PUBLIC LENDING RIGHT BILL [LORDS]

HC Deb 16 November 1976 vol 919 cc1237-306

Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

Mr. Lawson

I am delighted that the House has decided that we should continue this debate, if only because I was on my feet and I shall be able to complete my contribution, although my train of thought has been somewhat arrested. I think I was saying that the Minister had raised the question of the administrative costs. The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) has pointed out how all over the place she was when she had refused in Committee to accept a particular limitation, not a very narrow or restrictive limitation, on the administrative costs.

The hon. Lady said in her speech that the administrative costs would be 40 per cent. I think that the 40 per cent. came from the estimates in the report of the technical investigation group, which said that it would cost £400,000, and the fact that the main clause of the Bill is to put £1 million of taxpayers' money into the Central Fund. I think that it would have been right for the hon. Lady to point out—she will correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think I am—that the estimate of £400,000 administrative costs, even if it were correct and given in good faith, was in 1975 pounds. Therefore, in present money the administrative costs would be nearer £500,00 than £400,000, whereas the £1 million remains where it is. Therefore, the administrative costs can be even higher as a percentage of what is available to be distributed and, therefore, what is left over for the authors is even less.

But we must look at this more closely. We must look at two different aspects which the hon. Lady rightly raised. The first question is: what are the administrative costs, and is it sensible for us to go for a more costly scheme in the interests of equity and fairness and other values which we hold dear—for example, including the other libraries, which we regard as being of the first importance? The second question is: who is to bear the costs, not merely the administrative costs but the costs of the whole scheme?

It is not surprising the hon. Lady is so sensitive on the question of administrative costs when under this scheme the costs have to be paid for by the taxpayer whether he likes it or not, irrespective of whether he borrows a book and whether he can read a book. It would be different—this is a lesson that the hon. Lady might learn—if the thing were financed, as it should be, from library charges. Not now, but later this evening, we must get at the great myth that the free public library is a sacrosanct principle which cannot be assailed, assaulted or eroded.

We must deal with that because it is at the core of the Bill. Had the hon. Lady said that this would be financed from library charges, fines, dues, subscriptions and so on, so that the whole scheme would be self-financing, an extra administrative cost for the sake of equity would be supportable. Indeed, the amount available to the authors would have been more. In the long run, authors would get far more if what they got was dependent upon what people were prepared to pay as a modest charge for borrowing library books than if they had to depend on the good will of a Scrooge-like Treasury, as they must under the Bill. Authors would do far better, the scheme would be self-financing and there would be no excess of public expenditure. I am concerned that there should be no increased public expenditure.

10.15 p.m.

The hon. Lady said that to extend the libraries covered would increase administrative costs. One thinks first of the Library of the House of Commons, of university and college libraries throughout the country which are particularly dear to the hon. Lady's heart—

Mr. Ian Gow (Eastbourne)

Will my hon. Friend direct his mind to a crucial element in the amendment? As it stands, the discretion is vested in the Secretary of State. Does not my hon. Friend think that it is important to divest the Executive of powers of this kind and to stipulate in the Bill exactly which libraries would have the additional powers to charge?

Mr. Lawson

My hon. Friend is on to a very good point. I did not draft the amendment. Although I shall support it because it is an improvement on the Bill, I agree that the amendment is defective in the way suggested by my hon. Friend.

Because of the inherent vagueness, the libraries that the Secretary of State happens to favour can be included and those which he disfavours can be excluded. That is why the hon. Lady was able to say that, although there will be extra administrative costs, it is impossible to say what they will be. It is also impossible to specify the libraries. That is a slightly circular argument, because if the Secretary of State is to decide upon the libraries one would think that the junior Minister representing the Secretary of State would be able to say which libraries they will be. Alas, precision is lacking in the amendment because that information was not forthcoming. Nevertheless the amendment represents an improvement to the Bill.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford is not present. His contributions to our debate are so good that we are always sorry when he is not here.

Dr. Keith Hampson (Ripon)

Perhaps my hon. Friend will glance to his left.

Mr. Speaker

Order. This is the only part of the House we know.

Mr. Lawson

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford is perhaps with us in spirit but not in any other sense. Because I wished to take part in the Report stage, I read the Committee's proceedings with great care. What made those proceedings less interesting was that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford made so few contributions to the debate. That is a matter of great regret to me, knowing as I do the deep interest he has had in this subject over a long time.

The Under-Secretary chided me earlier and said that she had made all these remarks. I attempted to intervene but she did not give way. That is her right, and I do not complain. It is important for the hon. Lady to realise that many Members—indeed, the overwhelming majority—were not members of the Committee. It is unacceptable for her to say that because she made certain remarks or gave certain explanations in Committee she need not make them on the Floor of the House. In fact, they should be made on the Floor. That is the purpose of Report—namely, to enable the arguments to be deployed on the Floor of the House. For the rest of the evening's debate, let us make it clear that something that was said to a small coterie in Committee must be uttered on the Floor if the hon. Lady wishes the point to be made.

Mr. Body

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for the hon. Lady to make perfunctory remarks? In an earlier debate she spoke for only two minutes. From what one could gather it was a good argument, but we never heard what it was.

Mr. Lawson

It is clear that the hon Lady is ineffably bored by the briefs she is being served. I cannot blame her, but she has a duty to perform. This is an important Bill and she must conquer her boredom, which I concede is natural boredom. If only she will try to speak from the heart, maybe she will be able to become a little more enthusiastic and will find it possible to speak longer and more fully.

There are various other libraries that are meant to be included if the amendment is carried. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford alluded to reference libraries. This is worth exploring because there seems to be some lack of clarity about whether reference books are included. It has been said that this will be a matter for the High Court to decide. Surely that is an expensive way of settling a simple issue. If the hon. Lady will settle it for us clearly this evening, she will save a lot of expensive litigation.

Miss Margaret Jackson

Perhaps I am getting a little absent-minded in my old age, but I understood that we had settled that issue when dealing with the previous amendment.

Mr. Lawson

If the hon. Lady thinks that, she is becoming a little deaf in her maturing years. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford quite clearly mentioned that arising from the previous debate there was a lack of clarity about the position of reference books. Maybe the hon. Lady is becoming confused. There are reference books that are consulted in libraries and there are reference books that are taken out of libraries. Are reference books included? I distinctly heard it said that that would be a matter for the High Court to decide. When that was said, the hon. Lady did not utter a word of dissent. There is confusion, and it is part of her function to clear it up. I hope that she will do so.

Animadverting to reference libraries, which it is said will be included if the amendment is carried, we come back to the issue that I developed on an earlier amendment—namely, magazines. Surely serious magazines should be accepted. Many of them, such as the New Statesman and the Spectator—the latter is a better magazine but I am prepared to put it in alphabetical order—are to be found in reference libraries, in reference sections of public libraries, in university libraries or in the House of Commons Library, the libraries that we are talking about in the amendment.

The hon. Lady said earlier that magazines would not be included. She said that they are not books although she could not give us a definition of a book. I must point out to her—she probably does not know this—that many ordinary working people talk about books when they are referring to magazines. For many printers, compositors and others who work in the printing trade, it is the custom to refer to a magazine as a book. The confusion can be put right only by a definition that the hon. Lady has so far failed to provide for the House. She has proceeded in a rather cavalier manner.

Having announced at an early stage that she was about to give us the definition of a book, the hon. Lady later announced that there will not be such a definition because it is not possible to make one. That was not a very satisfactory answer, especially after the expectations which she had aroused in our breasts that she was about to unburden herself of a definition of "book". As I say, this is rather important because among different social groups the word "book" has different connotations and different meanings.

It is astonishing that there should be this discrimination between the so-called public libraries and the libraries of our universities and other institutions and the Library of the House of Commons. The argument that an author should have some recompense for books of his which are borrowed but not bought must apply with equal force if those books are borrowed from university libraries, technical college libraries, school libraries, the Library of the House of Commons, the Library of the House of Lords or whatever it may be.

It is astonishing that the Minister has given us no argument to justify the distinction which she draws except the one of administrative convenience. That is not good enough. We in this House are concerned with matters of principle. It is no good the hon. Lady saying that it is administratively inconvenient to include these other classes of library and, therefore, that the authors of books which are borrowed from them should not be included.

The Minister should address herself to matters of principle instead of getting bogged down in the boring and almost irrelevant matters of technical convenience which her advisers serve up to her. She should also reflect on the origins of the public library. The origins were not to entertain. I have no prejudices against entertainment, but the origins of the public library were to instruct, to improve, to educate and to edify. They were very serious and high-minded origins. By discriminating now in favour of the public library but against the academic library, the university library the school library, the technical college library and the libraries of our great institutions of learning, the Minister is turning the whole matter on its head and saying that the purpose for which public libraries were originally introduced, constituted and set up should be actively subverted by the Bill.

If the Minister accepts the amendment, she will go at least some way towards redressing the balance and towards keeping in tune with the high-minded principles—principles which we should not sneer about today—which led to the public library movement in the first place. It is a movement which I am sure the Minister and her right hon. and hon. Friends feel is still worthy of support.

Mr. Gow

I have no wish to prejudice the outstanding career which awaits the Under-Secretary, but I find myself in substantial agreement with her remarks. Unusually, I find myself in respectful disagreement with those of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), for reasons which I shall explain. I am opposed to the principles behind the Bill because, at present, any measure which adds to public expenditure and which increases the number of people employed in non-productive work should be rejected by the House.

As it stands, the Bill at least has the merit of being more restrictive of manpower and of money than would be the case if the amendment were accepted. I have a profound objection to the amendment because, if passed, it would confer more power on the Executive, without any element of parliamentary control. We would be giving the Secretary of State a further element of patronage. It would enable the Secretary of State to say that if a certain library lent a book there should be a public lending right, whereas if another library lent it there should not be that right. I am suspicious of increasing the power given to the Executive to make decisions which are not subject to parliamentary control.

10.30 p.m.

