Commons Sitting of 25 May 1972

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

    THAMES CONSERVANCY BILL (By Order)
    Order for consideration, as amended, read.
    To be considered upon Tuesday, 6th June.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Shoplifting (Prosecutions)
    Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will introduce legislation to require proprietors of self-service and supermarket stores to obtain the approval of the police before instituting prosecutions for shoplifting.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Mark Carlisle): No, Sir. The right to institute a private prosecution is a long-standing one and there is no justification for restricting it in respect of shoplifting.
    Mr. Janner: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that I have received a telegram from the President of the National Union of Small Shopkeepers which shows that thousands of shopkeepers are extremely concerned at the right to prosecute being left in the hands of the shopkeeper? Does the hon. and learned Gentleman appreciate that the doctrine of "Let the courts decide" means that thousands of innocent shoppers are put in peril and fear for long
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    periods? Will he at least warn holiday shoppers of the risks they face and of the need to take great care to avoid any sort of suspicion attaching to them?
    Mr. Carlisle: I do not accept that at all. The position of a shopkeeper is the same as that of other individuals. There has always been a right for an individual to bring a private prosecution if he wishes to do so. The position of the small shopkeeper is the same as that of a supermarket or self-service store. If he chooses to bring a prosecution which is proved to be unfounded he might well end up by having to pay the costs of both sides.
    Mr. Adley: Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that there is a real problem here? One county police force is refusing to take cases brought by one chain of supermarkets. The police and others feel that supermarket proprietors are using the courts to do their dirty work for them and that they should be spending more time on prevention and less on cure. Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that an increasing number of hon. Members on both sides of the House are becoming concerned about this problem?
    Mr. Carlisle: I accept that in the end the policy is determined by the chief constable of the police force concerned, and it is right, as my hon. Friend says, that there are wide variations in practice between one force and another. Some forces undertake the conduct of prosecutions while others prefer to leave it to the individual shopkeeper to bring the prosecution. What I do not accept is the use of the phrase "the courts are doing their dirty work for them".
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Would the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that one of the main points here is that shops in some way attract shoplifting by the way in which they set out their goods—
    Mr. Carlisle.
    Mrs. Williams: —the provision of piped music and so on? Would it be possible for the Home Office to indicate to shopkeepers that they ought not deliberately to lure shoppers into committing crimes?
    Mr. Carlisle: One accepts at once that the temptation is often present because

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    of the manner in which goods are displayed. I do not think anyone would doubt that that is one of the major causes of the substantial increase in shoplifting. In the end, however, it must be a matter for the individual shopkeeper to decide how he lays out his goods and the way he conducts his business.

    Prisons
    Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average cost per prisoner of building new prisons at the present time.
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Reginald Maudling): Including the cost of industrial workshops and other associated buildings, a little over £6,000.
    Mr. Meacher: As the Home Office has placed a target of that size per prison place on all new prisons, and since the rehabilitating function of prisons is unproven, is it not manifestly absurd that there are only six adult probation hostels? Will the right hon. Gentleman set up controlled experiments in particular areas to see whether a full complement of probation officers and hostels can replace prisons in the majority of cases?
    Mr. Maudling: Those are the sort of objectives which are comprised in the Criminal Justice Bill.
    Mr. Duffyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is satisfied with the general arrangements at Her Majesty's prisons for visiting; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Maudling: I am not satisfied. Considerable improvements have been made, and will continue to be made. But shortage of accommodation is still a problem at many prisons.
    Mr. Duffy: Has the Home Secretary looked at a visiting order recently? Is he aware that those of my constituents who have occasion to travel from Sheffield to visit the prison in Leeds can do so only once a month between the hours of 1.45 p.m. and 3.30 p.m.? According to the visiting order which I have, they may do so for only a small period of time—20 minutes. I am not asking the right hon. Gentleman or his Administration to show more humanity, because I know they do that to the fullest extent. But
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    when will it be possible to permit more flexibility in visiting arrangements, particularly for young wives who have to leave children behind and must make special arrangements?
    Mr. Maudling: We certainly do what we can. All these problems of the prisons spring from the great overcrowding which has been a problem for several years. This we are tackling with considerable vigour and with the biggest prison building programme ever undertaken in this country, coupled with measures envisaged in the Criminal Justice Bill to ensure that a number of people are punished by means other than imprisonment.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Will the right hon. Gentleman look into the regulations for visitors to Brixton prison? Some people from Northern Ireland have travelled a great distance and have had great difficulty in visiting remand prisoners there. When a change of underclothing was recently brought for one of the prisoners it was only after an appeal to the magistrates that the underclothing was allowed into the prison.
    Mr. Maudling: Remand prisoners have, as is right, greater visiting facilities than convicted prisoners. I should be very happy to look into the particular case the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
    Mr. Thomas Cox: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what progress is being made towards provision for the care of young children while visits are taking place? Action on this problem is needed very urgently.
    Mr. Maudling: I cannot say offhand what progress is being made, but I shall look into the matter and communicate with the hon. Gentleman.

    Falcons
    Mr. Hardyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what inquiries are made and what criteria applied when applications for the keeping of falcons are considered by his Department.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Lane): Applications for licences to import birds of prey, or to take them from the wild, are considered in consultation with my

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    right hon. Friend's Advisory Committee on the Protection of Birds. Factors taken into account include the availability of the particular species and the expertise of or available to the applicant.
    Mr. Hardy: I am grateful for that information. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a number of anomalies have arisen as individuals who possess suitable skills and can offer proper accommodation have been refused licences, whilst others no doubt inspired by the film "Kes", have been given licences despite the fact that they have neither the necessary skills nor suitable accommodation available?
    Mr. Lane: I have no evidence that the present arrangements are seriously wrong, but if the hon. Gentleman will send me details of cases I will certainly look into them.

    Remands in Custody
    Mr. Terry Davisasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress is being made in alleviating overcrowding of people who are remanded in custody.
    Mr. Liptonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a further statement on the steps he is taking to reduce overcrowding of prisons by persons remanded in custody.
    Mr. Maudling: I am pursuing a number of measures aimed at reducing the number of persons remanded in custody; my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is taking steps designed to enable cases to be dealt with more quickly; and I am continuing action to improve conditions in remand prisons wherever practicable.
    Mr. Davis: Will the Government consider hostels for people who are remanded in custody only because there is nowhere else for them to live?
    Mr. Maudling: Certainly, and recently I went to the opening of the first bail hostel in East London. The Criminal Justice Bill gives the Government power to provide money to support these activities.
    Mr. Lipton: Is it any wonder, with 684 prisoners on remaind in 476 cells in Brixton, that demonstrations are taking
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    place on a scale not known for years? Will the Home Secretary really exert himself and do something to improve conditions, because these demonstrations will continue and the task of prison officers be made even more difficult unless they are improved?
    Mr. Maudling: I made a statement about conditions in Brixton some time ago. These conditions are being improved. One thing should be made clear about the demonstrations to which the hon. Gentleman referred. There were no demonstrations at all inside Brixton prison yesterday, and outside demonstrators were outnumbered by Press men.
    Mr. Alfred Morris: Can the right hon. Gentleman make any comment about the recent disturbances at Strangeways gaol in Manchester?
    Mr. Maudling: Not without notice.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: While welcoming the steps which the Home Secretary has been taking to deal with this problem, may I ask whether he has been able to take any action to persuade the courts not to refuse bail except in cases where they have reason to believe that, as a consequence, the person in question might not answer bail or might be a danger to himself or the community? Is there any possibility of opening remand accommodation in any of the existing training or open prisons to give some immediate relief in the present difficult situation?
    Mr. Maudling: I will look into the second point made by the hon. Lady and communicate with her. There are subsequent Questions on the first point.
    Mr. Peter Archerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many persons were in custody awaiting trial on 1st April, 1972; and what was the corresponding figure on 1st April, 1971.
    Mr. Maudling: In England and Wales, 2,781 on 31st March, 1972, and 3,007 a year earlier.
    Mr. Archer: Without wishing to preempt tomorrow's debate, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to assist by saying whether the difference is represented by the numbers of crimes committed, by

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    delays in the hearing of cases or by a reluctance to grant bail?
    Mr. Maudling: I do not think I can give an analysis of the position. The figure is encouraging, but offhand I cannot give an analysis of the various reasons.
    Mr. Molloyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what instructions he has issued relating to complaints by detained individuals awaiting trial who have been denied certain personal facilities.
    Mr. Maudling: Prisoners who wish to complain about their treatment in prison have the right under the Prison Rules to see the Governor, a member of the board of visitors or a regional director. They may also address a petition to me. If they are not satisfied they may then write to a Member of Parliament.
    Mr. Molloy: The question is not about prisoners but about people who have been arrested but not tried. The Home Secretary has got it wrong. I am concerned about those who have been arrested and who complain that while they are remanded in custody they have not been provided with proper facilities to maintain themselves in a clean and respectable way.
    Mr. Maudling: My answer covered all prisoners. Whether people are detained awaiting trial or convicted, they are prisoners because they are in prison.

    Detention Centres
    Mrs. Doris Fisherasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is satisfied that adequate numbers of places are available in junior detention centres; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Carlisle: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave yesterday to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight).
    Mrs. Fisher: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman think it satisfactory that Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire should cover one-third of the catchment area of England and Wales?
    Mr. Carlisle: My right hon. Friend recognises the present difficulties which
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    the courts are facing. I am the first to accept that there are shortages of places in junior detention centres.

    Voting Machines
    Mr. Madelasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now consider the use of voting machines in parliamentary and local government elections, and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Carlisle: In December, 1970, after a study had been made of the use of voting machines, my right hon. Friend's conclusion was announced that they would not offer enough advantages to outweigh the radical change in our traditional voting methods which they would require. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] He sees no reason to take a different view now.—[Vol. 807, c. 1457.]
    Mr. Madel: In spite of the Parliamentary boundary changes, constituencies are growing all the time, with larger local authorities coming into being under the Local Government Bill. Will my hon. and learned Friend look again at the possibility of having a pilot scheme? Will he also have a fresh look at American experience in this sphere?
    Mr. Carlisle: No, Sir. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary does not at present feel able to recommend any such change to Parliament. He has decided against making any further study of voting machines at this stage, and by the murmurs of assent which I heard when I gave my original answer I have the impression that that is a decision of which the House approves.
    Mr. Heffer: At the risk of being considered an old Conservative, may I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to take it from me that some of us on this side of the House, having looked at the American system and particularly bearing in mind recent experiences of the use of voting machines in that country, very much welcome his right hon. Friend's decision in this matter, a decision which is probably applauded by the majority of hon. Members and the country as a whole?
    Mr. Carlisle: The number of names on the ballot paper in America and the number of candidates for whom one must

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    vote at any particular time make for different considerations there than apply at parliamentary elections in this country.

    Fire Precautions (Hotels and Boarding Houses)
    Mr. Wigginasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what guidance he has given to chief fire officers on the implementation of the Fire Precautions Act, 1971, with respect to hotels and boarding houses.
    Mr. Blakerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice he is now giving to chief fire officers about the implementation of the Code of Fire Precautions Practice for Hotels and Boarding Houses.
    Mr. Goodhartasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consultations he is now having with chief fire officers about the application of the Code of Fire Precautions for Hotels and Boarding Houses.
    Mr. Miscampbellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what advice he has given to chief fire officers about the application of the Code of Fire Precautions for Hotels and Boarding Houses.
    Mr. Lane: Chief fire officers have received copies of two Home Office circulars to fire authorities and of the Department's published guide dealing with the application of the Act to hotels and boarding houses, and will have a copy of a further circular about to be issued to fire authorities recommending local consultations with hotel and boarding house keepers. Many of these officers have attended special conferences on the Act at fire service colleges.
    Mr. Wiggin: Is my hon. Friend aware of the great dismay and apprehension that has been spread among hotel and guest house keepers as a result of the publication of these regulations, on the basis that if they are to be adhered to to the very letter the cost in some cases could be prohibitive? Why has it taken so long to institute further consultations with chief fire officers to interpret the regulations properly?
    Mr. Lane: Consultations have been going on all the time. I am aware of the concern and that is why we are
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    issuing, in I hope two weeks time, a further circular. However, the paramount consideration must be the safety of the public. Subject to that, fire authorities may require only what is reasonable in the circumstances of each particular case.
    Mr. Blaker: While we agree with what my hon. Friend has said about the paramount consideration, may I ask whether his forthcoming circular will take into account the fact that it is neither realistic nor necessary to insist on the same sort of fire-fighting apparatus and means of escape in many existing small hotels or boarding houses as in large new hotels?
    Mr. Lane: I hope that this will become better known. The code which the Questions mention is an indication of general standards to be aimed at but it is not intended to be an absolutely rigid requirement.
    Mr. John Fraser: The Home Office has our full support in dealing with many buildings which constitute death traps, one-quarter of them in London rather than at the seaside. As many fire brigades still have an enormous backlog of work in dealing with the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to say what steps have been taken to ensure that there is adequate staff in the fire service and in architects' departments to deal with the new responsibilities?
    Mr. Lane: I hope we will make steady progress. The Act is to be applied urgently but not unreasonably.
    Mr. Goodhart: May I remind those who are protesting about the new regulations that burning visitors is the worst possible advertisement for any city or resort? May I also remind chief fire officers that some hotels, even some with famous names, have a deplorable record when it comes to the provision of warning systems and fire escapes?
    Mr. Lane: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. The important thing is to get these further local discussions going urgently.
    Mr. Adleyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what study he has made of the implications for the tourist industry of the implementation of the Fire Precautions Act.
    Mr. Lane: Possible implications for the tourst industry were fully taken into account in the consultations leading up to this legislation. But the primary need was to take responsible steps to ensure the safety of guests in the event of fire.
    Mr. Adley: Is my hon. Friend aware that no one who questions him about the problem in any way questions the Act itself or the need for it? Is he aware that in many areas the industry is a major employer of labour, particularly in the South West, in Scotland, and in Wales, and that there are jobs at stake? It is the little man who is likely to be hurst most. In his consultations with chief fire officers will my hon. Friend stress that the regulations must be implemented with care and not too rigorously, too vigorously and too quickly?
    Mr. Lane: I have already said that the Act must be applied reasonably. I am aware of the misgivings. It is because I believe that closer consultation locally will help to remove them over the next few weeks that we are sending out another circular in a few weeks' time.
    Mr. John Fraser: Will the Minister now answer my question about recruitment of staff? The London Fire Brigade is 500 short. What steps are being taken to keep establishments up to present requirements as well as to meet the requirements of the Fire Precautions Act?
    Mr. Lane: I cannot promise any direct improvement. I hope that the staff will continue to grow so that it will be possible for fire authorities to take the Act in their stride. It necessarily means that the implementation of the Act is bound to be gradual.
    Mr. Wyn Roberts: Will my hon. Friend promise to look at the implementation of the Act very carefully and to lend a willing ear to any justifiable pleas for help that may come from small hoteliers?
    Mr. Lane: Yes, certainly. I shall be glad to meet any other hon. Members who are bothered and also to accept invitations to resorts during the summer to see matters for myself.

    District Council Elections, 1973
    Mr. Sydney Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for the Home Depart-
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    ment if he will take steps to postpone the elections for the new district councils, arranged for Thursday, 12th April, 1973, until at least six weeks after the elections for the new county elections.
    Mr. Carlisle: My right hon. Friend has now decided, after consultation with the local authority associations, that the first elections to the new county councils should be held on 12th April, 1973, those to metropolitan and Welsh district councils on 10th May and those to non-metropolitan district councils in England on 7th June. He appreciates the advantages of a rather longer interval between the first two dates, but it is important for the new district councillors to have an adequate period of shadow office.
    Mr. Chapman: While appreciating that my hon. and learned Friend has put back the date of the first elections till eight weeks after publication of the electoral registers, a move which will be welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House, may I ask whether he still intends to allow only four weeks between the two sets of elections? If so, will he confirm that nominations for the district elections will not close until two weeks after the county elections? In regard to the elections in June, will he have another look at the arrangements in view of the fact that thousands of people may be on holiday, including proportions of certain towns enjoying their tradition wakes week?
    Mr. Carlisle: To deal first with the second part of the question, the difficulty is that it is impossible to bring forward the date of 7th June because of the administrative arrangements that have to be made with regard to the warding of the non-metropolitan districts. If one were to put back the date, the only possible thing to do would be to put it back to the autumn, which would leave too short a period between shadow councils being formed and taking over their responsibilities the following April. On the first part of the question, I am informed that the interval that has always existed between county and county district elections has been only a month. Therefore, the same provisions will apply next year as have applied in the past for county and county district elections.
    Mr. Terry Davis: Would the Minister consider holding elections for all the councils on the same day?
    Mr. Carlisle: We have given consideration to that, but the date of 7th June cannot be brought forward. The only way that that could have been achieved would have been to put back the date of the metropolitan district elections to 7th June. As, amongst other things, those authorities are to be education authorities, it was felt that this was narrowing still further the time lapse between elections next June and the taking up of responsibility next April. When they have to appoint chief officers of departments and when many other matters have to be dealt with, we decided that we were not justified in reducing that period any further.

    Irish Citizens (Voting Rights)
    Mrs. Knightasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will introduce legislation to make the voting rights of Irish citizens in the United Kingdom elections conditional on the granting of voting rights to British citizens in Eire on a reciprocal basis.
    Mr. Maudling: No, Sir.
    Mrs. Knight: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if a United Kingdom citizen goes to live in Eire it is five years before he can even apply for naturalisation papers and that until he gets those papers he is not allowed to vote in a parliamentary election there, whereas Eire citizens coming to the United Kingdom merely have to be resident at a certain address here for three months to obtain a vote? Does my right hon. Friend consider that this is fair?
    Mr. Maudling: I agree that there is no reciprocity here, but that applies in a number of Commonwealth countries as well. This arrangement has been going on under legislation for nearly a quarter of a century. I do not know whether, if we started afresh, these arrangements would apply. At present I am concerned to take no action that would in any way make more difficult the task of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I should he happy to consider at any time anything which I thought would contribute to solving the Northern Ireland problem.
    Mr. Duffy: Is the Home Secretary aware that I am loth to be party to a mean, narrow, ungenerous, uncharitable Question?
    Mrs. Knight: Nonsense. Rubbish.
    Mr. Duffy: Will the Home Secretary confirm that there is reciprocity in local elections?
    Mr. Maudling: I am not sure about local elections. I entirely repudiate the hon. Member's description of the Question. There is nothing mean or narrow-minded about asking whether it is reasonable to continue an arrangement which is unreciprocal.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the Irish Republic is not a member of the British Commonwealth? Will he also say whether in the present situation he thinks that a measure such as this would help to show the Government of Eire that the British Government mean business?
    Mr. Maudling: As I have already said, it I thought that a measure of this kind would help solve the problem of Northern Ireland, I should look at it in a totally different light.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Once again I applaud the Home Secretary's line on this matter because it is quite obvious that there is no argument simply on the grounds of incompatibility between these two positions. A liberal attitude on voting rights has always marked the United Kingdom's relations with the Republic of Eire, which is admittedly non-reciprocal but which, if changed at this time, would be open to grave misinterpretation.
    Mr. Maudling: If I welcome so many commendations from the Opposition benches it may cause me a certain amount of embarrassment. In looking at this problem in a very difficult situation one has to reach an assessment as to whether any particular move will or will not help in Northern Ireland. Perhaps my judgment is wrong and perhaps the judgment of my right hon. Friend is wrong. But, at any rate, having reached our judgment we should follow it up.

    Alimony
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the number of letters he has had during April, 1972, on the subject of the non-payment of alimony awarded by court order.
    Mr. Carlisle: Four, Sir.
    Mr. Dalyell: In giving credit to Home Office Ministers for recent legislation on attachment of earnings orders, may I ask whether they imagine that they have done anything to reduce the number of these awful cases which arise? How about the Home Secretary introducing in the Queen's Speech next year legislation along the lines of the Ten Minute Bill which I introduced, which is not perfect but is at least another step in the right direction?
    Mr. Carlisle: We are aware—we are repeatedly reminded at monthly intervals by the hon. Gentleman—of the fact that there are still many women who have a maintenance order in their favour but that it is not being met. The hon. Gentleman has always been good enough to appreciate that this is a very difficult problem. In the end it comes to how one obtains money from a man who either does not have the means or has a determination not to pay. We are doing what we can to improve the existing arrangements.
    Mr. Elystan Morgan: Has not the time come when Parliament should intervene in the system whereunder it is practically impossible, according to precedent, for the courts to grant more than one year's arrears of maintenance? Is there any good reason why a claimant should not be able to go back well beyond 12 months?
    Mr. Carlisle: I was not aware of any such regulation. I shall certainly look at this position again with regard to arrears or whether one writes them off. When the court has to assess what is the reasonable practicality of whether they will be paid, we do not gain advantage for deserted wives by sending many husbands to prison for non-payment.

    National Voluntary Civil Aid Service
    Sir Gilbert Longdenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the present strength of the National Voluntary Civil Aid Service and how the training of the civil aid units is progressing; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Lane: I understand that the service has some 15,000 members, about one-third of whom are organised and trained in 249 operational civil aid units.
    Sir Gilbert Longden: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, which shows that it has not grown much in the last few months. Will my hon. Friend take every possible opportunity of expressing the full support of the Government for these voluntary services, and will he encourage local authorities to support them?
    Mr. Lane: Yes, certainly. I hope that local authorities will make maximum use of local help from these voluntary societies. I hope to discuss this question further with county civil defence officers during the next few weeks.

    Guard Dogs (Child Injuries)
    Mr. Laurance Reedasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what statistics he keeps of injuries to children caused by guard dogs; and what trends these reveal.
    Mr. Carlisle: Information is available only for 1970, when 39 children under 14 years of age were known to the police to have been bitten by guard dogs in England and Wales.
    Mr. Reed: Is is not time that a clear statutory obligation was imposed on the keepers of guard dogs to fence their property and to display adequate pictorial warning notices, and also to place them under liability, where they fail to do so, in regard to injuries to child trespassers?
    Mr. Carlisle: It would be possible to introduce such legislation, although the regulations might be difficult to frame successfully. The view of the police is that legislation relating specifically to guard dogs is not necessary and would not necessarily be helpful.
    Mr. Greville Janner: Is it not correct to say that not one owner of one guard dog which caused injury to any of these 39 children was prosecuted? Is not the law at the moment utterly powerless to deal with the situation? In that case, whatever the views of the police should not the law be changed?
    Mr. Carlisle: Guard dogs are at present under the same control as any

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    other animal and there are powers to take the owners before the courts if the dogs are not kept under proper control.
    Mr. Janner: Were any taken to court?
    Mr. Carlisle: I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman exactly how many owners of guard dogs were prosecuted. I would do so on notice.
    Mr. John Fraser: Is there not a case for putting dogs into the category of ferae naturae so that children or adults who are injured by them are not met with the defence that the dog is allowed one bite and so that the owners of guard dogs would be subject to strict legal provisions in regard to injuries caused by guard dogs?
    Mr. Carlisle: I must make it clear that by no means the majority of accidents in which children or adults are bitten by dogs are caused by guard dogs. The problem is one generally of controlling dogs rather than one necessitating specific action against those dogs which are described as guard dogs.

    Remand Centres for Women
    Mr. Thomas Coxasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many remand centres for women there are in England and Wales.
    Mr. Maudling: Three, Sir. Women and girls on remand are also held at Holloway prison.
    Mr. Cox: I understand that reply and appreciate that in certain cases it is necessary to remand women in custody, but does the Home Secretary agree that, in view of the time, the cost and the social difficulties that are often involved in transporting women very long distances from the courts to remand centres, either remand centres should be established nearer to the courts or, better still, efforts should be made to reduce the number of remands, especially for minor offences?
    Mr. Maudling: This is a problem but, fortunately, the number of women and girls who are remanded or committed in custody is few. We cannot justify more than these three centres. There are other priorities in the prison building programme which are more urgent. The question of avoiding remanding in cutody, wherever possible, is well in the minds of magistrates. A working party is
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    at present considering the whole subject of bail, and it will consider this aspect.
    Mrs. Knight: Does not the paucity of the figure my right hon. Friend mentioned illustrate once again the extreme folly of the Home Secretary in the last Government closing down Brockhill remand centre for women in the Midlands? Will my right hon. Friend seek to get over the problem of a remand centre for the Midlands, for which we have constantly appealed?
    Mr. Maudling: I know that there is a particular difficulty in the Midlands. I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State on 27th April.
    Mr. Arthur Davidson: Will the Home Secretary take a particularly close look at the position in Holloway, where a very high proportion of women who are remanded in custody are subsequently either discharged or sent for non-custodial treatment? Does not this indicate that far too many women are being remanded in custody who might well be given bail?
    Mr. Maudling: I am not entirely convinced about that. This is a general problem affecting men prisoners as well as women prisoners. I see the desirability of not having people committed to gaol wherever possible and there are provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill in this regard. On the other hand, I often receive representations from the police to the effect that people who are released on bail sometimes commit other offences or intimidate witnesses.

    Immigrants (Dependants)
    Mr. Wintertonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now consider restricting the admission to the United Kingdom of dependants of immigrants permanently settled in this country to wife or husband and children of school age or under only.
    Mr. Lane: No, Sir. I can see no sufficient grounds for varying the existing practice, which is of long standing.
    Mr. Winterton: A statistical table published recently in the Daily Telegraph showed clearly that 1,912 dependants and settlers came to Britain in December 1971. I refer particularly to the one voucher

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    holder, 26 other settlers and 523 dependants. With the strain on our education, social and welfare services should not my hon. Friend look at this again?
    Mr. Lane: No. The dependants arriving in any month are not necessarily connected with the voucher holders who arrive then. I assure my hon. Friend that, leaving aside the special case of the United Kingdom passport holders from East Africa, the annual rate of dependants now arriving here is down to half what it was five years ago.
    Mr. Pavitt: I congratulate the Under-Secretary on the firmness of his reply. Is he aware that I come from an area which has a very high degree of immigration and that the problem is one of integration rather than of entry? The hon. Gentleman's decision will be widely welcomed by those of us who are working very hard to secure integration in my area.
    Mr. Lane: I appreciate that. I appreciate also the uneasiness still felt by many people about the numbers coming in. That is why I have tried to make it clear that the general trend of arrivals has been declining for a number of years.
    Mrs. Shirley Williams: Is the Under-Secretary aware that the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) has given voice to some totally misleading statistics? Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the average number of dependants joining those coming here is about four to five, taking a number of years together?
    Mr. Lane: Yes. That average holds true at present for United Kingdom passport holders coming from East Africa, where it is much more normal for the dependants to come with the head of the family. That is a much more accurate average.

    Police Forces (Strength)
    Mr. Fowlerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what was the net gain or loss in the strength of police forces in England and Wales, including the Metropolitan Police, in the first four months of this year; how this figure compares with the comparable period in the years 1969, 1970 and 1971; and whether he will make a statement on the police recruiting campaign.
    Mr. Maudling: There was a net gain of 1,356. This compares with 562 in 1969, 784 in 1970 and 854 in 1971. During the coming financial year national recruiting publicity will be maintained at its current level, and police authorities will have my full encouragement to go in for local publicity.
    Mr. Fowler: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Is not this a very encouraging trend? Does it not show that complete wisdom of the Government's reversing the policy of the Labour Government of restricting police recruitment? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that for the first time in police history a significant number of graduates are entering the police service?
    Mr. Maudling: I would like to see still more graduates entering the police service. The general figures show clearly that the Government have carried out their undertaking to strengthen the forces of law and order.
    Mr. R. C. Mitchell: Can the Home Secretary say how many police forces are still below establishment and what is the total shortage at the moment?
    Mr. Maudling: I should say that most of them are below establishment because establishment often is the ideal at which one is aiming. But the police forces generally are increasing in numbers more rapidly than they were a few years ago and I hope to improve on this in the future.
    Mr. Deedes: How far are these very good figures offset by the fact that after no recruiting during the war there were heavy intakes in 1946–47 which are now coming up for completion of 25 years' service and for retirement in larger numbers than usual?
    Mr. Maudling: These are net figures. The particular problem to which my right hon. Friend refers was very much in our minds when reaching agreement in the Police Council on pay a short while ago. The new pay scales have been pretty effective in dealing with the serious problem of potential wastage.
    Mr. Molloy: If recruitment for the police is improving, particularly in the Metropolitan area, would the Home Secretary be prepared to consider re-establishing those very admirable police teams

    1617
    that formerly toured schools teaching children road safety?
    Mr. Maudling: That is a slightly different point which I note well. But in the Metropolitan area the increase has not been as satisfactory as in other parts of the country and this is a matter which is giving me some concern.

    Computer Dating Bureaux
    Mr. Leslie Huckfieldasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now introduce legislation to licence the operation of computer dating bureaux.
    Mr. Lane: The possible threat to privacy from the operation of computers in the private sector is one of the matters which have been examined by the Committee on Privacy, whose report my right hon. Friend expects very shortly.
    Mr. Huckfield: The Home Department has been giving that answer for the last 12 months. The application form for Dateline computer dating includes some 52 attitude questions including questions on Communism and sex—[AN HON. MEMBER: "They go well together."]—without a shred of guarantee of anything like confidentiality. Is the Under-Secretary aware that this is one of the more respectable of the operations in this market at the moment? Will he do anything to stop many of these organisations which are nothing more than pedlars of personal profiles?
    Mr. Lane: I hope the hon. Gentleman noticed our answer on Tuesday saying that we hoped to publish the report in five to six weeks. But we have not received any complaints in the Home Office about the operation of these bureaux. Nobody who is asked the questions is obliged to answer them.

    Bail
    Mr. Arthur Davidsonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will send a circular to magistrates to advise them of the need to grant bail wherever possible rather than remand in custody.
    Mr. Maudling: I have no doubt that magistrates are conscious of their responsibilities in this matter. I should prefer to await the report of the Working Party on Bail Procedures in Magistrates' Courts
    1618
    before considering whether any further guidance is necessary or desirable.
    Mr. Davidson: Is the Home Secretary aware that some magistrates accept police objections far too readily without going more fully into whether or not they can grant bail? Does not the Home Secretary think that a circular indicating to magistrates that they should grant bail in all circumstances unless there are very serious objections to the contrary would help in this matter?
    Mr. Maudling: This is a difficult matter and there are considerations pointing in different directions. I would rather await the report of the working party.
    Mr. Clinton Davis: Some courts seem to insist upon unreasonable terms being attached to bail as a matter of policy, so that because the accused is unable to comply with those terms he is remanded in custody. Will the Home Secretary ensure that this matter is looked at?
    Mr. Maudling: We will certainly do that.
    Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: I appreciate the need to await the report. Will my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary not give too much credence to the somewhat sweeping generalisations made against magistrates who are trying to do their duty as capably and honestly as they can?
    Mr. Maudling: I agree. If we are to do anything it must be to help the magistrates, and I know that they welcome help and guidance they can be given. Sometimes it is argued that a court should have relased a person on bail and sometimes it is argued that it should not have done so. But this is complicated and when we have the report of the working party we may be able to give the courts some assistance.
    Mr. John Fraser: Are not the worrying figures that we heard earlier about overcrowding in prisons evidence that there is far too much remanding in custody of people who are not subsequently given custodial sentences? Is it not time for further advice to be given to magistrates about this?
    Mr. Maudling: No, it is not evidence that there is far too much but is merely evidence that the Government are right in seeing whether we can find ways and means of reducing the numbers.

    CHADDERTON
    Mr. Meacherasked the Prime Minister if he will pay an official visit to Chadderton, Lancashire.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I have at present no plans to do so.
    Mr. Meacher: Is the Prime Minister aware that there is the most acute concern in Lancashire that entry into the Common Market will cause a flood of cheap cotton yarn imports and that this will gravely threaten 30,000 jobs in the spinning industry? Have not the Government already decided to sacrifice Lancashire interests purely as a bargaining counter in the wider negotiations?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman could not be more wrong, and he is quite unjustified in raising fears of that kind. The present situation is that the Government have taken action to have both a system of quantitative restrictions and the tariff at the same time. This will be of great benefit to the textile areas. The Community also has its own protection against low-cost imports and obviously when we become a member we shall share that same position.
    Mr. Meacher.
    The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman shakes his head he had better look at the proportion of imported textiles in the Community compared with the percentage in this country. Here the figure is at least three times as high. The Community protects its own industries in this way.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Is my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister aware that on the textile scene on the other side of the Pennines, Britain's entry into the Common Market is very warmly anticipated? As for a visit by my right hon. Friend to Chadderton, would he not be very welcome there because the order for an extra squadron of Nimrods will considerably improve the employment situation.
    The Prime Minister: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Charles R. Morris: If the Prime Minister contends that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr.
    1620
    Meacher) is wrong, can he indicate what consultations took place with the British textile industry to protect it over yarn imports?
    The Prime Minister: I have said that we are satisfied with the Community arrangements. The British textile industry will not suffer from the exaggerated fears that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has been trying to instil.

    HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN (EEC VISITS)
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Prime Minister which Minister he proposes will be in attendance on Her Majesty the Queen on official visits to countries in membership of the European Economic Community.
    The Prime Minister: As for any State visit abroad, my right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary would normally be in attendance: but if he is prevented from accompanying the Queen he would recommend that another Minister should take his place.
    Mr. Hamilton: Why does not the Prime Minister go himself? Does he not think it would have been more dignified and honest if he had chosen to make the official speeches in France that Her Majesty was compelled to make like a clockwork doll in order to satisfy the Prime Minister's excessive EEC obsessions?
    The Prime Minister: On state occasions Her Majesty makes the speeches herself and she does so on the advice of her Ministers.
    Mr. St. John-Stevas: Can my right hon. Friend arrange for the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) to be in attendance on Her Majesty, since if he saw how dedicated she is to her work and how popular she is abroad he would be converted from a rabid republican to a raging royalist?
    The Prime Minister: It might have that effect on the hon. Gentleman but I also must consider the position of Her Majesty.
    Mr. Shore: I am not in any way criticising Her Majesty during her recent

    1621
    state visit, which we all recognised was on the advice of the Prime Minister. But does not the Prime Minister think that such visits are premature, particularly in the context of the proposal for European entry, in view of the votes we had in the House last night? Would it not be better to keep Her Majesty away from the inevitable involvement and controversies which must continue as long as the matter is before Parliament and the country?
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I think it was generally agreed that the visit was well timed, and I believe the reception Her Majesty had in France bore that out.

    SMALL FIRMS
    Mr. Redmondasked the Prime Minister if he will invite a representative of the Small Businesses Association to join his future discussions with the Confederation of British Industry.
    The Prime Minister: These discussions are concerned with economic policy issues affecting industry as a whole, and it has not been necessary to bring in representatives of particular sectors of industry. But my right hon. Friends and I are very willing to consider representations from the Smaller Businesses Association.
    Mr. Redmond: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Does he accept that the 1¼ million small firms in this country, which employ one-third of the country's work force, are of tremendous importance to the national economy? Does my right hon. Friend also accept that the small firms are extremely grateful that the Government have accepted all but five of the Bolton Committee's recommendations? Will he carry on with the good work?
    The Prime Minister: The fact that we have already taken decisions on 25 of the recommendations of the Bolton Committee and agreed with 23 of them is sufficient demonstration of the importance we attach to the small firm.

    PERSONAL INFORMATION (COMPUTER RECORDS)
    Mr. Leslie Huckfieldasked the Prime Minister whether he is satisfied with
    1622
    the co-ordination between the Home Department and Environment Department in the operation of joint computerised filing systems of personal information.
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Huckfield: Is the Prime Minister aware that the integration of the police computer and the Department of the Environment vehicle licensing computer represents potentially the most massive agglomeration of personal information information this country has yet seen? As the tyranny of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover in the United States has just ended, what will the right hon. Gentleman do to stop the same sort of tyranny happening over here?
    The Prime Minister: I see no possibility of that tyranny happening. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not exaggerate. There has always been a relationship between the arrangements for vehicle records and vehicle owner records and the police. When the computer system is developed this can be maintained much more efficiently and satisfactorily. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not indicate that he is opposed to efficient and prompt detection of crime.
    Mr. Carter-Jones: Does the Prime Minister accept that if there is spare computer time it might well be used for general purposes, such as recording the solution of problems for the aged and the education and employment of handicapped people, so that the problems of the handicapped and the aged are not resolved for the first time every time and we can have a record of the solution of the problems?
    The Prime Minister: That aspect of the organisation of computer facilities is primarily a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. We have the Central Computer Agency at the Civil Service Department, and the job of the agency is to co-ordinate computer arrangements exactly in the way that I think the hon. Gentleman wants.

    LAW REFORM (NORTHERN IRELAND)
    Mr. Clinton Davisasked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the coordination between the English Law

    1623
    Officers and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on questions of law reform.
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Davis: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Legal Advice and Assistance Bill expressly excludes Northern Ireland and that consultations with the Northern Irish Law Society have only just begun? Can he explain why there was this delay when the Bill was published a considerable time ago? Will he give an undertaking that when future law reforms are contemplated they will be introduced contemporaneously in Northern Ireland and in this country?
    The Prime Minister: The explanation is that until last month virtually all law reform in Northern Ireland was a matter for the Northern Irish Government. Since then my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has been greatly concerned with the changes which have gone on in Northern Ireland, and particularly in the establishment of the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland. He has been to Belfast many times, for a great part of each week, in order that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions should be brought into action as speedily as possible. These other matters can now be attended to, but it was necessary to have an order of priorities.

