social workers and multitudes of ordinary people with far sounder ideas on moral conduct than the muddle-headed ideas of the proponents of the new morality vehemently protested at the statement.

Speaking personally, I have rarely, during the time I have been a Member, had so many letters of protest as I received on this matter and I know that many of my colleagues had a similar experience. It is perhaps cheering to notice that a public opinion poll taken to ascertain the public reaction to this statement showed that less than 20 per cent, of the public were in agreement with the view expressed.

There was also protest at the highest level by members of the medical profession. Dr. Ernest Claxton, Assistant Secretary of the B.M.A., said: As a doctor and official of the British Medical Association I can tell you that extra and premarital intercourse is medically dangerous, morally degrading and nationally destructive. Twenty-five years ago this statement by Dr. Henderson would almost certainly have put his future employment by the State in serious jeopardy. Everyone expected that at least my right hon. Friend would have strongly repudiated the views of his Chief Medical Officer. I am bound to say that many of us have been profoundly disappointed and shocked by the attitude of my right hon. Friend to this matter.

My right hon. Friend was good enough to write to me at some length setting out his point of view, and I am sure that he will think it not improper for me to quote from the reasons he gave for the attitude he adopted. I think that the following summarises his views on the matter. It is a quotation from his letter: It is not my duty to lay down the law on this subject. Different views are held by honourable people on the question of whether premarital intercourse is in itself immoral. Neither I nor my predecessors have claimed the authority to lay it down that one view was right and all other views were wrong. The position has always been and remains that in our system of education these matters are the province of the teachers inside the schools. If that be the case, how serious is the statement of the Chief Medical Officer, because he was acting as the guide and the instructor of the teachers? He was giving a lecture to teachers at a seminar at Cambridge and surely, therefore, on the Minister's own argument, this is a case of the blind leading the blind, with the danger of both falling into the pit.

Let me make a brief comment on the Minister's argument for the attitude that he has taken. Let us suppose that a teacher in a secondary school expressed to a class of teenagers the opinion that Dr. Henderson expressed at the seminar. Let us assume that there was, as there undoubtedly would be, a volume of protest from the parents of the teenagers to whom that advice was given. Let us assume that the local education authority, as it could properly do, went into the matter, warned the teacher about what he had said and told him that if he repeated any advice or gave further teaching of that kind dismissal would follow.

Haw greatly has the position of the local education authorities been weakened by this advice by the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Education, because the teacher, in these circumstances, would be able to say to his employers, "I said what I did on the authority of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Education. I said no more and no less than he said."

My right hon. Friend has not even been consistent in this matter, because he has not been unwilling to allow posters in schools warning children that if they break the rules of health by smoking they are in danger of getting lung cancer. But apparently he is not willing to lift a finger to ensure that young people should be warned that if they offend against the laws of God by indulging in premarital intercourse they run the risk, among other evils, of contracting venereal disease and bringing illegitimate children into the world. Most of us would regard smoking as a less serious matter than fornication.

I would ask my right hon. Friend whether he has studied what the Newsom Report on Secondary Education has to say on this matter. The Report, issued by the Central Advisory Council on Education, says: Teachers can only escape from their influence over the moral and spiritual development of their pupils by closing their schools. A chapter on spiritual and moral development quotes the 1944 Education Act: It shall be the duty of the local education authority to contribute towards the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community. The Council then goes on to declare: We believe it to be wrong to leave the young to fend for themselves without guidance. Boys and girls should be offered firm guidance on sexual morality based on chastity before marriage and fidelity within it. I think that it is not irrelevant for me to ask the Minister whether he agrees with that judgment in the Newsom Report, and whether he considers that the application of that judgment in the Report will be helped by the kind of statement made at Cambridge by his own Chief Medical Officer.

