HC Deb 02 November 1965 vol 718 cc878-957

Report from the Select Committee on the Palace of Westminster to be considered forthwith.—[Mr. Bowden.]

3.31 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Bowden)

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Report.

The House will recall that on 26th April this year, with the gracious approval of Her Majesty The Queen, the control, use and occupation of the Palace of Westminster passed from her to the control of the two Houses of Parliament. Hitherto, supreme control on behalf of The Queen rested with the Lord Great Chamberlain as her representative. During the time that the House of Commons was sitting, control was, in those days, delegated by the Lord Great Chamberlain to the Serjeant at Arms acting for Mr. Speaker, but during the Recesses and weekends control reverted to the Lord Great Chamberlain, and it was on those occasions that most of the difficulties arose, when any did arise.

With effect from 26th April, control of the House of Commons part of the Palace of Westminster rests in Mr. Speaker. The Report which I now commend to the House is of a Select Committee set up by this House on 27th April this year to make recommendations on the control of accommodation, powers and services now vested in Mr. Speaker on behalf of the House of Commons. The Select Committee, under my chairmanship, made a close and very detailed study of the present organisation, and we are extremely grateful for the memoranda submitted to us and for the oral evidence to which we listened.

I should like personally to take this opportunity of expressing to the Chairman and members of the Select Committee on Publications and Debates Reports my regret that through an omission, for which I accept sole responsibility, the Committee was not invited to give evidence or to submit a memorandum.

In the Report we have set out in detail the functions and activities of the three Departments responsible for the administration of the House. I feel that I am expressing the views of the Select Committee when I say that there are, apparently, many anomalies. It is, for example, a little difficult to understand why, as a result of the happenings during the years, the Kitchen Committee and the Publications and Debates Reports Committee are both Select Committees of this House whilst the Library Committee is an advisory committee to you, Mr. Speaker.

We considered very many points of detail and found some apparent lack of co-ordination. To give one example, the Minister of Public Building and Works is responsible for the cleaning of certain rooms and corridors in the House of Commons side of the Palace of Westminster, while the Serjeant at Arms is responsible for cleaning other parts of the Commons side of the Palace. We came very quickly to the conclusion that there is a need for a central organisation, some central committee, which perhaps would delegate part of its responsibility but, nevertheless, would be in control and answerable to Mr. Speaker and to this House. In our view, without such a committee it would be quite impossible for Mr. Speaker to control the House of Commons side of the Palace.

The Select Committee, therefore, recommended the setting up of a House of Commons Services Committee, consisting of two members from the Government and two from the Front Opposition Bench, Government and Opposition back benchers and, maybe, one Liberal Member, if the Liberal Party wishes to be represented. It was thought desirable to include among those members some new Members of the House who came here after the last General Election. It was also thought that it would be an advantage if the Leader of the House and Government Chief Whip, with their equivalents on the Opposition side, were the respective Front Bench members of both sides of the House.

The Committee also recommends that Ministerial representatives of the Ministry of Public Building and Works and the Treasury should be available when required but would not sit as members of the Committee. We feel that it is important that this should be a House of Commons Committee, not a Government Committee or an Opposition Committee, and therefore that Ministers should be called in only when their advice was needed to help us in our deliberations.

It is recommended, in addition, that the main Services Committee should appoint four sub-committees: one, catering; two, administration, which would include the functions of the Clerk's Department and such matters as the preparation of the Votes and Proceedings of the House; three, Library; and, four, accommodation and housekeeping. Accommodation is a problem which will have to be looked at fairly soon, because additional accommodation is becoming available and it is important that a committee should be looking at the problem with a view, perhaps, to deciding in what way Members can be best helped now that additional accommodation is available.

It is felt that the chairman and deputy-chairman of each sub-committee should be appointed from the main Committee and up to five additional members should be appointed to each sub-committee with the approval of the House. The subcommittees would report in the normal way to the main Services Committee, which would itself report to the House as required and certainly not less than once each Parliamentary Session.

The proposed sub-committees of not more than seven members each—that is, five appointed by the House, the chairman and deputy-chairman appointed by the main Committee—would take over the functions of the existing Kitchen, Libraries and Publications Committees and would, in addition, have a fourth committee dealing with some of the functions of the present Clerk's Department.

The Publications and Debates Reports Committee is currently engaged in considering the televising of Parliament. It has done a great deal of work and has published an interim report. I have it in mind at a later stage—probably at the beginning of the next Session—to ask the House to appoint a special Select Committee to continue investigation into the desirability of, and the problems involved in, televising Parliament. I hope that in this way the valuable work that has already been done by the Publications and Debates Reports Committee will not be lost. I believe also that in this way we can get continuity of membership.

It is appreciated that Members of the House will wish to ask Questions on the responsibilities of the proposed House of Commons Services Committee. It is thought that the best way of dealing with this is that the Chairman of that Committee should answer Questions in this House in the area of the Committee's responsibilities but, if he so wished, that sub-committee chairmen could answer for any of the functions of any of the sub-committees on behalf of the Chairman of the main Committee.

The tasks which will be set the Services Committee are considerable. If the House today agrees to its setting up, we shall be having a Motion early in the new Session appointing the Committee and asking the House to approve the names. There are very urgent matters for consideration. I have mentioned accommodation. The House will be aware that accommodation is becoming available in the roof spaces and that building is going on fairly rapidly over Star Court. There are problems also of staffing, problems related to the Votes and Proceedings of the House and problems of reorganisation of departments and departmental co-ordination.

I hope, therefore, that the House will agree that the Committee will get on with its work fairly rapidly. It will take a little time to set up its own machinery and arrange the delegation of the many functions that the sub-committees will have, but, given the support of the House, I am sure that a great deal can be done quickly to help hon. Members to carry out their Parliamentary duties.

I hope that the House will accept this unanimous Report from the Select Committee, thereby enabling Members themselves, under you, Mr. Speaker, to assume responsibility for control in the House of Commons area of the Palace of Westminster.

3.42 p.m.

Mr. R. Chichester-Clark (Londonderry)

The recommendations of the Report which we are considering certainly come from a distinguished Committee. The Leader of the House presided, several Privy Councillors were members, and both Chief Whips served. One was glad to see that the normal silence which they preserve in this House was not continued in the Committee. I have not the least doubt that at least one of the Chief Whips was particularly audible during the Committee.

The House must be grateful to the Committee for the work which it has done. It must have been a long and arduous Committee. It has now produced for the House a unanimous Report, which is a fascinating study of the way in which this House works. If, as I hope it will, the Motion which the right hon. Gentleman has this afternoon moved goes through, the Report will probably become required reading for anybody who follows and studies the development of Parliament.

Certainly, to anyone from outside looking in at the Palace of Westminster and its work, I am sure that the apparent anomalies in the dual control system which existed until recently must have seemed to make for a system which could only be unworkable. At first sight, as the Leader of the House has said, it was an odd anomaly that the Lord Great Chamberlain should be in control of the Palace during Recesses and at weekends and that the Serjeant at Arms should, so to speak, take over, acting on Mr. Speaker's behalf, when the House was sitting. As the Committee's Report makes clear in paragraph (2), however, difficulty rarely arose between them. In answer to Questions Nos. 209 and 210, the Serjeant at Arms made it clear that the liaison between his Department and that of the Lord Great Chamberlain was very close and that any occasional friction which occurred took place only during weekends. For the fact that there was never a demarcation dispute we must be grateful to both concerned for the co-operation and good sense which they must have shown in preventing this.

When Her Majesty The Queen graciously gave control to the two Houses themselves last April, the House had to set about considering urgently how control of this portion of the Palace of Westminster should be administered. As things now are, Mr. Speaker is in control of the House at all times, whether or not it is sitting.

Paragraph 14 of the Report made it obvious that some form of central control was needed and that it would be most unfair to expect Mr. Speaker to exercise that control without the help and assistance of hon. Members. Accordingly, as the Leader of the House has said, it has been suggested that a House of Commons Services Committee should be set up. I welcome this proposal, and I feel certain that it will commend itself to my right hon. and hon. Friends on this side. It is, however, important, and I was glad to hear this stressed, that this new Select Committee should be a high-powered one. I am sure that it is right also, although I know that this is not entirely uncontroversial, because there are some who think back to the Stokes Report, that the Leader of the House of the day should be the Chairman of the Committee.

Anyone who is to serve on the Services Committee and who thinks that it will be an easy job will probably suffer a good deal of disillusionment, because it will have some difficult and controversial matters with which to deal, especially at the outset. I hope that it will be possible to have an annual debate on the Report of the Committee, at least once a Session. I feel certain that if the Leader of the House becomes Chairman of the Select Committee, he will find himself answering a good many Questions in this House.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman a small number of detailed questions. At present, the pay and conditions of service of staff in the Palace of Westminster are settled by the Commissioners of the House of Commons, who consist of Mr. Speaker, the Chancellor of the the Exchequer, all Secretaries of State and the Law Officers. Although salaries are now nearly always linked to appropriate grades in the Civil Service, the Commissioners still have to approve additional posts being created or posts being regraded.

I understand—and something which I heard yesterday leads me to believe this to be correct—that the Commissioners have never met. Indeed, I found from inquiring that some Commissioners have not even known that they were Commissioners. I am sure that the Leader of the House will bear me out in that.

The work of the Commissioners is done largely by the Staff Board, which reports to Mr. Speaker, who then secures the agreement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Although the Staff Board is now to report to the proposed new Com- mittee, we have not really come to a conclusion as to what should happen about the Commissioners. Will they be abolished as redundant and unnecessary, or will their agreement still have to be obtained? I am under the impression that if they were abolished, legislation would be required. Perhaps the Leader of the House can tell us something about this.

It is proposed that the Services Committee should take over the duties of the existing Kitchen Committee. I under stand that all the staff of the Kitchen Committee are employees of that Committee and are not borne on the House of Commons Vote or the Vote of any Ministry. In this respect, therefore, their position is different from that of the rest of the staff in the Palace. May we be told what change, if any, there is likely to be in their situation? This would be a useful fact to have this afternoon.

There are other detailed points which one might ask, but, in the main, they are matters for the new Committee. I am certain that everyone in this House will agree with the final paragraph of the Select Committee's Report and that it would be foolish for hon. Members to imagine that they could with profit interfere in the day-to-day management of the House. The great Departments which are set out in the Committee's Report—those of the Clerk of the House, Mr. Speaker and the Serjeant at Arms—are run with great efficiency. Certainly, when we think back to last summer, we all know of the great debt which we owe to many of the people in those Departments at a time when, for reasons which it might not be politic to recall this afternoon, the House was under very great strain. This, in turn, put a considerable strain on the staff. I am sure the House is grateful for their service at that particularly difficult time.

Yet without interfering in the day-to-day running of the House, it is obviously right that the overall control of the House of Commons and its Administration should be in the hands of its Members. Members have strong feelings about the facilities of this, House, and the accommodation in it, and they are rightly jealous of space near the Chamber and in the building as a whole.

One urgent problem which I do not think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned in the location of the Fees Office. There is some discussion about this in the Report, but it has still, obviously, to be decided, and I would have thought this an urgent task for the new Committee when it comes about.

I should like to ask the Leader of the House a little more on the question—he said something about it—of the responsibilities of the Minister of Public Building and Works, in particular about the allocation of Ministers' rooms and so forth. Will he be doing this, or will this be a function, perhaps under his advice, of the new Committee? Or will the Committee allocate rooms? Perhaps we could be told that today.

There is in the Palace of Westminster one important element which does not seem to have been considered very fully—and that is an understatement—in the Select Committee's Report.

Sir Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)

I only want for the record to make known that point about the Fees Office. I think the Committee gave a pretty clear indication that careful thought is being given to this by recommending that the move back of the Fees Office to the main building should be postponed. I think that ought to be known, because I think that is an important general direction which the Committee discussed, and my hon. Friend left it rather ambiguous.

Mr. Chichester-Clark

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The point I was seeking to make was that this is a problem of some urgency which I am sure the new Committee will wish to discuss at an early moment.

What I was saying was that there is one important element in this House which does not seem to have come in for much discussion, and that is an understatement, in the Report, and that concerns the arangements for the Press Gallery and the Lobby. I would not claim that this is a matter which is the concern of just one side of the House or the other, or of any one group of Members, but it is of concern to us all, for we have working in this building 300 journalists, I think, at the maximum, and an average of from 180 to 200 journalists every day. It would seem that at present their affairs come within the care of the Serjeant at Arms. I wonder if we can be told what arrangements for them there will be in the future. The Gallery do have a great many problems which should be ventilated, and I am quite certain that they, without any reflection whatever on the Serjeant at Arms, would wish some of their problems to be discussed by, or to be able to be taken to, at least one of the sub-committees which come under the aegis of the new House of Commons Services Committee. I wonder whether the Leader of the House could perhaps tell us if that is to be done and how it is to be done.

The conditions under which the Lobby and Gallery work are certainly not the concern of any one section of the House, but I must say that I would recommend any Member who has not seen them to go and see them for himself, because, as the Leader of the House agrees, they are, to say the least, appalling in many cases. Of course, this is a very opportune moment for the new Committee to start thinking about them, because, as the Leader of the House reminded us, more space is to be available very shortly. Now we have talked a great deal over the years, on both sides, about improved accommodation for the journalists who work here. I should have thought it was time we got down to some action.

It will certainly be in the interests of both the Government and the House of Commons as well as of the journalists if we do. After all, a great many foreign and Commonwealth journalists come here to listen to our debates and have to use the accommodation such as there is and very often, I am told, articles appear in the Press overseas which are critical of the accommodation here. I should not like to think that articles by overseas journalists were coloured in any way by the conditions which they have to suffer—if that is not too strong a word—in the Palace of Westminster. I am sure that that happens very rarely, if at all, but certainly we ought to make the conditions such that it could not happen at all.

Having seen the accommodation for myself only very recently, I must say that I find it rather ironic that the Parliamentary Press in Australia are at present in communication with the secretary of the Gallery here asking what facilities should be available for the Press in the new Parliamentary buildings in Canberra. They may, of course, learn quite a lot by experience if they come here to have a look for themselves. It is no exaggeration to say that not another journalist could be accommodated in any of the Gallery writing rooms without intolerable hardship.

We have just passed a Resolution in another debate this last week on the setting up of Second Reading Committees, and this, again, could lead to further demands for more staff and, therefore, for further accommodation. What is to happen if there is a further demand for staff accommodation is difficult indeed to visualise. Incidentally, I do not know whether it comes as a surprise to anybody, although certainly I had not thought about it before, but it is a fact that more and more interest is being taken in our proceedings in this House, and all the time more and more requests come in for membership of the Lobby, and that, again, presents us with the problem of the need for more accommodation.

I must not dilate too long on accommodation this afternoon because that is not the total object of the debate, but perhaps I can give one example of what can be seen by any hon. Member who goes upstairs. Perhaps it is the worst one, and that is the Press Association room, of which the occupants may be 24. In it there is available 17 sq. ft. per regular occupant. In other rooms there are 15 sq. ft. and 28 sq. ft. per regular occupant, and so on. I think it is true that there is only one room up there which meets the requirements of the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act which this House passed in 1963. That Act stipulates a minimum of 40 sq. ft. per person. Most journalists expect to be harried, rushed and harassed in their work, but they also expect to be able to have a desk and a filing cabinet. At the present moment, perhaps almost more they need space for back numbers of newspapers, books for research, and so on, and anyone who—

Hon. Members

So do hon. Members.

