HC Deb 27 April 1967 vol 745 cc1965-81
Mr. Clegg

I beg to move Amendment No. 86, in page 23, line 24, to leave out Clause 30.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if, with this Amendment, we discussed Amendment No. 87, in page 26, to leave out line 9.

Mr. Clegg

The effect of Clause 30 is to delay the time at which a man or woman can be sent to prison for nonpayment of a fine. I think that that is putting the matter very simply. However, although it is simple, the Clause itself is complex and throws great burdens on the magistrates' courts which will have to administer its provisions.

It has been a source of worry not only to right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House but to those who will have to work it. The hon. and learned Gentleman is aware that there has been considerable criticism of the Clause by the Justices Clerks' Society, the Magistrates' Association and the London Criminal Court Solicitors' Association, all bodies which have a tremendous experience in this sphere of activity. They feel either that the provisions will he unworkable, or that, if they are to be workable, it will be only at the expense of the employment of new staff. That, as the hon. and learned Gentleman knows is already a considerable problem for magistrates' courts, not only in the Metropolis but throughout the country.

We have to consider, too, the effect of the Clause against a background of the imposition of 1,200,000 fines a year, but we must also take into account that, if the Home Secretary's policy as expressed in the Bill is carried through, the number of fines will increase considerably, because the whole policy of the Bill, as shown by the increase in the amounts of fines, is the substitution of fines, amongst other things, for imprisonment. As a result, in future the number of fines per year will increase considerably.

Part of the answer to why the Home Secretary is delaying the sending of people to prison for non-payment of fines is to empty the prisons. He wants to get out of prison many of the people who are in now for not paying fines. But it was interesting in Committee to look into the number of people who went to prison each year for non-payment of fines. We were told that the figure was about 10,000. However, 40 per cent. of that number bought themselves out of prison, which means that 4,000 people went to prison who could well afford to pay their fines.

I believe that that illustrates the present difficulty of getting people to pay fines. If people who can pay have to go to prison before they produce the money, it shows how many of them, even now, when the powers of the magistrates are greater, hold the courts in contempt. As I said in Committee, they put the payment of fines extremely low on their budgets.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

Can my hon. Friend explain why it proves that people can afford to pay, as opposed to somebody else deciding to pay the fine for them?

Mr. Clegg

I think that I can explain that.

Many people will go to the uttermost ends before they will pay a fine. They will go to the last ditch, and sometimes into it. I know from experience that many men, and women, too, could avoid going to prison by paying their fines, but they will not do so, and the ultimate sanction has to be used before they will "cough up". My hon. Friend is right in saying that sometimes a relative will pay the fine, but it shows that in most cases there is sufficient money in the family to prevent the man from going to prison by paying the fine.

The procedure set up by the Bill is suspect because it has been brought in by the Home Secretary before the Payne Committee considering the question of the recovery of civil debts has reported, and yet part of the new machinery which the right hon. Gentleman says will make people pay their fines more easily depends for its effectiveness on the Committee's report. For example, power is to be given to courts to register a civil judgment either in the county court or in the high court, but until the Committee reports we cannot judge how effective this power will be.

When we discussed this matter in Committee, the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Macdonald) told us that he had a lot of experience in getting people to pay money which they owed. He said that it was necessary to chase them. The first time they were tackled, one went through the procedure of issuing the usual warning letter. This was followed by another warning letter, proceedings were then started, and eventually one got judgment against the individual concerned, but the hon. Gentleman told us that the effect of this was that the next time the man owed money he knew that he had a long time in which to pay because the whole procedure would have to be gone through again. This is what will happen under the Clause, because it will be mandatory for magistrates to consider using every other procedure before sending a man to prison for the non-payment of a fine.

The Bill will be more effective if the Clause is left out, because the power that is being given to attach wages will give a magistrate the discretion to use that power and he will do so. I think that the Clause is in the Bill because the Home Secretary mistrusts justices of the peace, and, indeed, the judiciary generally. He thinks that in some way they will frustrate his liberal intentions, and the intentions of Parliament. I believe that the Home Secretary is mistaken in bringing in this provision.

I have some experience of the courts. I have often taken people to listen to court proceedings. Their abiding impression of the courts is not that the sentences have been unduly severe, or that the judge has been unduly severe, but rather that the courts have dealt with people with the utmost clemency. I have heard this said on many occasions, both of assize courts, and of magistrates' courts.