Clause 1(1) states that the public lending right will be payable when works are lent by local library authorities. This, again, is a sign of the times. If we look at the definition clause, we find that it imposes a restriction to libraries under the control of local authorities—in England and Wales on the one hand, in Scotland on the other, and in Northern Ireland in the third case. There is a perpetual concentration on libraries which are under the control or approval of local or central Government.

Mr. Lawson

I am not quite clear which side my hon. Friend is on. Will he support the amendment on the ground that we are trying to widen the scope beyond that of local authority libraries?

Mr. Gow

That is an important point which I shall answer presently. My anxiety is that the Secretary of State will use the discretion conferred on her by the amendment to go beyond local library authorities to libraries which are in one way or another under the control of Ministers. I do not want to give that power to the Secretary of State, and I do not approve of exclusivity of local authorities. One could say that I am arguing against both the Bill and the amendment.

In singling out local authority libraries as the sole bodies from which there should be derived a lending right, the Government are predictably giving preferential treatment to libraries within what is colloquially called the State sector. I am wholly opposed to any measure that will add to public expenditure at this time, but if we are to add to public expenditure it is quite wrong to say that authors will receive the public lending right only if their books are borrowed from libraries in the public sector. Equally, to extend this, as the amendment would, is wrong too, because it would vest discretion in the Secretary of State. Far too many discretions are already vested in the Secretary of State, and it is time that this House began to assert its rights of control over the Executive.

When we vote on the amendment in a few hours' time, I shall vote against it. If the House votes for it, it will provide a greater opportunity for increasing public expenditure. If the Secretary of State were entitled to extend the provisions of subsection (1) to further libraries, the cost to public funds would be even greater.

Mr. Lawson

I think that my hon. Friend is under a misapprehension. Whatever happens, the amount of expenditure under the Bill is limited to £1 million. Although the Secretary of State can by Statutory Instrument increase that sum with the approval of both Houses of Parliament, that applies equally whether or not the Bill is extended to cover other libraries.

Mr. Gow

I accept that, but the possibility of using up the £1 million annually is increased if the number of libraries in respect of which the money is payable is increased. If the number of libraries is restricted, it is possible that the entire amount will not be used.

Mr. St. John-Stevas

We obtained the sum of £1 million in 1973 when I was the Minister responsible. Thanks to the tall in the value of the pound, I imagine that that sum has depreciated by 30 or 40 per cent. There has, therefore, already been a heavy reduction in real terms. My hon. Friend should allow for that when he is concerned about public expenditure. There would be a case for an amendment to increase the sum by 40 per cent., and the Government would introduce it if they wanted to give the Bill the same priority as the Conservative Government gave it.

Mr. Gow

My hon. Friend is developing a most dangerous argument. I find myself in profound but respectful disagreement with him. One of my anxieties is that if we agree to £1 million today, a subsequent Secretary of State—even my hon. Friend, who in most other respects is eminently sound—would increase it. My hon. Friend fails to understand that the Government are borrowing £1,000 million a month, £250 million a week, £35 million a day. My hon. Friend says that we should make an exception in the case of the public lending right. But in public finance we need to show an iron resolve, and we must ensure, even with the authors, who may have been hard done by, as with all other claimants on the public purse, that consistency of purpose which it 13 essential to follow if not only authors but the nation generally are not to be put into bankruptcy.

Mr. St. John-Stevas

I was most impressed by the Churchillian tone of my hon. Friend's remarks. However, he must realise that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has already made it plain that the principle of cutting public expenditure is subject to exceptions. One exception is national defence. The others are national security and care for the needy. Authors may well come into that last category since they are one of the least-well-off sections of the community. But surely, just as during the war an exception was made for the arts, there is a case in these grave economic crisis that the arts should be afforded special treatment.

Mr. Gow

I do not wish to act as umpire between my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. Who am I to assume that role?

As I have been asked for my view on the matter, I shall not flinch from giving an answer. My answer is that when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe) made that very moving and powerful oration at the Conservative Party conference last month, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford will have listened and which was subsequently endorsed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, he made it clear that the three areas of public expenditure which would be sacrosanct when my right hon. Friend formed her first Administration, would be external defence, internal security and those in the community who are in real and dire need.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford should not plead his special case, because herein lies the real danger to the economic purity of the next Administration. My hon. Friend knows about purity. Indeed, he is a pure man. The economic purity of the next Administration—I choose my word carefully—depends on our not succumbing to special pleading. If authors fall into the category of those in special need, defined by my right hon. and learned Friend, they will be protected under that category, not by virtue of the fact that they are authors.

Therefore, without wishing to embarrass the Minister, I shall be voting against the amendment and in favour of the clause unamended while at the same time disapproving of the whole principle of the Bill.

Mr. Body

We have 11 more debates ahead of us.

Mr. Lawson

And Third Reading.

Mr. Body

And Third Reading. Therefore, perhaps we should make shorter speeches if we are to get tomorrow's business.

I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) has cottoned on to some of the facts behind the Bill. Does he realise that nothing will happen until 1980?

Mr. Gow

Yes, I do.

Mr. Body

My hon. Friend must agree that before then the pound will have continued its inexorable downward slide.

Mr. Gow

Does my hon. Friend agree that before 1978 is out there will be another Administration on the Government Benches? Does he further agree that the moment that becomes a possibility, let alone a reality, the pound will rise dramatically?

Mr. Body

No, because—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine)

Order. We are dealing with an amendment. I should be obliged if the hon. Gentleman would confine himself to the amendment.

Mr. Body

But this is germane to what we are discussing, Mr. Depnty Speaker. As a monetarist, my hon. Friend will surely agree that there will be a two-year time lag, so that whatever is done in 1976 will be reflected in 1978. Even if we had a new Administration now which included my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) and others, they could do nothing to prevent the continuing decline of the pound certainly for the next year.

The cost of administering the scheme will mount up because, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne is aware, the Bill proposes that there should be 35 to 40 civil servants or officials to administer it, and it is unthinkable that from 1978 onwards they would be paid as little as they would be paid now. One can therefore forecast that the cost of administration will be not the 40 per cent. assured to us by the Minister but a figure in excess of that.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman must relate his remarks to the amendment.

Mr. Lawson

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You did not have the privilege of being in the Chamber when the Minister, in her opening speech, rested her case on the administrative costs involved.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I regret that I did not hear the Minister, but I would still like the hon. Gentleman to keep to the amendment.

Mr. Body

We are concerned about whether we should limit the scheme to public libraries. I do not have to convince you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the whole of the cost of the public library system is borne by public funds. The taxpayer and ratepayer pay the whole of the revenue needed for the public library system.

In the interests of the authors we must ask whether we can be sure that by 1980, when the scheme comes into operation, the public library system will be in as healthy a state as it is today. It is possible that there will be a dire, I will not say economic Armageddon, but a financial crash. If that happens, the public library system will be one of the branches of the public sector the future of which will be in danger. The public library system will be one of the first candidates for the surgical cuts that will be necessary in the event of such a financial crash.

Mr. Lawson

Unless there are charges.

Mr. Body

As my hon. Friend says, unless there are charges. I look forward to the day when there are charges in the public library system. Those who use public libraries are, of course, literate and are usually those who are fortunate in being among the better educated, and yet they will get the advantage of expenditure made available by the taxation of both the literate and the illiterate. Every ratepayer and taxpayer will have to contribute to a system of which only a minority will be beneficiaries.

I suggest that by 1980 we might well see a severe cut-back in the public library system which might open up opportunities for the libraries which have gone out of business in your lifetime. Mr. Deputy Speaker. I could give a long list of such libraries, which would include Smith's, Boots and Mudie's, as well as many other lesser chains in different parts of the country which have been driven out of business by the public library system. Harrods has survived, but most commercial libraries have gone out of business—a matter of regret to many of us. There may be an opportunity for them to come back into business. If they do, the books they buy and the authors whose works they acquire will be outside the scheme.

To start preparing in 1976 for a scheme for 1980 when conditions may be different is wholly wrong. The Minister must give thought to that. She would be very bold if she said we could be sure that by 1980 the public library system would be buying books of the same kind as now and that the same authors would be benefiting from their patronage. That is not unlikely, but I think she would agree that it is less than probable.

Therefore, I urge the hon. Lady to a course that would enable the Bill to be wider. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne that the amendment would give still more patronage to the Secretary of State, giving the power to select whether Harrods, Mudie's, Boots or whatever else should be included, to say "I like you. You are a good chain of libraries. We shall include you but exclude another." That is a kind of patronage that the House should not give to any Minister. But the amendment has a great deal of merit, and I hope that the hon. Lady will consider it sympathetically and give a reply different from the one she gave in Committee.

Mr. Moate

I support the amendment. I entirely accept the criticism of it made by my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) and Holland with Boston (Mr. Body), but I feel that it is an acceptable compromise. In Committee I tabled an amendment seeking to include all libraries. That did not mean that one would have immediately to incorporate all libraries within the scheme, but it would have enabled the scheme to be drawn up with the possibility of taking a sample from all libraries. The amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) was on a par with the one now before us, providing this power of discretion to the Secretary of State. There was a Division in Committee, resulting in a tie, and the matter was resolved by the Chairman's casting vote. That is why we are again debating the question.

Despite my inclination towards the more comprehensive amendment and my reluctance to give discretionary power to the Secretary of State, I felt it right to compromise with my hon. Friends and produce an amendment that we genuinely thought might be acceptable to the Government. I am very disappointed that once against the Under-Secretary has rejected the proposition.

It was suggested earlier that the hon. Lady was bored with the proceedings. I think that she referred to the tedium of hearing the same speeches over and over again. If she is bored—I have some sympathy with her—it is to a certain extent a self-inflicted boredom. I suspect that she is bored because she knows that she could be doing many better things with her time, dealing with more important matters relating to education. I suspect that she is bored because she has been told to say "No" to every amendment and is prepared to offer no significant contribution to the debates. It is not her fault but the fault of the brief she has been given by the Secretary of State.

Is it surprising that the hon. Lady is bored and unresponsive when she has been told to say "No. There must be no amendments, no matter what the merits of a particular proposition might be"? Some might say that that is consistency. I would say that it is repetition to the point of tedium. I am surprised that the hon. Lady is even awake to listen to her own arguments, if that is the right word for the case that she puts.