Mr. Chichester-Clark

I fully accept that. No one would disagree with that. The right hon. Gentleman spoke yesterday about having to get the priorities right—

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, West)

Get your priorities right.

Mr. Chichester-Clark

—and no one would disagree—

Mr. Speaker

I do not like interruptions from a sitting position. The hon. member must not tell me to get my priorities right. He must address any remark he makes in a Parliamentary way and through the Chair.

Mr. Chichester-Clark

I do not think there is any real disagreement among us at all on this point. The point is that this House through its new Committee will be in a position to discuss with Members the problem of their accommodation and so on. What I am trying to make absolutely certain is that there is a real link, because this has not been greatly discussed in the Report, with the Press, because the Gallery do feel on occasions out of touch with what is going on in the running of the House of Commons.

It is not in any party spirit that I recall one instance of this, which is as follows. The last Minister of Public Building and Works, Geoffrey Rippon, did allocate three extra rooms for the use of the Press Gallery. They were to have been available by Easter of this year, but late in 1964, in an Adjournment debate, the news came out—I do not want to get into the realms of controversy here—that those rooms were not, after all, to be available. The point about this is that that was the first occasion that the Gallery were officially informed that the rooms would not be available. I am not sure whether even at this moment they know whether or not they are going to get—

The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Pannell)

I pointed it out on the spot, even before that statement. It did not come in an Adjournment debate. I gave it straight in answer to a Question.

Mr. Chichester-Clark

I think that if he looks it up the right hon. Gentleman will see this did actually occur in an Adjournment debate, although whether or not there was another reference to it I do not know, but I have checked my facts very carefully and I find that they were not in fact officially informed. I say "officially". There may have been some unofficial communication of which I do not know anything. I am blaming no one for this apparent lack of communication. I am only saying that this is something which the Committee must, at an early stage, try to do something about. It must try to decide whether the matter comes within its terms of reference.

I know that it is the desire of all hon. Members and not merely any one group to improve these conditions. This is something which the House as a whole wishes to see improved, and a positive step which we can take in this connection is to find some better means of fitting this aspect of Parliament into the more modern setting which is envisaged in this Report—which I now commend to the House.

4.0 p.m.

Dr. David Kerr (Wandsworth, Central)

This Report, compiled during the long, hot, tiring summer, still carries some of the dust of that era of Parliamentary affairs. It is a dry document, and its recommendations, which we are asked to accept and to which I am pleased to add my voice in support, do not seem to carry us very much further along the long road towards supplying ourselves with effective, efficient and encouraging conditions of work and of living.

People outside the House are insufficiently aware of the fact that we are not simply committed to doing an office job in this place. If we were, heaven help us, because the facilities to do this effectively are lacking. We live up here. We are very much a community, but the sort of services which are available to us have not yet been translated into terms which allow for effective and pleasurable community living. I cannot accept that the kind of spartan existence to which we are subjected is necessarily productive of the best kind of Parliamentary work, and when people tell me—as they frequently and cornily do—that "Parliament is the best club in the world", I hasten to assure them that any club which tried to function with the facilities of this place would be out of business in a week.

I have particular interests in certain aspects of our life here. I am sure that hon. Members will not be unaware of the concern expressed on both sides of the House about the health of Members and its relationship to the conditions which prevail. The recommendations of the Select Committee suggest, first, that the new House of Commons Services Committee should include—on a sort of part-time basis—a representative from the Treasury and from the Ministry of Public Building and Works. It also suggests that the Committee should be able to call for papers and persons. I welcome that recommendation, but I wonder whether, faced as this House is with the possibility of new, rapid and exciting developments, representatives of the Ministry of Technology and the Ministry of Health would not also be useful part-time members of the Services Committee.

This is a personal opinion, but I have in mind, first, the fact that the ultimate televising of the proceedings of this House in some form or another is an inevitability, whether we like it or not. Why, then, should not we consider, as part of the services of this House, the immediate introduction of closed-circuit television? This has already taken place over the river, in County Hall, and has effectively supplanted the old annunciator system. On the whole, our annunciator system works reasonably well. Occasionally it has a fit of the shivers and the print then becomes totally illegible.

The introduction of closed-circuit television as an alternative to this system would have two advantages. First, it would give Members outside the Chamber a much more intimate opportunity to be involved in the debate in the Chamber at a time when they might be unable to get to it, for one reason or another. More important, however, the experiment with closed-circuit television would provide a most valuable experience for learning about the technical problems of editing, projecting and so on of future televised programmes dealing with debates in this Chamber. This is a matter which should encourage the new House of Commons Services Committee, when it is established—as I am confident it will be—to seek some technical as well as administrative advice.

The other aspect of technical concern of which I am sure hon. Members are aware and in which I am interested concerns the health of Members. There are a number of fringe aspects in this matter of which we may not all be fully aware. I take very hardly indeed—perhaps I do so especially from my point of view as a doctor—the lack of privacy which is available for men and women who are confined to this place for many long hours. The opportunity to escape from one's fellow men makes them much more attractive when one comes back to them.

There should be an opportunity, too, to meet people privately in this place—whether they be constituents, people with special advice which they can give Members privately, or simply Members' wives. Today Members see all too little of their wives. They should be able to entertain them in a manner which does not consist in sitting them down outside the Chamber on a hard bench and expecting them to wait while their husbands complete their business. This is a deprivation which, in the short time that I have been in the House, has been too little spoken about. As a matter of personal pride and pride in the work of this House, we ought to see that these matters are dealt with and come before the new House of Commons Select Committee.

The question of Members' health is too wide-ranging a matter for me to do more than indicate how the new Select Committee could begin to look at the problem. We are all individuals, and we all have individual problems of health and welfare. At the moment these are dealt with by the efforts of doctors on both sides of the House and by the sterling work—to which I pay tribute—of the Whips on both sides, who have shown themselves to be helpful, friendly and practical in dealing with social and welfare problems.

But sometimes—quite rightly—a Member is not very willing to confide in one of his colleagues on questions of personal difficulty when that colleague, even though he may have the necessary medical qualification, does not stand in a professional relationship with that Member. Therefore I urge the new Committee to examine the possibility of introducing to the work of the House some medical advice of an independent nature which is not committed to the rather special relationship which we, as doctors, enjoy with our colleagues in the House and which we hope our colleagues enjoy similarly with us.

As for the services of hon. Members, in view of what is already before the House, there can be no doubt that the demand on Members' time and the need for new facilities will increase. The White Paper concerning the Parliamentary Commissioner fills me with dread. It is not merely that I, in common with most hon. Members, have continuing difficulty in coping with the unceasing stream of demands for help from my constituents; it is that to all that is to be added a new form of encouragement. I welcome this, but in the circumstances I must insist that without the provision of facilities to meet with this upsurge of demand the hardworking, honest M.P. will find himself in very great difficulties, being forced to devote more and more of his Parliamentary salary to the employment of secretarial help—and heaven knows where he will put the secretaries and meet them in order to instruct them in their work.

This is very much the bread and butter of our day, and unless we are prepared to support the House of Commons Services Committee in its attempt to find better accommodation and facilities we shall find ourselves snowed under. It is not only a question of a Parliamentary Commissioner and the extra work which, if the terms of the White Paper are carried through, will fall to us; there is the suggestion of new sorts of committees, suggestions which should be examined sympathetically, but even the new recommendation which the House agreed last week is bound to mean new calls on the time of private Members.

There is one singular omission in the Report. The principle is established of a House of Commons Services Committee with a spokesman in this House, but I am intrigued by the absence of any suggestion that the other place is excluded from the consideration of providing amenities and facilities for Members of this Chamber. This seems to imply that whatever new facilities we want must be found within the present curtilage of this House. I regret that very much.

I have another fear. I hope that there will be a spokesman in the other Chamber to report the considerations of the Services Committee, but, more particularly, I hope that the other place will have some opportunity to examine it. In view of the growth of interest and the forward-looking policies established in the other place, I wonder whether they might not come to us for some of our accommodation and steal it from us. I hope that we shall not be neutral over this project—

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

rose—

Dr. Kerr

I will give way in a moment.

I think that we should be able to press for a considerable extension, as necessary, into the facilities now available for the other place so as to ease the work of this House.

Mr. Cooke

Perhaps I can help the hon. Member. Was it not as a result of agitations by his hon. Friends that the Palace was parcelled up between the two Houses? The decision has been made and the line has been drawn, and we have to get on as best we can with the part we have.

Dr. Kerr

It is not my interpretation, although it may be my fear, that the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) is right.

The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) referred to several other matters. One is the broad question of the conditions of work for our staff. I remain hopelessly ignorant about the sort of facilities available for the many people who make our work possible. I am not sure—I have read the Report all too briefly, I confess—that the available channels of communication between the differing employing authorities and the staff employed is a satisfactory means of negotiation and improvement of services.

This applies, of course, not only to the Press Gallery, the members of which, heaven knows, have plenty of opportunity to speak for themselves. It applies to the kitchen staff, the engineers, the porters, the guardians and the many other people whom none of us take for granted but whose rights in this House are certainly parallel to our own. If we are to have an effective House of Commons, their rights must be preserved, because without their work we cannot hope to have an effective Parliamentary system.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

From experience on the Kitchen Committee, I can inform my hon. Friend that the facilities available for members of the kitchen staff are far from satisfac- tory. Unfortunately, it is not easy to do something about it.

Dr. Kerr

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention. I am aware of the difficulties of recruitment and retention of kitchen staff. We all know of the difficulties which we faced during the long hard summer and the long hard Session in maintaining a satisfactory refreshment service. This is a reflection not on cost and perhaps not even on wages, but simply on working conditions. This also is something which the new Services Committee will have to deal with in a trenchant and sympathetic way.

Lastly, apropos of the point made by the hon. Member for Londonderry about the Press facilities, this is an opportune moment, perhaps, to express regret at the forthcoming closure of the Exchange Telegraph facilities and wonder whether their space will be made freely available to spread the existing crowded Lobby. We have all come to rely very much on ExTel in this place, and we hope that an early opportunity will be given to them to have another look at their decision to cut us off from the pleasure of looking at our own speeches very soon after we have made them.

I join with the Leader of the House and with the hon. Member for Londonderry in welcoming the Report. The matter is not one for a steady, continuing deliberation and obstruction; it is a matter of urgency. As the work of the House develops, as it must and should develop the need for the improvements which are hinted at, if not explicitly laid down, in the Report will become not merely apparent but quite unanswerable.

4.15 p.m.

Sir Richard Thompson (Croydon, South)

Like most hon. Members, I welcome this Report. I should like to add my thanks to the Committee for the work which they have done and for giving us a unanimous Report. It is appropriate, when we are discussing the conditions under which we are to work, that there should be the broadest general agreement among ourselves about them.

As I understand it, this document relates more to the administration of the House than anything else. Its most important recommendation is the central one—that of setting up a House of Commons Services Committee to combine in one body the functions at present spread over several committees and officers of the House. This makes sense. It is right that there should be one main channel of communication between you, Mr. Speaker, and Members who wish to alter, amend or improve the conditions in which they work and the arrangements for that work. This Committee is the right way to achieve it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) referred to that part of the Report dealing with the future location of the Fees Office. Although it may be said that this is something for the new Committee to consider, I hope very much that hon. Members of this House will not press for the Fees Office to be reaccommodated in the scanty amount of space which we have here simply—as I understand it—to suit the convenience of a few Members. It is no great hardship to walk under cover the relatively short distance which we have to go at present and it would be wrong to take up all that space within the Palace of Westminster itself simply in order to afford a few people easier access to records and details of Parliamentary pay.

The Report states that the average number of Members who go in person to the Fees Office every day is about nine and that since the Office has been across the road the number of telephone calls which it has received has increased. In view of all the improvements of facilities for which we are asking here, the reintroduction of the Fees Office—whether it be in the corridor upstairs or anywhere else—is not high on the list of priorities. I do not believe this to be a high priority at all.

If the Fees Office did not deal with such matters as salaries, car allowances and matters affecting the personal business of Members, it might not have had the attention in the Report which it has received.

The composition of the suggested Services Committee is extremely important. I hope that since control of appointments is one of the most important functions, we shall be very careful to try to get a well-balanced Services Committee. I particularly like the suggestion that it should include a representative selection of new Members of the House.

This is one of the most conservative places in the world, and it is the easiest thing in the world to imagine that because we have settled down in certain practices which work tolerably well, they can never be changed, and the only people who can bring some fresh air into this are new Members, who look at the whole thing de novo and ask, "Why on earth do we go on doing this in this situation?" It is probably only from that source that we shall get some new thinking and some sensible reform.

The hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. Kerr) pleaded for closed circuit television as a means of allowing hon. Members outside the Chamber to know what is going on inside it. It was before his time, but we tried a modest experiment with that not very long ago. I happened to be in the Ministry of Works at the time and knew a little bit about it. We set up one or two television receivers within the Palace and reproduced on them exactly the message which goes out on the annunciators. The general response by hon. Members was poor. At any rate, there was no encouragement whatever to go on with what seemed to me to be a very sensible reform. This illustrates how difficult it is to make any changes here. We tried very hard with this experiment. We even built into the sound track of this experiment that clicking noise which goes on when the message changes. We even did that to try to suggest to hon. Members that there was no change at all, but it did not work.

Dr. Kerr

I confess that I did not know about this. I am afraid that I did not make myself clear. I had in mind not that the closed-circuit screen should bear the message now borne by the annunciator, but that it should broadcast the actual proceedings from the Chamber.

Sir R. Thompson

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that explanation. I can see that he conceived a rather wider rôle for television than that which we modestly attempted. I also agree with him that the full televised recording of our proceedings is bound to come. After all, to a great extent, television has taken the place of the newspapers. All the arguments which are urged against television were urged in their day against reporting proceedings in the Press. In earlier days hon. Members imagined that television would involve enormous cameras like gun turrets with curious-looking young men manipulating them across the middle of the Chamber and with the floor littered with great cables and bright lights. Of course it means nothing of the sort. I agree with the hon. Member that television will come in the shorter rather than the longer term.

I want to say a few words about the better facilities which we need for doing our work properly. The great difficulty is the limitation of space. If we are to say that every hon. Member here should have a room to himself and adequate secretarial facilities and all the other facilities which this kind of body ought to be able to command, it is difficult to see how we shall fit them all into the Palace of Westminster. I do not think that it is practicable. But if we take a decision that some of our activities can be out-housed, then it becomes much easier. If we are to provide tolerable conditions for the very large staff—and not only the journalistic staff—which serves this place, then something must go, and we shall not squeeze it all into the existing Palace.

May I differ from the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central on one point? In providing better facilities here we should concentrate strongly on what I call the functional aids, which enable a man to sit down and to do some solid reading or research work in greater privacy than he has now, with better access to research facilities. I would sooner see an emphasis on those facilities than on the more social amenities. I agree that the latter must not be neglected, but, whether we call this the best club in the world or not, we must remember that a good club does not depend on the plushiness of the chairs.