Most magistrates' courts are very careful before they send someone to prison for the non-payment of a fine. They go into the background of the case. I am certain that they would not send a man to prison if he was unable to pay his fine because he was suffering from ill-health, or because his circumstances had changed since the fine was imposed. In most cases, the clerk of the court says to someone who is brought before the court to answer questions about his means, "Why did you not come to my office and tell me your circumstances, and why you could not pay? Had you done so you might have been saved the trouble fo being brought here now". Courts are much more realistic than the Clause gives them credit for being.

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson.) that the effect of the Clause will be to empty the prisons for a time, because in the early stages this procedure will delay the sending of men to prison for the non-payment of fines. But, in the long run, and especially because of the new policy of imposing fines, the position will be as bad, if not worse, than it is today. In other words, this is merely a postponement. As my right hon. and learned Friend said, the sausage machine will start grinding again once the initial period has been gone through.

Dame Irene Ward

I am glad of this opportunity to support the Amendment. When the right hon. Lady the Minister of State replied to the last Amendment she said that I had not been associated with the Bill very often. That is true, mainly because I did not have the privilege of being a member of the Standing Committee. However, as I pointed out when I spoke last, I have been a magistrate on the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Bench for very many years; and that is why I am glad to speak on this occasion.

While listening to the debate today I have been worried at the almost complete absence of recognition by the Government of the part that magistrates play in administering the courts of summary jurisdiction. No attention appears to have been given by the Government to the views which have been sent, in no uncertain terms, to the Home Office on the issues covered by the Clause. While attention may have been paid in Committee to the views of the courts of summary jurisdiction, I speak tonight because I want to make sure that the views of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Bench are on the record.

When it became apparent that the proposals contained in the Clause would be introduced into the Bill, there was a meeting of the Newcastle Bench. This is a large bench, with four courts every day. Wide experience is possessed by the magistrates there and they discussed the Clause in great detail. It was their unanimous opinion—there was no opposition and no politics were involved—that the Clause should be deleted.

I became suspicious about the amount of attention that was being paid by Home Office Ministers to the views of magistrates, many of whom, in my view, have a great deal more experience than many of the new Ministers at the Home Office and who feel that they have every right to express their views on this subject. And when I realised some time ago that the Home Office intended to proceed with the inclusion of a Clause of this kind, I asked the appropriate Minister at Question Time whether many recommendations had been received in the same terms as those forwarded by the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Bench. The answer was, of course, "Yes".

None of this has been referred to during the debate, although the Minister may mention it when he replies to the Amendment. Suffice to say that strong recommendations have been made and I imagine that a great many of them were as unanimous as the recommendations put forward by Newcastle.

Justices' clerks, magistrates' associations and the whole section of the community concerned with administering the courts of summary jurisdiction have, so far as I am aware, all been opposed to the Clause as it stands. The Home Office should, therefore, pay attention to the views of magistrates, who are responsible people doing an extremely good job.

As a magistrate, I have always been in favour of imposing the highest amount of fine in appropriate cases. However, one of the problems of the courts of summary jurisdiction is that they are short of staff, and the collection of fines presents a difficult administrative problem for them.

If the hon. and learned Gentleman does not mean to accept this proposal, I hope that he will tell us in straight terms that appropriate staff will be provided for the courts so as to relieve the difficulties which clerks to the justices now face. I do not mind telling him that if steps had been taken some time ago to deal with the problem, magistrates might have had greater sympathy with the proposals in the Bill. The present position is quite intolerable, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will bear that in mind.

If this Clause is retained, we will add to the burden of the vast numbers of deserted and separated wives who have maintenance orders. Here, the legal position needs adjustment and amendment. Day after day in the House I listen to statements—and I do not at all disagree with them—about action being taken to deal with television licence and motor vehicle licence dodgers. We are told, quite rightly, that in the interests of the national economy stricter steps are being taken to deal with the people who seek to escape paying.

I welcome that; but I find it the more surprising that in the case of women who are in great difficulty over the receipt of the money due to them under maintenance orders of various kinds the Government have gone in just the opposite direction. I do not need to tell the hon. and learned Gentleman that hon. Members are continually receiving representations from constituents about husbands who disappear. The men change their jobs, nobody is able to trace them, and the maintenance that the magistrates have ordered them to pay just goes by default.

