Commons Sitting of 26 March 1975

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
The Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence, through illness of Mr. SPEAKER from this day's Sitting
Whereupon, Mr. GEORGE THOMAS,the Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table and, after Prayers took the Chair, as DEPUTY SPEAKER, pursuant to the Standing Order

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  SCOTLAND

    River Tweed
    Mr. Beithasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will introduce legislation to provide that the English bank of the River Tweed, those reaches of the river which are wholly in England and the adjacent area of the Northumberland coast shall no longer be governed by Scottish law in respect of fishing and related matters.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Hugh D. Brown): I have no plans to do so.
    Mr. Beith: Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the present situation is something of an anomaly and is felt to be so by those fishermen who pay their rates in England but are governed by Scottish law. The gill net ban has led some people to feel that their interests have not been sufficiently carefully considered. Will the hon. Gentleman accept that if these powers pass to the Scottish Assembly this kind of government without representation will be unacceptable on the English side of the border?
    Mr. Brown: I do not want to encourage English nationalism—[Interruption] We have enough bother with Scottish nationalism. There is a genuine difficulty here, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman recognises. All the previous legislation has recognised that it is impossible to consider the problems and prosperity of the Tweed
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    and salmon fishing in isolation—in other words, it is recognised that it is impossible to differentiate between England and Scotland. For these practical reasons, and in the interests of all concerned, it has always been desirable to deal with this in United Kingdom legislation, but with the main emphasis on the fact that it is a Scottish river and the fish are mainly Scottish fish.

    Economic Bulletin
    Mr. Robertsonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when the next issue of the Scottish Economic Bulletin will be published; and if it will contain an estimate of employment prospects in Scotland over the coming 12 months.
    The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): The spring edition has just been published and the next is due in July. It is not our practice to give estimates of employment prospects, but each issue contains an article reviewing general progress in the Scottish economy.
    Mr. Robertson: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the large number of factory closures in Paisley and get his astrologers on to the job of trying to find out how we can get these people other employment?
    Mr. Ross: I should prefer to rely on a much more reasonable policy than that of astrology. I hope that when we come to the publication and then the enactment of the measure dealing with the Scottish Development Agency we shall get all the help that we usually do get from my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Gray: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether he believes that the employment prospects in Scotland will improve or decline if the United Kingdom leaves the EEC?
    Mr. Ross: One cannot isolate the economy of Scotland from that of the United Kingdom. One of the things about which I am pleased is that although there is evidence of rising unemployment the Scottish economy seems to be much more resilient because of the special efforts that have been made and the opportunities that we now have in Scotland. We cannot isolate Britain from the rest of the world, and we cannot

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    isolate the Scottish economy from the United Kingdom economy.
    Mr. Gordon Wilson: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's statement about the Scottish Development Agency. May I ask what additional resources will he placed at the disposal of the Assembly, bearing in mind the statement made in Newcastle by the Leader of the House to the effect that few additional resources would be going either to the Scottish Assembly or to the Scottish Development Agency?
    Mr. Ross: It seems that certain individuals are quite speechless unless they read the Daily Express I suggest that it would be far better to wait a little while. A few days after we return from the Easter Recess the Scottish Development Agency Bill will be published. It will contain a Financial Memorandum and a list of powers, and the hon. Gentleman will then be able to make up his mind without getting guidance from the enlightened organ to which I have referred.

    School Leavers (Employment)
    Mr. Gourlayasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he is taking to assist the Scottish economy to absorb the large number of children leaving school and seeking employment in the current year.
    Mr. Tom McMillanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what discussions he has had with industrial organisations about employment problems facing school leavers in 1975.
    The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. Bruce Millan): Between February and March the number of unemployed school leavers in Scotland fell by over one-third. In mid-March there were more vacancies for young persons notified to the Department of Employment than there were unemployed school leavers. These figures are an encouraging sign.
    Mr. Gourlay: Is my hon. Friend aware that the people of Scotland will be pleased to note the encouraging trend of those figures? Nevertheless, is he aware that in Fife in particular in March of this year there were 141 school leavers still unemployed, compared with 52 in March 1974? Will he give encouragement to
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    the people in my constituency, and in other parts of Scotland, by indicating that the Scottish Development Agency will have the powers necessary to ensure employment for school leavers?
    Mr. Millan: I take my hon. Friend's point. The employment situation is not as good this year as it was last year, and this has affected unemployment amongst school leavers as well as elsewhere.
    Apart from particular things that one can do to help young people, the answer is a healthy Scottish economy within a healthy United Kingdom economy, and that is what the various steps that we are taking, including the establishment of the SDA, are designed to bring about. in this as in other fields the SDA will have a favourable effect upon the Scottish economy.
    Mr. Tom McMillan: I thank my hon. Friend for the good news that he has brought us. It seems that things are a little better. However, is he aware that of the 80,000 school leavers this year 64,000 will find it very hard to get jobs? Is he considering doubling the regional employment premium for those firms which are prepared to take on extra apprentices? If we can develop the skills now for the great future that is ahead of us we shall have done a good job.
    Mr. Millan: The level of unemployed school leavers at the minute is just over 2,000. That is far too high a level, but it is not comparable with the figure that my hon. Friend mentioned. His specific question is more a matter for the Department of Employment and the Training Services Agency, but I shall pursue his suggestion that employers might be given special incentives to take on young people in this difficult situation. I shall write to my hon. Friend about that matter.

    Unemployment
    Mr. Selbyasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received from trade unions about the current rate of unemployment and what replies he has sent.
    Mr. William Ross: I have received no representations from individual unions but when, with the Prime Minister, my colleagues and I met the STUC recently

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    we had a discussion in depth over the whole field of Scotland's economic development.
    Mr. Selby: I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. Is he aware that over the past few weeks I have been asked about the position within the development area of Govan? Certain industries are closing down in Govan. Cape Contracts is moving to another area. Has it made any attempt to get in touch with the Government? The people who work in the King George V dock are in the same position. Have they made any overtures to the Government to the effect that a difficult situation may arise when Hunterston begins operations—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Two questions are enough at one time.
    Mr. Ross: My hon. Friend has put two detailed questions about firms in his constituency. In the first instance they would make their representations not to me but to the Department of Industry. However, on 1st July I take over new powers and I may then have much more detailed information to give my hon. Friend in respect of these matters. I shall gladly look into the point that he has raised about these individual firms.
    Mrs. Bain: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Scottish unemployment situation is almost as bad as the situation in Denmark? Is he aware that Denmark is often cited as the worst European example? Does he realise that if Scotland did not have 40,000 oil-related jobs it would be in a situation similar to that which exists in the United States of America, which is now going through its worst slump since the depression? As the Government have made such a mess of establishing oil-related jobs, will they now consider the possibility of establishing jobs which are not connected with the oil industry and which will provide long-term employment opportunities?
    Mr. Ross: I do not know whether the hon. Lady knows what she is talking about. The fact is that we have 40,000 oil-related jobs. The full implications of the go-slow policy preached by the hon. Lady's party are such that they would not have established 40,000 oil-related jobs.

    Fishing Industry
    Mr. Sproatasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the future of the Scottish fishing industry.
    Mr. Hugh D. Brown: In Scotland, as in the United Kingdom as a whole, the fishing industry is currently facing some economic difficulty, and it was for this reason that the Government announced their intention of giving temporary financial aid. The aim of this aid is to give the industry time to adjust to changed circumstances.
    There is also natural concern about more long-term problems, including fishery limits and conservation of stocks. The Government will play their part, in co-operation with the industry, in seeking a speedy resolution of these problems through international negotiation.
    Mr. Sproat: 1 thank the Minister for that reply. Is he in a position at this stage to say anything about yesterday's meeting about the banning of foreign fish? I appreciate that there will be a statement later today. Further, will he now change his mind and agree to meet representatives of the STF when he is in Aberdeen on 3rd April to discuss the continuation of financial support after the end of June, the need for a settlement of the EEC fisheries policy before the referendum, and the need for a 200-mile limit to be imposed unilaterally if the Geneva Conference breaks up without agreement?
    Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman is obviously well-informed in that he knows about my activities. I say straight away that I would be delighted to meet the STF in Aberdeen next week, together with any of the other representative organisations in the fishing industry. There is lack of communication even within those organisations about what is going on. The hon. Gentleman obviously will not expect me to anticipate my right hon. Friend's statement, but I can assure him that we are well aware of the short-term problems, the long-term problems linked with the Law of the Sea Conference, and the need to give urgent attention to the EEC common fisheries, policy.
    Mr. Donald Stewart: Welcome though the recently announced subsidies are, does the Minister accept that there is a great

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    deal of resentment that vessels fishing for shellfish should be excluded? As a great deal of their catch goes to earn foreign currency, surely there is a case for seeing that vessels fishing for shellfish are included.
    Mr. Brown: There is another Question on the Order Paper dealing with that point. Although the hon. Gentleman has skilfully avoided the 40 foot argument, he will recognise that this is a temporary financial aid to the industry and that it is based on operating costs. With great respect to the shellfish industry, its operating costs have not increased so much as costs in other sections of the industry.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that in his consideration of the problems facing the fishing industry he will seek to preserve the principal of priority for coastal States, as was negotiated originally when we entered Europe? As for the very much changed situation in respect of the 200-mile limit now under negotiation at the Law of the Sea Conference, will the Minister say when the Government will be in a position to give their answer to the herring section of the industry regarding interim measures to serve the herring industry until the Law of the Sea Conference is concluded?
    Mr. Brown: If the hon. Gentleman concluded satisfactory agreements I must tell him that they are not appreciated by many sections of the fishing industry. I do not think that he should overdo the compliments to himself when he leaves me with the problems. We are well aware of the urgency of this matter, but the first thing to do is to see how the Law of the Sea Conference proceeds. If there is an acceptance of the 200-mile limit it will still be open to us, within that kind of framework, to pursue the right policies within the EEC.

    Scottish Trades Union Congress
    Mr. Sillarsasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he next plans to meet the Scottish TUC to discuss economic and employment prospects.
    Mr. William Ross: I had a full discussion of these matters with the STUC at the end of February, in company with the Prime Minister and my colleagues principally concerned. We propose to
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    repeat this occasion annually, and, of course, I shall continue to meet the STUC myself as and when the occasion requires.
    Mr. Sillars: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the meeting was warmly welcomed in Scotland? Will he confirm that when dealing with the middle- and longterm position the Scottish TUC put great emphasis on the Scottish Development Agency being controlled by the Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh? Notwithstanding the narrow defeat of the excellent composite Resolution No. 1 at Aberdeen last Friday will my right hon. Friend agree to give the most serious consideration to the point of view of the Scottish trade union movement, especially as it received such weighty support from, for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan)?
    Mr. Ross: I assure my hon. Friend that I shall take full account of the views of the STUC. I shall give due weight to the decisions of the political wing of the Scottish trade union movement.
    Mr. Rifkind: Will the right hon. Gentleman inform the House what he believes would be the effects on employment in Scotland if Scotland and Britain as a whole were to leave the European Community?
    Mr. Ross: I should be happy to do that if the hon. Gentleman managed to table a Question and if I managed to answer it.
    Mr. Lambie: Does my right hon. Friend remember that after his last meeting with the STUC at the Scottish summit the Prime Minister gave an assurance that Hunterston would be started by 1982? Later, in an effort not to be outdone, Monty Finniston, the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation, stated, in an interview with the industrial editor of the Glasgow Herald, that he would start the preparatory work now. When will my right hon. Friend get into step with the Prime Minister, Monty Finniston and everyone else in Scotland and start building up our infrastructure, and when will he open the new motorway connecting North Ayrshire with the M8 and the M74?
    Mr. Ross: I shall be delighted to open it when it is finished.
    Mr. Fairgrieve: If the Scottish TUC does not take the Government's advice to support Britain's staying in the Common Market. will the Secretary of State ask it who is to pay the huge grants that Scotland is currently receiving from theCommunity—[HON. MEMBERS: "Reading."]—and who will provide employment for those made redundant—[HON. MEMBERS: "Still reading."]—in the main Scottish industries for which the biggest market is in Europe?
    Mr. Ross: The Question relates to my plans for meeting the STUC. If the hon. Member had the time to write that supplementary question down why did he not write it out and put it on the Order Paper?

    Economic Prospects
    Mr. Teddy Taylorasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the prospects for the Scottish economy.
    Mr. Alexander Fletcherasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what are his estimates of employment and investment prospects in Scotland during the next 12 months.
    Mr. William Ross: The Scottish economy is subject to the same difficulties which face the United Kingdom as a whole as well as other industrial and oil importing nations. It is, however, encouraging that employment in Scotland is proving more robust than in the rest of Britain, Scottish unemployment bearing a lower relationship to the Great Britain total than at any time since recording began in 1954. The establishment of the Scottish Development Agency and the development of North Sea oil will, with our general regional policies, help to sustain and create new employment and to encourage investment in Scotland.
    Mr. Taylor: Does the Secretary of State agree that the unprecedented wave of strike action in the Glasgow area is damaging the image of an area which desperately needs to attract jobs and is causing hardship to users of the airport and to residents in multi-storey flats, among others? Does he agree that in consultation with the Secretary of State for Employment he should appoint an independent inquiry to find out what is
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    going wrong with labour relations in Glasgow and what can be done to put the situation right?
    Mr. Ross: Like the hon. Member, I deplore the disruption, and I hope that he, like me, will use all his influence not to stir up trouble as some people in Scotland are doing but to strengthen the hand of the official trade union movement. He should direct his question about the inquiry to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment.
    Mr. Fletcher: Why is the Secretary of State so coy about giving us the benefit of his advice about Britain's continued membership of the EEC? Will he be less shy in commending the dustmen and the Army in Glasgow for the efforts they are making to make Scotland a cleaner and better place to work in? Will he follow through the idea of bringing troops into Glasgow by bringing the Royal Air Force into Abbotsinch, so that people can fly to and from London and elsewhere?
    Mr. Ross: I have already paid tribute to the dustmen and the Army for the work they are performing, but I saw little indication of a similar approach by the Conservatives when they were in that situation before.
    As for the hon. Gentleman's impatience in getting a speech from me about the EEC, I can tell him that I delivered such speeches from the Opposition Dispatch Box and I have made speeches on the subject over a long period. I have had no influence on him, however, and I deplore the fact that he is still so dense in these matters.
    Mr. Sillars: On the question of the Scottish economy, does my right hon. Friend agree that the point of substance by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Lambie) in a supplementary question earlier today, about a major road link between Hunterston and Central Scotland is important? We are delighted that my right hon. Friend will come to open the road, but the people of Ayrshire want to know when that will be.
    Mr. Ross: I would have welcomed far greater attention to this matter by the people of Ayrshire. The project was held up over a decision as to the line that the road should take. My hon. Friends were trying to put one point of view and other

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    people were putting another, and until that matter was settled among those people, with the help of the Scottish Office, we could not make reasonable progress.
    Mr. Gordon Wilson: I welcome the conversion of the Secretary of State to the realisation of the importance of the development of Scottish oil resources for the benefit of Scotland. Will the right hon. Gentleman now admit that the real importance to Scotland lies in the investment of Scottish oil revenues within the Scottish economy? Will the right hon. Gentleman do something to persuade the Leader of the House to take action to prevent these vast resources from leaving Scotland for England, as is presently planned?
    Mr. Ross: I shall be glad to look into any of the hon. Gentleman's suggestions, but I hope that they will be better than the ones he has made hitherto.

    Prison Sentences
    Mr. Dempseyasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what was the nature of his reply to the representations he received on behalf of 1,000 persons from Coatbridge and Airdrie which called for legislation providing for longer sentences on those convicted in courts; and if he will make a statement.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Harry Ewing): Penalties are a matter for the courts and there is no reason to suppose that their maximum powers are inadequate. A reply to the Editor of the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser was sent on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 14th March and by me today. These discussed measures which, if taken by the services and, indeed, the citizens in the local community, could help to reduce the problem.
    Mr. Dempsey: Is my hon. Friend aware that more than 1,000 persons wrote to the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser asking that tougher measures should be taken against those who flood high schools, repeatedly burn beautiful new primary schools, destroy industrial premises and even poison the guard dogs, and attack and brutally beat up innocent persons who are thus reduced almost to vegetables? Will my hon. Friend con-
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    sider widening the court sentences to include useful community work under the prison service supervision where no labour force exists now, not forgetting the possibility of restoring corporal punishment for these persistent sophisticated thugs?
    Mr. Ewing: It is important to get this question in its proper perspective. The Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser issued about 10,000 forms, of which 1,000 were returned. The forms contained a question which the people answered. I am sure that my hon. Friend would not wish to mislead the House into believing that 1,000 people actually wrote to the newspaper, because that is not the position.
    I assure my hon. Friend that longer and more severe sentences are now being imposed. In 1963, 8 per cent. of those convicted for vandalism were given custodial sentences, whereas in 1973 the figure was 13 per cent.
    Consideration is being given to the possibility of introducing some form of community service for those convicted of vandalism. But I think that my hon. Friend has a duty to be consistent. I know that he does not favour corporal punishment in schools, for instance—
    Mr. Dempsey: No. The Minister is wrong.
    Mr. Ewing: It is important that we should get the question of corporal punishment clear in our minds.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: Does the Under-Secretary agree that vandalism is a serious and worsening problem? What does he mean by his new initiative, and does he envisage a situation in which those who perpetrate acts of vandalism would, where practicable, be made to make good the damage they have done?
    Mr. Ewing: Any person convicted of an act of vandalism can be sued in a civil action for the costs of putting right the vandalism committed. The new initiative to which I referred relates to community service. We are looking at this matter, and when we are in a position to say something to the House that will be done.
    Mr. Gourlay: In his travels throughout Scotland, has the Minister noticed the

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    andalism being perpetrated by the SNP election propaganda which is still being displayed? I refer particularly to the horrible desecration of an important building in my constituency. Will my hon. Friend take steps to ensure that custodial sentences are imposed upon those concerned?
    Mr. Ewing: I have noticed that most of our road signs are still seriously disfigured with SNP election propaganda. This is a serious point which I trust the SNP will take seriously. Political parties have a responsibility to clear up that type of vandalism. I appeal to the SNP to take steps to have our road signs restored to their original form, to clear up the type of vandalism to which my hon. Friend rightly referred.
    Mr. Fairbairn: Does the Minister appreciate that, having with great difficulty got the District Courts (Scotland) Bill through the House in its present form, he has thus excluded the thousand burghers of Coatbridge and Airdrie, who might have imposed the sentences in the courts?
    Mr. Ewing: I appreciate that what we have done with the Bill, without the hon. Gentleman's help, is to introduce a system of courts that will be very acceptable and will perform a very good service within the law of Scotland.

    Community Councils
    Mr. Canavanasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress has been made in the establishment of community councils.
    Mr. Milan: Most of the new district and islands councils have in hand the necessary preparatory work for setting up community councils in their areas.
    Mr. Canavan: Will my hon. Friend try to ensure that the new community councils are as democratic and representative as possible, by seeing that they contain the maximum number of directly-elected representatives and also by ensuring that they are adequately financed by central Government, so that they are not entirely dependent on local authorities for their resources, some of which authorities may be reluctant to support bodies which oppose some of their views?
    Mr. Milian: The preparation of schemes is a matter for the district and islands councils. Since we published our consultative document last December, there has been considerable activity by councils in this respect, particularly within the Strathclyde region. The regional council has promised to provide financial support, which, at the product of a penny rate, will amount to about Elf million. So I think that finance will be forthcoming.
    Mr. David Steel: Will the Minister confirm that there is no need for communities to wait until the district councils propose comprehensive schemes for community councils throughout the area before they get together to form provisional community councils?
    Mr. Milan: A great deal of activity can go on now, but the first statutory step is for the advertisements to be placed. That has already been done in most areas. It is now up to interested bodies—local organisations, community organisations, and the rest—to put their ideas to the local authorities, so that this important initiative gets off the ground as quickly as possible.
    Mr. Donald Stewart: What action does the Scottish Office intend to take against the ludicrous Treasury decision that any funds finding their way into community councils will not be regarded as of charitable status?
    Mr. Milan: I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. The financial provisions for community councils were laid down in the Local Government Act.

    Divorce Law Reform
    Mrs. Bainasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many representations he has received to introduce legislation to implement divorce law reform in Scotland.
    Mr. Harry Ewing: In the past year my right hon. Friend has received 18 letters from private individuals and interested groups supporting the introduction of legislation to implement divorce law reform in Scotland. I am aware also of similar representations that have been made to my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council and others.
    Mrs. Bain: I am sure that there is no need to remind the Secretary of State that the people of Scotland are fed up with being treated as second-class citizens. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that they have noted that Government time was allocated to discuss the matter on a specifically English basis, but that the Government have refused to allocate time to discuss it as a Scottish matter. Has the hon. Gentleman read the Law Commission report. which states that Scottish law is falling behind because there is no time to debate such matters? Does he agree that that is a strong argument for setting up a Scottish Legislative Assembly immediately?
    Mr. Ewing: I always understood that the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends were more interested in separation than divorce. I hope that she is as forthcoming with the people of Scotland outside the House as she appears to be with those inside the House, because one of the reasons why the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh. Central (Mr. Cook) is in such difficulty is that it was opposed in its early stage by the Leader of her own party—her hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart).
    If the hon. Lady is suggesting that the law of Scotland is falling behind the law in England and Wales and should be brought into line with English law, she should say so.
    Mr. Robin F. Cook: Has my hon. Friend noted the statement to the Press issued by the hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) that we should allow any English law reform to run for 10 years in England before we imitate it in Scotland? Does he agree that that is not acceptable to the Scottish people, and that the sponsors of my Bill, from all parties, have greatly appreciated the Government's sympathy and understanding of the difficulties we are in? Will my hon. Friend inform the House of the number of representations made to his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, which I think have been passed to the Scottish Office for answer?
    Mr. Ewing: I cannot give the House the number. I noted what the hon. Member for Western Isles said in the statement, and also that when the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire. East (Mrs.
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    Bain) was speaking the hon. Gentleman was violently disagreeing with what she said. Certain discussions are taking place about the Bill, and they will continue.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Why on earth should time be given for a hare coursing Bill, which many of us support, yet there is no Government time to be given for this Bill, which is on a matter causing acute anxiety to a number of families in Scotland? The opponents of the Bill on a Friday are a Scottish Tory Member who sought to use the English law to obtain his own divorce and the Leader of the SNP, one of whose colleagues is now shouting for harmonisation between the law in England and the law in Scotland.
    Mr. Ewing: I am not responsible for the management of Government business, and I am not in a position to say why time is given for one Bill and not for another.
    Mr. Sproat: I accept what the Minister has just said, but will not the Scottish Office change its traditional mind on this question and urge the Government to give time to debate the matter? Does the hon. Gentleman accept that in many families in Scotland great bitterness is felt about the lack of harmonisation between English and Scottish law in this matter, and that Members from all parties want the earliest possible debate, at least to see what the feelings of the Scottish Members are on the matter?
    Mr. Ewing: It must be within the hon. Gentleman's memory that during his time as PPS to the previous Secretary of State for Scotland approaches were made on the subject, and no sympathy or support were forthcoming from the Government of the day. Whilst I recognise the strength of feeling, 1 rest on the answer I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central that these are matters for discussion and that we should wait and see how the discussions develop.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: Will the Minister dissociate himself from the unfair personal remarks made by the hon. Member for Fife. Central (Mr. Hamilton), and agree that a Bill of this importance should be fully debated, and not approved on the nod at 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon?
    Mr. Ewing: I am not responsible for what any hon. Member, on either side of the House, says at Question Time or in debate. The matter has been debated in the House many times. Most hon. Members, whether they are for or against divorce reform, have made up their minds where they stand. We should leave the matter there, and see how it progresses.

    Mentally Handicapped Persons (Education)
    Mr. Adam Hunterasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many centres for the education of the mentally handicapped are in the process of construction.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Robert Hughes): Ten for children and five for adults.
    Mr. Hunter: Is my hon. Friend satisfied that enough has been done to begin implementing the Education (Mentally Handicapped Children) (Scotland) Act 1974, which is widely acclaimed by many people in Scotland who have a special interest in educating the mentally handicapped? Those people are worried about the lack of visible progress in the building of accommodation. Will my hon. Friend say whether anything is being done and what new developments he has in mind, particularly in relation to profoundly mentally handicapped children?
    Mr. Hughes: As my hon. Friend will be aware, the Education (Mentally Handicapped Children) (Scotland) Act 1974 comes into operation on 16th May this year. There are 10 centres for children and five for adults at present under construction. There are a number of problems, but many of the premises already used will be taken over by the education authorities which will be responsible for the education of mentally handicapped children after the appointed day. One problem, for example, concerns the 1,500 children in mental deficiency hospital wards, many of whom receive no education or training at present. Most education authorities are making short-term arrangements for taking over hospital wards for teaching purposes, as is being done, for example, at Lynebank Hospital, in my hon. Friend's constituency.

    Public Service Employees
    Mr. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether be has any plans to introduce a weighting allowance for public service employees in Scotland similar to the London weighting allowance.
    Mr. Milian: No, Sir.
    Mr. Henderson: Is the Minister aware that that answer will be received with deep disappointment and some anger in Scotland, particularly by people who work in the public services and whose cost of living is similar to that in the south-east of England, although they do not get the benefit of the weighting allowance which is paid to people working in the public services in London? Will not the Minister stand up for Scotland for a change and impress on his Cabinet colleagues the importance of securing social justice for the working people of Scotland as well as for the working people of London?
    Mr. Millan: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman said. The London weighting allowance is specifically directed to the high cost of housing and travelto-work in the London area. These matters have only recently been studied again by the Pay Board in a report which was initiated by the previous Government. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will be happy to have the information that the overall average earnings for all manual workers in all industries, on the latest figures available, are, in England £48.75 per week and in Scotland £48.37 per week, so that the figures are now absolutely, on all fours. I hope that that information will be set against the lying propaganda of the Scottish National Party in this matter. Generally speaking, it would be much to the detriment of Scotland, both in the public service and generally, to move from national agreements to a series of local agreements. It is a great illusion to imagine that Scotland would benefit from that system. In my opinion, it would suffer very much.
    Mr. Canavan: I recognise the general need for better wages, but will my hon. Friend remind the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Henderson) that according to Department of Employment statistics many Scottish workers

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    earn more than do their London counterparts, because of the hard work of Scottish trade unionists working within the Labour movement? Will my hon. Friend also remind the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East that although he may never have attended a trade union meeting in his life, he can at least try to equalise Scottish wages by asking his fellow SNP member, Sir Hugh Fraser, to pay the lassies who work in his Scottish shops as high wages as those in his London shops.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is not the time for an Adjournment debate.
    Mr. Milian: I am sorry to hear that, Mr. Deputy Speaker because I thought that my hon. Friend made a very good point, which I hope will be noted. It is true that there are many industries in which Scottish wages are considerably ahead of wages in England. That applies, for example, to sections of the engineering industry in the west of Scotland. It is an illusion to believe that all these matters can be looked at in any general way. The situation is patchy. There are reasons for the present disparities which are sometimes to the detriment and sometimes to the benefit of Scotland. The idea that basing wages or salaries generally on local indices of cost of living would produce benefits for Scotland is a great illusion. I rest on that, whether one talks about Scotland generally or parts of Scotland like the west of Scotland or, for example, Aberdeen.

    "Roads to the Isles" (Study)
    Mr. Donald Stewartasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what decision he has made in response to the submissions of the Highlands and Islands Development Board in its study "Roads to the Isles".
    Mr. Milian: I have considered the HIDB paper within the general context of the review of shipping services which I am conducting. I hope to announce the results of my review soon.
    Mr. Stewart: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this is another attempt by an independent body to bring pressure to bear on the Scottish Office and the Government to ensure that the Western Isles and other islands of Scotland get a fair deal in transport? As the railways
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    are heavily subsidised—very properly—throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, is it not time for urgent action to be taken on freight charges?
    Mr. Milian: The subsidies to the Western Isles are disproportionate to the subsidies anywhere else. I do not complain about that. It is essential and desirable. I just wish that the hon. Gentleman who represents these areas would not continually pretend that they receive no subsidies at all. The subsidies are high, and the proposal by the Highlands and Islands Development Board would probably have the effect of trebling them from the already high figure. The Government's conclusions on the services will be announced soon.
    Mr. Grimond: Is the Minister aware that compared with general transport subsidies, the subsidy for shipping in the Orkney and Shetland Islands is small and that we look forward with keenness to the result of the general review? In making that review, will he bear in mind the effect upon the islands of the increase in postal charges?
    Mr. Millian: That is a different question. We all send letters, as well as the people who live in Orkney and Shetland. It is true that the subsidy for the shipping services of Orkney and Shetland is comparatively modest compared with that for the Western Isles, but large sums of money are being spent in the development of other services to Orkney and Shetland, including, for example, the air services, and a large sum is being spent on the development of the airport at Sumburgh.

    Education
    Lord James Douglas-Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will publish a White Paper on Scotland's educational system.
    19. Mr. Rifkindasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will publish a White Paper on policy towards education in Scotland.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: No, Sir.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Will the Minister be flexible over the timetable for phasing out the grants to grant-aided schools in the discussions which

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    are due to take place with those schools?
    Mr. Hughes: Yes, we shall certainly be flexible in the discussions. One reason for the discussions on the phasing out period is to examine the various propositions which might be put to us. We have an open mind about the length of time over which phasing out takes place, but we certainly do not have an open mind about the principle.
    Mr. Rifkind: Will the Minister explain why, in a Written Answer to me, the Secretary of State refused to give the assurance which was given by the Secretary of State for Education and Science that arrangements would be made to safeguard the interests of children presently at grant-aided schools?
    Mr. Hughes: The circumstances of grant-aided schools in England and Scotland are totally different, and require different solutions. In our discussions with the grant-aided schools I have no doubt that one issue which will arise is the question of pupils who are already in those schools. We shall certainly listen to what is said. These are matters for discussion.

    Shellfish
    Sir J. Gilmourasked the Secretary of State for Scotland what amounts and value of fish, excluding shellfish, are at present landed in Scottish ports by vessels under 40 feet in length.
    Mr. Hugh D. Brown: Vessels under 40 ft. contribute between 1 per cent. and 2 per cent. of the quantity and value of such fish landed at Scottish ports. Provisional estimates for 1974 indicate a value of the order of £700,000 and a quantity of about 100.000 cwt.
    Sir J. Gilmour: With the large amount of fish involved and the need to support the fishing industry, is it not unfair to leave vessels under 40 ft. out of the present arrangements?
    Mr. Brown: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concern. However, he should not talk about a "large" amount.
    I have already indicated the provisional figure for 1974. In 1972 the figure was £1 million, and in 1973 it went down in value to £800,000; the quantity fell from 200.000 cwt. to 100,000 cwt. Therefore,
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    although 1 recognise that it makes an important contribution to Scottish fishing, it is still only in a proportion of 1 per cent. to 2 per cent.
    Mr. Watt: If all members of the fishing industry are prepared to take a slightly lower subsidy to enable those who fish from boats of under 40 ft. and those who fish for shellfish to participate in the subsidy scheme, will the Department take a fresh look at its decisions?
    Mr. Brown: I have already indicated that this is a purely temporary contribution. The hon. Gentleman knows the problems, because we have discussed them together. If there is any desire on the part of either section of the industry to make a voluntary and co-operative effort, there is nothing to stop anybody taking action if he is willing to help somebody else. If there is some intention to do so, we would not stop such action, and possibly would encourage it. I wish members of the SNP would appreciate that there is a difference in operating costs between vessels below 40 ft. in length and those above that length, up to 130 ft.

    Human Tissue Act 1961 (Circular)
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Scotland when he hopes to complete his consultations with health boards and representatives of the medical profession on the proposed circular of guidance on the Human Tissue Act 1961.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: Consultations should be completed and the circular issued within the next few weeks.

    European Economic Community (Aid)
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish in the Official Report the various forms of financial assistance given to projects in Scotland by the EEC in the last 18 months.
    Mr. Millan: I would refer my hon. Friend to the comprehensive information given in reply to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) on 11th March.—[Vol. 888, c. 130–2 and 131–4,]
    Mr. Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend aware that his reply is not comprehensive? Does he deny or confirm that more than £30 million has been given in grants or loans for onshore and offshore development of North Sea oil? Is he also aware that several hundred thousand pounds have been given to help build fishing vessels in the north-east of Scotland and elsewhere and that a figure of £2,000 was given by the EEC to the Seafield Colliery disaster fund in Fife? Will he publish in much greater detail than given in the original answer the enormous benefits which have accrued to Scotland through our membership of the EEC?
    Mr. Millan: I invite my hon. Friend to look at the answer again, because all the points that he mentioned are included in it.

    NORTH SEA OIL INSTALLATIONS (OFFENCES)
    Mr. Alexander Fletcherasked the Lord Advocate whether he will list his statutory powers in relation to prosecutions involving offences committed on North Sea oil installations.
    The Lord Advocate (Mr. Ronald King Murray): The statutory powers of the Lord Advocate in relation to prosecutions involving offences committed on North Sea oil installations depend on where the installation is situated. If an offence takes place on an oil installation situated out with territorial waters in a designated area, the Lord Advocate has the same powers which he has in relation to offences committed in Scotland. If the oil installation is situated within territorial waters, the relevant powers are given to the Lord Advocate by the 1964 Act, as extended by Section 8 of the Mineral Workings (Off-shore Installations) Act 1971. If the oil installation is in transit, both the 1964 and the 1971 Acts apply.
    Mr. Fletcher: I am grateful for that reply. Is the Lord Advocate satisfied that this rather complex system is the best way to deal with prosecutions that may arise from the ever-increasing activities in the North Sea? If not, has he considered suggesting how the supervision of law and order in the North Sea might be more simply controlled?
    The Lord Advocate: I am satisfied that this is an effective method of policing installations at present. I take the view that improvements are possible, and these matters are under active consideration by the Government.
    Mr. Sproat: The Lord Advocate says that he is satisfied with the situation. Is he satisfied that the responsibility for law and order on all oil installations will still be carried out by the Chief Constable of Aberdeen? What advice will he give to his hon. Friend, who is reviewing the situation presumably because he believes it to be unsatisfactory?
    The Lord Advocate: If the hon. Gentleman had paid closer attention to my answer, he would have heard me express qualified satisfaction. Some of those qualifications cover his point.

    SCOTTISH LAW COMMISSION
    Lord James Douglas-Hamiltonasked the Lord Advocate whether he will make a statement on the progress of the Scottish Law Commission.
    The Lord Advocate: The commission's progress in the various fields with which it is currently concerned is narrated in its Ninth Annual Report, published last month. Since completion of that report a further two consultative memoranda have been published, dealing respectively with liability of a paramour, and powers of judicial factors. Also, two reports prepared jointly with the Law Commission have been presented, namely, "Statute Law Revision Sixth Report" and "Supply Powers".
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Will the Lord Advocate do everything in his power to ensure that the recommendations of the Scottish Law Commission are implemented? Will he try to ensure that parliamentary time is made available for this purpose?
    The Lord Advocate: The hon. Gentleman must appreciate that government is a matter of priorities. I assure him that it would be impossible to implement every one of the Scottish Law Commission's recommendations as soon as a report was published. However, it is one of the Government's objectives to achieve a continuous pace of law reform in Scotland.

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    We shall endeavour to abide by that objective.
    Mr. Fairbairn: Will the Lord Advocate use his legendary charm on his sensitive colleague the Leader of the House to provide parliamentary time to legislate the important reforms which the distinguished work of the Scottish Law Commission has proposed—or will he bring them to his office, declare them redundant and stop wasting public money?
    The Lord Advocate: My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland has already answered that point sufficiently.

    SHERIFFS ASSOCIATION (COUNCIL)
    Mr. Rifkindasked the Lord Advocate when he next intends to meet the Council of the Sheriffs Association.
    The Lord Advocate: I have no proposals for such a meeting at the moment.
    Mr. Rifkind: Does the Lord Advocate realise that there is some dissatisfaction in rural areas about the distance which members of the public may have to travel to attend sheriffs' courts? Will he bear in mind the fact that it is a matter not simply of mileage, but of other equally relevant factors, such as bus routes, which must be considered when determining the future location of sheriff's courts?
    The Lord Advocate: These matters are fully taken into account by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.
    Mr. David Steel: Will the Lord Advocate, with his intimate knowledge of the Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles constituency, take particular note of the representations made against the proposed closure of the sheriffs' court at Hawick, which will mean inconvenience to the public and also increased costs for police, social work departments and solicitors?
    The Lord Advocate: I have taken note of these matters, as has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.
    Mr. Robin F. Cook: Will my right hon. and learned Friend take careful
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    note of what is happening in Edinburgh? Has he noticed the decision of the Edinburgh magistrates not to appoint a stipendiary magistrate because they fear that a substantial volume of work will be diverted from the sheriff court? Has he any estimate of the amount of work which would be diverted if such a magistrate were appointed? Does he not agree that the proper functioning of the burgh court—the second largest in Scotland —will be greatly improved by the appointment of a professional maeistrate?
    The Lord Advocate: If my hon. Friend desires to have an answer on that matter, he should table a detailed question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. It is a question which I guarantee my right hon. Friend will be able to answer.
    Mr. Gordon Wilson: If the Lord Advocate intends to meet the Council of the Sheriffs Association, will he ask whether it is prepared to undertake additional work in dealing with divorces, if that work is transferred to the jurisdiction of the sheriff courts?
    The Lord Advocate: Many matters of that kind are discussed at such meetings. Again, priorities must be considered. I would not have thought the point raised by the hon. Gentleman was one of the most important matters to be discussed by the sheriffs at present.