I have always felt that this should be a place of plain living and high thinking. When we have done our work here, when we are not in the Chamber or in Committees and are not dealing with correspondence or interviewing constituents, on the whole hon. Members do better to get away from the place and to get out into the world—to a theatre or to the opera, or to look at a factory, or to lunch with an industrialist, or any of the many extramural activities on which hon. Members of all people ought to be concentrating very much. It would be a great pity if on the social side we made this place so cosy, convenient and comfortable that many hon. Members had nothing better to do in their leisure time than to sit around enjoying it. If we did that we should be cultivating a sort of political closed shop of all parties, getting more and more remote from real life, and I do not think that we should do that.

In the reorganisation of the facilities here, I am very much in favour of putting all the weight on those facilities which help the functional business of our being better Members of Parliament, being able to deal with our research problems and our constituency problems more efficiently. Given that, I should be content if the best club in the world still had a rather shabby room for us to live in when we were not working.

I think that this Report is a very worthwhile document. If we are to get full value out of the Services Committee, we must make sure, as far as we can, that we get the right people on to it. On some Committees we know that it is a question of the party Whips going round and saying, "Be a good chap and go on this Committee. We cannot find anybody else to do it." We do not want people of that character. We want a balance between experienced Members who know about this place and its traditions and how it runs and Members who have not their experience but who often have very good ideas if they can put them forward effectively in the right place at an early stage in their careers.

4.28 p.m.

Mr. A. Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire)

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) on the way in which they have addressed themselves to this Report. I am sure that we appreciate the Report and think that this is the right time at which the matter should be considered. My only doubts about the Report is that it seemed to follow the general line that we should do a little bit here and a little bit there, making another little building, and providing some more rooms, but that there would be no fundamental tackling of the problem of the future. My feeling is that the House ought to face the future.

During the war when the Polish Government came to this country the Minister of Information came to the Scottish Office to see whether he could ask some questions about this country. Tom Johnston gave me the job of replying to the questions. One point which puzzled this man from the Polish Government was how it was that in this country we had municipalities which were Conservative, such as Brighton and Southport, which seemed to act as if they were Socialists by running municipal services and putting everything in the charge of the municipality, while we had such local authorities as Glasgow and other great local authorities, under the control of Socialists, which did not run these municipal organisations. I agreed that it was a puzzle for anyone coming here from abroad. I also agreed that people who stood as Conservatives sometimes acted like Socialists while other who stood as Socialists seemed to act like Conservatives. Indeed, I added that I could only conclude that the Government was comprised of Socialist Conservatives and Conservative Socialists.

In the matter we are discussing, that is equally true, for when we debate possible changes we are all inclined to be conservative. We are today approaching not only a new attitude in Parliament but are rapidly reaching the time when this country will hold a different position in the world. Sooner or later we will have some partnership with Europe and will be more closely related to Europe. Sooner or later we will become closer to the rest of the world generally. That means that there will be a greater interchange of visits, with more people coming here, many of them not being able to speak our language.

Since the House did not accept my view that we should establish an academy of language, to see if we could get agreement in Europe on how we could best speak to one another, it seems that the language problem will face us for many years to come. True, English is winning in the race and is rapidly becoming an international language. However, if many more people will be coming here from other countries, particularly visiting Parliament, we should provide facilities of the sort provided in other Parliaments. Only in that way will all foreign visitors understand what is happening. There should be a lecture room with simultaneous translation equipment of the most up-to-date kind.

When the new buildings are being considered, this and other technical and scientific matters should receive early consideration and we should ask what will be our relations with the rest of the world, particularly Europe, in the near future. We are obviously going to play an important part in European affairs. Today, more and more people from South America, Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere regularly visit the House of Commons. They should be provided with facilities to enable them to hear and understand lecturers and, to this end, we should install the latest scientific aids.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) that television is a valuable medium. I am not completely clear about how he expects hon. Members to do their work in other parts of the building if they are at the same time viewing and listening to debates going on in the Chamber. I think that the House would prefer hon. Members to be in the Chamber if they intend to take part in debates and that we should not encourage them to listen to debates elsewhere and not be present. Few enough hon. Members attend sometimes without their being encouraged to stay away. The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) made some interesting comments about a sort of television notice board, with facilities for messages to be relayed throughout the building via the television screen.

Having said that, I must point out that we hon. Members are too amateur-like to attempt to consider the scientific problems affecting the Palace of Westminster. Nevertheless, much of our consideration must bear on what we intend to do about our voting practice. As long as we maintain the present method of having, in this mediaeval fashion, to wander through the Lobbies, hon. Members are bound to be tied to this centre of the building.

If, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central, suggested, hon. Members will be in various offices, perhaps half a mile from the Chamber, we need have no fear about our health. We will be running through the corridors to vote at such a speed that we will be bound to keep in good trim. We will be rushing to and fro half a dozen times a day, perhaps several times in one hour.

This is a ridiculous way for hon. Members to have to go about their work. If the present voting system is to be maintained, the only answer is to convert the offices above the Chamber into offices for hon. Members and install a fireman's pole so that we can slide down it when we are called upon to vote. Not only is the idea of hon. Members running into the Palace of Westminster to vote from over the street frightening; it is impracticable.

I gather that the Committee will consider the whole voting procedure. I trust that it will remember that if the present voting system continues the facilities made available for hon. Members must be close to the Chamber, otherwise the system will break down. Indeed, at present even Ministers find it inconvenient to have to come here to vote from their offices in Whitehall.

When I was in Uganda I was interested to note that the debates were televised into the reporting room, where the proceedings were taken down on tape machines. In that way the reporters not only heard what was said but saw what was happening and the whole thing made for greater accuracy and ease of reporting.

Over the generations we have had the most marvellous reporting of our proceedings. However, which reporter can cope will my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) when he is speaking at 280 words a minute? It is almost physically impossible to get it down. Therefore, for greater accuracy, and as an aid to reporters, we should adopt some form of tape recording. Considering the scientific achievements which are going on in this age, for the House of Commons to be 50 years behind the times is ridiculous.

If we are to use science in the Palace of Westminster, what is the good of our words being reported here by journalists when they must be relayed to their newspaper offices afterwards? Would it not be possible for a television broadcast of our proceedings to be sent direct to newspaper offices so that the newsmen in those offices would see what is happening on the soot, without the work having to be duplicated, even triplicated?

If we are to be really modern, I see no reason why we should not allow newspapers to have a television broadcast of our proceedings. This would be the sensible way of reporting our debates and it would also result in many rooms, which are at present used by reporters, being made available, for the transcribing of the notes would not have to be done here but from the television screen. That would leave Lobby correspondents and others here—those who must observe what is going on in the House.

Similar difficulties arise in Committee upstairs. When an important debate is taking place on the Floor of the House and a vote is called the Committee must bust up while hon. Members come down to cast their votes. No matter what the circumstances, the Committee must fold up for the time being while we rush down and then rush back upstairs again. This is a most inconvenient way of conducting Committee business. It causes a great deal of disturbance.

Is there any reason why a vote which is called on the Floor of the House should not be taken upstairs in Committee, where the Chairman of the Committee could put the Question and register the vote? That would prevent us having to rush up and down. The Committee's proceedings would not be halted for a great length of time and it would make for an improvement all round.

Hon. Members will be aware that sometimes, particularly when an important Committee is sitting upstairs, a vote is called on the Floor of the House in the spirit of mischief. That applies not to one Opposition but to all. If there is an important meeting upstairs, an hon. Member will call a Division so that everyone must come rushing down—although it frequently happens that when we have all arrived downstairs the Division does not take place. These are schoolboy politics and I suggest that this method of conducting our business needs looking into.

I once put forward the proposition that the Government should establish an office—a sort of ombudsman's office—for the assistance of hon. Members and for the provision of certain services. New hon. Members are always coming here and it would be of great benefit if they could find their way about the place more easily. The sort of office I suggested would contain civil servants who would assist hon. Members, show them how things are done and what to do. I see no reason why the Government should not set up such an office, a sort of information centre, to which hon. Members could go for documents and other services. As a matter of fact, if capable civil servants were to be there it would be an excellent training ground for them, before getting promotion in their own offices, to know the difficulties of M.P.s at first hand. Later, as permanent under-secretaries and the like, they would be ready to deal more sympathetically with Members' problems.

We can all speculate on what should be done about a great number of things, but, generally speaking, the less the work concerns the Members the further away should be the new accommodation. Members' work should be brought as close to this Chamber as possible as long as we are to work as we do work, and all the secretarial service should be performed further away. If it is necessary for Members to dictate, there is no reason why there should not be long-distance tape recording of the dictation in a dictation centre.

That is done in offices all over the country. People can lift a telephone, dictate to a record, a disc or a tape in the secretarial office and later get the typescript. It should not be necessary for people to scramble round looking for little corners in order to dictate letters to a secretary. Dictation should be done through a secretarial office on a businesslike basis. An obvious business expert should be brought in to advise on what assistance can be given to Members in their work.

I quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wandsworth, Central, who talked about Members sitting in all sorts of corners in which to dictate to secretaries or meet wives. I am not sure that it was not a plot on the part of hon. Members in the last century to see that wives were not made very comfortable here. They probably thought that there was danger in wives being too comfortable. As it is, a Member's wife soon gets tired of being here and clears out. This may have been a deliberate move by hon. Members in the last century, but we have to consider whether the facilities should not be made too comfortable. Nevertheless, wives should have some more comfortable place. We might be able to shift the rest rooms to the new buildings and provide proper meeting place facilities there. A lot could be said for that.

Again, we might say to a group of scientists, "Here are some of our problems—can you show us how we can deal with them." It is quite impossible to give plenty of room to the 5,000 people associated with this Parliament. If we did so, it would become like a new town, where one needs a motor car to visit one's friends. We would then be so scattered that we would be lost.

There is a cosiness about being crowded together. Winston Churchill's idea of rebuilding this Chamber not too large so that all hon. Members could not find seats was based on the fact that there is an atmosphere when the place becomes crowded at the end of a debate. There is something in people being close together. If we were to scatter the House, we would lose much of its intimacy. We must keep this cosiness if we can and push all the offices and the other people further away.

There is no reason why the Members should do the running—the other people can do that. If people want to live in the House, there is no reason why they should not live further away from the Chamber and so provide more room for Members. The whole area is so congested that the only other way of dealing with the situation would be to build an entirely new Parliament and House of Commons somewhere else, and I think that sentiment would be against that.

Speaking from my experience, I believe that hon. Members will make a mistake if they go too far away, and if they accept this idea of beautifully equipped offices two or three hundred yards from this spot. Racing back here to vote might be good from the point of view of Members' health, but I am against it. It is not that I do not like exercise, but I do not like too much of it in the space of an hour. Nor can one get settled to one's work if one is continually running up and down to vote.

There are many problems to be considered, and this is an opportunity for us, through the Committee, to try to face the future; to see whether we can bring science to help in the working of the House, and provide equipment for Members which will relieve them of a good deal of the donkey work so that they can devote more time to the work of the House.

4.45 p.m.

Mr. Jasper More (Ludlow)

I too, would congratulate the Select Committee which has produced this admirable Report. The year 1965 will, I think, be accounted a historic year here. This is the year in which, as is mentioned in paragraph 2, Her Majesty has handed over control of the Palace, and I should like the Leader of the House to consider whether it would be appropriate or suitable that a Loyal Address should be presented by the House thanking Her Gracious Majesty for this historic act.

I would also refer briefly to the part played in the history of the Palace by the Lord Great Chamberlain, whom in the past we have all rather tended to take for granted. His is one of the historic offices of State, and I am not sure that it is generally appreciated that it is one of those offices that can be exercised only at considerable personal cost to its holder. It might be nice were the House in some way to make acknowledgment of that fact.

As a moderately new Member I have read the Report, and have listened with sympathy to the speeches and requests that have been made by the newest members, and their criticisms of the facilities that are available. I have viewed with some concern, however, the emphasis that appears to have been put by them on the facilities for Members as opposed to the facilities for the others who have to use this building. I shall refer later to the Press, but I am somewhat concerned to see the extent to which the recommendations in the Report itself are focused once again on the Members, to the exclusion of others who have to use the building.

I have had a brief experience as a member of the Kitchen Committee, of seeing some of the conditions in which people in this building have to work. One comes up on almost every side against the physical difficulties, and I would say to the Minister of Public Building and Works that it is the physical limits in which things have to be done that seem to inhibit so many efforts for improvement.

This Report, in terms, concerns the control of accommodation, powers and services. I do not know to what extent the Committee wished to stray outside the actual framework of the building as it is and visualise improvements, but paragraph 11 refers to the Minister as being responsible also for structural alterations that may be required, and we are all aware of the building work now going on in Star Court.

If anything in the way of real improvement is to be achieved, we have to view it from the angle that was put so forcibly by the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) and face what should be a fundamental tackling of our problem here. From the little that I have seen, that cannot be done without a good deal of physical reconstruction of the building itself.

I have seen some of the conditions available to those who have to work in the various catering departments that are scattered throughout the building, and I would recommend any hon. Member who may be interested to see the one room on the ground floor which is available as a rest room for the members of the kitchen staff who serve the Members' kitchen.

I am sure that that example could be multiplied all over the building, but I should like to concentrate on what I think is a part of the building which should be of paramount interest to all hon. Members, and that is the part which is available to the Press. Hon. Members who have spoken in this debate have referred to the extremely restricted and difficult conditions in which members of the Press have to work. I do not think it can be said too strongly that but for the Press this Parliament would not he an effective democratic Parliament at all in the second half of the twentieth century. We exist here for the purpose of following, criticising, and performing the functions of government as far as possible in the public eye, and if we were not served by the Press we would do it with the rest of the public in complete darkness as to what was going on. The conditions in which the Press have to work are, I would suspect, and be ready to bet, a great deal more difficult than those available to the Press in almost any other legislature in a large modern State. I think it outrageous that members of the Press should be expected to do the work they do in the accommodation available.

I should like to refer to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson), and I think another hon. Member, in regard to the degree of facilities which should be available, not only for work but for recreation. As a member of the Kitchen Committee, I have been very conscious of the position in which members of the Press working here are placed in regard to hospitality. Hon. Members may say that the business of the Press is not hospitality, that its members are here to work, and nobody would agree with that more than our Press correspondents, but there are times when perhaps some important representative of the Press from a foreign country comes here on a visit, and a member of the Press Lobby would like to entertain him. He does not want to take him to Fleet Street to El Vino or somewhere like that. He would like to entertain him here. If hon. Members are not aware of the poor facilities which are available for such an occasion, it would be a good thing if they were to look at them.

I do not think it can be a matter of pride that any body of people who play such an important part in this building should have to work and live within such limitations. I support everything that has been said in this Report in the cause of improving things for Members, but I urge that we should also take account of all those others who work and serve with us here.

4.54 p.m.

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, West)

I am disappointed with the range and scope of this Report. I feel that, as with the changes in procedure which the Leader of the House introduced last week, the Report is totally inadequate to deal with the problems that face us at the present time.

It is not good enough for the Government, a Labour Government, and its Ministers to talk outside the Chamber about modernisation, about bringing Britain into the twentieth century, and about asking industry and trade unions to modernise themselves, when they work, tolerate, and in fact perpetuate, the system and facilities which exist in this House.