The Ministry of Social Security cannot give addresses, and those who fail to pay what has been imposed on them can get away with it. The benches have no means of following up the cases they have dealt with and putting the law into operation. This means a great blow to many women, who have no means of protecting themselves from defaulting spouses.

The magistrates have been given the responsibility of forming their own genuine views of cases coming before them, and I think that they do extremely well. That being so, I find it quite indefensible that the Government should have taken this decision before we have had the report of the Payne Committee. To do that is intolerable to the House of Commons and to the magistrates who service the courts of summary jurisdiction. In case the hon. and learned Gentleman refuses to delete the Clause, I should be glad to know when he expects the Committee to report.

I should also like to know—but I do not suppose I shall be told, because no Minister ever wants to give information about what his colleagues think—whether the Lord Chancellor, who has very humane views on the treatment of women, was consulted before this Clause was put into the Bill knowing, as he does, that a Committee is at present considering all these matters of civil debts.

I know what the attitude of the Government would be on certain other matters on which pressure might be brought to bear from both sides when a committee is due to report. We have heard about local government commissions, reviews, Royal Commissions. We can never get a decision on anything, because everything has to be referred to a Royal Commission, a Select Committee, or a special committee. Nobody can take a decision when cases of grave hardship are involved, because it must be referred to a committee.

Now, on this Clause, it suits the Home Secretary to act differently. I am not criticising him as a Home Secretary. I know that everybody thinks that he is a very good Home Secretary. I know that he wants to be regarded as the best and greatest Home Secretary who has ever held that office. That is his objective. I do not think that he is like that. If he had been like that, he would never have agreed to the insertion of the Clause before having received this very important report. The views which are being advanced to the Home Secretary have received little attention. They have been brushed aside.

The one consideration that the Home Secretary has in mind is to empty the prisons. Nobody disagrees with his objective, but a person should not set that as his one and only priority and cause tremendous hardship to many unfortunate people who have gone before the courts to get their protection and to get the protection of justice. The inclusion of this Clause in the Bill removes the protection of justice that magistrates' courts try to offer to those who come before them for protection against people who, on the civil side, have been treating them badly.

Being a Member of Parliament, I am not often able nowadays to sit on my own magistrates' bench. When we have a case before us we go into very great detail to discover the means of the person who is to be fined. Within the maximum and minimum terms that are prescribed for us, we so fix the fine. The Home Secretary is now preventing us from going into these details, which are so relevant to the fixing of a fine.

I resent this interference. On the whole, benches are very humane. They are well-informed. All Lord Chancellors prefer the benches to be staffed by magistrates with wide experience in every section of life. A bench of magistrates is not composed of people from only one section of the community, having only one branch of knowledge. Benches are composed of people with very wide experience of life. Magistrates with many years of service know much more about life than Home Office Ministers. The Home Office thinks that it has all the answers. It has not. It is easy to make decisions in Whitehall having done little work in the field. Work in the field in the administration of justice is much more important than being a Home Office Minister.

I do not know whether any of the other Members from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, all of whom have received letters from the clerk to the justices pointing out what the bench has decided, intend to speak. I do not know whether any of them intend to support their own bench, which represents the city for which they sit, but all I can say is that I hope we shall hear a great deal more about what representations have been made.

Home Secretaries go to magistrates' associations, who are always supposed to be brought into consultation. But I do not think that the Government believe in consultation with the trade unions. Unless there is some recognition of the views of the trade unions—

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Speaker

Order. The hon. Lady now is just out of order.

Dame Irene Ward

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I was only going on to say that if one can accept knowledge put forward by one section of society, I think it only right to expect that the Home Office should recognise advice tendered by the Magistrates' Association as a whole, from the clerk to the justices, and the whole paraphernalia of people who are experienced in this field, who have made their recommendations and who do not agree with Clause 30 of the Bill.

I therefore ask the Minister to do something about it and to let us know whether he really knows anything about courts of summary jurisdiction.

Mr. Buck

In view of the admirable way in which the Amendment was moved by the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg), and the support it has received at some length from my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), in an admirable and interesting speech, I do not think that much more need be said. But there are one or two points I would like to emphasise, and one or two questions I should like to put to the Minister.