    PETITIONS
    Mr. Carterasked the Prime Minister how many petitions have been presented to him since 18th June. 1970.
    The Prime Minister: This information is not available.
    Mr. Carter: Whatever the number, is the Prime Minister aware that it will be increased by at least one when the British public discover that it is the Government's clear intention to extend the value added tax to food? Is he aware that his Ministers dealing with the Finance Bill have refused to deny that contingency plans have been made and that this is a complete break with the pledge made by the Government at the General Election?
    The Prime Minister: It is nothing of the sort. My right hon. Friend the Chan-
    1624
    cellor of the Exchequer made absolutely plain in his Budget Statement what the position of the VAT is, and this is embodied in the Finance Bill.
    Mr. Sydney Chapman: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that after the introduction of the VAT what can best be described as the basic necessities of life will be taxed far less than they were and are under the existing purchase tax and the old selective employment tax?
    The Prime Minister: Taking the two together, Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Joel Barnett: Would the Prime Minister care to give a pledge that the agreement not to tax food is permanent?
    The Prime Minister: The Government's policy has been very clearly stated, and was stated by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the Budget, that VAT will not apply to food. That is the position.

    EUROPEAN FREE TRADE ASSOCIATION
    Mr. Molloyasked the Prime Minister if he will call a Heads of Government meeting of European Economic Community and European Free Trade Association countries.
    The Prime Minister: I have no plans to propose such a meeting.
    Mr. Molloy: Should not the Prime Minister have plans to call such a meeting, if only to reassure those EFTA members who responded to Britain's call to set up EFTA, and who will not be able to join the enlarged Community, that they will not be deserted? Should he not also take cognisance of the Vedel Report commented on in today's Guardian and call a meeting to have the report examined because of the dangers to democracy and the sluggish administration in the EEC? Should not the Prime Minister call such a meeting if only to tell those in Europe that the British workers and trade unions are an essential part of the British community and that he has misrepresented them very much over the past year?
    The Prime Minister: A meeting is not necessary for any of those matters. First, the Heads of Government of the EFTA countries know that they are not being

    1625
    deserted, because they are not. There has just been a meeting of the EFTA countries, on 4th and 5th May, and the communiqué stated quite clearly that all the Ministers welcomed the successful conclusion of the negotiations by Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom for membership of the Community and the signature by those countries of the Treaty of Accession in Brussels on 22nd January this year.

    LORD PRIVY SEAL (SPEECH)
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Prime Minister if the public speech by the Lord Privy Seal on the subject of Civil Service conditions at Margate, on Wednesday, 10th May, represents Government policy.
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Dalyell: In the light of Sir Henry Hardman's committee to which Lord Jellicoe referred, will the Government do anything to disperse some of the 100,000 headquarters civil servants from London to other parts of the country?
    The Prime Minister: That will depend on the recommendations of the committee.

    VALUE ADDED TAX CENTRE
    Mr. Dormandasked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the co-ordination between the Treasury and the Departments of Trade and Industry and Employment over the arrangements for the value added tax centre.
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Dormand: Does the Prime Minister recall telling the House on two occasions that Members from development areas need not be concerned about the siting of the centre at Southend because the numbers to be employed there would not be large? Is he aware that there have been two recent statements by Treasury Ministers that 6,000 additional staff will now be required for VAT? Does he agree that in the circumstances a large number will be employed in the centre? Will he consider transferring it to a development area such as mine, where that number of jobs would be a godsend?
    The Prime Minister: What I have said all the time is that the Central Unit for VAT must be alongside the Customs and Excise at Southend. All the discussion about VAT shows that for its efficient operation that is necessary. But I have also stated that the bulk of the staff will be in offices throughout the country, including the development areas. Of course, the bulk of the staff cannot all be in development areas, because they must be spread over the whole country.
    Mr. Harold Wilson: Will the Prime Minister consider publishing a brief White Paper or making a statement in Parliament, in HANSARD, saying exactly what has been the total effect of transfers of central staff of the Civil Service to other areas, particularly development areas, over the past two years?
    The Prime Minister: I shall gladly do that, and show the distribution.

    CABINET MINISTERS (RETIREMENT AGE)
    Mr. R. C. Mitchellasked the Prime Minister if he will make it a practice of his Administration that Cabinet Ministers retire from office at the age of 65 years.
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
    Mr. Mitchell: Will the Prime Minister make an exception in the case of his right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor? Is he aware that many people are very worried, because the Lord Chancellor is titular head of the judiciary and we do not know when he is making a speech as head of the judiciary and when he is making a party political speech? It is becoming increasingly confusing.
    The Prime Minister: I do not agree with making such exceptions. Even if I did, it would not affect my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor because he is not 65.
    Mr. Fell: To take that slightly flippant question about the age of retirement into its more serious wider context, will my right hon. Friend consider giving some fillip to those who wish the ages of retirement not to be reduced but, if anything, to be raised, since we are now

    1627
    reaching a state of affairs in which there is no will any more to employ a person who has been retired early or even to employ a person who has been forced to leave a job over the age of about 45 or 50?
    The Prime Minister: If my hon. Friend is referring to members of the Government, I can only say that I have not found that they need any fillip to carry on in office. If he is referring to retirement generally, that goes beyond the present Question and I would not wish to answer without notice.
    Mr. Bidwell: Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed that one interpretation of his speech at the Conservative women's conference yesterday is that he was hinting at an early General Election, which, if that be so, would soon lead to the resignation of the entire Government, regardless of age?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Harold Wilson: Will the Leader of the House kindly state the business for the week after the recess?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Carr): The business for the week after the Whitsun Adjournment will be as follows:
MONDAY, 5TH JUNE—Supply (20th allotted day): There will be a debate on an Opposition Motion on Industrial Training.
At seven o'clock, the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.
Motions on the Explosives (Northern Ireland) Order and the Northern Ireland Finance Corporation Order.
TUESDAY, 6TH JUNE AND WEDNESDAY, 7M JUNE.—Completion of the remaining stages of the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Bill.
THURSDAY, 8TH JUNE—Further progress in Committee on the European Communities Bill.
FRIDAY, 9TH JUNE—Remaining stages of the Parliamentary and Other Pensions Bill.
Motions on the proposed New Palace Yard underground car park, on language courses and on travel funds for Members.
MONDAY, 12TH JUNE—Private Members' Motions until seven o'clock.
Afterwards, there will be a debate on Northern Ireland affairs, when the House will be invited to approve Motions on Northern Ireland Orders relating to appropriation, electoral law, employers' liability and exported animals.
Mr. Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman will recall that I said last week that we would hope to co-operate with him in getting the Criminal Justice Bill at a reasonable time, but he was not then able to say when the Motion for the Whitsun Adjournment would be taken. Does he realise now that, as we are to have two major statements today, on Concorde and on Northern Ireland. and then the debate on the Motion for the Adjournment, it will simply not be possible, if this important Bill is to be treated seriously, to get it at any reasonable hour tonight, the more so since Mr. Speaker has, if I may say so, very appropriately selected a substantial list of Amendments? In the circumstances, will the Leader of the House undertake that if we have not made enough progress by a reasonable hour consideration of the Criminal Justice Bill will be continued further after the recess?
Second, on the business for Monday, 12th June, on which, of course, the right hon. Gentleman may be questioned again, will he confirm that it is intended that the debate on Northern Ireland affairs will go the full three hours to 10 o'clock and that the other items which he mentioned will be taken after 10 o'clock and not introduced earlier?
Third, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the House may expect at the very earliest possible date a debate on Rhodesia in Government time?
Mr. Carr: As to the Criminal Justice Bill, the right hon. Gentleman will recall that we adjusted business in order to try to make the arrangements easier and more convenient for the House. I regret that other adjustments have superimposed themselves on top of that, so that we have not now, I realise, quite the time which we hoped to have for it. However, I think it reasonable that we must see what

1629
progress we make, but I shall bear in mind what the right hon. Gentleman has said.
Regarding the debate on Northern Ireland affairs on Monday, 12th June, perhaps we might have discussions about the most convenient way to deal with the matter both through the usual channels and with hon. Members on both sides who are particularly interested. The first order I mentioned, the Appropriation Order, would itself allow a wide debate, and each and every one of the four orders to which I referred is entitled in its own right to an hour and a half after 10 o'clock, so that a considerable time would stretch ahead for us late at night or early in the morning if the House wished. But I repeat that we can discuss the most convenient way to take it.
As regards Rhodesia, yes, Sir, I recognise that, pretty soon after the Whitsun Recess, we shall need to find a day for a debate on this important subject.
Mr. Wilson: As the House has by a large majority endorsed the Government's action in taking over full responsibility for Northern Ireland affairs, we recognise that there must be adequate time for debates both on executive decisions of the Secretary of State and upon legislation; and a considerable time is being taken now with Private Notice Questions and the weekly Thursday statement. Will the Leader of the House arrange, therefore, that the debate on Monday, 12th June, will be adequate to cover a wide-ranging discussion on Northern Ireland affairs, with other time found, out of Government time, for other Northern Ireland questions, without encroaching on that part of parliamentary time which needs to be devoted to affairs on this side of the Channel?
Mr. Carr: I shall bear in mind what the right hon. Gentleman has said. As he and the House know, discussions are going on about the most convenient way of dealing with Northern Ireland business and Northern Ireland affairs generally in the House in the present temporary difficult situation.
Sir Robin Turton: Does my right hon. Friend recall that his predecessor always said that he would be most anxious to make the quickest possible response to any report from a Select Committee concerning the procedure of the House, and
1630
that, in fact, last November he promised a debate on the recommendations regarding length of speeches? Since then, there have been three reports, one dealing with the election of the Speaker, another dealing with the Consolidated Fund Bill and ministerial statements, and the last dealing with the right of hon. Members to attend Select Committees? With the exception of the first, there is a certain urgency for their consideration. Will my right hon. Friend consider whether time should be given for early discussions on those recommendations so that we may know what the House thinks about them?
Mr. Carr: I recognise that there is great substance in what my right hon. Friend says and that the House will need to debate these matters. I should like to arrange it as soon as possible, but I must in all honesty say that at the moment I cannot tell him when that will be.
Dr. Dickson Mabon: The right hon Gentleman's predecessor promised a debate on the reform of local government in Scotland at some time before we rose in the summer. Will the Leader of the House confirm that such a debate will be arranged before we rise?
Mr. Carr: I recognise that there is a widespread demand among Scottish Members for a debate, but it would be rash of me to make any particular promise at the moment.
Mr. Kilfedder: I welcome the announcement of the debate on Northern Ireland on Monday, 12th June. Will my right hon. Friend not only consult through the usual channels but make sure that hon. Members on both sides from Northern Ireland are consulted about the arrangements?
Second, will my right hon. Friend endeavour to make sure that the affairs of Northern Ireland are not discussed during late hours of the night or early morning but that proper time is given for debate at a reasonable hour?
Third, will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the plight of the Biharis and those who are awaiting trial on charges alleging war crimes?
Mr. Carr: On the first point, I thought I made clear that I wanted to consult not only through the usual channels but with

1631
hon. Members who were particularly interested. I note what my hon. Friend said about the other matters. I cannot announce time for any subjects other than those I have already mentioned.
Mr. Arthur Lewis: Will the right hon. Gentleman in the first week of the new term make a statement to the House on a matter which I raised yesterday involving EEC legislation? We have waited 18 months for the secondary legislation in the EEC and we have already found 144 pages of mistakes in that secondary legislation. Furthermore, we have had to wait six or seven months for new amending regulations. Surely the right hon. Gentleman should do something to see that by the time the House reassembles we shall get these orders within a reasonable time and in a correct form. Will he make a statement on that matter?
Mr. Carr: I cannot promise to make a statement. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy considered this matter and made a statement in yesterday's debate, which the House will find in column 1,500.
Mr. Fell: As my right hon. Friend is a stout defender of the back benches on both sides of the House, will he step in to save the House from the serious dilemma in which it now finds itself in the nine or ten remaining days of the Committee stage of the EEC Bill, which is becoming a complete farce? We have reached a stage when it has become obvious that Government Ministers have no intention of conceding, accepting—or even considering accepting—any Amendment, however good, to the European Communities Bill, for the reason that the Government are determined to avoid the necessity for a Report stage. Could not my right hon. Friend intervene to put this matter right?
Mr. Carr: I do not know what intervention my hon. Friend expects me to make. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy and my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General will continue to advise the House about what they think right and appropriate on each Amendment.
Mrs. Shirley Williams: May I press the right hon. Gentleman about the Criminal Justice Bill? Some Amend-
1632
ments which have been tabled for discussion tonight were not dealt with in Committee and raise major questions of bail, legal aid and life imprisonment. I urge him, in the interests of proper debate in this crucial matter of civil liberties and the law, to consider winding up the Committee sufficiently early to enable these maters to be sensibly debated on another occasion.
Mr. Carr: These are serious subjects and we must see how we get on. I hope we shall take a reasonable view in the light of the progress we make.
Rev. Ian Paisley: I welcome the announcement about the business on Northern Ireland, but could the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that on 12th June there will be an opportunity in debate to deal with the problem of security in Northern Ireland? Hon. Members from Northern Ireland have a special interest in this matter as we look at the sad situation which has arisen in our Province? Will he say when there is likely to be an announcement to the House about the means by which an opportunity will be given to table Amendments to proposed legislation for Northern Ireland? Is he aware of the fact that Northern Ireland Members, and, indeed, other hon. Members from this House who are interested in Northern Ireland, can only reject or accept Orders in Council and have no opportunity to amend them? Will he announce the Government's plans to give Northern Ireland full parliamentary rights in this House?
Mr. Carr: I note what the hon. Member has said about security. Before 12th June perhaps we can have discussions with hon. Members concerned on the most convenient way of allocating the time available on this subject. As for the opportunity for the tabling of Amendments, initially we shall be dealing almost entirely with legislation which has been through Stormont, or which has substantially been through that House. Discussions are taking place to decide how to deal with other matters as they arise.
Mr. Latham: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that through his selecting guillotined business for the Tuesday and Wednesday after the recess my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North

1633
(Mr. Stallard) and myself will become victims in a matter about which I complained to Mr. Speaker last Tuesday? In other words we shall lose the right under Standing Order No. 13 to seek the leave of the House to introduce Bills connected with civil rights and a system of proportional representation in Northern Ireland local government elections. Does not the Leader of the House accept that the fact that we must give 15 days' notice of such a Motion and do not know whether guillotined business will be selected until much later puts us at a disadvantage? Will he provide an opportunity for back benchers to vote on the Motion which I have submitted so that the House of Commons might attempt to redress the erosion of back benchers' rights?
[That, notwithstanding anything contained in the orders of the House relating to proceedings on days allotted to the consideration of Bills subject to a timetable, Members may on such days (being Tuesdays and Wednesdays) seek leave to bring in Bills under the provisions of Standing Order No. 13.]
Mr. Carr: I cannot undertake to alter the timetable Motions under which we are working, which have been approved by the House in the light of past practice. I shall bear in mind the principle raised by the hon. Gentleman if need should ever arise for timetable Motions in future.
Mr. James Johnson: is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there have been two days' hard talking at the Foreign Office about the future of the deep-sea fishing fleet in Icelandic waters? Has it not occurred to him that the House would like a statement on this topic this afternoon? How is the House to be told about fishing within the 50-mile limit?
Mr. Carr: I thought that discussions were continuing today. If I have been wrongly informed I apologise, but I thought that was the position. I am sure that in due course my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will make a statement.
Mr. Clinton Davis: When will the House be given an opportunity to debate the decisions taken at the UNCTAD meeting in Chile? Is he aware that there is great despondency among the develop-
1634
ing nations about the state of affairs which has arisen at that conference? Is he also aware that this matter should be debated in the House in Government time?
Mr. Carr: As a Minister who was formerly concerned with overseas aid, I share the hon. Gentleman's interest in this subject. However, I cannot say that time will be given to that subject at the moment.
Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: Will my right hon. Friend try to allow time for a debate on the spread of pornography since it appears that the policy of the Home Office seems to be to let it rip?
Mr. Carr: So far as I can see the situation at present, I must leave it to my hon. and gallant Friend and other hon. Members to raise these matters in private Members' time.
Mr. Shore: Reverting to the subject of the resumed Common Market debate on 8th June, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to recall that this subject is of special importance because we shall then be dealing with the taxation of the British people by the Common Market? Would he please ensure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, rather than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, is available on that occasion to answer the debate?
Mr. Carr: I take note of the right hon. Gentleman's comments, and I shall talk to my right hon. Friend about them.

NORTHERN IRELAND
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. William Whitelaw): In my statement to the House on Monday I promised the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) that I would look into what he said about the use of derelict houses by gunmen shooting at the children of Kelvin School. Representations on this matter have been made by the Roden Street Tenants' Association; and Mr. John Laird, the Stormont M.P. for St. Anne's, has also interested himself in it.
Accordingly I decided to take action. Yesterday I signed an order under the Special Powers Act for the demolition of derelict houses in certain streets in the area which have been used several times

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lately by snipers. Work on the demolition is due to start today. This will make it easier to protect the school children and people who live nearby, who have been exposed to danger and provocation. I shall, of course, arrange for appropriate compensation.
I am glad to be able to tell the House that I have now set up the Northern Ireland Commission which is provided for in the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1972, and the names of its members will appear in answer to Written Questions in the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow and in the Library now. The Commission is a strong team, whose members have considerable knowledge and experience in various aspects of Northern Ireland affairs. I shall look to the Commission, whose first meeting will I hope be held at an early date, to help me not only in examining proposed Orders in Council but also in a wide range of matters which come to me by reason of my functions in Northern Ireland. I am very grateful to those who have agreed to serve.
On Tuesday there were a number of bomb explosions in Belfast which caused extensive damage to property but injuries only of a minor nature. A soldier of the King's Royal Regiment, Private Handley, was killed by a single shot from a sniper. On Monday evening a man was shot dead sitting outside a priest's house near Cookstown and another man was killed when returning home on Tuesday night. I am sure the whole House would wish to express its sympathy to the families of those concerned. Every effort will be made to track down and bring to justice those responsible for these crimes.
Yesterday I received a delegation from the Unionist Parliamentary Party which was led by Senator Andrews in the absence of Mr. Brian Faulkner, who, I am sorry to hear, is ill. The delegation expressed to me its serious concern about the security situation. I assured it that the security forces would continue to do everything in their power to protect the law-abiding community at large, of whose commendable restraint under provocation I was very conscious.
The situation remains tense and difficult, and the need for restraint on all sides is as great as ever. But the House will have noted with some hope the
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clear, determined and courageous expressions of a desire for peace which have come from the Bogside and Creggan districts of Londonderry.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: We welcome the appointment of the Commission, which, I am sure, will straddle the communities and the various interests. We note its advisory function and hope that it will. in particular, look at the problem of employment and economic development. Will it be able to raise matters with the Secretary of State? The right hon. Gentleman reminded us that, by the Act which this House approved, reference will be made to the Commission of Orders in Council which will eventually be destined for this House. Does he accept that this does not obviate the need for detailed consideration of these Orders in Council here, particularly in some cases? Stormont, in its last months, was not functioning properly in the watchdog sense of the term.
Is the Secretary of State aware that we commend the use of normal compensation terms for the property demolished?
We wish to be associated with the right hon. Gentleman's words of condolence to those involved in the killings. All the killings were equally reprehensible, but does he agree that the killing of Mr. William Hughes was not only evil but cowardly?
We note the cautious optimism concerning the desire for peace expressed in Londonderry. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this desire is in no sense a lack of support for change in Northern Ireland but a rejection of political change by murder? In our view, the desire for peace stems from the change of policy, the initiative of eight weeks ago. An important part of this was a change of policy on internment. There seems little doubt that the provisional IRA wants internment; it thrives on it. Therefore, why not go further with the changed policy on internment without trial and, by declaration of intent, set a date for its end?
Mr. Whitelaw: First, the Commission is purely advisory in capacity. Secondly, it will be able to raise with me any matters it wishes. Thirdly, it does not in any way change the position of Orders

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in Council in this House. On the question of compensation for the houses which will be pulled down, I used the Special Powers Act only because of the need, on security grounds, for speed. I shall not be tied to its provisions concerning compensation.
We all deplore the killings. I note what the hon. Gentleman says in particular about Mr. Hughes.
On the question of cautious optimism about the incidents in the Bogside and Creggan districts of Londonderry, I confirm that the desire there is for an end to violence. That is the basis of the desire. Lastly, in all my actions on internment I must have regard to the security situation, and an end to violence makes the matter very much easier for me. No one has said that more often than I have.
Mr. Stratton Mills: Is the Secretary of State aware that the view of the Unionist Party about the Commission which he has announced today is that it is wrong to depend on appointing a Commission for advice on major matters rather than working through those elected by the people of Northern Ireland? Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance, as I am sure he can, that there will be no question of hiding behind the Commission and that all the responsibility ultimately will be borne by him?
The tragedy of violence still continues, but is my right hon. Friend aware that the broad mass of the people of Northern Ireland join in and reciprocate the desire for peace which has blossomed in the last 24 hours? We certainly hope that this process continues. However, can my right hon. Friend give the House some idea of the terms on which he is being pressed in this area, because he must realise that it will be too high a price to pay if they ultimately destroy security?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am aware of my hon. Friend's last point. In all my discussions I have to take that into account. I am equally aware of the Ulster Unionist Party's view about the Commission. As I have said, the Commission is purely advisory in character. I am only too well aware that in all these matters I must take ultimate responsibility. When my hon. Friend has seen the names of the members of the Commission I do not think he will find that they are people
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who are likely to allow me to hide behind them. In any event, I could not do that by the constitution.
I understand my hon. Friend's views on security and the cautious optimism which I expressed. I am grateful for what he has said.
Mr. Grimond: Is the Secretary of State aware that many people will share his view that the action of the women of the Bogside and Creggan districts is one of the most important and encouraging things which has happened in Ireland for many, many months? Unless the border is to be redrawn, the only hope for restoring peace is that the people themselves should throw out the IRA Fascist thugs. If they are to do that, surely they must be reassured about some of the anxieties they have expressed. Is this a matter which the Commission will consider?
It seems to me more than ever important that the political initiative which the right hon. Gentleman has already taken should be followed up and that the inhabitants of these areas should be reassured that they will not be subjected to what they have suffered before and that they can feel protected from the activities of terrorists in their area.
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman has said. The short time in my job has taught me the need for the utmost caution in the face of all developments, good or bad. I think that that is the right way for me to proceed at all times.
The question of further political initiative is a matter for discussion politically in the Government, with various parties in Northern Ireland and in this House, and is not so much for the advisory Commission, although I am naturally prepared to hear its views on it.
Mr. Pounder: With regard to my right hon. Friend's statement about the demolition of houses in Roden Street, may I, on behalf of the Stormont Member for that area, Mr. John Laird, and everybody else there, thank my right hon. Friend for the speed with which he has taken action? Am I right in assuming that the compensation which he will grant to the owners of the property will be more generous than would perhaps be permitted under the Special Powers Act? Secondly, yet another week has elapsed and we have

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heard nothing about the plans for the district council elections, the boundaries, the registers, or the periods for complaint against those registers. Can my right hon. Friend say anything on that score?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said about Roden Street. I particularly said that I would not be tied to the compensation provisions of the Special Powers Act. I have nothing to add at this stage about the district council procedures, but I note what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr. McNamara: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, although we welcome his action in speedily demolishing these houses, it was power taken under the Special Powers Act? When are we likely to have legislation to replace that iniquitous Act? Secondly, with regard to other legislation which is to come before this House, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of it had only reached Committee stage in Stormont, and Committee stage when there was no effective Opposition sitting in Stormont? For that reason, does he agree that a great deal of it was not really put under the microscope? Much of that legislation concerns defective materials, electricity supply, and various other matters which are the proper province for trade union representations to be made about the safety and employment prospects of their members. Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to have full discussions with the trade unions concerned before that legislation comes before this House?
Mr. Whitelaw: On the hon. Gentleman's point about the Special Powers Act, I have been very careful not to use the Act, and I have said that I am reviewing it. In this instance, I did so only in the interests of safety and security, which, in the circumstances, I regarded as being of the highest importance. I note what the hon. Gentleman says about the legislation. I am having discussions with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and with others through the usual channels as to how we should handle the legislation in this House. The hon. Gentleman asked me finally about the possibility of discussions with interested parties in Northern Ireland. I have given the absolute undertaking that any legislation produced will be in draft form and that interested parties will be given every opportunity to comment on it to me.
Mr. Goodhart: While we appreciate the emotions of the women from the Bog-side and Creggan who came to see my right hon. Friend after the murder of yet another British soldier, may we press my right hon. Friend to acknowledge that the rule of law cannot be restored to the "no-go" areas by private enterprise alone? What protection does my right hon. Friend intend to give to those people in the "no-go" areas who are anxious to rid themselves of the rule of the IRA?
Mr. Whitelaw: In answer to my hon. Friend I should say that in my statement I gave a cautious welcome to the development, but I have to be equally cautious about it. There are many other factors which have to be taken into account in this matter.
Mr. Fitt: While the right hon. Gentleman is to be congratulated on getting anyone to serve on the Commission at this crucial stage, is he satisfied with its present composition or will he be prepared to appoint a further member to it who will be more acceptable to the two communities if that should prove to he necessary? Secondly, with regard to the compensation which is to be paid to the owners of the derelict houses in Roden Street, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there must be 600 or 700 empty houses in Belfast which the Catholic owners had to vacate because they were intimidated out of their areas? They have been given no compensation. Thirdly, on the question of internment, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees), will the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is still the greatest single issue dividing the communities? There are elements in Northern Ireland who want to perpetuate partition against the overwhelming mass of opinion in both communities. Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that as soon as this block is taken away he will have the co-operation of all concerned in seeing that the initiatives that he has taken are given a chance?
Mr. Whitelaw: When the hon. Gentleman sees the names of the members of the Commission, I believe he will agree that it will be widely acceptable to a large number of people in Northern Ireland. The possibility of adding to it is certainly in my mind, if that becomes advisable. I do not rule it out. I note what the

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hon. Gentleman says about compensation, and I am prepared to consider these cases. I have made my position clear on internment, and I think that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate it, too. In my mind, it is bound up with my ultimate and firm responsibility for security, and I have a duty to this House and to the community in Northern Ireland to fulfil.
Mr. Molyneaux: Further to my right hon. Friend's reply to the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt), will my right hon. Friend assure us that he will set definite limits to the scope and the numbers of the various non-elected advisers during the period which the elected representatives of Northern Ireland have been set aside? Will he bear in mind the necessity to prevent a still further loss of confidence in parliamentary democracy?
Mr. Whitelaw: I have no intention of having a large Commission. I merely reserve the position of possibly adding a few members to it. I realise the temporary nature of the Act, and I accept it. This underlines the importance of political consideration for the future, which I accept absolutely.
Mr. Paget: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm some statistics which I have received from our research division which are to the effect that during the period of direct rule the average weekly rate of arrests has fallen by about two-thirds, the average weekly rate of shootings has rather more than doubled, and the average weekly rate of explosions has nearly doubled?
Mr. Whitelaw: Statistics in these matters, frankly, can be somewhat misleading. No one can tell what would have happened if the initiative had not been taken. That is a very important factor which has to be taken into account. As for the hon. and learned Gentleman's point about the increase in the various forms of violence, it is extremely important in no way to equate this to the question of arrests. I cannot believe that anyone could imagine that the long-term future of any community depended on an ever-increasing number of arrests and of ever-increasing internment. That is not a possible way for any community to proceed.
Mr. Haselhurst: Without building any hopes on recent developments in the Bog-side and Creggan, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that there in a widespread feeling that these developments are further confirmation of the wisdom of his policy in not relying on military action against those areas?
Mr. Whitelaw: While I am grateful to my hon. Friend, I must remain very cautious about the outcome of any developments.
Mr. McManus: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to inquire immediately into two very serious matters which have been brought to my attention? The first of them has been brought to the right hon. Gentleman's attention. It concerns the administration of drugs to at least one of three prisoners arrested in Newry and brought under an ordinary police action to Newry Barracks on 29th April. The second is the almost daily intimidation of and attacks upon the people of the Tunnel area of Portadown, a town which the right hon. Gentleman will have been long enough in Northern Ireland to know has a tiny minority of Catholics in a largely Protestant population. The intimidation and attacks have come from forces ranging from the RUC to the Tartan gangs. Will lie investigate these matters immediately?
Mr. Whitelaw: On the alleged administration of drugs to prisoners, if that has occurred it is wholly improper. Any allegations will be investigated very carefully. As for intimidation in certain areas, if the hon. Gentleman has any specific points to put to me I shall be pleased to investigate them. My anxiety is that there tend to be too many allegations of intimidation on all sides. The less intimidation there is, the better it is for everyone in the whole community.
Rev. Ian Paisley: Is the Secretary of State aware that his announcement today about the pulling down of these derelict houses in Roden Street, which were used by known IRA terrorists as cover from which to shoot at Protestant schoolchildren, will be widely welcomed in the area? Is he aware, further, that the children come from Sandy Row, that the party to which I belong controls the ward taking in that area in the city council,

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and that it was as the result of representations originally made to us that this matter came to light?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is considerable gratitude among people in Northern Ireland for the announcement that he is giving £1 million immediately to the Co-operative store so that it can restock and so that those who lost their employment have the possibility of being re-employed in that store?
Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that the Act which brought into being his own office and this Advisory Commission provided that the Commission would be advisory only? Will he make it clear that it is an advisory body only and that there is no intention that it should usurp the authority of the elected represenatives sent to this House from Northern Ireland?
Will the right hon. Gentleman see to it that Members of this House representing Northern Ireland constituencies are consulted about Orders in Council and other matters which come before this House by way of legislation?
Would the right hon. Gentleman inform the House that this ray of hope that has been seen in Northern Ireland also must be viewed in regard to the statement that was made by the women who met him last night, who made clear that they were for the IRA and were looking for an amnesty for the IRA so that these IRA men could walk about where they liked? Will he assure the House that in future in Northern Ireland the law will be carried out for all sections of the people absolutely impartially?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the houses. I have had talks as well with Mr. John Laird, the Stormont MP for St. Anne's, who urged much the same thing on me. I am glad that I have been able to take action in this regard.
I am grateful also to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks about the £1 million for the Co-operative store. I will do all I can to help repair those actions which tend to destroy employment in Northern Ireland. One can only say how utterly tragic this sort of action is in
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an area where there is already such high unemployment.
The Advisory Commission will be purely advisory. Members of this House have shown themselves resolute in their determination to consider the various matters concerning Northern Ireland which have been brought before the House, and, naturally, that process will continue. I at once give the reassurance that the Government are determined that the rule of law will be systematically and impartially applied to everyone throughout Northern Ireland.
Mr. Orme: Is it not the case that the women from Bogside and Creggan who came to see the right hon. Gentleman, while saying that they would not be prepared to hand over anyone to the security forces, were nevertheless operating independently and were truly representative of those areas? Does not this give the lie to the allegation that these areas are dominated and terrified by either the Provisional IRA or the Official IRA? The fact that these women came to see the right hon. Gentleman openly and publicly is an expression of the support they are giving, tacitly or otherwise, to the measures that the Government have taken following the introduction of direct rule. Whilst we must not build too much hope on the action which these women have taken, does it not show an expression for peace amongst the minority and, therefore, that if the right hon. Gentleman were in a position to end internment, that action would see the end of the power of both the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA in these areas?
Mr. Whitelaw: I must applaud the courage and determination of the women who came to see me. I equally applaud the courage of various other people in these areas, and perhaps in particular I might mention Father O'Neill, who has made a number of very helpful speeches and has given a lead in this matter. There are others concerned as well. I remain, naturally. in all these matters extremely cautious and would not wish to say anything at this stage one way or the other. It would be better for me simply to say that cautiously I welcome what has happened.
Mr. Model: Does my right hon. Friend recall that one of the reasons for internment was that the normal course of civil law was inhibited by intimidation? Will he bear this in mind in phasing out internment?
Mr. Whitelaw: I certainly bear that in mind. I am glad to say that, as my hon. Friend will have noticed, there have in recent times been some cases before the courts in which, where considered proper, some firm sentences have been imposed on those found guilty. That is also an important aspect.
Mr. Kilfedder: I associate myself with my right hon. Friend's appeal for continuing restraint in Northern Ireland. Does he realise that great ill-will is built up between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland by deliberate and wild allegations made by supporters of the IRA? Does he also realise that a number of wanted men are in the Republic and that sometimes they have crossed back into Northern Ireland? Does he realise also that a great number of terrorists are coming from the Republic back to Northern Ireland? What has he done to bring this situation to the notice of Mr. Lynch? Can he tell us what Mr. Lynch has done since direct rule was imposed?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's plea for restraint, which I hope will be echoed throughout all sections of the community in Northern Ireland. In many different ways, it is extremely important. I note what my hon. Friend says about terrorists coming back from the Republic. I have certainly noticed various expressions which Mr. Lynch has made recently, and I hope that stern action will be taken in the Republic, which I am sure would be of great help to the situation in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Peter Archer: While recognising that the Secretary of State is encouraging all sections of the community in Northern Ireland to assert their rights lawfully, may I ask him whether he will confirm that the Government have begun consultations with a view to the extension of the legal aid scheme to Northern Ireland? Is he in a position to say when he can make a statement about it?
Mr. Whitelaw: I am not in such a position at the moment, but I will look into what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said.
Mr. Selwyn Gummer: Just as we should not panic in circumstances when disastrous activities take place, so we should not take too strongly individual cases which are much happier and point to a better future. Does not my right hon. Friend agree that it is part of his responsibility to see that the Press is kept fully informed so that we do not have this swing whereby on one day there is deep gloom and on the next over-euphoria? This is a long job, and my right hon. Friend needs support throughout the whole period.
Mr. Whitelaw: I hope that I have shown cautious determination to go in the same direction undeterred from one day to the next. I have many responsibilities, but one of them is not for what the Press writes. That is the affair of the Press, and I recognise the total right of journalists to put whatever construction they wish on various actions which take place. But it is my job to proceed undeterred.