    CRIMINAL PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND)
    Mr. Fairbairnasked the Lord Advocate if he will invite the Scottish Law Commission to consider the question of criminal procedure.
    The Lord Advocate: No, Sir. This is being considered by a departmental committee under the chairmanship of Lord Thomson. The Scottish Law Commission has submitted comments, and a former commissioner, Lord Stewart, is a member of that committee. The commission's views will no doubt be reflected in the departmental committee's conclusions in due course.
    Mr. Fairbairn: When the Lord Advocate sees the Scottish Law Commission, will he make publicly plain in Scotland

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    the opinion of the Attorney-General in England that dislike, disapproval, or ignorance of the law are no good reason for breaking it?
    The Lord Advocate: I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that the Attorney-General has no jurisdiction in Scotland.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mrs. Thatcher: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for the first week after the Easter Adjournment?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): Yes, Sir. The business for the first week after the Adjournment will be as follows:
MONDAY 7th April, TUESDAY 8th April and WEDNESDAY 9th April—Debate on a motion to approve the White Paper on the Membership of the European Community, Command No. 5999, and the Recommendation of Her Majesty's Government to continue Britain's membership of the Community. EEC documents R/650/75 and R/1372/73 on regional aid will be relevant.
At the end on Monday,
Remaining stages of the Reservoirs Bill [Lords].
Remaining stages of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation measure.
Tuesday 8th April will be the 13th Allotted Supply Day.
THURSDAY 10th April—Second Reading of the Referendum Bill.
Remaining stages of the Coal Industry Bill.
FRIDAY 11th April—Private Members' motions.
Mrs. Thatcher: First, may I ask the Leader of the House to confirm the date for the Budget which I understand is on the tape?
Secondly, we are grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for agreeing with our suggestion that there should be three days on the European motion. We think that it is extremely important.
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Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the Prime Minister will be making a statement about the guidelines, in respect of dissenting Ministers, for the conduct of business? There was some concern about that matter at Question Time earlier this week when the Secretary of State for Trade was answering Questions.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give us some idea of the date in his mind for the referendum? My right hon. and hon. Friends and I find that we are being asked questions about this matter, and it would be helpful if we could give a reply.
Finally, we understand why it has not been possible to arrange for a debate on defence the week immediately after Easter, but, as the White Paper is extremely important, may we know when we shall be having that debate?
Mr. Short: I confirm what I understand is on the tape, namely, that the Budget will be on 15th April.
I note what the right hon. Lady said about the three days for the debate on the European motion. The guidelines are part of the guidance that the Prime Minister gives to his Ministers. All Prime Ministers give guidance to their Ministers from time to time, and sometimes parts of the guidance are made public. The content of the guidance and whether it is made public are matters entirely for the Prime Minister. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I wish that for once in a while the Opposition would listen.
I am afraid that I cannot yet give the date for the referendum, but I will make the date public as soon as possible. A number of factors are involved, including the progress of the Bill in Committee. I hope to be able to make the date public by the time that we come to Second Reading in the week after Easter.
I note what the right hon. Lady said about the defence debate. This will be held as soon as possible. I understand the general desire for a debate on the White Paper.
Mr. Dalyell: Turning to that other White Paper on devolution, if we are at all clear about what is to go in a Devolution Bill, why should there be that much extra work involved in producing a White Paper?
Mr. Short: We have not yet completed the briefings for the Bill, let alone the Bill. We did not promise the Bill before the end of this year. We said that we hoped to achieve a Bill by the end of this year. I have told my hon. Friend before—I will bear in mind what he said —that if the production of a White Paper will not greatly detract from the work being done on the Bill, I will certainly consider it later this year.
Mr. Henderson: Is the Leader of the House aware that many hon. Members would like an urgent debate on the fishing industry? Is he aware that, for example, last night in Peterhead over 300 skippers signed a declaration stating that they would take strong action unless they got a satisfactory reply from the Government? If any such action were to take place during the recess, would the right hon. Gentleman consider recalling this House to enable us to debate the matter?
Mr. Short: I understand the feelings about this matter. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food met the fishermen's representatives yesterday. I will certainly pass on to him what the hon. Gentleman said.
Mr. Spearing: The Lord President mentioned some EEC documents on regional aid in his statement on the White Paper debate. Will he clarify that statement? Will he tell the House whether these regional documents and regulations from the EEC have been debated in the House, whether they will be debated on a separate day, and why he has bracketed these documents with the White Paper debate when there are many aspects of our relations with the European Economic Community other than regional development?
Mr. Short: I understand that these two documents are directly relevant to part of the renegotiated terms. Therefore, I thought that it would be for the convenience of the House to take note of these two documents at the same time.
Mr. Powell: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been drawn to what was said from the Treasury Bench last night, in the debate on the census order, about the desirability of more time being found for the discussion of that order, which
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came under severe criticism? Will the right hon. Gentleman bear that in mind?
Mr. Short: I understand that that debate was completed last night, but I will certainly look at what the right hon. Gentleman said and what was said in the debate last night.
Dr. Edmund Marshall: Would it be possible for English regional business to be discussed, other than on the Floor of the House, in some way similar to the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees?
Mr. Short: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting that question. As he knows, on a number of occasions recently I have said that I have been looking at this matter. I hope later today to table a motion for the setting up, for an experimental period, of a Standing Committee to discuss regional matters. We shall look at that matter after Easter, but I hope to table a motion today.
Mr. Cormack: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether Ministers will be free to take part on both sides of the issue in the debate on the White Paper? Will he also tell us when we are to debate the Finer Report?
Mr. Short: On the last point, I cannot yet give a reply to the hon. Gentleman. However, I know of his interest in this matter and I will arrange a debate some time this Session.
On the first point, I told the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition that the guidance that the Prime Minister gives to his Ministers is a matter for him regarding both content and whether it will be made public.
Mr. Mike Thomas: Is my right hon. Friend aware that yesterday this House, by a majority of nearly four to one, gave a First Reading to my Liquor Licensing Bill? Is he also aware that there is now a clear demand in the House for implementation of the Erroll recommendations? Will he either give time for my Bill to proceed or persuade his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to bring in a Bill of his own as fast as possible?
Mr. Short: I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will note what my hon. Friend has said. I am afraid that my hon. Friend must use what opportunities there are for Private

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Members in the same way as other Private Members do.
Mr. David Steel: The Leader of the House has been less than candid about the rôle of dissenting Ministers during the three-day debate. This is a matter of constitutional importance. Are they free to participate in the debate? If so, from where will they speak—the Government Dispatch Box, the back benches, or the Opposition Front Bench?
Mr. Short: I have twice said that the extent to which the Prime Minister makes public the guidance that he gives to his Ministers is entirely a matter for him.
Mr. Marten: On the referendum, I recognise that the Government have their own problems of timing, but will the right hon. Gentleman recognise that it also creates problems of indecision for the two campaigning sides? Would it not be better if the Government went nap on a slightly later date—for example, 19th June—to allow for any obstruction in the other place, so that we all know where we stand? Will he look at that point?
Mr. Short: We certainly intend to go nap on a date as soon as we can, but a number of factors are involved in deciding the date. Therefore, it is not possible today to give the date. However, I will announce the date at the earliest possible moment. I understand the difficulties of the hon. Gentleman and the two campaigning organisations.
Mr. Bryan Davies: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the acute public distress, which is reflected in every part of the House, at the recent reports of the conditions of workers on the British-owned estates in Sri Lanka. Will he consider in the first week after the recess tabling a motion to set up a Select Committee to inquire into that problem?
Mr. Short: No. I cannot undertake to do that. However, I will pass on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what my hon. Friend has said. I know of his concern and that of many hon. Members on this matter.
Mr. Lane: As a matter of priority, and for the safety of die public, will the Lord President undertake to bring forward the long-overdue Safety of Sports
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Grounds Bill well in advance of the Hare Coursing Bill?
Mr. Short: I cannot say which will come first. Certainly they will both be taken in this Session.
Mr. Kershaw: Is the Lord President aware that I put down a Question about the Common Market to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for answer at the next sitting week? It has been transferred to the Secretary of State for Trade. I know that usually the Lord President would say that that was no concern of his, but in the present circumstances would he persuade both his colleagues to answer? I could then pick which answer I preferred.
Mr. Rost: Have not the answers of the Leader of the House on dissenting Ministers been typically arrogant and complacent? Is it not time that hon. Members received some clarification, because when Ministers reply from the Front Bench on European matters we have a right to know whether they are speaking on behalf of the Government or of themselves?
Mr. Short: The hon. Gentleman is an expert on arrogance, so I shall not comment on that.
With regard to the substance of the question, I said that all Prime Ministers from time to time give guidance to their Ministers, but whether or not it is made public is entirely a matter for the Prime Minister. I have no doubt that he will read what was said today in the House.
Mr. Whitelaw: Leaving questions of arrogance aside—which is rather surprising for the right hon. Gentleman—is it not a fact that the Prime Minister promised my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Oxon (Mr. Hurd) that he would make public the guidelines w Ministers? If he made that promise to my hon. Friend, will not that be honoured?
Mr. Short: Of course, if my right hon. Friend made a promise it will be honoured. May I say that the right hon. Gentleman's opening remarks were completely out of character for him.
Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for saying that if the Prime Minister niade a promise to my hon. Friend it will be honoured.

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because in that case the right hon. Gallic-man will know that the Prime Minister will make the guidelines public. since that is what he promised.
Mr. McNamara: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the reply which he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) with regard to the establishment of a Select Committee to look into the Sri Lanka tea estates and the British interests there will be noted with regret? We look to the Leader of the House for the establishment of Select Committees—not to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Will the Leader of the House please look again at this matter?
Mr. Short: There is a limit to the number of Select Committee which we can set up. We could set up Select Committees to inquire into everything under the sun. However, I shall consider what my hon. Friend has said. I have no intention to set up a Select Committee on that matter the week after Easter. That was the question which I was asked.
Sir David Renton: Is the Leader of the House aware that when Ministers speak in this House they are expected to explain the policies of their Departments? Will the right hon. Gentleman say what will happen when the policy of a Department conflicts with a Minister's views on the Common Market?
Mr. Short: I have answered that question already. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I am now answered questions on the business to be taken during the week after Easter. I cannot see how the question arises out of that matter. This is entirely a matter for the Prime Minister, who I am sure will bear in mind all that was said today. If my right hon. Friend made a promise he will, of course, honour it.
Mr. Skinner: Regarding the business to be taken when the House resumes after the Easter Recess, and those Ministers who will speak with different voices on the question of the Common Market, will the Leader of the House take into account the fact that a large number of Government supporters are not terribly concerned about the show of Departmental differences between Cabinet and other
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Ministers, and that we regard it as part of our manifesto campaign to have open government? [Interruption] Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall be only one minute more.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): I am deeply pleased to hear that, but the hon. Gentleman should address his question to the business for the next week.
Mr. Skinner: Does the Leader of the House appreciate that in the course of the debates in the week following Easter and hon. Member, perhaps even of ministerial standing, will have to represent not only those in the Labour Party outside the House who are against the Common Market but also the views of perhaps 25 per cent. of the Tory voters and half of the Liberal voters who are against the Common Market? That is nothing to be concerned about.
Mr. Short: During the three-day debate which I have just announced I am sure that all points of view on the Common Market will be put with vigour in the House.
The Prime Minister took the view, in my opinion rightly, that on this unique issue, which divides parties and the country, where Ministers have deep conscientiously-held feelings, they should be allowed to dissent from the collective view of the Government.
Mr. Farr: Is there to be a debate soon on the Gardiner Report relating to security and other matters in Northern Ireland, which is important now in view of the fact that the Price sisters have been transferred to Northern Ireland, and because there is a possibility that other Irish bombers may be transferred to gaols in that Province in the near future?
Mr. Short: I was asked about this matter last week. I said that I could not arrange a debate in the near future, but that I thought this was an appropriate subject for a debate in the new Irish Committee. I shall be happy to arrange that if that is the general wish.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: We must move on as there are two statements to be made.
Mr. Hurd: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can you help us over the matter with which the Lord President

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attempted to deal? This is a matter for the Chair. Every day hon. Members receive letters. We have no means of assessing whether answers to questions represent Government policy.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair. A three-day debate on the matter will take place after the recess.

FISHING INDUSTRY
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Fred Peart): I told the House on Monday that I was meeting representatives of fishermen and would make a statement to the House afterwards.
The discussion was frank and constructive. The fishermen drew attention to low quayside prices for fish in relation to the increased costs of fishing. They said that earnings were reduced and many voyages undertaken at a loss. Heavy unloading of imported frozen fish was a major contributory factor. If this situation were to continue, vessels would go out of fishing, supplies of fresh fish to the consumer would suffer and prices thereafter would rise unduly.
The Government have for some time been aware of the depressed state of the market. We introduced temporary aid to ease the situation while price adjustment took place. Within the European Community, we have been having discussions. The intention is shortly to introduce a system of reference prices for frozen fillets with a view to stabilising the market at satisfactory levels. We have also been having other talks.
Arrangements by Norway for minimum prices for frozen cod and haddock coming to our market come into operation today. This is an important move towards market stability. In view of it, there has been no need to ask the Community for use of the safeguard clause.
The fishermen also gave me their views on other matters, including points about fisheries limits. I have taken full note of their views; but I made it plain that the Government would not act unilaterally or in advance of the outcome of the Law of the Sea Conference. The discussion was helpful. I am glad to see that the blockade has been lifted in some ports
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I am hopeful that others will follow this responsible example.
Mr. Pym: The House will be most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making a statement the day after he met the fishermen. Having listened so carefully to their views, we trust that he will follow that up and take urgent and practical action. We are glad, too, that the blockade has been lifted in some ports, but there are other relevant aspects about the crisis on which I should like to question the right hon. Gentleman.
First, is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the dissatisfaction with the herring quota, which is causing some boats to be idle? What hope can he hold out for improvements in the quota? As he will be aware, this dissatisfaction has exacerbated the anger of the fishermen and caused them to press for a 50-mile limit to preserve their livelihoods. How in present circumstances can these fishermen maintain their incomes?
Secondly, what are the facts about rising imports? We are glad about the action taken by Norway, but how will that action effect the level of imports? What we are concerned with here is fair competition.
Thirdly, is the right hon. Gentle:nan aware of the real fears that exist in the industry of overfishing by foreign boats? What is required is reassurance about the future safeguarding of the livelihood of these fishermen, and we should like to hear something about that.
Finally, in his statement the right hon. Gentleman refers to a reconsideration of existing provisions of the common fisheries policy. Has that reconsideration begun, how quickly will it proceed and when will the results of it be likely to be made known?
Mr. Peart: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, his Government and the Conservative Party accepted the common fisheries policy. It is there. I shall be having discussions on this matter in the Community when I visit Brussels in April. There are some aspects on which I feel that we need to have assurances. There is no question about that.
The herring quota is not a matter which has affected the dispute with which I have been dealing. Here we are dealing

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basically with imports coming from Norway affecting the market, and this is the matter to which my attention was drawn. I recognise that the herring quota is a matter of importance, and 1 have been having discussions with my Scottish colleagues about it.
On the 50-mile limit, I thought I had given my views to the House. We could not do something unilaterally on this matter. We are bound by the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference discussions. This is right and proper, because we ought to see what emerges from that conference.
The question of overfishing is an important matter but does not affect this dispute.
Mr. James Johnson: Bearing in mind that my right hon. Friend the Minister is now fully aware of the desperate mood of inshore fishermen following his talks with them, may I ask whether he is further aware that the deep-sea fleet men are fully in sympathy with these men in the stand they are taking? The deep-sea men do not condone their tactics, of course, but they are in sympathy with their view about the state of the market. As the nations which are now—not dumping exactly—unloading fish on to our market are outside the EEC, will my right hon. Friend say a little more about the proposed negotiations and arrangements with the Norwegians in particular but also with the Icelanders, if possible?
Mr. Peart: I know that my hon. Friend represents a fishing constituency and is in close contact with the British Trawler Federation. I understand that the federation accepted that the inshore men have a case. In relation to my hon. Friend's specific question about the countries which are supplying fish here, I should like to say about Norway that I am happy to pay tribute to the Norwegian Government, who have taken a constructive and helpful step. With permission, I shall circulate information about the minimum export prices in the Official Report. They come into force today and will be kept under review. 'We have had discussions with Norway on this matter and they have been constructive.
Mr. Grimond: May I also thank the Minister for the early part of his state-
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ment? However, may I impress upon him the fact that anxiety is felt all round the coasts by all sections of the fishing industry and ask him a little more about the limit? We appreciate that the 200-mile limit may have to wait upon the Law of the Sea Conference, but will he impress upon all those concerned that what we have in mind is that unless steps are taken to preserve stocks, particularly herring, in the North Sea, there will be no fish to fish for at all very soon?
Mr. Peart: Yes, I agree, and the right hon. Gentleman rightly has stressed the point raised by the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym). Conservation is vital. At all conferences the British Government's point of view, I know, is that which previous Governments have always expressed. I shall certainly bear it in mind. There is anxiety on this matter. I accept that. But what we have achieved from discussions will be helpful.
Mr. McNamara: Will my right hon. Friend inform the House of the amount of frozen fish stocks in EEC countries as a whole? Second, what is likely to be the effect upon the inshore and other fleets when the derogation from the Treaty of Rome negotiated by the previous Conservative Government comes to an end? Thirdly, has he sought the opinion of the Law Officers as to whether the fishermen, in the way that they are handling their dispute, might become guilty of a common law conspiracy?
Mr. Peart: I do not want to get involved in that question. I met the fishermen. Some of my colleagues in the House, from both sides, were with me and represented certain interests. I am anxious to see this dispute settled amicably. I do not like to use threats in this way. [Interruption] I have not threatened anyone. I hope that my lion. Friends will listen to what I am saying. I am anxious that the blockade should cease, and I hope that nothing which is said in the House will prevent that.
On the question of imports from Europe, I have no figures. The problem has been imports from Norway and countries outside the EEC. I shall try to get those figures and write to my hon. Friend about them.
Mr. Brotherton: is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the great problem now facing the commercial ports of Immingham and Grimsby, where the blockade is still being maintained? Is he aware, for example, that there are ships in Grimsby and Immingham that have been prevented from sailing since last Friday because of the dispute? Is he also aware that the very vague nature of his reply today will unfortunately not give much satisfaction to the Humberside fishermen?
I reinforce the right hon. Gentleman's plea to those blockading these ports to call off the blockade, particularly because a court injunction has been granted. However, these men are very firm indeed in their view that they will not call off the blockade unless they get a really satisfactory answer from the Minister.
Mr. Peart: I am aware of that, but I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should make those remarks. This is no contribution to a constructive solution. We had discussions with Norway about this. As I have said, the important step, which I stressed with the men yesterday, is to get market stability. That is what they wanted. Indeed, my reply fulfils that.
Mr. Fell: I think we all realise that the Minister is doing his best. However, may I ask him this question on the herring quota? Is he aware that this quota affects longshore herring as well? This involves the small boats and not the big drifters. Could not an exception be made for the longshore herring, particularly as he talked about fresh fish? Heaven knows, there cannot be much fresh fish left among the quota that has already been fulfilled because the fishermen are not allowed to catch them. We have these wonderful longshore herring swimming around the coast and my people are not allowed to catch them.
Mr. Peart: I recognise the inshore problem in relation to herring but this is not a matter which affects Norway as such. This affects our own waters. 1 am having discussions with my Scottish colleagues.
Mr. Watt: I appreciate the difficulties in which the Minister finds himself, but will he not recognise the fact that virtually no skipper around the Scottish
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coast will be satisfied with his statement today? Will he realise that this situation cannot be cleared up piecemeal and that he must go for a package deal, on which the fishermen insist—for example, minimum prices at ports, control of imports, and a complete renegotiation of the common fisheries policy so that our men may have exclusive use of the first 50 miles of water around our coast?
Mr. Peart: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate what I said about the common fisheries policy. This was not a specific issue which the fishermen raised with me. This is a matter which I volunteered to the House. When I go to Brussels in April I will put our point of view. It is a formidable one, because the British are the largest fishing nation in the Community. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should say that my statement will not satisfy people. Of course it will not satisfy those who do not want to be satisfied. I hope he will appreciate what we have achieved. I stress the importance of market stability and the arrangements about minimum prices. These are matters which affect frozen cod and haddock coming into our market, and they will come into operation today.
Mr. Wall: Will the right hon. Gentleman recognise that, while I welcome what he has said about prices and imports, these matters take us only part of the way? May I ask him about the use of registered dock labour for unloading fishing vessels? Is he aware that this ties up with the official definition of an inshore vessel, which is causing a great deal of concern in the small ports?
Mr. Peart: I appreciate that the hon. Member represents an important fishing area. He will know that the Government have recently issued a consultative document dealing with registered dock labour and containing proposals for legislation. The proposed dock labour schemes exempt inshore fishing vessels. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment will be taking serious account of the views which have been put to him about these proposals. At his request I am conveying to him the general representations which the fishermen made on this point.
Mr. Michael Shaw: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that answer.

495
may I take up the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall)? Is there to be any definition of an inshore fishing boat, because this seems to be the point on which the whole issue hinges?
Mr. Peart: This is not an easy question to answer directly. I could not answer it now. I have taken note of it.
Mr. Buchanan-Smith: May I reassure the right hon. Gentleman by telling him that the Scottish fishermen are international in outlook and appreciate that these negotiations have to be carried out and agreed internationally? Does he accept that they are asking for this 50-mile limit simply as an interim measure, to be agreed internationally? If the Government reject this, can the right hon. Gentleman say what measures they would support to achieve conservation in the interim? Is he aware that the fishermen are prepared even to accept a temporary ban on herring fishing? Does he accept that the timing of the referendum creates a new situation and that it is important that he tries to achieve agreement on the common fisheries policy before the referendum?
Mr. Peart: I hope that I shall not be influenced in what I do at any time because there happens to be a referendum. I must do what I think is best for the industry. I have always behaved like that when I have gone to Brussels and achieved what I have achieved. I know that a lot of people may be critical of my achievements but I believe that the interests of Britain are more important than the issue of the referendum. I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman said about the fishermen of Scotland. It would be wrong for Britain to act unilaterally when we are committed to holding discussions at the Law of the Sea Conference.
Mr. Powell: While I agree with all that has been said about the urgency of action on the fishing limits, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is the Government's view that these imports of frozen fish come within the definition of dumping, or are the proposed measures part of the generally restrictive approach of the EEC towards food?
Mr. Peart: No, this is nothing to do with the attitude of the EEC towards
496
food. It would be wrong to draw that conclusion. I know the right hon. Gentleman's views but I can assure him that that is not so. This is specifically related to imports from countries such as Norway, which has now agreed to this pricing policy.
Several Hon. Members rose
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Order. We must move on. Mr. Orme.
Mr. Biffen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is with great diffidence that I raise this point. If this dispute should, unhappily, be protracted and there is occasion for a future ministerial statement, may I ask you to give consideration to calling those Members whose constituents consume fish as well as those whose constituents merely catch it?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is something I shall ponder on during the recess.
Following are the figures
The Norwegian Minimum Export Prices for the United Kingdom are:

Cod

Haddock

Boneless/skinless fillets frozen in blocks (industrial blocks).

3·65

3·65

Frozen catering fillets,skin on

under 8 oz.

2·80

3·20

8–16 oz.

3·10

3·60

over 16 oz.

3·70

4·00

Frozen catering fillets,skinless

under 8 oz.

3·20

3·70

8–16 oz.

3·50

4·15

over 16 oz.

4·10

4·50

(All prices are in £/stone, cif British ports).

HARLAND AND WOLFF
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and with that of the House, I wish to make a statement about Harland and Wolff, the Belfast shipyard. This is not the first time it has been necessary to make a statement on this subject. The right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym) told the House on 21st December 1973 about proposals to provide financial support. In a further statement on 22nd July 1974 I announced that, as a rescue operation, the Government had decided to extend the shareholding in Harland and Wolff Limited already held by the

497
Northern Ireland Department of Commerce, with a view to providing the additional finance required by the company to make good its heavy trading losses, and to bring about the changes which the Government believed to be necessary. Following that statement, the Government put a project team into the yard to undertake a review of the company's affairs.
That review has now been completed. The company's annual accounts for 1973 published in November 1974 showed a £38 million provision for estimated prospective losses on contracts entered into prior to 31st December 1973. In the light of the review it appears that the provision for prospective losses needs to be increased by over £22 million, that is, to about £60 million.
These are very heavy losses. However, a modernisation programme costing £35 million, mainly financed by Government, and making this yard one of the best-equipped in Europe for the construction of large tankers, bulk carriers and similar ships, is nearing completion. The company is the largest single industrial employer in Northern Ireland, with a long tradition of technical excellence in shipbuilding. It still has a substantial order book. The Government have accordingly decided that they have no alternative but to give the company a chance for survival.
Everybody in the company must realise that the only hope for the future lies in such efficient use of their own skills and of their excellent technical facilities that, as the present order book is worked off, the company can quote acceptable prices in worldwide competition with reasonable expectation of making a profit. We cannot contemplate a fresh succession of loss-making orders. With the world market for large ships in its present doldrums, the going will be tough and the outcome uncertain.
The Government's intention last July was initially to take a substantial majority in an expanded equity, leaving existing shares in the hands of their present owners. However, the issued share capital has been eroded by the enormous losses and large sums of new money will have to be put in. So we have concluded that the only satisfactory way in which the company can be financially reconstructed is for the Government to become the sole share-
498
holder. Legislation for the compulsory acquisition of all the issued shares, ordinary and preference, which are now in private hands will be introduced in due course. Like all Northern Ireland legislation in the interim period, it will take the form of an Order in Council, under the Northern Ireland Act, 1974. Terms of compensation will be announced which will take account of the realities of the situation and the particular circumstances of the company.
These matters will take a few months to accomplish and meanwhile the undertaking needs to be kept in funds. To this end an interim Order in Council will be introduced immediately to enable the appropriate payments to be made by the Northern Ireland Department of Commerce. We have invited the company to make the necessary adjustments of its borrowing powers.
The Government have made clear to the board that the company may not conclude new contracts to build ships without the approval of the Secretary of State, which normally would not be given unless they satisfy him that all direct costs and overheads can be covered in the building years beyond 1978. It has also been made clear that they may develop, but not without the Secretary of State's approval implement, plans to use the resources of the yard in other ways. The future of the yard is now in the hands of those who work there. No Government could go on supporting the yard indefinitely. Unless it can obtain orders which can be completed without loss, a halt must be called.
I am convinced that if the company is to survive this can only be through the determination and effort of everyone in Harland and Wolff. Increased productivity is vital, and I mean vital, but productivity deals alone are not enough. A new approach to industrial democracy is required. This is why we need to advance towards genuine worker participation in the decision-making processes at all levels in the yard. We have now sent to unions and management within the yard the promised discussion paper on worker participation and it is the spirit of this that we want to see influencing the attitudes of everyone in the yard. This paper is not a blueprint—there is so such blueprint available to fit any given situation—nor does it cover every possibility. The inten-

499
tion is to indicate possibilities which can be discussed freely and tailored to suit the particular circumstances of the yard and its employees. We are entering upon an exciting experiment, with all the problems that this will entail. There will be difficulties, but if these can be overcome it may enable the yard to survive.
A new managing director is required. Now that the decision has been taken on the future of the yard the post will he advertised publicly as quickly as possible. Anyone already working in the yard will, of course, be free to apply.
In the future the yard will in a real sense be owned by Northern Ireland. Those working in the yard will no longer be working for private shareholders, or for themselves alone, but for Northern Ireland. It is their responsibility to ensure that, in the interests of Northern Ireland, the yard will survive.
Mr. Neave: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in view of the great seriousness of his statement and what he describes as "an exciting experiment", we shall press for a debate on Harland and Wolff in the context of Northern Ireland as a whole? On the question of industrial democracy, would he confirm that the Government will acquire 100 per cent. ownership? Will the managing director he has mentioned he responsible direct to the Secretary of State or to a national board? What will be the basis of compensation and, as the losses are to be met from the Northern Ireland budget, how will this affect development and social services in Northern Ireland as a whole?
Mr. Orme: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. The question of worker participation and "an exciting experiment" caused some hilarity in the House. I hope it does not cause hilarity in Northern Ireland because we are talking about the survival of a major industry employing 10.600 workers, crucial to the economy of Northern Ireland. If this company were to go into liquidation, the cost to the Government would be substantial; therefore, it is in everyone's interest to make this experiment work, and I am hopeful that that can be achieved.
500
I will certainly mention the question of a debate to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. My right hon. Friend might consider either having a debate upstairs in the Northern Ireland Standing Committee which he is seeking to form or pressing for one on the Floor of the House, but I will discuss that with my right hon. Friend.
The advertisement for a managing director will be coming out in a day or two. I have announced it publicly today. We want somebody who can play a leadership rôle within this yard. I can assure the House that the conditions will not be similar to the previous conditions and terms which were offered. We want to see somebody appointed and, whilst we have not ruled out anybody in the yard, the post will be publicly advertised and people will be free to apply. There is no reason why the consultation about which I have been talking could not start at the level of this appointment.
The basis of compensation will have to be worked out. I am not in a position to give the hon. Gentleman details and I do not think it would be advisable to do so in the House, but I can perhaps let him know at a later date exactly what that position is.
As for the losses and the decision of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to levy some of the costs for this yard against expenditure in Northern Ireland, certainly some of the cost will have to be taken into account by future Government expenditure—not the whole of the cost, but the Government have said on a number of occasions that there is a Northern Ireland responsibility here and that nobody in Northern Ireland can avoid it.
Mr. Craig: The Minister will be aware that the size of the projected losses will cause shock and alarm not only within the industry but throughout Northern Ireland. I should like to assure him, however, that there will be general appreciation of the Government's willingness to give the yard another chance. However, the important part of the statement, to my mind, is the sentence,
"Unless it can obtain orders which can be completed without a loss, a halt must be called."

501
Of course that is a right and proper attitude. Can the Government indicate why the yard is in this position of making continuing losses? Have they been able to identify the root cause of the yard's problems?
Mr. Orme: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the first part of his question. He quoted to the House the crucial sentence within the statement. It is absolutely crucial, and I would underline it: no Government could go on in this position. The reason we have taken these decisions is that we believe that there are possibilities and that the workers in Harland and Wolff will respond to the challenge. It is a challenge.
The right hon. Gentleman asked why we are in this difficulty. There are all sorts of problems from the past, such as problems of industrial relations, problems of fixed pricing, problems of the world shipping market. These are real problems. It may be of interest to the House —hon. Members interested in this subject will already know—that there is not a shipyard in the world at the moment which is not receiving some Government support, whether it be in Japan, West Germany, Sweden or Britain. But the fact is that we cannot go on in this way. We have to try to get the output, the steel throughput and the pricing acceptable, so that the company can compete in world markets. The facilities are there, the money has been spent. Physically, on the ground, everyone can see the facilities, fed by a skilled labour force. Therefore there is no reason why this cannot be got off the ground. These are the bases of the problems facing us at the moment.
Mr. Fitt: Will my right hon. Friend accept that all political parties and political representatives in Northern Ireland will be grateful that the Government have once again given this opportunity to Harland and Wolff to survive? In view of what he intimated in his statement, could he say whether there is still a market for large tankers and bulk carriers, bearing in mind that there is now the possibility of offshore oil? Can he say that in contemplating any orders which are forthcoming in the interim period the Government will have a say—not may have a say, but will have a say—in whether such orders are accepted or rejected? Can he further indicate to the
502
House that in the compulsory acquisition of shares the Government will not be taking any steps which would make it appear that they were giving golden handshakes to people who have been running such an inefficient company in the past?
Next—this is, perhaps, most important will the Minister be responsible to the House as to the person to be appointed managing director?
Finally, will the Minister accept my congratulations on the excellent discussion paper which has been published today? In the contacts he had with the trade unions and others involved in the preparation of the Discussion Paper on Industrial Democracy, did he have discussions on the possibility of achieving an integrated work force at Harland and Wolff and ensuring that a man's religion will be no bar to his getting employment at that establishment?
Mr. Orme: I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. I have already explained that there is a world recession. The order hook is full until 1978. It is beyond then, when new orders are negotiated, that the crunch situation arises. My hon. Friend's guess is probably as good as anybody else's about the oil situation and about whether large tankers will be needed. I am not a pessimist. Things tend to ebb and flow. One minute it looks as if there will be no more orders. Then orders come in. We shall have to wait and see. Any new orders will have to be fulfilled in accordance with the criterion I have set out in my statement.
The Government will be directly involved in the question of the appointment of the managing director. At present the company is answerable to the Department of Commerce and, through the Department of Commerce, to the Secretary of State and myself, who are answerable to the House. We would be answerable in future in the same way.
As for my hon. Friend's question about golden handshakes, the acquisition will be on the normal basis of share value. The price of the shares does not give the Government cause for any concern
I have had continuing discussions with the trade unions. Nobody more than the Government wants to see a more balanced work force. One of the ways

503
in which we are tackling this question is through the apprentice training scheme. There is now a Government training centre in West Belfast. We hope to build a special training centre outside Harland and Wolff for apprenticeships in Harland and Wolff. I have been given assurances by the representatives of the trade unions that they will co-operate with the Government in this regard.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Order. Long questions and long answers make matters difficult. There is a great deal of business to follow.
Mr. McCusker: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I shared his indignation earlier at the comments of some hon. Members, particularly Labour Members, who show a strange ambivalence when we arc dealing with workers in Belfast compared with workers in Great Britain?
The right hon. Gentleman has not given us any details of the findings of his project team. Has the project team come to any conclusions with regard to manning at Harland and Wolff, not only at the craft level but also in the service and administrative sectors? What action does the right hon. Gentleman intend to take to strengthen the management team apart from the sackings which he undertook a few months ago?
Will the right hon. Gentleman accept my thanks for and congratulations on his Discussion Paper on Industrial Democracy? Is he aware that all sensible people in Northern Ireland realise that industry can go forward only on a partnership basis? I particularly welcome the fact that the discussion paper contains no dogmatic assertions but puts forward points for discussion, which I think will be valuable.
Mr. Orme: It was unfair of the hon. Gentleman to criticise hon. Members on this side of the House. His criticism was not justified. I assure him that my hon. Friends expressed great concern about the situation in Northern Ireland. The Government have received support from this
504
side of the House in difficult times on this issue, and we appreciate it.
We have given the main basis of the report of the project team, which is that it has made a forecast of the losses, which are substantial. Proposals have come forward about manning. These will be discussed with the appropriate trade unions. Adjustments will have to be made.
Mr. McNamara: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, because of the enthusiasm with which his statement was received by the United Ulster Unionist Members, we look forward to their voting with the Government on the Third Reading of the Industry Bill?
We warmly welcome the statement about industrial democracy and hope that there is to be a ripe future for the yard, but the statement on losses is somewhat disconcerting. Does the £60 million go only to the end of 1974, or is that a projected loss until 1978? If it is not a projected loss until 1978, what is the amount of the loss between 1974 and 1978? When talking about projects after 1978, are we talking about each project having to be on a break-even basis? Finally, what are the other resources of the yard which might be used in different ways?
Mr. Orme: I thank my hon. Friend for his warm welcome of my statement. I take note of what he said about the attitude of some hon. Members opposite on other subjects. I welcome the support I am receiving from Northern Ireland Members on both sides of the House in this matter.
The losses are projected losses to 1978. I have emphasised that the break-even point will be the critical issue when new orders are taken.
Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the Minister of State aware that this is not the first time that we have asked for a debate on an important Northern Ireland matter and have been referred to the Northern Ireland Committee, which has not been set up? Will his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State talk seriously to the Leader of the House about this?

505
Meanwhile, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to say a little more about the future structure of the company? Will the managing director when appointed be responsible simply to the Secretary of State or to a board which will be collectively responsible to the Secretary of State? What will be the structure?
Mr. Orme: This will be a joint stock, limited liability company with a 100 per cent. Government shareholding. So there will be a board. I do not know what form management will take. The discussion paper says that there will be an opportunity for people to devise methods. Obviously proposals will be made to the Government, which we shall examine sympathetically, for putting the concept of worker participation into operation.
There is some misunderstanding on the question of a debate. There is a difficulty about time. The Government have said that there could be a debate upstairs in Committee. The Leader of the House made a statement previously to the effect that a Northern Ireland Committee will be formed where these matters can be debated. If the Opposition wish to press for this matter to be debated, or if they want to take one of their Supply Days or even half a day, that will be entirely for them. The Government would welcome a debate. My full statement goes some way towards informing the House of the true position.
Mr. Dalyell: Even by the standards of other shipyards, are not these escalations in loss staggering? When can we have some report on why there has been this escalation from £38 million to £60 million? Is it entirely a matter of fixed pricing? Will my right hon. Friend enlarge on the phrase
"the necessary adjustments of its borrowing powers"?
May I repeat the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara) and not answered as to what are the resources of the yard in other ways and how they are to be used?
Finally, how do these actions square with the views we heard so eloquently expressed for many years by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell)?
Mr. Orme: On the last point, my hon. Friend must address his question to the lion. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). As to the size of these losses, when the Government in July examined the position under the previous management and under the Government subventions, the project team had to find out exactly what was the reality of tIle position. Frankly, when we are dealing with a company of this size, with forward orders, and when it takes three years to build a ship, all kinds of problems arise. It has taken several months for the project team to arrive at these figures and at the forecast it now makes.
I tell my hon. Friend, as I have told the House, that there is no simple answer to this problem or to the question why the shipyard is in this position. There are a number of answers. We are now trying to wipe the slate clean and to say that there is a chance for survival and that given ownership money, worker participation and forward thinking, the Government believe that we can support a positive approach. I was asked about other uses for the yard. My hon. Friend is thinking of other products for which it can be used. This is very difficult in a shipyard of this size, designed to build 300,000 ton tankers. But there is, for instance, an engine shop employing over 2,000 workers which at present is doing an excellent job and is breaking even. There are problems. It is not an easy matter of just switching from one product to another. Fundamentally, this is a shipyard and has to be a success as such.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: We must move to next business.
Mr. Farr: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I draw your attention to the fact that, although the statement which the Minister has made obviously has very serious implications for the taxpayer in Great Britain as a whole, not a single hon. Member from the back benches of the main Opposition Party succeeded in catching your eye?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is not entitled to cast reflections on the choice of the Chair.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS FOR FRIDAY 11TH APRIL
Members successful in the Ballot were

Mrs. Joyce Butler.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence

Mr. Michael Shersby.

BILL PRESENTED
  REFERENDUM
  Mr. Edward Short, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Jenkins, Mr. Secretary Callaghan, Mr. Secretary Benn, Mr. Secretary Shore, Mr. Fred Peart, and Mr. Gerry Fowler, presented a Bill to provide for the holding of a referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Economic Community: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 121.]

  COMPANIES
  4.35 p.m.
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams (Kensington): I beg to move,
  That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the responsibilities and duties of directors; to require certain companies to appoint non-executive directors; to require such directors to make an annual statement to the shareholders; and for purposes connected therewith.
  I am seeking the leave of the House for the seventh time to introduce a Companies Bill which will have the effect of increasing slightly the supervisory element in senior management. As on previous occasions, I propose that the Bill should apply to about 1,000 of the largest quoted companies; namely, to those with net assets of £5 million or more, or about 1,500 workers. I suggest that all such companies should have at least three non-executive directors.
  I believe that over 80 per cent. of these companies have at least one non-executive director already and over half have at least three, so the Bill does not represent a very big departure in the first instance. But to give these non-executive directors a more serious function than they have at present I would like once again to recommend that they should be obliged to make an annual statement to the shareholders declaring their view of the management of the company and the use of the company's assets, together with such information as they consider material for the appreciation of the efficiency and propriety of the conduct of the company's affairs. This statement should be made available to all shareholders and employees. By this means we could introduce a supervisory element at the level of senior management without the general disclosure of confidential information.
  I believe, too, that this provision would enhance the status of non-executive directors. Their statement could be purely formal. It would not be necessary for them to produce a large-scale management audit each year, and the Bill will actually include a provision to prevent them doing so without the specific agreement of the shareholders. But each of the non-executive directors appointed in accordance with the terms of the Bill

  509
  should be made to sign this statement or resign from the board.
  Objection has been made that the Bill would make two classes of director—the executive directors and the non-executive or supervisory directors—and that this would be incompatible with the idea of board unity. I accept this objection in that it is the whole purpose of the Bill to provoke a process of cell-division within the British joint stock company. This is a development which has to take place because the two-tier board is a concept which is now increasingly well understood and in the end it has to come. We have to differentiate between the executive functions of top management and the supervisory functions which are no longer being carried out effectively in all too many companies.
  This year I suggest that the Bill should include some innovations. First, I suggest that the non-executive directors shall not have the right to vote at meetings of the board. This, of course, recognises the fact that they are officers of the company with a separate function of their own. They are not responsible collectively, with the rest of the hoard, in a situation where they are now normally wholly out-numbered by the executive directors. Secondly, I suggest that the non-executive directors shall be required to meet as a separate body, apart from the rest of the board, at least once a year and that at their separate meetings they shall have the right to co-opt an equal number of representatives of the work force.
  These minor, as I think, improvements to the Bill are not just put forward to be trendy. We must recognise that the British version of the joint stock company can be a very sick organism. Changes are needed in the way we organise our-
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  selves for work in this country. I am not one of those who blame British management, British technology or the British working man and woman for the shortcomings of the economy, but we fail to organise ourselves as effectively as we should for the creation of wealth, and this is something which needs legislation albeit of a minor character, to put right.
  With the virtual withdrawal of the shareholders the essential element of supervision is missing in all too many of the larger joint stock companies. It cannot be imposed from outside the company; it must be developed from within. We must build on what we already have. The non-executive directors are a nascent supervisory board. We need a minor reform to encourage them to exert themselves in that capacity.
  That is a summary of the Bill which I hope the House will give me leave to introduce.
  Question put and agreed to
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir Brandon Rhys Williams, Mr. Sydney Bidwell, Mr. John Cope, Mr. David Crouch, Mr. Hugh Dykes, Mr. Robert Edwards, Mr. R. A. McCrindle, Mr. Tom Normanton, Mr. John Pardoe, Mr. David Price, Mr. Tim Rathbone, and Sir John Rodgers.