I must confess my surprise at the line adopted by Dr. Henderson. A word of regret from him would very greatly have helped, but that word has remained unspoken. He has committed two cardinal errors as a civil servant. First, he has gravely embarrassed his Minister by the unguarded statement that he made, and, secondly, he has largely destroyed his own future usefulness in the position that he occupies, because when, in future, it is suggested that he be invited to address seminars large numbers of teachers will say, "We are against extending an invitation to him. We do not want to invite to speak on our platforms, a man who has publicly condoned fornication. Let us have other speakers whose views are more acceptable to us and whose views will be more helpful to us in the discharge of our work as teachers."

There has not been from Dr. Henderson one word of regret about the damage that he has done by his statement at Cambridge; but while he has remained silent his wife and his friends have intervened in the public Press to defend him and his statement, presumably with his knowledge and his approval, so that we are entitled to assume that in this matter he remains unrepentant.

My right hon. Friend could have finally disposed of this matter in July if he had said just this, nothing more and nothing less, "I do not agree with what my Chief Medical Officer said; I have so informed him and I have warned him to be careful in the future. It remains the policy of my Ministry to uphold sound moral principles throughout the education service. "That was all that it was necessary for my right hon. Friend to say to dispose of this matter finally nearly four months ago.

I appreciate that it is difficult at this late stage for my right hon. Friend to undo the harm that nearly four months of tardiness have done, but it would be a big thing, and a satisfactory thing, if, even at this eleventh hour, he were tonight to say a word in support of those principles on which the greatness of the nation depends and which, to multitudes of people, are more precious even than life itself.

10.26 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman (Coventry, North)

I have been in the House for eighteen years and this is the first time that I have heard an attack on a civil servant delivered in this form. The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) should have addressed his attack not to Dr. Henderson, but to the Minister of Education, who can answer for himself.

I do not want to deal with the substance of what Dr. Henderson said, but what he said was a private statement delivered in a private seminar. In those circumstances, it would be a gross infringement of his personal liberty if the House were to comment on his views as an individual, or if the Minister were to try to restrain him in the expression of those views. The hon. Member gave a catalogue, a sort of scale of moral values, which was undoubtedly interesting. However, if he would address himself to the pornography of violence seen every night on television and to the incitement to immorality which appears not only on television but in the Sunday newspapers in particular, aspects of journalism to which attention has frequently been called, then I feel that he would do much more public service than by attacking a civil servant who, quite rightly, has not sought to defend himself.

Sir C. Black

These are matters to which I have devoted a very great deal of attention and it does not lie with the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) to bring that imputation against me.

Mr. Edelman

I would only say that if the hon. Member has done so, he has done so very inconspicuously in this House. [Hon. Members: "Withdraw."] Certainly not. There have been many occasions and many areas of interest when the hon. Member could have occupied himself when he has singularly failed to do so. To summarise his speech, I would have said that never during the whole of the time I have been in the House have I heard a speech more redolent of humbug and cant.

10.29 p.m.

Mr. A. Bourne-Arton (Darlington)

While sharing the general views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) on the harm that the unfortunate publicity given to these two sentences in a speech by this officer has created, I would not go as far as he has in his condemnation of the officer himself.

I say this not only because I know him to be a sincere, high principled and worthy man, but also, like the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), I believe that the country would be ill-served if we were not to allow our public servants to express views sincerely held, particularly within the free intellectual walls of a university. If the officer had said—and this is the tragedy of the position—that, in the circumstances he was talking about, "I would not condemn", then few of us would have joined issue with him. None of us wants to be censorious, or to pry into other people's lives.

However, this is the nub of my appeal tonight. Dr. Henderson was quoted as saying, to the Daily Mail, "Who am I to say that they are wrong?" With respect, that was the wrong question for him to ask. He should have asked—as I ask—"Who am I to say that they were right?"

I ask my right hon. Friend, while not passing judgment in this matter—for I agree that it is not his business to do so—to say categorically tonight that he himself would not presume to say that they were right.

10.30 p.m.