The amendment is important, and the reason why we had a tie in Committee, after an extensive debate, was that it was regarded as a fairly fundamental matter. The fact that we debated these matters at length—although two or three hours on a matter of this importance is not particularly long—is an indication that this is an issue relating to the fairness of the scheme.

On previous amendments we have argued that the scheme is very unfair to a large number of authors. It has been argued by some of my hon. Friends—I think from the wrong viewpoint—that it is unfair to certain libraries because they might be excluded from the scheme. I ask them—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow), who momentarily is not with us—to reconsider that point. I would say to my hon. Friend that it is not an advantage to the libraries to be included in the scheme. The fairness of including them lies in the fact that they would then have to share the burden of administration, which as the Bill stands will fall exclusively on the local library authorities.

What seems to me to be grossly unfair is that this burden should fall solely on the public sector and not be distributed equally among all libraries. That is certainly one argument in favour of extending the Bill to cover all libraries, or at least to allow the Secretary of State to include other libraries when she thinks fit. But the real fundamental argument in favour of the amendment, and against the Bill as it stands at present, is that the Bill produces a grossly distorted sample. It is unfair to all authors if one restricts the Bill solely to the local library authorities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne argued that it would increase public expenditure if the scheme were extended to include libraries other than those at present covered by the Bill, namely, the local authority libraries. I think, with respect, that he was wrong on that point. The Bill is quite absolute in its present limitation of £1 million. Obviously it would be nonsensical if the whole £1 million went on administration, although, nonsensical as it might seem, we might get to that situation. Nevertheless it is limited to £1 million, and we are primarily concerned with getting a principle on to the statute book.

One could extend that argument ad absurdum and have the whole £1 million spent on administration, but the authors would not worry because at least they have the principle on the statute book. Who knows, but the time we get to 1980–81 the salaries of the 20 to 25 staff, plus the registrar, might be up to that level, and the Government would still be adhering to the limit of £1 million. If the value of the pound has dropped by 40 per cent. since my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford secured the £1 million, as he proudly proclaims. I have no doubt that the staff and administration costs will have gone up by 40 per cent. Therefore the scheme looks somewhat nonsensical.

I do not think that we should make the scheme less fair because of the possibility of the administration costs going up by a small percentage. It would be merely a small percentage to extend the scheme to cover other libraries.

The hon. Lady has made a great point about the cost of administration. She says that it would be virtually unwork- able to extend the scheme to cover libraries outside the local authority system. She then tells us that the technical investigation group has never investigated this. I find it extraordinary that the Government base their whole scheme on what the technical investigation group has reported. They say that at last they have a practical working scheme because the TIG has produced the answers.

11.0 p.m.

When we come to analyse the scheme and ask whether the group has considered other libraries, we are told that it has not done so because it would be impracticable. But if the Minister has come to the conclusion that a scheme is practicable enough to bring forth a group report, how can she then say that it is impracticable if she has not asked anybody to make a proper study of the possibilities?

I wish to emphasise how defective the Bill is since it relates only to local authority libraries. The Minister said in Committee that there were 6,500 public library service points, plus about another 6,000 library service units for hospitals, old people's homes and the like, giving a total of 12,500 outlets. She then said " Although we have 12,500 library service points, it would be impossible to extend the scheme to cover the few hundred other major libraries outside local authority systems." She did not say why but implied that they were one-off libraries.

Mr. Nott

Some private libraries in my constituency concern themselves with a whole host of interesting matters relating to local history and local mythology—matters of great importance to the people of Cornwall. But is it being said that those matters are not to be taken into account in deciding whether an author should receive something out of this odd Bill, which I am seeking to understand, and that only public libraries which concern themselves with novels of the cheaper kind are to receive income from the Bill? Is that the case? I was not a member of the Committee, but I am trying to understand the Bill.

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friend has concisely summed up the defects of the Bill. He is absolutely right. The arguments which he applies to local specialists also apply to some of the greatest libraries in the land. A little earlier in our discussion the Bill was described as the "Harold Robbins Benefit Bill". The fact that it is limited to public libraries and district libraries emphasises this point. We have been told that 70 per cent. of the lendings by local libraries relate to works of fiction. We do not intend to disparage fiction or to deny the rights of fiction writers to their proper reward, but that is not a fair reflection of the literature of this country.

The Government are adamantly refusing to allow other libraries to be introduced to bring in the more serious works involving a great deal of research in order to ensure that there is a fair sample. The fairness of the sample is all-important to a scheme based on a sampling system of libraries throughout the country.

We have been told that the Bill seeks to bring justice to authors, but each time we put forward a proposition to make the system fairer the Government say that we cannot change the Bill. Indeed, the Government have not accepted one amendment. They are so convinced that the scheme is perfect that even when we put forward an amendment that will not cause any increase in public expenditure they still say "No.".

Mr. English

The hon. Gentleman should not blame the Minister personally. As I have said before, junior Ministers cannot accept amendments and the senior Minister responsible is too frightened to be here.

Mr. Moate

The last thing I wish is to be unfair to the Under-Secretary. The hon. Gentleman is right. She represents the Government, and I apologise if I have attributed to her all the faults of the Government. That is too great a burden to place on any one person's shoulders. But, sadly for the hon. Lady she represents the Government's view on this extraordinary Bill. I suspect that deep in her heart she regrets it, just as many hon. Members regret that we have this legislation at all. They and the nation regard it as lunacy that, at a time of crisis in our affairs, we should spend time debating a Bill which proposes to increase public expenditure.

I am concerned about how we spend that money if, unfortunately, we have to spend it.

Mr. Nott

I understand that Harold Robbins, to whom my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) referred earlier, was outside the scope of the Bill because overseas authors were not to benefit. Perhaps I am wrong, but if overseas writers, those who spend a great part of their lives writing important works on local history and all books in private libraries are not to benefit, who is to receive the available money?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman should look at the amendments before asking a question of that sort.

Mr. Nott

I understand that the amendment is concerned with whether public libraries should be the only ones which are to be relevant to the Bill. I was trying to ascertain who would benefit from the money available after the deduction of administrative expenses.

Mr. English

More than 40 per cent.

Mr. Nott

If books taken from private libraries, including learned works on local history, are excluded, who will receive the remaining 60 per cent, of the funds?

Mr. Moate

It is not easy to gain enlightenment from this curious measure, but it is clear that the specialist writer on Cornish folklore would not benefit. If his work is lent by a public library, he might get a few pence. The figure is minute.

Mr. Faulds

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong about that. If he is talking about Cornish writers who dealt with aspects of Cornish life in that way, the name of Leo Walmsley immediately springs to mind. His whole career and his pecuniary difficulties over many years give an absolute denial to the hon. Gentleman's argument.

Mr. Moate

If that author's books are being lent through public libraries, he will receive public lending right. The report of the technical investigation group made clear, however, that specialist writers in regional terms would get trivial amounts—perhaps £1 or £2 a year. A Welsh fiction writer was the classic case quoted. However, if a writer has no books in the public lending library and they are in private libraries, he will get nothing.

As things stand, the Government much prefer to give taxpayers' money to Harold Robbins, living in California or wherever he might be, and not to the much deserving author living in Cornwall and doing a lifetime's research into his specialist subject.

It will be hard to correct the fundamental follies of the Bill, but one way in which we could improve it is by extending it to include other libraries. I emphasise that we are not trying to pin down the Under-Secretary to saying that the provision must include all libraries. All that the amendment seeks to do is to enable the Secretary of State, at her discretion, at some time in the future and if she thinks fit, to extend it to other libraries. It is not often that Opposition Members seek to give discretion to a Socialist Secretary of State. When we do so, she rejects it.

Mr. English

The Secretary of State is not here to reject it.

Mr. Moate

We are talking about an enabling provision. At some time in the future a scheme will be drawn up. Presumably, in the course of time it will need amendment in the light of experience. Therefore, one does not want a rigid scheme laying down a rule that this could apply only to public library authorities.

I want to emphasise the question of the burden of administration. The Undersecretary knows that many libraries dislike this measure and that many librarians have objections to this proposition, largely because of the administrative burden involved. Why should it apply only to the district library authorities, and not, for example, to Harrods? My hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston mentioned the existence of Harrods' commercial library—and a very good library it is, too. However, it is extraordinary that the Under-Secretary has such a preference for the private sector, and not a discrimination against it, inasmuch as she says that all the poor large district libraries will have to work this wretched system and have a legal obligation to make these returns but Harrods' commercial library and any other commercial libraries that may exist are exempt. That is unusual favouritism for the private sector.

Perhaps this means that the Undersecretary is trying to encourage the growth of commercial libraries. If she is, she should know that they are excluded by the Bill. What an extraordinary proposition. Perhaps we shall see an increase in commercial libraries. I have heard it said that certain large organisations are considering establishing a new private enterprise lending library system, partly because many of our local public lending library authorities are having their budgets cut and are unable to provide as many books and as good a service as they used to provide. Perhaps there is an opportunity for Smith's or Boots to start up a library again. However, if that happens, perhaps the Undersecretary will say that if an author has his books purchased by Smith's and Harrods and then lent out they will not be included in the sample. I do not understand that, because those books are subject to the ISBN, so there would be no problem about putting them on the computer.

It is hard to drag answers from the Under-Secretary. Perhaps that is because she does not have any. I suspect that that is part of the truth and that her civil servants are so disillusioned by the Bill, that it is so actively disliked in her Department and by anyone concerned with educational matters and that it is so detested by all and sundry connected with it that they are not anxious to feed the hon. Lady with effective answers. I suspect that even the draftsmen who had to draft the wretched thing deeply regret the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford and the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Jenkins) ever got into a position of making this commitment on behalf of their respective parties. I hope that the Minister will tell us why she felt it right to exclude Harrods and Boots and the other private libraries which might exist. What puzzles me particularly is not only the exclusion of commercial libraries but also the exclusion of some of the great British libraries.

11.15 p.m.