This is a twosided affair. If some of the people outside who are criticised could look at the way in which we operate, their report might be even stronger than the Devlin Report was in relation to the dockers. It is because of that that I, speaking as a back bench Member of the Labour Government, expect the Government to show some initiative and drive in modernising this House. In the past my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works has styled himself as a shop steward. He has said in this House that he is now a poacher turned gamekeeper. Because of that I expect some more rapid changes and some more constructive proposals to come from him and his Department in the very near future.

I have looked at some of the previous Reports produced by this House. I have read the Report which was presented by Mr. Speaker's Committee in 1964 on accommodation for the House of Commons. That Committee spent some hours discussing whether the Gothic style of building was the right type to adopt for modernisation, or whether there should be a new style of building. The proposal was discussed by many people in this House who, in the normal course of events, will not live to see either type adopted.

Mr. Robert Cooke

Gothic architecture came into the discussion because hon. Gentlemen opposite insisted on having an enormous amount of square feet of space readily accessible attached to this Palace. That is how the architectural decision flowed. The discussion arose because hon. Gentlemen opposite wanted an enormous amount of space tacked on to this building. The proposal was rejected by the House as being grandiose and unnecessary, and we have now accepted other methods.

Mr. Orme

I was not here at the time, and I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I can only go by the Report, and I do not propose to go into the dialectics of who was to blame. All that I am concerned about is where we are going, and I am speaking now as a new Member of only 12 months' standing. If I had my way, the hon. Member could take more than the few bricks that he purchased following the demolition of part of Star Court to build a wall at his home.

We have to make up our minds on what this place is. Is it a museum? Is it a modern working House of Commons? Are we going to have proper facilities here, and if so, how are we going to get them? I have some questions to put to the Minister of Public Building and Works and to the Leader of the House about the provision of office accommodation. Extensions are being made in Star Court, and extra rooms are being provided upstairs. A tremendous amount of money is being spent on these schemes. Is the objective to provide each Member with what he really needs, namely, an office of his own? If not, when are we going to finish with all these extensions? If the intention is to provide each Member with an office, how much more money will have to be spent on converting rooms that now hold four, five, or six Members? As I think was shown by the proposals put forward by the Leader of the House last week, changes trickle through in dribs and drabs, with no overall plan or any basic idea of where things are to end.

The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) spoke about facilities for members of the Press, staff, and so on. Of course all these problems are important. Facilities for everybody are an important consideration, and I am as concerned as anyone with regard to the provision of facilities for the staff in this place. I think that they work under abominable conditions, but so do Members.

I apologise to the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) for interrupting him from a sitting position. This is not a question of looking at one section of the problem and saying that it is desirable to improve it: we should look at the picture as a whole. Hon. Members spend 18 or 20 hours a day here. They not only work for a long day but have to seek their refreshment and other facilities here, and those facilities are not provided in a correct manner.

Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington)

Why not reduce the hours?

Mr. Orme

I will ignore that interjection. Because of the pressure of modern legislation I do not think anyone would dare to do what James Fox is reputed to have done. He put a notice on his house saying, "No callers from Friday to Sunday and no correspondence answered between Monday and Thursday". The pressure in modern conditions under modern society will not lessen. The Government are to introduce an ombudsman to deal with the grievances of individuals, but it seems that Members of Parliament would need such help because of the increasing pressure of work. To me this is a full-time profession, but it is becoming virtually impossible for hon. Members to do anything but concentrate on the work of Parliament, although I see nothing wrong in that.

A point which is not covered by this Report is closely related to it. I am a provincial Member of Parliament and live very near my constituency which I like to visit frequently, but there is a problem for provincial Members in getting accommodation in London. It is not merely a question of getting hotel accommodation and other facilities. A recent example of this difficulty has been the Motor Show when the city became exceedingly crowded. One hon. Member had to write to 60 hotels in order to find accommodation for last week when the House reassembled. It seems idiotic that hostel accommodation of a simple kind should not be provided for hon. Members. This is a necessity.

Sir Douglas Glover (Ormskirk)

Is the hon. Member telling the House that an hon. Member, having known for 10 weeks when Parliament would be meeting again and knowing that the Motor Show would be held in the same week, did not make provision for hotel accommodation until the week when we came back?

Mr. Orme

Through some oversight the accommodation which had been booked was not available and he had to find other accommodation. Now that commuting can be done so rapidly I do not think hon. Members should be forced to live in London if they prefer to live in the provinces in or near their constituencies. Because of the many all-night sittings even hon. Members who live fairly close to London find it difficult to get home at two, three or four o'clock in the morning. Why should there not be some accommodation provided for which hon. Members would pay and which would be more easily accessible?

This place has been described as the best club in Europe. I do not know about that because I am not a member of a club. This is a work place, but it has to be made a tolerable work place providing good facilities. There is the difficulty over secretarial work. If a secretary is in Bridge Street it may take her 10 or 15 minutes to get here. A question has been asked about lifts. The lift in the Bridge Street premises is an example of Heath Robinson workmanship. Hon. Members have to travel back and to places where they dictate their correspondence. The normal everyday facilities provided in industry and business are not provided for hon. Members. We take visitors round the Palace and show them points of historical interest. I wish it were possible to show them some of the conditions under which we have to work and the conditions under which the staff have to work. They should know more about those conditions.

Reference is made in the Report to the dual services of the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Serjeant at Arms and to overlapping of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Report confirms that the House of Commons has now taken charge of its own facilities. It seems absolutely ridiculous that we should take over the facilities of the House of Commons without having control of the whole of the Palace of Westminster. The House of Lords meets infrequently and does not have the same pressure of business which we have. I do not see why some part of that Chamber and its facilities and amenities should not be available for the elected Members of the House of Commons. After all, we are the premier body.

These are some of the things which must be discussed. I hope that some wider aspects of the matter can be referred to the Committee to which the Leader of the House has referred. I hope that it will not become a Committee of people who do not want change but are conservative, with a small "c"—they exist on both sides of the House—always talking about what a marvellous place this is with great historical content while as back benchers we are consistently faced with the increasing power of the Executive. We want facilities and accommodation in which we can do research so that if necessary we can challenge the Executive and meet it on an equal footing.

Mr. Robert Cooke

Will the hon. Member tell the House which bit of the House of Lords he would like to be used by the House of Commons?

Mr. Orme

The hon. Member will know that the House of Commons used the House of Lords Chamber during the war when this Chamber was put out of action. There is no reason why we should not take it over again. Many on this side of the House would not shed any tears if the Second Chamber as it exists at the moment were abolished entirely. I am one of them.

I hope that when the Committee is set up it will be a positive one. I hope that its terms of reference will be widened and that we shall be able to make changes in this House in the near future. I hope that it will not talk in terms of grandoise schemes which never materialise, of plans and models for 1980 or 1990. If we are to maintain ourselves and get a return of public interest focused on Parliament such as has been shown in the last 12 months, we must have a Committee which will work in a positive way. That is why we must consider televising our proceedings in the near future. If we are to show the general public that Parliament is not isolated from the everyday stream of life but has an important part to play in their lives, we must show them that we do not act merely as guides in a museum, which is the feeling which many hon. Members have, but that we are active Members of Parliament in a democracy in 1965. Therefore, we must have the facilities. I ask the Leader of the House to be more bold in his approach. We will support him all the way.

5.11 p.m.

Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)

I have listened to the debate with a great deal of interest, particularly to the speeches of the right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) and the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), who arrived in the House a short time ago. I think that the country has begun to realise with the most terrible shock that Parliament is losing its power. I saw an article in the Economist. I have read articles written by people from abroad. Gradually but surely the country is beginning to watch the erosion of the power of Parliament.

Therefore, it is not surprising that there has been tremendous back-bench pressure for reports on our procedure. I must ask the House this question bluntly: after these reports having been read, are we any further forward? Would a businessman consider that the way we conducted our affairs here was efficient? Of course not. Would he consider that the accommodation available, not only for ourselves and for the servants of the House but for the Press, were adequate? Of course he would not. It is now suggested that our proceedings be televised. If that happens, more staff will be required. Where will they be accommodated? How could they be fitted in, with things arranged as they are?

The hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) pointed out that during the last Session the health of many Members had deteriorated. Our health is not good. I know that our hearts beat much faster when we have to run to a Count. There is no way of getting any exercise in this building, as far as I know, other than by taking a bath.

I have been here for only 10 years. This Mother of Parliaments is facing a most serious situation. Does the Leader of the House know that if a second Guy Fawkes arrived the day after tomorrow and blew up the Mother of Parliaments he would do the greatest possible service to democracy? If it pleases the hon. Member for Salford, West, I include the Lords in that.

When the Leader of the House appoints this suggested Committee, I ask him to consider one vital factor—the future planning of this area for Parliament. I do not know whether I am the first, second or third in this field, but for some time I have been warning the House and the taxpayers that they are pouring money into a monumental pile. It is an historic pile, certainly; it is a building of character and of interest, but it is not the right place in which to conduct our affairs in the latter half of the twentieth century. I am a traditionalist by heart, and I am very fond of the House. I must tell the hon. Member for Salford West, who was so rightly concerned about living accommodation for provincial Members, that if I had not had a home nearby to which I could go, paid for at my expense, my life here would have been intolerable. One time I returned from France. I wished to have a letter typed in French, but I could not even get a French typewriter here. An hon. Member going to the Smoke Room and wanting a French newspaper, an Italian newspaper or a German newspaper will not find one there. True, the Hindustani Times, the Ceylon Times, and a Pakistan newspaper might be there. That is all very well, but we are not even up to date on the journalistic side. I will say that our opportunities to conduct research are improving.

I believe that the time must come when the Labour Government, so modern in their approach, should ask for advice from people who understand something about the scientific age in which we live and something about the sort of Parliament we should be. They will then have to decide whether it is worth spending any more of the taxpayers' money on this Palace of Westminster in the middle of the grandest twentieth century traffic jams. The traffic will get worse. Our work will increase. Of course we are going to have dealings with Europe. I am asking for one thing only, namely, that the proposed Committee, or a part of it, should obtain without fail during the next year expert advice and then advise the Government whether we should not completely re-house ourselves.

There are so many people who have their minds fixed. Queen Victoria is dead. She was a very great sovereign, but we are living in a different era. Horses and carriages have gone, but in the passages outside under the arches there is just room for a coach to go by.

All of us must become conscious of the fact that if this great Mother of Parliaments is to function and show itself as a great Parliament in the later part of the twentieth century, it must have the facilities; it must have the right building, and the building must be in the right place.

I therefore say to the Leader of the House that we must discuss the future. It is always the past. I am fond of history, but I am fond of democracy, I am fond of debate, and I am fond of the House. I plead with the Leader of the House to ask his Committee to consider the future and not to betray the future of this great assembly by insisting that it be confined in this area. I hope that the Leader of the House will take what I have said in the spirit in which it is meant. I ask for an expert committee to be set up. Should we join Federal Europe, is this Parliament situated in the right place to discharge our business in the later part of this century? I hope that the right steps will be taken so that we for our children's sakes will not have been conservatives with a small "c" and have betrayed our heritage.

5.19 p.m.

Mr. E. Shinwell (Easington)

If the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. William Yates) is suggesting—it was certainly conveyed by implication in his observations—that we should transfer the Mother of Parliaments to Brussels or to Athens or to some such Continental resort, he will meet with very determined opposition from the majority of Members. If he wants to discuss our entry into the E.E.C., let him be quite direct about it and not try to do it in such a roundabout form.

Mr. William Yates

The right hon. Gentleman has completely misunderstood what I said. I pointed out that if by chance we happened to be associated with Europe we should need larger buildings, and I posed the question: was this the right place for them?

Mr. Shinwell

I do not know what the hon. Member for The Wrekin means. Does he want an entirely different building? Does he want to abandon this place entirely? He has been telling us that we should not spend any money in reconstructing this place but he should know that the cost of building is very high nowadays. In the first part of his speech the hon. Member made me feel very melancholy. This talk that we get from time to time from some hon. Members and the Press that the power of Parliament has vanished, or at any rate has diminished, and this attitude that people are not concerned about Parliament is just a lot of nonsense. Hon. Members who indulge in that kind of talk are crying stinking fish, and in the long run people outside will believe them.

Those who believe that the power of Parliament has gone should resign. If there is no power left here, why do they remain here, taking salaries and doing nothing? They should understand that the power of Parliament is not vested in the architecture of the building or in the adjacent rooms and acommodation. The power of Parliament is vested in the spirit of hon. Members who come here to do a job of work. It is time that some of them were told this. I was melancholy when I heard about the deleterious effect on the health of hon. Members. With characteristic modesty I should like to say, and anybody can challenge me, that I have done as much work as any other hon. Member. I have been active all the time and I am still active—sometimes a little too active for some of my hon. Friends.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins (Bristol, South)

About 10 minutes ago I was reading about my right hon. Friend being 81 years young.

Mr. Shinwell

That is all right, but do not let us make too much of it. At the moment I do not require medical advice even from some of my hon. Friends in the profession.

One hon. Member spoke of membership of Parliament being a full-time job. I agree that it should be but what will happen to the lawyers if we become full-time professional politicians? What do hon. Members want? What are they talking about? Hon. Members use phrases and indulge in pious aspirations and platitudes, but what do they mean? Why not be realistic about this? I am as anxious for modernisation as anybody. I want more technological advance. I want to see more space travel, more supersonic aircraft, more speed, more activity. I want them, but I have not much time left and therefore I want more of these things than some of the younger Members.

Is this place unfit to work in? I have been working in it for a long time. I worked in this place when any salaries were £400 and when there was a great deal more correspondence than hon. Members receive now. There has been a change in the political situation as well as physical changes in the House. The issues now are more blurred. There is more bipartisanship than there was when I came to the House first.

Hon. Members on the Tory benches and on the Liberal benches were not agreeable then to what is now called the Welfare State. We, the Socialist Members, as we were called, were anxious to advance the Welfare State. The controversies were much more acute in those days than they are now. There was much more correspondence and much more work to do when I came to the House in 1922. We then received £400 a year and we had to pay our fares to and from our constituencies. I could not afford to go home at the weekends. I lived in Glasgow and I represented West Lothian. I could not afford the fare home and I stayed in London in digs for which I paid 15s. a week and 1s. 6d. for breakfast. That is how we lived, but our health was not altogether impaired by that because what we lacked in food we made up in work and activity. We loved the job. We did not take the job on for money or in lust for power. We took it on because, in a sense, we were missionaries.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

I would remind my right hon. Friend that there have been men and women who worked in this place and, unlike my right hon. Friend, died too early because of the conditions.

Mr. Shinwell

Some people are more fortunate than others. I hope that my hon. Friend lives long in spite of the abominable conditions which we have heard about. All I say is that I do not believe that the conditions of themselves have the effect described. As I said, some people are more fortunate than others, some are in better physical condition. Some hereditarily are better than others, some have come from better environments, and some people live better lives.

I want to see this place modernised. The Select Committee of which I was a member does not go into detail. We argued a great deal. We interrogated people and perhaps nobody did more of that than I did. It may be that I did it more offensively than some of my hon. Friends because I am no respecter of persons. When the Serjeant at Arms came before us I spoke to him as I would to anybody else. This Report goes only a certain way. It says to hon. Members, "We want the organisation and administration of this House to be vested in hon. Members" and it is for the Committee itself, consisting of hon. Members and perhaps some right hon. Gentlemen who have to be accepted even if one does not like them, to determine the policy which must be carried out by the Serjeant at Arms and even by Mr. Speaker. It is for the Committee to determine what kind of House we want.