BRITISH AIRWAYS BOARD (CAPITAL STRUCTURE) AND CONCORDE AIRCRAFT
The Minister for Aerospace (Mr. Michael Heseltine): I should like to make a statement on the present and future capital structure of the British Airways Board and on Concorde.
As the House will know, there has been a sharp decline in the profitability of world airlines in the last three years. The two British air corporations, BOAC and BEA, have stood up well—and better than most—to the strains of traffic recession and cost inflation. But, despite timely adjustments, they have not been able to insulate their undertakings from a world recession.
The two corporations have been taking vigorous action to meet a changing world situation. The short-term outlook is difficult, thanks to capacity out-running demand throughout the world. The longer-term outlook, though brighter, presents many uncertainties. The old distinction between scheduled and charter

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services is becoming blurred and the airlines have to meet the growing demand for low-cost travel. All this is happening at a time when costs are rising with inflation. It is impossible to tell now how far there will be satisfactory world agreement on fare structures. We are seeking to meet the reasonable needs of the travel-ling public, while enabling the airlines to achieve a proper return on their capital.
Both airlines are facing important equipment decisions. In BEA's case there is the selection of a wide-bodied aircraft—an important task facing the corporation and its parent Airways Board. The board's appraisal is being pressed forward urgently.
For BOAC there is the need to expand its subsonic fleet and, of course, the great challenge of Concorde. The Government. having weighed all the relevant investment considerations, believe that an investment in Concorde is in the interests of the country and the travelling public and that BOAC should lead the world in the introduction of civil supersonic flight. This being so, I am glad to tell the House that BOAC is today announcing that it will shortly place an order for five Concordes for use on a major part of its route network. The investment in these aircraft with spares and associated equipment will be £115 million at estimated 1974 prices. This purchase has been endorsed by the British Airways Board and I have given my approval. The whole House is aware that in the pioneering of any radical departure in types of aircraft there are bound to be financial risks. With supersonic flying many of these uncertainties are at present quite unquantifiable, and, indeed, some are outside airlines' control. The Government will, of course, do all they can at the appropriate time to ensure the successful operation of Concorde on BOAC's chosen routes.
The air corporations will be faced, like other major world airlines, with a number of challenging uncertainties over the next few years, of which Concorne is only one. It is the Government's task to provide the British Airways Board with a capital structure which will enable it to meet this challenge. We have in particular to give the board a sensible debt-equity ratio
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having regard to that existing in foreign airlines.
The board's present debt-to-equity ratio, 66:34, is considerably higher than is normal in world airlines. I consider a ratio of around 35:65 to 50:50 would be appropriate for the board. To achieve this range the Government have decided that the requirements of the board for new external capital will be met in the next two or three years by means of issues of public dividend capital, under Section 43 of the Act, to a total of approximately £200 million; that this facility will be available for refinancing existing debt as it matures as well as for financing new capital projects; and that the ratio will be maintained within the range thereafter by means of further issues of public dividend capital to finance a part of the board's capital expenditure.
I have also agreed that the Government will be prepared to review the financial position periodically with the board in the light of the outcome of the board's operations and of the conditions prevailing in international civil aviation at the time; and, if necessary, to take steps to ensure that the board maintains a sound financial performance. It would, of course, be perfectly open to the BAB to refer in its published reports and accounts to the way in which various assumptions made at the time of its equipment purchases had worked out in practice.
The board is now reviewing the forward plans of the two corporations, and it would be premature to set a target before the new board had done its work. It is my intention, therefore, to announce a realistic but nevertheless demanding target in the autumn.
Finally, I should like to express my appreciation to the British Airways Board and to the boards of the two corporations and their staffs for their efforts to expand the British share of world aviation markets on a profitable basis. and to BOAC for all that it has done over a long period to bring the Concorde over to fruition. I am sure the House will wish the Airways Board, BOAC and BEA well at the beginning of what promises to be an important and exciting era in British civil aviation.
Mr. Benn: I first of all thank the Minister for that most important statement, particularly in respect of the BOAC order for Concorde, which is a major

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step forward. I would express our welcome for it, and make it clear that this aircraft, now entering world markets without any foreign competition of any kind following the cancellation of the Boeing, has a much better prospect of success than might have been thought possible even until quite recently. Other world airlines will really need to order this aircraft if they are to keep abreast of BOAC. I am sure that everyone in the House, whatever may be their views on the aircraft, will wish BOAC well.
I hope the Minister will make it clear that when he talked about unquantified risks these are financial in character and not in any sense safety risks since this is an aircraft that has been more highly tested than any other aircraft ever manufactured in any country.
Dealing with the BEA order and the need for wide-bodied aircraft, may I ask when can we expect a statement on the purchase of the wide-bodied aircraft? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Rolls-Royce-powered TriStar should certainly be the choice for BEA on the same basis as has been announced for the Concorde order?
On the financing aspects of the statement, will the hon. Gentleman agree that BOAC has done very well and more than matched its foreign competitors in its economic performance, despite the damage done by the transfer of the West African routes and the allocation of routes across the Atlantic and the failure to protect the air corporations from charter competition, which we believe would in any case justify compensation from the Government of the order of £9 million or so?
Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that we shall now want a White Paper on Concorde and on the financing of the air corporations, we shall want to receive figures on the development and production costs of the aircraft, the pricing calculations, the significance of the issue of public dividend capital and the financial targets, and we shall really need to scrutinise these figures carefully? In addition, we shall want an early debate.
Finally, may I invite the House to congratulate, in addition to BOAC, the workers at BAC and Bristol Engines and Sud and SNECMA for the remarkable technical achievement of building an air-
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craft which is the first of its kind in the world and will without doubt go successfully into airline service?
Mr. Heseltine: I at once confirm that, of course, the risks are purely financial and that, as the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out, Concorde has been more extensively tested, and will continue to be more extensively tested, than any other aircraft introduced into service. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks and pay tribute to him for the part that he played in steering this remarkable British and French co-operative venture to a successful conclusion. I would also tell the House how appreciative I am to my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery), who launched this project when he held my job, and I also pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester-shire, South (Mr. Corfield) for bringing the BOAC order so close to fruition.
I appreciate the urgency of the BEA wide-bodied order. BEA is now considering and discussing with me its requirement, and the TriStar project is being considered very seriously. I fully understand the interest the House has shown in the whole Concorde project and the request for further information. It will always be my intention to give whatever information the House requests as quickly as I can. I doubt whether it is necessary to bring it together within one particular paper because it will become available over a period of time. Certainly the information requested from time to time will be given as quickly as I am able to give it. I would say—and anyone who has ever been involved in such a situation understands this—that financial targets can only be set in the light of an appreciation of circumstances prevailing nearer the time.
Mr. McLaren: Is my hon. Friend aware that his announcement about Concorde will be received with great pleasure and triumph, particularly in places such as my constituency where Concorde workers live? Is he further aware that after many nights of doubt and sorrow we are delighted to see the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry here wearing the Concorde tie? Will my hon. Friend say whether there are grounds

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for hoping that other airlines may shortly place further orders?
Mr. Heseltine: I must say that it is a relief to have the attention of the House drawn to someone else's tie rather than mine. I appreciate how much of an interest my hon. Friend has from a constituency point of view. It may be of interest to the House to know that approximately 1 in 4 Members have manufacturing interests, through constituencies, in Concorde. Approximately 152 constituencies are involved in the production of components for the aircraft. [Interruption.] I mention this point merely to indicate what a remarkable national effort this is. The placing of the first order for Concorde by BOAC moves us to the situation where interest is now focused on the next orders to come internationally, and I shall do everything I can to give support to BOAC in the very impressive efforts it intends to make, starting on 2nd June when the British prototype flies to the Far East.
Mr. David Steel: While we all wish BOAC well in this enterprise in the purchase of Concorde, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to expand on the rather cryptic sentence in his statement which says:
"The Government will of course, do all they can at the appropriate time to ensure the successful operation of Concorde on BOAC's chosen routes."
Is this an open-ended financial commitment, and, if so, roughly what is involved?
Mr. Heseltine: No, this was not intended to refer at all to the financial situation, which is covered elsewhere. We are pioneering a new form of flying, and there will undoubtedly be occasions on which the Government will need to support the efforts of BOAC in pioneering that new form of flying.
Mr. Warren: Having worked for a time on this project, I am delighted to hear the announcement today. Will my hon. Friend tell the House what is involved in the £115 million, which seems a surprisingly large amount of money for five Concordes? Will he give a breakdown of the figure and assure the House that it and no other amount of money that he has talked about contains any visible or invisible subsidy for operating the aircraft?
Mr. Heseltine: I can help my hon. Friend in this respect. The £115 million to which I referred breaks down to a cost of £21½ million for each Concorde. That is the cost of Concorde, plus the necessary spares, allowing for the adjustment to 1974 prices. The basis upon which the price was worked out relates to earlier information given to the House of £13 million for the aircraft itself at 1971 prices. I confirm that nothing in what I have said in my statement or in reply to questions should be taken to imply that there is any operating subsidy for the aircraft, because that would not be the case.
Mr. Joel Barnett: The Minister spoke of "sound financial performance", which is another way of saying "commercial viability", before Government money is put in. He omitted to tell us what return he is expecting from the £200 million investment. Are we to take it that there will be no return to the country from that investment? On the question of the subsidy element, in view of the fact that he has not in the past, despite what he says, given the House or the country as much information as we are entitled to about this massive expenditure, will he tell us openly the full extent of the subsidy to BOAC on which it insisted before it agreed to order the Concorde?
Mr. Heseltine: It is important that all hon. Members understand that no hidden subsidy is involved in the arrangement I have put forward. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that the repetition of what, therefore, are unfounded charges can only be taken as a deliberate attempt to make harder the work which is necessary to sell the aircraft. There is no subsidy, and it is totally irresponsible to suggest that there is. If the hon. Gentleman chooses to question the methods which I have adopted to reflect the uncertainties that lie ahead, I refer him to the speech of his right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) when he introduced the concept of public dividend capital on 22nd November, 1965. The right hon. Gentleman gave then substantially the same reasons to justify public dividend capital in those circumstances as I have given now to justify it on this occasion. I do not think it will be possible for the hon. Gentleman to use the arguments he suggests when he has seen the target which I intend to set the BAB later this year.
Mr. Allason: Now that we are first in what we hope will be a long queue, will my hon. Friend give an indication of what will be the return on overseas earnings?
Mr. Heseltine: The interesting question of the effect upon our balance of payments of the manufacture and sale of Concorde aircraft needs assumptions to be made which I cannot make about the number of sales, although I am optimistic. The House will appreciate the significance of it if I say that the cost of buying the first five is £115 million, so that on additional aircraft we sell we share with France benefits of that that order.
Mr. Russell Kerr: While I do not go all the way with the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) in the "commercials" that we have heard on behalf of Concorde, I none the less wish the project well. Is he aware that many of us who still support him on this rather expensive journey are deeply distressed to learn that our worst suspicions are confirmed about the routes which have been stolen from BOAC and BEA, so that instead of the £6 million which his predecessor the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) gave at the time of the announcement, a total of more than £13 million-worth of routes has been stolen? Is not this a disgraceful display of ministerial irresponsibility?
Mr. Heseltine: With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I am at a loss to understand from where he gets the £13 million. Nothing in my statement has any implication at all on the question which he seeks to raise. At the appropriate time I shall be happy to discuss it with him, but I assure him that nothing in my statement can be interpreted in the way he suggests.
Mr. Tebbit: In echoing the congratulations which my hon. Friend has received from both sides of the House on BOAC's order, may I pay tribute to his predecessor who did so much work to see the aircraft through to this stage? Will my hon. Friend confirm that the placing of this order by BOAC will start the clock going on the timing for the taking up of options which have been placed by other airlines, particularly Pan-American?
Mr. Heseltine: It does not trigger off the option period in respect of Pan-American, which is related to the placing of an order by BOAC and Air France, but I confirm that there are a considerable number of major international airlines whose option period is triggered off by the placing of the BOAC order alone.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES BILL (PROCEEDINGS)
Mr. Molloy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. A situation has arisen in our discussions in Committee on the European Communities Bill which is causing grave concern to hon. Members on both sides of the House. It was referred to briefly by the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell).
It is now patently obviously that the Government are determined not to accept any amendment of the Bill. It is recognised that the Bill constitutes one of the most important Measures ever to be presented to a British Parliament, and it is hardly conceivable that we can accept that in every word and detail it is absolutely word perfect and cannot be subject to amendment.
Will you be good enough to consider, Mr. Speaker, perhaps during the recess so that we can be guided on our return, whether this behaviour on the part of the Government should be examined? When the matter was raised earlier this afternoon the Leader of the House said that it was for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but this issue is related not specifically to that Minister but rather to the Leader of the House.
I refer to Erskine May, page 84, paragraph 3, which states:
"By the insertion of the term 'proceedings' in the Bill of Rights, Parliament gave statutory authority to what was implied in previous declarations of the privilege of freedom of speech by the Commons, e.g., in the Protestation of 1621, where it is claimed:
'that in the handling and proceeding of those businesses every member of the House of Parliament hath and of right ought to have freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason and bring to conclusion the same…".
In view of that statutory declaration by Erskine May that we should have the right to "treat" and "reason", we should surely have those same rights on the European Communities Bill, particularly

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as the guillotine procedure has already curtailed our discussion. This has meant that Amendments have had to be moved formally and the movers have been denied the opportunity to convince the Committee of the desirability of making the Amendments. This, in my view, also demonstrates the wrongful doing of the Government in preventing there being a Report stage. I feel that it was wrong of the Leader of the House to try to pass this on to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It is his reponsibility. I hope that he will give it further thought. I beg you, Mr. Speaker, when we return after the recess, to be good enough to opine on what I have said.
Mr. Speaker: I have allowed the hon. Member to make his point of order. I am not certain that it was a point of order. Nevertheless, I will consider the matter. I think I am bound by Standing Order No. 50. but I will consider the matter.
Mr. Arthur Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise that I have not been able to give you notice. Yesterday in Committee, when I raised a certain matter, it was suggested I should raise it in the House. I thought there might have been a statement from the Leader of the House which would have helped. You may not be aware that connected with the European Communities Bill are some 2,500 rules, regulations and directives which—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have familiarised myself with the matter which the hon. Member is seeking to raise. He would have been perfectly in order in raising it at another time, but he is not entitled to raise it now as a point of order. He could have questioned the Leader of the House about it or raised it in some other way. It is certainly not a matter of order for me.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS FOR MONDAY 12TH JUNE
Members successful in the Ballot were:

Mr. Robert Redmond.

Sir Ronald Russell.

Mr. Michael Meacher.

ADJOURNMENT (WHITSUNTIDE)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House at its rising tomorrow do adjourn till Monday, 5th June.—[Mr. R. Carr.]
4.42 p.m.
Mr. R. Paget: I feel grave anxieties about leaving the situation in the position we have. We have recently had three major measures upon which both the great parties have been in agreement. I notice that such agreements are almost always disastrous. I refer to sanctions, direct rule and Concorde. Agreement between the two great parties is nearly always based upon mutually guilty consciences that commit them to continue mutual folly.
Certainly regarding the situation as it has developed under our direct rule in Northern Ireland, I do not feel we ought to go into Recess. I put certain statistics to the Minister earlier today. In just over two months arrests have fallen by two-thirds, shootings have rather more than doubled and explosions have rather less than doubled. On any view, this is a gravely deteriorating situation.
The Minister said "But you cannot connect arrests with shootings". When dealing with a crime wave, one normally looks, on the one side for successes, which are the arrests, and, on the other side, for failures, which are the crimes one has failed to stop. In this case preventive measures are failing, crimes are increasing alarmingly, and everybody seems complacent about it. This is what worries me.
As against this we are told, "But the women of the Bogside have come out". That is the sort of euphoria spreading through the country on this matter. Some time ago they came out in Anderson's Town, but not for very long. This strange idea that the women will come together and stop the war is based on ancient feminist mythology. Aristophenes produced it when the women were going to stop the Peloponnesian war. They did so in a play, but not in reality.
We were told by the suffragettes that we had only to give women the vote and wars would come to an end. It was not so long ago that we had three wars on our hands at the same time being run respectively by Mrs. Golda Meir, Mrs. Gandhi and Mts. Bandaranaike. The

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amount of evidence in support of this idea is not very strong.
Of all countries I cannot think of one in which it is less likely to happen than in Ireland. Whatever else can be said of Ireland, the Irish are not a matriarchal society. They may possibly be described as a leonine society in that the male sometimes has no objection to the woman being the provider. That is often the case in Derry—the male does not give the female any rights for having provided —at any rate not in this Irish society. To imagine that the biddies will see off the IRA is a piece of wishful thinking.
Whilst we have a Government thinking on these wishful lines I am anxious about going away for the Recess.
Then there is the question: what is the peace these ladies are supposed to be bringing us? Is it the peace between order and disorder? Is it the peace between the police and the criminal? That is just the peace which in fact they are said to be bringing us. One of them, Mrs. Docherty, said:
"We told him we do not want the IRA out of Derry. They are our boys. We are not here to shop them."
We are told—I think Father O'Neill says this—that we are to have a ceasefire. What does a ceasefire mean? We have a ceasefire in some areas of Palestine which has been there since 1948 and in others which has been there since 1956. A ceasefire means conceding the area to the successful gun. Is that what is being sought in Derry? Is that what is being welcomed?
Another case where we had a ceasefire, which may be somewhat distant but none the less very much an historical parallel to this event, was when Hasan the Imam of the Assassins was given a ceasefire by Saladin. The castles of the assassins then blackmailed and levied a toll on the trade of the Middle East for 300 years. If we allow areas to become refuges for the criminal, areas which are outside the law and which live by a process of blackmail threats, the situation does not get better; it gets worse the longer we tolerate it.
I am worried about going into Recess, because I have no confidence in the Minister. This is not on personal grounds. I have no confidence in the Minister because he is much too nice a man for the job. It used to be axiomatic when
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making a posting never to send a nice officer to an Irish regiment. He was always a disaster. The kind of man we want for this job is not somebody like the Minister—I hope he will forgive the for saying so—but somebody like the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys). We want somebody with an iron will. The right hon. Member for Streatham has often looked to me to be just the kind of man, in the Iron Duke tradition, to lead an Irish regiment: a man with an iron will, of great courage, with no humour or imagination, and an eye which would pose no problem to a sculptor working in basalt. 'That is the kind of man who leads Irish armies and that is the kind of man the Irish understand. His friends know where they are and his enemies know where they are. With the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State in Ireland, nobody knows where he is.
The Protestants are starting to drill in real panic, wondering whether he is letting them down. The enemy, including the ladies from the Bogside, are asking, can this be true? They are saying, "If we had a horse, what a fellow to sell it to". That is the situation. I do not believe that the present set-up is working. I do not believe that one can succeed in avoiding casualties simply by postponing them.
We are faced with the situation that in an area over which we have taken direct control we do not even pretend to assert control. It is an area in which we are negotiating as though it were a foreign country, and where we are accepting and acknowledging frontier guards as though it were an alien country. It is an area from which attacks are emanating. The most serious attack of all was made only last week, when not only was a bomb put in a car park but the Protestant workers at the factory were lured into the car park. If that continues, by the time we come back we shall have a civil war on our hands.
I am not somebody who wants blood. I am not somebody who wishes violence, or wishes to be hard or unkind to people, but, in these circumstances, the more we funk the decision the more people will get killed in the process. I believe—and I believe this because of what I have heard from officers with whom I have discussed the position—that if we tell the Army to

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go in and do not tie its hands, there will be very few casualties, indeed, as long as we are not half-hearted about it. But if the Government do not want to do that they should recognise that this is an area which has passed out of our rule and, using the river and the old wall of Derry as boundaries, they should take the area away from the North and Ulster and put it on to the free South.
Having done that the Government should tell people in "free Derry" that the frontier with us is closed and that in future when they wish to collect their social insurance benefits they will have to do so from Dublin. Similar information should be given to Dublin. That will be something. If we let the war drift week after week, with the shootings doubling, the bombings doubling, the Protestants drilling, and new no-go areas being set-up, by the time we come back there will he a civil war on our hands
4.54 p.m.
Mr. Stanley R. McMaster: I fully support what has been said by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I believe that he has got his finger more correctly on the pulse of affairs in Northern Ireland than even my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench.
There are many topics, including the announcement today of the members of the Advisory Commission, which require urgent and immediate consideration in this House. It was impossible, following my right hon. Friend's statement, to consider the appointment of this commission because the names were not announced. They are to be given by way of a written reply which we shall see either tonight or tomorrow morning. As it is about two months since the Parliament at Stormont was suspended, it is not right that an announcement as important as that should be made in this manner, and in a manner which means that the constitution of the commission cannot be properly considered by members from Northern Ireland before 12th June.
I agree with what the hon. and learned Gentleman said about the increased tempo of terrorist activity in Northern Ireland. During the last eight weeks I have raised this matter several times in the House and received what I consider to be totally unsatisfactory answers
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from the Minister. In replying to Written Questions from myself and other of my hon. Friends the Minister has produced statistics which support what was said by the hon. and learned Gentleman, and yet when he has spoken on the Floor of the House on the few occasions when we had an opportunity to question him on these matters he has drawn totally inaccurate conclusions from the figures which have been produced.
Anyone who has spent even a few days in Northern Ireland over the last two or three weeks realises that there has been an increase in the number of explosions in Belfast. Only the night before last there were three explosions in the centre of the town which wrecked many shop premises. The tempo of terrorist activity has in no way abated as a result of the political initiative.
About 10 days ago the Co-operative store on the edge of my constituency was destroyed. This has meant the loss of jobs for about 750 work people, and it will cost the taxpayer—who in the end will have to foot the bill—about £10 million. Not only have terrible matters such as that to be debate in the House urgently, but we must debate also the fact that the number of separate shooting incidents has increased steadily since the political initiative was taken.
The last two or three days have seen the murder—I do not hesitate to use the word "murder"; I am often surprised to see these events reported as "killings", and I want to use the correct word—of men and soldiers, and here I am thinking particularly of Ranger Best who was on leave in his own home in Deny. He was taken out by the IRA, court-martialled and murdered. Other soldiers have been shot while on duty. Yet others have been shot in front of their wives and children in their own homes. All this is due to the murderous activities of the IRA. I suggest to the House that if murder, bombing and arson were to take place on even one-tenth of this scale in other parts of the United Kingdom the House would demand an immediate debate; yet we shall have to wait until 12th June to debate the matter. That is not for another two or three weeks, and I regard that as totally inadequate.
I, too, welcome the action of the women of the Bogside. I agree with the small deputation of six women who

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spoke to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but I feel in accord with the hon. and learned Gentleman when he says that it would be wrong to read too much into that initiative. One must remember the previous attempts of the women in Andersonstown and in the Bogside to persuade the Republicans, the terrorist members of the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA to lay down their arms. In each case they were opposed not only by members of the IRA but by other women who were outspoken in condemning their actions.
Be that as it may, I feel that for the sake of long-term peace in Northern Ireland there should be a statement by my right hon. Friend assuring the House and the vast majority of the law-abiding population in Northern Ireland that there will be no amnesty for those who are responsible for the horrible, murderous bombing that has taken place over the last three years. Only by such a firm statement shall we hope to dissuade other terrorists from similar activities in future. If there is any doubt that the IRA will continue its campaign of attacking and maiming people by explosions and other means, one need only remember that in the past three years there have been 350 murders. Those responsible must be brought to justice.
When answering questions today and on previous occasions my right hon. Friend has said that if conditions have deteriorated since the political initiative was taken no hon. Member can be sure what conditions would have been like without that initiative. I do not accept that argument. It is commonly known in Northern Ireland that since the political initiative the IRA has been re-forming in Belfast.
But for the initiative—this is apparent to the security forces and the people of Northern Ireland generally—we would have continued gradually, throughout the Province, to get on top of the IRA threat. As a result of the political initiative and the softly-softly policy—the release of many from internment and the dramatic fall in the number of arrests—the IRA has had time to regroup.
Time is not on the side of the Government. My right hon. Friend is trying what has been described as a gamble. I urge him to place a definite and early time limit on his actions. If they are
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not successful in the next few weeks, he will have to review his policy dramatically, and his intention to do this should be made clear now.
If those in the Bogside and Creggan areas are given an indefinite time to go on with their planning and preparation, there will be no hope of peace in Northern Ireland. The only hope for this initiative is for my right hon. Friend to give a clear indication that the people have a certain time within which to deal with the I.R.A. With the mounting death toll and incidence of bombing, the ordinary citizens of Northern Ireland will no longer sit back. A time is bound to come, unless what I say is done, when the loyalist citizens will reach the end of their tether.
I urge my right hon. Friend to realise that the death toll is likely to mount and that the terrorists will use this time, just as they have used the time in the last eight weeks, to prepare, train and build up their supply lines. The more time that is given them, if this policy is not successful, the greater the death toll will become when the policy is changed, and then the soldiers will have a harder task in taking the initiative and restoring order throughout Northern Ireland.
I wish my right hon. Friend would appreciate that in circumstances such as exist in Northern Ireland today there is more need than ever before to have a parliamentary safety valve. The past eight weeks have not seen a proper debate on the affairs of Ulster. We have been promised what amounts to a half day's debate on Monday, 12th June. If Parliament is to serve any useful function in the United Kingdom, it must act as a safety valve so that the ordinary law-abiding citizens feel that their grievances are being properly ventilated on their behalf.
The arrangements made in the last eight weeks both for the debate of the affairs of Northern Ireland generally and for the consideration of the many Bills that are outstanding—there are between 30 and 40 of them, some of a detailed character—have been totally inadequate. These Bills deal with such matters as local government reform and turn very much on whether Stormont will be restored. They may require not only general discussion in the 90 minutes that we

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have been promised but detailed amendment, dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
I hope we shall be given some definite information on the points I have raised.
5.5 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am pleased to see you in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because you may not be aware—on the other hand, you may be aware—of some local difficulties which we have been having and which should not be left unresolved on our departing for the Whitsun Recess.
I refer to some details which we should be given concerning the Bill which proposes to take us into the EEC. In Committee on this Bill we have asked for facts, figures and information to help us in our work. For more than 18 months I tried to get the Government to publish, for the benefit of hon. Members, the EEC rules, regulations and directives which we shall have to pass in toto if we join Europe. Eventually the Government published these documents and we naturally thought that they were factually correct, especially after they had had 18 months in which to publish them.
We found to our horror that, as with so many things done by the present Government, they had made a complete hash of publishing this information. Having had 18 months to consider publishing these matters and a further six months in which to think about doing so, not only were they partly wrong but the Government had to publish a booklet of 144 pages correcting the many mistakes in the documents.
I would have liked during the Whitsun Recess to have studied these documents to prepare myself for the debates which will take place when we return, but what is the point of my studying them if they are likely to be wrong to this degree? I remind hon. Members that the documents of which I speak were available to our colleagues in Brussels not just recently but as long ago as last November. The Government have had them, but apparently hon. Members are not entitled to have them. Hon. Members have to wait six or seven months, and even when they get them they cannot be sure that they are factually correct. We are in the invidious position of being expected to go on holiday without having
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the right documents to study, and not knowing whether those which we have are correct, or whether we can obtain the correct documents. We are expected to return for debates on the matter, but we are told that we have to accept these documents whether or not we like them, and to accept that the Government are unable to supply them for hon. Members. That is not good enough. The House should not go into recess until the Leader of the House can give more definite information.
I am in a quandary because I am not sure about where the responsibility lies in this matter. With the utmost respect, I thought that it was Mr. Speaker's duty to see that documents were available to hon. Members. But even in tabling quite a few Questions I have found that a bit of jiggery pockery goes on. When things are a little awkward the Foreign Secretary switches some Questions to the Leader of the House, the Leader of the House switches some to the Minister for the Civil Service and others are switched between Ministers. Whom does one blame? I blame the Government in toto. However, as the Minister who is to reply to the debate is the Leader of the House, perhaps I should say that probably he is the Minister responsible. I can now reveal that his predecessor as Leader of the House at the time, who is now Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, saw my first pile of documents, which were also seen by you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The pile was about three feet high and weighed what felt like half a ton. I said to the then Leader of the House "Have you seen these?" He replied "Of course not." I said "Do you mean to tell me that, as a Cabinet Minister, you have not seen them?" He replied "Of course not. No Member of the House has seen them." I do not suppose hon. Members have seen them. Indeed, if from then onwards Ministers had been doing nothing but studying these documents by night and day they would still not have got through them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), the "shadow" Leader of the House, will agree that not all Ministers could have been constantly studying these documents, because some Ministers have been in the Chamber. They have obviously not read them because when questioned about one or

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two of them by my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham), who is a diligent attender of debates, they have been unable to give satisfactory answers.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon the Leader of the House to give us a definite assurance on two matters. First, I am told by some Ministers that if I care to apply to them they will let me have a copy of a particular document. But that is privileged and preferential treatment which is offered, and I do not want it because I have never had privileged or preferential treatment since coming to the House. To start receiving it after 27 years of membership, and to be given a privilege above that given to my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale, would mean that I could not face my hon. Friend knowing that I was getting something which he was not.
The more serious point is that if I can apply for and receive a copy of a document privately, why cannot all hon. Members have a copy? I suggest that this is a legitimate request which the right hon. Gentleman ought to convey to all the Departments concerned. The Minister of Agriculture has hundreds of these documents, dealing with sugar, milk, butter, cheese and so on. He knows, as I know, that one of the effects of entry into the Common Market is value added tax. We know that value added tax will be imposed upon food. The Government know that, but they are dishonestly hiding the fact from the electorate. The Government know that in all the countries of the Six VAT is imposed on food. The Minister of Agriculture knows that we shall have to harmonise our VAT based upon that imposed in the Common Market. But when I have tried to obtain information from him he will not let me have it.
The Government know that in the countries of the Six a value added tax is imposed upon all forms of construction at the very high rate of 23 per cent. Even private house building is taxed at 17½ per cent. of 33⅓ per cent. of the value of the property. This will vitally affect my constituents who are now very badly housed. We have a great housing problem. But I do not think that the public know that when we enter the Common Market houses erected for local councils and the poor who have no homes will
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have VAT imposed upon them at 17½ per cent. of one-third of the valuation of the property. Few hon. Members will know that all building construction will be subject to VAT.
All this information could be made available. The Government have this information, but are deliberately with-holding it from hon. Members. It is not good enough that we should go into recess knowing that it is being deliberately withheld.
I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale is present in the Chamber because yesterday I walked out in a bit of a temper—for which I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the House—because I was so disgusted at being unable to get certain documents. Probably I should not have walked out in a temper because I see from the OFFICIAL REPORT that, as always, the "shadow" Leader of the House does much better than the actual Leader of the House. My hon. Friend tried to help the Committee on a nonparty basis—as always. He was able to look up Erskine May and find that it is the duty of the Government to make these documents available. He found also that if the documents are wrong, deliberately distorted or incorrectly supplied to the House that may well be a breach of privilege.
We are in a unique situation in which there is the possibility of the Government being in breach of privilege of Parliament, because it is the Government who have deliberately withheld documents and subsequently produced inaccurate documents. They must have been known to be inaccurate because the Government have subsequently rectified the inaccuracies. I understand that there will be further rectification of the rectifications. So we shall have a series of new documents coming through saying that "No. 1 document is wrong. It should be amended by No. 2 document. No. 2 document will be amended by No. 3." This may happen for the whole time that the European Communities Bill is in Committee, and we shall be supplied with inaccurate information. The Government should deal with this matter in view of the importance of this legislation.
This is not something that can be put right at a later date, because this is a

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once-for-all Bill. As we have been told, by the Prime Minister downwards—perhaps I should say, by everyone else upwards to the Prime Minister—this is probably the most important Bill that has come before Parliament in recent history. If we are to be hamstrung by this important Measure in perpetuity the Government should ensure that everything connected with it is right.
There are a number of other reasons why I oppose the Motion. I have been looking by accident through the Notices of Motions. You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will no doubt be as amazed as I was to find that there are no fewer than 336 urgent Motions and Amendments. Hon. Members know, but the Press and verbatim reporters may not know, that Motions deal with urgent matters which hon. Members believe should be debated.
It would take a long time to go through all 336 Motions, but I hope to be forgiven if I pick out some of the more important ones. It will be fortuitous if some of them happen to have been sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and myself. Motion No. 52 is entitled:
"Unemployment and the Government's Terms for Market Entry".
There are some good Amendments to this important Motion. So urgent does my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) consider this matter to be that he has tabled a Motion. The matter has not been debated.
I am glad to see two or three of my Scottish Friends here. Whenever important matters are being discussed, my Scottish hon. Friends are here. They can tell us that the unemployment problem, which is bad nationally, is particularly pernicious in Scotland. I should like this Motion to be debated next week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday. I should not like my Scottish hon. Friends to have to come all the way from Scotland on Monday. Almost all Scottish constituencies are represented by Labour Members, because the Scottish people wisely would not elect Tories. I am sure that my Scottish hon. Friends would be more than willing to return on Tuesday to debate this question.
An important Motion of mine which I should like to be debated is that which
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concerns the question of the abolition of the Origins of Marking Order, again done to facilitate our entry into the Common Market.
A Motion which will appeal to my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale is No. 60, which I have tabled and which is entitled:
"Lack of Democracy in Parliament, Due to Subservience to the European Economic Community".
I am sure that if we were to return next Tuesday my hon. Friend could be persuaded to make a wonderful speech on this subject, after I had briefly introduced the Motion.
I shall not have the chance to do that because, against the will of the majority on this side, we are to have a long recess. The recess has been contrived and arranged. No one consulted me as to whether we should have a longer or shorter recess. Probably the usual channels were consulted. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover was not. Those of us who want to remain here to bring these important matters to the attention of the country cannot be held responsible for the length of the recess.
Motion No. 61, which has been tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) is entitled:
"Value Added Tax on Owner-Occupiers"
What more important subject could be discussed by Tory Members, who are now conspicuous by their absence? They claim to be the champions of the private owner, but only four of them are now present.
Mr. A. E. Cooper: There are not many Labour Members either.
Mr. Lewis: Labour Members out numbered Tory Members by about 2 to 1. Tory Members, who claim to champion owner-occupation, should declare to owner-occupiers that if Britain joins the Common Market on the present terms a value added tax will have to be imposed on owner-occupied houses, and apparently my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover has already worked out the amounts
The Motions cover almost every burning issue confronting the Community. Motion No. 202, which has been tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster (Mr. Harold Walker), relates to
"Armed Forces Pensioners' Widows"

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It is strange that my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster should be the one who is interested in these pensioners' widows, because we are usually told by the galaxy of hon. and gallant Members who usually sit on the benches opposite and who are now conspicuous by their absence that they are the friends of the Armed Services pensioners' widows. When it comes to it, however, not only do they not table a Motion but they are not even present to press the Government to allow time to debate this important subject.
Motion No. 222, which has been tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris), and to which I have two Amendments and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) has one, is entitled:
"Value Added Tax—Essential Domestic Goods and Services".
I am willing to return on Tuesday next to discuss this Motion.
It cannot be said that I have been biased and have advanced the case for my own Motion being debated. Perhaps we could debate Motion 222 with Motion No. 224. This stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens (Mr. Spriggs), and it deals with the adversely effect for the retail trade if we join the Common Market.
I hope I shall be forgiven if I draw particular attention to Motion No. 232. I believe it is one of the most important Motions because it refers to democracy in Parliament. The sponsor is none other than the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis), who always puts good Motions on the Order Paper, if I may say so on his behalf.
Mr. Cooper: They are never called.
Mr. Lewis: No, they are never called and I never get an opportunity to explain how important they are because the Government say there is no time for a debate. They always say that there are Bills and other things to be debated, but if they cut the recess short we would have an opportunity of debating all these matters and everybody would be happy.
There is also Motion No. 238, which deals with tragic matters. It relates to the imposition of the value added tax on hearing aids. If we join the Common Market there will be a 10 per cent. In-
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crease in the price of hearing aids to the poor deaf people because of the imposition of the value added tax. These items already cost between £60 and £80.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale is a very skilled and knowledgeable parliamentarian. When I left the Committee in a huff yesterday he was wisely able to look up Erskine May and refer to the point I had raised in the House. He was able to discover important matters which would have been of assistance to myself and the Chair. I do not have a copy of Erskine May, and if I wish to look it up I have to leave the Chamber and go to the Library. By the time I have consulted the book and returned to the Chamber the issue has been dealt with. Motion No. 248 puts forward a much better idea. It says that every hon. Member should be supplied with his own copy of Erskine May.
Mr. Cooper: Is that the hon. Member's Motion?
Mr. Lewis: No, it is one of the very few Tory Motions, but it is a good one nevertheless. If we had a short recess we would have time to debate this and explain to the Government, who say that the proposal would cost too much, that it would be a once-and-for-all outlay. Once hon. Members had the book they would not have to be supplied with another because when we are in the Common Market we shall not need Erskine May. All the decisions will be taken in Brussels, and we shall become a rubber-stamp House.
Thirty or 40 selected Members, who will be the "Yes-men", will go to Brussels to represent us there. We shall be told only what has been decided in Brussels, and we shall be able to debate the merits and general issues but we shall not have an opportunity of amending the decisions in any way, shape or form. I do not believe that is good for democracy, and I do not believe that one single hon. Member, from the Prime Minister down to the newest hon. Member who won the election at Southwark recently, told his electorate that if Britain joined the Common Market all the decisions would be taken by the Council of Ministers and that the British Parliament would have no chance of amending them. I would gamble that not one hon. Member explained that it could affect taxation, the

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standard of living and where and whether citizens were allowed to work.
Motion No. 277 deals with the impact of the value added tax on the poorer families, of which I have a large number in my constituency. I would like an opportunity to discuss the Motion because it is of vital importance for many of my constituents. I could explain to them that, although the cost of living is rocketing in this country, they need not worry because it will be as of nothing compared to what will happen when we are in the Common Market. I could tell them that the Government promised that before we joined they would seek the full-hearted consent of Parliament and the people, but that with a majority of five, as they had yesterday, they will take us in just the same. I could tell them that the price of food will rise by 10 per cent. or 12 per cent. I could tell them that we had an opportunity to discuss and debate these matters on a Motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman), but that because our recess was too long we did not have the time.
Another Motion which I think every hon. Member should and could support stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell), dealing with retirement pensions. This is another vital matter. I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover present because, like me, he has been campaigning for the old-age pensioners since he first came to the House. He has been battling away against a stony-hearted, cruel Government who awarded the old-age pensioners a 75p increase but refused to give it to them until October. Before the ink is dry and the announcement is made, that 75p increase will be absorbed in the rise in the cost of food and other prices and it will be lost to the old-age pensioners. If someone in commerce tried to do that to the general public, he would be charged with a confidence trick. If I tried to sell something for 75p, knowing that it would completely evaporate, I should be charged with obtaining money by false pretences. But here we have a crooked Government who crookedly announce that they will give a 75p increase knowing that because of the actions they have taken the price of food,
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rents, the cost of houses and all other prices will so depreciate the purchasing value of the pound that before the old-age pensioners receive their increase they will lose more than the 75p they are due to receive in October.
There is no need for the pensioners to wait until October. All that the Government need to do is to tell the post offices that every pension order book should be over-stamped from the date of the Budget with a 75p increase, and that could be paid. The Government do not want to do it. This is another matter we could discuss but for the fact that we are going into recess. I should like the recess to be shortened to enable some of the Motions to be discussed.
Motion No. 328 is concerned with the grave effect for the chronically sick and disabled telephone subscribers of a 10 per cent. value added tax. One of the names attached to it is that of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe, who is rightly interested in the chronically sick and disabled. He introduced a magnificent Act to help them, which has done a very good job. I am sorry the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications is not here, because I believe he would like a debate on the matter. He has probably gone to Spain.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: With George Best.
Mr. Lewiss: The sick and the disabled and the chronically sick will have to pay the tax, I suppose because the Prime Minister insists on taking us into the Common Market without the full-hearted consent of Parliament and the people. They have to pay for his ego and the pleasure of taking us in when we know that the overwhelming majority of the people and the whole trade union movement are against it. [Interruption.] The Leader of the House may laugh, but if he does not believe that let him have a referendum.
Modesty forbids my giving the name of the sponsor of Motion No. 330, concerning support for political action by the European Economic Community against the opponents of democracy. The Motion refers to Greece, a subject we have not discussed for two or three years. We might well find that a debate on Greece would be of interest.