I turn from Cornish folklore to the other end of the scale and refer to the British Library. I have with me a booklet about the British Library. I would like to feel that by accepting the amendment the hon. Lady would include the British Library in the scheme. The booklet starts by asking What is the British Library? I suspect that the hon. Lady would probably have to ask that question. Perhaps her Department has not heard about the British Library, otherwise it would have included it in the scheme. The Department must be ignorant of its existence, otherwise it could hardly have left it out.

We are told that the creation of the British Library may well prove to have been the most exciting development in library services in the twentieth century. It has been the culmination of years of effort by librarians, scholars and much maligned Government Departments to provide the nation with a great library having comprehensive facilities". It is so great that the hon. Lady does not want to acknowledge it in the Bill. Here we have one of the greatest libraries in Britain, perhaps one of the greatest in the world, and the hon. Lady in effect disparages it by saying that she does not want to include it in the public lending right system.

We ought to extend the size and scope of this library. For example, we are told that in the Reference Division the total number of books is now nearly 8 million".

Miss Margaret Jackson

In order to refresh his memory, if the hon. Gentleman turns to the report of the Committee stage he will see that I am not ignorant of the existence of the British Library, because both he and I discussed it when we discussed this amendment at some length.

Mr. Moate

I am glad that the hon. Lady remembers. I am glad that she has again contributed to our discussion. I wanted to come back to some of the things she said in Committee which undermine her whole case in respect of the amendment.

I wish to press on and refer to the Reference Division, where the total number of books is now nearly S million". The hon. Lady does not want to include those 8 million books. They do not matter. The authors of those 8 million books do not count. There is no justice for the authors of those 8 million books. They do not matter because it is administratively inconvenient for the hon. Lady, To condemn the British Library because it is a one-off library, as the hon. Lady did in Committee, is a rather strange argument.

We also have the Department of Printed Books. Here we learn that the musicians' library is one of the most extensive sections of printed music anywhere in the world, amounting to more than one million items". What pity we did not include "works". Here is a classic example, because that fabulous collection is available to the people of this country yet the composers will get no money from public lending right.

I turn to the Lending Division, which is perhaps more relevant to the Bill as it stands. In 1974 the Lending Division received 2 million requests for loans or photocopies, 84 per cent. of which were satisfied from stock and 10 per cent. from elsewhere. The division also acts as the national centre for medlars. I presume that that does not refer to any Socialist inspectors set up under the present Government. "Medlars" is a computerised medical literature retrieval service. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is a fruit".] In this case it is not a fruit. It runs short courses aimed at promoting the use of this literature and it is responsible for the translation service of Russian and oriental languages. I do not think that that is the definition of a fruit, but it is certainly a definition of "works".

The hon. Lady said in Committee that the British Library lend the books only to other libraries for the use of their readers. She said: In so far as books from the British Library are lent out through other libraries, they would attract public lending right."—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 28th October 1976; col. 152.] The hon. Lady was wrong. In so far as they are lent to other local authority libraries, they might attract public lending right. It is no good the hon. Lady shrugging. I understand that a substantial proportion of the loans from the British Library goes out to the private libraries to which my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) was referring.

The specialist libraries—industrial, university and educational—are the principal borrowers from the British Library. The hon. Lady misled the Committee.

Mr. Lawson

Has my hon. Friend dealt with the Armed Forces' libraries both at home and overseas?

Mr. Moate

That matter was not raised in Committee and we have not so far discussed it. I presume that there are many library outlets for members of Her Majesty's Forces both at home and abroad. Will the hon. Lady tell us whether they come within the scope of the local library authorities? The size of the Armed Forces is declining steadily—we shall not hold the hon. Lady directly responsible for that—but their numbers are still substantial and I imagine that there are many readers of fiction among them.

Will the hon. Lady seriously say that the authors of books lent to the forces are not to receive any public lending right? If so, perhaps she will tell us why. Perhaps she will cheer us by saying that they are included because forces" libraries come under public library authorities, or that she is ready to accept the amendment.

I want the House to consider a range of other libraries, but before detailing them I want to turn to a vast area of book buying and lending that is excluded by the Bill but would be included if the amendment were accepted. I refer to educational books. If the case is that authors are deprived of book sales because of State purchases and individuals being able to borrow books over and again, that argument applies more fundamentally to education than to public libraries.

I am thinking not merely of colleges of education and their libraries but of educational books purchased through school libraries. Copies of a novel that is a set subject in a national examination could be purchased in bulk by a school and used over and over again by successive generations of schoolchildren.

Mr. Nott

My hon. Friend has not referred to medical libraries. Medical students may take out of a medical library an important book on anatomy that is fundamental to their studies. Would books taken out of medical libraries be ignored for the purposes of public lending right?

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friend has not understood. The Government have a fundamental objection to more serious works, and books on anatomy would come into that category. Had they not such an objection they would automatically have accepted the amendment. They show a preference for novels. Perhaps those in the Department of Education read novels all the time.

Mr. Ridley

My hon. Friend has not mentioned the Library of the House of Commons.

Miss Margaret Jackson

Yes, he has.

Mr. Ridley

I quite understand that Hansard is a multi-author publication, but there are many other books in the Library.

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friends are being immensely helpful. I have not yet covered a great many libraries. Indeed, there are many more.

Mr. Nott

Will my hon. Friend deal with medical libraries before he deals with the House of Commons Library? I made a serious point and I ask him to deal with it before he turns to the point that was raised rather intemperately by my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley).

Miss Margaret Jackson

Perhaps the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) will ask his hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott), who has intervened for the fourth or fifth time, to go away and read the Bill. If he does so, he will not have to ask his hon. Friend so many questions.

Mr. Moate

That is not the helpful intervention for which I had hoped from the hon. Lady. The Bill does not answer the questions that my hon. Friends have asked. It is most confused. We have heard about justice for authors—that is what the Bill is supposed to be about—but every time we examine the Bill in detail we find that it is grossly unfair and that there will be injustice for many authors. It is not surprising that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives is confused.

It would be helpful if the hon. Lady would give us—

Mr. Nott

The facts of life.

Mr. Moate

I was going to say anatomical details, but if my hon. Friend wishes to refer to the facts of life, so be it. The major medical libraries are vitally important institutions. Presumably their books are used for reference purposes or are loaned internally to medical students or those studying medicine generally. No payment will be made to the authors of such works. Presumably that is because the Government place a higher value upon the reward that Mr. Harold Robbins or any other such author receives than upon the reward of the serious writer of a medical work. That argument applies to many other libraries.

Mr. Gow

If one is a Russian professor of anatomy whose works are being lent out by a local authority library in the United Kingdom on the one hand, or if, on the other hand, one is a United Kingdom professor of theology who is letting out his books in a NAAFI library in Dusseldorf, is my hon. Friend telling the House that the Russian professor of anatomy will be entitled to public lending right and that the English professor of theology will not be so entitled?

Mr. Moate

If I have followed my hon. Friend correctly through that maze of logic to the precise end, assuming that he is not a multi-author and assuming he has an ISBN, I suspect that the Russian author would receive public lending right and that the British author would not. That is one of the many nonsenses in the Bill.

I turn to some of the more serious omissions. I reiterate that the hon. Lady gave a misleading answer in Committee. She said that British Library lendings would attract public lending right to the extent that the books went out to other libraries. Presumably that was what she hoped was the effect of the Bill. In making that answer, she recognised the justice of the case for ensuring that lendings from the British Library attract public lending right for their authors. That, however, is not the position.

I hope that the hon. Lady will tell us what percentage of lendings from the British Library goes out through the local library authorities or to the hundreds of other institutions in the United Kingdom. If the bulk of the books goes to private libraries or institutional libraries, it is grossly unfair that the authors should not receive public lending right on the lendings from our great British Library. I cannot understand why it should be so difficult to include the British Library in the system.

11.30 p.m.

I have dealt with the commercial libraries, and the Government have yet to explain why they have been excluded—that is, libraries which may exist already or which may be created in the future. I have dealt with the British Library. I have touched briefly on education matters. But I was diverted from the problem of books sold by publishers through the education system. In those cases, equally the publishers must be deprived of subsequent sales, because books are used in schools over and over again. I should like to see the Bill contain some provision so that, at a later stage, the Secretary of State could extend the scheme to include school libraries and school books purchased through the local library authority acting as agent, as often is the case.

I quote an example. A Mr. David Holbrook wrote to The Times the other day challenging what I said about expenditure on public lending right, my argument that this was no time to make a State handout to authors and that the £1 million suggested as the original sum to pay to authors might soon be extended to £4 million, and my comment that this was at least one economy that we could make. I stand by every one of those statements. Mr. Holbrook went on to describe his considerable literary achievements and to emphasise the financial difficulties that he had to face, with which I sympathise. But I am sure that it has often been the case throughout the ages that even authors of great merit have had financial struggles. I do not think it right at this time to use our library system as a scapegoat. Mr. Holbrook went on to say that he had some 30 books to his name, some of which had sold tens of thousands of copies all over the world and were used daily in the teaching of English and in the education of teachers.

The point is that the books which he has produced, in literary terms successfully but in commercial terms not so success-fatly, have obviously gone into the education system. Obviously, in terms of those sales there will be no benefit to him from the Bill. First, the scheme as it is proposed will exclude the education system totally. Secondly, the Government are not even taking powers to allow the legislation to include education libraries at a later stage. Therefore, if there is any case for public lending right for the public library system, surely there is a strong case for it to apply to the education system.

In practice, I do not think that there is a case for either, because, through its expenditure on public libraries and on books for the education system, the State is the greatest benefactor of authors and of the publishing profession. The lion. Lady told me recently in a Written Answer that the taxpayer, though these various media, supported British publishers to the tune of 40 per cent. of their total home sales. If the taxpayer buys 40 per cent. of the products of publishers, I do not accept that authors can say that the State of depriving them of income.

That deals with education and the ordinary range of school books. But there are many other education libraries. In Committee, we heard about the study done some years ago of 134 colleges of education. I calculated that there were between 6 million and 7 million books in those libraries, none of which would be eligible for inclusion in the sampling of public lending right.