  COMPANIES
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams accordingly presented a Bill, to make provision for the responsibilities and duties of directors; to require certain companies to appoint non-executive directors; to require such directors to make an annual statement to the shareholders; and for purposes connected therewith: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 2nd May and to be printed. [Bill 125.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SEX DISCRIMINATION BILL
  Order for Second Reading read
  4.40 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Bill gives effect to the principles set out in the White Paper "Equality for Women" which we published last September. The unequal status of women in our society is a social evil of great antiquity. Its causes arc complex and rooted deeply in tradition, custom and prejudice. Its effects create individual injustice and waste the potential talents of half our population at a time when more than ever before we need to mobilise the skills and abilities of all our citizens.
  The area of unequal treatment is vast. There is inequality in employment, in training and in related matters. There is inequality in educational opportunities. There is inequality in the facilities and services which women receive as members of the public. Paradoxically, these inequalities are in some ways felt more strongly because of the very improvements which have occured since the end of the nineteenth century in the situation of women.
  The combination of longer lives, younger marriages and smaller families has resulted in revolutionary changes in the lives of many women, whether as wives, mothers or workers. Today, nearly half of all married women in this country are in paid employment. Women's working lives have been transformed. Instead of work being an interlude between school and motherhood, it now increasingly tends to follow motherhood. To the physical and emotional strain of bearing children and caring for them in their early infancy have been added the demands of work in shops, offices and factories. Also, there are many women for whom paid work is not a matter of self-fulfilment but of financial necessity.
  But treatment of women at work continues to be unequal and unjust. Most women do lower-grade jobs for lower rates of pay than unskilled men. They are less likely to be found in charge in
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  business or industry. Proportionately, five times as many boys as girls take up apprenticeships—and most of the girl apprentices are in hairdressing and manicure. Five times as many men attend further education establishments on day release by their employers. Fewer girls than boys go on to higher education, and the choice of subjects which they can take is narrower.
  There has been surprisingly little improvement in the proportion of women in the professions since the removal of sex disqualification by Parliament as long ago as 1919. Less than one-seventh of our medical practitioners are women. Women are in a majority in the teaching profession, but, none the less, only two-fifths of our primary school head-teachers arc women. Despite the encouraging increase in the number of women trade union members, there has not been any significant improvement in the numbers who become union officials or are able to participate in union-governing bodies. There is unequal treatment, too, in the provision of goods and services, such as grants of credit or mortgage facilities or the provision of housing accommodation.
  The Bill is designed to combat unfair discrimination and to promote equality of opportunity in these fields. It is, I believe, probably the most comprehensive Bill of its kind in the world. Certainly its scope is far wider than the proposals of the previous Government. The Bill before us, as those proposals did, makes sex discrimination unlawful in employment, training and related areas. But, unlike those proposals, it also applies to the educational field, to licensing bodies, to partnerships and to the provision of the general run of goods, facilities and services to the public. It also covers discriminatory advertising, victimisation and pressure to discriminate. The Bill reflects the importance which the Government attach to effective enforcement by combining the right of direct individual access to remedies with the creation of a powerful Equal Opportunities Commission to enforce the law in the public interest.
  Before describing the contents of the Bill in a little greater detail I should like to explain, as I see them, both the proper rôle and the inevitable limits of legislation of this kind. There are two types of inequality which particularly

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  affect the female half of the population: first, the less favourable treatment of women than men because they are women; secondly, the handicaps which result from the past unfair treatment of women—for example, the fact that traditionally few women have been trained or recruited for a particular type of job, so that few women could at present compete for that job on genuinely equal terms with men. The first of these disadvantages is amenable to anti-discrimination legislation of the sort that we are proposing. The second requires positive action to compensate for the handicaps inherited from past discrimination.
  In addition, extra demands are made on women because, in general, they carry more than their fair share of the practical responsibilities for looking after a home, children, aged relatives, and need, for example, special help to meet the demands associated with child rearing. But these are not problems to be tackled in a Bill which is concerned with discrimination, and it would be misconceived to criticise the Bill for failing to deal with a whole range of problems which are to some extent inherent in our society.
  I now turn to the Bill itself, and I should explain at the outset that there are at least two important respects in which the principles upon which it is based go further than did the September White Paper, because we have been persuaded of the validity of the criticisms of the White Paper made in these respects by many women's and other organisations.
  We said in the White Paper that, although it will be possible in many instances to infer a discriminatory motive from the fact that a person of one sex is treated less favourably than persons of the other sex, to understand the full meaning of unlawful discrimination it is essential not to confuse motive with effect. We have tried to avoid such confusion in the Bill, but we have also come to realise that the Bill would be too narrow if it were confined to direct and intentional discrimination. It will apply not only to intentional discrimination but also to a practice which, regardless of motive, is discriminatory in its effect on persons of one sex and cannot be shown to be justifiable.
  Suppose, for example, that an employer requires would-be employees to satisfy
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  a requirement—such as a minimum height requirement—with which considerably fewer women than men are able to comply. If such a requirement is clearly justifiable in terms of the needs of the particular job that is one thing, and it may have to be accepted, but if it is not so required it will be unlawful regardless of whether or not it is intended to exclude women. An employer should be required to stop carrying on a practice which is unjustifiable and has a discriminatory effect even if the intention is not that it should be discriminatory. But he should not be penalised by damages for an effect which was not intended. He should be required to stop the practice, but lie should not have damages given against him.
  The second extension of principle is that we have made provision to allow "positive" or "affirmative" action designed to help women to compete for employment opportunities on genuinely equal terms with men. The Bill will permit, and, indeed, encourage, single-sex training for women or, where relevant, for men, to take advantage of opportunities for doing work which members of that sex have not habitually done. This does not amount to what is sometimes called "reverse discrimination", where, for example, a woman is preferred for a job over a qualified man because women have traditionally been excluded from that sort of job. However, I believe that we should not be so blindly loyal to the principle of formal legal equality as to ignore the actual and practical inequalities between the sexes, still less to prohibit positive action to help men and women to compete on genuinely equal terms and to overcome an undesirable historical link. The Bill recognises the obvious fact that special steps are necessary and desirable, for example, to encourage women to apply or to become trained for jobs which traditionally have been the preserve of men.
  Part I of the Bill is concerned with the definition of discrimination for the purposes of the Bill. Nothing in Part I, of itself, makes discrimination unlawful. It is only where a person discriminates in a situation dealt with subsequently in the Bill that discrimination is unlawful. In the interests of clarity and to avoid—or

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  at least to try to avoid—over-complicated language the Bill as a whole is drafted in terms of discrimination against women. But it applies, equally, to discrimination against men. This is achieved by Clause 2(1), which provides that in relation to the treatment of men the Bill should apply in the same way subject to requisite modifications and that a reference to "a woman" should read as a reference to "a man". This drafting device reflects the realities of the situation. Sex discrimination is widespread against women and rare, but not non-existent, against men. The same drafting device was adopted in the Equal Pay Act 1970, which this Bill complements.
  A number of organisations asked that the Bill should make unlawful discrimination on the ground of marital status as well as on the ground of sex. The House may recall that the Lords Select Committee recommended this primarily to cope with the problem of the marriage bar in employment. Marital status is, of course, particularly important for the very many arrangements relating to family support in the social security and taxation fields. The White Paper made it clear that the Bill could not deal with social security, pensions or taxation matters. They are governed by their own legislation, and that is firmly the case. But those aspects of marital status which are properly within the scope of a Sex Discrimination Bill have been dealt with in it. Thus Clause 1(2) covers, as discrimination on the ground of sex, the position where a person treats a married man more favourably than a married woman. Clause 3 deals with discrimination in employment on the ground that a person is married, thus making a marriage bar unlawful. To go further would bring into an already fairly complicated Bill many other complications relating to trifling matters which are not directly relevant, which would not be justified and which would certainly not ease the passage of the Bill.
  Mr. A. J. Beith: The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned taxation and other matters which cannot properly be included in the Bill. I accept what he has said about that, but is there anything he can do to set up some machinery to enable the spirit of the Bill
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  to be considered in relation to tax, pensions and other legislation by the Government Departments concerned? Is there not some way in which the initiative which lies behind the Bill could be stressed in areas such as taxation where it is relevant?
  Mr. Jenkins: I have not ignored that and neither have my colleagues most concerned—namely, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. Of course, they fully support the spirit of the Bill. We are set in a direction in which they will move and in which there have been some moves already which have been announced since the Bill was published. I think that the hon. Gentleman and the House will appreciate that it would not have been practicable to have brought the Bill forward at this stage if it had dealt with a great range of complicated tax and social security matters involving vast sums because, although it is an important Bill it is not a money-spending Bill. It is genuinely appreciated by the Government that the Bill helps to create a climate of opinion which will create a momentum in the right direction in these different but related areas.
  I turn now to Part II. Clauses 6 to 21 and Schedule 1 deal with employment. The Bill makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate either on the ground of sex or against married persons as regards the recruitment of new employees or his treatment of existing employees—for example, promotion, training, transfer and dismissal. It complements the Equal Pay Act 1970 by dealing with non-contractual aspects of employment and certain contractual matters not covered by the 1970 Act. The amendments to the Equal Pay Act are mainly clarificatory, although that may not be immediately apparent on reading them. They are designed to ensure that complaints under the Act are, as is generally assumed, limited to contractual matters. We must ensure that the broad structure of the 1970 Act, which is known to industry and which is due to come into full operation at the end of the year, is preserved.
  Part II of the Bill also deals with discrimination against contract workers by trade unions, professional bodies and employers' associations and in the granting of licences or other qualifications

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  which facilitate the carrying on of a particular trade or occupation. The Bill provides that there should be no discrimination in the provision of training by the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Services Agency, industrial training boards and certain other bodies. It provides that there should be no discrimination in the provision of services by the Employment Services Agency, the local education authority careers services and employment agencies generally. We have also covered—here we have gone further than the White Paper—all kinds of partnerships and not merely professional partnerships of more than five partners.
  As foreshadowed in the White Paper, the Bill contains two kinds of employment exceptions. There are specific exemptions and provision for exceptions where a person's sex is a genuine occupational qualification for a particular job. The specific exceptions include employment in the private household or in a firm of five or fewer employees. In Clause 6(3), employment for the purposes of an organised religion in Clause 19 and employment in the Armed Services in Clause 75(2). There are special provisions relating to employment in mines and quarries or as midwives in Clauses 20 and 21. Although we are not exempting midwives completely from the provisions of the Bill, employment covered by the protective legislation relating to the employment of women is exempted under Clause 43.
  The criteria for judging when a person's sex is a genuine occupational requirement for a particular job are set out in Clause 7. This is inevitably a difficult drafting job, but I am quite clear that it is much better to start with a general provision against discrimination and to exempt where necessary rather than to start the other way round and to build up where it can be shown that the reverse is true. In the main the exceptions are set out in the White Paper. They cover the position where the essential nature of the job or the duties which form part of it call for authentic male or female characteristics, where there is a need to protect decency and privacy or where the job relates to certain personal services. The exceptions have, however, been further restricted by the provisions in Clause 7(4). They restrict the operation of the genuine
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  occupational qualification when an employer already has sufficient employees who are capable and reasonably available to perform the duties concerned.
  Mr. Michael Alison: As the right hon. Gentleman is dealing with exceptions, has he considered that there might be a need for exceptions not only as regards sex but on the ground of marital status? Has he considered whether there might be certain jobs for which it would be desirable and proper to seek an unmarried person?
  Mr. Jenkins: I think I can conceive that this might be so. It is a point we can look at in Committee. We have to look at these questions through a pretty close sieve because it is only too easy for the position to become unacceptable. Perhaps my metaphor there is a little confused, and a fine sieve might prove a little opaque for the observance of what is happening on the other side. Perhaps I should say that we should consider these matters in relation to a closely-sieved process, because otherwise we could find that there would be too many exceptions. I do not rule out the possibility of what the hon. Member said, and this could be looked at in Committee.
  Part III, Clauses 22 to 28 and Schedule 2 relate to discrimination in education. It is made unlawful for the body responsible for a school, university or other educational establishment specified in or designated under the relevant clauses to discriminate as regards admissions or other treatment of pupils. In these respects the Bill treats educational institutions, whether in the public or private sector, in the same way as other persons covered by the Bill.
  Mr. William Molloy: Does that provision extend to teaching hospitals?
  Mr. Jenkins: Yes it does.
  Clause 25 goes further, however, and in relation to the public sector imposes a positive duty on educational authorities. Local education authorities and other responsible bodies will thus be required not only to ensure that their present policies are not discriminatory—that is not to exclude a girl where a boy is admitted—but also to consider their future

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  policies on the positive principle of inviting girls to enter. The clause also applies the powers of the education Ministers to the enforcement of the legislation in the public sector of education.
  As indicated in the White Paper, the Bill makes an exception for single-sex educational establishments. There are at present about 3,000 single-sex schools in England and Wales, of which about half are maintained schools. The Government think it right that parents who prefer single-sex schools should retain their freedom of choice, although we expect, and hope, that the trend towards co-education will continue and will be strengthened by the whole philosophy behind the Bill. The Bill will not, however, require an essentially single-sex establishment to go coeducational. However, the Bill enables such institutions to go co-educational, if they so wish, over a period of time which takes account of the accommodation, facilities and resources of the responsible body. The school or college may apply to the Secretary of State—or, in the case of a private sector establishment, to the Equal Opportunities Commission—for a transitional exemption order covering the period during which its character is changing. The object of this is to avoid a position in which a school can discriminate completely but loses exemption if it wishes to move gradually towards non-discrimination and, therefore, has only the choice of moving overnight or staying where it is.
  Mr. Ronald Bell: Is the Home Secretary satisfied that the Bill covers the situation in which one of these single-sex establishments has made that decision just before the Act comes into force? It would appear possible that it would then not be able to get a transitional certificate of exemption.
  Mr. Jenkins: I will look into that matter. It would be the fault either of the concept or of the drafting if this were so because that would not be the intention. I am anxious, as I said, that the whole trend should be away from single-sex and towards co-educational institutions, but I do not believe that one should force this by means of the Bill. Equally, one should make it as easy as possible for people to move gradually but with reasonable speed in this direction.
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  Clauses 29 and 30 make it unlawful to discriminate in the provision to the public, or a section of the public, of goods, services and facilitics, and of housing accommodation. Examples of services and facilities covered by Clause 29 include loans, finance. mortgages, and facilities for recreation and entertainment. The list is similar to that in the Race Relations Act 1968. and the wording of these clauses is also similar to the wording in that Act. This has been done deliberately. It was made clear in the White Paper that the Bill is not intended to affect facilities and services provided to the members of genuinely private social clubs, or to private and personal relationships. However, I would not wish hon. Members to assume that the provisions of this Bill pre-empt the proposals for amending the Race Relations Act in the context of clubs which may emerge as a result of my current review of the race relations legislation.
  Clause 32 sets out necessary exceptions. In the main these cover single-sex facilities cr services —for hospitals or other establishments for persons requiring special care, attention or supervision; situations where provision on a single-sex basis is required by religious doctrine or is the main object of a voluntary body; and situations where questions of decency and privacy arise. The exceptions for small residential accommodation follow those in the Race Relations Act.
  Clause 33 makes it unlawful to publish an advertisement which could reasonably be understood to indicate an intention to do an act which is unlawful under the provisions of Parts II or III of the Bill. It will not apply unless the act referred to in the advertisement is itself unlawful. However, the publisher will not be liable if he reasonably relies upon a statement made by the advertiser that one of the exceptions applies; but the advertiser who knowingly makes a false statement commits a summary offence. Other clauses deal with discriminatory instructions, with pressure to discriminate and with cases of vicarious liability.
  Part V of the Bill specifies a number of exceptions to the scope of Parts II to IV; for example for acts done in compliance with charitable instruments or existing legislation; in relation to

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  sporting activities in which by reason of physique women arc at a disadvantage to men; or, in the life assurance or similar fields, but only on the basis of reliable and relevant actuarial or other statistical data.
  I now turn to the enforcement machinery and the Equal Opportunities Commission. Here again the Bill goes well beyond the previous Government's proposals, which would have given no enforcement rôle to the Equal Opportunities Commission, aid which were, in general, somewhat lacking in teeth. Also, the Bill in some respects has strengthened what was proposed in the September White Paper.
  We propose to set up an Equal Opportunities Commission. The commission will be able, on its own initiative, to investigate discriminatory practices; for this purpose it will have powers to require the production of relevant information, and it will be empowered to deal with unlawful discriminatory practices by issuing "non-discrimination notices" which will require the cessation of those practices and will be enforceable by the courts by way of injunction. The commission will have power to assist individual complainants to pursue their cases, though it is our hope and intention that they would reserve this for important or significant cases and concentrate upon the strategic rôle.
  The commission will have a general responsibility to oversee and advise on the working of the legislation as a whole and on related matters, such as the protective legislation governing the employment of women, for however long that continues to be necessary, and to point the way to increasing equality of opportunity between the sexes in areas not covered in the Bill.
  Mr. John Garrett: Clause 46 provides that the Equal Opportunities Commission may promote research. Will it be entitled to carry out research in all fields of discrimination, including social security which, after the passage of the Bill, will be the most flagrant area of discrimination against women? Or will its research be limited only to the provisions of the Bill?
  Mr. Jenkins: Under the proposals the commission will be entitled to carry out research into any field related to sex
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  discrimination. It will be a matter for it to consider exactly what research is carried out, but there is no statutory limitation on its ability to range widely.
  The general approach to enforcement is to combine the right of direct individual access to county courts, or industrial tribunals in employment cases, with the strategic rôle of the powerful Equal Opportunities Commission, which has the responsibility and the powers to enforce the law in the public interest. Complaints about sex discrimination in employment and related matters, which may well be closely linked with complaints under other employment legislation, such as the Equal Pay Act, or in respect of industrial dismissals, will be dealt with by industrial tribunals, and the normal facilities for conciliation will be available. Other complaints will go to the courts, except that complaints related to the public sector of education are to be made in the first instance to the Education Ministers, so that they may consider using their powers of direction under the Education Acts. In three areas where the public interest rôle predominates—advertising, discriminatory instructions and pressure cases —enforcement is in the hands of the Equal Opportunities Commission, which can, if need be, obtain a court order.
  The remedies available from the courts in individual cases will be damages, a declaration of rights and injunction. Industrial tribunals will be able to award compensation on the same basis as the courts can award damages, subject in their case to the limit in unfair dismissals legislation, which is currently £5,200. They will also be able to make a declaration of rights, and recommend a particular course of action. Damages and compensation, as I have already indicated, will not be available in respect of unintentional indirect discrimination.
  The proposal in the White Paper that tribunals or courts should be able to make a "general finding of discrimination", which was criticised by a number of organisations as being clumsy, has been dropped in favour of a provision which enables the commission to go more readily to the courts for an injunction against persistent discriminators. That is dealt with in Clause 63.
  For the purposes of helping a person who considers that she or he may have been discriminated against, a procedure

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  has been devised in Clause 66 whereby she or he may, using prescribed forms, question the respondent about the matter, and provision is made for the questions and the respondent's replies to be admissible in evidence in legal proceedings.
  Part VIII deals with supplemental matters. Clause 70 gives the Secretary of State, after consulting the commission, a limited power to amend certain provisions of the Bill. The power is proposed because of the difficulty of defining in advance the exceptions to the principle of non-discrimination in this new field, where public attitudes may change over time, and where we may gain and learn from experience.
  Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for not having raised this matter before we moved on to Part VIII. Clause 58(4), in Part VII, seems to provide for the introduction of something which, so far as I am aware, has not hitherto been well known in English law; namely, damages for injured feelings. Is the right hon. Gentleman proposing to give any direction or advice to the courts about how to interpret and measure the new concept of damages for injured feelings?
  Mr. Jenkins: I do not believe that it is entirely new. As the hon. and learned Gentleman—
  Mr. Stanbrook Mr. Stanbrook indicated dissent
  Mr. Jenkins: As the hon. and, perhaps in the future, learned Gentleman knows, I do not have expertise or experience in the courts and the law as such. However, I believe that I am right in saying that this is not an entirely new matter for the English courts, because it applies in defamation cases. I do not envisage heavy damages, but there are circumstances in which damages for injured feelings are the only way to deal with a situation which has occurred and cannot be put right. I believe that that is the correct way to proceed in this matter.
  Clause 73 gives the power to bring different parts of the Bill into operation at different times. It is my intention to bring the Bill generally into operation on 29th December 1975, the same day as the Equal Pay Act comes into full operation. However, there may be a need for
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  a grace period related to the academic year, especially as regards admission to educational establishments.
  The House may have been a little surprised to see a Bill of this length and complexity. It is, I fear, more than twice as long as the Sex Discrimination Bill prepared by the Lords Select Committee two years ago. Its length and, to some extent, its complexity are partly due to a combination, for which I in no way apologise, of ambitious aims tempered by a regard for what is practical and in accord with common sense. Because it is comprehensive in its scope, we have had to define the situations in which separate or different treatment is justifiable, whether as a matter of propriety, privacy or common sense. Because individuals are to have direct access to legal remedies, we have had to specify certain guiding principles in the Bill—for example, the criteria for the genuine occupational qualification exception. The need to dovetail the provisions of the Bill with those of the Equal Pay Act has brought its own complications.
  The preparation of this major piece of social legislation owes much to detailed consultations with outside bodies. I am grateful to them for the representations that they have made and for the advice that they have given us. I think that many of them will agree that we have been extremely anxious to take into account what they have said and to learn from it. It has required considerable efforts from many Government Departments. I am grateful to officials in the Home Office and other Departments for the hard and detailed work that they have done in order to bring the Bill to fruition.
  It would be foolish to pretend that this or any Bill can be anything but a beginning to an attack on sex discrimination, which, perhaps because it is so deep-seated, affects not a minority, but half the population, or a small majority, and which is the most resilient of all forms of discrimination.
  The Bill is a necessary pre-condition for an effective equal opportunity policy, but it is not a sufficient condition. A wide range of administrative and voluntary measures will be needed to translate the ideal of equal opportunity into practical reality. The responsibility for these wider

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  measures does not, and cannot, rest with the Government or with the legislative processes alone. It must be accepted by employers and trade unions, by commercial undertakings and the professions, by universities, colleges and schools, and by the community as a whole. It must be accompanied by a profound shift in the attitudes and actions of all of us, which the Bill can assist, but which it will not in itself secure.
  The attack on discrimination must be mounted with vigour and flexibility, with persistence and with imagination. The Bill is only the first step—but a major and essential step—towards true equality for women. I commend it to the House.
  5.19 p.m.
  Mr. Ian Gilmour: I welcome the Bill just as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) welcomed the Home Secretary's White Paper. It is a great relief to have a piece of legislation from this Government which is not directed against any particular set of people, which is not based on obsolete doctrine, and which is not totally removed from the serious problems which the country faces. It is a huge relief to find a piece of legislation which is not designed largely to undermine what the last Conservative Government did but is designed to build on what we achieved.
  It may be helpful if in outlining the Opposition's attitude to the Bill I look back briefly at the Conservative record in these matters so that it may be seen how the country arrived where it is now. We put right a number of injustices to women in the application of the law. First, we passed the Guardianship Act 1973, which gave mothers equal rights with fathers to make decisions about a child's upbringing. Secondly, we stopped the distasteful practice whereby, in assessing damages awarded to a widow, the court had to assess her chances of remarriage.
  Thirdly, we made a number of improvements in the arrangements for maintenance. We passed the Attachment of Earnings Act, which required husbands who were liable for maintenance payments to inform the court when they changed employment so that the maintenance order might be carried over from job to job.
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  We also enabled maintenance payments to be made by post, so avoiding time-wasting and the sometime distressing business of having to collect money from the court, and we managed to make arrangements with many other countries to prevent men from avoiding payment of maintenance by going abroad.
  Fourthly, we enabled married women living apart from their husbands to have a legal domicile of their own. Fifthly, by ending the property qualification for jury service, we enabled many more women to sit on juries.
  In taxation, too, the last Conservative Government introduced a number of reforms that were beneficial to women. First, in the Finance Act 1972 we introduced specially favourable arrangements concerning the liability for estate duty of surviving spouses. Secondly, we ended the situation in which some married couples paid more tax on their joint incomes than they would have paid if they were not married.
  In the social services we introduced a number of benefits which were particularly helpful to women. I mention especially the attendance allowance, which helped single women or widows who devote their lives to looking after an elderly mother or father who requires a great deal of care and attention. We also closed another gap in our social security provisions by introducing a sliding-scale pension for women widowed between the ages of 40 and 50, who had previously received no pension. I think that I was the first Member to raise that point, more than 10 years ago.
  Much more remains to be done, and much more would have been done by our tax credit scheme, which we regret the Government have abandoned. For a start, those proposals would provide child credits paid in cash to mothers for all children, including the first or only child. The Home Secretary knows that many divorced, separated or deserted wives have one child, and so would be helped by that reform. One-parent families would also be helped by the other possibility envisaged in our tax credit scheme, which was that a single parent looking after young children would receive the benefit of the higher married couple's credit, instead of being treated as a single person for that purpose.

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  I know that such mothers do not come within the scope of the Bill, but it is important to make the general point that there are a number of women who need help rather than wider employment opportunities, since, because of their circumstances, they are in no position to take up employment.
  Towards the end of our period in office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) produced his proposals for legislation in the document entitled" Equal Opportunities for Men and Women", in which he said:
  "The Government has decided to introduce legislation to make unlawful discrimination in employment on grounds of sex…and to encourage the changes in attitudes which are required if women arc to obtain opportunities equal with men."
  We have every reason to be proud of our record. We did more in this respect than any Government of any Western European country have done during a similar period in office.
  We on the Opposition benches are far from thinking that legislation in this matter is out of place. We think that it is essential. Although the law cannot by itself create new attitudes and a different atmosphere, it can help to achieve those objectives.
  Despite all that has been done, we remain a man's world. Extraordinary determination, ability and hard work enable many women to succeed, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has recently conspicuously shown.
  Mrs. Renée Short: Where is she?
  Mr. Gilmour: My right hon. Friend is so successful that she is unable to be here.
  Nevertheless, deeply embedded feelings about what constitutes a woman's place sabotage both sexes, inuring women to discrimination as much as allowing men to perpetrate it. While social attitudes cannot be overturned by legal coercion, they can be shifted gradually as more women take their rightful place in a nondiscriminatory society. A country which considers itself just and democratic cannot afford to institutionalise prejudice against half the population, particularly when it is almost broke.
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  Legislation is necessary, because it affects the climate of opinion, but Governments do not affect that climate only by passing laws. They should affect it by setting an example. The right hon. Gentleman made that point in his White Paper, where he said in paragraph 4:
  "There is much that the Government can do by example."
  There are undoubtedly some areas in which the Government are not setting an example. To use a prejudicially feminine expression, they should clean their own house first. If non-discrimination is to be imposed on everyone else, despite what the Home Secretary said this afternoon, the Government should look more urgently at their own policies on, for example, nationality, marriage, health and family law, where discrimination still lingers on.
  But the most inexcusable example of the Government's failing to practise what they preach is their inactivity on the Factories Acts. There can be no justification in today's conditions, and in a Bill seeking to end discrimination, for the Government's continuing restrictions under the Factories Act 1961, and associated legislation, relating to hours of employment, including overtime, Sunday and night work, or for their perpetuating the restrictions relating to working with moving machinery. As my right hon. Friend said in paragraph 2.18 of his document, if the restrictions were continued, they would
  "produce an unsatisfactory situation affecting some two million workers across the whole range of factory employment. Factory employers could justifiably claim that it was impracticable to require them not to discriminate in favour of men for certain jobs requiring frequent night or weekend work."
  If women are prepared to do the job, they should be allowed to do it. What used to be discrimination in favour of women has become discrimination against them, or just plain discrimination It is illogical to continue it. After all, plenty of women, such as nurses in hospitals, do shift work at night.
  The Government are creating a Catch 22 situation. An employer advertising for men to operate machines on a shift system will presumably be breaking the sex discrimination law. But if he took on women and allowed them to work the night shift he would presumably be breaking another law. The Labour

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  candidate for Crosby, Miss Hignett, on 9th August 1974 in a publication called Labour Weekly—which I am sure the Home Secretary reads avidly every week —wrote:
  "The midwives who wish to keep their profession for women only are to lose this right, but the big trade unions who wish to keep the nineteenth century based laws which stop women working night work and restrict the hours of overtime are to keep theirs … Why squash the midwives and defer to the big unions?"
  Why indeed? This lacuna in the Government's proposal seems to us indefensible, and we shall aim to deal with it in Committee. For the Government to assume that private individuals will co-operate with a law whose principles are flouted by the Government which introduce it is rash indeed.
  One of the most important aspects of the Bill and of the whole question of equal opportunity for men and women is education. We must get the situation right in the schools, universities. polytechnics and further education colleges. The Home Secretary gave some scarifying figures. I understand from the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals of Universities that, although more boys than girls go to university, if one compares admissions with applications, a higher proportion of girls who apply are successful. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State will confirm that.
  I am interested in the position of medical schools in view of the figures given by the right hon. Gentleman, because I believe that many women would like to have a woman doctor. Is it true of medical schools that women applicants are more successful than men applicants in gaining admission?
  We have to persuade more girls to apply for higher education, and that brings us back to opportunities at school. How are we to encourage more girls to take up, say, mathematics and science at the higher levels, and what can be done about this by teachers? The country is badly in need of engineers, scientists and technicians of all kinds, and we are unlikely to get all we need by looking solely to one sex to provide them.
  I hope that the Secretary of State will assure us that he will have more discussions with those who are concerned in education in the broadest sense to further
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  the practical application of the Bill. He said enough this afternoon to show that he is aware that passing a law saying that something will or will not be so does not by itself achieve the desired aim.
  If the prime requirement of a law of this kind is that the Government should set an unimpeachable example, it is scarcely less important that there should be nothing in the legislation which may bring it into contempt. That means, among other things, first, that the law should be generally seen to be workable, practicable and enforceable and, secondly, that it should not include any provision which seems ridiculous or unjustified.
  We are, after all, using the law to change attitudes, and if anything in the legislation strikes ordinary people as either ridiculous or utterly misconceived attitudes will not be changed but will be reinforced. We do not want to get rid of historic anomalies only to see them succeeded by legal anomalies created by an enormous legal edifice which might itself soon become anomalous.
  One can scarcely avoid some doubt whether the Bill as it stands is fully workable. The Government have made things as difficult as possible for themselves by producing apparently very tight criteria and then imposing them on virtually everybody. We restricted the operation of our proposals to firms with more than 25 employees. In their White Paper the Government unwisely reduced that figure to 10, and in the Bill, even more unwisely, they have reduced it to five. I imagine that it will not usually be easy to prove that employment was refused because of sexual prejudice, considering the plethora of possible evasions. How on earth in any likely circumstances could it be proved that a firm employing four men had been discriminatory in taking on a fifth?
  Incidentally, Clause 7, the "genuine occupation" clause, now contains the words "authentic male characteristics", whatever they are—I hope that the hon. Lady will tell us—instead of the words in the White Paper:
  "for reasons of physiology or authenticity"
  The words seem a good deal vaguer now, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will tell us why they have been substituted.

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  In Part V of the Bill the exceptions categories seem to be very narrowly drawn. Part V appears to mean that, for example, political parties are subject to the Bill. As a result, reserved places for women in these organisations will presumably become unlawful. I imagine that there will no longer be places on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party reserved for women. If the Home Secretary has surveyed his party and come to the conclusion that its constitution is defective, few people will disagree with him, but if the constitution of the party is to be altered, surely it should be done openly and not furtively, still less by mistake.
  Moreover, this would have considerable results in the Conservative Party which I should strongly deprecate. If that were so, I would strongly deprecate that the Conservative Party was not among the many organisations of the House that were consulted by the Home Office. Perhaps we were meant to be consulted but something went wrong. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will tell us the exact position and whether the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short), the right hon. Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) and others are to lose their places on the National Executive Committee. Will she also tell us what will happen to the other voluntary women's organisations, such as the National Council of Women of Great Britain? Either the Bill has been badly drafted here, as in other places, or the Government apparently do not know what they are doing. I may perhaps have misread it, but I think not.
  Mrs. Renée Short: I am interested in what the right hon. Gentleman says about the composition of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, and I am touched that he is concerned about my future on it. Will he be kind enough to tell the House to which clause he is referring in his comments about political parties? Am I right in assuming that he means Clause 29?
  Mr. Gilmour: No. What I said was that political parties did not seem to me to be excepted in Part V of the Bill and, therefore, they are included, but I am open to correction. No doubt the Under-Secretary of State will be able to reassure
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  the hon. Lady about her future on this important and friendly body.
  The avoidance of the ridiculous in this sort of legislation is vital, but I fear that the Government have not avoided it. In our proposals my right hon. Friend suggested that public opinion might prefer some anomalies to be retained, and he instanced the midwives.
  The Government have taken the opposite view, and they have logic on their side. But, quite apart from the contrast in their treatment of the midwives with their treatment of the powerful unions, they have misjudged the probable public attitude. I do not detect any great public pressure for the enrolment of male midwives, yet the Secretary of State for Social Services solemnly told the General Secretary of the midwives' organisation:
  "I am convinced that despite the practical difficulties …which I readily admit, it would be wrong to rule out male midwives as a matter of principle, and that to do so would damage the reputation of the midwifery profession in the eyes of the public."
  If the right hon. Lady the Secretary of State for Social Services is capable of believing anything quite so idiotic as that, it is not surprising that the National Health Service is in quite such a mess.
  That is not the end of the matter, because in the same letter the right hon. Lady gave the assurance that
  "… in many situations chaperonage of male midwives will be necessary."
  At a time when the National Health Service is short of just about everything, the spectacle of male midwives trotting round Britain chaperoned by, I suppose, female midwives is not likely to reassure the country about the quality of the administration of the health service or about the good sense of our laws against sex discrimination. It may, however, confirm some people's views about the right hon. Lady.
  Mr. Carol Mather: Will not yet another chaperone be necessary, because the patient will want one too?
  Mr. Gilmour: I am not an expert on chaperones. I thought they had gone out of fashion. However, my hon. Friend may be right.
  Clause 33 of the Bill carries a similar risk. It virtually outlaws in advertisements the use of such words as "waiter",

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  "salesgirl", "postman" or "stewardess". Surely such toying with terminology is ridiculous and misplaced. Moreover, the Bill contravenes the rule only 12 clauses later by referring in Clause 35 to "chairman" and "deputy chairman" of the Equal Opportunities Commission. If a restaurant is to be forced to advertise for a "wait person" a shop for a "sales person", and the Post Office for a "post person", surely the least the drafters of the Bill could do by way of example would be to suggest the possibility of a "chair-person". Subsequently, in Clause 66, "the person aggrieved" is referred to throughout as "he". It seems unlikely that many "he's" will be aggrieved. In any event, to ban words such as "waiter" - or "salesgirl" in advertisements can serve only to bring the Bill into ridicule.
  A third piece of nonsense, in so far as I understand it—and I am afraid the Home Secretary's explanation did not help me very much, which was probably my fault—is the introduction of the concept of "unintentional discrimination". This seems to be confused and confusing, and the example given by the right hon. Gentleman confused me further. In regard to height qualification, he said that if a certain height is necessary for a job that is all right, but if it is not genuinely necessary and has the effect of discriminating against women, that would be unintentional discrimination. But it seems that in the case he gave this would be a clear case of inferred discrimination.
  I do not follow the new concept of unintentional discrimination and why it is necessary. I do not know what it means. It is surely difficult enough to legislate in the arena of sensitive human relationships where intent is provable, but to obfuscate an already difficult subject by introducing this concept is regrettable and wrong. I hope that in Committee we shall look carefully at that matter. Furthermore I believe that the concept of vicarious liability should be reviewed, as also should the point mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook).
  I shall end as I began by Welcoming the Bill, though for the reasons I have given that welcome is not as unqualified as I would have wished. But I assure the Home Secretary that this legislation will
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  get through Committee a great deal more easily than will most of the rest of the Government's legislative programme. But we must learn lessons from similar legislation in the United Kingdom. It is difficult enough to draft clear-cut legislation for equality, as some of the highly obscure clauses in the present Bill only too clearly demonstrate, but it is no less difficult to ensure that it works.
  The Equal Pay Act 1970 is consequentially amended in the present Bill, but it is instructive to see just how ineffective that piece of well-meaning legislation, passed with all-party support, in some ways has been. Now that we are nearing the end of the transitional period, we discover that the latest figures show that men are now earning on average 107.8p per hour, whereas women still earn on average only 61·2p per hour. The Equal Pay Act is ill-equipped to close these gaps and is shot through with loopholes. Let us hope that it will not be possible to say the same thing after the passing of this Bill.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. John Fraser): Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why the Conservative Government did not use the powers which they possessed under the original legislation—namely, to make a 90 per cent. order during 1973 and to bring about substantial improvements during that period—rather than to save it until now to make niggling comments about this Bill?
  Mr. Gilmour: The hon. Gentleman has got the situation wrong. We made substantial progress during our period of office. We took special pains in stages 2 and 3 of our prices and incomes legislation to see that progress towards equal pay continued. The great need is for the public to have confidence in this Bill. Although I accept the need for enforcement procedures, we want to see as much conciliation and as little litigation as possible. I think that there is a strong case for making conciliation compulsory before a case comes to court. At a later stage we shall want to examine all the powers of the Equal Opportunities Commission—a body which seems to be policewoman, prosecutor, judge, jury and even probation and after-care officer for those caught in this peculiar brand of sexual delinquency. No doubt its

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  intended rôle is strategic in the identification and elimination of discriminatory practices. But some of its powers need probing.
  Mr. John Garrett: I am sorry to interrupt the intellectual pyrotechnics of the right hon. Gentleman's peroration, but how does he see compulsory conciliation working?
  Mr. Gilmour: It should not be difficult. A conciliation officer could examine the matter before the case goes to court, and that is surely reasonable. If that does not work, then that will he the situation, but such a system should be tried. Surely the House would approve of the idea that it is best to conciliate if that is at all possible.
  We have need to probe the powers of the commission. Clause 51 says that the commission
  "…may require any person to furnish such written information as may be described … and may specify the time at which, and the manner and form in which, the information is to be furnished".
  Is this to be just one more example of the greater daily interference with people's lives by those who sometimes seem to have greater powers than the police—such as the disruptive incursions of the now-dreaded VAT men? However, I hope that that will not happen.
  Our anxiety is to ensure that this is a workable piece of legislation because we think the principles behind it are right. We want to see it working well and we want it to win high public respect. But in order that this may happen much work remains to be carried out both in the Bill's remaining stages in this House and in the years to come. That certainly will be our aim.
  5.50 p.m.
  Mr. Jack Ashley: I think the whole House will agree that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) will never have a more difficult job than he has had in making the speech that we have just heard. It must have been difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to attack a monumental Bill of this kind, an Everest of a Bill, and be compelled to pad around in the foothills talking about midwives, the avoidance of the ridiculous and
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  all the piffling details with which he had to deal. We ought to sympathise with him. The right hon. Gentleman has done his homework and knows that the proposals put forward by the previous Government were appalling. Their proposals were minimal compared with the provisions of this Bill. That is why his job today was impossibly difficult. Therefore, we should sympathise with him in his difficulty.
  The right hon. Gentleman made one or two points which I should like to correct at the outset. He told my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that it was confusing and wrong to bring in a distinction between unintentional discrimination and deliberate discrimination. I believe that my right hon. Friend was correct to bring in this distinction. The Bill is concerned mainly with deliberate discrimination, but we must have some regard to unintentional discrimination. I am glad that my right hon. Friend dealt with that point.
  The nub of the argument put forward by the right hon. Gentleman was contained in his phrase about preferring conciliation to litigation. We all prefer conciliation to litigation, but what has characterised their approach to sexual discrimination is the inability and reluctance of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition side to use the law as a vital instrument in ending discrimination.
  We know that the law cannot be used in isolation and that it will not end discrimination. The emphasis on conciliation is a striking contrast to the attitude shown by the Opposition on industrial relations, for example. They not only threatened but used legislation in industrial relations. Now, when it comes to women, the large oppressed majority, they suggest conciliation.
  Mr. Leon Brittan: Is it not just as inconsistent to oppose legislation in industrial relations, as the Labour Party does, and to support it here, as to do it the other way round? Is not the truth of the matter that we are not assisted by comparing like with unlike but are much more assisted by a constructive examination of these particular proposals?
  Mr. Ashley: I am suggesting that legislation—legal enforcement—is necessary.

