CHAIRMAN (Hansard, 22 October 1973)

§ Mr. Gordon Campbell
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The amendment is on an addendum sheet simply because of a printing error. It is simply a drafting amendment which failed to be marshalled.

§ Mr. Gordon Campbell
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The purpose of the amendment is to oblige the new district councils to sub- 874 mit for the Secretary of State's approval any title which they may wish to give their chairmen. Hon. Members will remember that this was discussed generally in Committee and it was felt that it was impossible to make a general prescription for the chairmen of districts although it was prescribed for other bodies in the new reorganisation. In the House of Lords there was a feeling that this might create a free-for-all in which a number of districts might take for themselves strange and inappropriate titles. The only solution, if this were to happen, appeared to be for a Minister to have the final say. We agree that there is a possibility of this kind of thing happening and that it would be prudent to keep the choice of the titles of chairmen within reasonable bounds. I therefore commend this amendment to the House.

§ Mr. Ross
The Secretary of State was unwilling to take on additional powers when I suggested that he should effect combinations of local authorities and other matters. Now he rises to the occasion by saying that he is prepared to be the umpire regarding the titles of various district councils.
I agree that we want to avoid a proliferation and confusion of titles of chairmen of district councils. My noble Friend Lord Hughes, in the other place, spoke of the strange titles that now exist. For example, he said that a place called Elgin tried to argue that it was entitled to have a lord provost rather than a provost. That is also true of Perth.
That being so, may we be told by the Secretary of State, who has a constituency connection with one of those places, whether he will consent to the title of lord provost for any district other than the cities that are specifically mentioned in the Bill? I think it is a mistake. We have laid down that the chairmen of regions and cities shall be known as conveners. With the exercise of a little imagination we could have laid down something for the district councils, even if it were to be simply "chairman". It 875 would have been better to have a limited variation of title.
I regret that we are still to have lord provosts. They are part of the past of local government. We should have made a clean sweep in that respect. After all, the new Glasgow district will not be the old Glasgow. The functions will certainly be very different. We should have made a complete change from the past. However, that having been decided, I should like to know what the Secretary of State has in mind as a suitable title for the chairmen of other district councils.

§ Dr. Dickson Mabon
While I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) about wanting to hear what the Secretary of State has to say about Elgin and Perth, may I point out that he is somewhat forgetful in that in Committee he did not want this kind of amendment. It is not that the Lords discovered this defect. In Committee we complained that there would be this complete and total confusion about the description of a district council chairman. This is irrespective of the argument about the dignity of the title lord provost, provost, or what one will. Indeed, we might call this the correction of the mulligatawny clause, because we pointed out the variety of titles that could be invented by people.
I welcome this improvement in the Bill, but I hope that the Secretary of State will give us some guidance on what he proposes to say to the local authorities in different parts of Scotland.
Apparently the Glasgow district is not now going to be the Glasgow district. All that Wheatley recommended was in the Bill as it left the House of Commons. It will now be easier to call the chairman of the Glasgow district the lord provost because it is territorially almost the same as the present city. That might not be true of other areas.
My right hon. Friend mentioned Rutherglen, which will be in. Therefore, the provostship of Rutherglen will disappear. But what about other places? Are we to have a provost of Eastwood?

§ Mr. Gordon Campbell
With the leave of the House. When this was discussed in Committee I think we reached general agreement. Some of the districts will be 876 rural but there will be others which will be almost complete burghs. That was why it was felt best to leave that open, because there would be some districts where it would be appropriate for the title 'provost" to continue. From all sides of the House there has been a call to the Government to try to retain traditions and titles where appropriate, where a successor body clearly could continue with them. That is why it was left open for the chairmen of districts to be called chairmen. I agree that that is clearly unobjectionable. The same applies to "provost" when a new area is the equivalent of a previous burgh, and to "provost" or "convener" in a rural area. That is what county chairman have been known as over most of Scotland.
That was the reason for leaving it open. It was only when it was suggested in another place that obscure or exotic titles might be invented that it was thought there ought to be some break. The power suggested here for the Secretary of State is small compared with the enormous one which the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) referred to on the previous amendment.
He is asking about two particular cases. I would not wish to pre-judge the choice by the local authorities concerned or to say what a future Secretary of State might decide. This is a general reservation, an enablement for ministers to step in if something is clearly inappropriate. It is a refinement of what we agreed in Committee and I hope the House will accept it.