Then we have the university libraries. We have some of the most famous in the world, and presumably they buy a large number of volumes to maintain their stocks. For some odd reason, the Government say "We do not want to include these fine university libraries."

It is extraordinary that the hon. Lady and the Government Whips should be prepared to whip through a Bill that will exclude some of our greatest libraries. That is an insult to the libraries, to our universities and to the authors who supply the books. It is an insult to authors that the Government should propose to place on the statute book a Bill so riddled with anomalies, contradictions and unfairnesses when we "cave heard hardly a word of argument from the Gov- ernment against an amendment whose merit is overwhelming.

Mr. Lawson

Is it not a significant factor, of which the whole House should be aware, that the hon. Lady has had not one word of support from her Back Benchers on this very important amendment?

Mr. Moate

That has been the pattern throughout these debates. During the Second Reading debates there were not even enough Members to maintain a quorum. Government supporters were so uninterested and apathetic that the Government Benches were devoid—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. Perhaps the hon. Member will return once again to the amendment.

Mr. Ridley

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have been listening to my hon. Friend and I think that he hardly strayed from the straight and narrow until being slightly diverted by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson).

Mr. Deputy Speaker

All I was suggesting was that the time had come when the hon. Member should return to the amendment.

Mr. Moate

I was just adding emphasis to the point that I was about to make. I was about to comment on the lack of argument from the Government side about the amendment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) has said, the Government have not had a word of support on the amendment from their own Back Benchers.

Mr. English

The hon. Member will be aware that both Front Benches support the Bill but that, although both Chief Whips could presumably have tried to bring in their troops, between May and October both of them were unable to bring 100 Members to force the closure on Second Reading. That is an illustration of the popularity of the Bill.

Mr. Moate

I shall not pursue that, but it must be self-evident. I should probably stray out of order if I pursued that line. There may be arguments against the amendment, but I think that there is a strong case for it. However, we have heard hardly a word of argument from the Government. They cannot believe that the Bill was so perfect when it was introduced that no argument is required.

Mr. Nott

The House is listening with rapt attention to my hon. Friend's interesting speech, but I must put my question to him again. He has not dealt with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) and subsequently by myself about the Armed Forces' libraries and medical libraries, and I should like my hon. Friend to get back to the question.

Can he explain why it is—reasonably enough, the hon. Lady said that I should read the Bill; I have done so—that someone who has written a book on anatomy and who has devoted a great proportion of his time and energies to doing so should effectively be excluded from the benefits of the Bill simply because that book is not taken up by the libraries? I revert to the question that I asked half an hour ago. Is there any justification for people who devote their time and lives to writing books of this nature being so excluded?

Mr. St. John-Stevas

Clausewitz "On War".

Mr. Nott

My hon. Friend mentions Clausewitz "On War". After all, that is a book taken out with great frequency from the forces' libraries. In sergeants' messes, Clausewitz "On War" has been a popular book for a long time. Perhaps Clausewitz is no longer available to benefit, but why should authors of similar books be denied the benefits of the Bill when Harold Robbins will benefit?

Mr. Moate

I do not deny the relevance of the question, but, without being immodest, some of us on these Benches have tried to make up for the lack of fervour on the part of our Front Bench in opposing the Bill. I think I shall have to adopt the role of Government spokesman and my hon. Friend the role of Opposition spokesman, and then perhaps we would have a more constructive debate. We are not getting answers from the Under-Secretary. We want clear, helpful and concise answers.

Mr. Cow

In order to answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) surely it is neces- sary to know the date of the death of Clausewitz. Under Clause 1(6) the lending right is payable only until 50 years have elapsed since the end of the year in which the author died.

Mr. Moate

That was a most helpful intervention. No doubt if I were the Government spokesman my PPS would now be running off to get me the date of death.

Mr. Lawson

Surely this is immaterial. As Clausewitz is dead, he is unable to register the book for public lending right.

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friend has foxed me on that one. But I am sure that the Under-Secretary is totally familiar with the intricacies of the Bill, although she has managed to conceal her knowledge from us in recent weeks. I must, however, move on if we want to preserve tomorrow's business, which I believe is important.

I turn to the exclusion from the Bill of Government libraries. I hope that the Under-Secretary will explain why they have been omitted. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne has got it wrong. He thought that it was wrong to show a preference in treating different libraries in different ways. Any burden that is imposed should be imposed fairly and equally on all libraries. At the moment. Government libraries are excluded. Why should the Minister secure that favour for her Department? Her Department has a very important library with 183,000 volumes, but it is excluded from the Bill.

Mr. English

What is the number of borrowings? It is upon that that the public lending right will be based.

11.45 p.m.

Mr. Moate

If the Government had done their job properly they would have referred the matter to the technical investigation group, which could have considered whether Government libraries should be included. It could have provided the number of lendings.

Mr. Lawson

How many of the 183,000 volumes are by multi-authors? Such books would be excluded from the Bill anyway.

Mr. Moate

I have not done a personal analysis of these volumes, but, again, that is the sort of question that the group could have answered.

It is not good enough for the Government to say that the whole scheme is based upon the group, that Government and private libraries cannot be included because that would be impractical and that the matter has never been considered by the technical investigation group.

Mr. Gow

Is the Department's library included in the schedule to the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, which is referred to in Clause 5(2)(a), or has my hon. Friend overlooked that?

Mr. Moate

The answer to the first question is "No". The answer to the second is that I may have overlooked it.

Other libraries which are excluded are the House of Commons and the House of Lords Libraries. Our Library gives us magnificent service in terms both of research and of the provision of books. I hope that the Under-Secretary is listening. If she is getting fed up, she deserves to be with this lousy Bill.

Can the hon. Lady tell me about the inter-lending arrangements? Will a book borrowed by the House of Commons Library through another library or through the British Library attract public lending right? I do not see how it could, since the House of Commons Library will not come under the category of a local authority library. If I am right, how can the Minister justify that situation? If I borrow a novel from my district library, it will earn the author a public lending right payment, but if I borrow the same book from the House of Commons Library—I suppose that it might get it from the same source—it will attract no such payment. How can that be fair to authors?

I hope that when the Under-Secretary replies she will explain the position regarding inter-lending arrangements through the House of Commons Library. Will she tell us about the great industries which have substantial libraries? Will she also tell us about the British Broadcasting Corporation's library of over 100,000 volumes?

Mr. Ridley

Has my hon. Friend considered the library at Transport House which is full of interesting volumes? I think that the hon. Member for Wake- field (Mr. Harrison), who is about to make a highly intellectual contribution, probably browses in the library at Transport House. Why should not authors who have books there receive public lending rights as well?

Mr. Moate

I am not particularly enthusiastic about the library at Transport House, but I should imagine that the books there, if I may be excused an unintended pun, are well read.

I understand that the BBC's library has 140,000 volumes. All the great learned institutions in London and elsewhere have substantial libraries.

Mr. English

I hope that in the light of his earlier comments the hon. Gentleman will not forget the library at Conservative Central Office as well.

Mr. Moate

There are plenty more. There is the Prison Service. Is that covered? Many London clubs have substantial libraries. Presumably they would be regarded as quasi-commercial.

Mr. Nott

I wonder whether my hon. Friend would care to comment on paragraph 22 of an interesting document entitled "Public Lending Right", which is probably relevant to the amendment. I hope that the House will forgive me if I read from this document, but it is relevant to the amendment. Paragraph 22 states: Another variety of Optical Character Recognition font, known as OCR B, was not tested because suitable portable equipment for recording this code is not yet available in the United Kingdom, although it should be in two or three months' time. This font is similar in appearance to numerals as normally printed, is more aesthetically pleasing than the other codes tested and would be preferred by both publishers and booksellers. That is paragraph 22 of the final report of an investigation of technical and cost aspects. Perhaps my hon. Friend will comment on where that relates to the amendment. I shall not read any further for fear of displeasing the House.

Mr. Moate

Its relevance escapes me. and I do not have the interim report with me. Therefore, I find it difficult to relate it to the amendment.

Mr. Lawson

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) was reading from the final, not the interim, report. I think that what he probably intended to read was the recommendation in paragraph 4 of Part 1, "Introduction", that the use of local authority computer based systems should be exploited wherever possible. Perhaps that explains why local authority libraries are singled out in the Bill.

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friend is on to a very serious point.

Mr. Whitehead

The hon. Gentleman should address the House.

Mr. Moate

Mr. Deputy Speaker, may I, through you, ask the hon. Gentleman to desist from making comments from a sedentary position?

Mr. Peter Hardy (Rother Valley)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) may have addressed the House from a sedentary position, but the point he made was valid. All that we are having at the moment is a private conversation between the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) and the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate), who has been speaking for far too long. It seems to me that the House should be addressed and that the hon. Member for Blaby should conduct his conversation with his hon. Friend at least in your direction, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Lawson

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) should be so defective in his knowledge of the Bill. I was intervening in the pertinent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) and I apologise if my eyes strayed for a moment away from the direction of the Chair. But I am sure that if they had strayed too far or too long you would have called me to order.

Mr. English

Further to that point of order. My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Hardy) said that he thought the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) was engaging in a private conversation. But I have been unable to hear the hon. Member for Faversham properly because of a series of private conversations around me.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I suggest that it would be for the benefit of everyone if we allowed the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) to make his speech in his own way.

Mr. Ridley

This is a serious point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) was intervening in a speech, but the hon. Members for Wakefield (Mr. Harrison) and for Pontefract and Castle-ford (Mr. Harper) were conducting a prolonged, loud and seated conversation about how they were bored at having to discuss the Bill at this time of night and how they might terminate it. That is intolerable. It is wrong for hon. Members to complain about a public debate on this side of the House. Will you please ask the Whips, if they wish to conduct a private conversation, to do so outside the Chamber so that we may get on with consideration of the Bill?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

There have been a number of conversations in different parts of the House. I suggest that hon. Members should rivet their attention on the hon. Member for Faversham.

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby has raised an issue of fundamental importance. I do not wish to speak at great length because we have a great deal of business to complete and we are all anxious to protect tomorrow's business.