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I would mention the Motions of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover, but that would make my speech longer than I had intended. I conclude with some of those that I know he is interested in.
Motion No. 331 is entitled
"Who Are the Blackmailers".
It is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. I am pleased he is here, because he will know that it is a Motion we could debate if we were not going into Recess until 5th June. We have heard what Ministers and Tory Members have said about ordinary trade union workers, men working hard with their sweat, their tears and their toil at the benches. The railway workers are trying to obtain a decent wage, up from £17 to £20 a week. They are accused of being blackmailers because they want a 12½ per cent. increase. If we could debate the Motion we could point out that the Government, who are denying £20 a week to railway workers, are already planning to give £80 a week extra on a £400 a week salary. That is a 20 per cent. increase. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover is taking these figures in.
Mr. Skinner: I have got them all.
Mr. Lewis: The railway workers feel they are justified in asking for £20 a week for a full week's work. They are told by the Government that they are not entitled to it, that they must have a ballot, that the Government will spend £250,000 forcing them into legal action, forcing the trade unions to be fined. Company directors who commit contempt of court can get away with it, but if a trade union is involved the courts can meet on a Saturday and Sunday to impose the will of the so-called democratic courts upon it. When a crooked company director walks away with a couple of million pounds, the case can go on for year after year with no action taken. The Motion says that the blackmailers are certainly not the railwaymen. It is the Government who are dishonestly withholding information which they have from the Boyle Committee, which has recommended increases for some people of up to 20 per cent. and in some instances 25 per cent.
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That leads me to the next Motion that I want to mention. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe always gets good Motions on the Order Paper. I must ask him to consult the hon. Member for West Ham, North, because he might be able to explain to that hon. Member how to put down some good Motions. His Motion is on the wages and conditions of farm workers. Strange as it may seem, there is an Amendment to that Motion, by none other than the hon. Member for West Ham, North, who has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the higher-paid civil servants, the chairmen of the nationalised boards and the judges. The Amendment draws attention to the fact that, while the poor old farm workers are told that asking for a few pounds a week extra would be inflationary, and would be the most terrible thing for them to do, the Boyle Committee is recommending increases of up to 25 per cent. for certain of the higher-paid civil servants, chairmen of the nationalised boards and judges. The Government have had the report for the past six or seven weeks. It was leaked to the Press, I think officially, but then the Government found that the rail dispute started to boil up. "Boil" was an appropriate word, which I used quite unconsciously.
Many poor old-age pensioners do not understand percentages. They understand the 75p they have not got, but if they are told that they will have a 1 per cent. or a 2 per cent. increase they do not understand. It would not mean anything to an old-age pensioner if I told him that the Chairman of the British Railways Board was to receive a 20 per cent. increase, but if I explained that it meant £80 a week extra on a £400 a week salary he would understand. It is people like the Chairman of the Railways Board who say that to give a £20 a week rise is a generous offer by any standards. I wonder what he will say when he gets his £80 on top of £400? Perhaps he will say that it is over-generous, and he may well be right.
If we were not to adjourn tomorrow we should have an opportunity to consider Motion No. 335, entitled:
"Full-hearted consent of Parliament and the people for the implementation of the Boyle report."
I am sure that the Government would be glad to have that discussed. The

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Prime Minister loves his phrases about "the full-hearted consent of the British Parliament and people". What better way of testing the feelings of the people than to publish the Boyle report? Is it to be published during the recess?
Mr. Skinner Mr. Skinner indicated dissent.
Mr. Lewis: My hon. Friend shakes his head. If he has knowledge of the matter I readily give way.
Mr. Skinner: I can hardly imagine that the Government will announce the Boyle recommendations and state their view on the report until the railway dispute has been settled. In the light of that report, they would not expect the railwaymen to reach a conclusion in the Government's favour, so I am sure they will hold it back for some time.
Mr. Lewis: I had not given that a thought. My hon. Friend is much brighter on these things than I am. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend could be wrong. The Government forced the ballot on the railwaymen, and they may, after being wrong so often during the last two years, be right in thinking that the railway workers will support their approach.
Mr. Skinner: No.
Mr. Lewis: Who knows? Perhaps the overwhelming majority of the poor railway workers will vote in support of the Government's approach, whereupon the Government will loudly proclaim that the railwaymen have voted to have £20 a week with the strings attached, and then announce that they will give the chairman of the board £80 a week extra. But we are in the realm of hypothesis; we are guessing. All we know is that the Government have had the Boyle Report for seven or eight weeks now. I have put Questions almost every day to the Prime Minister asking whether he will publish it. Perhaps my hon. Friend is right in thinking that the Government will not publish it for fear of the reaction of railway workers.
I have given many good reasons why the House should not adjourn tomorrow or should come back earlier than is proposed in the Motion. I have had to cut my remarks short, because time did not permit me to go into all the other important matters which should be raised, but I have said enough to make the case clear.
5.54 p.m.
Mr. A. E. Cooper: After that bout of verbal diarrhoea, I do not know what one can say. For sheer hypocrisy it is probably unmatched. One can go downstairs now and see the suitcases of hon. Members opposite ready for them to take away. They are quite happy to go off for their holidays, and we know very well that they would be seriously inconvenienced if the Motion were not passed.
I may be old-fashioned in these matters, but I thought that we were discussing the simple proposition that we should go away for four days—that is what it amounts to—from Whit Monday until the following Monday. Listening to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis), one would think that we were going away for a year and that nothing else would happen.
We had a speech from the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) which suggested that if the House sat for four days next week the problem of Ulster could be settled. What rubbish! The presence of Members in this place for four days would not settle the problem of Northern Ireland, or any of the other major problems facing the country today.
We had a fairly hard time over the winter, with some very late nights, and it would do no harm for the House to have three or four days rest. This is what happens in business.
Mr. Skinner: Not on the railways. What about the railwaymen having a week off?
Mr. Cooper: The idea of every company at this time of the year sitting down to decide whether it should have two or three days' holiday, with all sorts of reasons for and against, is ridiculous. The House of Commons is entitled to have three or four days' holiday. Ministers are entitled to have a few days away from the hurly-burly of this place so that they can get to their desks. I say that not because I support the present Government but because I know that the same must apply to every Government in office, Labour or Conservative. There must be a period of refreshment for Ministers at various times throughout the year so that they may, as it were, recharge their batteries ready for the next sitting.

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The only reason why I go some way in support of the hon. Member for West Ham, North is that I have some concern about the Summer Recess, and I have a suggestion to put to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. We still have a great deal to do this Session, and there is almost the certainty that the long recess, as it is usually called, will in the event be short. I suggest that it could conceivably be better, and it would have the support of the House, if the Whitsun Recess were eliminated altogether and we could be sure that the Summer Recess would be—I do not say of the normal length in past years—somewhat better than many of us suppose it may well be.
We have not had exactly a rough time over the last few months, but there has been a severe strain on most hon. Members. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), whose attendance throughout has been assiduous. He has done a tremendous job for the Labour Party during these past months, and I pay him ungrudging tribute for it. He, like many others, is entitled to a few days' rest, and I do not believe that four days is too much.
Mr. Skinner: What about the railwaymen?
Mr. Cooper: Why does the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) keep trotting out remarks about the railwaymen? They have been going slow, on strike and all the rest for weeks and weeks. What is he talking about?
Mr. Skinner: Get the facts right.
Mr. Cooper: The hon. Member for West Ham North trots out his class prejudice about an £80-a-week rise for the Chairman of the Railways Board. He does not tell the House how much Richard Marsh will have to pay in tax if he gets the rise. These things are never talked about. All hon. Members opposite talk about, in their attitude of prejudice, malice and envy, are gross figures. Remember that Richard Marsh was a member of the Labour Party.
Mr. Skinner: That is not my fault.
Mr. Cooper: Everybody has a cross to bear and Richard Marsh has the hon. Member for Bolsover to bear. If Richard Marsh gets £400 gross, he will be lucky
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to take home an extra £15 a week net. With all this talk about a £80 a week rise, I would ask whether you really know anything about it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. I am not supposed to know anything about these things.
Mr. Cooper: I apologise to you. Sir Robert. The hon. Gentleman knows that I am speaking the truth. The amount of tax and surtax taken from the chairmen of nationalised boards is enormous, and the final take-home figure amounts to only a meagre sum. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bolsover always talks about the railwaymen There are two factors about which he never tells the country. First, there is the value to each railwayman of his travel concessions. Secondly, there is the fact that many thousands of railwaymen live in very heavily subsidised houses. Those facts are never mentioned by Labour Members.
Mr. Skinner: What about your travel concessions?
Mr. Cooper: I get none whatever. I am willing that the hon. Gentleman should examine my finances, but I assure him that I receive no concessions.
The hon. Member for West Ham, North mentioned the housing problem in his constituency. He has had a Socialist council in West Ham for more years than I can remember. Therefore, if he still has a housing problem it is a sad reflection on the policy of the Socialist Party in that town.
Mr. Arthur Lewis: I know the hon. Gentleman will be fair. He knows that West Ham lost over a third of its accommodation in the war and the remaining two-thirds were blitzed, blasted and bombed. This created an enormous problem. Since then successive Governments have made it difficult in terms of economic pressures which have adversely affected the situation.
Mr. Cooper: I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the war finished quite a long time ago. I would also remind him that Ilford, South suffered no fewer than 42 V2s, which was the highest figure reached in the country, apart from in Croydon. We have managed to put the situation right since that time. Of course we have a housing problem, and indeed

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every town has its difficulties, but we have not a problem such as faces West Ham, which has had a Socialist Council for as long as I can remember. I do not know how to deal with the situation.
I conclude by saying that if the Summer Recess could be made longer I should be happy to do away with the Whitsun Recess.
6.5 p.m.
Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: I disagree with the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) first for chastising my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) for indulging in a legitimate practice on these occasions, and, secondly, for suggesting that the Whitsun Recess should be abolished. I disagree with him on medical grounds. It is wise after parliamentary spells of 10 weeks or so for us all to spend some time at home and take the opportunity to see our constituents even if the break is only as little as four days.
I do not quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House about the length of the Whitsun Recess even though it is rather short. Unfortunately, however, there is a great deal we can do in our constituencies which we are prevented from doing because we have to spend so much time on the business of the House.
I am not on this occasion seeking to raise a constituency matter. I hope that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will consent to receiving a deputation from my constituency in the Whitsun Recess so that my constituency matters, and. in particular, unemployment, can be raised with him directly. I am seeking to take part in this debate because of the appalling answer which I was given this afternoon by the Leader of the House. I would not detain the House at all if it were not for that terrible answer.
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a fair and reasonable man but I feel that he may have got a little lost in the great brief which he carries. He has obviously forgotten the procession of events concerning our requests over the past year or so for a debate on local government reform in Scotland. There was a two-day debate on the reform proposals for English local government, with a White Paper and subsequent ministerial state-
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ments. But we Scots who are one year in the political reform calendar behind English Members have not even debated our White Paper. Yet the legislation is due this year. Both the present Leader of the House and his predecessor the Member for Penrith and the Borders (Mr. Whitelaw) have constantly dodged this matter.
In the summer of last year when a White Paper was published following the Wheatley proposals—the Scottish equivalent of Redcliffe-Maud—we had Government statements on housing finance. We heard the remarkable statement that housing finance legislation would take precedence over local government reform, and this is now a reality. We asked, therefore, last July for a debate on housing finance in the Scottish Grand Committee and we were given it. The Scottish Office Ministers would have preferred us to discuss the reform of local government but we prevailed on them to debate housing finance instead. However that decision has been used by the former Leader of the House as a reason for saying that we did not want to debate the matter at a time suitable to the Government. This, quite frankly, is a frivolous argument to put forward.
The Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Bill has still to go through its Report stage. It was obvious in July of last year that we would have to have a full debate; we were told in October, 1971, that it would be considered in the new Session of Parliament. We were then in November told that it would be considered some time before Christmas. Then we had a statement by the Secretary of State for Scotland on 22nd December which substantially amended what he had said in the White Paper. We at once requested a debate and were told that we might have a debate in the Scottish Grand Committee. This is not good enough. Our Scottish Grand Committee and the various Select Committees have been in almost permanent session on legislation since January of this year. We cannot accept that we should not be allowed the opportunity of a debate on the Floor of the House. The reason for our preferring the Floor of the House is that more Scottish Members can have the opportunity to speak, even though in the Grand Committee we tend to ration ourselves in time.

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I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look at his notes again and consider all the references in HANSARD to this subject over the past year or so. Will he also turn up the letter from his predecessor to my hon. Friend for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Buchanan), the Secretary of the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Group, saying that he would favourably consider finding a suitable day on the Floor of the House? I hope that he will now assent to the modest proposition I made at business question time that he would find one day for the debate before the end of July.
Perhaps one is not aggressive enough in Parliament. Perhaps that is why we do not get our requests met. If I had demanded a day during the first week after the recess I might have got a positive answer, but I asked, quite reasonably, for a day before the end of July. What could have been more reasonable than that? Like all Leaders of the House, the right hon. Gentleman at this time of the year is in difficulties in finding parliamentary time, but I repeat that the Scots are entitled to a day on the Floor of the House to debate the White Paper on the reform of their local government. If the English, quite properly, got two days, we are entitled to at least one day.
This is a very important issue in Scotland. On many matters in the White Paper the Secretary of State has, perhaps legitimately—we do not know—changed his mind. Daily, councillors, local authority personnel and others come to Members of Parliament both here and in Scotland to put their views. There is also the parliamentary aspect. The reform of local government inevitably has consequences on parliamentary boundaries, and it is a piece of impertinence by the Government that in all this time they have never sought the opinions of hon. Members on what is happening.
Yet, inexorably, the machine preparing the Bill is going on in the Scottish Office for its presentation in November. Are Ministers aware what hon. Members think? Not at all. This is not a party matter in the narrow sense but a House of Commons matter. The right hon. Gentleman is our titular protector, and I hope that he will take what I have said very seriously. I do not want to impede the progress of business, but to a request for a day before the end of July the
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answer can be only "Yes" or "No". I hope that it will be "Yes". In all fairness, it must be.
6.12 p.m.
Mr. John Wilkinson: I shall not keep the House long, as we have other important business to discuss, but, like the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), I have great anxieties about our adjourning for the Spring Bank Holiday Recess at this critical time. Had there been adequate opportunity for debating Ulster affairs since the imposition of direct rule, and were there a resident Parliament and Government in the Province, it would be very different. We could then perhaps turn our backs on its problems without such apprehensions.
In the debate on the Third Reading of the Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act, I said that the successful pursuit of anti-terrorist measures depended upon the support of the majority. I feel that this support is ebbing away fast, if it has not entirely been dissipated. I should like to know, as would the law-abiding majority in Ulster, what exactly the policy of the Government on Northern Ireland is. I felt at the time of the passing of the Act, and feel now, that this Measure was a complete leap in the dark. The constitutional objectives of the Government have in no way been clarified since that date.
Nor have they been clarified by today's announcement of the formation of an advisory Commission without even declaring simultaneously the composition of its membership. Indeed, by comparison the constitutional arrangements of the last days of the British Raj look a model of representative democracy to me. It is this political vacuum and the improvised machinery of Government which have exacerbated the fears of law-abiding citizens, who are already deeply aroused by the inability of the security forces not just to protect satisfactorily peace-loving people in the IRA-dominated enclaves but also to protect British citizens in those areas of Belfast which prize most highly the United Kingdom connection, and are the loyalist to the British Crown.
I hope that my right hon. Friend can assure me, before the Motion is put, that he will present to the Secretary of State

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for Northern Ireland the view of many of us who wish the Secretary of State well that he should review his policy constantly. There is not only one course possible for Ulster affairs. If the situation deteriorates further, a low profile approach to security pursued too long could lead to the point of no return being passed, beyond which that very bloodshed and those casualties which, by so-called "over-reaction" to terrorism the Secretary of State so understandably very much wishes to avoid, might very well ensue.
Before we decide upon the Motion, I should like to know how normality is to be restored to Ulster, not just politically but in law enforcement also. While the Secretary of State expresses cautious optimism about developments in Northern Ireland, he has still said nothing about how security in the Province is to be made less dependent upon the Regular Forces of the Crown. Any successful pacification programme in a counterinsurgency campaign must be constantly orientated to the future and place increasing reliance on locally recruited law enforcement agencies, both police and military. This has not been the case in Ulster.
I must express considerable anxiety about rising for the Spring Bank Holiday Recess at this critical moment in Ulster's destiny. We cannot afford to leave it just to Father O'Neill of Londonderry Cathedral to expose the true nature of the IRA without practical political support, and assistance from the forces of impartial law enforcement. The threat of those IRA men whom Father O'Neill condemns is not just confined to Ireland, North and South; their methods are increasingly widespread in the Western world. It is a threat which cannot just be wished away.
Before we rise for the Recess, I hope that my right hon. Friend can assure me that the Secretary of State will be prepared to use, if necessary, methods which, though temporarily unpleasant, may exorcise the menace of terrorism and get the IRA gunmen off the backs of those who have in recent days so bravely spoken out for peace.
6.18 p.m.
Mr. Dick Douglas: I apologise to the hon.
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Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Wilkinson) for not following him in his speech. If I thought the problems of Ulster could be solved by keeping the House in Session, I should be opposed to its rising for the Recess. I was sorry to hear in the Secretary of State's statement today that Mr. Faulkner, the former Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, is ill. We all hope that he will be quickly restored to health, as we hope that the political health of the Province will be quickly restored.
I want to reinforce the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Mabon), who objected very strongly to the answer he got from the Leader of the House during business question time about a debate on the White Paper on the reform of local government in Scotland. Since I became a Member of this House in June, 1970, we have been appraised of the fact that local Government reform in Scotland has been taken on board by the Government. We have had the White Paper and the promise of an opportunity, with no fixed date, to debate this very important matter. When I return to my constituency during this Recess, I shall be meeting convenors of county councils and many county councillors, who will be asking me pertinent questions about the functions of the proposed new regional and district authorities. I shall be discussing with them the boundaries that might ensue from the subsequent reform of electoral divisions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock said, this does not affect only the local authorities; it affects all 71 Scottish Members. It is important that, at an early date, we should have an opportunity of discussing this matter in the House.
We have already met, within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster, deputations from Scotland expressing disquiet at the way in which boundaries have been drawn, wanting to discuss particular functions of the new local authorities. They are pressing us to get some clarification from the Government about their intentions and at least to get a debate on the White Paper. I speak for two county councils who will be within the central region if the proposals are implemented and the convenors of these councils are pressing me to get a great deal more clarification, particularly on the boundaries.

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I have to tell them that while they may have entered into correspondence, may have discussed the new boundaries, functions and reorganisation with people in St. Andrew's House, I have not had the opportunity of putting these points in Parliament. They are appalled at this, they find it unbelievable. Time after time we have put questions to the Leader of the House and his predecessor and have been fobbed off with promises that we may get a debate in the House in the near future.
My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock put very forcibly the point that the time has come for a clear and firm undertaking from the Government that this White Paper will be debated. It is not part of the democratic process for the administrative procedures reorganising Scottish local government to be going on behind the scenes, for boundaries to be drawn, functions re-aligned, the Staff Commission working away, when this House has not had the opportunity of a debate. I ask the Leader of the House to give a clear and firm indication that before the Summer Recess we shall have an opportunity of discussing this urgent and important matter on the Floor of the House.
6.23 p.m.
Rev. Ian Paisley: In reply to the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) may I say that although I agree that the problems of Northern Ireland will not be solved in four days, this House nevertheless has a solemn responsibility in that it voted to take away the Northern Ireland Parliament and by doing so assumed parliamentary responsibility for the Province. This House therefore has a double responsibility laid upon it to consider matters relevant to the present position.
It is all very well for hon. Members to say that four days will not solve anything, but in those four days there could be happenings in Northern Ireland which we should want—and we have the right —to raise urgently on the Floor of the House. I find myself in agreement with what was said by the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. McMaster), that these matters need to be fully ventilated on the Floor. For four days probably—we hope not—there could be an escalation of violence, there could be a most serious situation. There could be an intensifica-
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tion of a campaign that would bring the Province of Northern Ireland almost to a state of civil war. I hope that hon. Members are aware of the tense situation there.
It is only right that representatives from that part of the United Kingdom should continually bring to the attention of this House the seriousness of the problem with which we are confronted. I will not weary the House with a catalogue of some of the matters that cause grave and great concern to all who are interested in peace, progress and prosperity being restored to the Province. I underline the nature of the present situation, its seriousness and what might happen in the coming days. I trust that the House, when it returns, will keep the matter of Northern Ireland before it and will be prepared to give adequate time within the parliamentary machinery for Northern Ireland Members to bring before it the problems that are causing terrifying concern in the hearts of the people of Northern Ireland.
I would like to press the Leader of the House on the matter of accountability. With the prorogation of Stormont the Public Accounts Committee of that Parliament also ceased its activities. This means that the various Departments of the Northern Ireland Administration are not now being scrutinised. This is serious. Government Departments spending large sums of money on various services are not now being scrutinised. I wonder what the Government have in mind about this. There will be an Order in Council presented after we return in which we shall be deciding on the Northern Ireland Finance Corporation which is to receive £50 million from this House to help restore and rehabilitate the Northern Ireland economy.
Written into that Order is the fact that the Comptroller and Auditor-General of Northern Ireland will have the responsibility for looking at the accounts of that Corporation. Will the Comptroller and Auditor-General of Northern Ireland report to this House now and will the Public Accounts Committee of this House have the opportunity of scrutinising these accounts? If this is so, would it not be right for Northern Ireland Members to have the opportunity of voicing their opinions either before that Committee or

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a sub-committee dealing with it? The question of public accountability cannot be shelved. It is an urgent matter about which the Government should have made some announcement before the Whitsun Recess.
One other matter relates to a private Bill which will be coming before the House, the United Reformed Church Bill. It has gone through a Committee of this House and in that Committee there was submitted as evidence a booklet called "The Joint Committee for Conversations Between the Congregational Church in England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England. The Scheme of Union". On page 8 of that booklet there is a passage which I feel is contempt of this House because it clearly says that the Bill will become law, that there will be no amendments. It does not say "perhaps" or "if". It does not say it may be accepted or rejected, it simply says that the Bill is to be passed. It says:
"The Bill will by then have received the Royal Assent."
I feel that the Leader of the House should look at this. What is the use of parliamentary machinery if people can say that a Bill will become law before it comes before this House? There are within it matters which hon. Members will want to debate when it reaches us. I will not go into them now but I call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to this. Since the Bill proposes to take away the property of the churches and to vest it in a central authority and to take away the local autonomy of many thousands of churches in this country, it is essential that it be given the closest possible parliamentary scrutiny.
6.30 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Latham: I wish to refer to two matters, one of which follows upon the remarks of the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) and underlines the point which I put to the Leader of the House at business question time today. It is regrettable that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) and I should be deprived even of a 10-minute opportunity to submit to the House a Bill dealing with civil rights in Northern Ireland and a Bill dealing with proportional representation.
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Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the proposals contained within the Bill concerning Northern Ireland, to some extent it would meet what was said by the hon. Member for Antrim, North if it were possible for a Committee of the House which was less divided on party lines to be given the opportunity to discuss in detail reforms in Northern Ireland. That would provide a much better opportunity for an exchange of views than is provided either by a short debate or by the statement and question procedure.
Although the Leader of the House said that the loss of rights under Standing Order No. 13 is not unprecedented, a situation in which so many days remaining in a Session are allotted to guillotined business is unprecedented. The erosion of back benchers' rights is therefore on a scale never previously experienced. Again I appeal to the Leader of the House to provide an opportunity for a vote on that matter.
The second matter with which I want to deal is the fact that the House should go into Recess without hearing a statement either by the Secretary of State for the Environment or by the Minister for Housing and Construction of the Government's intentions about the implementation of the Housing (Finance) Bill. It is particularly pertinent to raise this matter on the Motion to adjourn for the Recess because during the coming week and after there will be many conferences of local authority representatives to determine their attitude to the legislation. Although there may be differences of view about the propriety of considering the non-implementation of a Stautue, that is one matter which the local authorities will be considering. The discussions will go on against a background of confusion which it seems that the Ministers responsible have deliberately created. When local authorities meet to deliberate whether to implement the legislation or how to implement it, they will not be clear precisely what the Government expect them to implement.
Over the past several weeks my hon. Friends and I have submitted Questions to the Department of the Environment seeking clarfication of the Government's intended interpretation of Clause 50 of the Housing (Finance) Bill and of their

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reaction to the informal proposal submitted by the Director of Housing in Birmingham for the Minister to exercise his powers under Clause 63(4) of the Bill.
The sad fact is that the Department of the Environment has earned a reputation for giving the least informative and almost evasive answers to Questions of any Department of State. Answers given on the Housing (Finance) Bill are a classic example of the complete dodging of any commitment as to the meaning of Clause 50 or the way in which Clause 63(4) is to be applied. Much to my surprise, I received one straight answer to a series of Questions on the subject. The explanation might appear to be found at the top of the sheet which contains the Questions put by myself and the answer given by the Minister which is headed:
"Mr. Arthur Latham (Con.—Paddington, North)"
That is the only answer that carried that mistake and it is the only one that has produced any information from the Department. The latter part of the answer reads:
"If the rent of a dwelling resulting from an increase towards fair rents to which a direction under Clause 63(4) applies is less than the fair rent as subsequently determined, the dwelling is a qualifying dwelling for the purpose of subsequent increases towards fair rents in accordance with Clause 65."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd May, 1972; Vol. 837, c. 353.]
That at least was a straightforward answer and it confirmed what most of us believed, that even if the Minister exercised his powers under Clause 63(4) and acknowledged a local authority's submission that the increases proposed were likely to result in rents which were higher than the fair rent level, if subsequently the rent scrutiny board fixed a fair rent at a higher level the increases would have to be paid by the tenants.
It is extremely important that local authorities should understand what is required of them by the Government. Those who want to ameliorate the effects of the Bill should be clear about what they are ameliorating. Those who choose not to implement parts of the legislation should be clear as to the penalties involved and which actions are in conformity with the spirit and intention of the Government in promoting the Bill.
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I underline the point by mentioning the criteria which have been applied in the submission by the Birmingham Corporation to the Minister to exercise his powers to exempt the Corporation from imposing the increases under the Bill. Birmingham has had regard to the general level of wages in the area. That, we understood, in 57 meetings of the Committee, was not a factor expected to he taken into account by the local authority. In that submission from Birmingham regard has also been had to avoiding a situation in which the majority of tenants become eligible for rebates. That again is a point which we consistently raised in 57 sittings of the Committee, being at all times assured by the Government spokesman that this factor was not to be taken into account in determining the so-called fair rents.
Further, Birmingham has had regard to the absence of sufficient registrations of comparable properties in the private sector of housing and has applied its own interpretation to the requirement to have regard to the investment value of a property. Never in Committee or subsequently has any guidance been offered on whether an investment value is to relate to present-day prices or is to be based upon the original cost of building with allowance made for inflation and other costs meanwhile. Birmingham has also disregarded a relationship between its fair rent assessments and gross values, and has even added a sixth principle to the effect that the majority of people living in flats would rather live in houses. Therefore, if there were a situation in which supply and demand were in balance, the rents of flats would be at a much lower rental.
It is vitally important that all local authorities should know whether these criteria are acceptable to the Government. It seems perfectly clear by any lawyers' or commonsense interpretation —one hopes that the two will most times be the same—that the criteria which Birmingham have included in its submission are contrary to the provisions of Clause 50 of the Bill. But whenever my hon. Friends and I have asked questions we have received non-answers from the Department. I see sitting opposite the hon. Member for Paddington, South (Mr. Scott). The lion. Gentleman will

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take the point, regardless of our arguments about the merits or otherwise of the Bill, that it is criminal that the Government will not have the honesty and straightforwardness to tell the local authorities who will be charged with implementation precisely what they are intending to do.
The Birmingham assessment results in an average increase of about 35 pence a week. Other local authorities are desperately anxious to know whether similar submissions based on the same criteria by themselves are likely to be approved by the Secretary of State. I submit that he has a duty to tell this House and the country, the tenants and the local authorities, at the earliest possible moment whether these criteria are acceptable to him.
The Secretary of State has tried a further device to dodge the answer by suggesting that the correspondence between his Department and Birmingham is a private matter having no important implications and repercussions for other local authorities. I have tabled today, in a final effort before we go into Recess, a further Question which I hope and pray will produce some elucidation. I am equally intrigued to find how the Department of the Environment dodges this one. The Question, to which I have not so far received an answer, is to ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether it is the intention of the Government that rents determined by rent scrutiny boards under the Bill shall correspond to registered fair rents for comparable dwellings in the private sector, and whether it will be open to private tenants to object to the rents determined for their dwellings on the ground that comparable rents for council dwellings are lower and vice versa.
That is the acid test. It was argued originally in the White Paper, and I quote from page 8 of the so-called Fair Deal for Housing:
"The Government proposes to apply the principle of fair rents to local authority dwellings. These rents will be subject to the same broad criteria as the rents of private unfurnished dwellings. In consequence the two main sectors of the market for rented housing will, for the first time, be goverend by one common equitable principle—fair rents for all."
If that still holds and that is still Government policy, that is the intention of
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Clause 50 and the then Minister for Housing and Construction was totally dishonest in making even a passing reference to the Birmingham figures at the Third Reading debate. If that is not the case it means that the Government intend to depart substantially from the principles described in their own White Paper and what we were told were the policies and programmes of the Government in Committee on the Housing Finance Bill.
The Government should make up their mind whether they will back track or whether the application by Birmingham three days before the municipal elections was simply a propaganda exercise on which the Government intend to renege at the earliest possible opportunity. Either the Birmingham criteria are right and the Bill is being substantially modified, or the Birmingham criteria are not applicable. The Government have an obligation in all honesty to meet the local authorities who will be charged with the difficult task of trying to implement this complex legislation and to make their position clear before the House goes into Recess.
6.45 p.m.
Mr. Kenneth Lewis: I had not wanted to intervene in the debate and I do so exceedingly briefly. My intervention arises out of what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) concerning the United Reform Church. The United Reform Church is the proposed amalgamation between the Presbyterian and Congregational churches in England and Wales. The matter was considered yesterday in a private Bill in Committee.
I thought my hon. Friend slightly misled the House in suggesting that there will be something rather undemocratic in this amalgamation. The Congregational Church voted on this matter and those churches that are joining voted by 75 per cent. so to do. Those who decided not to join are standing out.
There was some discussion in Committee about whether the right should be given to any Congregational church to opt out once having come into the scheme. Counsel for the promoters of the Bill decided that without writing it into the Bill they would give an undertaking

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that any church which in due course felt impelled to come out, once it went through the normal stages of the Presbyterian Assembly, would be given the right to do so.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Has this Committee reported to the House?
Mr. Lewis: No, Sir.
Mr. Speaker: Then the hon. Member is not in Order.
Mr. Lewis: I will not continue with the proceedings of the Committee. I will simply say that the Bill will in due course come before the House. I hope that it will be reasonably facilitated. We felt yesterday that we had got all the undertakings required.
Rev. Ian Paisley: The point I made was not the content of the Bill, on which I said I would comment when it came properly before the House, but a matter to which my hon. Friend has not referred. My hon. Friend has accused me of slightly misleading the House, which I had no intention of doing. The point I made was that evidence was laid before the Committee and that there was a statement which in my opinion was a breach of privilege.
6.48 p.m.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: Although I was present in the earlier part of the debate may I apologise to the House for my absence during part of it. My absence was not through any intended discourtesy but because I was called away for a time on another matter.
I have been extremely anxious to speak in this debate because there are urgent and compelling reasons why, before the House goes up for the Whitsun Recess. the Government should take certain specific actions on the urgent problems affecting Manchester and, in particular, my own constituency.
I am pleased that we have the right hon. Gentleman as Leader of the House because before he took up this position he was secretary of State for Employment. Therefore, he will be seized of the particular and urgent problems which should have action taken upon them before the House rises for the recess.
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It is not realised, because of the long and proud record of the city of Manchester, what a serious situation that city now faces, and the comprehensive measures which are needed to cure it. In June, 1970, when the right hon. Gentleman took up his appointment as Secretary of State for Employment, Manchester's unemployment rate was 2·2 per cent. compared with the national level of 2·4 percent. That is 8 per cent. below the national average. It is now 4·4 per cent. compared with the national average of 3·8 per cent. That is 16 per cent. above the national average. During that period, unemployment in Manchester has more than doubled and vacancies have halved. Whereas in June, 1970, one breadwinner in 30 was out of work in Manchester, there is now one breadwinner in 15 out of work. Whereas in June, 1970, there were five breadwinners chasing every vacant job, there are now 22 breadwinners chasing every vacant job in Manchester.
There is an alarming level of unemployment among school leavers and among university graduates unemployment is now 8·5 per cent. compared with 5·5 per cent at the end of 1970.
There is a terrifying current of redundancies sweeping the jobless along. In the past two years in Manchester there have been 21,880 redundancies, and of these 8,750 have taken place in the past four months alone, so the speed of the current is accelerating.
To counter this trend the number of new manufacturing jobs which have been created as a result of industrial development certificates allotted has been only 2,830 and, in the past four months, only 859. So this year only one new job has been created to match every 10 redundancies which have taken place.
One of the urgent reasons for my regarding it as so pressing that action should be taken before the House agrees to the Motion is the state of affairs at the Avon Moseley Rubber Works, which is literally across the road from my constituency, and in which many of my constituents have worked. This works has been closed down, and 468 workers have had their employment terminated. The Department of Employment has made 640 submissions, but has found only 161 places. At this time, 85 workers in that establishment are registered as unemployed.