The hon. and learned Gentleman may recall that yesterday, fairly early on in the Report stage, I sought to move an Amendment relating to the publication for the purposes of the Press of, as it were, daily calendars of the court list. I was conscious in moving that Amendment, that this would place a minor administrative burden on the staff of the magistrates' courts. Indeed this was pointed out to me by the Under-Secretary in no uncertain terms. What is proposed here, however, is to place an enormous additional burden on the magistrates' courts, both on the magistrates themselves and particularly on the staff of their courts.

This point has been made before, but I would reinforce it by asking the Under-Secretary to tell us tonight what steps he is proposing to increase and strengthen the staffs of magistrates' courts so that they should be able to cope with the additional burdens placed upon them.

When I ventured to bring the earlier Amendment before the House, I asked the hon. and learned Gentleman if he would be prepared to give at a later stage figures concerning additional burdens placed on magistrates' courts staffs in recent years. Perhaps he will take this opportunity of doing that.

On the earlier Amendment, which, in my view, had great merit, we were told that the administrative burden was too much. Yet here, for no overwhelming reason which I can see, we have the magistrates' courts being burdened with a very cumbersome procedure.

I should like to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman what representations he has had causing him to bring in this particular Clause of the Bill? Where has the pressure come from for this change? None of us on this side have heard of any pressure for this. All the pressure of which we are aware has been for the retention of the present system which has worked moderately well, especially in the spheres mentioned by the hon. Lady such as maintenance orders and the like.

Where has the pressure come from? Who is in favour of it? Who has been pushing the Home Office? Where are these overwhelming considerations for bringing this forward, especially in view of the terms of reference of the Payne Committee? Someone must be putting pressure on the Home Office to bring forward such a cause as this when there is a Committee with very similar terms of reference dealing with the whole matter. I should like a full reply from the Under-Secretary of State about it.

Sir J. Hobson

The weight of professional opinion expressed against this proposal from all quarters of those most concerned with enforcement is very impressive. What do the Government think about these criticisms and what assurances do they intend to give of the way in which they will deal with the problems created by this Clause for large numbers of magistrates' courts and for other enforcement machinery.

My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) is a little innocent if he thinks that an explanation is needed as to where the pressure arises on the Home Office to introduce the Clause. It was entirely internal pressure from the Prison Department to try to keep as many people out of prison as possible. This is obviously a desirable objective if it can be achieved without a breakdown in law and order, but my anxiety is that the result of bringing this elaborate administrative machinery into effect will be that millions of people will find that, having committed motoring offences and minor offences of every description and having been fined, in fact they need not pay. The administrative machinery will break down.

People will go to court and will be fined, but will walk out of the court with no enforceable order made against them. There will be a summons for inquiry into means, the court will consider whether it should be enforced through the county court, and only at the end of a very long road, which can be thoroughly obstructed by the persons from whom one is trying to get the money, will there be in some cases the risk of a man going to prison.

If all went to prison in the end, that would perhaps see that the law was respected, but if, as so often happens in these administrative problems, some people go to prison and some do not, it will bring the law into contempt and will create a sense of injustice and equality. That will be the case if some people find that, having been fined, they are imprisoned and others are not imprisoned and are still not made to pay the fine.

May I ask about the Home Office, the Lord Chancellor's Department, and the Payne Committee? There is a major administrative problem for the country in debt collection. It is not only a matter of fines and of the maintenance orders which my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) mentioned. Every hon. Member knows of innumerable cases in which married women are seeking to enforce orders against their husbands who fail to pay. In addition, there is the enforcement of county court orders. Very frequently, this debt collection involves the same man. He is fined, he is also being chased by a hire-purchase company and by his wife and perhaps he has other liabilities.

I have always thought that in every area there ought to be a single administrative enforcement machinery to collect all this cash, often from the same indi- vidual. At present, each competes against the other and no one knows at any moment exactly how much is required from all the different sources. I should much have preferred the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor's Department to have awaited the Payne Committee's report and to have considered whether some common machinery could be set up jointly for enforcing the money penalties of the criminal court and the payment of civil debt.

I wonder whether the Under-Secretary could give the House any indication when the Home Office, as at present advised, intends to bring the Clause into operation. All these Clauses have to be brought separately into operation by the Home Secretary. I hope that this Clause will not be brought into operation, and that the Home Secretary does not intend to bring it into operation, certainly until after the Payne Committee and the Lord Chancellor's Department have discussed it and it has been seen whether this can be carried out with other debt-collecting machinery.