As for accommodation, I am not sure what hon. Members want. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) has genuine convictions and is most sincere in what he says. He seemed to think that every hon. Member should have an office. What do hon. Members want an office for? Somebody talked about the mass of material one has to have at one's disposal. I advise hon. Members not to bother with too much material. Why do they want offices? I can understand a need for desk rooms, and desk rooms are much better, because they lead to community consciousness which cannot be got in a private office, and I guarantee that if Members have private offices they will not occupy them for more than an hour or two in the course of the day. I know that, since I have a room myself, not because I am Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party but because I am one of the senior Members. When senior Members on the other side were allocated rooms, it was thought fit for a senior Member on our side to have a room as well. But it is up in the north corridor. I have to go up in a lift and walk quite a distance, which leads to difficulty if there is a Division. Incidentally, I told someone yesterday that if he was sleepy he should go up to my room to rest. I do not occupy it very much, because my work is done in the Chamber.

One hon. Member raised the question of correspondence, and I would like to challenge him about that. I can remember a time during the last war when I had 500 or 600 letters a week, and I had to employ two secretaries to deal with them. But how many letters does a Member get on average now? It is probably between 10 and 20 a day, or 60 a week. Do I hear one of my hon. Friends saying 100 a week? Where are the Members who are getting 100 a week? I get a lot of printed paper, but one must not include printed paper in the total number of letters. Let us be realistic about it. On the other hand, there are Members who do work in the House which is associated with their own jobs and which they ought to be doing outside, but that is a different matter. I know that there are some members of the legal profession who do an awful lot of their work in the House. If one goes into the Library, one can see them reading up their briefs and preparing for their next appearance in court. That has nothing to do with Parliament or with politics. I do not object to that use of the place. Who could object? The same thing applies to hon. Members associated with businesses. A lot of their work is done in the House, and I do not object. But do not let us pretend that we are occupied so fully and are being so overworked that each hon. Member requires a private room, and that otherwise we shall not be able to undertake our duties effectively. Of course we can.

Another hon. Member talked about the House being the best club in Europe, but it is nothing of the sort. I want to deal with the points that really matter, and hon. Members can challenge me if they like. Has anyone seen that Tea Room of ours at 3 o'clock in the morning? What a squalid place it is. If any hon. Members go into the Tea Room when the House is busy they will see the tables littered with cigarette ash, butts and matches, with papers strewn about. If an hon. Member wants a cup of tea he must take it in the most squalid conditions. Some hon. Members have talked about the conditions of the staff. I invite them to look at the conditions of the staff of the Tea Room, because they are abominable. One sees a queue of people waiting for tea, and two women are there trying to serve them. If there is to be talk of changing conditions, let us start with those conditions, because in that way we shall be rendering a service to members of the staff.

How can such problems be remedied? I do not know if new Members on this side are aware of it, but there is a Smoke Room along the corridor which used to be called the Tory Smoke Room. It is still that, because it is practically monopolised by Tory Members. I remember in the old days that if some of us went there and sat in a corner, they looked at us as if we were natives from a foreign country. Even the staff in the Tory Smoke Room did not like the looks of us, because we did not want anything, and those were the days when one was expected to leave a tip. We did not order brandies and sodas, because we could not afford them, although now we are a bit more affluent. But there is the Tory Smoke Room, providing accommodation for Members on the other side. What accommodation have we got? The answer is, none at all, apart from the Tea Room. I have been to some of the Commonwealth Parliaments. In Australia, for example, in all the State Parliaments Labour Members have their own room where they can meet and have discussions. At one time, we had something akin to that in what is now the Reference Room but which in those days was the Map Room, where Labour Members sat and argued and determined the policy of their own party and even that of the Government of the day. Sometimes even the Prime Minister came in, and we told him where to get off. But we have no accommodation now where Labour Members can be intimate with each other—[Laughter.]—by which I mean nothing disreputable, but where good friends can meet and not be isolated from each other. We do not want groups, caves and that sort of thing, which do Parliament no good at all.

That is the job of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Public Building and Works, and I will tell him where he can make a good start, particularly now that we have a new Speaker. Mr. Speaker has a large room behind the Library. Why not use that? No one has more affection for Mr. Speaker than myself. I am a great admirer of his, but he has plenty of accommodation, and he could easily give up that part of it to hon. Members. That would make a great deal of difference, and we should not object to Tory Members coming in occasionally, because we should like to meet them.

Reverting to the point about Members' working accommodation, I hope that the Committee which is to be set up will not agree to provide rooms for every Member. I should prefer to see the provision of desk rooms, with ample accommodation, cupboard space and even typewriters, and the provision of any equipment of an electronic nature which might usefully add to their facilities. We do not want a monastic attitude, and it should be remembered that the building can never be transformed into any sort of modern building. All that can be done is to add on accommodation here and there.

I welcome the Report. I had something to do with it, as hon. Members know. The one thing that we decided was to vest power in the House of Commons itself, and that means no disrespect to the Serjeant at Arms, to Mr. Speaker or to the Chief Librarian. Incidentally, one place where we want reform is the Library. We want more research workers placed at our disposal. Even now, on occasions, I need information. I go into the Library and ask if there is anyone who can find some statistics for me. I am referred to Mr. So-and-so. I see him and ask if he can get me some statistics on the subject in which I am interested, and he says that he will try. He then speaks to someone in some other part of the building and, a few days later, I get nay statistics, but always they are inadequate. We need more research assistants to help Members to do their work effectively. I want the Library to be more effective. There is a lot of stuff in the Library that ought to be thrown out. A lot of books have been bought which are of no use to Members. On the other hand, hon. Members ought to be facilitated even more than they are in the provision of books.

If one has a book from the Library, one is told, in the course of a few weeks, that it must be returned. Sometimes, one goes to look for a book only to be told that there is a long waiting list. The Library has to apply to the London Library if it wants two or three copies of a book. All this is wrong on a modern place like this, and to put it right it would not mean much in the way of money.

Hon. Members would be surprised at the power vested in the Accountant of the House. I do not know where he derives this power, but he has got it. In the Recess, for instance, if a Member has a season ticket from his home to Westminster, the Accountant writes to him and says that he must send it back. [Interruption.] Oh yes, he is told that he must send it back. Let there be no mistake about it. That is not all. I came to the House several times during the Recess, of course, and I paid my fare. I am told that I may apply for a warrant if I wish to, but I do not do that because it is not worth while. I pay my own fare when I come down to the House during a Recess. But, when the House is about to meet, I have my ticket sent to me the day before the House sits. Why?—to make sure that I do not use that season ticket at the public expense while the House is not meeting. What a ridiculous state of affairs. The same thing happens at Christmas when we go into Recess for a few weeks. The Accountant will write to Members asking them to send their tickets back, and they have to send them back. In his last letter to me—I am not blaming the Accountant entirely because I suppose that he derives his authority from somebody else—he pointed out that if I did not send the ticket back I should be surcharged, and the reason the Fees Office wanted the ticket back was that they would otherwise be unable to get a refund from British Railways.

What a ridiculous and pettifogging state of affairs. These are the things which should be put right. After all, a Member of Parliament is supposed to be a dignified person. We should not be too pompous, of course, but, at least, a Member of Parliament means something in the eyes of his constituents. Immediately after he is elected, they hold him shoulder-high, although afterwards they object to giving him a decent salary. But that is by the way. We have some dignity as Members, and to do that sort of thing to us is ignominious, absurd and abominable, and it should be stopped. Those are some of the things that I hope the new Committee will put right.

Over and above all that, however, what is really unchallengeable and unanswerable now is that we have got the Lord Great Chamberlain out of the way. I mean no disrespect to the old gentleman, but, because of the gracious act of Her Majesty, in this Palace of Westminster we can now have our own place and rule our own roost. I hope that the new Committee will be an effective Committee. I do not like the term "high-powered Committee" because that idea separates the sheep from the goats—I do not say who are the sheep and who are the goats—and I should like to see some of the new Members on it, though not necessarily those who have spoken today. They have ventilated their views and grievances, but I should like on the Committee some of those who have not had an opportunity to speak, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy).

I hope that Members on the Committee will be firm and have no nonsense. They must say, "We decide the policy for the administration of the House of Commons and its facilities." If we go about it in that way we shall get very much what we want. But, for heaven's sake, do not ask too much. We cannot turn this place upside down overnight. I have been trying to do it for 40 years and I have failed. I hope that my hon. Friends will have more success.

5.44 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

It is a great privilege in this debate to follow our youngest elder statesman, the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), with a great deal of whose speech I agreed. I thought that he dealt fairly well with some of the tender plants who adorn the benches beside him and, perhaps, brought us back to reality on this question of the facilities which hon. Members really need in order to do their job properly in this place. Views differ among hon. Members on what we want. That is why we have had various Committees of one sort and another.

I shall begin by telling a very short story about one of the greatest figures with whom I have had the privilege to serve in the House. About three months after the work had been done, I asked this right hon. Gentleman, "Do you like the new decorations in the Smoking Room?" "Oh", he said, "have they been changed?" He was not a stick-in-the-mud, but I think that he typified many hon. and right hon. Members who have got used to this place and, perhaps, found that some of the things which annoy and frustrate us when we first come here are really not so annoying and frustrating and can very well be lived with.

I was a member of the Select Committee which produced the Report which the House is now asked to approve. Some of the things I shall say may be controversial. The right hon. Member for Easington was controversial.

Mr. Shinwell

No.

Mr. Cooke

I dare to suggest that most hon. Members would probably say that the right hon. Gentleman is occasionally controversial and was so today. I hope that if I say anything which is controversial, the House will realise that I am trying to be helpful and to throw out a few ideas which might be considered by the Committee which we propose to set up, although I shall have to differ fairly violently with some hon. Members opposite, and hope to explain why.

This Report has come before us because of a long history of hon. and right hon. Members searching for better facilities in a changing world. Ever since Barry left this building unfinished a century ago, we have been making improvements and suggestions for improvements. There are some hon. Members who will remember the rebuilding of the House after the war and the Stokes Committees. Some of us who have been here a little less long served on the Duncan Committees, and perhaps even those deliberations are not to the mind of some hon. Members who have spoken today. We had various proposals for new buildings on the other side of the road, and they were rejected by the House.

Later, we had what I call the Selwyn Lloyd Committee, which produced a scheme which would have solved all our problems for accommodation and facilities once and for all, but that would have involved the blocking up of Bridge Street and the creation of a very large addition to the Palace, which, because it would have had to be an attached addition, the Committee felt should be in the same style of architecture, faithfully reproducing what we have here. This was laughed out of court by the architectural critics, although, in my view, they were wrong; and the House decided to set up yet another Committee to see what could be done within its own walls and, possibly, in other directions. In passing, I remind the House that the Martin-Buchanan Report on Whitehall accepts some of the traffic recommendations which the Selwyn Lloyd Committee suggested, and Bridge Street will cease to be a thoroughfare if Martin-Buchanan is adopted.

As a result of all this long history of Committees, we now have the proposal that, for the Commons part of the Palace of Westminster, there should be established a powerful Committee of Members, with all the important people who run the House represented on it, which should have power to collect the views of Members and to act upon them. All the previous Commitees have been in a position only to make suggestions, and various rather more remote bodies and persons have carried out some of the suggestions. Now, however, we are proposing a Committee with real power.

To some, this Report would seem to be a victory over a noble gentleman who has been mentioned many times in the debate, the Lord Great Chamberlain. He has been used as a sort of scapegoat all along. Whenever we have been frustrated, we have blamed the Lord Great Chamberlain. As a result of the new arrangements, one finds that the duties transferred from the Lord Great Chamberlain to the House of Commons are, at all times, 50 per cent. of the custody and control of the Palace for the Queen, the interests of the general public, the overall allocation of accommodation and flag hoisting; and on non-sitting days, in the House of Commons area, security, including private entertaining, visitors, Press and photography, fire services, car parking, and administrative emergencies, for example, pressure to break rules, death, lost property, car parking and disagreeable noise. So, as a result of all this long battle against this bogyman, the Lord Great Chamberlain, we have got among other things half of the flag hoisting and all the disagreeable noise now within our control.

The House may, having heard that in silence, perhaps in amazement, have thought that it was perhaps rather a flippant way of putting things. But the point I am trying to make is that it is quite unrealistic and unfair to blame the difficulties which we have had in the past upon the way in which the Palace was controlled upon the Lord Great Chamberlain as a great officer of State or upon the present incumbent in the person of the noble Marquis, Lord Cholmondeley. The present occupier of the office has always treated this House with every consideration and courtesy. I challenge any hon. Member to disagree with that.

As the result of this partition, the division of the Palace of Westminster into three, the ceremonial rooms remain in the charge of the Lord Great Chamberlain, who, as I have already said, is a great officer of State, not a Court official. He does not have an official residence, and he receives no salary. Those rooms remain within his charge. Hon. Members will no doubt be delighted to see when they receive their tickets for the State Opening of Parliament that they are still graced with the delightful signature of Lord Cholmondeley, and that will go on into the future, we hope, for many years. The ceremonial rooms remain in the control of the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Lords have their part of the Palace and we have our part, and red lines exist on the map to mark one part from the other.

As a result of this great victory won by so much agitation on the part of the Labour Party and carried into effect by the present Government, we are now faced with a position in which the steam for the heating is situated under the House of Lords. If they turned nasty, they could cut it off. The only retaliation that we could take would be to cut off the air conditioning, which they have not yet got but hope to get, because the plant and machinery are partly in our part of the building.

This is all very hilarious, but I think it is worth mentioning, because this sort of thing would not otherwise appear on the record, that our troubles in the past have not been due to this mysterious bogyman. They have, in fact been largely our own fault. However, I submit to the House that as a result of this Report, on which hon. Members of all ages and all complexions of opinion worked extremely hard throughout the long summer afternoons and even into the evenings, a proposal has at long last been produced which can do a great deal to help us. Indeed, it is a basis on which we can in the future solve all our problems. The trouble so far has been that we have never had a sound basis on which to work. We have merely had ad hoc committees set up to deal with particular problems, and sometimes their recommendations have not been implemented even though they had the pretty general agreement of the House.

The hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Dr. David Kerr)—I am sorry that he is not at the moment in the Chamber—set me thinking by his long list of complaints about the inadequacies of our facilities. While he was speaking, I thought of all the things that have happened in the nearly nine years that I have been a Member of this House. I came to the conclusion that in those years the conditions had improved beyond my wildest dreams. When I came here I could find no desks in the Palace of Westminster that one could have for oneself. I do not remember ever casting an eye on a filing cabinet in those days. Now we have filing cabinets, which are very useful in that we can put into them the paper about which the right hon. Member for Easing-ton spoke. I challenge anyone to say that there is a single Member of Parliament at the present time who has not got a filing cabinet. There appears to be complete silence.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

How can the hon. Member answer for everyone?

Mr. Cooke

I have taken the trouble to find out, and there is not a single hon. Member who has asked for a filing cabinet and not been able to get one.

Mr. Molloy

Then why did the hon. Gentleman ask the question in the first place?

Sir D. Glover

I have a filing cabinet, but I never asked for it.

Mr. Cooke

I can assure my hon. Friend that if he had wanted one he could have had it. He might have even been able to have two.