1695
It is true that against this background, having pressed continually for intermediate status for Manchester, we have achieved it. We welcome that, but I submit that in the present desperate situation it is far from enough. Since the designation of Manchester as part of the North-Western intermediate area, more than two months ago, there have been only nine inquiries for sites or premises, and there is no guarantee of a single job arising from those inquiries or from our intermediate area status.
In the light of this bleak situation, I believe that Manchester has the right to ask for more aid. Indeed, we unhesitatingly demand it. I demand it now, and demand a response before the House agrees to the Motion.
The aid for which we ask is highlighted in two authoritative statements. The first is from the North West Industrial Development Association which, talking about the incentives in the Government's White Paper and, indeed, in the Industry Bill, said:
"A serious omission in the new package of incentives…appears to be the lack of any Government initiative at this stage to attract office projects to the North West.…any realistic and effective policy for achieving a better regional balance of job opportunities must include strong measures to discourage further expansion of office employment in the South together with strong incentives to encourage office development in areas such as the North West."
The Manchester Evening News, in a leading article on 12th May, commenting on the same incentives, said:
"But there may be a flaw in the very foundations of the policy. The incentives now being offered…benefit most the highly capitalised manufacturing industries. They will not necessarily create jobs.
The traditional manufacturing industries of the regions, which have now run down, were the great users of labour. The new ones are not. It is clear in America and other highly industrialised countries that employment growth is now in service industries rather than in manufacture."
That authoritative leading article concluded:
"Service industries, moreover, can do a great deal to improve the social infrastructure of the regions, making life in old industrial areas like Greater Manchester more pleasant and therefore more attractive to people thinking of setting up factories here. They are not soft options or lazy alternatives to the man's work of coal, steel, and cotton. They are the future."
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So I ask the Leader of the House, the former Secretary of State for Employment, in winding up, to make a positive response to these heartfelt pleas for incentives to office and other service developments in Manchester.
As part of the plea I am making at this urgent time, I submit that Manchester must also have a lively and expanding manufacturing sector. At present, two major sources of employment, with thousands of jobs at stake, are under sentence of death. I refer to the British Steel Corporation works at Irlam and Churchill Machine Tools at Altrincham. The Whitsun Recess is a crucial period, because June is the crunch month for both these establishments. It is the month which will decide whether they go ahead or whether thousands of jobs are to be lost. We can save them through the Industry Bill, which the House debated on Monday, on which it is possible for the right hon. Gentleman to make an encouraging statement tonight.
We have the right to demand the response for which we ask. I ask the Minister to make a positive statement tonight that the Government will use their powers under Clause 7 of the Industry Bill to save Churchill Machine Tools and BSC, Irlam, from closing down. Both of these actions arc possible as the Government are being given the necessary powers. I ask the Minister, in winding up, to give a specific and unambiguous promise on this matter. It is vital to save these industries, but it is even more vital that we should have expansion in our area. More incentives are needed. I ask the Leader of the House to appeal to his right hon. Friend the Minister for Industrial Development to extend the machinery and plant grants in Clause 1 of the Industry Bill to the intermediate areas—at half rate so that the differential can be maintained with the development areas—so that Manchester can have them.
All these needs are vital. Even so, they are only patchwork at best. Manchester is too important to be content with patchwork measures. The Local Government Bill, which we shall be debating when we return, recognises that Manchester is the most important metropolitan area outside London. It must be developed on a scale matching its importance. Therefore, I ask the Minister to say that the Government will agree

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to my plea, and that the Departments of the Environment and of Trade and Industry will draw up a comprehensive plan for Manchester. I ask them urgently to launch a survey in depth of the new greater Manchester metropolitan area taking into account the skills of its people, land availability, the markets for its products and services, an industrial census, a survey of communications, of population trends, of educational potential, of amenities and of the mass communications media.
I ask the Minister to respond by saying that, on the basis of this survey, the Government, in consultation with the local representatives of Manchester, will draw up a balanced plan for the metropolitan area's development as an employment centre—a plan which the Industry Bill, which the House has approved, can help to finance.
If the Government allow Manchester to slide into an irreversible decline—and the danger of that exists—they will commit a crime against a centre which has made a major contribution to Britain's achievements in the past and which is equipped to make an even greater contribution in the future. This great city must grow again. We must plan to bring that about, and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to respond in that spirit when he winds up the debate.
7.0 p.m.
Mr. James Molyneaux: Northern Ireland Members naturally feel that the recess has come at a critical period for the people of Northern Ireland, when there is so much confused thinking on the success or otherwise of the so-called initiative. Quite clearly the initiative has failed, at any rate in its first objective which was to stop the violence, and when people talk about working for a period of 12 months towards a solution they completely ignore the fact that it was never intended that this discussion should take place against a background of gunfire and explosions. It is rather like arguing that one can put a satellite into orbit after the first stage of the rocket has failed to ignite.
There was a general belief that the shock of direct rule would somehow cause a ceasefire, at least for a temporary period. In fairness it must be said that the Government and, for that matter, the Opposition, too, were led astray by
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the advocates of the initiative to believe that violence would stop if only Stormont were suspended and certain other demands were met. But those who made such promises knew that they could not be kept. In plain terms, they did not and could not deliver the goods, and it must be a further disappointment to the Government that some people, even hon. Members of this House, have made little in the way of subsequent contributions.
Nor is this surprising, for what had the IRA to gain from a ceasefire? It would inevitably have resulted in the transfer of real power from the IRA command to those who, in many cases, had ridden to power on the backs of the terrorists. Nor was it reasonable to expect the terrorists who had gained their objectives by violence to retire from the stage and become forgotten and unknown men.
To me the urgency of the moment is not the "no-go" areas. Despite the helpful happenings over the last few days, it is difficult to see how the inhabitants of those areas can free themselves from the domination of the IRA, a domination which results from consolidation over a period of three years, without at least some help, and not merely encouragement from outside.
I believe that the matter which should be treated with real urgency is the containment of further extension of terrorist control. In the past few weeks the gunmen have reached out to what were hitherto peaceful areas and brought death and destruction to many innocent people, including one in my constituency. In the same period, by well-designed and well-intentioned regulations, law-abiding, decent, ordinary citizens have been prevented from parking their cars even in their own villages when they go on a shopping expedition. They are in the ludicrous position of having to park their cars in a country road, trudge into the village and trudge out again with their purchases, simply because the IRA have dictated the pace all over Northern Ireland, and not just in the danger areas.
I end with a personal experience which perhaps illustrates to right hon. and hon. Members what it is like to he a Member for a Northern Ireland constituency. Three weeks ago I had occasion to visit two old-age pensioners, constituents of

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mine, who live in the IRA-dominated area of Anderson's Town. Shortly after I had gone into their house there was a knock at the door and on looking through the window I saw two chaps in combat jackets and wearing IRA berets. I naturally thought that I was the attraction. The lady of the house went to the door and on returning said to her husband, "John, it is the collectors. What are we going to do?", to which he replied, "Mary, I do not think that you will get away with anything less than a pound" and the pathetic old lady had to bring out her purse, take out a pound note and give it to these rascals who then moved on to the remaining houses in the street. I naturally reported this to various authorities, but they asked, "What do you expect us to do? We cannot go in and live there". I hope that that will be accepted as an accurate and first-hand illustration of what life is like in these areas.
It is against that background that I ask the House to keep us very much in mind and in its prayers during the coming recess.
7.5 p.m.
Mr. Michael Foot: I shall not detain the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House or the House for more than one or two minutes, not because there is not plenty to say, but because it is perhaps the least effective time to say it, and so I shall not say it.
Everyone knows that the Government's legislative programme is in a hopeless tangle. Nobody knows it better than the right hon. Gentleman, and it would be almost parliamentary sadism to pursue that aspect of the matter further. But that is the reason why some of my hon. Friends from Scotland have had to plead for a proper debate on the local government matters which they wish to discuss. Many other matters which have been raised fall into that category, but they are prevented from being discussed because of the Measures which the Government are seeking to push through the House under the guillotine.
I do not wish to pursue the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) at the beginning of the debate, but that is not because I do not think they are
1700
important. They are. We do not accept the statement by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that these documents are not documents presented to Parliament and therefore the criticisms which we have made of them are not apposite. When the House returns from the Recess we shall seek to return to this question because it raises important constitutional issues.
The matters concerning Ireland have been the most prominent matters discussed in this debate, and I do not believe that anyone would be critical of hon. Members, and particularly those who represent Irish constituencies, for raising them today. I think that they have every right to do so. Indeed, they have a duty to do so.
We heard the views of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). Perhaps one could say that the perversity of his opinions was matched only by the brilliance of his invective, but I am not sure which was the more effective. Perhaps one could apply that generally to every argument in almost equal proportions.
Those who spoke on Irish matters raised issues which are of supreme importance for the reputation of the House as well as for the wellbeing of the people in Ireland. Whatever differences of opinion there may be in the House, I say to the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) and others that we believe that they have every right to insist on full parliamentary rights to debate these matters in the House. The corollary of direct rule is that this House of Commons must provide time for their matters to be raised persistently. Indeed, because of the tragic nature of the events taking place in their constituencies they have a prior right to ensure that these questions are raised. I believe that that is the desire of the Government as a whole, and I think that the House has sought to provide time for these momentous matters to be discussed.
We are in general agreement with the initiative being attempted by the right hon. Gentleman in these matters. We believe that he is attempting to deal with them with courage. We wish him success in his operations, but we insist—and I believe he agrees with this—that he must be accountable to this House all the

1701
time, and the more we argue that power should be removed from Stormont the more necessary it becomes that the right of inquiry should exist in this House of Commons.
For the rest, it is to be hoped that we return after Whitsun refreshed to deal with some of the problems to which I have referred and many of the others which have been raised by hon. Members. This is one reason why I am in favour of our departure for a brief holiday at Whitsun. It was the greatest Irishman who ever lived, Jonathan Swift, who described the parliamentary Recess as "a lucid interval". The sooner we reach it the better.
7.10 p.m.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robert Carr): I will try not to delay the House from departing for a "lucid interval". However, I should get into trouble if, as Leader of the House, I did not deal, however briefly, with most, if not all, of the points that have been raised.
Since I first became an hon. Member of this House, some 22 years ago, it has been remarkable to me with what energy, indeed passion, some hon. Members apparently refuse to go on holiday. The hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) showed that passion, and at great length, today.
I wonder how many of his hon. Friends, and some of mine, would be here next week with him if, contrary to expectation, I were to seek leave to withdraw the Motion? Be that as it may, I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) that it might be a consideration whether we should give up the Whitsun Recess in order to rise a little earlier in the summer. However, I doubt whether that would happen.
It is the experience of hon. Members that there comes a time when to have a few days off—even at the loss of four days in terms of parliamentary business, as we shall lose next week—refreshes us —I was about to say cools us down—so that we return and get on with our business with more despatch and effectiveness.
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Perhaps it is up to the Leader of the House to repeat at reasonably frequent intervals something which many people may not realise, namely, that hon. Members are not necessarily on holiday when the House of Commons is in recess. Indeed, we should be much less good hon. Members—I was about to say "even" less good—if we spent all our time here and did not have a few weeks now and then in the year not only spending time with some leisure in our constituencies but getting about and seeing what is happening in the country, and perhaps abroad, on the major matters which come before us.
One such matter which the hon. Member for West Ham, North raised but which his hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) did not raise—at least, not on this occasion, but with ominous warnings of what may happen on some future occasion—was the availability and accuracy of documents concerning the EEC.
I do not intend to get involved in the great debate about this subject tonight. This is not the right moment to do that. I assure the House that we are making every effort to ensure that the texts which are published are of a high standard and come forward as quickly as possible. However, in a task of this size and complexity it is no good even a supporter of Common Market membership on either side denying the complexity, difficulty and enormous size of the task involved.
We are trying to produce these texts as quickly and accurately as possible but, as I say, it is an enormous task. It is regrettable if mistakes occur, but in a task of this scale perhaps some mistakes are inevitable. The hon. Member for West Ham, North makes a lot of the 144 pages of amendments to which he often refers. But, taken in comparison with the very large volume of material involved, as a percentage of that volume the number of errors is very small indeed.
Anyone who looks through the book of amendments to which the hon. Gentleman referred will realise that some of the corrections are of a highly technical nature. Indeed, when I looked at some of the pages of the booklet during this debate I realised that to understand such matters I would have to revive the knowledge of organic chemistry which I had many years ago at university. In many instances

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they are matters of great detail and complexity.
Mr. Arthur Lewis: Important matters, nevertheless.
Mr. Carr: I agree that they are important in detail, but the House will realise that such detailed technicalities exist in some of our own legislation and that errors cannot always be avoided there.
Nor is it fair to say that we always wish to debate, for example, the number of carbo atoms and the complex molecules of various compounds. I thought the hon. Gentleman made rather heavy weather of some of these technicalities, and I repeat that my hon. Friends are doing their best to ensure that these documents come forward as quickly and accurately as possible.
I assure the House also that there is no question of the Government intending deliberately to withhold material from the House. The Government have said that to be helpful to hon. Members they are willing to have information made available in advance of the official texts being printed. It is in an effort to help hon. Members who have sought such information that the Government are taking this course. This attempt to help hon. Members in advance of the universal availability of information should not be turned against the Government as some sort of crime. After all, to do so hardly encourages Ministers to be as helpful to hon. Members as they wish to be.
I come to a matter raised by the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon), the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) and referred to by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale; the question of local government reform in Scotland. I was asked particularly strongly by the hon. Member for Greenock to promise a day to debate this matter before the end of July. I regret that I cannot give such a definite promise.
The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale referred to the "tangled mess" in which the Government's legislative programme was situated. I admit that it is congested, but it is by no means tangled. The lines are clear, and they lead straight to the Summer Recess. I look back as a rela-
1704
tively new Leader of the House with horror and dismay at some of the tasks that faced some of my predecessors in office. I think, for example, of what faced the then Leader of the House in 1966 when hon. Gentlemen opposite were in power. Compared with that, my task is a relatively simple one. I concede, however, that there is congestion.
I understand the strong desire of hon. Members from Scotland to debate this matter and I wish that I could give the promise sought by the hon. Member for Greenock. I cannot, but I hope I shall succeed in what I regard as one of my first tasks as Leader of the House, which is not to promise what I cannot perform. I hope occasionally to perform what I have not promised. I certainly do not want to achieve the reverse.
Without casting any blame for the choice of subjects, I hope that hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies will agree that the Scottish Grand Committee is the forum in which these matters can be discussed. It was, after all, one of the reasons for establishing first the Scottish Grand Committee and then the Welsh Grand Committee that some of these matters for which it is difficult to find time on the Floor of the House—matters of immense importance to Scotland and Wales—could be discussed with greater freedom in their own special forum.
Although I wish I could give the promise for which the hon. Member for Greenock asked, I regret that I cannot do so. Nor would I wish to pretend that the outlook is very bright for such a day before the Summer Recess.
The hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham) raised two matters, and I will deal with one of them straight away. He asked for a statement from my right hon. Friend about the implementation of the Housing Finance Bill. The hon. Member raised a number of extremely important but also, as I am sure he would admit, very detailed and technical points to which a non-departmental Minister such as myself would not be expected to be able to reply in a substantial way. I will draw the attention of my right hon. Friend to what the hon. Gentleman has said. I know that my right hon. Friend is considering some of these matters, notably, for example, the proposals put to him by Birmingham, and

1705
has not yet made up his mind about them. I cannot accept the charges made by the hon. Gentleman against my right hon. Friend and his Department of dodging answers to the questions they have been asked. We have to bear in mind that this Bill is still a Bill. It is not yet an Act. It is still going through another place. For all we know, it might have to return to this House before finally becoming an Act. But I will draw my right hon. Friend's attention to what the hon. Gentleman has said.
I come now to a matter to which I did not expect to have to reply. I know that on these occasions Leaders of the House are expected to have a very clear crystal ball into which they can gaze and prepare themselves for answering questions on almost anything. But I did not expect to have to reply about the United Reformed Church Bill. I was relieved when my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) appeared and began to inform the House about this matter, only very properly to be called to order by yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the briefing of the Leader of the House being cut short in mid-stream. But I may say to my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) that this Private Bill is going through the proper Private Bill machinery as far as I know. I do not believe that there can be any question of contempt or a matter of privilege—if there were, it would not be for me to pronounce upon—but I will make some inquiries and brief myself about it to make myself better informed than I am at present.
I return to the point raised by the hon. Member for Paddington, North, a point which he has raised with me not only in the debate this evening but also at Business Question time for two weeks running, and by this Early Day Motion on the Order Paper, namely, the effect on the opportunity to hon. Members of introducing Ten-Minute Rule Bills on allocated days under timetable Motions. I am afraid that I must maintain the position I have stated in reply to Business Questions. I cannot suggest that the House should alter the existing timetable Motions under which it is working and which have been passed by the House. I repeat that as far as I know the effects that these Motions are having on such
1706
activities as Ten-Minute Rule Bills are not new. They are, I think, in line with past precedent. But perhaps I may underline a little more carefully than is possible in answering a Business Question the fact that as Leader of the House I shall particularly bear this point in mind if, alas, I should ever have to consider the drafting of timetable Motions in the future, because I doubt whether it is necessary to have this restriction. I should not like to be categorical about it, but I assure the hon. Member that if ever we have to draft any timetable Motions in the future I will take this point carefully into account and see whether we can avoid this unfortunate effect in the future.
Mr. Latham: I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that amplification of the assurance that I understood him to give at business question time. It is not at all a complicated matter; it is simply a matter of restoring our Ten-Minute Bill right, at present. I have put the point to the right hon. Gentleman that the volume of guillotine days occurring at present is unprecedented. In view of the kind way in which he is receiving representations, would it really be so difficult simply to allow time in the House to enable back benchers to pass the Motion which I have tabled?
Mr. Carr: The holiday mood tempts one to be kind to all, but I am sorry to tell the hon. Member that I must stick where I stand on this matter, and I cannot offer any chance of changing what we are doing at present. But I will try to see that the matter is considered on any future occasions.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) raised a number of points about the problems of the Manchester area. Of course unemployment in that area is higher than we ought to regard as acceptable for that area, just as it has been in almost every part of the country for some time past. I cannot make specific announcements about matters which are the responsibility of my colleagues in the Government—I am sure that the hon. Member knows that—least of all may I make specific statements about exactly how the powers will be used in relation to a Bill which received its Second Reading only a few

1707
days ago and is not yet an Act of Parliament. It would be improper as well as rather difficult for me to do so. But I am sure that my right lion. Friend the Minister responsible will take into account the matters raised by the hon. Gentleman.
When the hon. Gentleman talked about the problems of unemployment, I felt that he was rather short in having anything to say about how this situation has arisen. In Manchester, as throughout the country, there can be little doubt that the main cause of our present unemployment difficulties is the effect of five or six years of almost complete economic stagnation culminating in an unprecedented cost-inflationary explosion. That is undoubtedly the main cause. The main remedy is to achieve expansion. That is the key to the Government's economic strategy. That has been the purpose of the measures we have taken. Those measures are now beginning to have effect. Growth is beginning to come, and it is the Government's policy to maintain sustained growth. If we are successful in that, it is only within that context that not only unemployment in total but unemployment in particular areas can be solved. It is only in the context of economic expansion, to which the Government are committed, that the unprecedented incentives which we are giving to the special regions will fruitfully be able to take effect. So it is a combination of special incentives and overall sustained growth that is the remedy for the problems the hon. Gentleman raised about Manchester, and not only those of Manchester but those of the whole country.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman very strongly about the importance in this modern world of giving better treatment to service industries. As he will realise, that is why we have reversed the policy which the Labour Government used to pursue in these matters, notably by the abolition of selective employment tax.
I come lastly to a matter which I have deliberately left until last because it was, clearly, the most important subject which has arisen in the debate; that is, the subject of Northern Ireland. I think that five hon. Members spoke about this matter, and I am glad that of those five —and many more could have spoken—two of them—in other words, almost half
1708
—were hon. Members representing English constituencies. I am glad that it was not only hon. Members from Northern Ireland who were expressing concern. Indeed, I have got my arithmetic wrong. Six hon. Members mentioned this matter, including the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. So over half of the hon. Members who have stressed the vital importance of this subject do not represent a Northern Ireland constituency.
It is right that all parts of the House of Commons should make clear to the people in Northern Ireland their understanding of the tense, critical, tragic and highly dangerous situation which exists in that Province. On behalf of the Government, I say to them that we, of course, understand the concern with security, with the need for law and order, and with the need not just to condemn but as soon as possible to eradicate the murder and intimidation taking place there.
What we want to say also to those who are so worried about these matters is that, in our view, and in the view of the overwhelming majority in the House, it is necessary, if we are to see an end to this situation, that a policy of law, order and security, and its enforcement, should be combined now with political initiatives and new attempts at reconciliation between the different sections of the communities.
I know that the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) takes another view. [Interruption.] The hon. and learned Gentleman is, as he himself said, a compassionate man. I know this from having been in the House with him for more than 20 years. Indeed, the hon. and learned Gentleman has been here for longer than I have. I am aware of the number of issues on which he has shown his compassionate nature.
However, the hon. and learned Gentleman seems to me to be inconsistent on this subject; because, when he was commending the qualities which he believed were desired in Northern Ireland, I thought that he was drawing our attention to the qualities which, because they had been only too evidence, not just in Northern Ireland but in the whole of Ireland, 100, 200 and 300 years ago, were part of the reason why we are in this trouble today. I do not believe that

1709
those are the qualities of approach to which the Irish people do most happily respond.
Of course there are risks and dangers in the new policy. Hon. Members who criticise the new policy should in all fairness ask themselves whether the old policy was showing any signs of working. I do not think that in fairness it can be said that it was.
The hon. and learned Member for Northampton talked about the euphoria which had arisen about the activities of women in Londonderry or anywhere else. I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland showed any euphoria today.
Mr. Paget: I agree entirely. It was the absurd Press we had this morning and the wireless last night.
Mr. Carr: We often suffer, not only in this subject but in many others, from excesses and exaggerations of reporting in the news media, which either make everything unnecessarily black or unnecessarily white, either gloomy or hopeful.
It is a very serious situation. We should not be too depressed with melancholia, nor should we give way to euphoria when something goes right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. McMaster) said something rather critical about my right hon. Friend's announcement of the Advisory Commission. My right hon. Friend thought it right to take the earliest opportunity of informing the House of the composition of the Commission and the fact that it had been set up. He thought it right, however, not to take up the time of the House by giving the names in his statement today, because he wanted also in his statement to do what he felt that the House wanted; namely, to deal with other matters as well as simply the membership of the Commission. I hope that the House will acquit my right hon. Friend of in any way deliberately trying to keep the names of the members of the Commission away from the House or of trying to protect himself from any criticism on this point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) had something important to say about accountability, the question of what was to happen to fill the gap left by the Public
1710
Accounts Committee of Stormont and of the Northern Ireland Comptroller and Auditor-General, in regard to the expenditure of all the Northern Ireland Departments, in particular of the Northern Ireland Finance Corporation.
I assure the House that my right hon Friend is very aware of this and is actively studying what can be done. He hopes soon to be able to come forward with arrangements and with an answer which will, I hope, satisfy my hon. Friend and other hon. Members that we intend to ensure that there is the proper sort of accountability through bodies like the Public Accounts Committee and the Comptroller and Auditor-General. I cannot give a categorical answer here and now, but my right hon. Friend authorised me, when I gave the House the assurance that he was looking into the matter, to strike a hopeful note about the outcome.
Finally, I have very much in mind the need for parliamentary debate and control over the affairs of Northern Ireland. This was something about which the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale properly had something to say in his few remarks. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East spoke about the particular need for a safety valve, as have other hon. Members from Northern Ireland. Although the position may not in their eyes be by any means satisfactory, I hope that they will feel that we have made some progress in the last week or two in the right direction. We are having frequent statements from my right hon. Friend. Not only have there been the statements my right hon. Friend made today and last week, but earlier this week he answered a Private Notice Question. On each occasion there has been an opportunity of widespread questioning of my right hon. Friend. I believe that there is an Adjournment debate tonight which my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is to answer.
I was particularly glad that in my Business Statement earlier today I was able to announce considerable time for Northern Ireland affairs on Monday,.5th June, and on Monday, 12th June. Particularly on Monday, 12th June. I hope we shall have a substantial amount of time, and I hope that the nature of the business to be dealt with on the second half of that day will enable the debate to range fairly wide and to deal

1711
with some of the matters which I know that hon. Members want to take up.
I repeat that I will be very ready to discuss not only with the usual channels, but particularly with hon. Members from Northern Ireland how best they think we might arrange that debate to meet their needs as fully as possible.
I realise that there is still a major problem to overcome about Northern Ireland legislation. I think it will probably be acceptable that those Measures which have been either completely through or through most of the Stormont procedures can be dealt with in a relatively quick and easy way in the House; and at least some hon. Members from Northern Ireland have indicated to me that that would be the case. I realise that when we move onto new legislation or legislation which has not been fully debated at Stormont we must find some more effective machinery here.
Discussions are going on. One of the things that we shall have to consider very seriously, and I believe adopt, is some form of Northern Ireland Committee to deal not only with general subjects but also with legislation in a manner which is consonant with proper parliamentary control. I am sorry that the discussions have not yet been completed and that I cannot make a definitive statement now. The matter is very much on my mind.
I think that I have dealt with most of the matters which have been raised in the debate, though I am sure that I have not dealt with all of them completely satisfactorily. I believe the House has earned a few days of tranquility and calm and that we shall return the better for it. I can only wish all hon. Members a few pleasant days' rest.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House at its rising tomorrow do adjourn till Monday, 5th June.

ORDERS OF THE DAY
  CRIMINAL JUSTICE BILL
  As amended (in the Standing Committee) considered.
New Clause 1

  POSSESSION OF FIREARMS BY PERSONS CONVICTED OF CRIME IN NORTHERN IRELAND
  In section 21 of the Firearms Act 1968 (possession of firearms and ammunition by persons previously convicted of crime) the following subsection shall be inserted atter subsection (3):
  '(3A) Where by section 19 of the Firearms Act (Northern Ireland) 1969, or by any other enactment for the time being in force in Northern Ireland and corresponding to this section, a person is prohibited in Northern Ireland from having a firearm or ammunition in his possession, he shall also be so prohibited in Great Britain at any time when to have it in his possession in Northern Ireland would be a contravention of the said section 19 or corresponding enactment';
  and in subsection (6) of that section (application to court for removal of prohibition) for the words or (3)' there shall be substituted the words (3) or (3A)'.—[Mr. Carlisle.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  7.40 p.m.
  The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Mark Carlisle): I beg to move. That the Clause be read a Second time.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): It will be convenient to discuss also Amendment No. 36, in Clause 56, page 35, line 41, leave out 'to 24 and' and insert:
  '23, 24, (Possession of firearms by persons convicted of crime in Northern Ireland), 25'.
  Mr. Carlisle: The new Clause meets an undertaking I gave to the hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) during the Committee stage. Section 21 of the Firearms Act, 1968, prohibits from possession of firearms certain categories of persons who previously have served sentences of imprisonment. At the moment the section applies only to those who have been sentenced in England, Wales and Scotland, and the purpose of the new Clause is to make

  1713
  those who are subject to similar prohibitions in Northern Ireland subject also to the same prohibitions in England, Wales and Scotland.
  In Committee the hon. and learned Gentleman raised the question that it should apply to anyone convicted in any other part of the world, and an undertaking was given at that time we would amend the forms of application for firearm certificates to require information about convictions anywhere in the world, so that a chief constable would be able to give due weight to such convictions in deciding whether or not to issue a licence.
  I said that we would consider the question of Northern Ireland sentences with a view to legislation, and that we have done. I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has decided that the converse situation should be dealt with so as to extend to Northern Ireland the effect of a prohibition derived from a sentence in court in Great Britain, and this change will be implemented shortly.
  Sir Elwyn Jones: We on this side of the Committee are grateful that the Government have adopted the proposal by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin) in Committee to fill a gap which he discovered in the legislation of England and Wales and of Northern Ireland, and to make sure that those who have been sentenced to substantial terms of imprisonment in England, Wales or Northern Ireland should be subject to strict and severe embargo on the possession of firearms.
  This is at least as important as heavy penalties for the criminal use of firearms, and I have often felt that if we could make it more difficult for criminals to get possession of and carry firearms, whether here or in Northern Ireland, there would be far less crime involving the use of firearms.
  I am glad, therefore, that it fell to this side of the Committee to draw attention to this matter. Without being in any way provocative, it is right that I should say that concern for law and order is not the monopoly of the Tory Party, in spite of some Selsdon Conference observations apparently to the contrary. But I can assure the Home Secretary that we will co-operate in any effective and sensible
  1714
  measures to resist the growth of violence in our society.
  I thought I would get that in at the beginning because we shall be moving on to the need also for compassion and civilised treatment for those in custody in the later stages of our debates.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 2

  LIFE IMPRISONMENT FOR MURDER
  In the case of any person sentenced to life imprisonment for murder the court shall have the power to order that he shall not be considered for release until he has served a specified minimum number of years imprisonment.—[Mr. Fowler.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  7.45 p.m.
  Mr. Norman Fowler: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  In this new Clause we are dealing with the punishment for murder. I suppose there is no other subject which arouses such strong emotions or such strong feelings. Normally these are clearly about capital punishment, and yet the strange fact is that although the argument on capital punishment has ranged to and fro, very little attention has been given to the alternative to capital punishment. The retentionist does not consider the alternative because he believes that all would be solved if capital punishment were restored. The abolitionist does not consider the alternative because he believes that all would be solved as long as hanging was removed from the Statute Book. This is a great pity because I believe there is one point of very real agreement between the retentionists and the abolitionists, and that is that the punishment for murder should recognise the unique seriousness of the crime. Therefore the aim of the Clause is essentially to examine the present life sentence and to see whether it provides an adequate alternative and whether it can be strengthened in the way suggested in the new Clause.
  Any punishment for murder must satisfy a number of requirements. Not only must it be an appropriate punishment for the offender, but it should also mark

  1715
  the public's view of the crime and at the same time act as a deterrent to future crimes. In the Bill generally we have been considering and giving priority to the best way of dealing with the offender. I believe with murder that our priority—our very clear priority—must be the safety of the public.
  The characteristic of the life sentence is clearly that it is an indeterminate sentence. Leaving aside the power of the court to recommend a minimum period, an essential of the life sentence is that once passed the power moves from the court. When a man is sentenced to 12 years imprisonment the public know that he will serve at least four years, if not recommended for parole, and that he can also serve up to eight years as a part of that sentence. With the life sentence there is no way of accurately predicting the length of the sentence.
  My first objection to the present life sentence is one of principle that the discretion of the court is very substantially removed by the present system. I am conscious that all I am doing here is repeating what has been said far more eloquently by a number of writers and politicians in the past. Two writers, Mr. Terrence Morris and Mr. Louis Blom-Cooper, said in their book "A Calendar of Murder"
  "For the legislature to provide a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for any crime is to reduce to zero the clement of judicial election in sentencing."
  The point was put in a much more pungent manner in this House in the debate in 1965 on the Bill to abolish capital punishment. In a very telling comment it was said:
  "If we do not give the judiciary in this case —as we do in others—the power to say that the punishment should mark the offence, why do it in any case? Is all sentencing to be in the hands of the faceless, anonymous men who make decisions and give advice? Surely that cannot be right. The public will not tolerate it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th May, 1965; Vol. 711, c. 1298.]
  The force of these words comes down very strongly over the years. In one very important respect it comes down even more strongly because the words were said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Epsom (Sir Peter Rawlinson) who is now the Attorney-General. He was not alone on the Conservative benches in having his doubts
  1716
  about the adequacy of the present life sentence.
  We have a sentence but no one can predict its exact length, and this has a number of unhappy results. First, and this is something I deplore very much, it allows very wild and inaccurate statements to be made about what is the average length of a life sentence. We have all heard that "life" means only nine or 10 years. But an average of that sort is simply not true and is not meaningful. It is not true because it is based only upon the figures of those who have been released, and it does not take account of the people who are still serving sentences in prison. It also cannot take into account the situation since the abolition of capital punishment because there has been insufficient time to evaluate sentences or to get any kind of averages based upon experience since then.
  It is very important that the message should go from the House that the statements we have sometimes heard about average life sentences are not correct. But we must recognise that it is extremely difficult to put to the public in a reasonably straightforward way the true seriousness of the life sentence. It is a sentence which by definition is surrounded by uncertainty and is based on doubt. Being uncertain, it fails to demonstrate clearly to the public the view that society takes of murder.
  I am not sure that a sentence which is so uncertain can be considered as an adequate deterrent. The 30-year sentences given to the train robbers seemed at the time much stronger than the life sentence. I fully accept what has been said in previous debates that with some murders the deterrent effect is not the essential quality. For example, I do not think that any sentence will have a great deal of deterrent effect on murders in the family situation. But that is not the class of murder which is essentially my concern. My concern is the murder committed in the course of crime, the murder of a bank clerk in a robbery, the murder of a policeman. My concern is the professional and semi-professional criminal who goes armed, who goes on his crimes prepared to risk murder. I do not believe that anyone can be anything but alarmed about the present situation in that respect.
  I have deliberately chosen not to try to make a statistical case. But there are

  1717
  two facts the House should understand. The first is that once the criminal statistics are analysed in any depth they show very clearly that it is the most serious forms of crime which have been increasing most rapidly in the past decade. It is not true to say that it is the trivial crimes that are pushing up the figures. The analysis that has been done, notably by McLintock at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, shows that it is the demonstrably serious crime like robbery or felonious wounding that has been increasing not by less than the average but by more than the average. The second point to remember is that it is now much more apparent that more criminals are going armed. In London alone last year there were 338 cases of robbery where the criminals went armed. The Commissioner's Report for London shows that during the 1960s the trend of armed robbery has increased.
  The risk of murder or serious injury is growing steadily in Britain today. We must decide whether to sit back and watch the trend or whether we are prepared to put forward policies to tackle the situation. I am not pretending that the Clause alone is likely completely to transform the situation, nor do I think that any one measure alone will do it, but I believe that this measure taken with others might have some effect. The Clause would give the Courts an extra power. At present they can give a life sentence and they can also recommend a minimum period that the offender shall serve. I very much hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will say something about his attitude to the recommendation that the courts make, but the legal position remains that the recommendation is not binding upon the Home Office. It is not binding on successive Home Secretaries, nor can it be. This is widely known and commented upon when such recommendations are made by the courts.
  The Clause would allow the courts to fix a minimum period within the life sentence. Not until that minimum period was completed would the offender be eligible for consideration for release. Even then, if the Home Secretary considered that the offender's release was a danger to public safety and security. he would have the power to retain him in
  1718
  prison, as he does now with other life sentence prisoners. But if the offender became seriously ill, for example, the Royal Prerogative of mercy would continue to operate and remission of sentence could continue.
  Clearly, the power in the Clause would be used for what the courts regarded as the most serious kinds of murder—mainly, I suspect, murders in the course of crime. But that discretion would rest with the courts.
  The Clause has one further advantage, that it does not fall into the trap of the 1957 Act and try to define murder in the furtherance of crime. It leaves that discretion with the courts. I think that is the only sensible way. I do not think it introduces any remarkable new principle into sentencing. A court which, for example, gives a minimum sentence of 20 years within the life sentence is doing no more than the court in the train robbery case in 1963 did in giving a 30-year sentence, because then offenders served two-thirds of their prison sentences and were not eligible for parole.
  The question of life sentences is under review by the Criminal Law Revision Committee under Lord Justice Edmund Davies. The Committee was set up no less than 26 months ago, in March, 1970, by the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) when he was Home Secretary. It always seemed to me a rather uncharacteristic act of the right hon. Gentleman, because one of his favourite remarks about the Home Office was that he was surrounded by so many advisory committees that he sometimes felt he had to ask permission before he even blew his nose. Yet what did he do when faced with the problem of life sentences but set up yet another advisory committee to consider the question?
  It is not only strange but a serious matter that we should have been waiting for the committee's report for over two years. An advisory committee should be an aid to Government, not a means of slowing it down. I do not know where the blame lies. It was always a guiding principle of my previous professional life, and to some extent of my political life, that when in doubt one blames the Home Office.

  1719
  The Bill gives us the opportunity for legislation on this matter. It is probably the only opportunity in this Parliament. Therefore, the Home Office should progress the outstanding advisory committees' reports to take the opportunity when it is presented. I see no point in setting up advisory committees if doing so simply causes delay, if it is simply a means of avoiding making decisions.
  I doubt whether the subject should have been given to an advisory committee in the first place. The issues are not so complex that they could not have been considered within the Department and then made the subject of a political decision.
  There is a strong case for the Clause. It provides an element of certainty within the life sentence. It puts the decision back with the court and gives it an extra power. Above all, it demonstrates much more clearly than is demonstrated now the very serious view that we in the House, the public and society generally take of the appalling crime of murder.
  8.0 p.m.
  Mr. F. P. Crowder: Despite the distinguished names set to the new Clause on the Paper, I have to tell the House that, on balance, I have come down against it. One of the problems in the courts today is that murder cases are being tried, virtually, in a holiday atmosphere. The crime of murder seems to have lost its seriousness in the eyes of the courts. I shall give the House some illustrations of what I mean which have come my way in the course of practice at the Bar.
  Not long ago, I was concerned in a case at the Old Bailey in which the accused, a young man of only 16 or 17, was charged with murder. He had been insulted by the leader of a gang. He took a bus home, collected his own gang, and picked up a carving knife from the kitchen. Off they went and rediscovered the man who had insulted him, and he stabbed him through the heart.
  I am sorry to have to tell the House that the learned judge and the prosecution accepted a plea of guilty to manslaughter, presumably on the basis that there was no point in trying it as a case of murder because there would be no difference at the end of the day in the
  1720
  sort of sentence which that young man would serve. To treat a classic case of murder in that way makes nonsense of the law. It brings the law into disrepute. It is most offensive to the relatives of the dead person.
  Here is another example, at assizes. I was prosecuting in a case in which a man had driven his best friend in a car, stopped the car, stabbed him through the heart, and taken £100 worth of notes off him. The defence raised the question of accepting a plea of guilty to manslaughter. The learned judge, who shall be nameless, said, "Mr. Crowder, I have read the papers. I think that the ends of justice will be served on that basis". I said, "I have read the papers, too, and they will not. Let us proceed with the case. If, at the end, the verdict is manslaughter as opposed to murder, so be it". We did proceed with the case, and the man was convicted of murder.
  These matters are of great significance in relation to the criminal statistics. When pleas are entered and accepted on the basis of that sort of slipshod attitude to murder and manslaughter, the statistics of murder are made nonsense.
  Mr. Clinton Davis: Is not the hon. and learned Gentleman's criticism in fact a criticism of the Bar and, possibly, even of the judge, rather than a condemnation of the law?
  Mr. Crowder: I agree. In my view, the criticism must go not only to the Bar but to the courts. This is a new feature which would never have entered into the working of the criminal law 10, 15 or 18 years ago when I, at least, began to practise in this type of case.
  Here is another example which goes the other way. I went to Lewes Assizes not so long ago, where the case was tried of a man who pushed a shotgun through the window of his house and shot his wife's lover through the stomach. He was charged with murder. What happens? We have a splendid fight for three days. I have a triumphant result in that, for some reason or other, perhaps because it was a Sussex jury, he is convicted of manslaughter. But what then? The learned judge, quite rightly, sentences him to life imprisonment for manslaughter. In that case, therefore, the three days' trial was, in effect, utterly wasted, though in the opposite sense.
  Mr. W. F. Deedes: What my hon. and learned Friend is saying—is this what he intends?—makes utter nonsense of the criminal statistics.
  Mr. Crowder: Yes, it makes complete nonsense of the criminal statistics when, in classic murder cases, pleas of guilty to manslaughter are entered and accepted in that way, because such cases are put in the statistics of manslaughter, not murder.
  The statistics run a bit amok in this way too. I was talking to the principal prison doctor at Brixton the other day, and he told me of the number of people whose lives he had saved with modern drugs, people who had been the victims of attack and grievous bodily harm and who, a few years ago, had it not been for certain drugs, would almost certainly have died. This, also, drastically reduces the murder figures.
  What are we to do? Everyone knows that, if a sentence of 18 years' imprisonment is passed, provided the prisoner behaves himself he must have a one-third remission, so that he will serve not more than 12 years.
  Now we have the new system of parole. I must say that it gave me quite a nasty turn the other day. I was on my local railway station, and a young man came up to me and said, "It is very nice to see you, Mr. Crowder. You defended me, you remember, at the Old Bailey, and I got four years". I replied that I did indeed remember, but it was only about 18 months ago—"I hope that I shall not be in trouble for assisting you as an escaped prisoner". "No", he said, "that is all right. I got parole. There was no bother at all".
  That is the sort of way in which sentences imposed by the courts may, time and again, be made to look rather nonsensical.
  Mr. Neville Sandelson: That would be a most unusual form of remission, and a most unusual experience for members of the Bar in relation to their clients, would it not? I am referring not to the hon. and learned Gentleman's encounter on the railway station but to the limited time spent in prison on a four-year sentence.
  Mr. Crowder: I agree, but it does happen from time to time, and I believe
  1722
  it to be happening far more often than we in the House fully realise. One begins to wonder what a sentence passed in a court of law means in practical effect.
  I was discussing the subject matter of the new Clause the other day with one of Her Majesty's judges who specialises in criminal matters. This is the argument he put to me, and I think that the House may find it useful. Whenever a man is given a life sentence, the judge—my right hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong—has a duty to write to the Home Secretary giving his views, ideas and feelings about the case. If the new Clause were to become law, the judge could be put in an embarrassing position.
  Sometimes, in mercy killing cases or cases of murder in most extenuating circumstances, the judge will take the view either that there should be virtually no sentence or that the sentence should be very mild. In a sense, that brings the law of murder, the most serious crime known to our law, into disrepute, for, if a judge sentences a man who has murdered in extenuating circumstances to six months' or a year's imprisonment. something like that, the matter will not be properly reported in the Press. It will not be fully covered, and, once again, it will make nonsense of the law of murder, whereas under the present system——
  Mr. Norman Miscampbell: My hon. and learned Friend may well have got it wrong. Whatever view one takes of the new Clause, one should not forget that the power would be given to the court to exercise—
  "shall have the power to order"—
  but it would not have to exercise it. The court will act with discretion, and, in the mercy killing case, for example, simply make no recommendation as to the length of time.
  Mr. Crowder: But then one is back to this: if judges are not to sentence when it does not suit them, we are not far from the recommendation as it is at the moment. Under the recommendation system, in a really serious case, the learned judge may say— as in the Kray brothers case and similar cases—that he recommends 25 or 30 years; but nobody is bound by that.
  I have been at the criminal Bar for 22 years and feel that the answer today