Mr. Taverne

The Amendment was very eloquently moved by the hon. Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) and very forcibly supported by the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and other hon. Members opposite.

We recognise that the Magistrates' Association does not like the Clause. We place the greatest importance on what the Association says. We recognise that it is a very responsible body. But I am sure that hon. Members opposite would be the first to agree that one cannot allow any individual body to dictate one's thinking. These are matters that one takes into consideration, but they are not necessarily conclusive.

We recognise that the Clause will mean more work for the staff of magistrates' courts. One may have to consider special requests for increases in staff in certain cases. It will mean more work for the police. We recognise this.

But the question that has to be faced is: what is the purpose of the Measure? Hon. Members opposite have stated that it is solely concerned with emptying the gaols or keeping people out of gaol. I suppose it can be put that way. But I ask hon. Members to think for a moment what this involves. It is not just a question of keeping the gaols empty. It is a question of people not being sent to gaol whom one would try to avoid sending to gaol. It means that one can avoid families being deprived of the breadwinner.

The hon. Lady spoke about the increased number of deserted wives that will result. What is the advantage to a wife if the husband is sent to prison when there might be ways of extracting the money without sending him to prison? How the Clause will increase the number of deserted wives I fail to see.

It is not only a question of the cost involved—the cost of someone in gaol and the cost of maintaining the family. It is not only a question of contamination of people who have not been to gaol before. It is also a question, which is particularly strong, of not sending people to gaol. Who are the people who would go to gaol if they defaulted on a fine? They are people on whom the court has decided not to impose a sentence of imprisonment. The courts have said, "The best method is not to send the man to gaol but to impose a fine." It is eminently the sort of case where one wants to keep the person out of gaol. Every time a person goes to gaol because the money has not been extracted from him, one is admitting defeat of the intentions of the court or of Parliament.

The hon. Member for North Fylde quoted figures. It is worth bearing them in mind. In 1964, the last year for which figures are available, there were more than 10,000 persons sentenced to imprisonment in default of payment of fines. Nearly 4,500 had no previous institutional sentences. They were the people one wanted to keep away from the contamination of a few weeks in gaol. Forty per cent. of them bought their way out. So 40 per cent. of the cases at least were ones in which the person would not have gone to gaol if there had been a suitable way of extracting the money.

I was asked why we could not wait for the Payne Committee. The line pursued when the Government take or do not take action is not always the same. Sometimes the criticism is made that the Government are postponing action because they must wait for committees to report. When they act and do not wait for a committee to report, they are criticised for not waiting. The Payne Committee was concerned not with the extraction of fines, but with the enforcement of civil debts. It was not concerned with the enforcement of criminal debts.

11.0 p.m.

There is, of course, a link, and it would be quite wrong if we were now to try to legislate in a way contrary to what the Payne Committee was planning to do in its report. Mr. Justice Payne was kept informed when the Bill was being prepared. We were told by Mr. Justice Payne that there was nothing in the Bill which conflicted in any way with his Committee's thinking.

In some ways our proposals are linked with the Payne Committee, because the attachment of earnings will be done in a way which is linked to the present attachment of earnings for maintenance orders; and as reforms are brought about by the Payne Committee in the enforcement of maintenance orders, they will automatically apply to the enforcement bf fines.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

The Under-Secretary has told the House of what Mr. Justice Payne has said. He must forgive us for being a little suspicious after being told previously that the chairman of a bench of justices was reported as expressing the view of his fellow justices when it subsequently transpired that they did not think anything of the kind.

Mr. Taverne

I can only tell the hon. Member exactly what I said before. We consulted Mr. Justice Payne, who should know what his own Committee was doing, and he told us that nothing in our proposals conflicted with his Committee's thinking.

I was asked about the Lord Chancellor. Of course, the Lord Chancellor was aware of what was proposed and was being done in the Bill, and he accepted what was being done in the Bill. I was asked whether this meant a distrust of magistrates. Of course it does not. We recognise the valuable functions performed by magistrates.

What is happening is that the laws on which magistrates operate are being changed. The present method of enforcing fines was based on legislation which was introduced, I think, in 1935, at a time when there was a quite different approach to the idea of imprisonment. It is now much more widely accepted that imprisonment should be avoided if that is possible. In 1935, when the present legislation was formulated, prison was much more readily accepted as an alternative to the enforcement of fines or as a way of enforcing fines.