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  I agree that we must try to persuade people, if possible, so I am in favour of conciliation. The danger is that in our anxiety to emphasise the virtues of conciliation we will refuse to use the law. That would be fatal.
  Mr. Ian Gilmour: I apologise for interrupting, but the hon. Gentleman has slightly misunderstood my argument. I was talking of conciliation in the context of the law and of the enforcement procedure merely as a prelude to litigation. That seems a sensible approach. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should attack it.
  Mr. Ashley: I understand conciliation to be a necessary prelude. All I am suggesting is that it should not be regarded, as it has been by the Opposition, as the be-all and end-all on this matter.
  I should like to give an example. The Disabled Persons (Employment) Act contains certain legal provisions. Any firm employing more than 20 workers is under an obligation to employ a quota of 3 per cent. of disabled people. Successive Governments, both Conservative and Labour, have been reluctant to bring pressure to bear on employers to fulfil their quotas. About 60 per cent. of employers are not fulfilling their quotas. The last thing that I want is for people to be going to the courts every few minutes, but there comes a time when the law—enforcement —must be used. Over half of this country's employers are failing to fulfil their obligations under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act. Therefore, the law should be used. I am anxious that this legislation should be used. By all means conciliate, by all means use persuasion, but let it be clear that there is a place for the use of pressure. I hope that all complainants will have access to legal aid. I recognise the difficulty of giving legal aid to everyone. I know that this is probably too difficult for the Government to handle. Nevertheless it is important to have regard to the fact that at industrial and social security tribunals most of those who are not represented fail in their applications. The reason is that they lack expert guidance and representation. If complainants could have skilled representation—preferably legal representation—I believe it would go a long way towards correcting wrongs.
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  I am glad that damages are included, because they are important. It would be inadequate simply to compensate for loss. Sex discrimination is a serious offence which should merit a serious penalty. Therefore, damages should be awarded.
  I believe that the Government should publicise the provisions relating to women. The Government, having made provisions of different kinds, should not just forget about them. What kind of publicity campaign do the Government propose to mount to let women know of their new rights under the Bill, if and when it becomes an Act? This is profoundly important. There is no point in making new provisions for women's rights if women do not know what they are.
  I agree with the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that the Government should give a lead. They have an important rôle to play. But what sort of lead should they give? The right hon. Gentleman did not elaborate. I should like to elaborate in two ways. First, the Government should ensure that in all areas of government, the Civil Service and elsewhere, there is no discrimination. They should be active in that sphere. Secondly, the Government should carefully consider withholding contracts from firms which practise regular and serious discrimination. I refer not to the occasional incident but to serious and continual discrimination by firms. The Government should lean on firms which continue to practise discrimination.
  I want to mention the need, which is behind all these provisions, to make specific provision in various ways for women. For example, there is no point in providing employment opportunities if women are unable to take advantage of them. The Government should request every employer of more than 10 workers to provide special child-minding facilities, because if a woman with children is tied to her home she will not be able to use all the rights in the world if she has them.
  I hope that the Government will seriously consider that proposition. I know that all firms will not be able to provide such facilities. Small firms will experience difficulty in doing so. However, the Government should put forward a proposal and urge big firms to make

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  the necessary provision for child-minding. The Government should make a beginning. They should also ask every firm to grant paid maternity leave to all women.
  This is a great Bill, although I do not believe that it provides the be-all and end-all panacea for sex discrimination.
  All aspects of our society are lacking with regard to sex discrimination. Employers, trade unions, educational establishments and the professions are guilty of practising sex discrimination, which occurs equally on the shop floor and in the board room. Trade unionists are guilty of failing to fight against sex discrimination. Let there be no breast-beating by Government supporters, or by anyone else, about what we are or should be doing. We are all guilty of failing to tackle the problem.
  I hope that we shall all support not only the Bill but all the other aspects requiring the ending of sex discrimination in the United Kingdom.
  Mrs. Maureen Colquhoun: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not fair to point out that only men have been called in the debate? We hope that you will not be too discriminatory towards us in the future.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): This is entirely a matter for the Chair, but I assure the hon. Lady that the Chair is sympathetic.
  6.4 p.m.
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: I cannot evade the complaint of the hon. Lady the Member for Northampton, North (Mrs. Colquhoun), but at least I shall not incur the anathema which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) pronounced upon the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) for having found minutia with which to criticise the Bill; for I make no secret at the outset of the fact that I am opposed to it in principle.
  It is an ungrateful task to oppose a piece of legislation which will certainly be wafted on to the statute book by the combined commitment of all political parties. There is a German proverb to the effect that against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain; but when
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  the stupidity is fashionable to boot, the frowning battlements are indeed impregnable.
  Nevertheless it seems wrong that those who believe that the result of this legislation will be to disadvantage not only the community at large but those whom it is intended to assist should remain silent. It ought not to be supposed that they do not share the satisfaction, which the Home Secretary mentioned, with which we all contemplate the revolutionary improvement in the conditions and the opportunities of women during the present century. That improvement was accompanied by the removal of legal disabilities; and if there are further legal disabilities to be removed I would lend my hand, with that of anyone else, to their removal. But it was not brought about by the effort to detect discrimination and to lay it open to legal proceedings.
  I go straight to the heart of the matter with a provision in the Bill which the Home Secretary described as "difficult drafting". It is indeed difficult drafting. But it is much more than that. It opens up what I believe is the fundamental question. I refer to Clause 7(2), which deals with the exceptions. There we read:
  "Being a man is a genuine occupational qualification for a job only where—(a) the essential nature of the job calls for authentic male characteristics, so that it"—
  that is, the job—
  "would be wholly different if carried out by a woman".
  I am not making a point of the drafting difficulties—they have already been mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman—in the expression "authentic male characteristics". I wish to direct the attention of the House to the word "wholly":
  "the essential nature of the job is such that it would be wholly different if carried out by a woman".
  Why is there this insistence upon all or nothing? Of course, there are jobs and functions which, if they were carried out by a woman, would be wholly different from what they are when carried out by a man. But why refuse to recognise that there is an immense gradation, infinitely subtle, of the differences in the carrying out of a whole range of jobs according to whether it is a man or a woman who does so? This depends not only upon the

  541
  nature of the job but upon the period of time for its performance—whether it is a matter of a short time, a year or a career which is envisaged—and varies almost invisibly with the changes in society, with the changes in qualifications and with the changes in industry.
  This clause brings us face to face with the fact that the Bill is a denial of the infinite differentiation of jobs and of those best fitted to perform them, that the differentiation of sex is all-pervasive and, in relation to different jobs and functions in society, confers—now in one direction, now in the other—more or less advantage and benefit on the way in which they are performed. Yet here is a Bill which sets out to eliminate the effects of that differentiation except where it is total or absolute.
  This is a defiance of reality. Indeed, the concept behind the Bill is a defiance of reality. It is impossible, even if we try to do so, by legislation to prevent these gradations and differentiations from being matched by the opportunities for employment which are provided and the remuneration which is attached to that employment.
  To some extent this measure was the foreseeable next stage of the equal pay legislation, which I also attacked and opposed at the time. If we seek to impose an equal price on essentially different items, goods or services, the next stage inevitably is that we are obliged to carry on and impose duress upon those who offer and those who invite services. So this Bill is, not solely but to a considerable extent, the logical consequence of the mistake which was made in legislating for equal pay.
  It is in the context of pay that one can illustrate most simply what also applies to the whole range of opportunity. It is not possible for long or over a very wide area to pay different sums for services of the same value. It is simply impossible, because if services of the same value can be obtained under a different label more cheaply, those who so obtain them will drive out of the business of providing the goods or the services those who pay more than they need for a given quality of labour or of service. It is a process which works automatically and unobtrusively—not indeed perfectly, but it has the advantage
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  that it works, and that it accommodates itself to all the changes and varieties of the real world.
  Of course there are prejudiced employers, as there are prejudiced everything else. Of course an employer may say "I prefer to pay more than I need for a given factor of production." Everyone is entitled to conduct his own business to his own disadvantage; but those who do so are destined to be in a small and disappearing minority, for the simple processes of society and of the market will tend to ensure that those prosper and continue to provide services who pay the going rate for the best available factors of production. It is, therefore, a delusion to suppose in the field of pay that as between men and women there can be unequal pay for identical services.
  The services which are unequally paid are themselves differentiated, either in the short term or in the long term; the payment—I am using the word "payment" in the widest sense, to include all remuneration—cannot but accommodate itself to the real long-run value of the services which are rendered.
  I re-emphasise that I am not speaking as if services rendered by women were, as such, inferior to services rendered by men—this cuts both ways, as indeed the Bill specifically notes—but in any given employment it will be the services which are most apt for that employment which will be attracted into it and which will earn the highest remuneration in that application.
  What applies to pay applies to the whole gamut of opportunity. It simply is not possible in a live and dynamic economy for services which can be rendered by women to be refused and rejected simply because they are offered by women. What will happen, on the contrary, is that the most apt services will be selected for the appropriate application; and sex differentiation, not only physically—which is mentioned in the Bill—but mentally, emotionally and in terms of the life cycle is such that there is bound to be a far-reaching difference in the pattern of the employment of women and the employment of men.
  In short, so far as it is practicably obtainable, the object of the Bill, as of the Equal Pay Act, attains itself. I say "So far as is practicable." But then the

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  objection is raised: "Then let us go further. Let us invoke the law. Let us discover cases where, being wiser than the individual citizens and wiser than the employer, the law knows that it would have been better to employ a man or a woman but the decision has been swung the other way by prejudice. Let us, having discovered these instances, bring the panoply of the law and a commission into operation to prevent it."
  Mrs. Renée Short: What would the right hon. Gentleman do?
  Mr. Powell: I thought that it was clear enough what I would do.
  Mrs. Short: Leave it as it is?
  Mr. Powell: Certainly, and I would expect the same improvement to go on as has been witnessed during the last 70 years, except probably at a faster rate.
  But I shall tell the House what is going to happen. What will happen is that this Bill, in its implementation, will introduce suspicion, discord, doubt and anxiety on the part of employer and employee. Wherever it is sought to be enforced there will be the intrusion of the law and of the investigatory powers of the commission into the affairs not merely of large fiarms but of all but the smallest.
  Where before there was a perfectly natural relationship founded upon common sense and on an understanding that the opportunities were adapted to the different propensities and skills which were on offer, in place of that there will be introduced discord and envy. The price that we shall pay will be the construction of a bureaucratic machine which, since it will fail—for it is bound to fail—will be driven forward with ever more force and ever more elaborations. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham was only touching the hem of the matter when he referred to the potential absurdities in attempting to control advertisements.
  One cannot but be moved by the description, which the White Paper quotes from the Finer Report, of the process which has been witnessed in our lifetime:
  "Longer life, a sex-ratio near unity, more and younger marriages and small, consciously-planned families, with fertility compressed into a narrow band of years, have resulted"—
  Mrs. Renée Short: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Powell: "Have resulted"—the hon. Lady should notice the tense—
  "have resulted in revolutionary alterations in women's lives as wives, as mothers and as workers."
  Legislation of this kind can do nothing but interfere with the realisation of that continuing process, because it is only the adaptations of society and of the economy to the new potentialities thrown up by those changes and by others like them which we cannot foresee which brings about that kind of revolution. If we attempt to do it by law and compulsion we shall destroy where we intend to create.
  There is a mania today in legislation for attacking discrimination, oblivious that all life is about discrimination, because all life is about differences. This Bill is a particularly heinous example of the follies into which Governments and Parliaments are led when they give heed to this fashionable but foolish craze.
  6.20 p.m.
  Mrs. Millie Miller: The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) may have many attributes, but I hope and pray that prophecy is not among those that he has already displayed.
  Mr. Powell: I am generally right.
  Mrs. Miller: Modesty normally prevents hon. Members from claiming that. However, some points in the right hon. Gentleman's speech warrant immediate reply.
  The right hon. Gentleman may be surprised to know that I sympathise with the points he has made on Clause 7. When the Government considered the White Paper, many people warned them of the dangers of definitions which could not be clearly understood and, more strongly, about exceptions which provided loopholes through which coaches and horses could be driven. A great deal of further thought and discussion is necessary on this to ensure that the real objects of the Bill are met.
  I am not surprised that the right hon. Gentleman opposed the Equal Pay Act. I could not understand from his argument whether he objects to equal pay for the same work. In many areas of industry women work alongside men for different rates. In other areas work is clearly

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  defined as women's work and is paid at a lower rate. It is interesting to note that in New Zealand, where there has been legislation of a similar nature, this was dealt with by establishing a notional male rate which was the rate for the job. It was the value of the work done which was classified and not the sex of the worker. If we had this kind of approach, much of the right hon. Gentleman's argument would fall to the ground. If a woman is engaged on a task and if her abilities and talents are the same as those of her male fellow worker, she should have the same opportunities.
  The information which the Home Secretary gave us—he touched on only a fraction of the areas of discrimination which are well known and documented —clearly showed the areas in which women are still at the gravest disadvantage. Although heartily welcoming, this legislation, we are only too well aware of the many areas, some of which the Home Secretary mentioned, which will not be covered by the Bill, such as taxation, social security and nationality.
  Many women, notably those represented on women's organisations, have studied this problem and have struggled for this day for many years. They are anxious to know when these areas of our life will be catered for. The right hon. Member for Down, South seems to have forgotten that for many years an increasing number of girls have been educated alongside boys and that more and more girls have similar ambitions in their working and educational lives.
  It is not just a matter of discrimination against women—something which women should be talking about. I should like to refer to an interesting report of the Junior Parlour sub-committee of Pembroke College, Cambridge. This is a male college. The young men of that college carried out a survey of the situation in Cambridge colleges which have become co-residential. They came to various important conclusions.
  In the area of academic excellence they concluded that co-residential colleges enjoyed extremely high academic reputations. They attributed this to the fact that those colleges had gone co-residential. In the social sphere they asked the fellowship of their college to accept that they grew up in a social environment that did not exclude women and that, with few
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  exceptions, they would be returning in their careers to an environment which recognises women as professional equals.
  They believe that in Cambridge women have been considered as a phenomenon and not a reality. They say:
  "we believe that hitherto relationships have been too often characterised by their fragile and contrived nature… this situation will be perpetuated by a decision for our college to remain exclusively male. The absence of women in our community is to us as unnatural and abnormal as the presence of such company in colleges was felt to be 30 years ago."
  They conclude their interesting survey with these words:
  "Most other reports conclude with a list of recommendations. We have only one, that the Society vote to admit women to Pembroke".
  They say that this is not simply because they like the pleasure of the attractive undergraduates who will be joining them but because the statistical evidence they have collected from colleges which have become co-residential in recent years encouraged them to want the competition of women working alongside them.
  Mr. David Lane: I am touched by the interest the hon. Lady is showing in the university in my constituency. I do not disagree with her general approach to the Bill. I hope she will visit Cambridge and allow me to show her, at first hand, the realities of life in the university in contrast to the rather superficial judgments in the report from which she is quoting.
  Mrs. Miller: I was given this report while visiting Cambridge and discussing the matter with a group of students, who included some of my constituents. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.
  The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) referred to protective legislation. The need for this legislation is not only urgent for professional women. Women working in industry are not ready to give up protective legislation until they are satisfied with the more important changes that are necessary in employment protection. Many of the protections which apply to working women might well apply to working men to the benefit of our society.
  A great many aspects of the Bill will be warmly welcomed, but there are still

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  a number of areas which warrant further and more detailed consideration. In some areas the definitions are too narrow. Clause 1(1)(b) is far too conditional It needs expanding so that it is clearly understood as it affects employment. 'Hie exceptions in the Bill are unfortunately still far too wide.
  Mention has been made of the Equal Opportunities Commission and the need for a considerable number of women —if possible, an equality of women—to serve on this commission. Although the commission will have the right to undertake educational and research functions, there is provision in the Bill for charges to be made. I sincerely hope that the charges the commission imposes on anyone needing educational material and requiring research facilities will not be such that people will be precluded from using it.
  In the main, the most serious discrimination occurs among those women who are least able to protect themselves, probably among those who are not organised within the trade union movement, those who are condemned, because of the inequality in education which has existed until now, to doing no more than the most menial jobs in our society. For people with this double disadvantage extra help is needed.
  For this reason I regret even more the fact that even in the White Paper the idea of positive discrimination to favour women, certainly in education and training, has not been introduced. The statistics we have and the evidence which has been produced to innumerable Select Committees of this House and the other place and the Private Members' Bills which have been before this House on numerous occasions clearly show that this is so.
  I hope that when the Bill gets into Committee a number of the points which I have raised, and which will no doubt be raised by other hon. Members, will be taken into account and the Bill will be amended so that it will receive a wholehearted welcome from the whole community, particularly from those women who in many cases are members of organisations which for the past century have been fighting to see legislation of this kind on the statute book.
  6.32 p.m.
  Mr. Clement Freud: Having listened to the extraordinary list of Conservative achievements which the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) detailed with all the verve and panache of a speaking clock, I have to admit that there is a great temptation on the part of any Liberal to draw to the attention of the House the real achievements of my party in its fight against sex discrimination. It is a proud record. I shall not take up the time of the House with that.
  My right hon. and hon. Friends warmly welcome the Bill, which we think is the most comprehensive step to combat discrimination on the grounds of sex in any part of the world. We welcome the Bill for the fair deal it gives to men as much as to women. Perhaps the most villainous aspect of sex discrimination has been the old-age pension which is given to women at the age of 60 and to men at the age of 65, in spite of the well-recognised fact that women live longer than men.
  We particularly welcome—and here the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham will disagree with me—the reduction in the size of companies that fall within the net of this Bill from those with 10 employees in the White Paper to those with five in the proposed legisla-tion. I do not know what research the Government have done but I think that there would be something in excess of half a million people employed in companies having a staff of five or fewer. There are dangers here, and there were greater dangers in the Conservative proposals limiting the number to 25, since it would be simple for someone to discriminate against the sexes simply by forming a single-sex subsidiary company.
  It is probably the first time that justice in this country will have been dispensed according to the size of the unit in which the injustice is perpetrated. It is an unwelcome legislative breakthrough.
  We welcome very much the speeding-up of the enforcement procedure of the Equal Opportunities Commission. The Minister will know that previously the commission would apply for injunctions against an employer and there would be a wait of as long as three years. Some-

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  times superannuation had taken place by the time the case came to court.
  I listened carefully to what the Home Secretary said and my major criticism, also voiced by a number of hon. Members, is that nothing has been done about social benefits and taxation. The Bill properly requires an end to commercial and industrial discrimination on the grounds of sex. But while fiscal administration, over which the Government have sole control and responsibility, remains outside the scope of this legislation, employers will be legally bound to abide by this admirable measure, while the Government in the form of the Department of Health and Social Security and the Treasury will top the league of sex discriminators.
  There will be a huge gap between the law by which employers will have to abide and the measures which, for instance. local education authorities are allowed to get away with. I have in mind such matters as the granting of maternity leave for married teachers but not for unmarried teachers and the inequity, in my opinion, of student grants which virtually encourage students to cohabit because if they marry the grant goes down. There are also the pension schemes which continue to discriminate against women.
  It seems wrong that pensions, which after all are simply deferred wages, should give unequal benefits when equal contributions have been paid; it is even less fair that these unequal benefits should come at unequal ages. One estimate is that even with the new safeguard 2 million women will receive lower benefits than men, which is wrong and cannot have been the intention of the Government.
  By the same argument, there are many instances when there will be discrimination perpetrated by Government Departments. I have in my constituency a lady doctor who pays a compulsory contribution for a pension. If she dies her husband will receive nothing. If she changed her sex, the doctor's wife would receive a substantial sum of money, as would his children. In a Government-sponsored sex discrimination measure this is an anomaly to which careful thought should be given.
  There is no protection for the married person who, because of status, is treated
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  less favourably than an unmarried person of the same sex. This relates to Clause 3 and is something which must be looked at in Committee. Again, when we come to immigrants, which is the responsibility of the Home Office, the words on the form which the immigrant has to fill in state that he is welcome to this country. It says that students, business men and visitors may bring a wife or dependant. This is totally sex discriminatory.
  I have in my constituency a college of further education. A Malaysian male student attending that college was given permission to bring his mother to this country yet a Burmese female student was refused permission to bring her brother. Surely "students, business persons and visitors"—as presumably it will be—ought to qualify for equal rights.
  The most surprising thing about the speech of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) was that it did not refer to the fact that the Bill makes no reference to Northern Ireland. I admit that sexual discrimination is not perhaps the major problem in Northern Ireland, but sexual discrimination in the Six Counties is quite as widespread, perhaps more so, as in the rest of the United Kingdom. I urge the Home Secretary to think about extending this admirable Bill to include Northern Ireland, which is so often excluded from progressive legislation.
  Mr. James Kilfedder: Perhaps I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I hope, if the Bill goes through, that we will have somewhat similar legislation introduced by the Council for Northern Ireland.
  Mr. Powell: May I confirm that it is vary rare for Northern Ireland to escape the legislative follies that afflict Great Britain.
  Mr. Freud: I am not very clear how the Bill will affect women's sections of political parties. I found, as did many other hon. Members, that there were clauses which were confusing, but of course the Bill is very complicated. I believe from what I have read that the illegality is vested in being an offshoot or subsidiary of an organisation, but perhaps the Under-Secretary when replying will explain just how it is. It is significant

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  that private clubs and voluntary organisations are excluded, and although they are excluded it has probably been noticed that some, like the Carlton Club, have already started accepting female members.
  Mr. William Hamilton: One.
  Mr. Freud: Which is discriminating, I suppose.
  Finally, Mr. Deputy Speaker—and I welcome the opportunity for the time being of so calling you, and not having to refer to you as "Deputy Speakperson" —there is a modicum of nit-picking in the Bill, but I think it should be the ambition of enlightened countries to abolish the words "man" and "woman" from their legislation and substitute "person". This Bill goes a very long way in that direction and we offer our congratulations to the Home Secretary and to his advisers, presumably of both sexes, who drafted it.
  6.42 p.m.
  Miss Jo Richardson: The Sex Discrimination Bill is the most recent of a number of laws which have been designed over many years to improve the legal position of women, and like everybody else, welcome it very much indeed.
  The first anti-discrimination law was passed in 1919. It was called the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act and it made it unlawful to bar women from public posts on grounds of sex. It fell to the ground simply because there was no method of enforcing it, so really it has been inoperative ever since. We have seen other Acts which have been of considerable assistance to women and which have made their lives much more bearable because of the ability to enforce the law. As we all very well know from the traumas over the past few weeks, we have, had since 1967 had an abortion law which has been of great help to very many women in this country and has strengthened their case.
  We have had the Equal Pay Act, which was passed in 1970 but which will not become fully operative until 1975 and is already being evaded by a large number of employers. And we have seen a number of attempts in the past on the part of hon. Members—notably my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green
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  (Mrs. Butler) and my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) —to produce Private Members' Bills, but, of course, as with most Private Members' Bills, they did not get very far.
  For all these reasons, I and all my colleagues on this side of the House welcome very warmly indeed this particular Bill. It is the most comprehensive attempt ever to have been made to try to produce legislation which will get rid of the worst effects of the discrimination which we have had up to this point. It is a positive move.
  The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) talked glibly about a number of measures which his party had passed, but his party has never produced a Bill of this sort. His party produced a White Paper which was so loosely written that one could have driven a coach and horses right through it. Indeed, a number of my hon. Friends who were members at that time did just that. But our White Paper on this subject and our Bill are very much stronger.
  I am particularly glad, as are other hon. Members, to see, for example, in Clauses 1(1)(b) and 4 the extension of the definition of discrimination to include victimisation of people bringing a complaint and also unjustifiable but unintentional discrimination. This is to be warmly welcomed.
  As the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) suggested a few moments ago, it is most welcome that the figure of 10 in the White Paper to indicate the size of the firms to which the law will apply has been reduced to five. Frankly, I cannot see what is so magic about five either, because there are a very large number of firms with fewer than five employees. Why should those people be left outside the law?
  Clause 40 is also very helpful since it allows positive discrimination in training and recruitment where one sex has been excluded from any particular kind of work or responsibility.
  These are positive attempts to combat the effects of past discrimination and they are essential if the new law is to have real effect in improving the position of women.
  The Bill permits employers to organise special training courses to fit women for skilled manual work. I hope that the

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  Equal Opportunities Commission will positively encourage them to do so, because it is no use simply putting it in a Bill, its becoming a piece of legislation and the employers ignoring it, as many of them will no doubt try to do.
  The Bill also allows trade unions to run special schools to encourage women to become shop stewards. This is a particularly important point. Not only do we need more women shop stewards, but in connection with this particular piece of legislation it will be necessary for women to be represented at the tribunals and before the Equal Opportunities Commission and it will be helpful to them if they have women shop stewards to whom they can go and whom they can consult.
  Mrs. Jill Knight: Why?
  Miss Richardson: Why not? It is often very much easier for women to talk to women in this particular way. I can tell the hon. Lady that very often they do not get very much good advice from men.
  The hon. Member for Isle of Ely also referred to the speeding up of the enforcement procedures in the White Paper. These enforcement procedures could have taken up to three years and I am very glad to see that, as far as I can understand the clause, they will be considerably speeded up. This will help women very much.
  There are some areas, however, in which I think that the Bill has uncertainties. I know that this is a very complex problem, that it is perhaps impossible to legislate absolutely for everything and that this has, therefore, resulted in a very complex Bill. I hope that we shall have an opportunity in Committee to put right some of the wording where the Bill is not well enough drawn and perhaps also to include some things which have been omitted. I should like to refer to just a few of these.
  Clause 3, for example, makes it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of marital status, but that applies only where a married woman is treated less favourably than an unmarried woman. There is no protection for unmarried people who are treated less favourably than married
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  people. For example, although married women are entitled to maternity benefit, unmarried women are not. There is no valid justification for not paying maternity benefit to an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant. The law must be extended to protect single women from unfair discrimination of this type.
  Much has been said about Clause 7 and the loosely-drafted phrases "genuine occupational qualification" and "authentic male characteristics". What was said in the White Paper was probably better, namely—
  "for reasons of physiology or authenticity".
  I wish that that phrase had been used.
  The clause goes on to talk about preserving decency and privacy, which I gather is intended to cover lavatory attendants and employees in cramped quarters. As drafted, the provision could apply to a number of other categories of people. It could apply to doctors and nurses treating patients of the other sex, to radiographers, to school matrons, to hairdressers and to dentists. The list is endless. Although I understand the intention behind the clause, I believe that it should be tidied up.
  The clause will also allow employers to discriminate where
  "the job needs to be held by a man because of restrictions imposed by the laws regulating the employment of women".
  This is doubtless put in because of the Factories Acts, but it could be used to justify an argument that because night work might be involved an employer could not take on a woman. This point should be tightened up.
  I had hoped that the Bill would spell out, as the White Paper does, the criteria which will not justify exemption. The criteria in the White Paper are, first, the extra cost of employing both men and women; secondly, statistical proof that the employment of men is more advantageous because of lower absenteeism or turnover rates; thirdly, customers' or clients' prejudices; and, fourthly, exposure to physical danger or adverse working conditions. These arguments, particularly those in relation to absenteeism or turnover rates and customers' or clients' prejudices, are used more than any others to justify employing a man instead of a woman.

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  Reference has been made to the exclusion of Northern Ireland from the provisions of the Bill. We have heard from the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) of the thinking behind some of those who represent Northern Ireland constituencies. That leads us to wonder whether the Government were not over-persuaded by what the reaction of those people might be.
  There is no reason for excluding Northern Ireland from the Bill. The question of discrimination may not be the most difficult problem facing Northern Ireland today, but discrimination exists in Northern Ireland just as it does in England, Scotland and Wales. 1 hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will tell us why Northern Ireland is not included.
  Clause 32(1)(c) means, amongst other things, men's clubs. It talks of places where embarrassment might be caused to male users.
  "at the presence of a woman".
  I have never been in a men's club except the House of Commons. One hears a great deal about, and even sees depicted on films, the embarrassment of elderly gentlemen when women venture through the portals of their club. I hope that clubs will be included in the Bill.
  I am sorry that single-sex schools are excluded. This is a retrograde step. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State talked about freedom of choice. This is freedom of choice to use single-sex educational institutions only for those who have the money to pay. This does not afford any extra freedom of choice to the average man and woman.
  The traditional attitudes to woman's rôle and capabilities are actively encouraged in most schools, especially in single-sex schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) referred to a study which has shown that on the whole co-educational establishments produce better academic achievements and social adaptability than single-sex institutions. The replacement of single-sex schools by co-educational institutions would be a positive anti-discriminatory measure.
  There is a need to change teachers' attitudes and teachers' methods. A great
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  change muse brought about in the overall attitude to women. Although the Bill cannot cover everything, its very existence will help. Girls are positively harmed by having it suggested to them from birth—in their homes, at school and eventually at work—that their domestic and maternal rôle in life is more important and more meaningful than a career outside the home. That is how women are taught and have been taught.
  It is increasingly obvious that women play, and must play in our present economic circumstances, an important rôle in supporting their families as well as giving birth to and caring for children. However, girls are pressured—in the home, at school and on television. Any hon. Member who gets out of this place often enough to watch television advertisements will know how many of them are geared to the notion that woman's place is in the home. The context in which it is put is that she is a wonderful mother, and she is shown using a particular kind of frozen food. The indoctrination of such ideas the whole time can do nothing but harm to girls and young women.
  Mr. Stanbrook: What is wrong with the notion of associating a woman with the home?
  Miss Richardson: There is nothing wrong with associating a woman with the home. Women are in their homes, they have to be in their homes and they have homes. My argument is that if the emphasis were not almost exclusively on the home it would take its proper place and woman would have a better rôle in society and allow their talents to be offered in a way in which, because of the pressures of films, television and schools, they do not offer them at present, simply because they do not think it is the right thing to do.
  It is said by the managers of industry that women cannot be persuaded to take promotion. I am not sure that that is true. Even if it were true it is understandable, because all their lives women have been led to believe that they should be in a supportive rôle. When they leave school many girls go straight to secretarial courses and then become secretaries, fulfilling a supportive rôle to decision-makers.There are very few female decision-makers in British industry.

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  Some time ago, before I became a Member of this House, I had occasion to talk to two fairly senior executives in a very large firm. I asked as a matter of interest whether they had any women in similar executive positions to their own. They told me "No, there are just not enough women in our firm who want to do that kind of work". I suggested that they should sit down and think about the women employed in the firm, and consider whether or not secretaries, clerks, those doing estimating, working computers and so on would be capable and would have benefited from a management course. They told me "No, there is only one woman who is absolutely exceptional in our firm. She is the chairman's secretary. She is absolutely marvellous. He, of course, is always in the South of France and she carries the whole of the department and, in effect, the whole of the firm". I asked them "So why is she not the chairman?" They said "That would be absolutely horrible. We cannot have a woman as chairman of a great firm like this."
  This may sound like exaggeration but I beg hon. Members to believe that it is the way that British industry looks at this question today. This is one of the reasons why we want to see the introduction and passing of the Bill, which will give so much help to women, will give them a much better, far more productive rote in life and will help the country.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): There are 14 hon. Members who want to catch my eye in the next two hours. It will be very difficult if there are long speeches.
  7.1 p.m.
  Miss Janet Fookes: What an intimidating start for me! On principle, I welcome the Bill because I believe that it will give greater freedom of choice to women to pursue whatever they wish to do in life, whether it be a career or in the home. I am not one of those who sneer at the contribution that women make to the running of the home. I cannot say that solely running a home would appeal to me but women should have the right to do either and should not be hindered but should be encouraged if they wish to enter either the one or the other.
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  In some ways it is a disappointment to me that we need to have a Bill at the present time. I would have hoped that after the initial impetus in the early twentieth century things might have been left to take care of themselves. But alas! I do not believe women have fulfilled their full potential, despite the changes that have occurred in their lives through the operation of family planning and all the other matters which the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), who has now disappeared, mentioned in his speech. Despite that, they have still not realised that potential, and that is why we need the Bill.
  We need it because women no longer just fill in on a job between leaving school and marriage and never thereafter go back. We need full opportunities because for them it is a lifetime career. Now we have the opportunity to put this right. I felt that my right hon. Friend, in speaking of what the Conservative Government had done along the road, was over-modest because he did not mention that it was a Conservative Government back in the 1950s who introduced equal pay in the non-industrial Civil Service, teaching and local government, which was a most important milestone in its day.
  There are two very important reasons why we ought to release this talent. The first is that it is in the national interest to do so. We are constantly told that one of our greatest assets, though not, of course, like other raw materials we have or food, only part of which we have to import, is the talent that is possessed by the population of these islands. One half of the population is female and it is not being fully utilised. In my view, that represents a waste that we can ill afford.
  Then, there is the level of the individual. I do not believe that the right hon. Member for Down, South can ever have talked to those women who have felt themselves at a disadvantage in their careers or he would know that the envy and discord which he believes will be engendered by this Bill if it becomes an Act are already there among women who feel that their talents are overlooked. We could all come forward with individual cases of women who have been overlooked, even where their talents are recognised. The hon. Lady the Member for

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  Barking (Miss Richardson) made a very good point about secretaries who are very able but never make the grade to the executive class. I can think of one or two such women within my personal acquaintance. One can produce all kinds of examples, even the woman journalist who finds great difficulty in breaking out from the women's page and getting on to something else, perhaps of wider interest.
  I recognise that any Bill of this kind must, in the nature of things, have certain shortcomings. There must be occasions when it is very difficult to detect discrirnination as such. I think, for example, of instances where there is intense competition for jobs and where, perhaps, the qualifications are not specific. Looking at this close to home, one thinks of the capabilities of a woman parliamentary candidate in relation to men in competition with her. Discrimination there is something which would be very difficult to prove afterwards.
  But I believe that the Bill, if it becomes an Act, will at least set standards and that it will no longer be possible to have the kind of thinking reflected in what I am assured was a statement made by a member of a Conservative selection committee less than a decade ago. The chairman announced "This, of course, is a big rural constituency. We could not expect a woman to have the physical stamina to go round at election time and address perhaps eight meetings a night, as is done in rural areas". The whole selection committee accepted that as a good argument for not having a woman candidate. That kind of argument will no longer be acceptable or accepted.
  Again, I recognise that in seeking to make the Bill comprehensive it becomes complex. When I sat down to read it I was at first dismayed by its length and complexity. Obviously, at the Committee stage certain points can be clarified. Nevertheless, the general idea, to set up the principle that there shall be no discrimination and then to give the exceptions to it, was right. We can then argue over what is acceptable at the present time by way of exceptions. I have. however, some reservations about the Bill. I
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  am disappointed that it is not to deal with taxation and the social services, but I recognise that to do so would make it an even larger Bill.
  I believe, nevertheless, that it is in those areas that a great deal remains to be done. I am not convinced by the argument that some things can be taken care of by other Ministers and other Acts of Parliament. If that is so, why include education in the Bill?—because that, too, can be taken care of by the Education Acts and the Ministers concerned. I suspect that the reason is quite different. There is a very great deal of money involved in these other Departments and I believe there is a reluctance to take it on board in case the financial repercussions are proved to be rather more than might be thought at first sight.
  The absence of a reference to taxation particularly annoys me. Over and over again one encounters instances where women are treated unfairly. I feel that this stems from the basic mistaken idea of taxation law that two separate people should be charged as one. In the present day, with divorce rates fairly high, with separations, and with women earning in their own right, this is no longer an acceptable principle.
  I am disappointed, though I understand the reason, that the Government have fought shy of any interference with church organisations. I suppose that that would have conflicted with the idea of religious freedom, but I trust that those denominations which do not accept women as priests or ministers will be shamed into thinking out their ideas again and considering whether those ideas are not wholly outdated. I know of several women who would gladly be ordained in the Church of England if it were allowed there, and I believe that they would make an excellent job of it. Certainly they could not preach a worse sermon than many ministers I have heard, and I dare say their advice would be more practical and probably less long-winded.
  I have a big query about midwives, because they have succeeded in getting themselves in a tangle. There is a logical argument for saying that midwives should be exceptions and the job should be confined to women, and in a logical way one can equally argue that the job ought to