  1723
  would be to restore the death penalty, but not to implement it except in the most serious cases on the recommendation of the prosecution, the manner to be heard before a full court of seven Judges in the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal.
  Having taken part in all the debates on the death penalty, I am certain that the death penalty was a deterrent. Hon. Members opposite shake their heads, but let us take our minds back to the war and to service in the Armed Forces. I am certain that, if the dealth penalty had not been something of a deterrent, we all would have won Victoria Crosses. Of course, it is a deterrent. People do not like the thought of being hanged and there is no harm in keeping the shadow of it there. There have been one or two notorious cases in recent years—the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) was engaged in one case and I was engaged in another, if not two—where the death penalty would not have been imposed.
  I am suggesting that the death penalty would be implemented on the recommendation of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, and the whole matter would be gone into by seven judges with the greatest possible care. It might happen that the death penalty would be enforced every three or four years, but if this meant the saving of a life in relation to the law of murder, I do not think any harm could be done. One of the problems at present is that the worst type of murderer is not the man who when shaving in the morning has no idea that he will commit a murder on impulse, through drink, or passion, but the man who deliberately and coldly plans a murder.
  It is generally accepted that one cannot keep a man in prison for more than nine, ten or eleven years otherwise he becomes a sort of institutionalised vegetable and he is useless when let out into society in future.
  Judging by Home Office figures for past years, it seems that murderers seldom serve more than nine, ten or eleven years. One of the first cases I ever handled involved the smashing of a plate-glass window. I told the defendant to plead guilty and he agreed. I asked whether he had any previous convictions and he said
  1724
  that he had not. I said, "Are you sure?", and he replied, "Well, there was one about 12 years ago". I asked him what it was, and he said "Murder". He had been reprieved. That is the sort of curious situation that is firmly in the mind of the would be murderer, that he is unlucky if he has to serve more than ten or eleven years.
  This means that we have put a premium on murder because it pays to shoot one's way out. Let us take the armed gang which goes out on a big bank raid and let us assume that the sum involved is £150,000. What will such men get if caught? They will probably get 18 or 20 years. If we take off a third for remission, the total figure is probably nearer 12 years.
  On past results, what is the difference between serving a sentence for that murder and going out with a gun to protect oneself? If the police turn up, shoot them—what is there to lose? Absolutely nothing. I take the view that by abolishing the death penalty we have put a premium on murder and that this is the reason for the increase in crimes of violence.
  I apologise for having detained the House at such length, but I believe that this whole matter needs looking at in a very different way. Much as I appreciate the good will and good intentions of my right hon. Friends in proposing the new Clause, it does not take us any further than the situation we now face—and it must be rectified.
  8.15 p.m.
  Sir Elwyn Jones: I can only designate as astounding the description the hon. and learned Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Crowder) has given of the contemporary conduct of murder trials. I cannot believe that it presents a true picture of what goes on in our courts today. I think the picture portrayed by him can be described as grotesque.
  From my experience of trials in which I have participated recently I would say that the hon. and learned Gentleman has presented a caricature of the situation and made an extraordinary attack on the alleged irresponsibility of our judges and counsel who have the heavy responsibility of prosecuting in Her Majesty's Courts. By his remarks he has rendered no service to the administration of justice. One of

  1725
  the effects of that kind of speech is to create alarm in the public and a lack of confidence in it. It is as if our administration of justice is soft. It is not.
  I shall remember for a long time a speech made by the hon. and learned Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) which described the severity of some of the contemporary punishments. He pointed out how increasingly more men are spending more years in prison as the years go by. In 1968 some 47 prisoners had served more than nine years; in 1969 the figure was 59; in 1970 the figure was 71; and in 1971 the figure was 85, 16 of whom had already served more than 13 years, one of whom had served 20 years. It is a caricature to say that there is any softness or flabbiness about the situation. No useful purpose is served to the public by the kind of speech to which we have just listened.
  Mr. Crowder: The last thing I wish to do is to cause alarm or despondency. I am saying that from a practical point of view, bearing in mind the saving of time, many murder cases turn into pleas of guilty to manslaughter. At the end of the day when the penalty has to be considered and dealt with, there is little real difference in it. I am not attempting to create any alarm whatever in the public mind or to disparage any of Her Majesty's judges or counsel.
  Sir Elwyn Jones: I doubt whether they will receive much comfort from that observation in the light of what the hon. and learned Gentleman said earlier.
  To give an account of one experience and then to make a general comment about the Parole Board was a total caricature. The Parole Board consists of three High Court judges, a number of experts in the social sciences and a number of ordinary folk representing the public. Is the hon. and learned Gentleman suggesting that in considering the safeguards which now exist in the Parole Board, in the judges' recommendations, in the Lord Chief Justice's recommendations and the Home Secretary's own personal consideration of the matter, all those people involved are indifferent to public protection and to the security of the public?
  We have created elaborate machinery to see that first and foremost in the con-
  1726
  sideration of whether a lifer should be released, matters of public safety and public protection should be paramount. It is right that the House should make these matters known to the public and also that criminals should know that there will be no compassion shown to the violent criminal who goes out to use a gun.
  I will not go into the issue of the death penalty, for it is not within the ambit of the new Clause. But there again the assertions of the hon. and learned Member for Ruislip, Northwood, I am sorry to say, bear no relation to the facts. I rise to oppose the new Clause, moved in a far more responsible and moderate way by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler), whose interest and expertness in this matter I readily acknowledge, as does the House.
  My view is that the mandatory life sentence is the right way of dealing with the crime of murder. In my view, in so far as penal provisions can ever be effective for the protection of the public, the life sentence is as good a protection to the public as current thinking at any rate can devise, consistent with the dictates of ordinary humane considerations. As I have ventured to say, I think that it is irresponsible to create unnecessary alarm by exaggerating and caricaturing occasional failures.
  I have mentioned some of the safeguards within the system of release already, but now, of course, the judges have the power to recommend specific terms if they wish to do so. What I have found interesting is how rarely that power is exercised. I remember taking part in the vilest murder case that probably has taken place in this country this century, but a very wise judge in that case did not specify a term of 30 or 40 years. It is a power which most judges think should be left to the Home Office.
  How can the judge foretell? How can he look ahead to the state of mind, the conduct, the behaviour of a prisoner 10 years after trial? It cannot be done. Very few judges want or seek to do it. I make no criticism of those who, in the face of dreadful murders, especially of police, think that perhaps in the public interest and as a sort of public reassurance in the occasional case it should

  1727
  be done, but in my view it is almost an act of arrogance to project oneself forward a term of years ahead and then seek a finite penalty in terms of 10 or 15 or 20 years.
  After all there is room in all of us for reform, for change, for improvement, and there have been some remarkable experiences in criminal history of released murderers proving the most admirable citizens after they have been liberated. Provided the safeguards are as effective as human judgment can devise, it is right that the opportunity for release should be made. It is also right that the responsibility for that should rest in the hands of those who will have the continuous care over the years of the prisoner. Of course it is also right that the judges should be consulted, and they are. They are not likely to take a sentimental view of murder cases. I am sure that the Home Secretary receives a mass of responsible advice with the consideration of protection of the public foremost in the minds of those advising him.
  While I appreciate the anxiety which has prompted the new Clause, I do not think that it would add to the protection of the public, and I think the present arrangements are as carefully devised as it seems to me practical in present circumstances. What is in any event important is that the Criminal Law Revision Committee has been seized of this subject now—I agree for an awful long time. It is not an easy subject and the ground it is covering is pretty large. It is considering homicide as a whole, how it should be prosecuted and how it should be punished. While one is always a little impatient about the time factor in regard to the work of a committee like this, it must not be overlooked by the House that after all those who belong to it are busily engaged in the courts themselves.
  Lord Justice Edmund Davies is a member of the Court of Appeal, which sits daily. Others who are with him on the committee are similarly engaged in commitments. Indeed, one of the merits of setting up the Law Commission was that we had a full-time body of law reformers who did nothing else. I feel that the strictures of the hon. Member for Nottingham, South were perhaps a little hard on the committee, but I agree that it is a pity that we have not had the
  1728
  report sooner. But there it is. Here is an expert body which has been studying this matter for two years, and my submission, and such advice as I am free to give to the House, is that the best course before changing the law in the way proposed in the new Clause is at any rate to wait until we get the report of this authoritative and high-powered committee.
  Mr. Deedes: I do not wish to prolong the debate, nor get in the way of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is anxious to respond. But I want to add one reason from the many I would like to offer for supporting the new Clause.
  Those of us who took part in the very long proceedings on the Silverman Act which led to the abolition of capital punishment were made aware that, with abolition and the substitution of the life sentence, there would elapse a period of time during which nobody would know what penalty was being exacted for the most heinous type of murder—that is to say, murder by the professional robber in furtherance of his aims, the type of murder which the rather ill-starred Homicide Act, 1957, was designed to catch but failed to catch for a number of reasons.
  The length of the life sentence served by any particular individual will never be known, and rightly so, because the date of release ordanied by the Home Secretary is known to no one outside the Home Office. Nevertheless, 15 or 20 years after the Silverman Act and abolition, we should I think be able to form some impression of how long life sentences were lasting for the worst kind of offence. That impression in my view would constitute an important part of the deterrent. It is not an impression which we have at this point of time. We cannot have it because the Silverman Act has been on the Statute Book only for six or seven years.
  I do not accept that the length of penalty has no deterrent effect. I did not accept this on abolition and I do not accept it now. I do not accept that the criminal is indifferent to the probable sentence he will receive. If we accepted that, it would render the penal system absurd in some aspects. As things are, only seven years after abolition who can tell the reality of the deterrent for the class of murder which my hon. Friend has in

  1729
  mind? No one can predict the exact length.
  8.30 p.m.
  The Home Secretary can, and will, I am sure, give us the assurance that sentences for violent crimes such as we have in mind, even if they do not amount to murder, are getting longer. We know this to be, true and the right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) was right to say so in the course of his remarks. The Home Secretary might even quote the number now serving a life sentence for murder. I think that I know the figure but I will not give it. It is a considerable and astonishing nunmber. The example of what certain types of murder will attract is not clear in the mind's eye of the murderer and, with respect, it is what is in his mind's eye and not what is in the mind's eye of the public that interests me, important though the public may be. How can this reality be in the murderer's mind's eye?
  Nor is this made much clearer by the present system of a recommendation to the Home Secretary by the trial judge. I hope I am not derogating from the authority of justice when I say that it is a declaratory sentence. He declares that in his view it rates a certain amount. It is a recommendation. It may be accepted or rejected but it is not binding on the Home Secretary or his successors. Incidentally, when we come to the remark of the right hon. and learned Member about how can a judge in those circumstances assess what may be the situation ten years hence, what may be the state of a man's mind, may I ask him to explain how this is done when a determinate sentence is passed which may on occasion be longer than the life sentence which is being passed? It did not seem that his argument was entirely logical.
  To permit the judge to lay down, as he can in all determinate sentences, how long that sentence should be would in my opinion aid the impression, and it is essential to create this impression, that for certain murders punishment will remain extremely severe. That is surely the fundamental desire of my hon. Friend and of many of us. I believe that this Clause would further discourage professional killing, the words kind of killing, and that is why it has my support.
  Sir Elwyn Jones: In supporting this Clause, does the right hon. Gentleman contemplate that the licensing provisions and the parole provisions should not apply to a sentence specified by the judge as the minimum number of years of imprisonment that a prisoner should serve? If this is so, it makes a great deal of difference between that set-up and the set-up of the determinate sentence which is subject to both parole and licensing.
  Mr. Deedes: I will answer the right hon. and learned Gentleman frankly. I have always had doubts, since the system of parole was introduced, whether, as in certain countries, it should not be made clear that in respect of certain offences parole would not apply, I am bound to say that I think that would be my answer in respect of the crimes we are now discussing.
  Mr. Clinton Davis: My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones), in directing his last question to the right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes), illustrated the difference not between the two sides but between the two points of view on this issue. When the right hon. Gentleman was saying that there are certain crimes where parole and licensing should not in his view operate, he was arguing by implication that there is no possibility of rehabilitating some people, or at least that they ought not to be given the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves. I find that a dangerous and unacceptable argument.
  The right hon. Gentleman also argued the case for a tariff for offences of murder. This also represented to me an unacceptable argument. If we establish tariffs there is a great danger of rigidity in the whole system, which I understood was something which those who advanced a similar Amendment in Committee wanted to avoid. The hon. and learned Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) adduced that argument in Committee.
  There has been a change of course in the debate tonight on the part of those who are putting forward the new Clause. The hon. and learned Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Crowder), in a speech which was severely criticised. and rightly so, by my right hon. and learned

  1731
  Friend, argued the case for the restoration of capital punishment. This new Clause has been taken from the substitutes' bench because the capital punishment player was not able to be fielded today having been defeated in Committee, but it would not be in order for me to argue that case, and I do not propose to do so.
  The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) said that the trouble with life imprisonment is that it is unpredictable, may be unfair to the offender and is unfair to the public because it does not provide a satisfactory deterrent. That is why he wants the trial judge to have the power to order a fixed penalty for murderers. With respect, those are contradictory arguments. The unpredictability may represent a serious deterrent to the offender, but I am not sure that the professional killer ever thinks about the death penalty or life imprisonment. What he really thinks about is his invincibility against being caught. I have not been involved in as many murder cases as the hon. and learned Member for Ruislip-Northwood and other hon. and learned Members, but I have been involved in some. It seemed to me that the persons I have represented believed that they would never be caught and were surprised that they were eventually caught. The argument about a greater detection rate and increasing the powers of the police to achieve it is the most important issue in all this.
  The arguments about the average time spent in prison by those convicted of murder, which was heavily relied on in Committee, seems to have been totally destroyed by the Minister of State and has not been resurrected tonight. It was founded on false statistical information and on a totally inaccurate premise.
  Judges at present have powers to make recommendations in certain cases, and, for good reasons, they have been loth to exercise those powers. They ale sensible people, compassionate in the main, and they recognise the limitations they enjoy. A trial judge may not always be the best person to postulate the sentence—at any rate a long sentence. I am not satisfied that the trial judge, on the limited information available to him at the conclusion of the trial, can necessarily form
  1732
  the right view as to the penalty that should be imposed.
  The idea of sentencing boards has been canvassed and there is much to be said for it. The difficulty is that it would delay trials. However, in cases where a judge believes a long sentence should be imposed, it might be a good idea that some sort of system analogous to the Parole Board system, where profound advice is available to the Home Secretary, should be available at the outset. I would like to see the Home Secretary investigating that possibility. This is not in any way to deride the judges or treat them with contempt, but one wonders whether one man, with necessarily at times inadequate information before him, is the right sort of person to pronounce long sentences.
  The worst feature of the Clause is that it will deprive the accused person who is recommended for a long term by the trial judge of having any incentive to rehabilitate himself. That is one of the most important features of civilised criminology. One must give a man in prison some hope that he is capable of reform. He must be given something to work, live and hope for. If he is denied that opportunity I venture to suggest that we shall have facing us in our prisons, which are already heavily congested and in some instances providing the most appalling conditions, trouble on our hands that makes the recent outbreaks of violence in some cases and of strikes in others seem absolutely nothing by comparison.
  There is little in the arguments that have been adduced that it is wrong to interfere with the Home Secretary's discretion, because that would be the inevitable corollary of passing this Clause. If a certain sentence was fixed it would be difficult for the Home Secretary to interfere with that because he would be criticised for interfering with a judicial act. As the Minister argued in Committee, it would help to raise the hopes of a prisoner who had an eight or nine year sentence imposed upon him that he would be released at the end of that time, when the Home Secretary might think on balance that was not the most appropriate course.
  For all these reasons I think that the present situation works, that the Home

  1733
  Secretary's discretion is exercised wisely, and that if we are to change it in favour of the Clause we should create a serious situation in our prisons. We should create a situation where a lot of no-hopers would be living out their days in prison. I cannot believe that in a civilised system of society that could be a good thing.
  The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Reginald Maudling): As I was not a member of the Committee, although I have studied the discussion in Committee, I welcome the opportunity to explain to the House a few of these matters. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) for moving the Clause in such a thoughtful way.
  I find that this is an extremely difficult problem to assess. It is one that comes home to any Home Secretary. The change proposed in the Clause is fairly simple. At present the life sentence is mandatory in these circumstances. Judges have the right to recommend a minimum sentence. The change would be to make that not only a power to recommend but a power to determine a minimum sentence. I recognise the feeling about this. One cannot but be appalled at the rate at which violent crime is growing in this country. We cannot fail to recognise that the statistics of murder or manslaughter—I agree the statistics are difficult to sort out in present circumstances—are very disturbing. Therefore, it is right to consider what measures can or should be taken for the protection of society against this rather sinister development.
  8.45 p.m.
  In effect, these problems arise from the ending of capital punishment. It is the new situation which arose with the ending of capital punishment which now faces us. We all recognise that no one has yet found the proper answer to the difficulty of how to deal with murderers at a time when capital punishment has been abolished by the will of Parlament.
  I should make clear to the House that I have always believed capital punishment was an appropriate penalty for murder. I consistently voted against abolition. I am still of that view. However, that is not relevant because Parliament has decided, and I, like every-
  1734
  one else, accept the will of Parliament and must work within it.
  The problems involved for the individual and for society in the concept of a light sentence in these circumstances are considerable. Keeping a man permanently without hope of release until he vegetates into old age is a terrible thing. I cannot help thinking that in some ways it is more cruel than capital punishment. We all know about the case outside the criminal law of Rudolph Hess and the feelings which arose about his imprisonment.
  Is it right to keep a man in imprisonment all his life? We have to balance the proper claim of the individual to be given a chance to rehabilitate himself with that of society to be protected. These two claims are difficult to balance. Yet that is what the Home Secretary often has to do in individual cases. The problems faced by a Home Secretary in these circumstances can be more difficult than those facing him in confirming a death sentence.
  Let us consider some of the cases. There may be a recommendation from the Parole Board or from the medical people that a man after many years in prison can he regarded as cured of his criminal murderous tendencies. They may be right, but they may be wrong. One obviously wants to release the man, because to keep him in prison when he is no longer a danger to the public is not right.
  However, I believe that a long sentence for murder is right in the sense that, as has been said, murder is the unique crime and should be treated with unique severity. This is right. Murder in itself should be met with a long and severe sentence. Long and severe sentences have an end. The question at the end of a period of years is: should the man be released? One may be advised that he is safe to be released. But suppose the advice is wrong. Suppose a man is alowed to go and he kills someone else. The responsibility on the Home Secretary who has decided to release him is serious. One must therefore recognise that these are matters of great difficulty and complexity. Therefore, I welcome the opportunity of debating them in this atmosphere.

  1735
  There is without doubt a need for flexibility in these matters. Men change as circumstances change. Though I agree that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) dealt effectively with the argument of the right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) that it was impossible for the judge to fix a term, it still remains the fact that human forecasting is not infallible by a long way. It is true that men change. One purpose of imprisonment, among other things, is rehabilitation. In so far as rehabilitation is effective we hope that with modern methods it will become more so and that men will change, too. I think that the judges themselves recognise this, because, as has been said, it is noticeable that relatively rarely do judges use their power to recommend a minimum sentence for murder. This is significant.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South rightly said, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the present situation. The theory has got about of an average term of nine or ten years for murder. This concept is quite misleading. It is, for many reasons already mentioned, the fact that not enough years have passed since the abolition of capital punishment and the end of reprieves to enable the statistics to be adequate upon which to base a conclusion.
  Again, one should not base statistics on the length of time served by those who are let out without reference to the length of time served by those who are not let out. One should always remember that a surprisingly high proportion of murderers commit what are called family murders, murders within the family, murders committed very much on impulse, to which no sentence is really a deterrent. I believe that the people about whom we are now thinking are those who murder deliberately in the course of crime, and who make up a surprisingly small proportion of the number of murders committed annually. It is those people for whom deterrence is far more likely to be effective than for the so-called family murderers.
  Finally in this connection, one must also consider that the life sentence prisoner is permanently liable to recall to prison in any circumstances. If a prisoner
  1736
  has a terminable sentence he goes out at the end of it, but a life sentence prisoner can be recalled to prison at any time on the decision of the Home Secretary.
  Mr. Peter Archer: Does the Home Secretary agree that protecting the public by keeping an individual locked away is quite different from a deterrent? Was it not George Bernard Shaw who said that the deterrent effect of hanging the wrong man was as high as that of hanging the right man?
  Mr. Maudling: Yes, I have studied both Shaw and Plato on the subject.
  I believe that we have here three elements—retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation—but that one must have regard to the protection of the public, and basically the feature of life sentences for murder offences is that the protection of the public should be in the mind of any Home Secretary in deciding whether or not it is safe to release an individual. These are some of the thoughts that occur to me in relation to this proposal.
  I see difficulties in the concept of a fixed term. If it is combined with a life sentence, it might in some cases be too litle, I can think of cases, thugh I will not name them, of people convicted of murder who never again should be released on the public. But if the fixed term is to be combined with a life sentence there arises the difficult question of how one fits it in with the parole system. Does one or does one not continue the parole system for life sentence prisoners? If one does, I do not think that much change will be made in the present system. If not, one may be moving from what I think is a very helpful development in our whole penal system.
  Again, I think that it will be found that if there is a fixed term definitely set the prisoner will normally come to regard that as the total length of sentence and will expect to be released automatically at the expiry of that fixed term. But I can think of cases in which to do that would not be very healthy; cases in which a man would not improve in prison but would deteriorate and should not be let out. Further, great difficulties would he laid on the prison service, for which we must have considerable regard, if that development were to take place.

  1737
  Another question is: how long should the fixed term be? Are courts to be entitled to award a minimum fixed term of 30 years, 40 years or 50 years? Here, again, one then comes across the very difficult problem of how the prison service could cope with a man who had no hope left and upon whom no sanction could be visited. That difficult problem merits careful consideration.
  The present system is that life sentence prisoners can be released only on the Home Secretary's authority after recommendation by the Parole Board, and the Parole Board is a very distinguished body, containing three members of the judiciary as well as other distinguished people.
  In addition to having to receive a recommendation from the Parole Board the Home Secretary has to consult, if they are available, both the Lord Chief Justice and the trial judge before reaching his conclusion. I should have thought that it would be unusual for any Home Secretary to agree to the release of a prisoner against the recommendation of the Lord Chief Justice and the trial judge. Certainly I have not done so, and I should think that it would happen very rarely, if at all.
  I am entirely prepared to keep an open mind on this proposition. I have been rehearsing some of the difficulties which I think must be considered in adopting the proposal inherent in the Clause. I recognise the public concern about these matters and the great need to protect the public against the growing amount of violent crime. My advice to the House is that we should not reach a decision on this matter now, that we should keep an open mind about it, particularly because, as has been said, the Criminal Law Revision Committee under Lord Justice Edmund Davies is studying this and will, I hope, shortly report on this and other matters.
  Since the debate in Committee when this was mentioned I have inquired from the distinguished chairman of the committee whether it would be possible for him and his colleagues to make an interim report on this aspect. He has advised me that they think it would not be wise to do so because all the subjects which they are considering are very much interlocked and to make a change in one area would be very difficult without
  1738
  affecting other areas. He and his colleagues think that it would not be wise to single out this aspect for interim report. He has further authorised me to say that it should not be assumed that the committee's conclusions will be in line with the Clause.
  In view of the seriousness of the matter I thought it right to consult the Lord Chief Justice. He has informed me that his view, which he believes would have the general support of the judges of the Queen's Bench Division, is that this is a complicated matter and that it would be premature to make any change in the law in advance of the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee which will in due course be presenting its assessment of all the relevant arguments and considerations. That is the considered view of the Lord Chief Justice, and I commend that point of view to the House.
  I think there are difficult considerations to be balanced against one other in deciding this matter. I see the need to protect the public. I see that just as any Home Secretary always would. I also see the practical difficulty of adopting the course set forth so clearly in the speech of my hon. Friend in moving the Second Reading of the Clause. I believe that we should regard this as a matter which should be further considered and thought over. When we have the report of the distinguished Criminal Law Revision Committee, then will be the time to take a decision on this and other cognate issues in this exceedingly difficult human matter.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. Sandelson: In spite of what the Home Secretary said in his cogent speech on the subject generally, I rise to speak briefly and to oppose the new Clause. The strongest possible arguments have been advanced by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House why the Clause should be opposed. No one will question the sincerity of the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler).
  Not long ago I had the privilege of sitting behind the hon. and learned Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) in a murder trial. No one will challenge his sincerity or, indeed, the zeal with which he has pursued this question when one recalls that in a Motion as long ago as 1961 he was urging the Government of

  1739
  the day to give a more definite and harsher meaning—if I may put it that way—to a sentence of life imprisonment. Many hon. Members who felt that his agitation in 1961 was wrong—I was not in the House at that time—still feel that nothing has transpired since then which can possibly add any further weight to the Clause which is being advocated this evening.
  Many experts on prison have expressed the view, which is entirely familiar to hon. Members, that there is good reason why a prisoner should not be incarcerated for more than 10 years unless his potential danger to society is likely to manifest itself again. It was Sir Alexander Paterson, one of the most eminent people in this sphere, who expressed that view and who was surely right to say that human personality tends to disintegrate after 10 years in an institution, whatever improvements are made in prison conditions.
  That being so, while some murderers who, because of their diseased mentality, present a continuing menace to society may have to be detained for extremely long terms, in some cases almost literally for life, we should be reluctant to accept very long stretches of life imprisonment as anything but exceptional.
  This Clause, in effect, presents a threat of something no less inhumane and a great deal less rational than the death penalty, and I was interested in what the Home Secretary said about this. Indeed, leaving aside other considerations as to the morality or otherwise of the death penalty, it would in many instances be an act of kindness to terminate life on the scaffold than to turn a living man into a travesty of humanity by a very long stretch of incarceration in prison conditions.
  None of us can doubt—least of all the movers of the Clause because, after all, this is their object in moving it—that the ending of the mandatory life sentence would result in the passing of sentences which would effectively kill any hope of release at a point when a man could still pick up the threads of normal life. For those who would remain in prison under this Clause for 20 or even 30 years, the breakdown of normal human stability would effectively destroy any hope of coming to terms with the outside world
  1740
  on being released. I believe that to be equally true in respect of extremely long sentences passed by the courts in respect of offences other than murder.
  It is no criticism of judges, unhappily faced with the task of sentencing murderers, to say that after a week or 10 days of listening to the often gruesome evidence in a murder trial they must react with passion and repugnance. The time to determine the length of sentence to be served is surely not on the last day of such a trial, in the pent-up atmosphere of the court room, but after a period of years—under any circumstances in respect of a lengthy period in the case of murder —when a man's behaviour and psychological development has been under constant surveillance for a long time and it becomes possible to decide, on the basis of medical fact and rational consideration. whether he can he released without public danger.
  The criticism that is made of a fixed-term sentence is that it is not open to review, unlike the life sentence—which paradoxically is subject to regular review —said misleadingly to average out at 9 to 10 years. I will say no more about this because the suggestion of the 9 to 10-year average has already been effectively punctured. It would be more accurate to say that the most common sentence for a released murderer to have served would be in the region of nine years, but that does not take into account those who are left inside still serving their terms of imprisonment.
  One recognises the emotions that this subject evokes. It should not be thought by anyone in the House that those opposing the Clause are any less concerned about the senseless killing, for example, of a police officer in cold blood or the evil murders of others, with all that is entailed for their families. But in abolishing the death penalty a civilised society has already turned away from primeval concepts of mere revenge. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" has lost its moral force in the times in which we live. Deferrence and public safety become the criteria in estimating a proper sentence for even the most heinous of all offences.
  It has already been rightly said that the great majority of murders arise from

  1741
  family situations, and those murders do not normally spring from the psycotic personality. The circumstances usually speak for themselves and there is very rarely any danger to society of repetition or of any form of violent conduct when the murderer has been released. Deterrence does not, therefore, affect this type of crime, and for this type of murder the deterrent sentence can have no significance. They are the great majority of all on whom the present life sentence is passed and they are the ones who, for the most part, are released after the nine-year period. It is with the small minority of murderers that we are concerned, the murders committed by men with positive streaks of abnormality in their makeup. It is already true to say that they are not released after nine or ten years, or anything like that in the case of many of this type of murderer, and they form only a tiny minority of murderers.
  An effective system of review and parole is already in operation. It has been described as an elaborate machinery. If it is right that judges should express a view by recommending a minimum term, even though that lacks binding effect, is it not even more right that High Court judges should sit on the Parole Board, as they now do, and review the sentence after a long period of years? In that way the Parole Board is able to combine the judicial wisdom expressed coolly long after the event with the medical reports and the expertise that is available to the Home Secretary and to the Parole Board at the time, which can surely tell a great deal more about a man's mental outlook and capacity to rejoin society after many years in prison than can the naked, horrifying details known to the judge at the time of passing sentence.
  The Clause evokes a great concern on the part of many of us in the House. I was not a member of the Committee, but I am grateful to the House for allowing me to express these views in opposing the Clause. I hope that the House will reject it if there is a vote on it this evening.
  Mr. Percy Grieve: This is an important debate, and it has been informed by sober and careful contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House who, in the law or in administration, have had what one might
  1742
  call almost first-hand experience of the problems involved in either the trial of murder cases or in having to deal with murderers when they have been convicted.
  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) on having moved the new Clause and on the research which he has obviously put into the facts which he brought to the notice of the House and the concern which informed his whole approach.
  Having said that, I have to say that, for a number of reasons, this is not a Clause which I can support. I say that with reluctance, because I was one of those—in this, I follow my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—who opposed the abolition of capital punishment for murder. I believe, even now, and possibly more so now than when these matters were last before the House, that this was an act of awful unwisdom. I used the word "awful" in its true and pristine meaning. I am concerned, as we are all concerned, by the rising tide of crimes of violence and of killings which I believe have their root in the fact that we abolished the capital penalty for murder.
  I endorse something which was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Crowder). I have no doubt that the statistics of murder itself have to some extent—to what extent it is impossible to say precisely—been distorted by the fact that the courts are, for perfectly proper reasons, rather more willing since the abolition of the death penalty to accept pleas of guilty to manslaughter than they were before the abolition of the death penalty. This is my experience, and I have been concerned in defending and in prosecuting many cases of murder over the years.
  I do not suggest for one moment that when this happens it is not proper that it should happen. Often the court is faced with the fact that on a reading of the depositions it appears that a jury would almost certainly take the view that at the end of the day a verdict of manslaughter was a proper verdict, even though such a verdict might itself justify a sentence of life imprisonment.
  Mr. Emlyn Hooson: That statistical fact or element in the appreciation of statistics must be set

  1743
  against the fact that in the days of the death penalty there was often an acquittal againt the weight of the evidence, and a fanciful doubt mattered when there was the death penalty. A conviction is much more likely now than it was previously.
  Mr. Grieve: That might appear to be a logical statement, but I am not sure that it reflects the facts. I believe that juries, when faced with the decision that they must make, were no more reluctant before the abolition of the death penalty to return a verdict of murder than they are now and that they were true to their jury oath to return a verdict in accordance with the evidence. This is a great tribute to the integrity and wisdom of English juries. I do not believe that abolition has led, in the sense in which the hon. and learned Gentleman suggested to the House, to an increase in the number of murder verdicts, though I admit that we are in the realm to some extent of speculation.
  I share the view to this extent of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood, that the statistics which we should consider are, apart from those of motor manslaughter, which is now so rare that it hardly occurs, those of killings rather than statistics of murder verdicts returned by juries.
  Mr. Edward Gardner: Is there not a curious anomaly at the moment in the reduction of the offence of murder to manslaughter? Under Section 5 of the Offences against the Persons Act, 1861, the court is left with a discretion to impose either a sentence of life imprisonment or one of imprisonment for a fixed term, with the result that someone who pleads guilty or is convicted of manslaughter might well be sent to prison for a longer period than he might have to spend in prison if he were sentenced to life imprisonment.
  9.15 p.m.
  Mr. Grieve: We are again in the realm of speculation as my hon. and learned Friend well knows. We have known many cases in the courts where in response either to a verdict of manslaughter or to a plea of guilty of manslaughter a judge has imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. There are other cases where he has said that it was a serious case and there might be
  1744
  a sentence of seven, eight or 10 years. It is quite impossible to determine what is the result of the life sentence because of its very flexibility and the fact that the ultimate decision lies with the Secretary of State.
  One of the reasons why I oppose the new Clause which was moved so cogently and so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) is that I believe that we should leave the ultimate decisions where life imprisonment is imposed with the Secretary of State. I shall deal for a few moments with the problems that have arisen as a result of the abolition of the death penalty. First, we should not be having this debate at all had the death penalty not been abolished. The debate reflects. I believe, a very real fear throughout the country as well as this House of the results of the abolition, and of the fact that life imprisonment does not appear to the public, and possibly to the criminal —and I think probably to the criminal—to be something which will deter him from killing.
  I agree with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and with others who have said that a great proportion of crimes of murder are committed under the stress of great emotion within the family circle. But there remains a substantial number of crimes of murder committed either by calculating criminals who take arms to effect their ends, to effect their entry or to effect their escape. These people would be deterred by the death sentence and I believe that they were deterred by the death sentence from carrying arms to effect their crimes.
  There is also the group of calculating murderers who could not be described as ordinary criminals who are setting out to rob a bank or something like that I refer to the murderer, never having committed a crime in his life before, who determines to commit murder and sets out to do it in a calculating way. In recent weeks I have been involved in a murder trial where there is no doubt that the murder was carefully planned, although the person who was found by the jury to have perpetrated it had never before committed any crime for which he had been brought to justice. These two classes of persons, in my view, are likely to be deterred by the death

  1745
  penalty and I believe that they are unlikely to be deterred by anything else.
  Mr. Arthur Davidson: Would the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that these particular types of well-planned crimes of violence have increased throughout the world, and particularly in the United States and in most States in the United States which still have capital punishment?
  Mr. Grieve: I have not studied the statistics in the United States and I am not prepared to accept the conclusion that the hon. Gentleman is asking the House to draw from what he said about statistics in the areas where capital punishment prevails and in those areas where it does not. In this House we must consider the circumstances of this country and the English character as we know it, and as perhaps we can judge it better than we can judge the character in countries in the world which may be different from our own.
  I deplored and continue to deplore the abolition of the death penalty. I cannot think that the ills which that has created are likely to be in any way ameliorated by the Clause, though I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for having once again initiated a debate upon this very important subject. Once life imprisonment is substituted for the death penalty for murder, it must be admitted that over the years there may be great changes in the personality of the person who is imprisoned. There may be changes in his attitude towards life as it appears to those who have charge of him. There may he changes in society and in his family circumstances. There may be changes in his mental make up. All these call for flexibility in the determination of the sentence.
  The judges already have power to recommend that a minimum sentence be served when they impose a sentence of life imprisonment. It is a discretion which is rarely exercised—for the very reasons I have given, I suggest.
  The Home Secretary has done a great service to the House and the country in making it absolutely clear that a sentence of life imprisonment does not mean just nine years, that it is not a light sentence, that there may be people who go to prison for life who will remain in prison for life. I hope that what he said will
  1746
  be fully publicised. But the ultimate decision must remain, for the reasons I have given, an administrative act by the Home Secretary. While the judge imposing the sentence can see, 10, 20 or even perhaps 30 years ahead, I do not think he can see ahead for the whole lifetime of the individual concerned and foresee all the circumstances which may arise. Although I have great sympathy with the motives of my hon. Friend and those who support the Clause—I should much prefer to see the death penalty restored, with whatever limitations upon it there may be —I cannot support the Clause.
  Mr. Hooson: This is an important debate, not because the Home Secretary has already stated a view but because of the understandable public disquiet throughout the country over the rise in our crime rate, and particularly violent crime.
  But I always think there is an air of unreality about such debates as this. I took part in each debate on the abolition of the death penalty. Unlike the Home Secretary, I was an abolitionist, and I maintained my stance throughout and continued to do so. The unreality in this kind of debate is that we discuss crime only in relation to punishment. We refer to the growth of crime, the increase in violent crime, and discuss only appropriate punishment and not the surrounding causes, the changes in our society, the changes in values in our society, in perhaps the acquisitive society that give rise to crime and the resort to violence in the pursuit of crime. It is regrettable that such debates are largely limited to contributions by people like myself who have considerable legal experience. We lack the contribution of others.
  I oppose the Clause for a variety of reasons, but, before I come to them, I must refer to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Crowder), who, unfortunately, is no longer in his place. I listened to the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech with growing astonishment, and I wondered how he could come to make it. I wondered whether I could have been all my adult life in the same profession, and whether I had been to the same courts, and served under the same system.
  To suggest that murder cases are now dealt with in a holiday spirit is, it seems to me, to present an utter travesty of the