The Clause insists that in many cases there must be a means inquiry. It is important to remember what a means inquiry is, because to some extent "means inquiry" is a misleading description. Essentially, a means inquiry is an inquest or inquiry into the reasons for default. It is eminently sensible that there should in every possible case be an inquiry into the reasons for default of payment.

Then we go on to say that there should be no committal until all possible steps have been taken for extracting the money

or it has been decided that there is no way of extracting the money and that to try to do so would be inappropriate. We do not remove the former protection. The ultimate sanction of imprisonment remains. An additional power to reduce is given.

I hope that the House will agree that the provisions of the Clause are valuable. Although the Clause will mean extra work, it will be worth while because it should mean that a number of people who are eminently the sort of cases who should be kept out of prison will no longer go to prison.

Question put, That the words proposed to be left out, to the word 'reduce' in line 17 on page 25, stand part of the Bill:—

The House divided: Ayes 112, Noes 21.

Division No. 326.1] AYES [11.04 p.m.
Allen, Scholefield Gregory, Arnold O'Malley, Brian
Archer, Peter Griffiths, Will (Exchange) Orbach, Maurice
Armstrong, Ernest Hamling, William Orme, Stanley
Ashley, Jack Harper, Joseph Park, Trevor
Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham) Harrison, Walter (Wakefield) Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice Haseldine, Norman Pavitt, Laurence
Bagier, Gordon A. T. Hazell, Bert Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Beaney, Alan Hilton, W. S. Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)
Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton) Hooley, Frank Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)
Bidwell, Sydney Horner, John Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.
Binns, John Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas Rees, Merlyn
Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur Howie, W. Reynolds, G. W.
Brooks, Edwin Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.) Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)
Broughton, Dr. A. D. D. Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford) Robinson, W. 0. J. (Walth'stow, E.)
Cant, R. B. Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.) Roebuck, Roy
Carmichael, Nell Johnston, Russell (Inverness) Rogors, George (Kensington, N.)
Coleman, Donald Kenyon, Clifford Rowland, Christopher (Meriden)
Concannon, J. D. Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham) Rowlands, E. (Cardiff, N.)
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony Leadbitter, Ted Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)
Dalyell, Tam Lestor, Miss Joan Shore, Peter (Stepney)
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington) Lever, L. M. (Ardwick) Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford) Loughlin, Charles Steel, David (Roxburgh)
Davies, Harold (Leek) Luard, Evan Swingler, Stephen
Davies, Robert (Cambridge) Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.) Taverne, Dick
Dickens, James McBride, Neil Urwin, T. W.
Dobson, Ray MacDermot, Niall Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)
Driberg, Tom Macdonald, A. H. Wallace, George
Dunnett, Jack McKay, Mrs. Margaret Watkins, David (Consett)
Dunwoody, Mrs. Cwyneth (Exeter) Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross&Crom'ty) Wellbeloved, James
Edwards, William (Merioneth) McNamara, J. Kevin Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Ellis, John Mallalieu,J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.) Whitlock, William
Faulds, Andrew Marquand, David Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)
Fernyhough, E. Millan, Bruce Winstanley, Dr. M. P.
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston) Milne, Edward (Blyth) Yates, Victor
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington) Molloy, William
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale) Moyle, Roland TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C. Murray, Albert Mr. Harold Walker and
Gourlay, Harry Norwood, Christopher Mr. Charles Grey.
Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth) Ogden, Eric
NOES
Biggs-Davison, John Glover, Sir Douglas Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Body, Richard Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John Russell, Sir Ronald
Braine, Bernard Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin Smith, John
Buck, Antony (Colchester) Iremonger, T. L. Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
Carlisle, Mark Knight, Mrs. Jill
Clegg, Walter Maddan, Martin TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Crowder, F. P. More, Jasper Dame Irene Ward and
Elliott, R.W.(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.) Page, Graham (Crosby) Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop.
Eyre, Reginald

Amendments made: No. 36, in page 25, line 17, leave out 'reduce the amount' and insert: 'remit the whole or any part'.

No. 37, in line 19, leave out 'reduces that amount' and insert: 'remits the whole or part of that sum'.

No. 38, in line 22, leave out 'by which that sum is reduced' and insert 'remitted'.

No. 39, in line 23, at end insert: 'or, as the case may be, shall remit the whole term'.—[Mr. Roy Jenkins.]