HC Deb 12 July 1967 vol 750 cc766-73
Mr. Ridley

I beg to move Amendment No. 12, in page 5, line 7, to leave out '30th June 1968' and insert '31st December 1967'.

The Bill claims in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to be temporary—"… to control temporarily the supply …". Not long ago the Minister said that the Bill was necessary to meet a short-term crisis, and that everything about the Bill was temporary and short-term. If this is so, I submit that one year is far too long a period for the Bill to have currency, and I move that the period be halved to six months and that the Bill should lapse entirely at the end of 1967.

If we cannot bring to an end petrol rationing, or whatever rationing there may be, within six months from now, we will be handling this crisis with great incompetence. If there is a new development in the world situation, a new explosion in the Middle East, then that would be a different state of affairs calling for different legislation. From all that the Minister has said, it would be quite wrong to give power to do what is contained in the Bill for more than six months.

There is a stronger reason still for this. We listened with sympathy to the arguments put forward by the right hon. Gentleman for resisting the positive order procedure. He may well have had a case. If one accepts that argument, it means that there can be no debate, not only upon the wisdom and advisability of petrol rationing, but upon its form. Orders might be introduced under the negative procedure which might not be debated at all if the House was not sitting, or, if they were debated, could not be discussed for more than one and a half hours, and even then might not be reached.

As the Bill stands it could happen that we have petrol rationing for a whole year without this House having an hour or an hour and a half's debate. It is essential that the legality of the Bill be brought to an end by Christmas, so that we can have an opportunity, if rationing is to extend beyond Christmas, to debate the new Bill which the Government would be forced to bring in. It is not possible to move that the Order should have a currency of only six months and I have had to move in respect of the Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman has been very fair. He has admitted that these are most wide powers. This is a massive power to control anything to do with fuel and petrol for as long as he likes, for a year, without any chance for Parliament to debate the imposition of the Orders, about which, he frankly admitted, he knew nothing.

Rationing is intolerable in these times. It is something which the House and country should do everything to avoid. I regret that petrol should be contemplated for rationing. We already have a holiday travel allowance ration and office building rationing, and I will fight against the extension of rationing to any other commodities, including petrol, to the greatest extent that I can.

My heart sank a little while ago when I heard the right hon. Gentleman mention the word "coupons". I thought that it was a word that we had forgotten. The idea of those nasty bits of paper every time one buys a gallon fills me with horror. We should firmly set our minds against giving this Bill any length of life which can be avoided. It would be quite wrong to give the Minister more than six months for this Bill. If the worst comes to the worst, and he needs to continue rationing beyond the end of the year, let him come to the House with a new Bill and let the House have the opportunity to question the supplies and stocks and the form of rationing, and all the other points which will arise.

Otherwise there is no reason why there should be any Parliamentary challenge of any substance, or any chance to vote before this time next year, and that is thoroughly unsatisfactory. During the Second Reading of the Bill the right hon. Gentleman said that there were certain administrative difficulties about shortening the period. I am not necessarily saying that the period would have to be shortened if the Amendment is accepted. I am merely saying that if the Government need to continue petrol rationing they should come back to the House and seek a new Bill, and new authority. After the Minister's admission of the widespread powers and the large amount of discretion that he is taking, he owes it to the House to accept this Amendment.

12.15 p.m.

Mr. John Peyton (Yeovil)

I wish briefly but warmly to support my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) in this exceedingly reasonable Amendment. No one can foresee for how long this Measure will be needed, and it is wholly wrong, faced with a temporary situation, for the Government to be given very full powers for a longer period than is absolutely necessary. I am quite certain that the Parliamentary Secretary would concede at once that the Opposition have not delayed this Bill at all—remarkable in the circumstances and in the present Parliamentary climate.

Had the boot been on the other foot, and the present Government had been in Opposition, suffering from the conduct of the Leader of the House, as we are suffering, this Bill would have been delayed a very long time indeed. We accept that the national need must come first, and we will not make a party political issue out of this. The Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister would do well to think seriously of the point made by my hon. Friend.

To return to the Leader of the House, we were recently dealing with an Amendment, the subject of which was lubricating oils and lubricating grease. Long use of these two substances could be recommended to the Leader of the House, whose incursions here, in a reasonably democratic Assembly, are as brutal and as unwelcome as the incursions made into the centre of Rome by the Vandals and the Goths.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. Gurden)

That may well be so, but we must come to the terms of the Amendment.

Mr. Peyton

I bow to your Ruling, Sir, but I am sure that you will be the first to appreciate how these sentiments are wrung from one in the present climate of Parliament. I will not trespass upon your indulgence, because I confidently feel that you entirely share the views that I have lamely expressed.

I very much hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will join the Minister in saying that he believes that this Amendment should be accepted, and that it is wrong for the Government to divorce themselves from Parliament making a re-tern to the House unnecessary for so long a period upon such a subject.

Mr. Emery

No one who has not sat through this debate would believe that the proceedings since 10 o'clock had been conducted with the greatest degree of co-operation and good will between Opposition and Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) and myself have been in this House throughout the night on the last two nights, and have had two hours between finishing the prices and incomes debate and returning to this matter.