In the last nine years we have made great improvements to the kitchen and the food, a subject raised by several hon. Members. We have done a certain amount for the Press, but nothing like enough. We have done nothing like enough about all these other things, but we have done something. There are many ways in which we can help the Press with accommodation, and I will come to this in a moment. We had no photostat machines, but now we have four. The Leader of the Opposition's room was improved when I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Works. We made great improvements to the cafeteria. We have provided better facilities for the waitresses. We have embarked on the roof schemes, though I shall have some unkind things to say about one of these in a moment and I hope the Minister will be able to give us an answer.

The Star Court scheme has been embarked upon, and that merits a little more detailed comment. We have the houses in Old Palace Yard. We have the rooms in Westminster Hall. We have the temporary use for some time, as far as I can see, of the Bridge Street accommodation. We have new lifts. We have greatly improved decoration and air conditioning in many parts of the building. All these things have happened in those nine short years, and they are a continuing prospect. So I would urge hon. Gentlemen opposite not to despair. I have made a note that there is now even a roof garden. That, I believe, is not exclusively for the use of hon. Members.

Another hon. Member complained that there was nowhere where wives could come and meet their husbands. Committees have constantly unanimously recommended that the old Serjeant at Arms office, known, I believe, as the "hot room" because it is kept at a higher temperature than the rest of the building, should be made available as a sitting room for use before lunch and dinner where hon. Members' wives could well be accommodated. There has been recommendation after recommendation, but nothing whatever has been done. The reason why nothing has been done is that we have not had the type of committee with real power which we are now, I hope, to set up. So all that will be put right very quickly indeed.

I should not like hon. Members opposite to think that this matter had never been thought about. It has been our constant aim on many committees. I served on the Duncan and Lloyd Committees. The right hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) grasped the essential point when he said that what we must do is make the best use of the accommodation near the Chamber for hon. Members. That has been the constant aim of all the committees which have existed. There used to be a good deal of criticism of certain vested interests which were hanging on to valuable accommodation near the Chamber. If one looks around now one sees that very few vested interests remain, if any at all. A good deal of progress has been made in that direction.

The hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) got very excited with his own Government. He said that they really had not done very much to help, and he hoped that they would give more of a lead. I submit that the present Government have now given a lead. They took up the plans for the Star Court building which already existed—they had been thought out by the previous Administration—and without asking the House about it—indeed, as far as I can discover, without any authorisation from anyone at all—the Minister of Public Building and Works decided off his own bat to do the scheme, and he knocked down part of the Palace of Westminster during the Whitsun Recess without telling anyone that he was going to do it. There has been some reference to some pieces of stone which I rescued at the end of the scheme. I had a letter from the Ministry of Public Building and Works saying that I could have the colonnade if I wanted it, but when I came back from my holidays it had, alas, all been smashed up and taken away. I do not want to criticise the Government for having got on with the job because, although there may be aesthetic difficulties about the Star Court scheme, it is now in progress and will no doubt help hon. Members. I want to make sure that the record is straight about that.

I hope that some hon. Members opposite will not seek to give the House and the public the impression that nothing has been done. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been and are being spent. Our Parliamentary shop steward has turned into a demolition and construction contractor. I am sure that the burning urge for improving the Palace of Westminster, which we all recognise to be possessed by the Minister of Public Building and Works, will be channelled into even more satisfactory courses when he is working with the new Committee. He will be the agent of the Committee, which will decide what is to be done.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. James Boyden)

indicated assent.

Mr. Cooke

I see that the Parliamentary Secretary agrees that the Minister will be the agent through which the decisions of the Committee can be carried out. There is little excuse for some of the wild statements about the inadequacy of our facilities in this building. Of course, a good deal remains to be done but a tremendous amount has been and is being done. My right hon. and hon. Friends have been taking a big interest in stimulating the Government to activity.

I hope that these new moves will deter some of the hotter-headed Members who are determined to make commando raids on House of Lords territory. As I see it, the settlement we have reached rules out for ever territorial claims. We have a generous part of the Palace for our use, with plenty of room to use and build on without ruining the outside of the Palace. It is in this direction that our energies should be directed.

There was also the matter of three rooms which it was said might possibly have gone to the Press. They are on the Upper Ministerial Corridor and they have not gone to the Press. They were originally occupied by the Department of the Clerk of the House. They were meant to be used by the Clerk and his assistants to rest in during all-night sittings. But one can imagine that the Gothic rooms, with their high windows, gaunt appearance and filthy conditions—for they had not been decorated for years—were not satisfactory for that purpose. The Clerk and his assistants are now accommodated more satisfactorily in part of the roof scheme.

The Duncan Committee recommended that these rooms, as part of the Upper Ministerial series, should become Ministers' rooms, although the Committee recognised that the Press needed more space. Indeed, during the activities of the Committee, a little more space was afforded to the Press. However, it is doubtful whether these three rooms, which are really Ministerial rooms, would be of much use to the Press because they are not particularly accessible.

In certain exchanges earlier in the debate I think that the Leader of the House had his facts wrong. I was present at the Adjournment debate in question and I think that my version of the story is the accurate one. We must do better for the Press. Unless our proceedings are adequately reported outside, much of the effect of Parliament is lost. I hope that, in the new allocation of space, the Press will be generously considered. I believe that the top floor of the Star Court scheme—although we have not been shown any details, which creates some difficulty for us—could be joined to the Press accommodation.

Mr. Boyden

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Minister had not informed the Press before making his announcement? I would refer the hon. Gentleman to what my right hon. Friend said on 25th November last: … I have seen the Press and explained the difficulties as I see them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 25th November, 1964; Vol. 702, c. 1435.]

Mr. Chichester-Clark

I, of course, had seen this Adjournment debate before this debate took place. I checked my facts at source and, without doubt, it was affirmed that the Press were not officially consulted before that announcement was made by the Minister. There is a great difference between official and unofficial consultation. That is probably where the confusion has arisen. Official consultation must be preferred.

Mr. Cooke

I do not want to digress but it was not suggested by the Duncan Committee that these three rooms should be reserved for the Press. The Minister did what he could for the time being and certainly more could and should be done through the Star Court scheme for the Press. As I say, the top floor could easily be joined to the Press accommodation.

I was delighted to hear references to the thorny problem of the Fees Office, because this problem has vexed every committee on which I have sat to consider accommodation. The Fees Office is temporarily housed, we believe, in Bridge Street, although how long it can go on being there I would not know. Perhaps the Minister does. I have a shrewd suspicion that that building will be available in its present form for a considerable time. So the urgency of finding somewhere else for the Fees Office is not very great, if we do not take it back here by Christmas—and I hope that we shall not.

I was shattered to hear the right hon. Member for Easington tell his story about the season tickets. Half the work of the Fees Office is due to the niggling, pettifogging regulations that we have to put up with as hon. Members. I tried in the Committee to raise this matter and did not get far. I said that there was considerable justification for the view that every hon. Member should have a free travel warrant to any part of the United Kingdom because one cannot concern oneself alone with one's constituents. One may have to deal with any part of the United Kingdom in one's public duties. All the different kinds of different coloured tickets could be done away with and money on administration saved.

Mr. Woodburn

I understand that when this scheme was originally introduced the railways wanted to give hon. Members free travel passes, as the railway directors had. They were quite content that the system would not be abused. Indeed, they regarded it as admirable that hon. Members should be able to travel to any part of the country. But the proposal was turned down by the Government of the day.

Mr. Cooke

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I feel that it is a happy chance that we are able to ventilate the subject now. It would not be in order on anything else. It is certainly something that should be looked at by the new Committee. It has the power to do so. We were assured of that when making our deliberations.

Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)

I am not sure whether I am right, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman can tell me. I have the impression that the present system of rail tickets is due to the decision of Mr. Speaker at the time and is not the result of pettifogging restrictions by the Fees Office.

Mr. Cooke

I am not suggesting that the Fees Office does this sort of thing to annoy hon. Members. No department of this House takes such an attitude. It arises because of the rules and regulations which we have allowed to grow up, to our frustration. Even the Inland Revenue, with which none of us has very friendly relations, does not consist of a lot of malevolent characters trying to beat us down. It merely administers the system according to the rules.

Members of Parliament must be treated as honourable men who will not abuse anything they are given to use in the pursuit of their public work. That is the point. They are not trusted according to the present regulations but if they were, much waste of public funds in administration could be cut out.

The crucial problem in the Palace has always been that of space—how we should use what we have and how to create more. There have been impassioned appeals from hon. Members opposite about taking over the House of Lords and abolishing the Second Chamber, but we would never have to go through that rigmarole every time we had a debate on this subject if we had twice as much space as we now have. No doubt, the new Committee will concern itself with that subject at some length. I hope that it will be able to get on with the job.

There is then the question of how the space is to be allocated. As I understand it—and I hope that the Leader of the House will not dissent from this view—the allocation of space in the Commons part of the Palace of Westminster, if this Report is accepted, will be the job of this new Committee of hon. Members, and in future it will not be possible for a Government of whatever complexion to say to their Minister of Works, "We have 150 Ministers and you will therefore have to find 150 rooms". This new Committee will have the power to say that there shall be so many Ministers' rooms—it might be quite a generous allocation—and the Government of the day will then decide for themselves how many Ministers are put in each room. It might be necessary for some Ministers to share rooms, although I hope not.

But we cannot have a situation in future in which the House votes vast sums of money for the creation of new accommodation and then returns to a new Parliament to find that the new Government with very many extra Ministers have taken up a great deal of the extra space. That cannot be right. I hope that I am right in believing—and the Leader of the House seems to assent to this—that the new Committee will have power to deal with these matters.

As the Ministry of Works is represented, I want to ask one specific question. I believe that at Question Time yesterday I asked the wrong Question and that that is why I did not get the answer I wanted. My question is about the roof scheme. I believe that there are three stages to that scheme. The first is the part which was finished a little while ago and which is now in occupation. The second is the bit to be finished at Christmas at the Lords' end, if one can call it that, although it is to be for our benefit and not for that of the Lords.

There is another stage, however, a stage which is in between. Am I right in thinking that that stage has been indefinitely postponed by act of the Government? I see that the Parliamentary Secretary is seeking advice and I hope that he will give us an answer on this matter tonight, because we must have an answer. I believe that that part of the scheme has been cut out or postponed indefinitely and that as a result hon. Members are getting less out of the scheme than they were promised.

I assume that it will be open to the new Committee to order that the third part of the scheme should be proceeded with forthwith and that it would not be within the power of the Government of the day to say that that could not be done because of any financial difficulties into which the Government had got themselves.

Our troubles—and we have been debating troubles most of the day—in the past have been very largely of our own making. We have not been able to put our own house in order. We have had all these ad hoc committees, these temporary expedients and, of course, quite a lot of permanent value from their work. But there have been too many committees and too many bodies and persons all at sixes and sevens, all trying to help hon. Members, but frustrated the one by the other. Now we have the proposal that if the majority of hon. Members, through this powerful Committee which we propose to set up, want a change in any direction, that change will be made and it will not be possible for a minority to frustrate that progress.

It is important to realise, when talking about power and progress, that the recommendation of this Report is not that the Department of the Serjeant at Arms or the Department of the Clerk of the House, the two great Departments of the House, should be interfered with or bullied by hon. Members, or by the new Committee. That was far from the intention of the Select Committee. It will merely mean that these Departments will be able to work even more harmoniously with hon. Members—and, heaven knows, they have worked very harmoniously with them in the past and are doing so now, one could say night and day. Nothing in the Report envisages any disturbance of the happy relationship between hon. Members and those Departments. The scapegoat of the Lord Great Chamberlain will have been removed and we shall no longer be able to blame some bogyman upstairs or at the other end of the building. It is up to us to make a success, and I hope that we shall.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

I must say at the outset that I am with the minority of hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon who cannot whole-heartedly welcome the Report. I am afraid there is a great danger of the Report being interpreted and used as a means of repairing the ramshackle services of the House which can be an even greater danger than would result from having no recommendations whatever.

The debate has dealt with the services which some of us would like to have in the House; yet they are not mentioned much in the Report. The Report has a missing link, namely, the back benchers, who ought to be the primary link, the most important feature of the House.

Of course, there are certain aspects of procedure which can be amended, but that can be done without any great change in the physical facilities of the House, and I would like those changes to be embarked upon. What I am concerned with is the efficiency of Parliament so that I can be an efficient Member for the people who sent me here. At the moment I do not think that I can do that with all the conscientiousness and hard work in the world.

The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) went to some lengths to point out how sorry he was for the Press and the difficulties in the Press Gallery. I have some sympathy with the members of the Press, but I must point out that the object of the House is to govern and rule and help the nation and not to provide copy for journalists. Journalists have a vitally important rôle, but the quintessential of the business of this House is the government of the land and not a source of copy for journalists. If they do not have proper facilities where they work, they should be as annoyed about that as we are about our own conditions, but if there is to be a system of priorities we must see that we who are sent here, each of us on average by 50,000 to 60,000 people in our constituencies, have what is required to make us efficient Members of Parliament in their interests. We want this efficiency not for our own sakes and not to have a cushy life, but to do more than we are doing now for our constituents.

Members of the Press ought to have first-class arrangements so that they can do their work, and we must acknowledge that in a democracy like ours a free Press must be able to have full access to all that is going on. If the Press has cramped conditions, its conditions should be improved. However, when I have finished my work in the House I cannot go back to some office. I happen to be a full-time Member of Parliament. I do not have an office in Fleet Street where I can go to write up this, that, or the other. I cannot dash to a telephone and tell my secretary, "Now take all this down". Indeed, in many respects journalists are better off than we are, and let us not be afraid to acknowledge it. I am not jealous of it, but I want to have some of the facilities which they have; their case has been too much stated this afternoon and ours not enough.

The Select Committee which we are to have is to be called the House of Commons Services Committee. I recommend to it—and I hope that the Leader of the House will take note of this—that it should go on a little tour to see how the German, Italian and French M.P.s operate and what facilities they have.

Mr. Woodburn

And the colonial M.P.s.

Mr. Molloy

And the colonial M.P.s. Most other legislative assemblies are far more modern and efficient than we are. I understand, for example, that a German Member of Parliament has an office of his own, provided by the nation. He has a secretary, provided by the nation, and he even has his own little library in the Bundestag. The American Member of Parliament is provided with a staff of ten. One of the troubles with this nation is that whilst we acknowledge that power resides in this House we have been too mean to give Members of Parliament either adequate salaries or facilities to carry out the very heavy responsibilities which they are prepared to accept.

It is not a bit of use anyone saying, "Well, you knew of this before you came". Yes, we did, and some of us said that if we did come here we were going to make an effort to change things. I hope that we do not fall, in years to come, into the obvious trap that my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) has fallen into. He made a very brilliant, witty and most interesting speech. From my point of view, however, I am bound to say that I thought he was failing to hear the whispers of the future because of the past bawling in his ears.

There are times when we can be enamoured with what might be described as having a rough time. This afternoon reminded me of some people who have been in the war. When they come back they tell us of the terrible time when they were crawling through the minefield or when they were dashing up the beaches. I have heard some of these characters in pubs and in smoke-rooms, and after a while I have been looking for my tin hat. They have been so realistic. They have almost enjoyed what they were going through. My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington seemed to indicate this afternoon that he had enjoyed the lack of privileges and the indignity he had to suffer. I hope I shall not fall into that trap, if I am here long enough. I am not so much concerned with the trials which Members of Parliament had to endure forty years ago. I am more concerned in building an efficient Parliament, of which I hope my grandson will be a member.