Sir Timothy Kitson (Richmond, Yorks)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The House does not yet know what tomorrow's business is. We do not know whether we shall be dealing with tied cottages or the aircraft and shipbuilding industries. Why should my hon. Friend try to protect something of which we have no knowledge?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Perhaps the hon. Member for Faversham will deal with the amendment, and then we can make progress.

Mr. Moate

Perhaps the Government's confusion is the explanation for their delaying tactics. Perhaps they are playing for time and the only reason for the Bill is that they need the time to sort themselves out.

I wanted to deal with the computer base of the scheme. If the scheme is to work at all and the Registrar is to conduct his duties with any degree of efficiency, it will only be because of the use of computer techniques and of the ISBN code. Unless the numbers can be fed into the system, the scheme will be a wash-out. If The base of the scheme is as I suggest, I do not understand why it is so difficult to include all the other libraries, particularly reference libraries. The books in those libraries have ISBN numbers. Why should it be so difficult for the hon. Lady to accept an amendment that allows the Government to include the British Library, which would enter its 8 million reference books and 2 million loans a year with the ISBN numbers and register them? I cannot understand why the hon. Lady is making such a meal of the matter.

12 midnight

The matter has been spelt out at such length because if the Government insist on restricting the scheme to the district library authorities they will have a very unfair sample of authors. They know that to be true, but they do not care. If they insist on bringing to the House a Bill which is said to be concerned with the principle of justice for authors, let us be sure that we are giving justice within the limitations of the proposition. The hon. Lady knows that it is an unjust measure. She admitted that there was inequity. Her only defence is the practical difficulties. We have had no explanation why those practical difficulties are so significant.

Limiting the scheme to the district libraries means that 70 per cent. of the !endings affected are novels. Why is the hon. Lady showing prejudice against the writers of more serious works and a preference for the successful novelists, who stand a chance of making a great deal of money from film rights, although admittedly many do not? The hon. Lady is showing a prejudice against those who may have devoted a lifetime of research to more scholarly works of a type that might be found in greater numbers in the many libraries she seeks to exclude.

The matter was discussed at some length in Committee, where many Labour Members were persuaded to abstain or to join us. I very much hope that on the merits of the case the House will accept the amendment so ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford.

Miss Margaret Jackson

The hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) said so often in his lengthy speech that he expected me to respond that I feel compelled to do so now. Through the pages of the Official Report of the Committee proceedings I followed his speech as point succeeded point and question succeeded question. I was surprised that he should so frequently ask me tonight whether I was aware of points he had raised in Committee and the answers which he had received there, but presumably the hon. Gentleman's memory is defective. Perhaps he did not have the advantage of having the Official Report before him, as I did.

Like several of his hon. Friends, the hon. Gentleman seemed to have lost the capacity to distinguish between arguments with which he disagreed and arguments which had not been advanced. It is easy to lose that capacity on such an occasion. Although my case may be one with which they disagree, it is inaccurate for hon. Members to argue that it has not been put. For example, I say to the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), who seems to pop in and out of the Chamber and then complain about what he has missed—

Mr. Lawson rose—

Miss Jackson

I shall not give way now.

Although I have spoken briefly and, I hope, succinctly, I have tried to convey the essence and purpose of the argument every time I have spoken. If I have not spoken at such length as the hon. Members for Faversham and Blaby have done, it is because I believe that it is necessary to put a point in only one way. I may be doing hon. Members an injustice, but I expect them to grasp it rather than expect it to be repeated 10 times in different ways.

Mr. Lawson

If the hon. Lady had been listening, she would have heard that my complaint on this occasion was not about what I missed but about what I heard from her.

Miss Jackson

I think that the hon. Gentleman has complained about both matters. However, I shall not bother to pursue it. It is not terribly significant.

There has been complaint about confusion whether reference books were included in the Bill. The matter is relatively simple. The scheme that it is proposed to establish by the Bill is confined to books which are lent from public libraries. If reference books are borrowed or loaned from public libraries, they will be covered by the scheme. If they are in the reference section and are not taken out on loan, they will not be covered. This is a matter which is included in the Bill, and it has been dealt with over and over again. I accept that hon. Members may think that this is illogical and wrong, but to argue that this is not the point which has been covered over and over again is a terminological inexactitude.

Mr. Robert Cooke

To qualify, does a book have to leave the library premises, or can it merely leave the reference department for some other department in the library? Where is the definition in the Bill?

Miss Jackson

A book has to be in the premises and has to be registered as having been taken out of the library on loan. I doubt whether such circumstances would exist as the hon. Gentleman envisaged, although he may be acquainted with them.

The hon. Member for Faversham, with great assistance from his hon. Friends, made a list of libraries—the Armed Forces, commercial libraries, the House of Commons Library and so on—which he purported to say were in ignorance of whether they are covered by PLR. They will not be covered by PLR. It is the purpose of the hon. Gentleman's amendment to seek to extend the Bill to cover them, and we are resisting it.

I have already explained that there is very little similarity between one of these libraries and another, that in our view it would be well nigh impossible to deal with them on the sample basis that we are proposing to use as the basis for the scheme, and that, therefore, we do not propose to extend the Bill in this way.

Mr. Nott

I take the point that it is not felt feasible to include a number of private libraries in parts of the country in which I am interested, but in Appendix B to the orange document entitled "Pub- lic Lending Right", in which the whole matter is stated, it is said that the Wilton Rural Mobile Library stops for 20 minutes per fortnight. Is it really suggested that that library, which stops for 20 minutes per fortnight, is a more representative sample than private libraries in my constituency, which, I assure the hon. Lady, are much more important in many ways than the public libraries which, as I understand the position, are to be taken as the basis for the Bill?

Miss Jackson

It is the intention of the Government in the Bill to confine the operation of the scheme to public libraries. We propose to do this through the local authority libraries and to reimburse the local authorities for their expenses. Although the hon. Gentleman says that the private libraries in his constituency are a matter of some significance, I think that this is not the case over the country as a whole. We are seeking to confine ourselves to what we consider will be practicable and reasonable and able to be operated efficiently, and to base the case for a scheme on a sample of libraries which will be typical of the whole structure of public libraries in the country. That is why we are excluding such considerations from the Bill.

We have dealt with the point fully on the Floor and in Committee, and I ask the House to reject the amendment.

Mr. Sproat

I thought that the Minister might at least have afforded us the courtesy of seeking to reply to this debate since she did not do so on the previous occasion. She did not answer the central question which has been put time and again. It is no use saying "It is our intention to limit the Bill to public libraries", because we already know that. Our question is why is the Bill so limited when it is clear that such limitation will give an unfair balance and will distort the situation in regard to the sort of books and authors to be rewarded by the Bill's provisions?

The Minister said that one of the reasons for confining these provisions to public libraries lay in the title of the Bill, in that it was a Bill relating to a "public" lending right. I am amazed that the word "public" appears in the title of the Bill. I was under the impression that the Bill was to include the words "public lending right" because it envisaged a reward for authors in respect of books lent to the public and had nothing to do with public libraries.

Mr. English

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Does he realise that the Bill refers to "local library authorities" and that the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate), in an excellent speech, and the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) became confused probably because of the title of the Bill? It has nothing to do with lending from a public library. There are public libraries founded by people such as Andrew Carnegie, and certain local authority libraries might not necessarily lend to the public.

Mr. Sproat

That was my understanding in Standing Committee. That was why I was so astonished when I heard the Minister seek to justify the limitation in the Bill to public libraries because public " was a word contained in the Bill. If the hon. Lady had waited until other hon. Members had spoken she would have saved herself another speech, since I presume that she intends to reply to our points at the end of this discussion.

The House will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) for his comprehensive speech, but I feel that a must seek to fill in one or two lacunae which he left untouched and which relate to an essential point of principle in the amendment.

I take it that the Government's principle underlying the amendment is the same principle of justice for a wider section of authors as we have been attempting to insert by our previous amendments. For example, we debated whether the Bill should cover "works" and not "books" because, although this is a bad Bill, we believe that it would introduce more fairness if it were extended to authors and paintings, records, sculpture and so on. Similarly, in this case we feel that if we are to limit application of the Bill merely to local authority libraries we shall be given a distorted view of the borrowing picture.

It is ludicrously unfair that authors such as Harold Robbins or writers from the Soviet Union should be able to siphon off up to £1,000 of taxpayers' money. We are trying to balance that unfairness by extending the payment to authors whose books may be frequently borrowed from libraries to which the Bill does not apply.

This is a mild amendment. It does not say that the Bill must apply to all libraries, but merely that the Secretary of State of the day may stipulate which extra libraries should be taken within the scope of the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) said that the amendment extended the patronage of the Secretary of State. He is right, but we believe that the disadvantages which would accrue from an extension of that patronage would be outweighed by the increase in fairness for authors who would be brought within the scope of the Bill.

We know that 70 per cent. of all books borrowed from public libraries are works of fiction. We have nothing against novelists, but we do not think it fair that 70 per cent. of the £600,000 which will be left after £400,000 has been spent on setting up a bureaucracy, should be siphoned off to novelists, some of whom may be living in the Soviet Union or the United States.

We think that the balance is unfair and we seek to right it by bringing into the Bill libraries where the preponderence of fiction may not be so great.

In his excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham mentioned various libraries. I shall not repeat them all, but let us consider the position of school libraries from which many types of books are frequently borrowed. For example, pupils are rightly encouraged to read the modern classics.

There is an argument—which I do not accept—that this borrowing deprives an author of sales. Whether or not this is so, such authors will certainly be deprived of a reward in recognition of the pleasure they give to pupils.

The Government have made no attempt to justify these books being excluded from the Bill. We are merely told that this is how the Bill was drafted and this is how it will stay. We do not accept that. A number of hon. Members have advanced reasons for the inclusion of such books, yet the Under-Secretary makes no attempt to answer them.

With school libraries we know that year by year the same books are used by pupils in class, and it must be so. It must be that if there is a principle of reward for pleasure or instruction that authors give, such principle applies to school books; indeed, particularly so, because certain school text books remain text books for years and years. The only benefit that the author gets is the one-off royalty for one copy sold that may last for years in a school library.