The Minister of Education (Sir Edward Boyle)

I rise now only because I am keen, in view of what has been said, to give an answer to the House. I shall try to leave a little time at the end of my speech for other Members to speak. There was one thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) said in his speech that I regret. He said he thought that Dr. Henderson had destroyed his own future usefulness. He has certainly not destroyed his own usefulness so far as I, as the political head of the Department, am concerned, and I am still extremely glad to have him as Principal Medical Officer. I hope that those who feel inclined to invite Dr. Henderson to address them will not be deterred from doing so by my hon. Friend's words.

It might be helpful to begin by explaining the circumstances in which Dr. Henderson gave his address. As Principal Medical Officer he was invited to give the address of welcome to a seminar for teachers arranged by the Central Council for Health Education. Usually, at professional gatherings of this kind, at which civil servants speak, the Press are not present and do not receive a copy of the text. That is because they are professional gatherings and speakers are expressing their personal ideas in the context of a closed scientific and professional meeting without giving any appearance of expressing an official Ministry viewpoint.

On this occasion reporters were present when Dr. Henderson spoke, although he did not know of this until afterwards. The fact that what he said was so widely reported gave some people the impression that he was deliberately seeking a wide audience, including young people. This was not so. Dr. Henderson was speaking in a purely professional context. In no sense was he making an official statement of policy. He chose to speak on certain aspects of the work of the school health service and tried to show how it was adapting itself to a changing society. It was at the close of his remarks, when dealing with personal relationships that he included the observations which some people have found offensive.

My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Bourne-Arton) said that he agreed with anyone who approached this matter in the spirit of "I would not condemn". It seems to me that this was exactly the spirit in which Dr. Henderson was speaking. He spoke of young people who planned to marry and who had sexual intercourse before they married. He said that they might or might not be wise to do so, but that he simply could not convince himself that they were immoral. In other words, he was exactly adopting the attitude of "I would not condemn". I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon quoted Dr. Henderson's exact words, because there has been a tendency to exaggerate what he said and to assert—some people have certainly done this—that he was advocating behaviour of a certain kind, which he certainly was not.

Nor was this a speech which advocated or in any way condoned an attitude of moral indifference. I am grateful for the letter which appeared in the Observer, from a Mrs Masterman, who was actually present at the meeting. I am glad to say that she wrote to the Press commending Dr. Henderson's forward-looking ideas on emotional problems in school children, prevention of accidents in schools and the education of the handicapped "— all of them, I should have thought, moral issues of some significance. She concluded that Dr. Henderson's ideas showed that we have a man in a position to do a great deal of good for the mass of ordinary children. Dr. Henderson's main theme in the last part of his speech, which contained the offending paragraph, was the im- portance of the family as a unit and the importance of the teacher's duty not to impose his own moral standards on the children, but rather to help them towards forming a sense of values and of standards with which they can genuinely feel identified. I feel that the widespread publicity—here I agree with my hon. Friend—which has been given to two or three sentences of Dr. Henderson's speech has caused many people to gain a misleading impression of his general approach to these matters. It was an approach which has had much in common with the views expressed in the recent Report of the Newsom Committee, although I agree, as my hon. Friend correctly said, that the Committee did differ from him on the particular point which has given rise to tonight's debate.

I say seriously to the House that if one reads the whole of Dr. Henderson's speech one finds that it was the speech of a morally serious man deeply concerned about social problems and with the ways in which we can help young people to frame a scale of values for themselves. That seems an approach which should command the admiration and approval of this House.

Now I come to the suggestion that I should have repudiated what Dr. Henderson said on the specific subject of pre-marital intercourse. I think the House should bear in mind the terms in which this suggestion—or in many cases this peremptory demand—was made to me. A number of correspondents have made it clear that what they were after was a statement which could be quoted, if satisfactory from their point of view, as an authoritative pronouncement on this subject. But there is nothing in our constitutional system which could have justified me in making such a pronouncement. Indeed, the whole tenor of our educational legislation points the other way. It is not part of my function to prescribe what moral teaching shall take place in the schools.