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  be open to men, but I see no reason for saying that there shall be male midwives but they must be chaperoned. It would be better to say "Let them train if they so wish", but ensure that any woman who really finds it distasteful has the option of a female to attend her. I hope that that matter can be considered again.
  I now propose to deal with advertising. Much play has been made of the regulations stipulating that it will be an act of discrimination, unless there is something to counter it, if one uses the word "waiter"or postman" or "salesgirl". I think that this could be got over fairly easily if, for example, advertisements are being grouped, as they often are, in newspapers by having a general heading for the advertisements saying that all the words used can be applied equally to either sex, so that we avoid the ridiculous result of having "chairpeople" as my right hon. Friend said. Surely there could be some arrangement of that kind, in the same way as newspapers sometimes put in a disclaimer that they cannot be held responsible for any proposals made where people are asking for business partners, and so on.
  I welcome the Equal Opportunities Commission, which was initially a Conservative creation and not a Labour one. I welcome, too, the fact that it has teeth. I see no difficulty in having a commission which is able to look at the situation widely and, at the same time, is able in certain circumstances to take action on its own.
  The Bill will be a landmark and will, I hope, get women to think again about the position which they occupy in society, because part of the difficulty, apart from active discrimination, has been the low value that women have put upon themselves and upon their capabilities because they have been so schooled by the general expectations of society. I hope, too, that by the time we reach the end of this century we shall have got so far with equal opportunities for women that the Bill will become obsolete. That, I believe, will be the real triumph, when we no longer need such a Bill as we hope to pass tonight.
  7.13 p.m.
  Mr. Roderick MacFarquhar: I agree very much with most of the general points made by the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes). She mentioned the problem of
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  lady journalists. Perhaps I may tell her that last night I witnessed on television a breakthrough in this field, when a lady newscaster intervieved a lady expert in the almost exclusively male field of international relations.
  I should like to add my tribute to the Home Secretary and those at the Home Office who have worked with him to produce the Bill. Of all the legislation brought forward by the present Government this Bill is the most significant. It seeks to eliminate injustices which are age-oldߞin the true meaning of that overworked termߞand to undermine prejudices and attitudes which exist at the deepest levels of consciousness of us all.
  But, as the Home Secretary said, one must be cautious about the impact of legislation in an area which is bound up with the most intimate relationships between the sexes. No Bill, even one more radical than the present one, could usher in a sexual Utopia. But I believe that this Bill, together with the Equal Pay Act, will be seen as a watershed from which will flow fundamental and enduring changes in the status and rôle s of women, and I hope that one day, as the hon. Lady said, the Bill will become obsolete.
  There have been a number of sea changes in the status and rôle s of women in recent decades, to which the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) was probably referring, but he seemed to prefer a state of nature. The Second World War proved again that women can do most of the factory floor jobs that only men are supposed to be able to do. There has been a desire for a better material life, and in recent years this desire has become a necessity as women go out not to earn pin money but to help ends meet within the family.
  Perhaps most important of all, there has been the sexual revolution. The introduction for women of a simple, relatively safe and cheap method of contraception has given them almost an equal right with men in deciding when and if they will have children.
  All these factorsߞeconomic necessity, the Pill, the Equal Pay Act and now the Billߞwill impel growing numbers of women to come out of the kitchen and go into the office or on to the shop floor. But they will still not find full

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  equality there unless further conditions are satisfied. Some can at least be initiated under provisions of the Bill, but some, regrettably, cannot.
  The first problem is what is sometimes called "poverty of aspiration". By the age of four my daughter had acquired the notion that doctors were always men and nurses were always women. We all know how this kind of attitude, even with constant parental counter-propaganda, is instilled and how difficult it is to eradicate because of the pervasive nature of these ideas in children's publications.
  I have here an example of what 1 mean. It is a children's book entitled "When I grow unߞwhat will I be?" It almost amounts to an international conspiracy against women, for the idea and the illustrations were done, apparently, by an Italian, the book was originally written in French, it was printed in Romania and it is published in English here in Britain.
  The characters are animals, but the message is clear. The private detective is Harry Hound, the astronomer is Hoppy the male rabbit, the cartoonist is Bert Badger, the ambassador, of course, is Sir Percy Penguin, and the mechanical shovelman is Louis Lion. There are many other examples of the jobs which could be done by women but are automatically assigned to males. The only females are Mrs. Mouse, the dressmaker, and Lily Lioness, the inevitable nurse. Even the chef is Hubert Hippo, a fact which underlines that most grotesque of inequalities. that a major feature of women's normal rôle is cooking at home but when it comes to cooking for money, when it comes to cooking as a job, it is men who have taken over the dominant rúle.
  I am not singling out this quite attractively-produced book for special criticism. This is merely one of countless thousands of examples with which I am sure hon. Members are familiar, and many do it in a far more subliminal way which is far more difficult to counteract. If the Bill is to have its desired effect the Secretary of State should require the proposed Equal Opportunities Commission ߞthe formation of which and the powers which it is to have I welcomeߞas a matter of first priority to investigate the children's book publishing industry and
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  to take positive steps to encourage the production of less sexist booksߞto use the jargon. This will not be an easy job, nor a quick one, for children's books tend to mirror the most conventional images of our society.
  But even if girls arrive at school with a relatively undistorted idea of the potential rôle s which they may play in life it will still be essential to ensure that such enhanced aspirations can be satisfied in the classroom. It is no use a girl believing that she can be an architect or an engineer if her teachers guide her, however gently, towards English, foreign languages and history, and an almost certain career in teaching. At the moment, three-quarters of all women with A-level qualifications work in health and education. Only 1.4 per cent. of girls reaching higher education study engineering, and they are outnumbered 35 to 1 by men.
  The objectives of the Bill for equality in education will be achieved only if the Equal Opportunities Commission sees it as its job to make use of the considerable evidence in this field, to initiate further studies into our educational system. and to come forward with recommendations for altering these obvious biases. It is in this area amongst others that I believe. like my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller), that there is a case for reverse discriminationߞnamely, discrimination in favour of girls. I regret that my right hon. Friend, the Home Secretary, seems to have ruled it out in every possible case. I believe that the Government should study the possibility of making conscious efforts to encourage the recruitment of girls into traditional male spheres of study even at the expense of boys. Only in that way will the balance be righted at a reasonable pace.
  I now focus on reverse discrimination. It is not a question of compelling companies to employ a statutory woman who might be under-trained, ineffective and positively injurious to the cause of equality but a case of spurring on the education and training of girls in such a manner as to enable them to take their rightful place, without fear or favour, as the equals of men in traditional male occupations.
  I applaud the positive encouragement that is given in the Bill to the training

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  of women. Reverse discrimination, like charity, should begin at homeߞnamely, in the Equal Opportunities Commission itself. I urge that at least 50 per cent. of its staff be women. I know it will be argued that that, like other elements of reverse discrimination, goes against the whole spirit of the Bill, but the inequalities faced by women are so subtle and pervasive that they can be fully appreciated only by women themselves.
  As has already been pointed out, it is clear that the right hon. Member for Down, South is totally unable to understand women's frustrations. If the Equal Opportunities Commission is to be a dynamic agency for change as opposed to merely research and enforcementߞof course, those are vitaly important functionsߞit must be staffed by people who feel the inequalities in the very marrow of their bones. That provision seems to be of particular importance when we recall that the cases that the commission will investigate may end up in the county courts. According to the evidence submitted to the House of Lords Select Cornmitee on an earlier anti-discrimination Bill there were 114 male judges and only one female judge.
  Mrs. Renée Short: We now have two female judges.
  Mr. MacFarquhar: I suppose that is progress.
  It is because of the preponderance of men in the courts and in the tribunals that I ask my right hon. Friend to look again at the very first clause of the Bill ߞClause 1(1)(a)ߞto see whether he cannot devise more generous language for judges to interpret. The clause talks of discrimination against women in circumstances
  "as nearly as may be resembling"
  those in which a man is treated differently. But a male judge or a male-dominated tribunal might interpret that provision narrowly and might take into account quite irrelevant issues such as age. Could not a phrase like "broadly similar to" be substituted to give the Bill a far greater likelihood of generous interpretation?
  Another important means of positive discrimination is by Government Departments. First, they should set their own
  566
  house in order. A report recently coming out of the United Nations revealed that only 7·5 per cent. of the non-clerical jobs in Whitehall are done by women. That puts Britain twenty-second on the international civil service sex equality table, just below Guatemala and a fraction above Syria. Even the presumably liberal Home Office which has fostered the Bill is not immune from this kind of discrimination.
  Government Departments should insist on dealing with firms which do not discriminate. To this end the Equal Opportunities Commission should initiate studies industry by industry to establish under Clause 7 what truly is men's work. I appreciate the problems but I believe that after considerable investigation a schedule could be drawn up. Having done that, the commission should run seminars for managements, unions and workers to educate them in the ways and attitudes that apply in many firms and particularly in smaller firms. There are many such firms in my constituency. The full impact of the Bill may not be appreciated not through malevolent. anti-feminism but through ignorance. That is because small firms do not have the money, the facilities or the time to investigate what pathbreaking legislation like this should mean to them.
  There are many other matters on which I should like to touch but doubtless other hon. Members will take them up. I close by referring to one aspect of discrimination which is not touched upon by the Bill but must be tackled if general equality for the sexes is to be achieved. I refer to women's double rôle s. Even today when married women work in increasing numbers it is still normal for the women to do the housework and child-caring. That is why women undertake far less shift work and often work only half-days or three-quarter days. It may be difficult for most hon. Members to focus their minds on this issue because no group of working women has a dual rôle forced on them so absolutely as do the wives of Members of Parliament.
  Mrs. Colquhoun: And the husbands.
  Mr. MacFarquhar: Yes, of course, but very few of them. The long and peculiar hours that we work prevent anything but the most notional of burden sharing. How the situation of hon. Members' wives can

  567
  be changed must await investigation or possibly a change in the sitting hours of Parliament.
  In the case of most of our fellow citizens there can be remedies. There should be far longer paid guaranteed maternity leave for women than appears to be envisaged under the Employment Protection Bill. There should be more flexible working hours for men and a great expansion in baby-caring facilities. There should be statutory paid time off for either parent to look after young children up to, perhaps, the age of three years. Those are the sort of measures that will be necessary to back up the Bill.
  Coleridge said that the happiest marriage is that between a deaf man and a blind woman. I sometimes think that that has been the characteristic of the relationship between the sexes throughout the agesߞnamely, men being deaf to women's distress and women being blind to their own potentialities. If Rome was not built in a day surely sex discrimination will not be ended in a generation. This truly will be the hardest battle ever fought for the hearts and minds of men and women, but I believe that the Bill will be a powerful, if not the ultimate, weapon for winning that struggle.
  7.28 p.m.
  Mrs. Lynda Chalker: Like the hon. Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar), I welcome the Bill, but I regret that after all the advance made since the turn of the century we now find it necessary to introduce legislation to give women an equal chance to live a full and complete life in the 1970s and beyond. I have always preferred voluntary agreement and conciliation to compulsion and dictatorship.
  The real problem perhaps turns on the words which were skilfully manipulated by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) when he talked about "differentiate" and "discriminate". We all know that in every walk of life we have to make decisions. These demand the weighing up, on the one hand, of those things deemed to be advantageous and the weighing up, on the other hand, of those things which are deemed to be disadvantageous. In that way we discriminate. Those of us who welcome the Bill regret that we have to have legislation to
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  prevent unfair discrimination taking place from the cradle through education, employment and family life as a mother or as a member of a larger family. There has always been unfair discrimination in some respects. It is enshrined in everything we learn right at the start of our days.
  If we are to talk of unfair discrimination it must be acknowledged that there is a case for widening our discussion beyond the problem of the sexes. There are many occasions in employment when discrimination is based on age and not on sex. That is something that I find regrettable. So many elderly people are prevented only because of their age from playing their full part in life when they could well do so. That is not a matter for the Bill but it is a matter that I hope the Government will consider when, as they surely will, they consider wider issues of unfair discrimination in future.
  I find this legislation extremely confusing and complex. I wonder whether there is any way in which through amendment we can make it intelligible to the average employer. We have heard from other hon. Members today that the problem will occur in both small and large firms. The large firms have the capacity to deal with complex legislation, but the small firms do not. In most cases the Act is read by one person in that firm, and he is possibly without legal training. The first warning that that person gets of any infringement of the law is when he is actually infringing the law. There is no help to warn him of the steps he might take to avoid that infringement, and that is something that I have been concerned about as I have read the Bill completely twice.
  When we consider complex legislation of this type we must ensure that, while we urge on firms that in every aspect of life there should be no unfair discrimination, we should also seek to do the same in our legislation. There was a humorous moment some months ago in the Committee stage of another Bill when we were discussing the problems of disabled housewives. As drafted, that Bill provided that a male disabled housewife would benefit from the non-contributory invalidity pension while a disabled female housewife would not, even though she might he doing exactly the same jobs.

  569
  We have there a lesson for our own legislation.
  There frequently appears to be discrimination in the Civil Service, where the Government are employing more and more people. However, I do not blame the employing Departments for that, just as I do not, in many instances, blame employers where discrimination is apparent on the shop floor, in clerical posts and in junior and senior management. The answer lies in the basic education system.
  I welcome the extensions in the Bill over what was contained in the White Paper last year. I am glad that the definition of discrimination will include the victimisation of people who complain. However, I would welcome clarification of the point concerning unjustifiable but unintentional discrimination. This question seems to me appropriate for amendment in Committee. We must be clear about exactly how this provision will come into force. Clarification is needed both for those of us who are down to earth and for our colleagues who survey these matters from the legal heights.
  I particularly welcome the positive discrimination in favour of training and recruitment, because this deals with the lack of opportunity in education which has so stymied many women with what have always been termed "men-like" qualifications who would like to take up jobs in industry at a senior level. I welcome the speeding LID of the enforcement of the Equal Opportunities Commission on employment. It would have been ridiculous if we had had to continue to wait three years before an injunction could be made against an employer who was proved to have discriminated unfairly against a man or a woman in making an appointment.
  I have certain criticisms about the Bill. Its complexity and length make it almost impossible for us to take many positive steps in the next two or three yearsߞonly perhaps in the next 10 yearsߞtowards changing the situation. I believe also that there needs to be a major effort to change people's minds rather than force the law down their throats. This could be done not only by example but by publishing the effects of not allowing
  570
  female manpower to be used to its full potential.
  Many criticisms have been described tonight as nit-picking. Nevertheless, I beg the Minister, in addition to taking another look at the conciliation and encouragement I have referred to, to consider the definition of the genuine occupational qualification. There may have been titters about Clause 7. There may be further worries about Clause 39. But the worries on that score will be nothing compared to the time wasted in the courtsߞthe county courts, the sheriff courts, and perhaps even tribunalsߞif this matter is not rectified before this commendable Bill is enacted.
  I have a major criticism which was referred to earlier this evening, and it relates to the treatment of discrimination on grounds of marital status. Clause 3 makes it unlawful to discriminate in the field of employment on grounds of marital status. However, that clause applies only where a person is treated less favourably because she is married than an unmarried person would be treated. However, an unmarried person treated less favourably than a married person has no protection under the clause. I suggest to the Minister that that is a matter appropriate for amendment.
  It would also be unlawful to provide benefits for a single employee which were not also available to a married employee or to operate a "marriage bar" in employment. However, it would still be lawful to provide maternity benefits for a married woman only and to refuse the same benefits to a single woman—that is, if I read the Employment Protection Bill aright—for I am referring here to the extra maternity benefit, not the basic benefit, which is the confusison which arose earlier. This matter should be sorted out in Committee.
  I must draw to the Minister's attention the fact that the Equal Pay Act still is limited in the jobs which are covered, even with amendments made by this Bill. I find that most worrying. A person in non-contractual employment is covered by the Equal Pay Act, but the new law does not cover a person serving under contractual terms of employment, and that is something which must be looked at.
  There will be many enjoyable scenes in the political parties from now on. How

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  regrettable it is that there are only 28 Members of the one kind in this House and more than 600 of the other kind. This apparently is not thought to be job which the present minority are competent to do. Yet we see on both Front Benches, and in all but two of our political parties, Members of this minority who are just as able to cope with the rigours of staying up all night and returning early the next morning as the men, and very often look much better doing it.
  We have heard about the pensionable age and the fact that the Bill does not cover social security, pensions or taxation. We have heard about all the things which have been left out of the Bill, and perhaps we can encourage Ministers to consider some of those matters more favourably when they are composing their amendments. It would be legislatively impossible to include many of these in the Bill, of course, but I regret that fact.
  I welcome the Bill's provisions on housing. When attempting to purchase a house some years ago I sought the help of no fewer than 12 mortgage companies, all of which turned me down because I was a woman on my own, despite my salary of over£4,000 a year at that time. I was told that I would not necessarily secure a mortgage over a long period. It was as unjustifiable an argument then as it is now. I am glad that women are to be helped in that respect, especially in the sale of goods and services. It is an indignity that when a woman wishes to sign a form to purchase goods, albeit valued at only£20 for her home, she is immediately asked for the signature of her husband. If she does not happen to have one, it is her father's signature that is wanted. I have always objected to this, even when I was married. Now, thank goodness, it will no longer be possible to put women in such an invidious position.
  I turn to education and jobs. At the very start of education we instil into female children the idea of limited capacity. There is no need for limitation, with our modern educational system. I am sure that the Secretary of State for Education would be fighting even harder on that score if he thought that children would be divided so exactly. Yet still we learn from an early day that it is dolls for the girls and trains for the boys.
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  It is not just in that aspect of teaching that we must accomplish changes. We must especially accomplish changes in career teaching, the standard of which is abominable at present. We fall down time and time again by not giving opportunities to both sexes to participate in what have traditionally been the rôle s of the other half.
  There is no reason why a woman cannot become an engineer. I read with some interest a report from The Engineer Special Report, headed
  "A woman's place is not in the home…"
  which says that it is very worth while to train women, and that the highly qualified woman does just as good a job. It also says that the woman is better at staying at work. She has less absenteeism than men. Since 38 per cent. of all those who work are women, it is regrettable that only around 11 per cent. get into an engineering job.
  Women are just as capable as men. From a report of the European Community on "The Employment of Women and the Problems it Raises in the Member States of the European Community", I can do no better than to quote the following:
  "One mistake is the ludicrous system of vocational guidance which leaves unused and sterile a large part of the intellectual and active potential of women by channelling it towards the few and over-full 'feminine' occupations. There is nothing more basically feminine in roasting a joint than in drawing machines, in operating a typewriter rather than a linotype machine."
  That sums up the stage we have reached. I am glad that that approach is being enshrined in legislation.
  In welcoming the challenge given to us by the right hon. Member for Down, South, I continue to say "Vive difference". I also say "Give us the opportunity", because that is what the Bill should do. Let us put right what is wrong with it in a formidable Committee stage, so that women have the chance to succeed just as much as men.
  7.45 p.m.
  Mrs. Renée Short: I add my voice gladly to the general welcome that has been given to the Bill. The only dissenting voice was that of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), although no doubt if the hon. and learned Member

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  for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, there will be another discordant voice.
  There have been two or three hon. Ladies sitting on the Opposition benches waiting for their opportunity to speak. I wonder where the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition is.
  Mrs. Chalker: She is doing a man's job.
  Mrs. Short: She should be gracing the Opposition Front Bench today of all days, when in International Women's Year we are introducing a Bill to end discrimination against women.
  Mr. William Hamilton: The Leader of the Opposition is on record as being against this kind of legislation.
  Mrs. Short: Maybe that is why she has not shown her face today, but time will tell. She is a firm believer that merit alone is sufficient to enable people to get on. She said that after she was elected. All too often the dice are loaded against women with merit. Through the generations it has been found that it is difficult for women to achieve their goal in politics, the professions, industry and the arts.
  More concern is now expressed in the political parties and in the women's organisations. There has been a great upsurge of pressure from women, which I welcome. The Government realise that it is necessary to take action to redress the balance which is tilted against women. Therefore we have the Bill, which I hope will have a speedy passage through Committee.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar) said that women made a tremendous contribution to the national effort during wartime, when no job was barred to them. All sorts of facilities were made available to make it easy for them to carry out jobs in industry as well as the care of their young children. We had an enormous number of day nurseries throughout the country, practically all of which have disappeared. Only a handful are left. They have been gradually eroded since the end of the war.
  We have made little progress in introducing equality, in standing up for women's rights and seeing that they have equal representation on, for example,
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  public bodies. There are only three women on the boards of the main retailing companies in Britain, yet most of these companies are largely concerned with department stores, for example, which cater largely for women with articles concerned with women's clothing, household goods and food. These firms employ large numbers of women, but few women are involved on the management side. There are only two women on the boards of the leading 1,000 companies in industry. These two women happen to be their company chairmen, or chairpersons. There is not one woman director or managing director among the top firms. Less than 2 per cent. of the membership of the Institute of Directors are women. In industry women are conspicuous by their absence in the top echelons of industry.
  The Government are not setting a good example in this regard. Attention has been drawn to the fact that in the senior Civil Service jobs in Whitehall there are few women. In the Richard Crossman diaries there was mention of the Dame, who was the exception rather than the rule. I put down a Question recently to approximately 18 Ministers about the number of women they have on their lists in their Departments for nomination to boards and public bodies to which they have the power to nominate. I received the following stereotyped reply from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister:
  "Lists of names, which include women, are drawn up whenever there is a vacancy on the public bodies and committees for which I have some responsibility. I maintain no general list of the kind which my hon. Friend has in mind." ߞ[Official Report. 17th March 1975; Vol. 888, c. 282]
  Fifteen Ministers gave me more or less the same reply, presumably drawn up by the same man somewhere in the Whitehall machine. Only the three woman Ministers showed any understanding of the need to find suitable women and make sure that they were put on those public bodies and boards. In our own area, where we have a great deal of influence, a great deal needs to be done.
  When we look at the Board of the BBC, the British Tourist Authority, the General Medical Council, the Arts Council and the British Board of Film Censors, we see that the overwhelming majority of members are men. As the hon. Lady has just pointed out, in this House we are

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  a minority. 1 believe that we are 26 out of 635, which is a poor position.
  Last December Social Trends, a document that all of us who are interested in the problem should read, produced a depressing report, saying that in spite of the Equal Pay Act, in spite of the changes that had recently taken place in people's attitudes at home and work, men were likely to take the majority of top jobs for the next 20 years at least, unless there was a considerable shift in opinion and positive discrimination. That means that women will continue to be in subordinate jobs and will be discriminated against in the top jobs.
  With my Expenditure Committee, 1 examined the problems of women's employment and related problems in 1972. We found a serious position. When children are just old enough to look at picture books, the conditioning into sex rôle s begins. It is always the little girls who are helping mummy in the kitchenߞno doubt preparing for the time when they try to find their way to a man's heart through his stomachߞand it is always the boys who are doing the active, energetic things in the garden or on the car with daddy. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science will take the matter on board immediately. The women in my party have been trying to persuade him for some time. He should now have discussions with the publishers of children's picture books and story books to see that this discrimination and moulding into the sex rôle s at such an early stage is eliminated and that both boys and girls are seen to be doing all these things together.
  The conditioning continues throughout the school phase. At secondary school early choices must often be made by girls but not by boys of the subjects they will take for O-level, which affects the choice of subjects taken for A-level. This often means that certain jobs, careers and professions are closed to girls. It denies boys and girls a choice of not only academic subjects but the craft and practical subjects that they should have the chance to do. This also conditions the jobs they take when they leave school.
  In our inquiry into employment we found that only 8 per cent. of girls took up apprenticeshipsߞand 75 per cent. of
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  them are in hairdressing. Whereas 40 per cent. of boys take up apprenticeships in industry, very few girls get such apprenticeships. The attitude of the trade unions has not helped in this regard. In the West Midlands, where my constituency is, I know how difficult it is for girls to take up apprenticeships as capstan setters, for example. It is practically impossible for them to be accepted, yet there is no reason why they should not do that job.
  On leaving school 40 per cent. of girls will take clerical work, because it is regarded as suitable women's work, but only 7 per cent. of boys take such work. After 0-level and A-level, the brighter girls are steered towards nursing or teaching. That is very unadventurous. It shows no imagination at all. We have very few women civil and mechanical engineers, no women pilots and no women telecommunications experts. The reason is again the way in which girls are taught in school. Generally speaking, certainly in the single-sex girls' schools, mathematics and science are not very well taught. Those subjects are needed for the engineering, technological and technical jobs and professions that I have mentioned.
  Therefore, I am disappointed that the Bill does not say that there is to be an early date for the phasing out of single-sex schools. I understand that money would be needed to turn girls' schools into mixed secondary schools, because additional facilities would have to be provided, but that is not a good enough reason to say that more generations of girls must continue to be denied the right to have the full choice of both academic and craft subjects that they should have.
  One good result of the Bill will be that the restriction of entry on girls into medical schools will be ended. We must also make sure that boys' and girls' applications are treated on an equal footing and that the medical schools are not allowed to demand better A-level results of girls than they do of boys.
  I very much welcome the equality to be introduced into the Government training centres, the skillcentres. Most of the courses are now geared to men's interests and jobs. Women are not encouraged to apply for training in these spheres. Let us bear in mind that a married woman with children is at a considerable

  577
  disadavantage in taking up any place that might be offered. This applies to women who now take commercial training in the skillcentres, the only course specifically open to women. We have only a limited number of centres through-out the country. A woman with young children has great difficulty in making the necessary arrangements for her children to be looked after while she is training. This is expensive. It adds to the cost to the family if the wife is to take up the training course place available to her. The matter needs to be considered urgently.
  The changes that are to be made compared with the proposals in the White Paper are very welcome. The reduction of the exemption for small firms and partnerships from 10 employees to five is welcome, but why leave it at five? The exemptions should be eliminated altogether. The broader scope of the Bill and the definition of discrimination are also welcome.
  Part II, however, seems to be lull of thorny problems. Clause 7(2) states the only cases in which being a man is a genuine occupational qualification for a job. One is
  "(b) … to preserve decency or privacy because…
  (ii) the holder of the job is likely to do his work in circumstances where men might reasonably object to the presence of a woman because they are in a state of undress or are using sanitary facilities".
  That applies to male midwives as well, does it not? This is an anomaly that will have to be carefully considered in Committee. Clause 7(2)(d) states another case, which is that
  "the nature of the establishment, or of the part of it within which the work is done, requires the job to be held by a man because—
  (i) it is, or is part of, a hospital, prison or other establishment".
  Clause 18 makes a change in the prison regulations. The words:
  "and if women only are received in a prison the Governor shall be a woman"
  are to be repealed. Does that mean that a woman may be governor of a men's prison? If that works one way, it should work the other way. It might be an improvement to have a woman as governor of a men's prison. It would be an interesting theory to try out.
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  I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will enlighten us as to the composition of the commission. I hope that it will not be overwhelmingly male, that it will not necessarily have a male chairman and that the chairman with not be a superannuated lawyer. Ministers on both sides of the House always look for a superannuated lawyer when they want someone to carry out a job of this sort. Let us get away from the elderly lawyer syndrome.
  The House knows well that women Members do not shirk their responsibilities. They are keen to be appointed to Select Committees, especially those that are concerned with their lives and health. I hope that a considerable number of lady Members will play their part in the Committee which is set up to consider the Bill and that we shall not have a repetition of the fiasco of the membership of the Select Committee which is considering abortion. The membership of that Committee is a disaster for the women Members of the House and has caused great feeling among individual women and women's organisations outside the House.
  I have no illusions that the Bill will change opinion. It will not persuade Conservative right hon. and lion. Members who are entrenched in their attitude of opposition to the Bill, neither will it change the attitude of people outside the House who oppose it. It will, however, create a better climate of opinion and help to educate the prejudiced, so that in the critical areas which affect us closely there will be a better atmosphere and we shall be able to achieve the progress for which we have been waiting for well over a century, ever since women first started campaigning for an improvement.
  Several hon. Members rose —
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Muron): Mrs Jill Knight.
  Mr. Stanbrook: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would it not be of assistance to the House occasionally to hear the case against the Bill?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: The choice of right hon. and hon. Members who are called is entirely a matter for the Chair.
  8.3 p.m.
  Mrs. Jill Knight: Discrimination against women on the sole ground of sex is widespread and bitterly unfair. From that it will be apparent that I strongly support the aims of the Bill. But I have to say that at the beginning of the debate I was far from convinced that legislation carrying penalties and the prospect of people being hauled before what is virtually a court would be the best way to tackle discrimination. It may be, and I am open to argument. The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) weighed heavily with me. It may be that the Bill is the best way to deal with the present unfair situation, but I am not sure.
  I remember a story about a one-time colleague of ours who has now been elevated to the other place, having been a Member of this Chamber for many years. Dame Irene Ward was incensed to see in the columns of The Times an advertisement for a librarian in the House of Commons which stated that men only need apply. Dame Irene put down a Question to the relevant Minister. In reply she received an unsatisfactory answer to the effect that she must understand that a librarian in the House of Commons Library would be expected to carry heavy ladders to get books down from the upper shelves.
  Dame Irene threw down her Order Paper in anger, stalked out of the Chamber, went along to the Library, picked up a ladder, put it over her shoulder and came back into the Chamber, or tried to do so. The Serjeant at Arms, called upon to make a snap judgment, decided that it was an offensive weapon and would not allow her to enter the Chamber. Dame Irene stood at the Bar of the House with the ladder across her shoulders. and I am toldߞI was not here at the timeߞthat it occasioned considerable trouble, because as she turned from side to side many hon. Members were in constant danger of decapitation. She shouted "I have the ladder, and it is not too heavy". Dame Irene made her point. As we all know, we have many excellent women working in the House of Commons Library today.
  I am a little worried because in matters of this kind Parliament can easily be
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  made to look silly. In America the battle of the Equal Rights Amendment rages. Some States have accepted it and others are fighting it. In America it is unacceptable to use the term "mailman", as under this Bill it would be unacceptable to use the term"postman". America, the term "male person" has to be used. It is not even permissible to say" "mailmaid" because one must not say whether the person is a man or a woman.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) referred to "chairperson". When I was speaking recently in America, I was just about to say "Mr. Chairperson" when I realised that that did not sound quite right, and simply to say "Chairperson" sounded rude.
  The Americans had to search for an alternative to the normal business letter salutation of "Dear Sir I gather that "Dear You All" has been proposed. That may be redolent of Southern geniality but it is hardly conducive to an atmosphere of efficiency or formality.
  Parliament must not be made to look foolish, but I detect a little foolishness in Clause 4, which states:
  "A person discriminates against another person … if he treats the person victimised less favourably than in those circumstances he treats or would treat other persons, and does so by reason that the person Victimised has x2026; brought proceedings against him".
  Then there is the ridiculous part at the end of the clause:
  "or by reason that he knows the person victimised intends to do any of those things, or suspects the person victimised has done, or intends to do, any of them."
  Imagine trying to put that to a court of law about a bad-tempered man. Imagine having to say "He is victimising me because he suspects I intend to do something". The law looks rather stupid in Clause 4.
  Parliament might look foolish if the law dragged the whole of a constituency committee which selected a parliamentary candidate before the Equal Opportunities Commission. as might occur under Clause 6(1). I do not say that that would be altogether bad because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake said, vicious and unfair discrimination crops up in parliamentary Committees of Selection.

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  I suspect that there may be some trivialities in the Bill. Judging by Clause 6(2), it would appear that women Members of Parliament could demand a women's hairdresser to be provided in the Palace of Westminster. [Hon. MEMBERS: Hear, hear."] We know that the men already have a hairdresser in the building. I have a sensitive feeling about the pockets of the electorate. If women could demand such a facility as a hairdressing service within the building, we should either have to be charged a very great sum of money for that service, or the cost would have to be borne outside. I do not think that would be altogether fair.
  Mrs. Colquhoun: Does not the hon. Lady know that many women Members of Parliament already use the barber in the building to have their hair washed and blow-dried?
  Mrs. Knight: I can only say that I would not altogether recommend a woman who was particularly interested in a handsome coiffure to go downstairs to the men's hairdresser.
  Clause 29(2) of the Bill will give some men-only clubs a nasty jolt, and perhaps that is not such a bad thing. But I must express a worry about the freedom issue. If men want to gather together in clubs, so far as I am concerned they are welcome to do so. I rather like Townswomen's Guilds and Women's Institutes. I regard it as a matter of freedom that people should be allowed to join with other people with whom they want to spend time. Therefore, we must be a little careful in taking any action in that respect.
  Clause 29(2) would make it illegal to refuse to put up a woman in the YMCA although a man could not be expected to be given a room in the YWCA. I am not sure that the Bill is fair since it wavers about, sometimes favouring men and at other times favouring women.
  Men are certainly favoured in Clause 7. Why should they have their sensibilities protected while women's sensibilities are ignored? The clause is most unfair in that respect. Why should it be the case that a job needs to be held by a man to preserve decency or privacy? Why should not such a job be held by a woman?
  Mr. Ronald Bell: Surely the matter is dealt with in Clause 3(2), which governs the whole legislation.
  Mrs. Knight: I have read the Bill extremely carefully about three times.
  Mr. Stanbrook:Read Clause 2.
  Mrs. Knight: If my hon. Friends cannot agree among themselves what the Bill says, surely it is not extraordinary that I should ask the Minister for clarification of some of its provisions.
  Clause 33 would make it illegal for a professional woman to advertise for a woman to take care of her children or for a busy housewife to advertise for an au pair girl. I do not think that is a good thing.
  I thoroughly agree with the Bill's support for women's rights to mortgages. It has been most unfair that women have been discriminated against in that area, and also in regard to their entering into hire-purchase agreements.
  One area of unfairness lies in the fact that many thousands of women do not know what their husbands earn, and their husbands do not give them a fair amount of money with which to run the house and pay the bills. There is nothing we can do in this Bill on that score. Nevertheless, it is a cruel piece of discrimination.
  One of the biggest villains of the piece in discrimination against women is Her Majesty's Inland Revenue. Recently, by some strange mischance, I overpaid some tax and, lo and behold, my husband had to sign a form allowing me to get my own money back from the Inland Revenue. That kind of attitude is most unfair. Other hon. Members have mentioned the situation of disabled people in the home. What is so unfair is that if a man has a wife who is struck down by a disabling disease, he can claim tax exemption for a housekeeper to run the house, but if a woman's husband is struck down with a disabling disease and she has to go to work to keep the home and family together, she cannot claim a penny. These are areas of unfairness which the Bill does not tackle.
  I am bound to say that I like the small courtesies of life. I like doors to be held open for me. I like to have the feeling that I am occasioned these courtesies

  583
  because I am a woman. Clause 1 says that a man must not treat a woman less favourably. I want to be treated more favourably. But I realise that I cannot eat my cake and have it. The question is whether the general increase in opportunities—if the Bill turns out to provide them—is worth having if one is to lose all the advantages and comforts of being a woman.
  8.15 p.m.
  Mrs. Joyce Butler: I wonder whether the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) appreciates that if, as I hope, a woman hairdresser is appointed in the Houses of Parliament, she will also be able to provide for the hairdressing needs of many women on the staff of the House and that therefore there will be no need to call on the taxpayer to support that new venture. I hope that this will turn out to be the situation.
  As other hon. Members have touched on the history of the Bill, perhaps I might make a small excursion into history. It may be some consolation to any dyed-in-the-wool opponent of the Bill who regards it as a way-out Women's Lib effort to knowߞand this puts the matter well above party politicsߞthat it was the Queen who started the whole thing off. In her Christmas broadcast in 1967 the Queen drew attention to the position of a woman in society and stressed the need for changes to be made. In the year following that speech I tabled an Early-Day Motion drawing attention to the broadcast. I sent copies to all the major women's organisations and said "What do you think we need to do?".
  I then heard from a London bus conductress who had been refused training as a bus inspector because she had never been a bus driver, and indeed could not be a bus driver because her male colleagues opposed it. I realised the real weakness of the situation facing women in employment and saw a need for special provision to give them redress against sex discrimination. As an immediate result, in May 1968, I introduced the first anti-discrimination Bill, which made provision for an anti-discrimination board to which women could refer. I introduced that measure four times under the Ten
  584
  Minutes Rule, with some minor amendments. It was that same Bill for which my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton)ߞand I was very grateful to himߞgained a Second Reading in this House, and Lady Seear introduced the measure in another place. That same Bill was the basis of discussions in the Select Committee on this topic, which produced a tremendous amount of evidence of real discrimination against women in employment, education, training and a variety of other ways.
  This is a moment of pride and pleasure for me. I am especially proud that this Bill is being introduced by a Labour Government. I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department is to reply to the debate since she has done so much work on the Bill and for the whole of her political life has been an active campaigner against discrimination.
  It is a welcome thought that, at long last, such a measure stands a real chance of reaching the statute book and of becoming law. Although London bus conductresses can now become bus drivers and bus inspectors, few have been appointed in both categories, and women in employment still find many difficulties in obtaining the necessary training for the jobs they want to do. They find difficulty in getting promotion and in getting round the applications for jobs, which they are well qualified to do, which are advertised for men only. In many other ways this discrimination needs a measure like this to remove the obstacles to these women doing the kind of work that they want to do. It is important not only for career women but for the great mass of women who work in the low-paid women-only jobs. These are the women whom we can most help by this measure.
  I regret that the Equal Opportunities Commission, established by the Bill, does not seem to be designed to receive and deal with complaints from individual women in the first instance. The women who will be the pioneers in using this new legislation needs an anti-discrimination ombudswomanߞin view of the terms of the Bill, perhaps I had better make it an ombudsboardߞto whom they can apply in the first instance. The boardߞit could well be the Equal Opportunities Commissionߞcould sift these complaints

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  at the outset and attempt to get conciliation before and possibly avoid altogether the need for going to the courts or to an industrial tribunal.
  I noted what was said by my right hon. Friend about the powers of the Equal Opportunities Commission regarding special cases. I hope that some means will be found for enabling the commission, or a section of it, to deal with all the cases which are likely to arise with the coming into operation of this legislation. This will be valuable of only to women in getting the thing off the ground but to the commission.
  The legality of discrimination on the ground of martial status is a welcome part of the Bill. Like other hon. Members, I regret that this provision cannot be extended to the tax law. Reference has already been made to the disability of married women in that respect.
  For example, despite the fact that I have made a wife's earnings election and a claim for separate assessment, which means that I am now taxed as a single person—I have that disadvantageߞrecently my husband received a letter from the tax office asking him to make a return not only of my income but of my parliamentary expenses. I wonder whether that could be a breach of parliamentary privilege. It is a new point which we might consider regarding this discrimination. Even if I could establish that fact. it would be a comparatively minor point compared with the married woman—the hon. Member for Edgbaston referred to her own caseߞwho has a refund due to her from the tax office and finds that it is returned to her husband. Such a woman may often not know that that has taken place and will have no means of getting the money from her husband if he does not want to part with it.
  I also take the same view as expressed by other hon. Members about the regrettable fact that equal pension ages and allowances are not to be made available under the Bill.
  I turn now to one of the exemptions in the Bill. I feel very strongly that, despite all the difficulties of applying such legislation, organised religion should not be exempted. I should like to see something less negative written into Clause 19, which exempts ministers of religion from the provisions of the Bill.
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  There is a strong feeling that women who feel themselves called to the ministry should not be barred. In addition, many of the disabilities which hamper women have their roots in religious attitudes which are now completely outdated. The Society of Friends and the Salvation Army are notable exceptions where women have complete equality. I believe that we should at least nudge other Churches in this direction in a Bill of this kind. I hope that the Home Secretary and the Minister involved will look at the possibility of doing that.
  I take the view that it is much better to have as few exceptions as possible, if we are to have any at all. It would be far better left to the enforcement provisions of the Bill and the building up of case law to establish any exceptions which may be necessary after full examination of the pros and cons in particular cases. That is very important.
  Having made these few critical comments, I must underline the tremendous satisfaction which I believe most women and many men will feel about this historic Bill. I say "most women" with certainty and conviction because, although it is sometimes questioned whether women want a Bill of this kind, in recent years I have been immersed in all the problems and activities of women in many groupsߞthe women I meet in shops with their domestic worries, women organised in clubs, guilds and societies with wide and specialised interests, deprived women in acute social need, elderly women acquiring new confidence as they shake off some of their traditionally imposed sense of inferiority, working women who are proud of their jobs and angry at obstacles to their success, young mothers producing incredible benefits to small children through pre-school playgroups, stay-at-home wives anxious to break down barriers which isolate them from each other and from the whole community, women in the media with their dedication and energy, and my women colleagues here. I refer not only to the old-established Members, with whom I have worked over many years in a variety of campaigns for women's rights but the lively, new young ones who have come into the House recently. I know from the talks and discussions that I have had with all these groups of women how much they