I want to talk on the important point of power. I am not at all sure whether enough power is in this House, and it ought to be in a democratic society. It seems quite ludicrous that senior Members or Members who have been in this place almost as long as I have been alive have been arguing that one does not need a desk. My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington thought that one needed an office and a desk just to write letters—

Mr. Shinwell

No. My hon. Friend is wrong. I said quite deliberately that while I did not think it was necessary for every Member to have a room or office, I thought hat one required desk room. The trouble is that my hon. Friend did not listen to what I said.

Mr. Molloy

That is a very old gag. The right hon. Member is a very old stager and he does it very well. He says one thing in his speech and when that is challenged he intervenes and gives a very different interpretation. He is a very old fox, and we all know that. But I know that every Member is acknowledging quietly and secretly that I am right and he is wrong, because they know what an old fox he is. The point I am trying to make is that if we acknowledge that power is in this House, that this is the acme of authority, why should people cavil at giving Members of this House all the facilities which they ought to have?

We do not jibe about senior civil servants having their own office, their personal assistant, their private secretary. Of course they should have them. But not one of them has the authority of a Member of this House. So why should we be prepared to give certain sections of the administration all the facilities which they require and yet cavil at giving a Member of this House reasonable facilities to do his work? This place is supposed to be the essence of power, and I would like my right hon. Friend, when he replies to the debate, to comment on this important aspect.

I am one of those who believe that it may not be necessary for Parliament to remain in this particular place. The time may come when we might have to consider moving away from London, which might be a good thing. I would not mind if we were to take parts of this place and move it to some other place. There must always be a start at some time. I understand that this year we celebrated the 700th anniversary of Simon de Montfort first establishing Parliament. It was somewhere in these precincts. That is not a bad run. Let us have it somewhere else for a couple of hundred years—I do not mind. Let us start a new history and let us have more decent behaviour, not history spotted with war, revolutions, blood and slaughter; a new history like the enlarging of the National Health Service, giving teachers decent pay, and creating a brand-new civilised community. Then we will have milestones of civilised behaviour rather than the uncivilised behaviour which marks many aspects of this place.

We who wish to see radical changes and are afraid that this Report might delay them do not want such changes for ourselves. We want to be able to do more work than we are doing now. There are Members who are in a privileged position, who can afford to have a flat not far from here with a Division bell actually in their flat. They also have country houses. They have no problem, but it is an enormous problem for me. I have not got a country house, nor have I a flat with a Division bell. So, looking at it with two different pairs of eyes, one has two different problems, but it is a very serious problem to me. We have this incredible privilege whereby some people, whether they are trade union secretaries or managing directors, or whether they are just plain wealthy, can afford to have their own little office and their own little flat. So long as those conditions exist we have not a genuine, fair and just democracy.

Not long after entering this House I remember someone said to me, "Have you got a secretary yet?" I said, "Let us see what that means." "Don't they provide you with one?" I was asked. "No," I said. I told them that I had to get one for myself, and the argument goes like this. It is no good having a secretary unless she can type; it is no good having a girl who can type unless she has a typewriter; it is no good having a typewriter unless one has a table; it is no good having a table unless one has a room to put it in. One can go on like this. People ask me if I have anywhere at all to work? My constituency is not very far from this House. Consequently, I get lots of people to see me. One of the first things they ask is, "Can I come to your room, because this is a very private matter?" I tell them I have nowhere to take them and they look quite shocked.

Mr. Robert Cooke

The hon. Gentleman obviously has not discovered that there is a large suite of air-conditioned interview rooms beneath this Chamber.

Mr. Molloy

Of course I know that. There are about twenty little cubicles.

Mr. Cooke

Large rooms.

Mr. Molloy

About twenty-odd cubicles for over 600 Members. That is not very difficult to work out.

Mr. Cooke

I am sorry to persist in this, but it is not 600 Members. There are the Ministers, who have rooms of their own, and there are a lot of Members who have their own rooms because of improvements. These are not little cubicles. They can take anything from 12 to 14 people.

Mr. Molloy

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that those large looms are for deputations. There are about three or four of them, and there are, I should think, fifteen or sixteen cubicles for about 400 Members. If the hon. Member is satisfied with having 400 Members sharing half a dozen cubicles, then I am not. I think the trouble with the hon. Gentleman is that he has been hauled too swiftly and much too rashly into the twentieth century. He should take it a little easier and come out of the nineteenth century much more leisurely. These points which I have been making are in the minds of many Members who entered this place at the last General Election.

We have also had encouragement from older Members on both sides of the House who are keen to point out that we get nothing in this place unless we fight for it. The franchise and democracy as we know it today were not given to us; they had to be fought for. That applies here. All that those of us on the radical left of the Government are doing is carrying on the fight to get our conditions improved, not for ourselves as Members of Parliament, but so that we will be able to be efficient Members of Parliament and give a better service to our constituents and, through that medium, give a better service to the nation.

6.31 p.m.

Sir Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)

I do not think there is any doubt that the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) brought some balance to this important debate. Other hon. Members, as was admitted by the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy), have been flying the propaganda kite. I do not blame them for that. They say that if we battle for something which we know is unreasonable at the moment we may get something which is reasonable sooner than otherwise would be the case.

The right hon. Member for Easington is a good example in support of the case which he put. Like him, I am not prepared to concede that the efficiency and quality of other Parliaments—and I have visited most of them in Europe and in the Dominions—are higher and better than is the case in this Parliament. I do not say that we are working in perfect conditions; I do not think that anybody is. What I am satisfied about, however, is that with in the limits in which we have to operate I do not believe that anybody, out of malice or carelessness or deliberate neglect, has caused us to work in worse conditions than were necessary.

The art of politics and of running Parliament is the art of the possible. If we feel that there is some real advantage in remaining on this traditional Simon de Montfort site, referred to rather flippantly a moment or two ago, if we believe that there is some merit in presenting the sort of Parliament which we have built up, not only because of the glamour of tradition but because of the knowledge that it stretches into the past, apart from the desire that we should hopefully stride into the future—and it is my view that the majority of Members and people in the country accept that—then we should not leave it unless it can be proved that we are inefficient as a result of being there. I do not believe that the nation would tolerate that for a minute.

If it is decided that there is real merit in remaining on this site, we must face the fact that there are limitations of space involved in that decision. Within those limits we cannot envisage 630 Members having a room of their own with another room to house a secretary, or, as has been suggested, six or eight secretaries. It is not "on". On grounds of common sense, we cannot contemplate moving out, as has been suggested, which brought great cheers from my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. William Yates). Anything which appeared to be revolutionary and different would have his cheers.

But it would not only be a matter of the Mother of Parliaments moving out. We must also consider all the administrative Departments domiciled in this area, not by accident, but because it is a good thing that the people who are permanently administering those great Departments should be readily accessible to this House. I was a junior Minister for about five-and-a-half or six years. While a Minister is doing his job within a Department—and most of the work is done within the Department—this place must be near enough to enable him to do his job as a Member of Parliament, too. If Parliament were moved, all the supporting administrative Ministries and civil servants would have to go too, which would be a pretty formidable exercise even to contemplate. Very few Members and, I would think, hardly anybody in the country who has studied the matter think it reasonable to contemplate moving Parliament from this site.

Does staying on this site really affect the efficiency and quality of service which Members of Parliament give? If we had all these extra facilities, if we had the photostat copying machine which we are supposed to have and if we had the services of two or three secretaries, I suppose some of the things which we do would, apparently, be done more efficiently. But I think that it would be a case of it being more apparent than real.

Mr. William Yates

My hon. Friend must not be carried away. All that we asked was that the Leader of the House should examine the problem of our siting with a scientific committee to decide whether we were efficient, whether we were likely to be efficient or whether we should move—no more than that.

Sir Harmar Nicholls

My hon. Friend used the wrong pronoun. He said "we". He may have asked for that, but if he had listened to the contributions made by other hon. Members he would have realised that some came down pretty categorically in favour of the idea that we should move. They had made up their minds that this site was inadequate. That was the point of view with which I was dealing, and I admit that it was an extreme one.

If we had all these extra facilities and extra offices, we could give the appearance of being more efficient, but I do not think that we would be more efficient in fact. I do not think that we need all these innovations. There has been reference to the analogy of great businesses. I know of very few, if any, great business organisations which have the sort of facilities which it being said we should have.

The hon. Member for Ealing, North was wrong when he said that there were only one or two interview rooms in this place. I have been a Member of Parliament for 16 years and I have not had outside facilities, but I have received a number of deputations because I have tried to be reasonably energetic, and I have never yet found it impossible to have a private room adequate enough to meet deputations. I cannot believe that I have had special treatment. I served for 2½ years in the Ministry of Works where I had special responsibility for looking after this place, and I never had brought to me any clear cut case to the effect that Members could not have the use of a private room when they wanted it.

Mr. Sydney Silverman

Is the hon. Gentleman really saying that a back bench member with a room and a secretary would not do his work more efficiently than a back bench Member without a room and secretary?

Sir Harmar Nicholls

I know that the hon. Gentleman listens carefully to other people's speeches, and I would concede this: on the face of it, it would give the appearance that a Member was doing his job more efficiently. The letters which he wrote might be longer. The memoranda which he sent out might be in greater detail. But I am not prepared to concede that the services of a secretary or two secretaries and a private room would automatically bring increased efficiency and an improvement in the quality of service.

Mr. Shinwell

Would the hon. Gentleman, for the benefit of hon. Members, define what he means by "efficiency."

Sir Harmar Nicholls

I mean the quality of service which a person gives in carrying out the job of being a Member of Parliament.

I come to the explanation of what seems to be a contradiction. I accept completely the point of view put forward by the right hon. Member for Easington. I believe that if extra offices were provided and if we drove Members into using them a number of hours when they did not need them, we should remove the community spirit of this place and we should lose the education which we get from talking to other hon. Members. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) may not have experienced this as much as some of us. I have always been a great admirer of his skill and ability, but he is a lone wolf. I do not think that he shares his mind as avidly as many other hon. Members, but I may be wrong, because I have not sat on the same side of the House as the hon. Gentleman. What I do know, however, is that the majority of Members are better Members if they meet in the public rooms and have this interchange of view. I believe that the quality of the letter which they send is so much improved because they have done it. I have seen the rooms in Canada and in America. The Members there do not have separate secretaries; they have to draw from a pool. I do not believe that the quality of their knowledge, because they have not had this intermixing, is anything like as good.

I therefore come down again on the side of the right hon. Member for Easington. If we can get extensions to the building, very well. If we can get an office for those who particularly want one, let them have it. If, however, priority has to be given, I would give it to the extra public rooms round the Chamber. I agree with taking away the old Map Room—mind you, they have the "hot room" now in place of it for the sort of chap who used to use it. I agree that the community rooms around the Chamber should be extended.

I have been led away by those generalisations. All that I wanted to say as a constructive suggestion was this. First, we ought not to be abusive of the Lord Great Chamberlain and the people who administered this place in the past. I doubt whether the sort of facilities that we get, because of the limitations of space, from the new Committee will be very different from what those others did in the past. The only difference, as the Leader of the House has said, is that we have now been given this responsibility as a House and we have to operate it.

I made this suggestion to the Committee, and I now repeat it publicly. I am certain that the best way to run and to carry out this new responsibility is to use it rather on the borough council principle. The main Services Committee would be the equivalent of the full council. If that Committee splits itself up, as it will do, under its various headings and if the sub-committees act rather as the various committees of a council act—taking into account the various needs of the specific departments, the Library, the kitchen, the general rooms and things of that sort—they should be supported by officials, some from the Ministry of Public Building and Works and others from the offices which administer this House. When they put their specific recommendations from their special departmental point of view, they should be looked at by the Select Committee as a whole, like the general purposes committee of a council, to make certain that the general policy has been taken into account. Just as a borough or a town can be efficiently run under that sort of system, now that we, the Members of the House, have the responsibility of doing a job which previously was done by Mr. Speaker and the Lord Great Chamberlain, I believe that if we follow the same sort of line we shall be successful.

My final words must be these. I agree that in the process of asking for something better, we must not denigrate what goes on now and what has been done in the past. Our record does not justify that. All that we can do is that we evolve in the future more quickly and more efficiently, if possible, but only along the same road that the people in charge have done over the last 30 years.

6.43 p.m.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown (Glasgow, Provan)

I am grateful for being given a few minutes to come into what to me has been an interesting and useful debate. It is inevitable that one of the things that frightens some of the new Members—I can speak only for myself—is the attitude that was put forward by the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) when he said that after a few years one gets to be able to live with it. I suppose that this is always one of the dilemmas on joining a new body when one thinks that in a few years' time one might be prepared to accept something which at the outset appears to be absurd. This is always one of the disturbing things when a new member of any body tries to express a point of view. One is damped down by the real traditionalists, if I may say so, from the other side of the House and damped down by the elder statesmen on this side of the House, who are really just as much part of the establishment as the other side when it comes to accepting things in Parliament.

With all due respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), it is good to be able to give us entertainment. It is good to give us the benefit of the experiences of others and the nostalgia and sentiment of the movement. Behind it all, however, there is always the impression that the new Members who are here lack the sincerity, the ability and, indeed, the application of the men of the past. I do not think this is true. I should not be the one to say it, but I certainly do not regard it as a very scientific approach to suggest—

Mr. Shinwell

I did not say that.

Mr. Brown

No, but the insinuation is always there that the older ones made greater sacrifices in the past than some of the new Members are making. I do not accept that.

Mr. Shinwell

We are still suffering.

Mr. Brown

My right hon. Friend did suffer, but he is arguing 40 years later about some of the changes that were not made 40 years ago. That is the disturbing thing.

It is only now that at last we are taking powers into the hands of the Members of this House to make certain decisions for greater efficiency and building up the stature of Parliament. It can be built up only if Members of Parliament are efficient and able. This is one of the things that we are trying to do. It is, however, sheer nonsense to pretend that the services that one requires nowadays are comparable to what Members were prepared to put up with 30 or 40 years ago. Some of us may be inadequate, we may not measure up to the standard which some of the older Members have acquired, but as we as new Members see it, there are certainly one or two points that need close examination.

This is the first time really that we have had a democratic approach to this problem in the sense that there is now a shop stewards' committee dealing with wages, hours and conditions. It appears to me as if, at last, we have the power to determine our wages, hours and conditions. They are all linked up. The frustration that new Members have been expressing is not because we are brash, ignorant or wanting everything laid on a plate for us. It is because we see that all the recent debates, whether on procedure, alteration of salaries or hours, are tied up.

I say quite honestly that if I were asked now, in November 1965, to agree to the salaries that were approved in November 1964, I would not have agreed to them under these conditions. We should have had a whole lot of other things added on to them. I am thinking not in terms of the rewards but of the other things that are more important. Our facilities are quite ridiculous in this modern age, with all the advantages of modern office equipment, although, to be honest, I do not know what they are, and I suspect that some of the members of the Committee do not know what they are either. All the argument we have had here is because no one as yet has asked Members of Parliament what facilities they think they need. No one has yet asked me whether I need a desk, how often I would use it or how many letters a day I get. We are all arguing something on which no one has really taken evidence and about which no one has asked us.