  1747
  facts. I am glad to see the hon. and learned Gentleman return, for I am attacking his speech with, I feel, considerable justification. In an intervention, I called grotesque his description of the holiday spirit in which murder cases had to his knowledge been treated. All I can say is that I have spent a long time in the same profession, and I believe that I have been involved in no fewer murder cases than has the hon. and learned Gentleman. For many years I have been on the Wales and Chester Circuit, and I have visited other circuits, as well as doing cases at the Old Bailey.
  Never in my experience have I come across anything like the state of affairs which the hon. and learned Gentleman described in the treatment of such cases either by members of his profession or by the judiciary. I suggest that if he had ever been in a case in which a judge or barrister behaved as he suggested it was his plain duty to report the facts to the Lord Chancellor and the Bar Council.
  Mr. Crowder: In saying that murder cares are tried in a holiday atmosphere, I was trying to impress upon the House that the atmosphere today, with the death penalty abolished, can be fairly described as a holiday atmosphere compared to the terrible tense atmosphere in the days of the black cap and the death penalty. I make no criticism whatever of the way in which Her Majesty's judges or counsel are dealing with murder cases. What I said was that from a practical point of view—one can understand it—it often saves a great deal of time to accept a plea of guilty to manslaughter, whereas in the past no such plea would ever have been accepted.
  Mr. Hooson: I am sure that the House generally, and the public who might have gained a wrong impression from the hon. and learned Gentleman's words earlier, will be glad to note his intervention now. If he is saying that the oppressive and tense atmosphere of the old murder trial when we had capital punishment has now given way to a more detached relaxed atmosphere, he is quite right. This is why I think that juries are much more likely now to convict in a case where the evidence justifies it than they used to be.
  Mr. Crowder: I am sorry if I created any other impression.
  Mr. Hooson: I opposed the suggestion made in earlier debates in the House that the judge should be given a right to recommend what the minimum period of imprisonment should be when a life sentence was passed for murder. It is significant that very few judges have exercised that right. I was concerned in the horrible case to which the right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) referred. He was Attorney-General, and I was on the other side. It was significant that that great judge, Mr. Justice Fenton Atkinson as he then was, did not exercise that right when, perhaps, most members of the public expected him to.
  A moment's reflection shows how impossible it would have been for the judge to make a recommendation in such a case. Would we have a tariff in this class of case? Murder cases vary greatly, from the most terrible and gruesome to a case involving a family situation in which a man of hitherto good character gives way to a sudden passion. How can one compare the two? How can one introduce tariffs?
  The suggestion tonight is that we should classify murders, is it not? The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) was. in effect, telling the House that he had in mind the armed robber, for example, who shot his way out of a difficult situation. When in the Homicide Act, 1957 the House attempted to classify murders, it did no good to the law. In fact, to attempt it is impossible and does not allow for flexibility. The taking of another life in circumstances where the crime cannot amount to less than murder is a serious matter, but varies enormously in its degree of seriousness. I do not think the judge is the right person to decide what the length of sentence should be in murder. I have known cases in which I have been faced with a dilemma, as I am sure have other practitioners. One is acquainted with some facts in the case which may not assist the accused if one introduced them in defending the case as to whether the verdict should be murder or manslaughter, but these same facts may be relevant in determining how long he should stay in prison.
  What will happen if this Clause is passed? Should one then introduce these factors in a plea in mitigation? If one does, it may militate against the chances

  1749
  of the accused if the case goes to appeal. On the other hand it may be a relevant factor on length of sentence for the Home Secretary to consider later.
  Counsel are not often in this dilemma, but I have known situations where I faced this difficulty. I think it is wrong in this modern age to expect a man—however well qualified a person of great integrity they may be, as a judge —having heard a case to determine alone how long a man should stay in prison on a life sentence.
  The hon. Member for Nottingham, South, in referring to "faceless and anonymous" people in the Home Secretary's Department, did less than justice to the procedures by which it is determined how long a person should serve in prison on a life sentence. From my knowledge of these matters, there is a very careful investigation conducted by very highly qualified and experienced people and the greatest possible care is taken in determining when a man should be allowed out of prison.
  As has already been pointed out, an indeterminate life sentence means that when a man is released he can be recalled. I believe I am right in thinking that there have been cases where a man has been recalled to serve a life sentence although he has not committed another crime.
  Mr. Carlisle Mr. Carlisle indicated assent.
  Mr. Hooson: I am glad to see that the Minister of State agrees with me.
  Mr. Gardner: May we know the hon. and learned Gentleman's views about the discretion now given to a trial judge in criminal cases? Is he advocating that the Home Office should in all criminal cases exercise administrative discretion?
  Mr. Hooson: In all but the most serious crimes it is right that a judge should pass a sentence, but it is equally right that the Home Secretary should have the right to review a long sentence, and in fact he now has this right.
  The establishment of the Parole Board was an important step forward. It would be a retrograde step now to put this suggested burden on the shoulders of one judge, however well qualified he may be, to determine the minimum sentence in this kind of situation.
  1750
  There are murder cases in which I have appeared in which I have found it difficult to imagine circumstances in which a Home Secretary would order the release of the prisoner. However, I have known other people who have committed murder and who, when seen at close quarters appear to be totally different persons from the persons they were when they appeared in court. Therefore, the Home Secretary may take a completely different view of a prisoner.
  It would be wrong for the impression to go from this House that anyone on either side is less than seriously concerned about the increase in the crimes of violence. Let it be said in a sense of humility that none of us really knows quite what the answer is to the problem. It is a question not only of punishment but of what kind of society we live in, of the values imported into our houses every day by television, of how society itself reacts to crime—whether it takes it as a matter of interest to be read in the popular Press, or whether it deeply feels about the victims of crimes of violence. All these considerations are of great concern to all of us.
  The worst impression that could go from this House is that there are any honourable Members who are not deeply concerned about this matter. It is a mistake to take the easy way out—and this is really what the Clause proposed amounts to—by pandering to the public concern on this matter at a rather superficial level. It is easy for a judge to say in the atmosphere of a trial when he has heard all the facts of the case "I think this man should serve 20 years, and that is the end of it." The public would rather like that. They would like something more determinate. But that is not the answer of a humane and civilised society. We are concerned not only with the accused—and I have appeared in cases where, if the accused had had his deserts, no one could argue that he should not suffer the death penalty—but we are as greatly concerned with society itself.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I strongly support the views of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood (Mr. Crowder), not only in general terms but because I am convinced that this Bill, by creating criminal bankruptcy, makes it even more

  1751
  likely than it has been in the past that a man will shoot to kill his witnesses since now, under the Bill, he will lose not only his liberty but also his loot.
  But having said that, nevertheless as a second best I support the new Clause for one main reason. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) pointed out that the judge's recommendation for a term of years is not binding on the Home Office or successive Home Secretaries. The Home Secretary himself pointed out that a Home Secretary may receive a report from the Parole Board and from the medical experts in charge of a prisoner that he is cured and could safely be released. As my right hon. Friend said, they may be right. But also, as he again said, they may be wrong, and that prisoner thus released on the strong recommendation may in fact kill again.
  My right hon. Friend went on to say that he believes that there are some murderers who should never be let out. But, of course, he will not always be Home Secretary. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Sandelson) said that there is good reason why a person should not be incarcerated for more than 10 years unless his dangerous conduct is likely to manifest itself again. But how can anyone know this with any degree of certainty?
  A man's conduct in prison, away from temptation, may be vastly different from his conduct when released. We have all seen prison reports showing that a man has been quite responsible in prison and has had a high degree of privileges, but as soon as he is let out again, with freedom, temptation, drink and so forth at his disposal, he has relapsed into violent crime. The awful thing about it is that some Home Secretaries have shared precisely the view of the hon. Member and may do so again.
  Lord Stow Hill, as he now is, referring to persons incarcerated and recommendations that they should be released said as Home Secretary:
  "but when I received reports that he is a person who has accommodated himself well to prison life and that a time has arrived to consider his release, whether it is after nine years of imprisonment, eight and a half, eight or ten years, depending upon the circumstances of the case, I would find it very difficult, in the exercise of my discretion. not to
  1752
  say that he should be released on licence, particularly if I were told—as indeed I am told, because I consider these reports, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hampstead has done—that if he is kept longer in confinement the chances of his being re-integrated into society grow progressively less and that a deterioration of personality might set in."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st Dec., 1964: Vol 704. c. 927–8.]
  Those of us on this side of the House who are nervous for the public safety are not pandering to public concern at a superficial level as the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) suggests. We are desperately concerned at the rise of violent crime and at the relatively low level of protection which the public now enjoys.
  This Clause will give a far greater measure of certainty about punishments for the crime of murder, and those who can be deterred, those who go out in cold blood to commit murder, will think much more carefully before shooting to kill if they know they can get a severe sentence. That is why I support the Clause.
  Mr. Edward Lyons: All of us are seriously concerned at the rise in the crime rate and all of us would support measures which would have the effect of halting this upward curve. The question is whether this Clause does that. Let us see what it does. When I looked at it, and I keep an eye on South African law, the first think I said to myself was "My goodness, this is a Robert Sobukwe Clause". That is a Clause applicable in South Africa whereby when a man has finished the sentence imposed by a court the State comes along and says "You have got to stay in prison for another few years." The Executive takes over from the court and adds to the sentence.
  In this case it is proposed that judges should order a minimum period. That means that the judge will not order a term less than he thinks the crime deserves. He will order what he thinks is a proper term. That being so, this Clause would enable the Home Secretary to come along and say to a man who has done 25 years, which the judge thought was appropriate, "I will, arbitrarily, add a period to that." At present the discretion of the Home Office is only to reduce a sentence. The life sentence can be reduced, but there is no power and never has been for the Home Office to increase a sentence. This Clause would do that.
  Mr. Grieve: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I do not support this Clause, but surely the reverse of what he is saying is the case. What my hon. Friend is proposing is that the judge should say "Life but not less than so much." That does not give an arbitrary power to the Executive to increase; it merely sets the limits beyond which it cannot diminish.
  Mr. Lyons: With respect, that is really quite wrong. This is not a proposal to fix a determinate sentence as it is normally known. A determinate sentence in this country is characterised by a number of features. First, it is subject to one-third remission for good conduct. This is not proposed here. Secondly, it is subject to the power of the Parole Board to recommend reducing the sentence by up to two-thirds, and again this will not be so. Thirdly, determinate sentences in this country are subject to a right of appeal in a higher court. There is no such right given by this Clause, as indeed the recommendation of the judges under the 1965 Act to keep a man in for a minimum time is not subject to any right of appeal.
  This Clause does the following: it says that we will impose a hybrid kind of determinate sentence with no power of appeal, no power to grant one-third remission and no power for the Parole Board to reduce the sentence. What does a recommendation involve at the moment? A recommendation of a term of life imprisonment means that no power of appeal to the higher court is given against the recommendation, but there may be a running argument with the Home Office whether the recommendation is correct. There is no indication that the Home Office would ever allow an appeal against a judge's recommendation. Nonetheless, there is an appeal to the Home Office.
  9.45 p.m.
  If the recommendation is turned into a firm order that the man must serve a miniumum period, he will not be allowed the privileges of a determinate sentence; namely, going to the Parole Board to reduce the sentence, getting a one-third remission and the right of appeal to the Home Office to reduce the period. In other words, if the judge is wrong, the man will suffer that wrong all the days of his life, the whole period of the sentence, and it is a very long time.
  1754
  When a judge recommends, as he does occasionally that the man be kept in for a limited period of 25 years, for example, that is equivalent to the recommendation of a sentence of 37½ years. When a bank robber gets 30 years he serves 20 years because of the one-third remission, but when the judge recommends 30 years as the minimum period of incarceration, if that is observed the man serves a period which after the one-third reduction would leave 30 years if it were equivalent to the normal type of sentence. A 30-year recommendation is equivalent to a 45-year determinate sentence, which is effectively a lifetime.
  All the Clause amounts to is that the judge no longer has the power to recommend but has the power to order. That suggests that the mover of the Amendment fears that the Home Office cannot be trusted to adhere to the recommendation.
  I said earlier that there are few instances where judges have recommended. In Committee my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) said that there had been only seven cases since 1965. If that figure is right, or anywhere near right, it means that judges with the power to recommend have not seen fit to use that power. What is the guarantee that if the recommendation power were turned into a power to order a limited sentence judges would use that power more than they use the power of recommendation? Judges have preferred in murder cases ending in life imprisonment nearly always to leave the matter to the discretion of the Home Secretary. It is assumed by those who sponsor the Amendment—although it is not backed up by a jot of evidence—that if the power to recommend were turned into a power to order the judges would all change their existing view and themselves take the matter out of the hands of the Home Office.
  If the Clause were introduced in 20 years' time it would be more relevant, because it would then be possible to see to what extent the Home Office has adhered to the recommendations already made by High Court judges. Until that time the Clause is premature. It introduces a novel principle into the English law enabling the Home Office to increase the sentence which the judge thought was right for the crime. That is the effect

  1755
  of it. It is not a determinate sentence as it is generally understood that is proposed, and I oppose the Clause.
  Mr. Michael Havers: I wish that the hon. and learned Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Crowder) was here because, although he and I have been together happily in many cases, I have to disagree with what he said about the atmosphere in court. He corrected it to some extent later, but those of us who spent any time in criminal cases when capital punishment was still in existence found those days very trying. The change in atmosphere is one that is all for the good. I remember in one particular case in which the present Attorney-General led me, taking some 11 days at the Old Bailey, that the strain imposed in the case on the judge, the jury, witnesses and counsel was something I would prefer to forget. All that has happily changed. I welcome the revised view the hon. and learned Member for Ruislip-Northwood gave when he intervened later.
  I am disappointed that the Home Secretary has said again that no decision will be taken at this stage. He said that he hopes the Criminal Law Revision Committee will shortly report. That is very much what the Committee was told in the early part of March, more than two months ago. I suspect that we shall not get another opportunity for some time to have this Clause incorporated in legislation unless it is done tonight.
  Parliament is expected to give a lead in reform and change. Not many years ago this lead was given when capital punishment was restricted and then abolished. No one can deny that many members of the public are disturbed when they feel inadequate sentences are imposed in murder cases. I suspect that the absence of a substantial deterrent, in the minds of the public, causes more worry now than it has for many years.
  I am an abolitionist. I am not in favour of restoring capital punishment. To be given the privilege of leading public opinion imposes upon this House the necessary duty to recognise that the lack of general support for the new law be sympathetically considered, so that a balanced view can be put forward when searching for some system which gives
  1756
  adequate protection for police officers, honest traders, bank staff, all peace-loving families and particularly elderly people living on their own. Their reasonable search for stronger measures can he met by this new Clause.
  There is another advantage about which little has been said tonight. When a judge orders a particular period in an ordinary case, the length of sentence he imposes gives to the public an opportunity to appreciate the court's view of the gravity of the crime. In a sense the judge represents the public at large and gives to the public, when he sentences, the feeling that the courts are protecting them. Whether it be right or wrong, the view that is so widely held now is that a life sentence is only a matter of years in single numbers. That means that when a sentence of that sort is passed at the end of a bad murder trial, the public feel that the courts are not able to afford the protection which the public think they deserve.
  I suspect that the public have come to accept that a life sentence means no more than a decision by some official in Whitehall, who has to remain anonymous, on how long the person sentenced to life imprisonment will remain in prison. Those who are the internal enemies of the State cannot complain if Parliament supports any sort of measure which effectively punishes them and provides a new sort of deterrent. This is something when one is looking at the majority of murder cases that I accept would not be necessary. Many murder cases arise in almost a spontaneous way. Those are not the cases that the Clause is aimed at. The Clause is aimed at the people who deliberately set out for their own selfish advantage either to enrich themselves or to satisfy some desire, and set out to remove either the obstacle in their way or to take the gamble in the course of enriching themselves that they might have to take a human life. In my view those sort of people would be deterred if they realised this sentence could be passed upon them.
  Nothing in the new Clause requires a judge to do this every time. It provides the judge with the opportunity, which at present is lacking, of saying in terms: "This case is so bad that in my view a fixed sentence is necessary for the minimum time that this man must stay in

  1757
  prison. The life sentence exists all the time, but he must stay there in any event for so long."
  The fact that there may not be remission and that parole will not apply will not be overlooked by the judge. The calculations by the hon. Member for Bradford, East (Mr. Edward Lyons), that 20 years will mean 30 years and 25 years will mean 37½ years, do not give Her Majesty's judges credit for appreciating that sort of thing when they come to determine the fixed term.
  For those reasons, I support the Clause.
  Mr. Arthur Davidson: One of the wisest remarks in this interesting debate was that made by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), that debates and discussions about murder are a little unreal. They are unreal because at the end of the day we shall not come up with an ideal solution. Just as there is no ideal murder, contrary to what the B-feature movies seem to suggest, so there is no ideal sentence for murder because, by its very nature, it is a unique crime. It is the one crime which evokes such passions, feelings and emotions.
  If the House were to pass the new Clause the public would be no more reassured. There would still be criticisms. I will explain why. First, we would unwittingly categorise murders once again. By giving certain sentences for different types of murder we would be saying that one type of murder was worth 10 years but that another was worth only eight years imprisonment. We would again be bringing back all the appalling anomalies and injustices which were created by the Homicide Act, 1957.
  The public would probably say that an absurdly lenient sentence has been given in a certain case, and the Daily Express would undoubtedly come out with a stormy leader saying that yet again the judges were being soft and the Home Office and other officials were in the hands of do-gooders, which is its constant line. I am convinced that whilst the present system is by no means ideal, it is about as good as we are likely to get.
  I am glad that the debate has exploded the theory and myth which is engendered in the public that criminals, particularly the violent criminal whom everybody in
  1758
  the country abhors, are somehow treated in a soft manner by the judiciary. That is not so. That belief was exploded very firmly by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones), a former Attorney-General.
  Why do the public think that the judiciary is soft? People do not come to that conclusion as a result of some instrictive feeling. They come to that conclusion because, sadly, there are people who wish to give that impression. They wish to give that impression because they feel that the only way to deal with crime is by brutal and repressive measures on the criminal. Therefore, they must create an atmosphere which gives the impression that all those in charge of and concerned with the treatment of offenders, whether they be the judiciary, the police, probation officers, or lawyers for that matter, are a bunch of rather soft do-gooders. That is not so.
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Ordered,
  That the Criminal Justice Bill may he proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Goodhew.]
  Question again proposed, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  Mr. Davidson: That interruption is something unique for me. I am glad of it, as this is probably a very rare occurrence, and in any case I have completely forgotten what I was saying. But I have probably made the point and will pass on to something else.
  I find it difficult to agree with one of the arguments advanced by the supporters of the Clause. I always thought that one of the views of the House was that decisions should not be made in a hurry; that there should be time for consideration; that there should be time for second thoughts. The whole method at present adopted of giving life imprisonment for murder to people who are a very special type of people means that over a period of years they can be under constant attention. They can be examined by psychiatrists, and others. Their conduct can be studied by probation officers and by social workers, and ultimately by the experts who sit on the Parole Board. That is right, because we are dealing with

  1759
  very special people, and a very special type of crime for which a very special punishment should be awarded. It is for all those reasons that I do not think that even if the House were to accept the Clause we would be in any better position, or that the public would feel any happier.
  Mr. Gardner: I agree with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that trying to find an appropriate sentence for murder is extremely difficult. I confess that it is a problem that causes me a great deal of personal concern, and I think it is the kind of concern that is shared by the great majority of people. It would be a great pity if the Bill became law without our touching upon what I believe to be one of the chief defects in our penal system, which is the absence of what many of us feel to be an appropriate sentence for murder. The House ought to be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) for giving us this opportunity to discuss this very important problem, and I congratulate him, if I may, on the lucid and very persuasive manner in which he put forward his arguments in support of the Clause.
  When, in 1965, capital punishment was abolished we were left with a critical problem which some years later we still have not solved—the problem of what we put by way of punishment or sentence in place of capital punishment. In making our ultimate decision we ought to be guided by two principles. The first principle is that for violent crime and for murder the protection of the public is more important than is the question of punishment. The second principle is that where a decision has to be taken about whether a person should be deprived of his liberty, that decision should be the decision of a court of law and should not be reduced to the level of a Home Office administrative decision.
  I believe that the Clause displays the operation of both those principles and satisfies what I personally believe, and what I understand a number of right hon. and hon. Members would endorse as being necessary to the proper administration of justice.
  I think that the present sentence of life imprisonment for murder exposes far too
  1760
  many defects. They have been well rehearsed in the past, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I briefly sum them up. Life imprisonment is a false title. It does not mean what it says because we all know that people sentenced to life imprisonment do not generally spend the rest of their lives in prison. It is a weak sanction because it gives too easily the hope of relief. I believe that it can he and frequently is, an unjust sentence because it has no flexibility and it does not allow for any judicial variation of the sentence. It is automatic.
  I do not want to detain the House because it is getting late and there is much else that we have to discuss in the Bill, but I am moved not only by what I hope is logic to support the Clause, not only by what I deem the hope of improving justice generally, but also by the memory of a number of policemen who have died at the hands of armed criminals. This is not said in any emotional spirit. I believe that it is not so much the past as the future to which we have to look.
  I believe that we ought, and indeed we have a duty, to see that we give to our police officers who look after us the best possible protection that the law can afford. There is no doubt in my mind—I may be wrong; I hope I am—that life imprisonment in its present form gives a temptation to the armed criminal who is faced, for example, in an empty lonely street in a city by one policeman. The present sentence presents a peril to that police officer because the armed criminal, seeing before him possibly the only witness of what he has done, and seeing before him the hope, by using his pistol, of getting away with his crime, may well be tempted to blind the eyes, to stop the ears and still the lips of that policeman.
  I believe that if we could have a Clause of the kind which my hon. Friend has proposed we could do something to add to and improve the protection which I believe society ought to give to people who put themselves in peril on our behalf, people like policemen and prison officers, and for that reason, and many others, I support the Clause.
  Mr. Miscampbell: This has been a vitally important debate, not least because

  1761
  the House should be seen to be discussing a matter on which there is a great deal of public concern.
  No hon. Member needs to have had the experience which we in my constituency have had of a particularly brutal police murder to understand the welling up of indignation which comes from ordinary decent people in seeking to find a way to control their emotions when something of that kind occurs. It is inevitable that they will express concern for the rising violence they find around them. It is, therefore, up to this House to give a lead.
  No service is done, in giving that lead, by using the shorthand, which is occasionally used, of political discussion which equates where a person stands on the issue of capital punishment with his views on violent crime. This debate has emphasised that every hon. Member is passionately concerned with the rise in violence. Where one stands on the issue of capital punishment has little or nothing to do with one's view on the subject and it would be totally wrong if people were to think of individual hon. Members in that way. Indeed, to equate hon. Members in that way would be worse because it would bring the House into disrepute because people would feel that we were not giving a lead.
  There is suspicion that all that could be done has not been done, and this suspicion is true. There are certain cases—some have been mentioned by inference; hon. Members who take an interest in these matters or who are professionally engaged know which cases are involved—in which life imprisonment will mean exactly what it says, imprisonment for the whole of one's life.
  In a famous comment immediately after the murder in my constituency Lord Parker, the former Lord Chief Justice, commenting directly on the case, pointed out forcibly that life imprisonment which meant a sentence of imprisonment for the whole of one's life might of itself be a more effective deterrent than capital punishment. Be that as it may, there are certain murders for which life imprisonment must mean natural life.
  When one takes the sentence of life imprisonment literally, few can feel that it is an inadequate sentence. Indeed, it
  1762
  is a powerful and awful sentence to impose on anyone. The life sentences imposed now are subject to review, and we appreciate the concern which is shown at such reviews and we know that the Lord Chief Justice is consulted and, where he is available, the trial judge is also consulted.
  Figures currently available show that an increasing number of prisoners are spending longer periods in prison. This is to he expected because we are in the period when more life sentences are being imposed for the most serious offences. It is inevitable that there will be growing numbers of prisoners spending very long periods in gaol.
  Not all of this is as well understood outside the House as it is within it. There is concern among people for those particular murders which we can all identify—there is no great difficulty about it—which can broadly be described as murders in the furtherance of crime. Nine out of 10 people who are murdered know the person who murders them. Murder is essentially a family crime in nearly nine out of 10 cases.
  Mr. Antony Buck: It is 40 per cent.
  Mr. Miscampbell: I am sure that the figure is considerably higher than that. But it is those that are left that concern us, the other 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. It is the violent criminals who are concerning us today. That concern is already expressed and Parliament has taken a view on this matter by allowing judges in certain cases, if they wish, to make a recommendation. It has been remarked that in a very large number of cases they make no recommendation and that it is quite right that they should not. Often they do not make a recommendation in the very crimes which the public consider the worst. But they may not be so. The judge, with his experience, realises that there are many reasons why he should not make a recommendation in those cases.
  But we can all recognise that certain cases can and should be distinguished from the general run of murder. In those cases we must begin to look at what we do with certain convicted murderers. After the abolition of capital punishment we have been left not with a vacuum but with a rather peculiar situation in that we use exactly the same

  1763
  form of words in sentencing for all crimes of murder, be it the most minor family murder where there is little or no blame and everyone knows that the murderer will be released in a very short time, or the very worst of murders about which people san say "His just desert is that he should remain in prison for the rest of his life". We must begin to distinguish between the punishments for those different categories of murder. I am not altogether sure that the Clause is necessarily the final way of doing that. I am grateful, however, that we have had the opportunity of considering it tonight
  We should make this distinction for two reasons First, I believe that it will bring home to the criminal who seeks to use violence in the furtherance of gain and murders in the pursuit of gain that he will suffer a very severe and long penalty. Although there are complications, on balance it would be worth it to mark our abhorrence of that type of crime. My second reason is not quite as serious but it is one to which the House ought to pay attention. We have to take public opinion with us in dealing with crime, unless we are to be faced with the kind of debate which has debased American politics, on a crime and punishment basis. We must reassure ordinary people that their concerns are recognised. One of the ways that we can do that is simply to make the change which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) proposes; that is, that where a judge now says "I wish to recommend", he has the right to go a stage further and not just to recommend but to specify—to say "This is what should happen"
  I do not think that it would happen in many cases, but it would be a valuable weapon in our armoury against the rising tide of violence.
  10.20 p.m.
  Dame Irene Ward: I wish to express my deep appreciation to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the speech he made and his efforts to guide the House to a right decision on the Clause. I have supported the Clause, and still do, but accept that my right hon. Friend detailed with wisdom the necessity for waiting until the House is able to arrive at the best solution to the problem.
  1764
  The right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) attacked my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Crowder) and asserted that he was creating anxiety in the country. I wondered in what detail the right hon. and learned Gentleman had contact with the country. There is no need for anybody to create anxiety in the country. The anxiety is already there. The country will not wait much longer until we can arrive at the right solution.
  I have listened to distinguished lawyers arguing today, in fascinating phraseology, the pros and cons of the Clause. I have only the small experience of being a magistrate in a part of the country where, unfortunately, the crime statistics are rising rapidly. There is a need for us to take the right decision, but the points were so legal, so to speak, in the arguments which have been so excellently advanced by so many hon. Members that the country will hardly realise what the pros and cons mean, and the country will not be very appreciative of the debate.
  I ask my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to put a note in his diary to remind himself to take action with those concerned so that a report can be presented to Parliament with a view to all the facts being debated. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure that what he said in his admirable speech is made known throughout the length and breadth of the country. That will bring some comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who are looking for guidance from Parliament and from the Home Office on this problem. It is a matter of urgency. Sometimes it is, I suppose, part of the weakness of democracy that people with knowledge in the House can take the time to discuss all the angles which must be discussed. The country has taken a long time to arrive at its anxieties, and I have noticed in quite a number of important conferences in London this week that the subject has come up for discussion. We know that it is in the minds of the people.
  So, apart from guiding us wisely on how to deal with the situation which faces the country on the increase in crime, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary must let it be known with all the emphasis he can, and by the attitude he

  1765
  expressed so well tonight, of his anxiety and his determination, with a wise decision from Parliament, to deal with the solution which the country is demanding that we face.
  I gather that we will not divide tonight, but I say to my hon. Friends who have taken so much trouble to work out the Clause and the arguments in favour of it that we think they have done a very great service because they have brought to a head a matter which we have been discussing, and they deserve our thanks and our appreciation. I feel that we are not now at the parting of the ways but we have crossed the line and we have said that we shall make a wise decision in Parliament which will help all sections of the community to feel freer and more secure and to feel that justice will be done, and that as far as possible we shall wipe away this frightful feeling of insecurity which hangs over the country at the present time.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: I have no desire to detain the House for more than a couple of minutes. There are one or two points which should be put at the end of what has been a fairly wide-ranging debate.
  There is only one criterion that we as Members of Parliament should apply, because all of us, wherever we may sit, necessarily share the view that our first responsibility must be for the protection of the public. So the only criterion anyone should apply to the Clause is whether or not it is likely to increase the protection of the public.
  I want to explain very briefly why I do not believe that it will do anything of the kind and why my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) has expressed his disbelief also. It has not been made clear by the movers whether parole and remission for good conduct would apply to the minimum sentence established. If they applied in the case of a man whose conduct in prison was good and who was able to be considered for parole, the actual length of sentence served would in almost all cases be no different from what it is at present if he was released at the earliest likely time under a life sentence, which is approximately seven to eight years. I do not believe that many judges would set a
  1766
  minimum sentence longer than three times more than that term, and parole amounts to two-thirds remission with good conduct.
  But let us assume, as the hon. and learned Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) assumed, that parole is refused in the case of someone who is given the minimum sentence. I must ask the House whether it believes that the kind of professional killer who has been described in such strong terms by a great many hon. Members this evening, in prison with absolutely no incentive to behave well, with no incentive to get parole or remission, would in any way hesitate before taking action against a prison officer which might involve his killing because he would have nothing to lose. I repeat that it is the responsibility of the House to make the job of those men who have to work in high-security prisons with murderers and with people with long histories of violence as safe as it possibly can be. I speak with sincerity in saying that I believe the Clause would make the job of the prison officer not less dangerous but more dangerous among men who had nothing more to lose.
  Secondly, it has already been pointed out by the Home Secretary that it is so unusual as to be virtually unknown for a judge's recommendation to be overruled. Both the Lord Chief Justice and the trial judge are consulted. When he makes this extremely serious decision, the Home Secretary has the benefit of not only the recommendations of the Lord Chief Justice and the trial judge, recommendations which would be binding if the Clause were accepted, but also the reports of prison officers, reports of family circumstances, reports of the governor of the prison, and reports that have been accumulated over many years about the man's behaviour from psychiatrists and others. In other words, he considers not just one aspect, the views of the trial judge, which he is bound to weigh very heavily in his final decision, but a great many other aspects. The Clause would merely remove from him the benefit of all that additional advice without, I suspect, going at all far in practice to strengthen the force of the judge's recommendation.
  Thirdly, the House must seriously consider—any Minister who has served in the Home Office is very well aware of this—

  1767
  how it best protects the public from a man who may return to crime. It is not necessarily the case that the longer the sentence the safer the man is when he is finally released. Almost all expert advice in the prison service and among criminologists is to the effect that there is a time to release a man, and it is not when he has been in prison so long that whatever moral sense he may have has virtually atrophied to the point of disappearance. That time may be eight, nine, 10 or 15 years aftre he starts serving his sentence. As the Home Secretary said, it may never be reached. But what is certainly the case—this is a point that has often been made by prison officers and governors—is that for the man genuinely trying to rehabilitate himself, genuinely trying to change, there is a point at which he is most likely to change, and if we insist on going past that point we have not a less dangerous but a more dangerous man, so embittered against society that he may offend again.
  My last point is that surely the House tests something which has been in practice for some little time in terms of its results. The incidence of murder by those who have been released by the Home Secretary while serving a life sentence is so small as to be virtually nonexistent.
  The House would be ill-advised to make a change in the light of those facts and if it does it must do so aware that change in itself is not necessarily desirable, aware that it would be making that change without waiting for the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, and aware that it would be making it on the basis of emotion rather than a rational argument.
  Mr. Fowler: The hon. Lady made a point about an added danger to prison officers as a result of the Clause. The
  1768
  present situation is that a court can,recommend a minimum period. We have been told that successive Home Secretaries will in most situations—virtually all, it seems—accept that minimum period. Is the hon. Lady therefore saying that the court's power to recommend a minimum period should be taken away as well? That is the logic of what she says.
  Mrs. Williams: I am not saying that the court's power to recommend should be taken away from it. I am saying that that recommendation should weigh in the final decision, but should not be the sole factor in that decision.
  The existence of the licensing powers, which last throughout life, may well be a better protection than keeping a man in gaol longer without being able to license him when he finally leaves.
  Mr. Fowler: I am sure that hon. Members on both sides will agree that we have had a good and valuable debate which has revealed and expressed the great concern which is felt on this subject. I give no ground on the evidence and arguments which my hon. Friends and I have put to the House, but I was impressed by what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, and I express our gratitude to him for the report which he obtained from the Lord Chief Justice.
  I noted what my right hon. Friend said about keeping an open mind on the situation until we have a report from the Criminal Law Revision Committee. In the circumstances, while giving notice that we shall want to return to the matter when the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee is available—I emphasise that—I beg to ask leave to withdraw the new Clause.
  Motion, and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

  DUTIES OF PROBATION OFFICERS
  Before appointing a day for the coming into force of section 11, 14 or 19 of this Act, the Secretary of State shall consult with such bodies and organisations. including those representative of probation officers and of probation and after-care committees, as appear to him to be desirable, and shall certify that in his opinion the number and distribution of probation officers are adequate for the performance of their functions and of any additional functions which by virtue of the said sections they will be required to perform—[Mrs. Shirley Williams.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  This matter was extensively discussed in Committee, and I shall not go over that ground again. We seek to delay the implementation of Clauses 11, 14 and 19 until it is clear to the Home Secretary and those whom he will consult, which will include the organisations representative of probation officers, that there are adequate staffing and adequate resources to carry out the relevant provisions of the Bill.
  The Bill will put additional burdens on the probation service. The first such burden will be the supervision of persons on suspended sentence. There is no objection on either side, I think, to the principle of the supervised suspended sentence, but there is a doubt about whether it will be possible to do such supervision effectively.
  In Committee the Minister of State gave about 5,000 a year as his best estimate of the number of suspended sentences given for cases involving sentences of at least six months for one offence, and he said that the supervising officer in the case of supervised suspended sentences would be a probation officer.
  Thus, we start with a fairly heavy load, even if we do not make the assumption, which several hon. Members made in Committee, that the courts will find it attractive to have the supervised suspended sentence and there will be a corresponding increase over last year's figure for sentences suspended.
  The second major new responsibility resting on the probation service will come
  1770
  from the community service order, albeit on a limited experimental basis. The probation officer will have to report on the offender's suitability for a community service order. He will have to make arrangements for that community service, and he will have to supervise the arrangements when they have been made.
  In Committee the Minister of State said:
  "The scheme will be the responsibility of the probation service, and the responsibility for organisation will rest with the probation service."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee G, 8th February, 1972: c. 474.]
  It will be a considerable responsibility, because the success of the community service order concept will depend to a great extent on how effective the arrangements made for it are in the experimental areas. I am sure that we carry the Minister with us in saying that it will be crucial that those arrangements are sound if the experiment is to go beyond the five areas which he has selected.
  Third, there is provision in the Bill for the establishment of day training centres. The instruction, other than educational, will be given by probation officers, who will be expected to devote the bulk of their time to day training centres. In Committee the Minister said:
  "The idea is to provide a much more intensive degree of supervision under probation, whereby, as well as the ordinary requirements of probation, the person can be required to attend for up to 60 days at the day training centre."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee G, 10th February, 1972; c. 529.]
  It is interesting to note that both these latter two experiments, the community service order and the day training centre, are, among other areas, to be attempted in inner London. I will return to them in a moment because I believe the crisis in the probation service is undoubtedly at its most serious in inner London, for reasons which I shall adduce.
  Before doing that I want to say more about the background of rising burdens on the probation service, even before we come to the implementation of the Criminal Justice Bill. The ideas in the Bill which I have outlined are welcome to this side of the House; our doubt is whether these experiments may founder because of the Government's inability to find adequate resources.