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  have looked forward to a measure of this kind. After all, they represent a large section of the women of this community.
  It has been a most memorable and moving experience for me to share with all these women's groups their passionate desire to make the fullest possible contribution to society of which they are capable and to end finally the waste of talent and energy which tradition has too often imposed on them.
  Not all women have the same ambitions. They want to do their thinking in their own way. But they are united in seeing a measure such as this as a necessary step towards removing many of the barriers which inhibit them from doing what they want to do. I believe that, if they had the opportunity, women would join me in welcoming the Bill and wishing it a speedy transition into law.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Time is moving on. Since a number of hon. Members still desire to catch the eye of the Chair, it would be helpful if speeches could be reasonably brief.
  8.29 p.m.
  Mr. Ronald Bell: I shall try to accede to your request, Mr. Deputy Speaker. However, you will know that virtually the whole of this debate has been taken up with paeans of praise from both sides in support of the Bill. It would be a little hard if the appeal for brevity came just as, after a long interval, some considerations against the Bill were to be put. I cannot imagine that the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), my hon. Friends who hope to catch your eye, or I, however long we spoke, could make an even balance against those who have deployed arguments in favour of the Bill. I shall not try to do that.
  The hon. Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) sincerely felt that she spoke on behalf of the majority of women. I believe that she is mistaken. Many women looked forward to the Bill because they have been enormously misled by a large number of people as to what an Act of Parliament would do or what, if anything, needed to be done.
  There has been endless repetition of words such as "prejudice", "lack of opportunity", "inability to realise potentialities" and clichés of that sort
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  with which we have become so familiar in the discussion of this subject. There are no legal impediments to women doing what they want or becoming what they wish. All the talk about women's rights is wholly misleading, misconceived and beside the point.
  It is because many women have probably been led to believe that a Bill such as this would vindicate, protect or enlarge their rights that they welcome it, if indeed they do.
  As the right hon. Member for Down, South pointed out, for 56 years there have been no legal restrictions upon what women could de. There are no legal rights which can be given to them. It may well be asked why a Bill is needed. A parliamentary Bill can only make law. What can the law do when no legal impediment exists? That takes us straight to the answer.
  This Bill, like previous Bills on other subjects, has as its purpose the regulating of the minds and judgments of the citizens of a free society and telling them that they may not exercise their judgments freely. They may exercise their judgments, but with a Bill such as this they are enjoined to ignore considerations and facts which they believe that they see, because it will be unlawful for them to take those into account.
  The situation is the same as that under the Race Relations Act 1968. When that measure was debated I said that when an immigrant entered this country he stepped at once into all the rights enjoyed by an established citizen of the United Kingdom. There was no question of civil rights. That Bill was the first in a sequence of legislation designed to clamp people's minds and tell them "You may not discriminate". Without discrimination there is no life. From the most minute form of animated existence, discrimination is the principle of life. However, people were told "Discrimination is the weapon of progress. Discrimination is always right."People were told" You must not discriminate. You must not use your judgment in a way which offends the political principles which we, having a majority in Parliament, hold dear."
  When the Race Relations Act was debated I said that what was called the educative use of the law was a dangerous road on which to start. I said "That is

  589
  not the last of such Bills. The next Bill will concern sex." I was right. I said that the next Bill would concern age. Already one Government supporter has proposed a Bill to outlaw discrimination on grounds of age. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) has said there should be such a Bill, and that we must not discriminate on grounds of age.
  Lord Hailsham, when, as Mr. Quintin Hogg, a Conservative Member of this House, put down amendments to the Race Relations Act which would have applied to the whole of its oppresive apparatus not only to sex but to language, nationality, social position and birth. You name it; it was in his amendment. If we proceed like this, what sort of country will this be to live in? The whole of the arguments we have heard today have been political arrogance and nothing else. The hon. Member for Wood Green is not an arrogant person, but she said that we ought to force the various religions to conform in dogmatism. Of course, religion can only exist if it is dogmatic. One cannot have an undogmatic religion. But it has been implied that their dogmatism, their various concepts of revealed divine truths, must be swept aside by political action in a Billߞif you pleaseߞbecause they are inconsistent with the views of the British Labour Party. Could one have a more preposterous and arrogant contention? What business is it of this House how the priesthood of various religious denominations is selected or what their beliefs are? Who are we to describe them as outdated? Besides, if the truth is alleged to be divine and absolute, I cannot see how it can be outdated.
  This is legislation by pressure group. Unfortunately, we have reached the position in parliamentary government where any set of dedicated cranks can in the end, if they are sufficiently persistent, get on the statute book legislation embodying their prejudices, and they do it by describing all disagreeing concepts as prejudices.
  Equality is a question of fact. It cannot be created by legislation. Indeed, can one apply the word "equality" in its generality to human beings at all? One may say that one person is equal to another in the game of tennis or in a
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  particular respect, such as calculation or something like that. But how can one say that one person is equal to another in an absolute and unqualified sense? Equality in that way is a mathematical concept. It does not exist at all, and it certainly cannot be achieved, as between men and women, by a process of legislation.
  Miss Richardson: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
  Mrs. Knight: Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?
  Mr. Bell: I would rather give way to my hon. Friend.
  Mrs. Knight: What about the laws which permitted women to have the vote? Surely they were passed by the House and made us equal in that regard.
  Mr. Bell: My hon. Friend has wholly failed to perceive the main line of my argument. I started by saying that all questions of civil rights were swept away 56 years ago. Where there is a legal barrier that can be removed by law. Indeed, it cannot be removed in any other way. But when all the legal barriers have gone and one uses the law, that is when one embarks upon an illicit course of action, because one is trying to use the law to control men's minds and to tell them that they must disregard in the working of their discrimination factors which they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be significant. One is substituting one judgment for the multifarious judgments of all the individuals who make up one's contemporaries in the world in which one lives at the time. That is the road to prescribing one judgment for all and to saying that all others shall be unlawful. That is what a Bill of this kind tries to do.
  There was an old saying that Parliament could do everything except make a man a woman or a woman a man. Goodness me, that is exactly what we are trying to do in the Bill. It is an attempt to make the facts fit abstract and shallow political theorising rather than using facts as the basis of theory. If there is one rule of life which is absolute and the only good one, it is that one follows the truth wherever it leads. We do not start by working out our theories in the abstract and then twisting the facts to fit them.

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  The differences between men and women are real. They are not the ossification of an antique attitude which the Home Secretary condemned as anachronistic. They are the realities which have emerged in the thousands of years of the evolution of life. There was never one moment when someone imposed this. It is the way we have evolved and developed from the beginning.
  Differentiation by sex, not merely in the reproductive function itself but in general physical and mental characteristics, is observed not only in man, throughout his history, but throughout animal life. Far from being a primitive phenomenon which is now anachronistic, it is, if anything, more marked in the higher manifestations of each category of life than in the lower. The overlap is vast. The polarisation of function, interest and attitude has been strongly marked at all stages of our development. The advance of human society has certainly not diminished itߞit has probably increased it.
  That being soߞand who can deny that it is so?ߞa heavy burden of argument and justification lies upon those who seek to suppress, by coercive measures, a natural and spontaneously evolved element of human life. I would not feel that that burden would be discharged by reference to a House of Lords Select Committee. To be satisfied that discrimination should be banned, we should need to be convinced by an argument of the rigour and sustained relevance of a proof in natural science.
  I have listened to virtually all hon. Members who have spoken and I have not heard a word of justification for the Bill. It has been taken for granted. Some hon. Members have said that equality is right and must be legislated for, and that we have only to mention discrimination to know that it is wrong. It can be seen in every aspect of the animal kingdom. It has not diminished but rather developed as man has grown more complicated. It has been presumed that it is right for women to specialise in certain aspects of life and men to specialise in others. A girl likes dolls because one day she will be a motherߞa doll is a "pretend" baby and the doll's house is a "pretend" home. Boys like trains because through the centuries they have
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  been the engineers. No one starts off as a stereotype. These characteristics develop naturally in the un-self-conscious periods of the human race.
  Why should it be assumed that this is a wicked conspiracy? Yet this has been assumed totally. Not one word of justification or argument has been advanced by any hon. Member as to why it should be totally repressed by law.
  Finally, I deal with the absolute prohibition in the Bill of taking into account the differences between the sexes. The Home Secretary boasts that it is the most comprehensive Bill in the world. I bet it isߞfor the very good reason that nowhere else in the world would any legislature be so foolish as to attempt to pass a measure of this all-embracing character. It is so all-embracing that, as the Home Secretary said, we can only make it look plausible by having specific exceptions. If we forbade all recognition of the difference between the sexes in every aspect of the services, utilities and goods of life, we could not live with the resulting situation.
  Take lavatories. We have managed to have lavatories for men and women for hundreds of years without thinking about it. We shall not be able to under Clause 1. So we need the "lavatory clause". There it is, in Clause 32. The phrasing is a joy. The House should have a look at it. It speaks of
  "Facilities or services… provided for, or … likely to be used by, two or more persons at the same time"—
  we all know that—
  "and

  (i) the facilities or services are such, or those persons are such, that male users are likely to suffer serious embarrassment at the presence of a woman, or

  (ii) the facilities or services are such that a user is likely to be in a state of undress and a male user might reasonably object to the presence of a female user."

  There we are. We need a special law now to have lavatories. Here we are, in our stupid, reactionary, dull prejudiced way, playing football with a male team against a male team. We have done it for years. That does not survive Clause 1 for a moment. So there has to be a "football clause". It is Clause 39 which says;
  "Nothing in Part II to IV shall, in relation to any sport, game or other activity of a

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  competitive nature where the physical strength, stamina or physique of the average woman puts her at a disadvantage to the average man, render unlawful any act related to the participation of a person as a competitor in events involving that activity which are confined to competitors of one sex."
  In other words, Leeds United can carry on.
  There are other gems. I have them marked here. There is the reference to any activity where failure to discriminate between these two sporting sexes might result in persons of an opposite sex touching each other. If that happened, and it might happen, we can discriminate because I suppose it would be risky for a man to be touched by a woman or a woman to be touched by a man—or at any rate the people who drafted this legislation and prepared everything thought that they ought to leave that little loophole.
  The hon. Member for Wood Green said that she did not like all these exceptions. She was inclined to think that there should not be any. I do not know what Leeds United thinks about that. I would point out that if the Gents is abolished, so is the Ladies' Cloakroom, and the ladies might not like that.
  Other hon. Members have referred to this ban on advertising for postmen and so on. The point in the end is a broad one. We are making fools of ourselves with this sort of legislation. It is silly, it is ridiculous, it is petty and in the end it gets us nowhere. If the truth is that men and women are totally interchangeable, which God forbid, then this will work itself out in the free ebb and flow of society. We do not need Parliament. But if it happens to be the case that Nature, evolutionߞcall it what you willߞthrough all the aeons of time has not been wholly wrong but that some polarisation of function, interest and aptitude is natural, is goon, that these differences between men and women are not just the differences of the two individuals who mate together to produce a new individual but are the very interest and spice of life so that the differences give a stereoscopic view of life without which it would be flat and dull, this Bill is not merely foolish and ridiculous but positively wicked and evil.
  Do not let us forget that we are embarking upon a path which does not stop
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  here. We have got it for race, we have got it for sex, and there are people crying for the next one already. In the end we shall be so hemmed in with proscriptions that people who want to breathe fresh air and live their lives as they wish and differ from other people, not on petty things but on fundamental things, will leave a country which has become so potbound by proscriptions and seek fresh air and liberty somewhere where politicians are less arrogant, less pervasive and less active.
  8.51 p.m.
  Mr. William Hamilton: Nothing that I can say can drive the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) from his neolithic cave. I never thought that he had a sense of humour until I listened to parts of that particular speech, but I recall him not so long ago, in my presence, describing women very seriously as second-class citizens. If that is his view, of course he will vote against the Bill tonight and thus put it on record that he is not against the practice that half the population wants to change by law. This place exists to remedy injustices and half the population of Britain, for one reason or another and largely on grounds of their gender, think they are unfairly treated right across the spectrum.
  Mr. Ronald Bell: This is the second occasion on which the hon. Gentleman has said this. On the last occasion he virtually refused to give way and I had no opportunity of dealing with it. He knows quite well that that phrase "second-class citizen" was his own, which he had been using in a broadcast with me over and over again. 1 he conversation he is referring to took place over drinks in the Green Room afterwards and was facetious on my side, throwing his own phrase back at him. He himself described his use of it by saying "I was cheating".
  Mr. Hamilton: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that that is a lie. I can produce the witness at the television studio—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not use that expression. It is unparliamentary.
  Mr. Hamilton: I withdraw the word. I say to the hon. and learned Gentleman

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  that he strayed from the truth, because I can produce the witness in that very Green Room he is talking about who will verify the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman said that women were second-class citizens. That is a phrase which I did not use.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman is going to exercise his vote tonight against the Bill because he does not believe that women are discriminated against solely on grounds of sex, despite the evidence, not only in this country but throughout the world, that women all over the civilised world in particular are determined that they shall have their rights.
  When the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) was speaking, she modestly referred to her own part in the campaign and said that the Queen had started all this off in 1967 in her Christmas broadcast. But it dates much further back than that. I wish that the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield and, indeed, every hon. Member would read the long essay written by John Stuart Mill more than 100 years ago, in which he said:
  "The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. But how entirely, even in this case, the feeling is dependent on custom, appears by ample experience. Nothing so much astonishes the people of distant parts of the world, when they first learn anything about England, as to be told that it is under a Queen: the thing seems to them so unnatural as to be almost incredible. To Englishmen this does not seem in the least degree unnatural, because they are used to it; but they do feel it unnatural that women should be soldiers or members of Parliament."
  That was 100 years ago.
  Miss Richardson: It has not changed. Mr. Hamilton: The essay continues:
  "In the feudal ages, on the contrary, war and politics were not thought unnatural to women, because not unusual; it seemed natural that women of the privileged classes should be of manly character, inferior in nothing but bodily strength to their husbands and fathers."
  This essay was written more than 100 years ago.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) referred to practices which I think are still in vogue
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  in the Tory Party. When a married male candidate goes before a selection committee, his wife must go on parade just as if it were a cattle market. The wife must make a speech and be paraded as if it were a cattle market.
  Mr. Stanbrook: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Hamilton: No. The hon. Gentleman must bide his time. This practice may have been modified in the last year or two, but there are men sitting on the Tory benches not because they have anything up here but because their wives have something down there. That is the crux of the matter. If the hon. Gentleman argues in favour of such a practice, it is up to him to show it by his vote tonight.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Drake complained about exclusion from the Churches, the operation of the tax law and the treatment of women under the social services. I agree with her comments in all those respects. I go further. I hope that the Department of Education and Science will refuse sanction for local authorities to build any more single-sex schools, because that is where discrimination starts. Men and women must learn to live together right from the day they are born. The only way to do that is for us to be done with the single-sex school, because that is where discrimination starts at a very impressionable age.
  Many of the points which have been made in the debate are Committee points. There will be a long and interesting Committee stage. I fear some of the legal jargon. I fear that ordinary working men and women on the shop floor will be frightened of the enforcement procedures and will be frightened to take action because of the Bill's complexity. I hope that the Government will look again at this aspect.
  I quote from an editorial on the Bill, not in a Labour newspaper but in the Glasgow Herald of 13th March:
  "Last month the Tory Party made their concession to International Women's Year by electing Mrs. Thatcher as their Leader."
  But that same right hon. Lady gave evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons to the effect that there was no evidence of discrimination,

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  certainly not in education, a sphere for which she was then responsible. It would be interesting to know her views on the Bill.
  The leader in the Glasgow Herald continues, and I agree with this too:
  "Passing a law will in itself not eliminate discrimination but it will provide a recognised basis from which progress towards a fair and equitable society for both sexes can be made.
  In recent years there has been a gradual change of attitude towards the rôle of women and there is now a greater awareness of the sheer costs of outdated prejudice."
  That is also a very important aspect on which the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Drake touched. It is in the national interest that we should use the intellectual and physical resources of women which have been under-utilised to date.
  The Government deserve great credit for producing, if not a wholly comprehensive Bill, at any rate a more comprehensive Bill than has been produced in any other country.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. David Lane: I join in the general welcome that this Bill has received, a Bill built on foundations laid by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle). I returned a few hours ago from a visit to the United States of America with the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration. We went there mainly to study the race relations situation but inevitably, although incidentally, spent a lot of time discussing sex discrimination also, a subject on which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had preceded us to America by a few weeks.
  I wish to make two comments in the light of my personal impression of the American situation. The first is the need for a strong Government lead in the drive to get rid of unfair discrimination whatever form it may take, including this one. The aim is to change individual and corporate attitudes, and this will be easier if the Government are seen to be acting boldly. The Conservative Government took a positive position on this, and the present Government are doing likewise. I hope that tonight the House will be seen,
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  on both sides, to be strongly in support of the general lines of this legislation.
  My second comment is on the relationship between this legislation and the legislation on race relations. In the White Paper, paragraph 24, the Government say their aim is to "harmonise" the powers and procedures in the two fields. Can the hon. Lady tell us when she winds up whether this rules out possible amalgamation of the two procedures? In the United States, as she no doubt knows, there is normally one single administration and procedure for the two fields. There are arguments on both sides, but I hope she can confirm that the Government's mind is entirely open on whether the two procedures might be not merely harmonised but amalgamated.
  I have only time to touch on one or two of the points that are significant in the Bill. Employment, I am sure, must be the first priority, and in the employment field let the searchlight be turned particularlyߞas one or two hon. Members on the other side have askedߞon the trade unions. So far as education is concerned, I am glad that there is still to be provision for single-sex institutions because we need flexibility and not rigidity in this field, not only at the schools level but in the universities as well.
  On goods and services I welcome the provisions in the Bill that should make it possible to end the present unfair practices in regard to television hire and obtaining mortgages. Enforcement has to be clear and effective, but I hope the Government will take great care not to create an elaborate bureaucracy. I am afraid there are signs of this in the Bill, and that is something which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) said in opening, will have to be looked at particularly in Committee. The law will certainly be a help but the real aim is the changing of attitudes with the limited helpߞand it is only limited help, as the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said in openingߞthat the law can give. It is a delicate field, one which I hope the Government will tread with great care. There is a lack of clarity in certain parts of the Bill, and its details will need as great scrutiny in Committee as any other Bills with which we are dealing during this Session. I hope the eventual Act will avoid

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  both ambiguity and absurdity. Subject to that, I believe the main thrust of the Bill is right. It deserves the support of the House
  I end by expressing the hope that justice for women will not be at the expense of chivalry, as my hon. Friend for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) feared it might; the two can and should go hand in hand.
  9.5 p.m.
  Mrs. Maureen Colquhoun: I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will forgive me if I do not say any of the nice things that I was going to say about the Bill, because I understand that I have only five minutes in which to make my speech. It is a splendid Bill, but I want to get on to the nitty-gritty of where it is important that the Standing Committee should scrutinise this measure.
  I begin by mentioning the language of the Bill. It is difficult to understand and it is discriminatory. This is ludicrous in a Bill which seeks to end discrimination. I suggest that it will be proper if, when the Bill comes out of Committee, the language has been changed. I should like to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to Clause 66 because this is an example of unbelievably contorted language. All through the clause, which appears under the heading
  "Help for persons suffering discrimination",
  "he" is used in describing the person. May I say quite loudly and clearly that "he" does not mean "she"? Why cannot "s/he" be used? Plurals can also be substituted.
  The House will remember that Mrs. Pankhurst's husband brought a case in Manchester in the 1860s, before the suffragettes really began their fight, claiming that as the law then stood "man" automatically included "women" so that women house owners had the right to vote. The court ruled against him and said that "man" did not mean "woman", and it was after that court ruling that the suffragette battle began. I suggest to the Secretary of State that "he" does not mean "she" and that the language must be changed.
  After all, language not only reflects but affects the way people think, and as it
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  stands at the moment it is ludicrous for this anti-discrimination Bill to appear on the statute book when it is itself using discriminatory language. If we cannot persuade the Government to change the language, I suggest that we shall have to begin a test case as soon as the Bill becomes law against them and the Parliamentary draftsmen who show such unbelievably chauvinistic thinking.
  In Clause 1 at line 20 the word "justifiable" could be open to much abuse, and I hope that more precise criteria and perhaps specific guidelines can be laid down.
  In Clause 3, marital status is mentioned but not parental or single status, or that a woman can be considered as the principal breadwinner with financial responsibility for dependants. This is a most important principle, and I wonder whether the Government will change the clause to make it have more relevance to life as it is lived by women in a real world.
  We want the Government totally to rethink Clause 7. This is not a balanced viewpoint. Incidentally, this is one of the arguments that have been used by Oxford and Cambridge to preclude women for decades.
  Turning to Clause 14, as a general principle I must point out that without "affirmative" action women will continue to be discriminated against until they acquire qualifications and experience.
  Clause 19 must end at "doctrines of the religion", and the rest of the sentence must be deleted because, left as it is, it means that women can be excluded from managerial positions in all kinds of jobs ߞcharitable organisations, adoption societies and so on.
  Will the Minister kindly explain Clause 29(3)? As it stands, it is unintelligible
  Does Clause 45, which set up the Equal Opportunities Commission, mean that we are to have a commission of men and one statutory woman? Surely, in this Bill above all others, it is vital that at least 50 per cent. of the commissioners should be women. This is yet another example of the extreme chauvinism of the parliamentary draftsmen.
  Clause 51 is also very important in that it provides sanctions. A fine not exceeding£400 is far too small. I hope that the Government will think about fixing

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  the deduction of a percentage of profits from private companies or the withdrawal of funding from public companies. That has happened in America and has been an important part of its legislation.
  Clause 67 must be vastly improved, and legal aid must be granted to complainants on the same terms as in any other civil or criminal action. The absence of this will mitigate especially against the rights of working women. I think that I had better sit down as I have had my five minutes.
  9.11 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Alison: I must start by saying what a profound relief it was to me that the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mrs. Colquhoun) managed to participate in this debate. I observed her sitting in Trappist silence throughout the whole of the Oil Taxation Bill in Committee and I noticed that she had a lot of points to make. If the hon. Lady had been confined to silence throughout this debate of all debates, I think that I should have burst on her behalf. I hope that the hon. Lady noted the trans-sexual chivalry between the Front Benches that allowed her to make her valuable contribution tonight.
  Mrs. Colquhoun: I hope the hon. Gentleman will recall that I sustained his patronage during the course of the Oil Taxation Bill. I had cause to remind him that it was International Women's Year and that we were equal. Let the hon. Gentleman cut the patronage.
  Mr. Alison: I am sorry, I was trying to be chivalrous. I was not trying to be patronising. I always enjoy the hon. Lady's contributions. She makes good speeches and she made a good one tonight
  This is an important Bill and it is important to try to put it in its proper perspective. In my view the Secretary of State for the Home Department was right to place the Bill at the outset in the context of the long-term secular changes that have taken place in our attitudes towards women and women's work and which have evolved over the past 50 years or more. I want to stess that aspect because the essential need in any legislation, and particularly in this Bill, is to fensure that we have our feet firmly on
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  The ground of reality and that we deal with the real world.
  The realities with which I am concerened and which we must keep firmly in view are prettty obvious but I think that they bear repetition. There has been the large post-war upsurge in the number of women at work. There has been a 50 per cent. increase from approximately 5½ million in the 1930s to over 8 million today. There has been the dramatic increase in the number of married women at work. But above all other factors I want to point to what I would describe as the causal realities for the change in the amount of women's work in the post-war era, namely, policies of economic expansion and full employment coupled with increased opportunities for women to work in the kind of work which is fashionable and in demand, such as the service industries and light industry.
  The Bill arrives at a moment when a number of background features, particularly the economic environment, are beginning to change. Some of them may change radically and permanently. For example, unemployment is rising sharply and we do not know when there will be a significant downturn, Equal pay will be operating from the same time as the Bill is enacted, and again we do not really know what the effect of that will be upon differentials between men and women for equal or unequal work.
  The Bill's provision for maintaining protective legislation in the context of equal pay could make the employment of women a net liability, a net cost in economic terms, and not the asset that it should be and that it has been in the past.
  Mr. John Fraser: No.
  Mr. Alison: I suspect that the maintenance of the 1961 legislation in this Bill could genuinely make keping women at work more costly, and it was discrimination on those grounds that the White Paper said the Bill would try to prevent.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman:Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the Provisions in the Government's Pensions Bill could militate against women being in contributory schemes unless some alteration is made to it?
  Mr. Alison: I note my hon. Friend's point, but I do not want to get drawn into

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  the question of pensions. The Home Secretary rightly kept off of that subject because it is a matter for separate legislation.
  Against this background of a possibly less favourable economic environment for women's employment, we must consider how the Bill will affect the fortunes of women. There could be real forces in the current declining levels of employment working in the opposite direction, reducing the opportunities for women to work. The Home Secretary said that the Bill was ambitious but tempered by what is practical in terms of common sense. Will the ambition of the Bill be powerful enough to offset the present trend in the economic environment, which may be going in exactly the reverse direction to the general post-war trend, which has accounted for the upsurge in women's work?
  In order to see how effective the Bill will be we have to look carefully at the terms of the crucial operative clauses. I want to scrutinise carefully Clauses 1, 2, 3 and 4 where the main concept of nondiscrimination on grounds of sex is laid out, defined and put into some sort of statutory or legal form. I want particularly to consider what is meant by the terminology of Clause 1(1)(a), which deals with discrimination against a woman and where the important words are
  "on the ground of her sex".
  Discrimination on grounds other than the ground of sex, including—a remarkable fact, which is actually included in the White Paper—unfavourable discrimination, is admissible. Only discrimination on the ground of sex is inadmissible.
  Discrimination of some sort, of course, is not only unavoidable; it is inherent in any process of selection, and the employment provisions of the Bill naturally deal with the whole question of selection. The first thing we have to get quite clear from the Bill and the White Paper is that discrimination is to be considered normal and admissible in a whole range of acts of selection provided it is not on the grounds of sex. It is therefore crucial that we should try to understand exactly what is this "fine sieve"—I borrow the Home Secretary's metaphor—which is suggested by the words:
  "on the ground of her sex"
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  The easiest and perhaps the most profitable examination would be to try to discover what it is not. One has to go into the world of negation and find out what
  "on the ground of her sex"
  does not mean. The first thing it does not mean is that it is a matter of qualifications. That is to say, it is not a matter of academic, professional or any other qualification.
  Paragraph 33 of the White Paper makes the matter clear when it says that the discrimination provision of Clause 1 and following
  "will not apply to differences of treatment made for any other reason, e.g., because a potential employee is not suitably qualified".
  Qualifications, or the lack of them, will continue to constitute a basis for legitimate discrimination.
  I hope the House appreciates that this is inherent in the way the clause has been drafted. This will be cold comfort to the whole range of women about whom details are given in paragraph 14 of the White Paper, which says:
  "in the 25–34 age group, some of whom towards the end of the century will be assuming many of the most responsible positions in our society, only two and half per cent. of women as against seven and a half per cent. of men have university degrees or equivalent qualifications and 59 per cent. of women compared with 48 per cent. of men have no formal qualifications of any kind."
  It is as well for the House to bear in mind that the phrase
  "on the ground of sex"
  does not include the possession or the absence of qualifications. Therefore, academic, professional, technical or any other qualifications will provide legitimate grounds for discrimination.
  The hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) and the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) said that my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) drew his White Paper wide enough to take a coach and horses through—a graphic phrase. It may be surprising to hon. Members that possession or lack of any sort of qualification constitutes a legitimate ground under the Bill for exercising discrimination.
  I next refer hon. Members to paragraph 20 of the White Paper, which speaks of

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  "the adverse treatment of someone on grounds irrelevant to that person's intrinsic qualities".
  That means that it is relevant to discriminate on the grounds of intrinsic qualities but that it is irrelevant to discriminate on the ground of sex. I hope it is clear that a differentiation is made between discriminating on the grounds of sex, which is improper and is not allowed by the Bill, and discriminating on the basis of intrinsic qualities, which is allowed. I wonder what "intrinsic qualities" are and what that phrase embraces. It can be as wide as anyone may wish it to be.
  Next, the "ground of sex", which is the sole arbiter, the thin mesh of the sieve, does not include the concept—here I quote from the new subsection 3(b) of the Equal Pay Act, inserted by Clause 8(1), which, making the exception in the case of equal pay, speaks of:
  "qualifications, experience, length of service, or other personal attributes (other than sex)."
  It will be proper, permissible and acceptable under the Bill for discrimination to be made, not on the irrelevant ground of sex but on the basis of experience, length of service or other personal attributes. Could there be anything wider than the phrase "other personal attributes" as the basis upon which discrimination is legitimised in the Bill?
  Mr. John Garrett: The hon. Gentleman seems to be amazed that the Sex Discrimination Bill deals with discrimination on the grounds of sex. Has he been present during the debate? Is he spinning out time or simply indulging in random talking?
  Mr. Alison: Perhaps I shall be able to enlighten the hon. Gentleman when I come to the crux of the argument. He has not taken on board how important it is to be able to make certain that "ground of sex" has an identifiable and precise meaning. So far I have been able to show, I hope with relevance, that the "ground of sex" is not a question of qualifications, intrinsic qualities, experience, length of service or other personal attributes.
  We can go even further. We may deduce from Clause 39, the so-called Leeds United clause, that "ground of sex" does not include
  "physical strength, stamina or physique".
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  It is true, that, as an exception, these qualities are treated as inherent attributes of sex. Here I come to the hon. Gentleman's point, that there is an attempt to link to the inherent attributes of sex certain specific qualities. It is said here that in the case of "the average woman" —the key words are "the average" —features of physical strength, stamina or physique are held to be attributes of sex. But precisely because it is an exception, and because every case of real selection in employment about which the Bill is mainly concerned will never be dealing with the average woman but by definition with the individual woman—and the White Paper says that there are more differences between members of the same sex than there are between the sexes—the give-away Leeds United clause means that the attributes of physical strength, stamina or physique will again be legitimate grounds for discrimination.
  I ask the Minister to refer to the important paragraph 48 of the White Paper, which says:
  "The Bill will not, however, allow exceptions in the following circumstances:—

  (a) where the employment of members of both sexes would be more costly than the employment of members of one sex only".

  Where in the Bill is the principle of paragraph 48(a) implemented?
  With regard to the key phrase of discrimination on the ground of sex, what are we left with as the real definition? How can it be used when every sort of qualification is excluded, when intrinsic qualities are not part of it, when experience is not counted, when length of service is irrelevant and when most personal attributes—physical strength, stamina and physique—have all been stripped away?
  I believe that the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) will understand the significance of this. Let us suppose that in the current environment of economic downturn there are some parts of the Bill which employers find oppressive, unsatisfactory or pointless. In my constituency there are plenty of small firms employing 10 or 20 people, often working in single covered premises or a small shed, doing printing, light woodwork and so on. The necessity of taking on one woman will produce social and personal problems in the context of an all-male labour force. Employers will

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  want to see whether it is possible to find a means of getting round the Bill.
  The Home Secretary made clear that motive is not the crucial point. What has to be judged by the courts is the effect of a particular act of selection. Any employer—and I fear there may be plenty—who wants to make a discrimination on the ground of sex has in the Bill a list as long as my arm of external grounds which cover practically any conceivable circumstance upon which he can legitimately advance good cause for making an act of discrimination. My list has specified them; none are "grounds of sex". In most of the circumstances in which the Equal Opportunities Commission will have to act in examining a particular employment situation, it will be pursuing a phantom. Its teeth will be totally irrelevant.
  There will be many opportunities for employers to say that they are discriminating because the person who presents himself has more experience or is stronger, or because of his intrinsic qualities of X, Y, Z or his physical strength, stamina or anything else which I quoted in my list is self-evidently better. All those provide admissible grounds which an employer can take as a basis for the selection. They are perfectly acceptable, they are allowed in the Bill, and the Equal Opportunities Commission armed with teeth will nevertheless be impotent when faced with something so nebulous and indefensible as the "ground of sex".
  That makes me wonder whether those outside the House who believe that the Bill will raise substantial expectations and yet do little to meet them do not have a good deal of sense and intuitive insight in their feeling. It is a serious point of criticism that the House should allow a Bill of this sort to emerge from Second Reading with so much fanfare, and launch before the public the concept of a fundamental sea change in the conditions and the lot of women at work, and the sort of work they can get, without warnings about loopholes.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) mentioned many serious defects of the Bill, and we shall do our best to improve it in Committee. The Home Secretary must be careful in the publicity he gives to the Bill and in the speeches he
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  makes about it to continue to temper the ambition which he rightly sees as a feature of the Bill with the other qualifications he added to its needing to be reasonable, sensible and practicable.
  In fact—as I suspect lady Members on both sides of the House feel instinctively —the Bill is a paper tiger. It pretends ostensibly to launch a great crusade for the cause of women at work but it allows so many exceptions—I have quoted exceptions inherent in the concept of the ground of sex in Clause 1 and many other specific and formal exceptions are included—that it will have very little effect when it is applied through the Equal Opportunities Commission or through the operations of the industrial tribunals. It will be difficult to isolate sex discrimination from discrimination in the context of one of those many other let-outs which the Bill contains. I hope that I shall be proved wrong, but we shall have to look carefully at the Bill in Committee and get a clear explanation from Ministers of what they feel the key phrases mean.
  As it stands, I suspect that the Bill will do very little good, certainly not enough to offset what I fear is the secular trend at present towards higher and persistently higher unemployment, a reduction in the real demand for women at work and a tendency for men in jobs to want to hang on to their posts and not allow anyone new to come in. These long-term subterranean forces will be too strong as the Bill stands to enable the sex clause to bite and move things in the opposite direction.
  We shall see. I hope that the Minister will be able to put our minds at rest. I hope that she will be able to deal with the important point as to whether or not the Bill contains provision to make employers take on women, even though it will cost them more than it would to take on men.
  9.35 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summer-skill): It is with very great pleasure that I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading. The Bill has today received a general welcome from the House and marks another milestone in the history of women's rights. Yet women's rights are but one aspect of human rights. Every

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  person, regardless of sex, colour, race or creed, has a right to achieve full potential as a human being. Therefore, I believe that the whole of our society—men and women, boys and girls—will benefit from the eventual effects of this legislation. It is clear that the country is ready for these new measures. They constitute an ideal which has found its time.
  Women throughout the world are that unique thing, an oppressed majority. Discrimination against them is not confined to developed or undeveloped countries, nor to countries of a particular political complexion. It knows no barriers of class or race. Therefore, in International Women's Year I am proud that Britain is introducing this major piece of legislation. A pledge to legislate was included in our election manifesto. Our proposals were set out in the White Paper "Equality for Women" and now, six months later, we have introduced our Bill which incorporates the principles set out in the White Paper, in the light of comments received from women's organisations, industrial and educational bodies, political parties and many others.
  This measure, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department said, is the most comprehensive and far-reaching legislation of its kind in the world. I wish to pay special tribute to my right hon. Friend for the admirable part he has played in ensuring the successful introduction of the Bill.
  In the 57 years since women obtained the right to vote, most of the legislation affecting them, welcome as it has been, has tackled particular aspects of women's equality. It was plain that we could no longer rely on the gradual process of voluntary initiative and piecemeal amendments to allow them to achieve real equality. The Government recognise their responsibility to change attitudes which are deeply entrenched in our social and economic life. A recent answer to a parliamentary Question revealed the fact that, whereas the average man can expect to live for 77 years, the average woman can expect to live for 80 years. That would appear to discriminate against men, but we were powerless to cover that in the Bill.
  The fact is that a longer expectation of life, younger marriages and smaller
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  families have resulted in major changes in the lives of most women in the last 50 years. However, discrimination persists. The average wage paid to women is just about half that which is paid to men, and 8 per cent. of women receive higher education compared with 22 per cent. of men. Women's work is low grade, low paid and uninspiring A total of 9·2 per cent. of girls obtain day release for further education compared with 36 per cent. of boys; 7 per cent. of girls are accepted for apprenticeship training compared with a figure of 42 per cent. for boys; less than 25 per cent. of girl school leavers take any kind of job training. The TUC has 1,400 paid officials, only 25 of whom are men [HON. MEMBERS: "Men?"] I am sorry. That was a Freudian slip. I should have said that only 25 of them are women. This is due partly to prejudice, which is hard to define and to prove, partly to discrimination, which is easier to define and to prove, and partly to the conditioning of boys and girls at home, at school and in the community about their respective rôles.
  Today nearly half of all British married women are in paid employment. They not only make a major contribution to our national economy but add significantly to the prosperity of their own families. It is not good enough that they do low-grade jobs, are less likely to be promoted than men and are rarely to be found in charge in business or in industry.
  The Government can set and enforce standards of conduct. Legislation cannot in itself change attitudes and eliminate centuries of deep-rooted prejudice, but it can make it harder for prejudice to survive and flourish and it can create a climate of opinion for progress and change.
  We hope that the spirit of this legislation will find expression among those concerned with education, among employers and trade unions, among those working in the media and in society as a whole. In that way, outmoded attitudes held by boys and girls and by men and women about women's work and women's place or men's work and man's place will become extinct and women will be encouraged to make the fullest use of the opportunities which the Bill will open up for them.