Mr. Shinwell

My hon. Friend is quite wrong. May I point out, first, that we who served on the Committee are respon- sible for making the recommendation, which he now applauds, to set up a Committee in whom would be vested full responsibility for determining how this House should be administered. Secondly, when evidence was submitted to us, we interrogated those who gave their evidence on precisely the points, or nearly all of them, which my hon. Friend has mentioned.

Mr. Brown

All I am saying is that no one has asked me for my opinion on them. [Laughter.] That, however, is not important. I could have volunteered and given evidence. I merely suspect there are many new Members—and old Members, too—who either were not sufficiently interested or did not know about it, or were not consulted. I am just saying that I suspect this, and I rather think that I am correct.

Sir Harmar Nicholls

If I may give the hon. Member a quick tip on the way the House is run, it is not to wait to be asked. We all have our Whips, the Serjeant at Arms and Mr. Speaker's Office, and all sorts of facilities. When we feel that something should be done, our job is to let them know.

Mr. Brown

I am delighted. This is, as I say, one of the things I am now beginning to learn. I appreciate this. And I would concede that we on this side of the House have open minds. I should like to think that some steps will be taken to encourage hon. Members, for let us not forget that there are over 100 new Members in this Parliament, and it may be that many of them have not tumbled to the fact that one does not wait to be asked to give one's opinions here: one goes ahead and gives them whether anybody wants to hear them or not. I would accept this.

There are two points I wish to make. First, the question of secretarial assistance which might be given to hon. Members should be looked into, which, if for no other reason, would save space. I cannot believe that more efficient use cannot be made of the space which is available. Secondly, we should know how many Members are full-time. Do we even know that? I certainly speak on behalf of the full-time Members, for whom there should be some kind of hostel or club accommodation—not for every Member, but for those Members who want it.

Do not let us look at these problems through the eyes of elder statesmen or of those who have been in Government or are in Government, with all the facilities they have. Let us try to be a bit more humble from time to time and pay a little more attention to the views of the new Members.

6.52 p.m.

Dr. Jeremy Bray (Middlesbrough, West)

I want to intervene only very briefly to raise a matter which the Leader of the House in the debate on procedure last week said should be referred to the House of Commons Services Committee which it is proposed to set up and which is being debated this afternoon, and that is the question of specialist assistance to the Estimates Committee. It was recommended by the Committee on Procedure that the Sub-Committees of the Estimates Committee should be entitled both to additional assistance from the Clerks and to employ specialist assistance.

If I may, I will refer to what happened last year; I think it establishes the urgency of this case. We wanted, in the course of an inquiry into recruitment for the Civil Service, to identify why graduates of provincial universities showed very marked reluctance to enter the Civil Service. We had a small inquiry carried out by the Acton Society Trust. We were unable to pay the £85 for the cost of the survey. Parliament can discharge its responsibility by spending £8,000 million. Why was it not able to pay £85 to meet the cost of this simple investigation? The cost is trivial in relation even to the preparation of the Report. It is trivial even in relation to the facility to travel abroad which the Government recommended should be part of the rights of the Estimates Committee's Sub-Committees. I therefore hope that the new House of Commons Services Committee, when it is set up, will deliver the Estimates Committee from this humiliating position, so that it is able, in the course of this year's business, fully to discharge the responsibility which the House rests upon it.

6.53 p.m.

Mr. Bowden

This has been an excellent debate. It has covered a pretty wide canvas. Many of the speeches have dealt with the Report we are considering. Many of the speeches, with respect to hon. Members on both sides, have been very much wider than the Report we are considering. It is a very good thing that on occasion we should have exchanges of this sort, and I am sure they will be of value to the Services Committee which is to have this job to do.

What has to be borne in mind in the first place is that the object of the Select Committee's Report we are now debating was, first, to review the existing control and organisation in the House of Commons side of the Palace of Westminster, and, secondly, to make proposals for controlling the House of Commons side with a view to advising Mr. Speaker and to replacing the Lord Great Chamberlain who was previously dealing with that on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen. That was the position. Those were the narrow terms of reference. In doing this, as I say, it was very necessary that we should have a look at exactly what was happening at the moment and how the controls are carried out.

I should like to deal with one or two of the specific points which have been raised. I am afraid I cannot deal with all the points, but I will deal with as many as possible. The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark), who followed me, referred to the pay and conditions of the staff which, as he rightly said, are now very largely tied to Civil Service rates. He asked me about the House of Commons Commissioners and he said they never meet. Not quite that. They have met, although they met on the last occasion nine years ago. Nevertheless, strange as it may seem, although they seldom meet, I am told that they do, in fact, function and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the main member of the Commissioners. It would, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, need legislation to abolish them. We felt that at this stage, till we could see how the thing is working, we perhaps had best continue with the House of Commons Commissioners, bearing in mind that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is always there to advise us if we so wish.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the Staff Board which, in a sense, is misnamed. It is really an establishment board rather than a staff board. It was set up a few years ago. I think that now, very largely, the problems of nepotism, and so on, have gone, and the thing seems to be working fairly well.

The hon. Gentleman asked me about the Kitchen Committee and whether the members of the staff would come under the Select Committee of the House. Of course, there is no reason why they should not be employed by the new Select Committee. I think there is a suggestion—no decision has been made—on evidence we heard that perhaps a few members of the staff, not more than half a dozen, on the clerical side could perhaps be better transferred under the umbrella of the staff board.

There has been a good deal of comment about the location of the Fees Office. My understanding of the position is that a Committee under a former Member, Sir James Duncan, advised Mr. Speaker that the roof space was being considered, that for the time being the Fees Office should continue in its present situation over in Bridge Street, and when the roof space was available should move back here. This was raised in the Select Committee by the hon. Gentleman and others, and the decision we took was that although it was thought necessary to remove the Fees Office from the Bridge Street site, the St. Stephen's site, and bring it back here during the Christmas Recess in fact no move ought to be made till the new Committee has had an opportunity of looking at it. It is not an open and shut case. The proposed site of the Fees Office in the roof space is quite a distance from this Chamber. It would probably be equally as far away up there as it is at the moment. On the other hand, I would probably agree that it is better to house Members up there than in the Fees Office.

Mr. Robert Cooke

The right hon. Gentleman used the expression "It was thought necessary". I presume he meant necessary for the Fees Office to come back. The Select Committee, if I recall the state of affairs aright, were unanimous that the Fees Office should not be moved back till we had the opinion of our successors. While I am on my feet perhaps I may ask the right hon. Gentleman to answer my question about stage three of the roof scheme, which is bound up with this.

Mr. Bowden

I will answer the point about stage three a little later. With regard to the Fees Office, I may be wrong—this may be a matter of correction if necessary—but my recollection of reading the Duncan Report is that the Fees Office was taken from its old position in Westminster Hall over to the Bridge Street site temporarily till such time as it moved to the roof space. But this whole thing can be looked at again.

The hon. Member for Londonderry also raised the question of the actual distribution of Ministers' rooms. The position is this, that all accommodation at the present moment is a matter for the Serjeant at Arms, but he, as it were, hands over a parcel of the accommodation to the Minister of Public Building and Works, who is responsible for allocating Ministers' rooms. That is the position at the moment. Whatever it may be under the new Committee is a matter for that Committee.

The hon. Gentleman referred, rightly, to the inadequate space for the Press Gallery and Lobby accommodation. Of course, it is quite true, whatever we may feel about the Lobby. We may not like the Lobby; we may not like the Gallery, either. But that is not my view. I think they do an excellent service and are part of the work of Parliament, as much as hon. Members are, and the staff who serve us. The trouble is that their accommodation is totally inadequate. Some time ago they had a working party of their own to consider the matter, and there is no doubt that they are working under very difficult circumstances. It is true that they are not the only ones, and this, too, can be looked at.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wands-worth, Central (Dr. David Kerr) raised one or two very interesting points. He mentioned the medical services. I do not know whether he is aware of the fact that a few weeks ago I had an offer from a local doctor, not a Member of Parliament, to come here for two hours every afternoon while the House was sitting and give his services free, without any fee whatsoever from Parliament. He did that as a result of having read in the papers that we were without those facilities. That gesture was made, and that again is something which the Committee might consider.

My hon. Friend mentioned the inadequate facilities for dealing with emergencies, and I have some personal experience of this. On one occasion I had to go into the small first-aid room round the corner to have something removed from my eye. The doctor who was there said, "There are enough instruments here to perform a major operation, but there is nothing here to enable me to take this bit of dust out of your eye". I think that the provision of medical facilities for such eventualities might also be considered.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the annunciator system. He was reminded of what happened some years ago when, because of the cost of the annunciator system, we looked at a new method of providing this kind of service. The Ministry of Works at the time thought that it should be done by projecting on to a television screen the name of the Member speaking, the time at which he started, and also, as the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) said, the ticking of the annunciator that we now hear, but Members decided that they did not like it.

The next point made by my hon. Friend was with regard to the possibility of broadcasting on closed circuit television the proceedings in the House so that any Member, wherever he was in the Palace of Westminster, be it in the Tea Room or in the Smoke Room, could know who was speaking and hear his speech. I do not know whether the House would like that, because I am sure everyone agrees that there are occasions when we are anxious to go into the Tea Room or the Smoke Room and we would not wish to be met by the same voice or the same speech that we were hearing when we left the Chamber.

My hon. Friend also raised the question of what was likely to be available from the point of view of desk space and rooms in the roof space and in Star Court. I am told that about 70 rooms will be available in Star Court when the building is completed. There are 47 desk spaces in the two roof schemes—I shall come to the third one later—but the interesting thing that emerges from the latest figures which I have—and they are almost 12 months old—is that although there is apparently a great demand for additional desk spaces, only 59 Members had not been satisfied six weeks after the House assembled in 1964. It may be that some Members had not asked for desk space, but that was the position at that time.

The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson) also dealt with the question of the roof space and made what I think is a very important point, that as far as possible in this re-organisation of space the first consideration should be that Members should be as near to this Chamber as possible, and that the offices which serve us, and serve us so well, should be removed further away. On the other hand, certain offices are as necessary as the Members themselves. I am thinking particularly of the Table Office, which is a great facility to Members to have on the spot, but generally speaking it is important that Members should be as near as possible to this Chamber.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the composition of the proposed Committee. I said in opening that we propose, or at least the Select Committee proposes, that it should contain some new Members. I think that the composition of the Committee is extremely important.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) made one or two interesting points. He talked about future developments. He was not concerned with the piecemeal development in the roof space or in Star Court itself. We may not see anything of the development on the Bridge Street site for three or four years, but considerable building is going on there. I suppose it is true to say that it is not yet off the drawing board, but a great deal of space will be available, and it may mean that we will have facilities for lecture halls, conference halls, and so on.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned the possibility of tape recording speeches. This is not a new idea; one has heard it before. I think the Committee might look at that. I take it that Members would have an opportunity of hearing their speeches played back, just as at the moment they have an opportunity of checking them before they are printed in HANSARD. If they go into a room and listen to their speeches being played back, it may have a good effect, perhaps even a salutary one, and it is a point worth looking at.

Mr. Woodburn

Is my right hon. Friend aware that on a few occasions Standing Committees were not able to meet because no facilities were available for reporting them? A great deal of time was lost as a result. The all-night sittings exhausted all the reporting staff, and no reporters were available. In such circumstances a tape recording could replace the present system.

Mr. Bowden

I am aware that on one or two occasions during the present Session there was a shortage of shorthand writers and Committees were not able to sit. I think I am right in saying that there is now on the market—it is probably not new, but I have seen one only recently—a device that records. It looks like a small typewriter. It is operated with one hand, and saves shorthandwriters in this way. But it would still have to be worked by an operator, I suppose.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) regretted that no reference had been made in the Report to the other place. Our terms of reference dealt only with our responsibility. It has to be remembered that the Royal Palace does not belong to Parliament. We are here on a long lease which has been in existence probably since the time of Henry VIII. When Her Majesty the Queen decided to divide up the control with the moving out of the Lord Great Chamberlain, she left part of it in his hands. She also left the control of our side in the hands of Mr. Speaker, and this Committee had the task of advising Mr. Speaker. I think that as a result of the setting up of this new Committee it will be possible to have joint talks with the Committee in another place which will be doing the same sort of job there.

The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. William Yates) went to some lengths to tell us that we were facing a very serious situation. I am sorry that he is not in the Chamber now. I was waiting to hear what he was going to suggest, but in the end he suggested building a gymnasium. It is probably true that we should take some exercise in this House. There was a gymnasium at one time, but I do not know whether it still exists. The hon. Gentleman thought that we should abandon this site altogether and rehouse ourselves completely. I cannot comment on that suggestion, as it is looking too far into the future, but no doubt the Committee will be able to consider it. The provision of the new buildings in Bridge Street are not so far in the future—perhaps three to four years—and there will be ample opportunity between now and then for the proposed new committee to consider what should be done with the accommodation there.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) was right when he spoke about the value of desk rooms. I had experience of this when we were considering putting Members into what was the St. Stephen's Club over on the Bridge Street site. It was surprising how many Members were prepared to share a room rather than have one to themselves. The number of desks, telephones, and filing cabinets available to Members has increased considerably over the last ten years. This has been going on all the time under successive Governments, and it is a move in the right direction.

My right hon. Friend also referred to the position with regard to season tickets. I know what happens here because, as Chief Whip, I had to deal with the matter on one occasion. I know that the system is an annoyance to Members. A season ticket is issued to Members for travel between the Palace of Westminster and their homes, provided that they make four journeys a week. This is the stipulation. It is thought that during the Recesses Members do not make four journeys a week, and therefore it is not an economic proposition for them to retain their season tickets because they still have to be paid for. I was told some years ago that the cost runs into many thousands of pounds if season tickets are not withdrawn, and a Member who has handed in his season ticket can use a voucher for travel between his home and the Palace of Westminster. This is something that ought to be looked at, and no doubt it is one of the many things which the new Committee will consider.

The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) raised a number of points. He asked specifically about the third phase of the roof space. My information is that this has been postponed as a result of economy proposals, which means a loss of some HANSARD rooms and Library rooms and shelves. It means no loss to hon. Members at the moment and does not affect them directly, but it could affect them because of the loss of HANSARD room and Library rooms.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) again regretted that our deliberations had not gone far enough. As I explained, our terms of reference related to the House of Commons only. I think he made a point when he said that we might take notice of what happens in overseas Parliaments and benefit from their experience. This perhaps we can look at.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, West (Dr. Bray) raised a point which I raised in the procedure debate last week when I said that the question of additional clerical and technical assistance to the Estimates Committee should be considered urgently by the Services Committee when it is set up. I hope that Committee will consider it very urgently because it is the view of the Government that if the Estimates Committee or any other committee needs assistance of this sort it should have it.

I have replied to a number of points although, as I said at the beginning, all of them are matters for the new Committee. What is important is that the new Committee should be allowed to get down to work as soon as possible with its subcommittees. It should be treated as a House of Commons Committee and on entering the room we should say to ourselves, "Abandon party all ye who enter here and look at the matter from the point of view of the House of Commons itself". I am sure that in that way we can work together harmoniously and it will be to the benefit of Parliament.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Report.