I am very sorry that the hon. Lady has not even chosen to look at this very important section of the argument. She may have looked at it to her own satisfaction, and then rejected it. She has not looked at it in the sense that we mean, which is to look at it and to give us reasons for rejecting it.

I am no a member of a commercial library, although I have wandered through Harrods' library on one or two occasions. I do not want to repeat the very good points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham. However, he mentioned that it may well be that if people were paying for their books, the principle on which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) is so rightly keen, and which I tried to introduce in Committee—that is that those who use libraries should be the people who pay for them; the principle that operates at Harrods—this would influence libraries on the sort of books on the shelves. It may be that it is a very different sort of book on the Harrods shelf from that on other library shelves, let alone that on the shelves of private libraries to which my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Nott) referred.

Here we have a totally new consideration thrown in.

Mr. Lawson

Does my hon. Friend also agree that if people had to pay a small charge for libraries, they would not follow the present practice, when one is given six tickets for a local authority library, of taking out six books at a time, thus depriving others of the ability to take them out? If one had to pay a charge one would take one book at a time and read one at a time, which would be less of a strain for the local authority resources about which the Under-Secretary seems concerned.

Mr. Sproat

That is a good point. A further point is that if one does not pay for one's books per item and therefore takes out six at a time, which one would not have taken out if one had to pay for them, if the six books are taken from a sampling library they would weight the sample in a quite different way from the sample being taken from Harrods, because people would not take them out if they had to pay for them.

A wholly different concept is injected. So far the hon. Lady has seen fit to ignore it. I am sorry about that. It is a very valid point that the commercial considerations make a great difference to the sort of books that are taken out.

I shall not go into the question of Forces' libraries or medical libraries, although they are very relevant. My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) may want to go into those matters. I do not want to take up every possible argument that may be deployed on the Bill. However, I want to draw the attention of the House to another sort of commercial library—for instance, the London Library.

I have no interest—if it is an interest—to declare with regard to this point. I am not and never have been a member of the London Library, but I have visited that library and I have been delighted by the range of books there. It is a wonderful library. But, again, why should that not come within the scope of the Bill?

Again, there are quite different sorts of books. I do not speak from a wide experience of the London Library, but it probably has more learned books and more scholarly books in many ways than a local authority library would have. That is not to complain about the local authority library or to praise the London Library. It is dealing with different sections of the public. Because of that it necessarily stocks its shelves with the works of different authors or, at least, authors in different proportion. That proportion ought to be recognised in the general computation which is made when it comes to rewarding authors under the Bill. [Interruption]. If the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) wants to interrupt let him stand up and do so, otherwise perhaps he will have the courtesy to keep quiet. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker

The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) knows perfectly well that interruptions from a sedentary position are out of order.

Mr. Moate

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The remark of the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), which was distinctly heard on this side of the Chamber, is a more serious matter. From a sedentary position we distinctly heard the hon. Gentleman make some remark about "Goebbels" in his comment to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat). That is a disgraceful remark and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I did not hear what the hon. Member for Keighley said. If he did say what the hon. Member for Faversham has alleged, I am sure that he will withdraw it.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Bob Cryer)

I was, in fact, pointing out to my colleague that when a debate was held on social security scroungers the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) failed to appear and I was pointing out that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South was making a lot of garbled remarks at the present moment.

Mr. Sproat

It did not sound like "garbled" to me and many other hon. Members. But if the hon. Gentleman has not got the courage or the guts to say what he said, so be it.

We now return to the amendment. The hon. Lady has made a number of references to the cost of this and other amendments. Normally that is an argument that would weigh heavily with me. One of the reasons I have opposed the Bill as a whole is precisely that it increases public expenditure and public bureaucracy. But, as my hon. Friends have said, if we can to a small extent improve the fairness of the Bill by widening its scope through this amendment, we are prepared to consider that the cost—if it is an extra cost—is well spent.

I do not see why inherently it should be more expensive to insert another sort of library into the sample. There is no reason why it should be more expensive for the London Library to run this scheme than for a local authority library to run it. The cost would be fairly equally disposed between them. In any case, we have not had an estimate of the cost of applying the scheme to other libraries. We know that the TIG did not even look into this question. The argument about public expenditure is rather a double-edged weapon in this context.

The problem of expenditure could be completely overcome if we were to adopt the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby, which I myself made in Committee—namely, that those who use the libraries should make a contribution towards the running of the libraries. In that case we need not worry about the way in which this scheme was run because libraries would be self-financing in this scheme just as they are in others. If we widened the scope of the Bill by accepting the amendment, we should spread the cost on to private as well as public backs and save the taxpayers' and ratepayers' money by allowing private libraries to make up some of the cost.

12.30 a.m.

Mr. Teddy Taylor (Glasgow, Cathcart)

My hon. Friend is talking about the cost to local library authorities. I understand that library functions are to be devolved under the Government's proposed devolution programme and that expenditure will be from a block grant allocated by Westminster. Will the amendment have the effect that the Scottish Assembly if it so wishes will be able to ensure that libraries do not get the funds and thereby deprive Scottish authors of the benefit? There will be administrative muddle if the Scottish Assembly has full power to decide whether to spend the money on libraries or something else.

Mr. Sproat

My hon. Friend, with his characteristic acuity, has put his finger on a very important point. He will be surprised to hear that the question what would happen under the Bill were a Scottish Assembly ever to be set up was not considered in Committee. It is so unlikely that a Scottish Assembly will be set up that it is too hypothetical a question to fall within the scope of the amendment. Public libraries in Scotland might be in an even worse position after the setting up of a Scottish Assembly than they are now. There would be even less money available from public funds. because some would have to go to authors.

My hon. Friend, who comes from Glasgow, is no doubt an assiduous reader of the great Glasgow author Mr. Alistair Maclean—a very rich man, as he deserves to be. Yet the Scottish Assembly could be paying out money to Mr. Alistair Maclean who, having been born in Scotland, is living in Switzerland. So there will be even less money for those projects which my hon. Friend holds so dear to his heart.

Mr. Moate

My hon. Friend is right in saying that this matter was not referred to in Committee, yet it is obviously of considerable importance. It would be wrong for us to allow the Bill to proceed without knowing the Government's intentions with regard to this legislation and their devolution proposals, especially as the library powers are planned to be devolved. Would my hon. Friend suggest that the hon. Lady should advise the House on the technical position?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern)

It would be helpful to the House if hon. Members who have already taken part in the debate tried to restrain themselves from making speeches by way of interventions. When making their contributions they should cover all the points on which they wish to be satisfied.

Mr. Sproat

It is important to know whether there is to be a Scottish public lending right and a Scottish registrar for Scottish authors. The definition of a Scottish author would be interesting. In Committee we discussed the definition of a British author. To our amazement, the hon. Lady could not tell us whether a British author was someone who lived in the United Kingdom, someone who had a United Kingdom passport, or someone who was born here. We do not know. If we do not know who is a British author, how shall we know who is a Scottish author? Is a Scottish author someone who was born in Scotland and is living in London—

Mr. Teddy Taylor

The amendment refers to— such other libraries as may from time to time be stipulated by the Secretary of State". If the Secretary of State stipulates certain libraries, certain funds have to be made available. Such stipulations could not be made under the devolution proposals without the authority of the Scottish Executive: Is the "Secretary of State" the Secretary of State for Scotland? If he had this power of stipulation, would it not be subject to the overall right of the Executive, which has full power to carry out delegated legislation and to make a delegated stipulation? If such a stipulation could be made, it would have no meaning in the event of the devolution proposals going through.

Mr. Sproat

My hon. Friend makes a shrewd point. He indicates the confusion that could arise in the context of the Scottish Assembly. Throughout our debates on the Bill we have assumed that Scottish public libraries would be getting their money from the Department of Education and Science in London. My hon. Friend shakes his head in dissent, but we should be grateful if that means we shall get more money for Scottish libraries.

The question that the hon. Lady must answer is whether the stipulation that will no doubt come into force when we carry the amendment will be assigned, to use a word which was much in use in Committee and which has been used on Report, or whether it will remain with the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Secretary of State for Education and Science.

My hon. Friend will remember the extraordinary incident the other day when the right to rate oil rigs in the North Sea, something which surely should have been assigned to the Scottish Assembly, was retained for the Secretary of State for Scotland. Perhaps that is the sort of arrangement to which the hon. Lady wishes to return. My hon. Friend used the word "muddle". He is right. Muddle, worse muddle and worse muddle compounded is what we shall get if we are foolish enough to try to impose a Scottish Assembly on our present legislative problems.

The words "legislative problems" take me to my next point—namely, that once again the hon. Lady has been advancing the argument of administrative inconvenience in attempting the refutation of the amendment.

Mr. Lawson

If my hon. Friend looks at Appendix B of the public lending right report he will see that the difference between the Tate Central Library and the Wilton Mobile Library is far greater than the difference, for example, between the Bodleian and the London Library. If one difference can be encompassed surely the other can.

Mr. Sproat

That is a shrewd point. The introduction of the Wilton Mobile Library into our considerations—it was first raised as a point of ridicule—raises a matter of real substance. If it is possible to work out what is being done with a library that stops for only 20 minutes every fortnight, if we can make allowance for that, why not make allowance for a library that has stood in the same spot for 600 years? The refusal to do that is what is ludicrous.

Mr. Gow

I wonder whether my hon. Friend has directed his mind to the provisions of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act 1955. An important matter to which my hon. Friend should direct his attention is whether the proposed Scottish Assembly would have power to override the key sectors of that Act. I raise this issue because the document entitled "Public Lending Right: Final report of an investigation of technical and cost aspects" was produced on 17th October 1975 whereas, as Mr. Deputy Speaker will remember, the Government White Paper on devolution, which was written by the former Lord President of the Council, appeared after the report was presented on 17th October 1975. My hon. Friend may have overlooked that the White Paper followed the report. Has he directed his mind to the effect of some of the more obscure subsections of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act 1955 and whether the Scottish Assembly, when set up under the provisions of the Government's White Paper—you will appreciate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we have not yet seen the Bill—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

What Bill?