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  We have had a good and worth while debate. I know that there has been a remarkable change in the climate of opinion in this House over the last five years, having attended all the debates on this subject in that time. I welcome the all-party support for the Bill. It is the culmination of a number of efforts in recent years to introduce legislation. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) and Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), who have played such a valiant part in preparing the ground for this measure to be introduced.
  From what we have heard today, I think that we can look forward to an extremely interesting, constructive and detailed Committee stage, if it has not already begun. We have heard many suggested amandments. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. MacFarquhar) and the hon. Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison) that we will take a close look at Clause 1(1)(a) before the Bill goes into Committee, and even during Committee, to see whether it can be redrafted to be made clearer.
  The general debate has covered all aspects of discrimination and been extremely wide ranging. However, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary pointed out, it was not possible for the Bill to cover matters like taxation and pensions, which involve millions of pounds. I know that the House is aware of the Social Security Pensions Bill which will make substantial progress towards achieving equality.
  Mr. Freud: Is the Under-Secretary of State aware that equality may be achieved by taking away from one group of people, not simply by giving to another?
  Dr. Summerskill: Yes. That will provide the same pensions for men and women with the same earnings and protect women's pension rights during periods of home responsibility. For married women it will abolish the special contribution "half test", the lower rates of short-term benefits, and the option not to pay contributions through employment.
  The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) referred to "unintentional discrimination". There is scope for further discussion later, but
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  the Bill proscribes not only overt discrimination but practices which are fair in form but discriminatory in operation. An employer should be required to cease carrying on a practice which is unjustifiable and which has a discriminatory effect, but he should not be penalised for it if its effect is unintended.
  Mr. Alison: Will the Under-Secretary of State comment on the words "discriminatory effect"? What is, or is not, eligible as an act of discrimination? Does this refer to sex discrimination or to discrimination over the range of other possible differences which I have suggested?
  Dr. Summerskill: The definition and meaning of "discrimination is covered in the first part of the Bill. It will clearly be the subject of much discussion.
  An important question was raised regarding the statutory restrictions on the employment of women. The majority of these are found in the Factories Act 1961 and in its associated legislation. When the Conservative Government proposed to repeal the restrictions in respect of women aged 18 and over relating to hours of work, including overtime and night work, there was considerable criticism of the proposal on the ground that the repeal might place undue pressure on working women. We propose that those restrictions should be retained for at least the present. However, Clause 47 of the Bill seeks to impose a specific duty on the Equal Opportunities Commission to keep under review protective legislation which treats men and women differently and to draw up and submit to the Secretary of State, if it thinks necessary, proposals for amending them. The EOC would do that in consultation with the Health and Safety Commission, which has general responsibility for health and safety at work. If the Government decided that there was no longer a case, on grounds of safety and health at work, for the retention of a particular provision, there would be power to repeal it by regulations.
  The Government are very much aware that the subject is controversial. It is true that the restrictions do not apply to persons not covered by the Factories Act, such as nurses in hospitals, and it is argued that the restrictions can operate so as to deny opportunities to women to

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  work at night. On the other hand, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) supported the idea of preserving this part of the Bill.
  This Bill will operate in conjunction with the Equal Pay Act 1970. This is important. The freedom and opportunity which I hope this Bill will bring is useless without economic independence and security. Clause 8 of the Equal Pay Act will be amended to clarify it and to bring it into line with this Bill. The Bill will cover the non-contractual aspects of employment, whereas the Equal Pay Act deals with the contractual aspects. It is hoped that this Bill will make it harder for employers who are evading their responsibilities under the Equal Pay Act to continue to do so.
  The subject of midwives was raised frequently in the discussion. Under the Bill men can he midwives, although employers of midwives will in certain respects be exempted from the Bill's requirement not to discriminate. I am aware that the proposal in the White Paper to remove the statutory bar on the employment of men has been controversial. However, we believe that it would be counter to the spirit of the Bill, which is concerned with breaking down barriers against men as well as against women, to fail to deal with this important one, which can prevent men from entering the nursing profession.
  There are potential problems. We recognise that a patient should have a right—this has been stated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services—to choose a female midwife if that is her wish. That right will be retained. It is also accepted that in many situations chaperonage of male midwives will be necessary. [Interruption.] I do not know why that should cause amusement in the Chamber, because it is a well-known feature of hospital life for medical students and even for some doctors that there should be chaperones in certain circumstances.
  Mr. William Hamilton: Will the chaperone be a man or a woman?
  Dr. Summerskill: We are confident that it will he possible for male midwives to be employed in certain centres as a preliminary to men in that profession being fully accepted in the future.
  614
  I turn now to the education provisions of the Bill, which are completely new. These are matters which were not touched upon by the Conservative Party when they were in Government.
  Mr. Alison: I am so sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but as she is leaving matters concerning employment will she deal with the critical part of the White Paper in which it is said explicitly that an exception will not be allowed where the employment of women would cost more? Where is that in the Bill?
  Dr. Summerskill: The exception is not allowed; therefore it does not appear in the Bill. The Bill is silent on this point because there is no exception.
  I now turn to education. I should like to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) and others who have raised the important question of curricula in schools. I am pleased to say that, although the Secretary of State for Education and Science does not control the curricula or what is taught in schools, Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools have completed an inquiry into the extent to which curricular differences and customs contribute to unequal opportunities for boys and girls. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science is arranging for the early publication of the results of that inquiry, and I am sure that it will make a valuable contribution to the examination of the question raised in this debate.
  However, I think that all hon. Members would agree that it would be wrong for any Minister to interfere with publications or in any way to try to stop certain books being circulated. But local education authorities and teachers will now, I hope, as a result of the Bill, take a hard look at the organisation of their curricula and be more critical, perhaps, then they have been up to the present.
  Mrs. Renée Short: I did not put forward such a harsh or hard suggestion as my hon. Friend imagines. I suggested that my right hon. Friend might like to have a chat with the publishers of books to suggest that it may be possible to change the kind of pictures and things that they produce.
  Dr. Summerskill: I stand corrected.

  615
  I now turn to the subject of political parties—which are of interest to every hon. Member. Political parties will be covered by that part of the Bill which deals with the provision of services and facilities to the public, although the Bill does not refer specifically to them. I should like to explain that the Bill is silent on political parties, and they are therefore covered by it, but I am undertaking discussions with each of the three main political parties to see what views there are on this matter. I shall ascertain before the Committee stage exactly what feelings there are on this most important question.
  The subject of advertisements, dealt with by Clause 33, was raised by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham. He is under a slight misapprehension. All that the Bill says is that any description of a person can be used, subject to the condition that the job must be open to both men and women and that this must be made clear in the advertisement. The House has made this slightly more complicated than it really is.
  Mr. Ian Gilmour: If that is all that is needed, why does the clause state that a reference to waiters and salesmen should be taken to indicate an intention to discriminate? Surely it is the other way round.
  Dr. Summerskill: The right hon. Gentleman will see that the Bill states that as long as it is clear that the people who are wanted can be either men or women, the actual nomenclature is not unlawful.
  The provision of legal aid has been mentioned. I cannot deal with every point, but I assure the House that the Lord Chancellor's Legal Aid Advisory Committee has recommended that legal aid should be extended to all statutory tribunals at present within the supervision of the Council on Tribunals.
  The Bill does not attempt to tackle the problem of women's rôle in society and subjects like facilities for child care, family law and the special problems facing the one-parent family. However, once the
  Bill is on the statute book matters like these will be affected by the influence and the propaganda that this legislation will generate.
  The Bill is important for all women and girls, not only for the small minority who aspire to be judges, company directors, editors of national newspapers or trade union leaders. It is important for the great majority of women and girls who meet prejudice and discrimination in their ordinary lives, whether at school, at work or simply living in the community. It is important for the 40 per cent. of working women who are single, separated, divorced or widowed, and for all those women struggling to bring up children on their own.
  It is not a Bill about what women should or should not do. It is about those things they should have the opportunity to do. It will remove barriers which currently prevent them from realising their full potential as individuals in whichever area of life they choose to pursue that goal. They will still be able to decide how they want to arrange their lives. If they wish to spend them making a home and bringing up a family, that is their right. However, they must be free to decide, knowing that the choice is not forced upon them either by lack of opportunity or by the prejudice of society. They must be free to acquire qualifications, skills and experience on a basis of parity with men throughout the whole range of human endeavour. It is important that women should not undervalue themselves or be undervalued.
  Mrs. Renée Short: Really!
  Dr. Summerskill: As a nation we cannot afford to waste the skills and intelligence of over half the poulation. I am sure that all hon. Members endorse the ideals of justice and equality. This Bill aims to achieve reality for these ideals for all members of our society.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 104, Noes 5.

  Division No.. 163]

  AYES

  [10.00 p.m.

  Alison, Michael

  Blaker, Peter

  Chalker, Mrs Lynda

  Allaun, Frank

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)

  Ashley, Jack

  Booth, Albert

  Coleman, Donald

  Bagler, Gordon A. T.

  Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)

  Colquhoun, Mrs Maureen

  Bates, Alt

  Carmichael, Neil

  Concannon, J. D.

  Berry, Hon Anthony

  Cartwright, John

  Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

  Cryer, Bob

  Kirk, Peter

  Rooker, J. W.

  Dalyell, Tarn

  Lane, David

  Sainsbury, Tim

  Davidson, Arthur

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Short, Rt Hon E. (Newcastle C)

  Dormand, J. D.

  Le Merchant, Spencer

  Short, Mrs Ranée (Wolv NE)

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)

  Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Luard, Evan

  Silverman, Julius

  Ellis, John (Brigg & Scun)

  MacFarquhar, Roderick

  Skinner, Dennis

  English, Michael

  Madden, Max

  Small, William

  Faulds, Andrew

  Mates, Michael

  Snape, Peter

  Fitt, Gerard (Belfast W)

  Mellish, Rt Hon Robert

  Spearing, Nigel

  Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

  Mikardo, Ian

  Stallard, A. W.

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Millan, Bruce

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Fraser, John (Lambeth, N'wd)

  Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)

  Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

  Freud, Clement

  Miller, Mrs Millie (Illord N)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

  Garrett, John (Norwich S)

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Thompson, George

  George, Bruce

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon)

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)

  Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

  Tinn, James

  Golding, John

  Neave, Alrey

  Urwin, T. W.

  Hamilton, W. W. (Central File)

  Newton, Tony

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  O'Halloran, Michael

  Walker, Terry (Kingswood)

  Hunter, Adam

  O'Malley, Rt Hon Brian

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)

  Palmer, Arthur

  Wellbeloved, James

  Jeger, Mrs Lena

  Peart, Rt Hon Fred

  Welsh, Andrew

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Stechford)

  Pendry, Tom

  Whitlock, William

  John, Brynmor

  Penhaligon, David

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Perry, Ernest

  Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

  Prescott, John

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Richardson, Miss Jo

  Miss Betty Boothroyd and

  Kilfedder, James

  Rodgers, George (Chorley)

  Mr. David Stoddart.

  NOES

  Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)

  Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  McCusker, H.

  Ross, William (Londonderry)

  Mr. Ronald Bell and

  Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral

  Mr. Ivor Standbrook.

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).
  SEX DISCRIMINATION [MONEY]
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to render unlawful certain kinds of sex discrimination and discrimination on the ground of marriage, and establish a Commission with the function of working towards the
  618
  elimination of such discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity between men and women generally, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

  (a) any sums required by the Secretary of State for paying, or making payments towards the provision of, remuneration, pensions, allowances or gratuities to or in respect of members of the Commission set up by that Act, or for paying expenses of that Commission, or for defraying any other expenditure falling to be made by him under or by virtue of that Act;

  (b) the remuneration of assessors appointed for the purpose of proceedings under that Act in a county court or sheriff court;

  (c) any increase attributable to the provisions of that Act in the sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under any other Act.—[Mr. Roy Jenkins.]

  COMPTROLLER AND AUDITOR GENERAL (SALARY)
  Queen's recommendation having been signified—
  10.10 p.m.
  The Minister of State, Civil Service Department (Mr. Charles R. Morris): I beg to move,
  That the rate of the salary which may be granted to the Comptroller and Auditor General under section 1 of the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1957 be increased—

  (a) for the period before 1st November 1974 from £16,475·28 to £16,496·16 per annum.

  (b) for the period of November 1974 from £16,496·16 to £16,517·04 per annum,

  (c) for the period of December 1974 from £16,517·04 to £16,579·68 per annum, and

  (d) for later periods from £16,579·68 to £18,675, per annum,

  and the date from which, under subsection (3) of that section, the person now holding that office is entitled to a salary at the said increased rates be 1st September 1974.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Subject to the House agreeing, with this motion we can debate the motion relating to the salary of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration—
  That the yearly rate of the salary payable to the Parliamentary Commissioner under section 2 of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 be increased—

  (a) for the period before 1st November 1974 from £16,475·28 to £16,496·16,

  (b) for the period of November 1974 from £16,496·16 to £16,517·04,

  (c) for the period of December 1974 from £16,517·04 to £16,579·68, and

  (d) for later periods from £16,579·68 to 18,675,

  and the date from which this Resolution is to take effect be 1st September 1974.
  I have to announce to the House that the amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) are not selected.
  Mr. Morris: The purpose of the motions is to keep the salaries payable to the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in step with those of permanent secretaries in the Civil Service.
  620
  There is, and always has been, a firm link with those rates, confirmed in the case of the Comptroller and Auditor General by the usage of over a hundred years and in the case of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration by invariable practice since the office was established in 1967.
  As hon. Members will know, a resolution of the House is required to vary the salary paid. By approving the motions tonight the House will be approving the link with the pay of permanent secretaries which it has always approved, and confirming these two officers in the standing which it has always wished them to have.
  As watchdogs over the executive it is important that the appointment and individual salaries of these Officers should be as directly as possible under the control of Members of the House.
  However, when it is necessary to review these salaries more frequently, inroads are made into scarce parliamentary time and the individuals concerned are placed, sometimes for months, in a less favourable position than the Civil Service permanent secretaries with whose pay theirs always has been aligned. It seems sensible, therefore, that there should be an improved and more up-to-date mechanism to vary these salaries while still of course retaining the essential control of the House.
  We therefore intend to bring forward legislation explicitly linking the salaries of these two officers to that of permanent secretaries, with provision for the House to vary the linkage by resolution if it were felt that that was appropriate. But that is for the future.
  The salaries the House is now being asked to authorise reflect the first stage of the increase promulgated in response to the considered recommendations of the Top Salaries Review Body. I am aware of the strong feelings amongst some hon. Members about high salaries generally, but I am sure that all hon. Members will agree that it would be unfair to discriminate against these two officials, rather than deal with the question by our general taxation policy, and, later, in the light of the report on higher incomes coming from the Royal Commission on Income Distribution and Wealth. It will be questionable whether we will be able

  621
  to obtain staff of the appropriate calibre if their salaries are allowed to fall behind what is fair and due and can be obtained elsewhere.
  Finally, I should like to take this opportunity to pay a warm tribute to the present holders of these two offices, for their devotion and skill in carrying out the onerous duties which Parliament has given them. In the case of the Parliamentary Commissioner, these duties have since October 1973 included the functions of Health Service Commissioner for England, Scotland and Wales, and I am sure I can speak for the House as a whole in expressing our appreciation of their services.
  With that brief introduction I commend the motion to the House.
  10.15 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Hordern: For our part, we welcome this motion. It is generally quite uncontentious and has never met with very much opposition or comment. Nevertheless, it is an important motion as the salaries of these two gentlemen are fixed by the House of Commons. For that reason I should like to say something on what the hon. Gentleman has said about the auto-maticity of these salaries to place them exactly in line with the salary of permanent secretaries. It is not unimportant that we should consider these salaries from time to time and make quite clear the position, that these two gentlemen are responsible to the House of Commons and not to the Government at all.
  Both have held extremely important functions which are increasing the whole time. The Comptroller and Auditor General now does a very different kind of job from that which he did when he was originally appointed under Mr. Gladstone. There is no question now of counting candle ends. He is the head of a very large and important Department responsible for the whole of Government expenditure, which is increasing both in resources of money and of men, especially under this Government; so we should be the last to oppose an increase in the salary which the Comptroller and Auditor General will be getting and certainly the very last to oppose the principle that the salary should be fixed by this House.
  As to what the hon. Gentleman said about making this process of fixing the
  622
  salaries of these two gentlemen much more automatically by, I understand, affirmative resolution, that is something that we shall have to look at very carefully because it is a matter which is the right of the House, and naturally we are very concerned to guard it very jealously. It is not just a question for the Government and the Opposition Front Benches to fix between them through the usual channels—and this is the first I have heard of it—but a matter for the House itself. I hope, therefore, that this matter will be discussed as opportunity occurs as well as this evening. It merits further discussion.
  We should not regard this just as a formal opportunity to confirm the salaries that are arranged but rather as it has been in the past as an opportunity for a fairly wide-ranging debate on what has taken place during the last year or so under the Parliamentary Commissioner and Comptroller and Auditor General. This is a subject at which I am sure my right hon. and hon. Friends would like to look carefully. It is something which the House should look at very thoroughly.
  With those remarks I am sure that, for our part as an Opposition, we welcome the motion as it has always been welcomed and we wish these two distinguished gentlemen every good fortune in their extremely important and arduous task.
  10.19 p.m.
  Mr. Bob Cryer: I share the admiration of the House for the work of these two gentlemen. The Comptroller and the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner are two independent Officers of this House who advise us in their scrutiny of the executive. It is very important that that scrutiny should continue. In my view this House has been far too lacking in its powers of control over the executive and there could be many improvements to bring about more democracy.
  Having said that, and having said that these two gentlemen are most estimable and have responsibilities which we recognise as important, we ought to have a look at the fact that their salaries are being increased; because those salaries are by no means modest.
  When the fine print has been cleared, the salary will be increased finally from

  623
  £16,579.68 to £18,675. It can reasonably be said that people on £18,675 are fairly well taken care of, and therefore it seems to me that there are good grounds for considering why the Labour Government are prepared to bring in motions to emphasise the salary structure in this country. These two gentlemen do an excellent job, but so do engine drivers and miners. These two salaries are linked to the Boyle Committee's Report which acts as a precedent to enable them to keep pace with the salaries of permanent secretaries.
  Some of us were distinctly dissatisfied with the way in which the recommendations of the Top Salaries Review Body were put through the House by means of a Written Answer to a Question on the Friday before the Christmas Recess, and now we are having a debate on the matter, because it has to be dealt with by a motion, by chance on the last full day of Government business before the Easter Recess. It is not the fault of my hon. Friend, but I suggest that he mentions to the Leader of the House that there are important matters surrounding this issue which should be debated at a rather more convenient time than at twenty minutes past ten on the last day of Government business before the recess. Many hon. Members have commitments elsewhere. They have to travel perhaps 200 or 400 miles to meet them, and they must get away, but some of us suffer from insomnia, and we are determined not to let anything go through the House without a degree of scrutiny. The Government can always count on some back benchers being ready to exercise some scrutiny over matters that are brought before the House.
  We are dissatisfied because it looks as though the Labour Government are slightly ashamed of putting through salaries on this scale, and well they might be. Their task is not to prop up the existing social structure but to redistribute wealth, as we said in our manifesto. We are doing it in other ways, for example, through capital transfer tax, but it seems to people outside that those whom they elected to office are merely changing places with the present Opposition and doing what they did. We have to show people outside that those earning
  624
  £16,000 a year or more are prepared to accept a redistribution of wealth.
  In the courts, justice must be seen to to be done, and it must not just be claimed that it is being done. The capital transfer tax is a fairly complicated measure which we believe will redistribute wealth, but if we pay people getting on for £20,000 a year, and if we pay an extra £2,000 to those who are already receiving £16,000 or more, it means that the Labour Government are giving considerable financial rewards to those who already have substantial salaries.
  I think that there is a strong case for narrowing the differential between the very top and the very bottom salaries. One might recall that in this House we were subjected to considerable inconvenience—happily now over—because of a strike by industrial civil servants. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) demonstrated, the take-home pay of skilled craftsmen is £28 a week. If we say to other people who are doing a necessary and important job that we propose to give £2,000 to people who are doing an important job and we have given an extra £2,500 to permanent secretaries and we shall cushion them with another increase at the beginning of next year, they will say that we are not creating the sort of just society which we promised to create when we were elected to office.
  Only yesterday we had 4,000 textile workers in London demonstrating about the situation in the textile industry. Many of them are on short time. That means that in the North, for instance, a household which depends on the wife going out to work will have its annual income severely reduced. It will not be reduced from £16,000 to £12,000 or £10,000, but from £1,500 to £1,200 or £1,000. That is the sort of money that people are living on throughout the country.
  We must also bear in mind that we lauded the Labour Government when they increased pensions to £10 for single persons and to £16 for married couples. We said that it was the largest increase in history. We must bear in mind that many useful, admirable people, who have worked throughout their lives for the country—in some cases they fought for their country and were injured in so doing —are now living on £10 if they are single

  625
  or £16 if they are married. When we say to them that other admirable people are getting £18,600 by means of an increase of approximately £2,000 so as to keep them ahead and to maintain differentials, they might well say "What sort of society is it that you are maintaining when these enormous differentials exist?" We must bear that sort of thing in mind.
  When I raised this subject in my constituency I was shown wage slips which indicated a take-home pay of £32 including overtime. I represent a constituency which does not have high-wage-earning levels. Even in the areas where there are high-wage-earning levels we are talking about gross annual figures of perhaps £2,500 to £3,000. That is what we meant when a few months ago we talked about the men in the car industry being high wage earners. That is what we are talking about when we say that the miners have just made a successful claim. My God, the economy is tottering because the miners have received an extra few pounds a week yet here we are slipping through an extra £2,000 for one person. That sum is more than many of my constituents earn in a year. Indeed, we are discussing a salary that many of my constituents will not earn in four or five years.
  I have made my position clear. I am making no personal attack. The fact is that we must discuss these differentials. We must be seen to make a shift of wealth in other ways than just through the taxation system. We must point out, of course, that the people who earn the most money pay the most tax. We want a progressive tax system. That is what direct personal taxation is all about. However, there is no question that the person on £18,000 is vastly better off than the person on £3,000 a year in spite of direct taxation taking its toll.
  The hon. Member for Horsham and Crawley (Mr. Hordern) did not mention the element of retrospection. Only yesterday—
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: Monday.
  Mr. Cryer: Yes, Monday. Time flies so quickly in this hallowed Chamber. On Monday we had a lengthy debate on the
  626
  Housing Finance (Special Provisions) Bill. It was severely mauled by the Opposition. Many Opposition Members were critical about its retrospective provisions. The Bill sought to right a wrong which had been pushed through the House by the previous Conservative Government. During the debate on 24th March the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) in column 75 said:
  "Can it be right, whichever party is in power, and whether the councillors concerned are supporters of that party or the party in opposition, that the Government of the day should, on coming into office, retrospectively remove the penalties which attach to the breaking of a law which was passed by the previous Government? That is a most dangerous act for the House to condone."
  The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) went even further. He said:
  "Neither the Attorney-General nor the Secretary of State could possibly contemplate retrospective legislation to remove the surcharge. That was more than they could stand."—[Official Report, 24th March 1975; Vol. 889, cc. 75 and 85.]
  The general point is that it has been said that legislation relating to councillors who refused to implement the Housing Finance Act would be retrospective and that that would be a very bad thing. I am not opposed to retrospective legislation. In many cases it is necessary. What worries me is the hypocrisy of the Conservatives who turn up in droves on an issue like Clay Cross and condemn retrospective legislation on that score. Their condemnation of retrospective legislation seems rapidly to diminish when it is introduced to deal with the cases of two people who, I agree, are doing an admirable job and who might well share the attitudes adopted by the Opposition—I do not mean politically but in a socio-economic sense.
  These salary increases, therefore, will get no support from me. I shall not divide the House. I offer a warning to my hon. Friend the Minister, and I know that he will take it to heart. The Labour movement outside, which is the arbiter for us in this place, will be studying the message which goes out from this place, because those people put us here to carry out a Socialist programme, not to tinker with the system, to maintain differentials, and to maintain the ruling élite as though time has stood still and will never be changed.
  Mr. Skinner: I think that my hon. Friend is now coming to the nub of the problem. It is that, whatever the situation in respect of those who accepted the arguments we put forward in both General Election campaigns about the need for a fundamental redistribution of wealth, it was also argued that within the social contract as it was then envisaged no one should get more than a normal cost of living increase on a sort of weighted average. My view is, and I wonder if my hon. Friend shares it, that if there is to be a weighted average there must be a movement from below which is above the rise in the cost of living and a movement from the top which is below. I tend to get the impression from this measure that the movement is an average which to some extent benefits those who are better off. Although it could be argued, therefore, that the two are moving in a kind of parity based on the cost of living, the facts belie that argument.
  Mr. Cryer: That was a very good speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). He is of course correct, and that is the point I made earlier. There is no point in arguing that there has been an increase in the cost of living and therefore this £2,000 is necessary. We are simply maintaining the status quo, the position which prevailed when we took office. Frankly, the Government must grasp the nettle. People who are living off the fat of the land on excellent salaries may be doing excellent work. But there are millions of people doing excellent work which is not so exalted and is much more humdrum. We need them just as much as we need the Parliamentary Commissioner and the Comptroller and Auditor General. We must move their wages and standard of living more closely to the standard enjoyed by those in exalted positions. The people in exalted positions must stand still for a few years. That is the road for the Government if they want to travel it.
  10.34 p.m.
  Mr. Ian Gow: It would be out of order, I think, to criticise the decision of the Chair not to select the amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis)—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Order. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I rise only to tell him to play safe.
  Mr. Gow: I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it is not out of order to say that although I do not criticise the Chair on the selection, if the amendment had been selected I would have voted for it.
  At a time of national economic crisis it is right that those who have the broadest backs should make a fair contribution to the national sacrifice.
  Secondly, I endorse what the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) said about the way in which this proposal for increases in the salaries of two distinguished gentlemen is brought before the House at this late stage of the Session and at what is, at any rate to some hon. Members, a late hour of night. It is not a late hour to the hon. Member for Keighley, the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) or the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Madden). For us, at least, the night is young.
  Just before Christmas, on the last day of the Session, and in a Written Answer, the Prime Minister announced substantial increases in salaries for the holders of certain important posts. We can draw comfort tonight from the fact that we are making progress, in that we have the opportunity for a debate, and it is the day before the last day of the Session.
  Thirdly, if there is to be restraint in the incomes of our fellow citizens, as I believe there should be, it must apply supremely to those who are best placed. I do not see the justification for increases of this kind, outside the social contract, and outside the scope of the sensible amendment.
  I join in the tributes to the outstanding quality of the two gentlemen who occupy the important posts with which we are now concerned. But I remember, as does the hon. Member for Keighley, the attitude of those whom we represent.
  When Mr. Churchill came to power in economic circumstances which, by common consent, were much more favourable than those which exist today, he required every Minister in his Government to take a 5 per cent. cut in salary. A prerequisite of national unity is that those in the most favourable position should take a reduction in salary. The Minister would be

  629
  astounded at the public response that there would be if he and his right hon. Friends followed Churchill's example.
  If the amendment had been selected, I would have voted for it. I regret that it was not selected.
  I appeal to the Government to look again at their policy in regard to these gentlemen, however distinguished. Sacrifices at the top are required if we are to get any sense of national unity.
  10.39 p.m.
  Mr. Charles R. Morris: The one impressive thread that has run through each contribution to the debate is the unanimity of appreciation for the services of these two officials. That is a reflection of the general appreciation of hon. Members for the work that these two individuals perform.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) made some stringent comments on the report by the Top Salaries Review Body. The Boyle Committee's report published in December last year was the first substantive report of the Review Body since its establishment by the then Conservative administration in May 1971.
  Those who have found time to read the report will, I am sure, agree that it is a well-documented, closely reasoned analysis of the scale of remuneration received by those employed in the private sector carrying comparable responsibilities and performing similar administrative functions. As I said, the report represented the first full review of the salaries concerned since 1969, and the Government were obliged to consider it accordingly.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in his stament on the Boyle Committee recommendations at that time announced that the Government had also to consider the recommendations at a time of critical economic difficulty for the country. It was against this background that the Government examined the recommendations of the Boyle Committee. I noted carefully what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said when he suggested that increases in salaries should broadly be contained within the movement in the retail price index. That is a valid point,
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  but I draw to his attention that the evidence to the Boyle Committee indicated that since the last substantive review in 1969 the salaries of individuals within the groups covered by the review had increased markedly less than the rise in prices, less than the increases in average earnings and less than the average increase in comparable salaries in the private sector.
  Mr. Cryer: Does not my hon. Friend agree that the evidence given to the Boyle Committee was largely from the same strata of top people and, therefore, was not wholly unprejudiced?
  Mr. Morris: My hon. Friend is perfectly entitled to put whatever construction he wishes on the evidence that was presented to the Boyle Committee, but the committee was looking to the private sector. My hon. Friend made that point with regard to the recent unofficial industrial action taken by industrial civil servants. They were arguing for comparability, and that is precisely the function which the Boyle Committee fulfils for the House in looking at top salaries and at these two salaries. Comparability was all that the Boyle Committee in general principle was seeking to establish.
  I assure the House that, irrespective of the evidence, the Boyle Committee recommendations were the subject of detailed scrutiny by the Government. As a result, the Government decided that in the case of the recommendations for nationalised industries, no increases could be agreed at all. In fact, the Government decided to defer any decision on these recommendations until the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth had made its report on higher incomes. The Government have taken this view in spite of increasing problems of discontent over nationalised industry salaries generally.
  So far as the other three groups are concerned—civil servants, judges and officers in the Armed Forces—the increases where the revised salary exceeds £13,000 are being staged. The increases recommended here, although substantial, were generally lower than those recommended for the nationalised industries, and were payable in the main to people on lower salary levels than, for example, nationalised industry chairmen.
  Mr. Gow: Will the Minister confirm that these increases are within the social contract?
  Mr. Morris: These increases stem from the recomendations of the Boyle Committee. That committee looked at these salaries over a long period of time and its considerations covered a period from 1969 to the time of the report.
  Mr. Gow: With great respect, the Minister has not answered my question, which is a very important one. We are not now going back over a period of time but are talking about increases in salary which take effect from the dates laid down in the order. Will he answer "Yes" or "No" to the question whether these increases fall within the social contract?
  Mr. Morris: These recommendations emanate from a 180-page report of a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Boyle. The justification for these recommendations lies within that report.
  Mr. Hordern: I know that the recommendations follow that report, but my hon. Friend is on to a good point—and it is a very simple one which the hon. Gentleman should be able to answer—namely, whether these awards fall within the social contract?
  Mr. Morris: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification, but I shall be coming to this point at a later stage in my speech and perhaps he can then intervene if he so wishes.
  The Government have an obligation as employers towards these groups not to use their powers to discriminate unfairly against them. To impose general restraints on higher incomes is another matter and one which the Government no doubt may wish to consider when they have the Royal Commission's report. Meanwhile, there is no justification for singling out public servants for harsher treatment than is experienced by other sections of the community.
  Hon. Members on both sides of the House criticised the fact that my right hon. Friends' announcement was made on 20th December, the last day before the Christmas Recess last year. It was suggested that the Government had some justification for being ashamed in that respect. I wish to explain that the Gov-
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  ernment were anxious to make an announcement about the report of the Top Salaries Review Body at the earliest possible date. However, it was not until a day prior to the last day of the Session that the Cabinet took a decision on the review body's recommendations. Therefore, the earliest date for the announcement was the last day before the Christmas Recess.
  Mr. Gow: Would the Minister not agree that the reason the Cabinet decided to take a decision on 19th December was so that the Government could announce it on 20th December, the last day of the Session? Was it not a deliberate policy on the part of the Cabinet?
  Mr. Morris: The hon. Gentleman should not cast an air of conspiracy over what was a reasonable sequence of events.
  Mr. Cryer: My hon. Friend must not follow this tack. It is not reasonable for announcements of such importance to be made by means of Written Questions—Questions which some people, in an unscrupulous way, might say were planted, but I make no such charge. My hon. Friend should certainly take back to the Cabinet our view that the House would like to see large items such as this debated in the House. I realise his difficulties, but we on the Labour benches and within the Labour Party will insist on these matters being debated.
  Mr. Morris: My hon. Friend and I belong to the Labour Party. I assure him that his views in that regard will be conveyed to my right hon. Friend. I also assure him that there was no planted Written Question. The Written Reply was the most efficient way of making the announcement on the last day of the Session, given the great volume of other business on hand and the general disturbance at that time.
  Mr. Hordern: I accept that the Question was not planted. I am sure that no such suspicion entered anybody's mind. But why were the Government unable to make a statement on the last day on this business? Why was it not possible for a statement to be made which would have been subject to questioning? It was that aspect that was so unusual and rightly brought criticism from both sides of the House.
  Mr. Morris: On that day there was an appreciable amount of parliamentary business before the House. The announcement was not made in an unreasonable manner.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley said that Government supporters outside this House are concerned to see a positive redistribution of wealth in favour of the socially disadvantaged. Are the salaries and wages of Government employees the best form in which to bring about that redistribution? I suggest that it is better to wait for the report of the commission which is looking into this particular matter.
  The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) suggested that the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Lewis) was sensible. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his interpretation of the amendment. I appreciate the close and continuing interest in these matters which has been demonstrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West over the years. If the salaries in question were to be increased in line with the terms of the suggested amendment to the limit of 45 per cent. more than the 1972 figure, the result would be £22,800, which would be over £4,000 more than the Government are proposing in the two resolutions. That would be the reality of the amendment that Mr. Deputy Speaker has decided not to call.
  The hon. Member for Eastbourne said that it would be an example to the nation if Ministers and Members of this House gave a lead by agreeing to a 5 per cent. reduction in salary. I remind him that the salary of Members for Parliament has not increased since 1972. I hope that the people of Britain recognise that fact and accept it as a fine example to the nation.
  Mr. Horden: The Minister was asked whether the award came within the social contract. If he cannot answer that point, which I thought would have been simple, can he say whether the increases mentioned in the motion are within the increase in the cost of living or above it?
  Mr. Morris: I covered that point earlier in my speech when I indicated that the salaries of the individuals within the groups covered by the review had increased markedly less than the rise in prices, less than the increases in average earnings and less than the average increase in comparable salaries in the private sector.
  With that explanation, I trust that the House will adopt the two motions.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the rate of the salary which may be granted to the Comptroller and Auditor General under section 1 of the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1957 be increased—

  (a) for the period before 1st November 1974 from £16,475·28 to £16,496·16 per annum.

  (b) for the period of November 1974 from £16,496·16 to £16,517·04 per annum,

  (c) for the period of December 1974 from £16,517·04 to £16,579·68 per annum, and

  (d) for later periods from £16,579·68 to £18,675, per annum,

  and the date from which, under subsection (3) of that section, the person now holding that office is entitled to a salary at the said increased rates be 1st September 1974.

  PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER (SALARY)
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  That the yearly rate of the salary payable to the Parliamentary Commissioner under section 2 of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 be increased—

  (a) for the period before 1st November 1974 from £16,475·28 to £16,496·16,

  (b) for the period of November 1974 from £16,496·16 to £16,517·04.

  (c) for the period of December 1974 from £16,517·04 to £16,579·68, and

  (d) for later periods from £16,579·68 to £18,675.

  and the date from which this Resolution is to take effect be 1st September 1974—[Mr. Charles R. Morris.]

  ADJOURNMENT
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dormand.]