  1771
  What are these existing rising burdens, the fruit of present legislation? The first is the rapidly increasing number of reports required from probation officers to the courts. They are already running at well over 200,000 a year and the Minister of State referred in Committee on several occasions to the automatic requirement for court reports over an increasing range of cases. Great reliance is placed upon these reports. The Committee referred again and again to their importance. But they take at present about one-sixth of the time of the service, and that share of its time is growing.
  The Children and Young Persons Act, not yet fully operational after having been passed three years ago—despite the fact that it was passed by the Labour Party when in Government, again against a background of inadequate resources—has involved probation officers in switching a great deal of attention from the young first offender to more and more difficult cases. The existence of parole, of increasing numbers of older prisoners and recidivists on the parole workload means that they are facing some of the most difficult tasks that any person in our society can be asked to undertake. There are only just over 3,380 probation officers, and, although the number is increasing, it is increasing much too slowly to be able to carry out reforms in this Bill effectively.
  I turn to the other side of the coin. I have outlined the existing burdens, flowing from present, new, legislation. The other side is the situation in which the service now finds itself. I will give a few instances which are fresh since the Committee ceased its work. I have recently been approached on behalf of the inner London probation service which explained to me that it regarded itself as being under the most immense pressure of work, that there was a rising incidence of breakdowns within the service, physical and mental, that because of the increase in the number of cases court reports had to be undertaken in less time than would be required to do a thorough report and in its view it was no longer able to do good quality work in certain areas.
  It also said that probation officers are working for as long as from 9 o'clock in the morning until 9 o'clock at night in a
  1772
  desperate attempt to cope with high work loads for salaries which by any standards are far too low for the kind of responsible work they have to undertake. Perhaps most serious of all, some of the inner London probation officers—I hope the Minister of State will bear this particularly in mind—are actually considering whether they will have to ask their probationers to report only once every three months.
  It makes no sense to talk of supervision when there is a report once every three months. It makes a mockery of the concept of probation. What is so serious is that very often a judge or magistrate will say to a probationer brought back for having broken the terms of the probation "You have had your chance; now I will have to sentence you to imprisonment." One cannot describe that level of supervision as giving the probationer a proper chance. In its evidence to the Butterworth Committee the London branch of the National Association of Probation Officers pointed to an 8 per cent. to 10 per cent. permanent shortage of staff, rising to as much as 25 per cent. in some units of the service. It has said that already, in existing circumstances, it cannot provide anything like a proper service to the London prisons in which there are 5,400 inmates, some in the most difficult prisons of all. Over two thirds of the main grade officers have less than five years' experience and the wastage rate is very disturbing indeed. 10.45 p.m.
  When men who are highly qualified and trained are taking home £25 a week for 47 hours' service there is something seriously wrong with our priorities. I say this conscious of the fact that no Government have adequately served the probation service and that every Government lay on them more and more and increasing burdens.
  Finally, there are examples of this in inner London and outside but I will just give instances from inner London of two men, both senior probation officers. One is working as an office cleaner to supplement his income. Although he is working a 50-hour week he is not earning enough to keep his family. Another is a security guard for the same purpose. The degree of dedication among probation officers is remarkable, but most people would not bear

  1773
  moonlighting to finance staying in a difficult professional job.
  This afternoon in the House the Home Secretary gave a figure of £6,000 per place as the cost of new prison accommodation. We know also that the weekly cost of prison is £24. Against this, it costs less than £2 a week, with virtually no capital, to put a man on probation. Yet, the recidivism rates on probation are slightly better than those in prison.
  I ask the Minister of State, who I know is sympathetic, "When are we going to get our priorities right and switch far more resources to the probation service?" I believe that we can not only finance them out of savings on prison but also save a great deal of recidivism and additional crime.
  I ask the Minister of State to look again at this before asking this overburdened service to carry yet another excellent reforming Bill which may very well break its back, not least in inner London.
  Mr. Carlisle: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for asking "When are we going to get our priorities right and increase the resources of the probation service?" In reply to the more general part of her speech I suggest that there has been a substantial increase in the provision for the probation service over the last two years compared with that up to 1970.
  Before I come to that I shall turn to the new Clause, which, as she said, is intended to inhibit the coming into force of the provision for suspended sentences supervision orders, of the provision for community service, or of the provision for probation day training centres until the Secretary of State has consulted outside bodies, including probation officers and the probation and after-care committees and has certified that he is satisfied that the number of probation officers is adequate to the performance of their functions.
  Of course I assure her that I appreciate fully the need to make sure that before the various new provisions in the Bill—which, as she rightly says, are in principle accepted and welcomed by both sides—are put into effect, there are adequate facilities available to make them work in practice, before imposing additional burdens on what I readily concede is an over-burdened probation service.
  1774
  I would suggest that the Clause proposed by her and her right hon. and learned Friend is unnecessary and would give no greater or more adequate safeguard to ensure that that does not occur than is already written into the Bill.
  I repeat, the point I made several times in Committee that the Bill has been specifically drawn to enable the Home Secretary to make a power available to particular courts in particular areas in respect of community service orders and probation day training centre orders. That is done by Clause 14(2)(a) for community service orders and by Clause 19(2)(a) for day training centres. The purpose of drawing the Clauses so as to enable the Home Secretary to dictate the timing at which these provisions are introduced is to ensure that they are not brought in in parts of the country where the facilities are inadequate for the new powers to function properly.
  That is, as the hon. Lady said, why we are starting first in various experimental areas. I assure her, and give her the assurance of the Home Secretary, that we do not propose to widen those areas, much as we want to do so as soon as possible, until we are satisfied that the resources are available and that there are sufficient people to carry out the work that will be involved in community service orders and day training centre orders.
  On the major matters which the Home Secretary will take into account in deciding whether to make a notification under Clauses 14(2)(a) or 19(2)(a) will be the size of the existing probation service in the area——
  Mrs. Shirley Williams: Before the hon. and learned Gentleman leaves that point, may I ask him about inner London? I think I am right in saying that at the last conference of the National Association of Probation Officers the London Branch moved the non-activation of the Criminal Justice Bill. Admittedly that was not carried. It is in inner London that some of the most acute difficulties arise, yet it is inner London that has been chosen for these two experiments.
  Mr. Carlisle: I will come to inner London in a moment. I accept that there are pressures in inner London, but to my knowledge it is with the enthusiastic support of the principal probation officer

  1775
  that both these schemes are to be tried out in parts of London.
  As I understand, the probation officers in London gave a fairly frosty reception to the suspended sentence supervision order. But I think I am right in saying that the Association of Probation Officers as a whole has welcomed the community service order and the day training centre order. I know from my own knowledge that the experiments on both these schemes in London have been welcomed by the principal probation officer. One must be realistic. In attempting to make experiments based on four or five places in the country it would be somewhat unrealistic not to see how the experiment worked in inner London compared with the other areas.
  Mr. S. C. Silkin: Will not the hon. and learned Gentleman even now accept what he was reluctant to accept in Committee, that the inner London probation service regards itself as being grossly undermanned, whatever enthusiasm it may have for experiments?
  Mr. Carlisle: I will come to the difficulties in a moment. The Clause specifically asks us to consult probation committees, which of course we did. We consulted the principal probation officers of all the areas we considered to be possible experimental areas before announcing the experiments. The Inner London Probation and After-care Committee was consulted. All agreed that experiments both in community service and in day training centres should be carried out in London. Those consultations were made before we announced that London was to be an experimental area.
  I repeat that it would be difficult to have a meaningful experiment to assess the effectiveness of community service in different areas of the country without having inner London as one of the experimental areas.
  Mr. Peter Archer: The Minister of State reminded us that it was the supervision order which met with a frosty reception from the probation officers. But, on my reading, Clause 11 does not have the built-in safeguard to which he refers.
  Mr. Carlisle: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me, I was coming to that point, which is the third matter:
  1776
  namely, the suspended sentence supervision order.
  The hon. Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) mentioned that in Committee the best estimate I could make of the number of suspended sentences given for six months or more was 5,000. With respect, the hon. Lady has not fully appreciated what I said in Committee or, indeed, the Amendments standing in my name on Report. The Opposition have an Amendment on the Order Paper the effect of which would be greatly to widen the number of cases in which suspended sentence supervision orders could be made. I know that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) has an Amendment down to prevent such an order being made in any circumstances. The debate which took place in Committee——
  Mr. S. C. Silkin Mr. S. C. Silkin rose——
  Mr. Carlisle: Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to continue. The discussion which took place in Committee turned mainly into a debate on the adequacy of the probation service to carry out the potential extra work created by the suspended sentence supervision order and how much that work might be.
  As a result of that debate, the expressions of opinion from both sides of the Committee, and comments given to the Home Department by the National Association of Probation Officers, I agreed to reconsider the terms in which a suspended sentence supervision order was provided for in Clause 11.
  There are further Government Amendments the purpose of which is to enable a suspended sentence supervision order to be made only where the sentence is over six months. In other words, that power will be effectively limited, in the first place, to the higher courts. However, if the House accepts an Amendment in my name, the Home Secretary will have power to lower it at a later stage. The decision whether to lower it will be based, first, on an assessment of the value of the suspended sentence supervision order—whatever may have been said by some hon. Members, both sides of the Committee basically welcomed that power—second, on an assessment of the amount it is used and the effect of the additional workload on the probation

  1777
  service, and, third, on an assessment of the availability of the probation service to meet that additional workload.
  Therefore, the Clause as it stands is unnecessary, because its aim, which is to ensure that these additional services are not placed on the probation service without consideration of its resources being taken into account by the Home Department, are met by the Bill as drafted. In fact, the Home Secretary has in mind the importance of the size of the probation service and the additional workload which the provisions of the Bill would impose.
  I now turn to the hon. Lady's overall comments about the size of the probation service. I must again challenge her, as I did at Question Time today, about the "crisis of confidence" which she claims exists in the probation service. I accept that there are particular difficulties in certain areas. However, I repeat that this comment about a "crisis of confidence" gives a wholly exaggerated picture. That is not the impression I gained from visits I have made to individual probation areas outside London. Morale was said to be higher in many ways now than it was a year or eighteen months ago.
  11.0 p.m.
  But I must challenge the hon. Lady when she doubts the Government's ability to provide adequate resources to meet the additional needs. With great respect to her, one of the first decisions that this Government took on coming to office—it was announced during 1970—was to expand the size of the probation service from 3,500 to 4,700 by 1975. Not only did we make that announcement but we matched it by providing additional training places to enable it to be achieved.
  I point out to the hon. Lady, I hope in a spirit of friendliness to her, that I inquired about the figures of those qualified probation officers who had left training in recent years. I think I am right in saying that in the years from 1969 to 1970 she was responsible in the Home Office for the probation service. In 1969, 325 qualified probation officers left training; in 1970 the figure had dropped to 268; and in 1971, as a result of our announced expansion, it went to 350. This year the figure will be 450,
  1778
  and next year it will be between 530 and 550. So if there is a shortage of probation officers, if there is a substantial burden under which they are labouring, it is not because of the decisions of this Government. It is the fact that in 1970 the output of trained probation officers was substantially down proportionately to what it had been in 1969.
  When the hon. Lady talks of the additional burden put on the probation service by the provisions of the Bill, I remind her that whereas we in the Home Office have been careful to ensure that the timing of the additional burden is kept in line with the additional resources as they become available, during the period of her Government no thought was apparently given to the effect on the workload that parole, the expansion of inquiries and reports, prison reports, and so on, had on the probation service at that time. So I do not accept the view that a crisis exists, or that we are showing an inability to provide adequate resources. We have made a major shift in emphasis, and we have announced a major expansion in the size of the probation service.
  Finally, we were faced with the effects in 1970 of the implementation by her Government of the recommendations of the Seebohm Committee without consideration being given to the effect that that would have on the salary structure of the service. That was something that faced this Government in the summer of 1970. For that reason we have set up the Butterworth Committee to report on the correct rôle of the probation officer. from the pay point of view, in relation to the social worker.
  I am therefore satisfied that we are doing what we can to expand as reasonably and as rapidly as we can the size of the probation service. I do not believe that morale is as low as the hon. Lady always implies, but I am well aware of the need not to impose further burdens on the service until resources are adeququate. It is for that reason that the Bill is drafted as it is.
  Sir Elwyn Jones: Before the hon. and learned Gentleman sits down, I do not think that at this hour we want to engage in party politics in a discussion which has broadly taken lines across the Floor, but it would be interesting if the Minister

  1779
  were to tell the House why it was that as far as I know there were no indications of inner revolt in the probation service when the Government to which I belonged were in office and, as far as I know, no great burden of complaint.
  May I also remind the Minister that, as far as I know, at all material times my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) was in a different Ministry——
  Mr. Carlisle Mr. Carlisle indicated dissent.
  Sir Elwyn Jones: I understand that at the material time my hon. Friend was in the Department for Education and Science. But if, in my effort to come to her aid—which was really quite unnecessary, I know—I have been inaccurate, I apologise to her, while venturing to reflect that even at this late hour a little galantry does not come amiss.
  Mr. Carlisle: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will remember that I said that I would make the comments in the nicest way that I could. I made them only because the hon. Lady repeated her comments about the "crisis of confidence" in the probation service, and the implication of that was that that crisis had arisen out of the inability to provide adequate resources.
  My point was that the crisis which existed in 1970 was the result basically of the implementation of Seebohm within the social services without consideration being given to its effect on the probation service, followed by the fact that until the summer of 1970 no adequate provision appears to have been made for further expansion of the probation service in training or in announced numbers to meet the additional burdens being imposed upon it.
  Mr. R. C. Mitchell: I am sure that the Minister is right when he says that before introducing the various new provisions in the Bill he consulted the probation services in the areas in which he is to try these experiments. Probation officers are excellent social workers. They have a great social conscience. They approve of the various measures being introduced in the Bill.
  1780
  If the Minister were to come to Southampton and ask my probation officers whether they would like their area to be one of those in which he is to try out these new things they would say "Yes". They would be proud of being selected, and I am sure that the same could be said of probation officers in London; but that does not necessarily mean that they would feel that they had enough staff to deal with the situation. Because of their social conscience they would say that they would have a go, but they would not feel confident that they could manage adequately to deal with the problems that would arise.
  I do not think that it matters very much for the purpose of this discussion who is responsible for the lack of resources in the probation service. I accept that my Government must bear some of the responsibility for this. I believe that there is an inadequacy of resources in the probation service.
  Many of my probation officer friends tell me that they are worried about the increase in their caseload. One told me that his caseload had increased by 50 per cent. during the last three years. Being a conscientious probation officer, his reaction is not that he is unwilling to do more work but that he is not able to fulfil many of his statutory duties properly because of this increase of work.
  It may be that the output of probation officers will increase to 450 in 1972 and to between 530 and 550 in 1973, but I doubt whether even that will be enough to meet all the new duties that have been put on probation officers in the last few years and the further additional burdens that will be imposed by the Bill.
  Despité the recent pay award, I still do not think that probation officers are paid enough compared with the earnings of social workers in other spheres. I know a number of people who thought of going into the probation service but decided that financially it would be better to go into some other form of local authority social work, and that is what they have done.
  I hope that the Minister, despite what he said, will not be complacent about the present situation. I do not think that it matters very much who was responsible for creating it. What matters is that if

  1781
  we are to maintain a probation service and improve it over the next few years to continue to do the valuable work which it is doing now, and will have to do under this and other Measures, we must make an increasing amount of resources available to it.
  Mr. Edmund Dell: The Minister of State has dragged me to my feet, despite my intense desire to spend the evening quietly. However, I promise to be brief because the Chair has been kind enough to select an Amendment standing in my name which will enable me to explain my view of the supervision order at a length and time of the day more convenient to hon. Members, and I am sure that the Government will allow sufficient time for that purpose.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman suggested that I was being inconsistent in my attitude towards the supervision order. I remind him that in Committee I said:
  "My own view is that in attempting to amend this Clause"—
  that was Clause 11
  "however successful that attempt, it will not remove its basic defects."
  Later I said:
  "…I think this Clause, despite the authoritative support that it has, is thoroughly bad in principle".…[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee G. 25th January, 1972; c. 382.]
  I make that point first to relieve the hon. and learned Gentleman of the need to repeat on the next occasion the debating point he tried to make tonight, and, second, because he referred to what he described as a "frosty reception" which the idea of the suspended sentence supervision order had received at a meeting which his glance at me indicated too, had attended. His word "frosty" was appropriate. As far as I could see, that very large meeting of probation officers was virtually unanimous, if not completely so, in being against the supervision order idea.
  In other words, the House is being asked not just to add a burden to the shoulders of probation officers, who have shown themselves willing to accept many burdens which are helpful in their work and to society, but to add a burden which a large number of them are against in principle. Despite the views of the National Association of Probation Officers—I borrow a phrase from my hon.
  1782
  Friend the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams)—many probation officers regard the supervision order as making a mockery of probation.
  Mr. Peter Archer: I shall resist the temptation to add my comments to those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) on the subject of the supervision order and, the House will be relieved to hear, on most of the other matters of principle raised by this issue.
  There is no question but that, with the exception of a possible controversy about Clause 11, we want to see these proposals implemented as quickly as possible. We are only concerned that they shall be implemented properly. It is not in issue that we need to see a vast expansion in the probation service, and that can come about only if we make the terms of engagement to the service more attractive.
  The Government are anxious, as we all are, to increase the establishment of the service from 3,500 to 4,700, but, remembering that it was in any event about 300 under establishment at the start, this is bound to be a considerable task. We cannot tell what will be the result of the Butterworth Committee, but we know that the Government will be bidding in a sellers' market.
  It is also not in issue that even from the point of view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer the Government will be making a good investment, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) pointed out, each person kept out of prison represents a saving to £24 a week.
  11.15 p.m.
  Two or three years ago the State of California introduced a scheme for keeping more people out of prison and implementing the principles of probation in more cases. This cost the equivalent of an additional £25 million a year on the probation service; but almost exactly three times that amount was saved on the prison service.
  These matters are not in issue. I have risen only briefly to throw out a suggestion which at this stage is very much a suggestion. I am not even sure that I am sold on it. But when the Government are consulting probation officers they may care to seek their opinions

  1783
  about it. I have discussed it with one or two probation officers and have received a mixed response.
  No highly trained professionals are happy to see part of their work being done by amateurs. But, until the service is up to full strength, I wonder whether part of the problem could be solved by assistant probation officers. Assistants are doing part of the work, of very selective type, in certain parts of the country now. Such matters as supervising the payment of fines by instalment are carried out by people such as ex-policemen. In many cases these schemes work very well. I wonder how far that kind of experiment might be extended.
  In Colorado there is already an experiment of a probation service conducted very largely by volunteer counsellors who have had the benefit of a fairly short training course. They see the offenders fairly regularly and make monthly reports. By all accounts this is working rather well. We tried something similar in this country with prison visitors. The Prison Visitors Association did a very good job, not only in prison visiting but in many cases in after-care also.
  Having thrown out the suggestion, I do not propose to develop it. Obviously one could say a great deal and give many examples. But it might be helpful if increased consultations about this kind of experiment were suggested to the probation service and if we discovered the reaction of the service.
  Until the service is up to strength the problem will be insoluble. There can be no guarantee that enough fully trained social workers will be found to man it within the period of five years set by the Government. We cannot continue to push more statutory duties and more cases on to the existing probation service without increasing manpower and resources, and even the office accommodation in certain areas in which the service has to operate. To attempt to put this extra work on the service, sometimes without giving the impression that anyone cares very much about it, is unfair to the service, to the offenders who are trying to rehabilitate themselves and to the public.
  Question put and negatived.
  Further consideration of the Bill, as amended, adjourned.—[Mr. Maudling.]
  Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be further considered tomorrow.

  DELEGATED LEGISLATION
  Lords Message of 18 th May, communicating the Resolution, That the Committee of seven Lords appointed on 16th December last to join with the Committee of the Commons as a Joint Committee on Delegated Legislation do have power to appoint persons with specialised knowledge for the purpose of particular inquiries, either to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the Committee's order of reference, to be considered forthwith.—[Mr. Hawkins.]
  Lords Message considered accordingly.
  Resolved,
  That this House doth concur with the Lords in the said Resolution.—[Mr. Hawkins.]
  Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

  ADJOURNMENT
  Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hawkins.]
  11.20 p.m.
  Mr. George Cunningham: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Am I to understand that Motion relating to Expenditure, which is on the Order Paper and which names me, is not to be moved this evening? On that assumption, may I draw to your attention, Mr. Speaker, to what I consider to be a breach of the courtesies of this House? A Motion standing in the name of a Member of the Government has been put upon the Order Paper, using my name——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. That Motion has not been moved. The Motion "That this House do now adjourn" has already been moved. The hon. Member cannot proceed further with his point of order at this stage. Mr. Kilfedder.
  Mr. Cunningham: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek

  1785
  your guidance. I rose on my point of order as soon as I thought I could. It was not known to me, and it could not be, that the Motion that stands upon the Order Paper was not to be moved——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot have any points of order about a Motion which has not been moved. Mr. Kilfedder.
  Mr. Cunningham: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: I cannot have any more points of order. The Motion has not been moved. No point of order can arise. Mr. Kilfedder.
  Mr. Cunningham: On a different point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to persist in this. I apologise to the hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder), but I will not keep him or the House for long.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is being most unfair. Time is running against the hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder). I cannot allow any more points of order. Mr. Kilfedder.
  Mr. Cunningham Mr. Cunningham rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Kilfedder.

  NORTHERN IRELAND(IRA ACTIVITIES)
  11.21 p.m.
  Mr. James Kilfedder: I do not intend to say anything in this debate which will engender hate or excite or inflame animosities. The Irish Republican Army has done that for itself. How well it has succeeded! The majority in Ulster, who do not want to be coerced into an all-Irish republic, have been pursued with a fury unparalleled by the armed advocates of Irish unity. Not only have the majority suffered danger, injury and death; they have also had to endure systematic and mischievous misrepresentation.
  People in Northern Ireland no longer say "If there is civil war…". They talk about "When we have to face civil war…", though I pray that all people will continue to show the restraint which the Secretary of State called for in his statement today.
  1786
  After three years of agony this is what we have come to. This is the measure of the success of the IRA. Our hospital wards are crammed with the mutilated bodies and ghastly, human wreckage of the victims of the IRA—Protestant and Roman Catholic. Thousands have been wounded; hundreds are dead. Those who have been executed by the IRA have even been denied dignity in death. When the black hood, which is the insignia of the executioners, is passed over the head and tied tightly round the throat, one cannot guess the thoughts which pass through the victim's mind.
  Every fresh horror breeds a new spate of rumours. The most appalling stories of brutality, torture and mutilation after death are widely canvassed and generally believed. Naturally, they put an impossible burden on the law-abiding community, which has shown so much restraint.
  So the truth should be told, and told immediately after each atrocity. God knows the truth is horrific enough. There is the case of one man who had his tongue cut out before being finally executed by the IRA. Others have been treated in an equally fiendish way, their bodies pumped full of bullets or subjected to electric shock torture. I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to give the facts tonight as far as he can. The least that most of the executed victims have suffered was a beating followed by death.
  Let those who would deny that such treatment is torture ask themselves how they would react to the final terrified hours that an IRA victim lives through —brutally beaten or kicked, then the agonising seconds when, hooded, he is shot in the back of the head.
  Let the truth be told for another reason. Let the whole world, for a change, see the true character of the IRA, which has systematically attacked the interrogation methods of the police and the Army. The true character of the IRA was shown, albeit belatedly, by the late Stormont Government in a pamphlet called "The Terror and the Tears". It is a pity that this Government have chosen to suppress this publication which was doing so much to show the suffering of the victims and tell the facts of IRA brutality.

  1787
  The IRA has made full use of the mass media. Its campaign has been a propaganda masterpiece. No one would deny the IRA its success. But what a dismal reflection on the values of today! The world's Press laps up the IRA's wild allegations, televises it, and especially its funerals with full rites—marching men and youths, gun volleys over the grave.
  Whenever a policeman or a soldier is murdered—some have been callously murdered in front of their families—the IRA machine enlists the support of the gullible everywhere. It alleges that the victims were executed in the name of civil rights and Irish unity or in response to alleged military repression. Where were the civil rights of the three teenage Scottish soldiers, two of them brothers, who were shot one by one in the back of the head after being lured on to a lonely Belfast hillside in March last year by an IRA execution squad, and kicked after death. What does the IRA say about these practices and about this criticism? There is a Mr. Fennell, apparently a public relations spokesman for the IRA, who stated in a recent article in a Dublin newspaper:
  "The IRA campaign as a whole has been conducted with great humanity and with regard for civilian life as compared with other guerrilla campaigns."
  In that article he castigated a very distinguished Roman Catholic clergyman who is also a professor. It is not the first time that the IRA has attacked members of the Roman Catholic Church who have been brave enough to speak out against its vileness.
  Let us look at a few of the examples of the IRA's alleged humanity. Take the case of one man, Private Harper, a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. He is alive today and alone can tell the treatment which was given to him in the course of IRA interrogation. He was kidnapped from his home in Co. Londonderry last week. He was tortured with a lighted cigarette in the backs of his hands. He was shot in the back of the leg and was interrogated for some time and asked about the UDR.
  Then there was the Guards officer, Mr. Marcus McCausland, a Roman Catholic and a former High Sheriff of Co. Londonderry, who had been a captain in
  1788
  the Ulster Defence Regiment. He was also abducted by the IRA. According to an IRA spokesman, he was interrogated by the Command Staff of the Official IRA for four hours. We read in the Press that:
  "Throughout this time he systematically lied and the information elicited from him was already known. It was established through interrogation that he was actually working for British Intelligence."
  We know that Mr. McCausland was hooded, beaten up and was, so my evidence reveals, in a very bad way before being shot. That is a measure of the IRA humanity.
  Then there is the case of Corporal James Elliott, a member of the UDR who was kidnapped on 17th April. On 19th April his body was discovered at Crossmaglen on our side of the frontier. A 200 lb. bomb was attached to his body and claymore mines were placed in the vicinity in order to cause havoc to those who came to rescue the corpse. Numerous bullet wounds were in the body and the head and there were wounds in the hands. All this showed that the man had experienced great agony.
  One of his relatives said that they were horrified at the look of torture and agony still visible on the face. The fingers of both hands were blackened to the knuckles and holes were punched in the finger tips. Handfuls of grass and earth were clutched in the hands. One side of the face was smashed by what could have been either the heel of a boot or a rifle butt, to the extent that the nose was broken and displaced to one side. Both arms seemed limp and the genitals had been kicked until swollen out of all proportion. The teeth were smashed, he was shot through the wrists, the mouth, the neck, the throat and several times in the chest.
  Rev. Ian Paisley: Is my hon. Friend aware that in this tragedy an attempt was made to cover up what the relatives themselves had seen and visits were paid by the security authorities to leading clergymen in the district to ask them to make a statement from their pulpit that no such atrocities were carried out on this man's body, and that this has caused deep resentment and deep feeling?
  Mr. Kilfedder: I appreciate what my hon. Friend has said, and perhaps I should explain that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr) would have liked to be here to make some comment about Corporal Elliott's death, but he is in hospital recovering from an appendicitis operation.
  I will move on to a soldier who came from Eire, Private Martin Bremmer, a member of the Third Queen's, who visited his girl friend in Dundalk. He was abducted by the IRA, hooded and shot in the head, and before he was shot he was severely beaten. His brain and skull were smashed in. As I understand it, his brains were exposed. Perhaps my hon. Friend can tell us something about that unfortunate man's case. It looked as if, to use the jargon of the times, he had been beaten with a pistol butt. There was considerable bruising on his face.
  There is the case of Mr. John Rocks. On 22nd November last year he was abducted by the IRA in Belfast and tortured apparently by means of a red hot poker applied to his private parts and his anus.
  On 18th January of this year Mr. Sidney Agnew, a man of 40 years of age, a father and a bus driver, was due to give evidence on the following day for the prosecution against three members of the IRA who were charged with the possession of guns. As he sat in his home on the evening of 18th January a gunman entered and killed him in front of his own family and wounded his 82-year-old-mother, who went to his assistance. That, again, is a measure of the humanity of the IRA.
  Then there is the case of Sean Russell, a Roman Catholic. The IRA does not distinguish between Protestants and Roman Catholics; its violence takes in everyone who stands up against it. Mr. Russell was a steel erector and a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. We are all proud to have members of the Roman Catholic faith serving in the Ulster Defence Regiment. Not sufficient praise can be given to those who take the risk of serving in the regiment. As Mr. Russell sat in the living room of his home in Belfast with his five children around him the bell rang. One of the children answered the door and a
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  masked man burst in and shot Mr. Russell dead. Again, this man was shot dead in front of his own family. One of the gunman's bullets wounded the eldest child—a girl of 10.
  On 16th February this year a Mr. Callaghan, a bus driver and a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, was driving his bus along the Creggan in Londonderry in the afternoon when he was hauled from his cab by a gunman. Three hours later his body was found, hooded. He had his hands tied behind his back. He had been shot through the head. I understand that there was severe bruising of the body.
  On 13th February of this year Private McCann of the RAOC was beaten up by the IRA when on leave in Dublin visiting his mother. His body was discovered hooded. He had been shot in the head and had obviously been kept prisoner for some time. The evidence is pretty clear that he had been given a severe mauling. There was bad bruising of his body. There is no doubt that he had been subjected to torture.
  The IRA does not restrict its activities to the hale and hearty. A deaf mute was tarred and feathered and severely and savagely beaten, and when the police found him the blood was streaming from his head.
  The whole purpose of the activities of the IRA is to create a Protestant backlash. We have had numerous bomb explosions. There was the explosion at the offices of the Electricity Board in Belfast when a young man—a constituent of mine—was killed and numerous office girls were severely injured. Some of them were maimed for life. Then there was the bomb which exploded recently at the Bluebell Bar, in Sandy Road, without any warning, injuring many people.
  There was the bomb that was accidentally exploded in Kelly's Bar. The IRA did not wish to own up to the fact that it injured its own men. It was prepared to put about allegations that this was a Protestant plot.
  But we all welcome the glimmer of hope presented by the women of the Creggan. It was a brave act of theirs to protest to their tormentors and plead for the restoration of peace in the Province, although it is sad that it took the

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  tortured and murdered body of a 19-yearold Roman Catholic soldier to do it.
  Ranger Best had never served in Northern Ireland, but that did not matter to the IRA. He was born and grew up in the Creggan. That did not matter to the IRA, some of the members of which were undoubtedly at school with him. Ranger Best had been, I understand, a vigilante in 1969 in Londonderry, but that did not save him from the IRA. Why had he been kicked, beaten and tortured, hooded and finally shot by a.45 in the back of the head? His only crime was that, having joined the Army, he dared return home on leave from Germany. Ranger Best and all his family may be the most ardent Republicans for all I know and care. But what I do care is that he, like many others, died in this mean and pointless way. I mourn his death as I mourn the death of everyone who has died in Northern Ireland since August, 1969. I know that this House extends sympathy to him and to his family. But I think his death may bring about a meeting place for Protestants and Roman Catholics who see the violence as a means of destroying Ireland, North and South.
  Did the IRA feel repentant or rebuffed as a result of the women's protests in the Creggan? Not at all. One of the IRA leaders is reported as saying that in a week the women of the Creggan will have forgotten Ranger Best. That sounds callous and stupid. Callous, certainly, but stupid, no. The IRA will have contrived, as it has done often in the past, to create an allegedly Protestant atrocity or a murder allegedly committed by the Army. The news media will bring the incident and the false allegations into every Republican home, and so the hate will be renewed.
  Both wings of the IRA profess that they are in the "no-go" areas only to defend the people there. But it is not realised that it is the women and the children in those areas who defend the IRA, because while the women are there the Army cannot take the action that it would ordinarily take.
  How many of the IRA's innocent victims can the people of this country recall to mind? Few, I fear, of the hundreds who have died as a result of terrorist
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  activity since August, 1969. I should like to see a park or community centre built by the Government, with contributions from public subscription, dedicated to the memory of the victims and bearing their names.
  That is for the future. We still have to defeat the IRA to obtain peace. A few days ago a Stormont Republican MP publicly told the IRA to get off the backs of the minority. But the IRA will not quietly dissolve. It retains its grip on Republican areas by terror, and it does not hesitate to make an example of anyone who may defy its Nazi jackboot rule.
  Last month Mrs. McGucken refused to store ammunition in her home in Springfield Avenue, Belfast. A few days later three men and two girls, all wearing masks, burst into her house on a Sunday, and in front of her three young children cut off her hair. Mrs. McGucken was pregnant, but these thugs dragged her out from her home and her children into the street, where they tied her to a lamp post and poured paint and feathers over her. That was not sufficient. They then beat her with hurley sticks, breaking her shoulder bone. This obscene deed was carried out in the street in which the unfortunate woman lived.
  Earlier this month two masked men entered the home of the Hyland family in the Lower Falls area of Belfast. When the terrorists identified Elizabeth, one of the daughters, aged 15, they threw a coat over her, lifted her bodily out of her chair and bundled her into a waiting car and drove off. That was on a Friday evening. Her mother, sister and young brothers never set eyes on her again until five days later. During her imprisonment she was moved around four different houses and was repeatedly beaten on the face and body. I understand that she was given bleach to drink. Her final humiliation was to be stripped of her clothes and forced to put on a pair of old trousers and shoes. Then she was taken outside into the street, which was only a few yards from her home, and tied to a telegraph pole. Her hair was cut and tugged out, and paint and feathers were poured over her. This punishment was carried out, allegedly for spying—in front of a mob of 200, many of them women, her neighbours.

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  The list of the victims of the IRA is long. The actions of the IRA are obscene. The IRA makes many allegations about the British Army and the police. It does not like the truth being told about its own actions, which disgrace the name of Ireland. The sooner the IRA goes, the sooner Protestant and Roman Catholic may live together in peace and for the good of all in the community.
  11.41 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. David Howell: We should be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) for directing the attention of the House and the public to the continuing horror of IRA terrorism and to the cases which he has cited, with the appalling suffering caused to the victims.
  There is a danger that, after two years of IRA terrorism, we could become inured to the almost daily toll of murder, wounding and misery. My hon. Friend is right that we should not forget the suffering. He is right that we should strive in every possible way, at home and abroad, to expose the savagery of this series of indiscriminate attacks on men, women and children and the coldly calculated murders of soldiers, policemen and civilians. It is this type of exposure which the IRA fears most, and rightly so. Above all, it fears exposure to the anger of its own community.
  Here, may I correct one point which my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North put wrongly, unintentionally I am sure. He said that the Government had suppressed the pamphlet "The Terror and the Tears". That is not so. It is available and obtainable. It is true that much has happened since the publication of that document, appalling in its message, and new IRA horrors have crowded out the old, alas. We believe that there is no lack of publicity for such incidents, and there must be no lack of publicity. Television and Press reports have made the incidents plain when they occur. We see at first hand the horror and pain and sorrow—it is present in our homes—and I believe that this is the best way forward in this respect. If my hon. Friend presses me on the matter I shall consider whether a fresh booklet or something of that kind would be required. But we believe that
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  we are achieving the necessary impact through the publicity which we have in the Press and other news media.
  Mr. Kilfedder: I hope my hon. Friend will reconsider the question of printing another publication so that the people will know the truth. They hear too many lies. If the facts are set out properly, they will see the truth.
  Mr. Howell: As I say, we shall look at that. But we believe that through getting the facts—the horrific facts—into the Press and other news media of the world we are adopting the best way of putting out the message.
  The people of the Creggan and the Bogside have recently, and very bravely, expressed more forcibly than we can, since they speak from personal grief, their horror and revulsion at the callous murder of one of their own kith and kin, the murder to which my hon. Friend referred. I suppose it could be that the cold-blooded decision by some IRA leader to murder Ranger William Best will in time prove to be the decision which showed beyond doubt that the rule of the gun will bring no peace to Ireland. IRA brutality is no substitute for justice. The shooting of its victims in the legs as a punishment for offending the IRA is no substitute for law and order. There is nothing noble in these acts, nothing to do with idealism. They are deeds which blot the book of Irish history, deeds of squalour and barbarism. Let us be clear about that.
  My hon. Friend asked me today, as he has before by Questions, about cases in which IRA victims have been tortured and then murdered. I have replied that the IRA has been guilty of torture in many cases and my hon. Friend listed some of them in detail. I have replied that we have a long list of murders by the IRA. I have also replied that it is difficult to prove that any particular murdered man was tortured before he was murdered.
  My hon. Friend mentioned the case of Corporal Elliott of the Ulster Defence Regiment and this is an instance of this difficulty. It was widely reported at the time that Corporal Elliott had been tortured before he was shot. As my hon. Friend knows, the inquest into the cause of death will be held tomorrow, 26th

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  May, and the evidence that has been accumulated will be submitted for consideration by the coroner. I do not think I can say any more than that now but I can say that if my hon. Friend wishes to approach the coroner or the Ministry of Home Affairs and seek help in gaining a view of the pathologist's report he should certainly do so. I will personally see throught the Ministry that we do all we can to help.
  At the moment I am still awaiting a report on the kidnapping and murder of Ranger William Best. The preliminary findings indicate ill-treatment before death. When these findings are made public as they will be it will then be for the House to judge whether this amounts to torture—whether we can distinguish in this case.
  There are a number of other cases in which it has been reported that IRA victims have been tortured before being killed. For reasons which I think will be obvious—and there are close relatives and friends of the victims whom we must consider—I cannot and do not wish to go into the question of the nature of the injuries suffered by IRA victims in this category before they were killed. Furthermore, in most cases the evidence is very difficult to assess. The injuries caused to the bodies of IRA victims by gunshot wounds from which they die can easily be interpreted, understandably so. as torture. We know definitely that the IRA has been guilty of torture. My hon. Friend knows it and he has specified instances. We know too that it is guilty of many brutal murders but the evidence linking the two in many cases dies with the victim and this is the difficulty.
  In the few remaining minutes may I put to the House the question which my hon. Friend put to it. It is right for us to ask: what does the IRA wish to achieve by this brutality? Is it an Ireland economically flourishing with jobs for all? Its activities have been directed to debilitating the Province. We all know of the deliberate destruction of factories and commercial premises, with appalling consequences. Is it a workers' republic the IRA is after or is it, as someone has said more eloquently that I, a widows' republic? There cannot be
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  a workers' republic if there is not enough work, if all the opportunities for work have been smashed up. These are the questions we must put again and again if we wish to make clear the true message of IRA brutality.
  We all know of fathers killed in the presence of their wives and children, of children shot down while they are playing in the streets or of young girls who are the innocent victims of indiscriminate attacks which have left them scarred and maimed for life. These are the horrific facts of the victims of the IRA.
  This debate has shown all too painfully who are the victims, which families have suffered. It must be our policy and it is the policy of this Government to reverse this horrific trend. The purpose of the initiative by my right hon. Friend has been to create conditions in which there can be and must be a civilised and profitable discussion between all those concerned over the future of Northern Ireland. We ask a good deal of the people of Northern Ireland but they have shown that we are not asking too much. The members of the community who took down the barricades last weekend have demonstrated that they can overcome fear. terror and brutality and opt for law and order.
  Those people in Londonderry who showed their city and the world what they thought about the IRA campaign of terror have made a first start. The people who overcome the degradation and horrific brutalities of the IRA in this way are no longer the victims; these are the people who are showing the way to peace in Ireland. I welcome the opportunity my hon. Friend has given us tonight to say something and to say something angry and firm about those brutalities. These are the things we should know and know definitely and utterly reject for the sake of Northern Ireland.
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at ten minutes to Twelve o'clock.