It is quite remarkable that we have been willing, after the complete disorganisation that the Leader of the House has brought to the business, to deal with this question in such a moderate manner. By withdrawing my Amendment about the affirmative and negative procedure, although I was not entirely happy, but was willing to ensure that the Government get the Bill today, I feel that we have proved that we are trying to help. Surely there is every reason for the Government to try to meet at least just one of our points on this Bill, by slightly limiting the duration of these powers.

The Minister knows that if it should be necessary to continue these powers afterwards the House will give him the powers. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary a question about this on Second Reading and got a pretty shirty answer, so that it is even more surprising that we should be in such a reasonable spirit today. So I would urge the Government to make this very minor concession, this infinitesimally minor concession. We all know that this rationing will probably not have to come about. As we have withdrawn our Amendment about the affirmative Resolution, surely the Government will meet us on this matter.

As the Minister has just returned I would add, without going over the whole of my speech, that I was trying to stress that as we have been very co-operative with him, even when there may have been reason for extreme friction after all that has happened over the last few days, and have sought not to inject that spirit into these discussions, surely therefore he should instruct the Parliamentary Secretary, if the latter is to reply to the debate, to give way on this one point. We will give the Minister the powers which it is reasonable to want, but because of the sweeping nature of these powers let us, for goodness' sake, in a democratic assembly say we want these powers only for as short a time as possible. This is not asking very much, surely? It is no more than what the Minister himself said during earlier debates, and I would urge acceptance of this Amendment.

Sir K. Joseph

I would ask the Minister, in replying to the speeches of my hon. Friends, to try to go as far as he can in telling the country some of the facts about supply. Obviously, we must leave the discretion entirely to him, but we have now had Second Reading and a large part of the Committee deliberations without any information from the Government at all about those sources of oil which are operating freely and those sources of oil which are blocked, but which the Government hope will be operating freely. I say again that we obviously do not want to embarrass the Government in relation to the supplying countries, but please can the Minister, in giving an answer on the Amendment by my hon. Friend, tell us as much as is safe about supplies from Nigeria, from Libya, from Kuwait, from Iran, from Iraq, from Venezuela, and from the United States, subject, of course, to the national interest?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power (Mr. Reginald Freeson)

May I first apologise for the state of my throat, which is the reason why I have participated so little in this debate.

Perhaps I will take the last point first, that from the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), and say that we cannot pursue the question of supply in the kind of detail he seems to want, chiefly on two grounds. First, because it would be difficult in these circumstances to discuss this matter at this time, and, secondly—linked very closely with this—since this is so essentially a matter arising from a political situation it is rather a matter for a foreign affairs debate than on the Bill before us. It is not because we do not wish to be helpful but because of the very nature of the situation which gives rise to the action which is before us.

Mr. Ogden

Would my hon. Friend comment perhaps that supply is not only a matter of sources of supply but also of transport, and the fact that the Suez Canal can be opened in six months does not mean that ships—tankers—will be able to go through in the six-months' period because of pre-charging arrangements and all sorts of changes?

Mr. Freeson

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I was coming to that point before moving on to the other points which hon. Members opposite have raised.

Certainly I repeat the point made by my right hon. Friend that it is essen- tially a question of tankerage rather than the supply of oil itself.

If I may mention the point with regard to the Suez Canal, without going into the realm I have said we must avoid today, it could be opened much earlier than within six months' time. We will leave that for another occasion, perhaps.

On the general point raised by the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) and his hon. Friends, it is in no spirit of disagreement as to the motives which they expressed, that we should want to have rationing, if it should ever have to come about, any longer than necessary. It is in no sense in disagreement on that point that we cannot accept what he is proposing. If this provision is to operate for 12 months, it is not likely that, should the need arise, rationing could possibly come into operation for quite some time. There are administrative difficulties which have been referred to earlier. Although in practice one may not want to extend rationing—if it were ever to be introduced—beyond the end of the year, one might have to consider the position after that initial period. It is for this reason that, in our view, we must adhere to the date 30th June as being in practice the shortest possible period for which we must have the powers. I hope that hon. Members opposite will understand that it is not because we want to take a longer period than is absolutely necessary that we must persist in the date as set out in the Bill, and I ask the House not to accept the substitute date of 31st December, 1967.

Mr. Ridley

I must say that that is not an answer which satisfies me. My point was that at least the House should have a debate on the question if rationing has to go beyond the end of the year. We cannot be expected to have any confidence that the Leader of the House will find time, or, if it is found, that it will not be 7 o'clock in the morning or some such insufferable hour. Nobody can have confidence that we will have a debate unless we force the Government to come back to the House in the way I was describing.

I do not want to stop the Bill from going through, but I think the temper- and patience of my hon. Friends has been tried very sorely this morning, and if the hon. Gentleman cannot put up a better defence than that it would be far better to agree to the proposal I put forward. I am not at all satisfied with what he said.

Mr. Freeson

If that is solely the point at issue—if it is really desired that there should be a debate at a later point in time—I would only say that it is possible to arrange these matters through the usual channels.

Amendment negatived.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.