  BANSTEAD HALL SITE
  11.57 p.m.
  Mr. George Gardiner: The Banstead Hall site covers a substantial area very near the centre of Banstead in the borough of Reigate and Banstead, and is owned by Surrey County Council. The buildings on it comprise Banstead Hall, which was built originally as a large boarding school; near by is Banstead House, which is also quite large, containing further dormitories and a self-contained flat, and further half-dozen houses originally accommodated teaching staff, and there are several large workshops.
  My argument tonight concerns not Banstead Hall itself but the other buildings on the site.
  In 1937 the whole complex of buildings became an approved school and continued in this use until severely damaged by fire on 17th March 1974. But already the county council had judged it to be surplus to its needs and so not worth restoring. The last boy accordingly left the establishment last October.
  However, as a community home it was—and, indeed, still is—listed as such in the regional plan prepared by the Children's Regional Planning Committee for South-East England and approved by the Secretary of State for Social Services. This puts the county council under a statutory duty to operate it as a community home unless the Secretary of State authorises an amendment to the regional plan.
  In fact, as far back as November 1973 the regional planning committee decided to apply for just such an amendment, but the Department refused on the ground that there was an acute shortage of community homes to serve the London boroughs.
  At a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State on 2nd May 1974 the county asked again for the plan to be amended so that the site could be disposed of to help meet the pressing housing need in the area. But the Department indicated that it would be prepared to agree to the deletion of Banstead Hall from the south-east regional plan only if it became incorporated instead in the regional plan for London. So the county council felt that it had no choice but to open nego-
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  tiations with the London borough of Croydon, which wished to use Banstead House and the adjoining buildings as the nucleus of a community home of its own, and those negotiations have since proceeded.
  However, the point I want to stress is that, in making that decision in May of last year, the Secretary of State was concerned only with weighing the scheme for further community home facilities for the London boroughs against the claim for further building land in this belt of Surrey. She was not concerned—since it was not then brought to her attention —with the totally different and far more pressing need to make some provision for the homeless in this part of Surrey. For my part, I must admit that I did not make this clear in my letter to the Secretary of State as recently as 25th February this year—for which I duly apologise to the Under-Secretary.
  But it is because of the emergence of this new and chronic factor that I ask the Under-Secretary tonight to reconsider his Department's decision of last year. Unless he does, I am afraid he will inflict great misery on people who are perhaps the most vulnerable of my constituents—those families who find themselves without a home.
  I should like to explain our local crisis over homelessness in a little greater detail. At this moment Surrey County Council is responsible for providing a roof for our homeless families. But in his Circular 18/74 the Secretary of State for the Environment expressed his wish that this responsibility should be taken over by the district and borough councils. I stress that there was no statutory requirement on them to do so, but the district councils of Surrey agreed together to cooperate with the Secretary of State for the Environment and to work together to take over this responsibility.
  Accordingly, on 1st April—in just six days' time—Reigate and Banstead Borough Council takes over responsibility for housing homeless families within our boundaries. But what is the situation that it is taking on? A number of these families come together with the houses in which they have already been placed. But a total of 26 parents and children are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Another seven are in temporary

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  accommodation and must be transferred into bed-and-breakfast accommodation next Tuesday. A further 21 are in different temporary accommodation which must be vacated by 31st May. So by that date no fewer than 54 parents and children will be living in bed-and-breakfast rooms.
  Let us not imagine that these will be all. I have the evidence from my own Saturday surgeries of couples—often under notice to quit tied commercial premises—coming to me and saying "Whatever can we do? Wherever can we go?" I am afraid that the truth is that there is nowhere for them to go. I do not want to make a political point, but since last year's Rent Act absolutely no private rented homes are coming on to the market in Reigate and Banstead. For some time the price of a private house in this band of Surrey has been way above such a family's reach, and those currently being allocated council houses have been five years on the waiting list.
  In my view there is no doubt that this problem of homelessness will grow. But for the moment we know that next Tuesday 33 parents and children will be in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and by 31st May at least 54. I wonder whether the Minister really understands what it often means to live "bed-and-breakfast" with young children—the mother leaving after breakfast, with the kids following behind, a carrier bag stuffed with the day's needs, perhaps leaving her children at a welfare centre while she spends the day walking the streets or sitting in bus shelters. The sheer social harm inflicted by this living pattern is denied by no one.
  There is also the question of costs to the borough. This was a duty taken on voluntarily, and its cost must be borne by the general rate fund. But the average cost of putting one homeless family in bed-and-breakfast accommodation in Reigate or Banstead is £2,500 a year—for just one family.
  However, I am sure that it is the social damage which must worry the Under-Secretary most. By next week, as I said, 33 parents and children in my constituency will have no homes between breakfast and bedtime. Yet meanwhile the buildings attached to Banstead Hall,
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  which could house every one of them, are lying empty. The Minister must recognise that this is nothing short of a scandal.
  This is the human crisis of which the Minister's Department was never aware when it decided that these buildings had to go to a London borough for use as a community home. I ask him to take it very seriously into consideration now, for it makes the choice before him a totally different one.
  Surrey County Council certainly appreciates it, even though it was not apparent to it last year. It is perfectly prepared to negotiate the sale or lease of this whole site to Reigate and Banstead council for this purpose. But it is blocked by the Under-Secretary's Department's decision.
  It is also possible that part of the extensive grounds of this site could be used to build some of the old people's flatlets we so desperately need, but I concede that that is a different question. Of course, the old Banstead Hall could be sold or leased to Reigate and Banstead Council but this building needs considerable reinstatement after the fire, and there would be no chance of that being available to house homeless families for a long time.
  The Minister must frequently have to make an evaluation of relative social need. That does not make his job easy. I would be the first to recognise that. Surely in this case he must recognise that the social need of these families, many with young children, is at least as great as those of children coming before Croydon Juvenile Court. I recognise that Croydon has a real problem. But I am not at all convinced that if its borough council knew that the Banstead Hall site was not available it could not find an alternative by looking hard within its own borough.
  The Under-Secretary must recognise also the anger felt over this in my constituency. All three political parties are represented on our borough council and they are united in pressing this demand. Having agreed to the Government's wish that the council should assume responsibility for the homeless, they now feel that they are being let down.
  Surely an asset of this kind, in the midst of our community, should be available first to meet our own real and pressing

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  problem, which is at least as great as the need for a community home by another borough which is not even within the county of Surrey. I acknowledge that this was not a factor when the Minister's Department made its initial decision on the future use of this site last year. But it is a critical factor now, and the Minister still has time to act, even at this eleventh hour.
  If the hon. Gentleman would but do so I can assure him that he would prevent untold misery to homeless families and children in my constituency while giving the London borough of Croydon the signal to search far more thoroughly for another building within its boundaries. I submit that it makes absolutely no administrative or moral sense to rob the homeless of Reigate and Banstead to help the juvenile training authorities of Croydon. That is effectively what his Department is doing. I cannot believe that it is knowingly a party to that situation. I appeal most earnestly to the Minister to take a broader view and think again.
  11.10 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Alec Jones): From the outset I would assure the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Gardiner) that I and the Department as a whole are concerned about this matter, and about his wish and the wish of local authorities in the area—it is also my Department's wish—that this whole site should be put to the best possible use.
  We might have some differences in defining what is the best possible use and that is the crux of the matter. We have a clash of two essential interests. The hon. Member said that he was aware that the needs of one were at least as great as those of the other. I think he used those words. That is the problem which, basically, we arc faced with: whether we shall allow the site to be used as accommodation for the homeless or as a community home. It is not true to suggest that the Secretary of State is concerned only with its use as a community home. My right hon. Friend and I are aware of the problem of homelessness in general and in this area in particular. I have spent some time visiting the homeless in the London area who are subjected to this bed-and-breakfast-
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  routine, and we agree that this is no solution to homelessness.
  I shall deal with the history of the matter in order to place on record how the Department sees the problem.
  On 1st April 1973 Banstead Hall, which was formerly an approved school, became a community home with education on the premises in accordance with the provisions of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. This Act provided, among other things, for the abolition of the courts' powers to order a juvenile to be sent to an approved school. It established the machinery by which schools in the centrally controlled approved school system would come under the direction or supervision of local authorities as part of a comprehensive system of community homes for the accommodation, care, and treatment of children in the care of local authorities. Responsibility for planning and providing this new system was devolved to local authorities which were required to establish regional planning committees to plan on a regional and inter-regional basis the provision of a comprehensive range of residential accommodation for children in care. In the course of their planning the committees had to decide how the approved schools, which were geographically unevenly distributed between the regions, should be shared. Some regions, like the South-East, were relatively well endowed with approved schools but others, such as London, had too few within their boundaries to meet their needs, and it was an essential part of the job of regional planning committees to provide through their plans arrangements for co-operation in the use of these specialised facilities by authorities within the region and with authorities and homes outside the region.
  At the time the regional plans were being drawn up Surrey County Council, which was responsible for three approved schools, one of which was considered to be surplus to the region's requirements, was negotiating the disposal of Banstead Hall to a London borough. These negotiations had not been completed by the time the regional plan was submitted for the Secretary of State's approval, and Banstead Hall was included in the plan for the South-East Region on the understanding that it would be used mainly by authorities

  641
  in the London region, and in the expectation that it would eventually be transferred to a London borough. When subsequently these negotiations broke down Surrey continued to run the home but uncertainty about its future led to loss of staff and to a drop in the number of boys it could accommodate. This led the county council to decide in September 1973, by which time the home was more than half empty, to seek an amendment to the regional plan to delete Banstead Hall from it. This would have enabled it to close the home and would have freed the site for other uses such as the hon. Gentleman has suggested. The regional planning committee endorsed the county council's proposal and in January 1974 sought the Secretary of State's approval of the amendment. At this stage the national demand for places in community homes of all kinds, the acute shortage of places in community homes with education on the premises and the particular needs of London, which has the greatest number of children in need of accommodation in community homes with education on the premises and too few such homes to meet the need, all these circumstances made it necessary to ensure that the loss of places resulting from the proposed deletion of Banstead Hall from the plan was unavoidable.
  The hon. Member will be aware that many hon. Members on both sides of the House are frequently drawing the attention of the Department to the need to provide extra facilities for these children in community homes throughout the country.
  Officials of the Department accordingly discussed with Surrey County Council and representatives of the two regional planning committees concerned the need for the replacement of the places that would be lost and the possibility of arrangements being made to ensure the continued use of Banstead Hall as a community home.
  Following these discussions, the London borough of Croydon began negotiations with Surrey for the purchase of part of the Banstead Hall site. Its intention then was that it would immediately update part of the property known as Banstead House, for use as a community home providing accommodation for about 15 boys, and that
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  over the next few years it would provide purpose-built units in the grounds to accommodate in all about 40 boys needing places in community homes with education on the premises.
  I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that was a worthy aim. No one can dispute the need for those homes, nor that this was a sensible proposal.
  The part of the property subject to negotiation amounts to less than half the Banstead Hall property and does not include the Hall itself, which, I understand, is not considered suitable for continued use as a community home but which Surrey is prepared to make available, together with part of the land adjoining it, to the Reigate and Banstead council. The negotiations with Croydon have reached the point where the county council has informed Croydon of the terms on which it is prepared to grant a seven year lease on the property with an option to purchase at the end of this term. This offer is to be considered by members of the council in early April.
  As the offer is to be considered by the council in early April, it is somewhat late in the day to begin withdrawing the basis on which negotiations have taken place.
  I sympathise with, and share, the concern of the hon. Member about the need to provide accommodation for the homeless, but the need to provide accommodation for children in the care of local authorities, as the House recognised in the debate on 9th December, merits equally pressing priority. This is a dilemma with which I am constantly faced. It is necessary to decide between equally worthy causes.
  The proposal to use the Banstead Hall site for housing the homeless did not arise until negotiations for its continued use as a community home had been under way for some time, and these negotiations are now expected to be concluded shortly. In the circumstances, while my right hon. Friend will be prepared to look at the matter again sympathetically in the light of the decision of the London borough of Croydon, she does not consider that it would be appropriate for her to attempt to intervene at this late stage.

  643
  The position has not been finalised, and cannot be finalised until Croydon has taken a decision. Even if Croydon acquires half the land for a community home, part of the remainder could be available to Reigate and Banstead for accommodation for the homeless.
  I am sorry that we cannot accede to the hon. Gentleman's request. I appre-
  644
  ciate his sincerity and recognise the need in the area. It is a question of balancing equally pressing needs. We must remember that these negotiations have gone on over a fairly lengthy period. It would be unwise to withdraw at this stage.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes past Eleven o'clock.

  Second Reading Committee
  Wednesday 26th March 1975

  The Committee consisted of the following Members:

  Mr. Albert Costain (in the Chair)

  Barnett, Mr. Guy (Greenwich)

  Shepherd, Mr. Colin (Hereford)

  Benyon, Mr. W. (Buckingham)

  Strang, Mr. Gavin (Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture)

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Crewe)

  Taylor, Mrs. Ann (Bolton, West)

  Hawkins, Mr. Paul (Norfolk, South-West)

  Tomlinson, Mr. John (Meriden)

  Hicks, Mr. Robert (Bodmin)

  Torney, Mr. Thomas (Bradford, South)

  Jopling. Mr. Michael (Westmorland)

  Ward, Mr. Michael (Peterborough)

  Kilroy-Silk, Mr Robert (Ormskirk)

  Wiggin, Mr. Jerry (Weston-super-Mare)

  Pavitt, Mr. Laurie (Brent, South)

  Winterton, Mr. Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  Ross, Mr. Wm. (Londonderry)

  DISEASES OF ANIMALS BILL [Lords]
  10.30 a.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Gavin Strang): I beg to move,
  "That the Chairman do now report to the House that the Committee recommend that the Diseases of Animals Bill [Lords] ought to be read a second time".
  This is a short Bill but its value is not to be measured in the number of its clauses. It deals with a subject of vital concern, namely the need to prevent the introduction of animal diseases which could endanger our livestock and farming industry. I think few Members would disagree that this country has a good record on animal disease eradication, and my Ministry has been fully engaged in the fight against disease since its inception. In fact one might say that it was animal disease that caused the birth of a separate agricultural Ministry, since it was built around the veterinary department set up to deal with the great cattle plague of 1865.
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  One of the disadvantages, however, of being first in the field is that one's tools become antiquated with time. This is what has happened with our import disease legislation. Although the present powers are embodied in the Diseases of Animals Act 1950, much of the substance of this Act is the consolidation of previous Acts now nearly 100 years old. The purpose of the present Bill is to replace this somewhat ramshackle and out-of-date legislative framework with comprehensive enabling powers which will be flexible and effective in dealing with whatever future emergencies we may have to tackle.
  The rationale behind the development of animal health legislation during the last 100 years has been that prevention is better than cure. The legislation has set out detailed control over imports and has built on the advantages of our geographical situation as an island. The sea and air provide a natural cordon sanitaire

  647
  and, provided our defences are not breached by animals or products carrying disease, we can maintain our health status. We must remain alert to changing circumstances and adjust our methods of excluding disease to accord with changes in other parts of the world, in trade patterns and in means of transport. Last year we took special measures in connection with rabies because of its advance through Europe, and the need to ensure that our defences against its introduction were strengthened and appropriate measures put in readiness to deal with any outbreaks that might occur.
  Rabies is, however, only one of a number of exotic diseases which flare up from time to time, and we need to be constantly aware of such dangers because of the growing volume of trade in animals, animal products and other potential disease carriers. With the development of air transport, diseases old and new can arrive from any part of the world in a matter of hours. In such circumstances, a system of control designed with sea transport in mind is no longer adequate. Moreover, veterinary knowledge is always increasing new diseases and new agents of known diseases are being identified, together with their method of spread, if our defences are to remain effective, our legislative arrangements must be flexible enough to take account of changing circumstances and of the fact that such changes will continue.
  I would not suggest to hon. Members that they should read the appropriate provisions of the 1950 Act which are being replaced. They contain quantities of detail, much of it out of date and inappropriate. There is little flexibility for swift action. A sudden disease threat from abroad could, therefore, cause practical problems because of the need to amend the legislative framework and even possibly the Act itself before taking effective action, and this delay could have serious repercussions for our national animal health situation. This could affect not only home production but also the fairly substantial export trade in farm livestock.
  The Bill recasts the complex and highly detailed legislation governing the importation of animals, poultry and their products in a way which will enable new problems to be met by relatively simple
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  and speedy changes by statutory instrument or licences granted thereunder. What the Bill seeks to achieve is indicated clearly and conveniently in the schedule, which covers a wide-ranging list of powers and controls. Experience has shown that precautions against animal diseases must be comprehensive or risk being ineffective.
  I should, however, like to emphasise that the proposals in the Bill are not designed in any way to restrict trade over and above what is strictly needed to provide adequate safeguards and that whenever it is consistent with our animals' health needs both animals and goods will continue to be admitted freely. The difference will be in the greater flexibility of operation through licences which can be adjusted according to circumstances abroad.
  I should like to point out that this will not affect trading arrangements with our partners in the European Economic Community. We are authorised under the Treaty of Accession to retain for the time being our national controls against the introduction of foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever in imported livestock and meat. These arrangements will be reviewed in due course and should any changes in our arrangements be agreed they can be implemented under the enabling powers set out in the Bill.
  The main substance of the Bill is in Clause 1 which indicates the broad range of Ministers' order-making powers and to what they may apply. The clause also deals with a number of detailed points with the general purpose of ensuring that the powers are sufficiently comprehensive; otherwise our efforts to exclude disease risk being self-defeating. The clause brings within its scope items which enter or return to Great Britain, from oil rigs for example, without being imported in the ordinary sense of the Act; the time of importation by sea or air is defined as in the Customs and Excise Act 1952.
  The clause also defines "animal" and "disease" very widely. This is to enable new conditions of animals not legally specified as disease under the 1950 Act to be dealt with as animal diseases if they are found in imported livestock or goods. It will also allow control in future of imports of species such as reptiles or fish or their products if they represent an

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  animal health risk to farm livestock. Finally, Clause 1 extends order-making powers to the specific matters detailed in Schedule 1, which I shall come to shortly.
  Turning to Clause 2, we have increased powers of entry for diseases of animals inspectors, to accompany the extended powers of control in Clause 1. Existing powers are deficient, particularly where aircraft or vessels in transit are concerned, since disease can be insect-borne or spread aerially in certain cases and adequate precautions are needed if the danger exists. Inspectors are therefore empowered to enter vessels, aircraft and vehicles within ports and customs airports—and, subject to conditions, elsewhere—to ensure compliance with the conditions of orders and licences.
  An additional need is for adequate enforcement of the requirements of orders and licences after importation. For this purpose the clause empowers inspectors to enter any vehicles, buildings, land and other premises where imported animals or things are reasonably believed to be, or have been kept. We do not expect that these powers will be used as a matter of routine, but there is little point in specifying certain conditions unless compliance with them can be checked.
  Clause 3 provides for tougher penalties by allowing prosecution on indictment. This brings the penalties into line with those incorporated in last year's Rabies Act.
  Clause 4 contains traditional provisions to enable existing Acts and orders to continue in force under the new powers, until revoked or amended as need be.
  Clause 5 enables the Bill, if passed, to be brought into operation by enabling order. It also limits the application of the Bill to Great Britain. Northern Ireland has her own veterinary legislation and acts independently but in accord with Great Britain in these matters.
  Schedule 1, to which I referred just now, lists specific matters which may be regulated by orders made under the new powers. Together they will allow appropriate controls to be applied, as necessary, before, during and after importation. I think they are self-explanatory and in most cases they are extensions of powers already in the 1950 Act rather than new powers. The extensions will allow these detailed controls to be applied to all imports to which the Bill refers, not
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  just to animals. Lastly, Schedule 2 lists the enactments to be repealed, principally the existing provisions governing importation in the Diseases of Animals Act 1950 and subsequent amendments.
  Since I have tried, like the Bill, to be brief, the outline I have given has tended to highlight what is new, and we hope more effective in the Bill. I should point out that the Bill essentially puts tried and tested controls on a new, more effective legal footing and that by keeping our legislative framework in good repair we can more easily deal with any real disease threat in the future. I commend the Bill to the Committee.
  10.40 a.m.
  Mr. Michael Jopling: We are grateful to the Minister for explaining the purpose of the Bill. It is the constitutional duty of the Opposition to oppose, but on a measure of this sort it is rather difficult for any Opposition to find reasons to oppose it in principle. We do not do that.
  We on this side recognise the need to support the Government on animal health matters of these sorts. Animal health matters are one of the most non-political issues that this House should ever have to face. In his opening speech, the Minister, probably inadvertently, referred to actions which the Government might take to protect farm livestock. He would agree that the powers and the actions involved in the Bill go further than farm livestock and cover the whole realm of livestock, even off farms.
  In matters like animal health, the Government are guided by technical officers and vets. This is a highly specialised field about which very few of us in the House have the remotest knowledge. Governments are guided by this type of technical advice and as an Opposition, one also must be guided by what the experts think is right. The situation would become somewhat different if the experts had let us down and if the technical advice which Ministers and Oppositions have been guided by had been shown to be faulty. We are all glad to say that the advice we have had from the experts on these matters has not been faulty. Therefore, I have no reason to doubt the advice which the Government have had and on which they are acting.

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  The Opposition welcome the Bill. We understand the need to update the 1950 Diseases of Animals Act. It has been said in another place that this Act was one of the last legislative Acts of Toni Williams who was the most revered Minister of Agriculture that the opposite side of the House produced. If Lord Williams were able to view the antics of the present Government, he would be turning in his grave. The present Minister learned his trade in agricultural matters, as I understand it, at the feet of—or rather from the seat behind—Tom Williams. I sometimes feel that the present Minister did not learn very much. I hope that the present Parliamentary Private Secretary who graces us with her presence on these occasions will learn her lessons on agriculture, not so much from the present Ministers, but from the lessons that Tom Williams began so many years ago.
  Mr. Thomas Torney: She will not have learned from the hon. Member when he was in Government.
  Mr. Jopling: I hope we will not have many remarks like that from the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) because we know that he cannot tolerate much heckling or noise; in such a case he walks out, and we cannot have that here.
  I must revert to the Bill. We accept the urgent need for speedy action when there is a threat of new diseases coming in or existing diseases being re-established in the country. The Minister referred to the need for flexibility and this is something which any department must have in these cases. There is the example of swine vesicular disease which came in unexpectedly and which has caused so much trouble, as the Minister well knows, over the course of the last few years. We have the threat of fowl pest still with us, unfortunately. For a time we were free of it, but it has come back. Other new diseases could establish themselves in this country, ones we have not had before. Foot and mouth disease is the principal one. Thank goodness it is not endemic in this country, and I hope that the powers we are prepared to give the Government under the Bill will make it even less likely that foot and mouth disease will ever become endemic in this country.
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  The Minister talked about flexibility. I do not understand how the Bill could be made more flexible. I should have thought that it was almost impossible for a parliamentary draftsman to suggest how more flexibility could be worked in. When one looks at the matters on which orders can be made under Schedule I of the Bill it is difficult to think of other things that might be written in, although I do not rule out the possibility that we might think of something to add at Committee stage.
  The Bill covers imports of animals, carcases, and what the Government are pleased to call "other things". From Section 24 of the 1950 Act as it stands, it seems that there was almost as wide a description of things that the Government could act on under that. I should like to ask the Minister what view he takes about the control of semen, because this is a possible vehicle for diseases being brought into the country. We have had cases over the years where semen has been smuggled in from abroad without authority. I wonder whether the Minister would be kind enough to say a word or two about control of that, how he sees it and the disease risk in it.
  There is also another matter which I noticed was raised in the House of Lords with regard to the position of oil rigs. I understand that it is the practice on some oil rigs to keep livestock. I am not sure whether they have battery hens and fresh eggs. I understand that dogs are kept on some of them. Clearly there is a risk when an oil rig is serviced from two countries at once, which I imagine is not impossible. If there was, for instance, an oil rig in the North Sea serviced both from Norway and Scotland, it is technically possible that livestock could be brought on to the oil rig from, let us say, Norway or some other continental country and then it could be brought on to this country without proper control. I hope the Minister will say whether he is happy with this.
  Would he say also to what extent the Government intend to monitor the to-ings and fro-ings of helicopters and ships from oil rigs? I notice that there was a marvellous phrase in the debate in another place, when the Minister there, in introducing the Bill, talked about the dangers of the introduction of animal

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  disease from having met with "something foreign on the high seas". It sounds almost improper, and I do not think I should dwell any longer on meeting "something foreign on the high seas".
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Why not?
  Mr. Jopling: I will leave it to my hon. Friend when he comes to make his speech to ponder what might be met on the high seas.
  There is another point I wondered about, on which the Minister might like to comment. If not, perhaps we might return to it in Committee. There is a strange definition in Clause 1(4) of "animal At my university I was taught that "animals" included poultry. I am a little puzzled as to why for some strange reason "animal" now may be wider, but certainly the Bill does include poultry. That was the way I was educated when I was reading agriculture quite some time ago. It seems that this is not the intention. So it is strange that this distinction between animal and poultry seems to appear throughout the Bill.
  There is another matter on Clause 1 about which I should like the Minister to say a word. I do not know whether he has had time to read subsection (5). For a glorious example of the parliamentary draftsman's mumbo-jumbo, subsection (5) must take the biscuit. I have tried to understand it and I do vaguely understand it. But it would be helpful if the Minister read out from his brief—because I cannot believe that he or anyone has it in his head—what subsection (5) is about. It is so abstruse. We should all be grateful.
  I come to the order which the Minister is empowered to make under Clause 1. Can he tell us what sort of order it would be? I imagine it would be the negative resolution procedure so that, from the moment of making it, the Government were allowed to do whatever they wanted. I imagine that—particularly in view of this Government's well-known inability to get their supporters present and correct to pass their own legislation—to have the affirmative resolution procedure might mean that the disease was well established before they had mustered their quorum to get the affirmative resolution through.
  Under Clause 2 we appear to be giving the Government much greater powers
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  of control. Indeed, it almost sounds as if we are giving the Government powers of immigration control. We hear that they can visit temporary landing places and all sorts of places where sumgglers might have been at work. I realise that it is not a sort of immigration control because we are told in Clause 1(4)(a) that the powers of the Bill do not extend to the control of man. I do not know about woman. We have some of our famous lady friends here who seem very keen on the Abortion Bill. Perhaps they would ask why Clause 1(4)(a) refers to:
  any kind of mammal, except man".
  Whether that means that there could be control over women and not over men I am not sure. Perhaps the Minister could tell us.
  I cannot but welcome the harsher penalties proposed in Clause 3 for those who risk spreading animal disease. It is absolutely right that the penalties should be at least as tough as those which the House agreed to under the Rabies Act.
  May I ask about the position with regard to the European Economic Community? I am sure that the Committee will agree that it is essential that we do not lose our advantage as an island in animal health matters. Over the centuries, the fact that we are an island has helped us immensely in the control of animal disease. I understand that, under the Treaty of Rome, we are allowed to have restrictions of this sort. I can imagine that continental countries might be tempted to argue in the future that our animal health restrictions were transgressing Articles 46 and 92 of the Treaty, which forbid trading practices restricting trade and competition. I was glad to read in a debate in another place that the Minister said that under the provisions of Articles 30 and 31 of the Treaty we are allowed to have measures which:
  "…are justified on grounds of the protection of health and life of humans, animals or plants."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6th February 1975; c. 1005.]
  I hope, therefore, that this will be all right.
  I know that under the Treaty of Accession we were allowed for the time being, as the Minister said, to keep our own animal health regulations. I think I am right in saying that these will be reviewed in 1977. I hope that the Government of the day, which will very

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  likely be different from the one we have now, will be able to renegotiate similar regulations to those we have now.
  We shall not oppose the Second Reading of the Bill. We shall need to discuss details in Committee, but I hope that we can give the Government this piece of legislation at an early date.
  10.55 a.m.
  Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I welcome the Bill, particularly its degree of flexibility. I assume that my hon. Friend, when he replies to some of the questions, will assure the Committee that paragraph (c) is so widely drawn that it will include animal protein and waste. He will be aware that, with the modern husbandry to which efficient farmers are now committed, it is essential that we should not import anything liable to spread disease, either because it has not been properly sterilised or because it will be used in close conditions which can rapidly affect animals and pose considerable risk to human beings.
  If I have a regret about the Bill it is that, although it is extremely widely drawn, it concentrates very much on animal diseases. There might be a case for a certain amount of cross-fertilisation, if I may use that phrase, with the Department of Health and Social Security to see what aspects of human health are involved in the importation of possibly unsafe foodstuffs. I realise that this is not the moment to discuss that aspect.
  I must reinforce, I am sorry to say, what the hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling) has said about the European Economic Community's powers over restrictions on importation. I hope that when the Minister says that "for the time being" these veterinary regulations are in force, he is not contemplating at any point in the future taking away from us the right to regulate importation, because this would put many people at risk, consumers as well as those in the farming community. We have long prided ourselves on our high standards of veterinary procedures. We are able to maintain those only because of the draconian methods that we have used in the past. I for one would fight tooth and nail to oppose any watering down of these provisions, particularly since I cannot sec that the spreading of
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  a disease is a way of persuading people that one is actually contributing to their well-being and their political future.
  I hope that the Minister will make it clear that, although this is the position for the time being, in the future it will remain equally clear that we will not allow any alteration of our laws which could in any way endanger our population.
  10.58 a.m.
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I fully endorse what the hon. Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) has said. I believe that she has put her finger on one or two very important points relating to animal health and diseases in this country. I refer particularly to her mention of animal waste. I hope that the Minister will pay careful attention to the importation of animal waste, because it is in such waste that such diseases as foot-and-mouth have come into this country. I am sure that nobody wants an outbreak of the severity which we had a few years ago. I was then not in this place but worked with a construction company. We used many of our excavating machines to go to farms to bury the carcases of animals slaughtered because of foot-and-mouth it was an appalling sight. I do not want to see it repeated in this country.
  That brings me to a point again touched on by the hon. Member for Crewe namely our animal health regulations and the European Economic Community. I feel as strongly as the hon. Lady that we should ensure that our standards are maintained and retained and that, when the matter comes up for review in 1977, we make it perfectly clear to our European colleagues that we are not prepared to budge from our standards. We do not want another outbreak of the severity of that which occurred a year or two ago. I believe that our regulations will ensure that that does not happen.
  I hope that the Bill will become an Act. It is supported wholeheartedly by the National Farmers Union. My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling) said that we welcome it. I believe that one of its major and most appealing features is its flexibility.
  At the risk of being slightly out of order may I raise the subject of rabies

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  which, I know, is deal with separately under the Rabies Act. This disease is sweeping in from Eastern Europe at approximately 20 kilometres a year, and will be at the Channel Ports in about four or five years' time. There is tremendously increased travel between Europe and this country. My hon. Friend has mentioned oil rigs and the increase in fishing and sailing vessels. There is commuting between this country and the Continent. It is easy to smuggle in a dog or a cat or other small animal without notifying the appropriate authorities and without the animal undergoing the necessary quarantine.
  What additional proposals have the Government in mind to deal with this developing situation? I hope that the Minister, in receiving the grateful comments of this side of the Committee, will pay attention to this very important aspect of animal health. As my hon. Friend has done, I welcome the provisions of the Bill. I hope it will have a speedy passage through the House. We certainly will not oppose it on Second Reading, but I hope that the Minister, in summing up, will deal with some of the points that have been raised.
  11.2 a.m.
  Mr. Thomas Torney: I was very pleased this morning by the breath of fresh air that blew across from the Opposition with the remarks of the hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling). They were so different from what we have heard in so many agricultural debates in the past.
  Mr. Jopling: I am amused that the hon. Gentleman should say that. I am sorry that he did not feel that he could stay long enough at the great aid rally at the Central Hall to hear my oration on that occasion because I think it would have done something to educate him.
  Mr. Torney: It is so easy to make a great oration when we play to the gallery and tell the audience, perhaps of many hundreds, what it wants to hear. But when we try to tell an audience the facts we find ourselves facing a great number of difficulties.
  When I was interrupted, I was saying that it gives me considerable pleasure to hear hon. Members opposite apparently changing their views about agriculture
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  and agreeing with us that the Bill is good for the agricultural industry, as it certainly is. It is so difficult for them to understand, or have they such short memories? It was unpleasant to hear the hon. Member for Westmorland make the kind of attack he did on my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture. Few Ministers of Agriculture in recent times have been beset with the kind of problems that have faced our Minister of Agriculture. Few Ministers have had to face the kind of opposition that we have had to tolerate up until this morning when at least the Opposition have said that they are prepared to accept something as necessary as this Diseases of Animals Bill which is good for the industry generally. They seem to have forgotten so much of what they did not do while they were in power, or so much of what they did which was perhaps not so good for the industry generally.
  The hon. Member for Westmorland must know that many of the problems in agriculture today, are affected by membership of the EEC and it was not the present Government who took us in. This brings me to the important point. Both sides of the Committee this morning have mentioned that they are hopeful, with the care that we take to prevent disease of our animals in this country, that our regulations will prevail if we continue to be a member of the EEC. They are asking the Minister to make the appropriate pressures in the appropriate directions.
  May I commend to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee the suggestion that the one way that restrictions to protect animal health in this country can be assured is by our not remaining a member of the EEC. If we can ensure that, we can ensure absolutely that Parliament will be sovereign in this matter of diseases of animals and that Parliament in future will definitely be able to take what measures it wishes, to pass laws as it sees fit at the time to ensure, as far as it is humanly possible, that diseases in animals do not spread.
  I do not want to say much more than that the Bill is to the benefit of the agricultural industry in particular and the country as a whole. It is again pleasing to know that there has been some small

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  change in the Opposition and that they will accept this and let it go through. I hope it goes through speedily.
  11.7 a.m.
  Mr. Paul Hawkins: I very much welcome the Bill. I have been connected with the livestock industry all my life and I am intimately concerned when there is disease because it affects one's pocket which is always close to one's heart. I have seen the most horrifying destruction of herds built up over a lifetime, of generations of work, of breeding being brought to fruition and then being destroyed overnight by foot and mouth and other diseases. I very much welcome the fact that the Bill is brought forward. One can say without the strictures of the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) that all parties have always wanted control of animal diseases.
  I very much welcome the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary is taking the Bill through the House. He gave two of my constituents a long meeting considering an obscure trouble which we have had in our constituency which affects not only animals, but human beings. I refer to psittacosis. A farm worker's wife in my constituency died and many other members of the family were taken ill and the Minister was kind enough to receive a deputation of the farmer concerned and the NUAW secretary of that area. He gave us a very interested and sympathetic hearing. I want to know whether the Bill will enable him to control more easily this disease which is also—as I think we proved to him—connected with fowl pest. Many of the parrots coming in on one consignment were found to be full not only of psittacocsis, but also of fowl pest. I have seen East Anglia ravaged by fowl pest, the destruction of thousands of birds—wild birds as well which also later caught the disease. I greatly welcome the Bill.
  I feel that the hon. Member for Bradford. South, who opposes the Common Market so bitterly that he had to bring it into the debate, should think long and hard about the way in which we can control these animal diseases such as rabies which is getting nearer and nearer to us because of the increase in movement across the Channel. We are an island still but we are becoming much less of
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  an island because of modern means of communication. We are there in Europe, pushing our frontiers back on this matter. We are gaining a foothold there and getting agreement on many of our regulations. This is the way in which to fight diseases of animals, rather than here with a brick wall round the country. We can never defeat disease in that way; it will defeat us.
  I welcome the Minister's endeavours in the Common Market on many matters; already a great improvement in the control of disease and in other matters connected with animal welfare has been brought about. The strange way in which the hon. Member for Bradford, South supports his hon. Friend was clearly illustrated by his opposition to the reintroduction of the export of live animals, but let that pass.
  I am extremely worried about rabies—
  Mr. Torney: I hope that the hon. Gentleman realises that, after the debate on the export of live animals, there was a free vote. I was in no way obliged to support my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture on that matter. Fortunately some things are left to conscience on this side of the Committee and of the House. If I happen to object conscientiously to the tortures inflicted on live animals which are being exported I am at liberty to vote according to my belief without any question of my being disloyal to my right hon. Friend—who is also my very good friend—the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
  Mr. Hawkins: I am sure the Minister will speak for that.
  I should like to speak about rabies. I sat on the Committee which debated that matter and it is one of the most worrying things with which we are faced. All hon. Members know that in any town, and even in country districts, there are far too many dogs. There are dogs roaming in packs on the RAF stations in my constituency. I have had letters and I have written to Ministers but they have no powers. One dog smuggled in on a plane, through the US Air Force or something like that, and let loose on one of these huge camps could have serious consequences. Because of the movement of RAF personnel so rapidly across the

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  world they must often leave their pets behind. This has created a tremendous problem and if one rabid animal were to be imported in this situation the result would he horrifying. Does the Minister believe that as a result of the Bill we shall have greater control over psittacosis and over rabies?
  There is another matter which clearly does not come within the scope of the Bill, but I hope the Minister may also have some thoughts about the control of our own dogs within our own country. Many of them are unwanted and are, I believe, victims of the greatest possible cruelty to animals.
  Mr. Winterton: Is my hon. Friend aware of the growing incidence of sheep worrying and of the particular incident that occurred in the North-West where over 100 sheep were worried and had to be slaughtered during last week. It is a serious situation resulting from the increased numbers of unwanted dogs which literally stray in packs.
  Mr. Hawkins: Yes, I am aware of this. We have fewer sheep than my hon. Friend has in his area, but there is no doubt that this is a very important point.
  I welcome the Bill. It is vital that this is brought in and the controls introduced as quickly as possible. The only doubt I have about it comes in the front page, in the explanatory memorandum in which it says:
  Effect on public service manpower
  The Bill will have no significant effect on public service manpower.
  I never want to see an increase in public service manpower, but I know perfectly well that many aerodromes and ports are not manned as they should be. I believe that the Minister will acknowledge that the number of veterinary surgeons and staff available to the Ministry is deplorably under strength. I hope that this means only that the actual numbers will not increase above what is laid down in some order, but that the number laid down is sufficient to cope with the new regulations he is introducing.
  11.15 a.m.
  Mr. Strang: I am glad that all hon. Members without exception welcome the proposed legislation. I noted that the hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling) pointed out that this was an area
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  where we tended not to be split or in disagreement on the basis of party loyalties. I was a little sorry that he marred that statement by his somewhat gratuitous and unsubstantiated attack on my right hon. Friend.
  The hon. Member for Westmorland referred to the enomous flexibility given to the authorities by the legislation. I am sure he would accept that in matters of this importance it is fully justified. When we were discussing this earlier it was suggested that perhaps these enormous powers might be challenged by hon. Gentlemen, particularly in view of the publicity which has recently surrounded the criticism of certain tax inspectors who have gone into premises to inspect records. As I have said I am sure that hon. Gentlemen would recognise the enormous difference between checking a tax matter and following up an animal or pieces of a substance which it was thought had led to the outbreak of serious disease.
  I come to some of the questions asked by hon. Gentlemen—
  Mrs. Dunwoody: And ladies.
  Mr. Strang: Yes, I am coming to that point. I feel that the words "hon. Gentlemen" should include female and male Members of the House, or we should have one word to encompass them.
  Mrs. Dunwoody Mrs. Dunwoody Hon. Members.
  Mr. Strang: Bovine and pig semen is controlled under the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1943. The Bill will control semen of all other species by order. We tend to have different legislation for bovine and pig semen. At present we are looking at some rather narrow aspects of the importation of pig and bull semen in the context of our current review of the artificial insemination legislation.
  I covered the point on oil rigs in opening. The hon. Member for West-morland referred, quite rightly to the situation, which could occur, whereby an animal is brought on to a rig from Norway and subsequently brought into the United Kingdom. Potentially more serious is the situation in which an animal could be brought on to a rig from Norway and come into contact with a British animal which subsequently came back to the United Kingdom. That is fully covered by our legislation.

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  The definition of "animal" is laid down in the Diseases of Animals Act: that is contained in the current legislation. I can remember numerous debates on Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bills on the question of whether the word "animal" should be deemed to include birds.
  I come to the hon. Gentleman's point on Clause 1(5). When the 1950 Act was passed, the Minister of Agriculture had sole responsibility for diseases of animals throughout Great Britain. But since 1955 he has shared this responsibility with the Secretary of State for Scotland, and the references to the Minister in the old Act have to be construed accordingly. With that information, he will find the subsection much more comprehensible.
  I come to the point about the European Community which was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody), referred to, I think, by the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) and certainly by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney), who takes a deep interest in EEC matters and has a strong point of view on this issue. He was clearly concerned about the possibility that, if we remain in the Community, the national controls which we now exercise over the importation of animals might be threatened. I assure my hon. Friends that I feel just as strongly on this as they do. It would be quite indefensible—indeed, preposterous—for any British Government to slacken in any way the controls which we exercise over animal importations and over ail importations in order to minimise the risk of animal disease.
  The hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Hawkins) was on a fair point when he said that we should not altogether forget the influences which we can have over other animal health legislation in member States. It is also worth remembering that while our disease status for rabies and for foot and mouth, which have both been mentioned, is higher than in most of the other Community countries, there are other diseases, such as brucellosis, in which our status is lower. Therefore, if there were to be a movement towards harmonisation—I take it as read that harmonisation could
  664
  mean only other members coming up to the highest standards of any member State—it could have a beneficial effect on some aspects of our disease measures and should not be presented solely as something liable to be disadvantageous.
  Mrs. Dunwoody: Would not my hon. Friend hope that we would do something rather more urgent about brucellosis, irrespective of what the EEC does? He is aware that this is a disease which causes not only great inconvenience to human beings but great hardship to families involved.
  Mr. Strang: I agree absolutely. I did not mean to suggest that we should now wait until the Community brings pressure on us to raise our standards here. We must continue to raise our standards as quickly as we can with regard to that disease and all other diseases, as we are doing now in the Bill.
  Mr. Winterton: Would the Minister therefore consider raising the brucellosis payment in order to speed up brucellosis eradication?
  Mr. Strang: The hon. Gentleman would not want me to deal with that specific point in this speech. Indeed I might take that opportunity to come to a point raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West, whom I would like to thank for his kind remarks about the meeting I had with him and some of his constituents regarding the unfortunate incident of psittacosis in his constituency. Manpower, after all, is the limitation in brucellosis, and the Government are very conscious of the shortage of trained veterinary manpower in the State Veterinary Service. This is a real constraint at present on our efforts to improve animal health; that is why we are pursuing this matter vigorously. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the vets got a special increase over and above other people; there has been an extensive advertising campaign and we are now interviewing a substantial number of applicants who have come forward. I can assure hon. Members that the Government are aware of the importance of redressing the current shortage of manpower in the public sector.
  Mr. Hawkins: Would the Minister consider, at any rate for an emergency period which, as far as I can see, will

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  last for five or 10 years, employing in many cases for particular work private veterinary surgeons who arc not in the State service?
  Mr. Strang: We already use private vets but frankly there is no substitute for the proper State service. The Government give the highest priority to attracting more vets into the public sector.
  I should like to come briefly to some of the other points raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe raised the important point of animal protein, particularly animal protein waste. This waste will be covered by the new provisions. To some extent it has been covered already, but when these new provisions come into effect they will give us greater coverage over this important area.
  On rabies, the Government have recently brought forward new legislation, which is now on the Statute Book. We are now embarking on a publicity compaign to bring home to people, particularly to people who will shortly be going on holiday, the fact that they must not bring in foodstuffs liable to carry animal disease and that they must not bring in dogs. The real problem is to ensure that people are not able to break the law. The law is tight enough; the penalties are there. We must ensure that people do not break this law, sometimes through ignorance.
  Dogs are a separate issue; the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton)

  THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS ATTENDED THE COMMITTEE:

  Costain, Mr. Albert (Chairman)

  Taylor, Mrs. Ann

  Benyon, Mr.

  Tomlinson, Mr.

  Dunwoody, Mrs.

  Torney, Mr.

  Hawkins, Mr.

  Ward, Mr.

  Hicks, Mr.

  Wiggin, Mr.

  Jopling, Mr.

  Winterton, Mr.

  Strang, Mr.

  will appreciate that this is primarily a matter for the local authorities. But a Government working party with local authority representation is looking into this important matter, which is of great concern to many sheep farmers, particularly in some of our more remote areas. It is true that this legislation will enable action to be taken, if justified, on the ground of animal or poultry disease, and this of course covers psittacosis.
  On my hon. Friend's point that we must pay more attention to the human health risk, in so far as any of these animal diseases is a danger to humans, this legislation and all we are doing is of enormous importance in that context. But the Department of Health and Social Security must inevitably, as my hon. Friend recognises, take the lead on specifically human disease.
  I think I have covered the points raised by hon. Members. I am grateful for the interest they have taken in the Bill. I am sure it is an important step forward, and I commend it to the Committee.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Ordered,
  "That the Chairman do now report to the House that the Committe recommend that the Diseases of Animals Bill [Lords] ought to be read a second time".
  The Committee rose at half-past Eleven o'clock.