Mr. Robert Jenkins (Dulwich)

Why not?

Sir E. Boyle

Nor would I have power to do so if I wished; that is the answer to my hon. Friend. It is surely relevant here that the Section of the 1944 Act which deals with religious instruction in county schools provides that the syllabus shall be agreed between the religious denominations, the teachers and the local authorities; there is no reference in this context to the Minister.

I thought the West London Association of the National Union of Teachers made an excellent point when it said—I saw a report of the statement made: A Minister cannot be asked to 'keep off' some subjects, and to lay down the law on others; nor is it reasonable to ask that teachers andofficials shall all have the same opinions. I thought that a very sensible comment on this dispute. Of course, I know that some people, evidently including my hon. Friend, think I ought to be in a position to lay down the law upon these moral questions.

Mr. Robert Jenkins

Certainly.

Sir E. Boyle

All I can say is that I hope that this House as a House will not take that view. I think it would be wrong educationally because, as the West London Association so rightly implies, knowledgeable and thoughtful men and women do not all think alike on these questions, and I cannot see either moral or educational advantage in trying to impose outward conformity where honest differences exist. Why that should be described, as it was by a distinguished correspondent of mine, as standing up for the moral integrity of the nation, I cannot understand. I cannot believe that imposing outward conformity where there are honest differences can be right.

I hope that the House will also bear in mind the position of the Minister if such a responsibility were forced upon him. Let us be clear about this. Many of those who advocate that the Minister should lay down the law on issues of sexual morality are really saying that the Minister, whoever he may be, must be ready to commit himself to a public position on this question, a public position of which they themselves have approved.

A number of the personal challenges put to me in correspondence have been in effect what I can only call test questions. If I had replied to them and my replies had not been considered satisfactory there would have been clamant demands for my resignation, just as there were for Dr. Henderson's.

Mr. Robert Jenkins

Why not?

Sir E. Boyle

I am explaining to my hon. Friend, whose contributions to the debate so far have been more noisy than useful.

Taking the long view and thinking, as I must, about my successors as well as myself, I am sure that I have been right to resist the pressure to answer test questions on my views concerning a matter of personal behaviour where there is no question of the law being contravened. I just cannot believe that it could be right to impose tests on the Minister which are not imposed on teachers or, for that matter, on Members of Parliament.

To end on a positive note, I believe—and I hope that the House will forgive me for putting it this way—that intelligent men and women can be helped in their search for truth, and for a sense of values to which they can feel truly committed, only by having their own and other people's ideas run the gauntlet of serious criticism and discussion. My belief is that there has never been more serious criticism and discussion of the human love relationship than there is at the present day. If we really believe in freedom of discussion, with respect we must mean something more than just free speech at the Marble Arch.

My hon. Friend, who has heard me speak on a speech day, will know the importance which I personally attach to persona] integrity and to boys and girls being encouraged to think seriously for themselves both about the objectives which they are to pursue in life and about the standards by which they are to live. Of course there is need for guidance, but in all humility I suggest to the House that worth-while guidance may often best be given by those who, in the words of the Newsom Report, understand the sincere differences …which separate men and women of real moral sensitivity. It is these considerations which explain the line which I have taken in this matter, and I hope that the House will agree with me.

10.41 p.m.

Mr. Leo Abse (Pontypool)

Perhaps I may be permitted to commend the Minister on the statement which he has made. I believe that it is one which must commend itself to those who hold a very different opinion both on the sentiments and on the attitude of the doctor. As I understand it, the doctor said that he was not prepared to condemn young people who intended to get married and who had premarital relations, even though he might not consider it wise.

If we examine the statistics we find that it is probably true that of every three first-born children born within marriage in this country, one was conceived before the parents were married. I think—

The Question having been proposed aften Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy-Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at seventeen minutes to Eleven o'clock.