Mr. Gow

We have not seen the Devolution Bill.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

It is out of order to discuss the Devolution Bill.

Mr. Sproat

Perhaps I can set my hon. Friend's mind at rest by saying that he is correct. I had overlooked the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act 1955 and its relevance to this matter. If he will give me a copy, I shall hasten to consider it, possibly with a view to future amandmeats. But my hon. Friend makes the shrewd point that it came out in 1955 whereas the TIG report came out in October. The whole thing is a mass of ad hoc additions, with one thing piled on another, making no sense, and a Scottish Assembly would make even more nonsense out of what is already a nonsense. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.

The Minister has yet again advanced this argument of administrative inconvenience. It is no good her saying that. We are prepared to believe that it is administratively inconvenient. No one doubts that. But we say that we do not care tuppence whether it is administratively inconvenient if this is a principle which in justice we should accept. That is the essential point.

It is no use her coming before us on every amendment and saying "It is administratively inconvenient". That is not enough. She might as well nothing as say that. We are advancing argument after argument. Either the hon. Lady says "This is what the Government have decided", with no attempt to say why, or she puts forward this tired argument that it is too complicated administratively and that the bureaucracy will be too difficult.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby has made some outstanding contributions to the debate, widening it from Clausewitz to the Wilton Mobile Library. But he made a very pertinent intervention when he spoke of libraries currently outside the scope of the Bill which possibly housed books "of a better kind". Once we begin using words like "better", we are on very dangerous ground.

Earlier, we had to say that "War and Peace", a novel, somehow was better or not better than the Shorter Oxford Dictionary. These are semantic morasses into which we would do well not to, tread.

What is more, when my hon. Friend talks about the "better" books in these libraries, it may be that they are more expensive, in which case the authors of them will already have had a higher price. But it is dangerous to talk about "better" books and to say, perhaps, that the Bodleian contains better books than the public library of Auchtermucht.

Mr. Gow

My hon. Friend is trying to categorise certain volumes. In which category would he put the two books so far published of the former Leader of the House and the volume entitled "The Governance of Britain"? Would he put those in the better or the worst category?

Mr. Sproat

I can deal with "The Governance of Britain" immediately, but I am not sure what are the two volumes of the previous Leader of the House.

Mr. Gow

I refer to the memoirs of Mr. Richard Crossman. The literary executor is the present Leader of the House.

Mr. Sproat

Is he? I did not know that. I must admit to having read only the version of Mr. Crossman's memoirs that appeared in The Sunday Times.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I hope that the hon. Member will be good enough to show me how his argument in any way relates to the amendment. I cannot relate it and I have been puzzling about it for the past two or three minutes.

12.45 a.m.

Mr. Sproat

I am sorry if the lack of clarity with which I have been advancing my argument has disguised the fact that it is totally relevant to the amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

There have been so many interruptions to lead the hon. Member astray. Unfortunately, the hon. Member has too easily fallen for them.

Mr. Sproat

How often in life, Mr. Deputy Speaker—

Mr. Lawson

As my hon. Friend has attacked me, and I do not resent that, may I clarify the position? I do not believe that the Bill should distinguish whether books are better or worse. I agree with my hon. Friend that that is certainly not a matter for legislation. I was merely expressing a personal opinion and I think that as hon. Member we are entitled to express a personal opinion. I think that we ought to have opinions on the quality of literature in libraries.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I do not see the relevance of this line. The very valued friend of the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), Aristotle, would not agree with him on this occasion. I see nothing in the amendment about books; it refers to libraries.

Mr. Lawson

We are talking about different categories of libraries and there is a suspicion that different categories of libraries might contain different categories of books.

Mr. Sproat

I agree with my hon. Friend about the relevance of this argument to the amendment, for different sorts of libraries will contain different sorts of books. If the Bill is confined to public libraries, as it would be without amendment, 70 per cent. of all the books involved will be fiction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby used the word "better". I took him up in a perhaps overly sharp way to say that it was dangerous to talk about "better". We must have subjective opinions of our own, but it is always dangerous to base legislation on subjective opinions.

Mr. Teddy Taylor

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) is talking nonsense. Surely he will agree that there is such a thing as a dirty book, but we are talking about public libraries. Does he know of any dirty public libraries?

Mr. Sproat

No, but I do not know whether my hon. Friend is talking in metaphorical or literal terms. Many public libraries, particularly with public expenditure cuts, are not as clean as they might be. With the recent strike of school cleaners in Inverness, no doubt those libraries are not as clean as they should be.

I do not like disagreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) because I value his opinions on so many matters, particularly on the Scottish Assembly, about which he is absolutely right.

However, perhaps I may return to the difference between libraries. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby made the comment that there would be different books in different libraries and we should take account of them—the Bodleian, the Wilton Mobile Library, the local authority libraries.

I shall not mention all those omitted by my hon. Friend. He mentioned the library of the Department of Education and Science. I imagine that there are more books in that library than there are in many others. This is that Department's Bill and one assumes that it will have more books than most. But I dare say that the Treasury has a number of books in its library, as has the Department of the Environment. No doubt the Foreign Office has hundreds of books in many different languages.

The Library of the House of Commons has been mentioned, with its natural emphasis on history and constitutional law and so on. Why should the author of a work on the constitution be deprived of a fair reward simply because the Bill is applied only to local authority libraries? Why should he be unfairly treated?

I have had no answer from the Under-Secretary to any of these questions. The whole issue could be settled easily if we could find a way of getting those who use libraries to pay for the privilege. Those who borrow books should pay for them—perhaps 5p or so each time, or perhaps a £10 annual subscription.

The orginial purpose of the public libraries was not to provide entertainment, yet today about 70 per cent. of the books borrowed are taken out for entertainment. There may be a wealth if instruction in them—life in pre-revolutionary Russia is richly described in "War and Peace", and there is instruction also on life in Russia in the stories of Chekhov. But most people do not read Chekhov for instruction. They want to be entertained. But why should the taxpayers pay for the entertainment of members of the public? They do not pay for football or cricket matches, and they do not subsidise opera or concert-goers.

The whole purpose of public libraries has been turned upside down, and this amendment seeks to put the situation right. Instead of the whole of the public lending right going to mainly fiction, a balance would be restored so that books of scholarship, history and law would benefit as well. It is quite wrong that authors who provide mostly instruction, rather than entertainment, should be refused reward for their works out of the public lending right.

Mr. Gow

Could my hon. Friend draw from his own experience and tell us which countries provide a public lending right in accordance with the Bill and which provide it in accordance with the amendment?

Mr. Sproat

That question should be directed to the Under-Secretary. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives kept asking about books of medical anatomy, and he directed his questions to the Under-Secretary. I do the same. I have not borrowed books from a public library in any country other than the United Kingdom, so I cannot say what happens elsewhere.

Sweden has been mentioned tonight in this connection. Certainly West Germany's Parliament passed a Bill of this nature, but it had the sense not to implement it.

Mr. Ridley

Is it not possible that the Germans have not implemented their scheme because they are having to save the money it would cost in order to lend it to us so that we may implement ours?

Mr. Sproat

That is a good argument. One might ask whether Saudi Arabia has a public lending right which it cannot afford to implement because it is lending us the money instead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne referred to the university libraries. We are proud of these libraries at Aberdeen, St. Andrews, Cambridge and Oxford. But there are other such libraries. They are at Heidelberg, Rome and Paris. Why have these countries not implemented or put forward such a Bill? These questions must be directed towards the Minister. I hope that she will accept the amendment.

Mr. English

The extraordinary thing about the amendment is that the Government have spent three hours resisting being given the mere power to extend the Bill to libraries other than local authority libraries. The amendment does not actually extend the Bill to non-local authority libraries.

The Government are resisting the amendment for two reasons. First, I strongly suspect that they cannot move the closure because they have lost their majority. That is a purely technical reason.

Mr. James Hamilton (Vice Chamberlain of the Household)

My hon. Friend should not say that.

Mr. Ridley

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Bothwell (Mr. Hamilton) is making sedentary interjections in a foreign language. That is intolerable. Will the hon. Gentleman rise to his feet and tell us what he was saying?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Like the occupant of the Chair, the hon. Member for Bothwell (Mr. Hamilton) is short of stature. He actually was standing.

Mr. English

The more important reason why the Government are resisting the amendment is that they do not want anyone in the future to apply the Bill to the libraries described by the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. Moate) and others. This is extraordinary. I do not blame the Under-Secretary. She does not have the power to accept the amendment. But where is the Secretary of State? She could accept this mere power, but she is not here.

The Bill could not have been drafted or constructed by other than a middle-class author in Hampstead. Excluded from it are libraries owned by the Crown. That covers the Civil Service and Armed Services libraries. University libraries are excluded, but local authority libraries are not. We shall all be taxed when anyone borrows a book from such a library. But no taxation will arise on borrowings from libraries owned by the Crown or the universities. Residents of Kensington and Chelsea who belong to Harrods library will give rise to no taxation by their borrowing. The public lending right is generated only in respect of the overwhelming mass of the citizens who go to the local authority libraries.

1.0 a.m.

The Minister, whether through fault of her own or not, finds it impossible, after three and a quarter hours of discussion, to accept an amendment which merely gives her power to add these other libraries. It does not state that she must. only that she could.

The Government, or whoever drafted the Bill, are determined that we must not tax the middle-class author when he borrows a book from a university library or a Civil Service library. Apparently we must tax only the people who read, but do not write, books.

Mr. Teddy Taylor

The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) said that he supported the amendment. I can see arguments on both sides. There are a number of questions the answers to which will help me to resolve my attitude to the amendment. In fairness I should point out that some of the questions relate exclusively to the situation in Scotland.

I have a high regard for the Under-Secretary of State, but it would help me and the House if a Scottish Minister were present, because he would have some understanding of the special problems of Scottish local authorities. We are talking about local authority libraries, which means local authority libraries in Scotland and in England. The law and library administration in Scotland are totally different from the position in England. Therefore, it will be an outrage if we do not soon have a Scottish Minister present. I should like the Lord Advocate to be present as well, because there are a number of legal matters which I want to raise.

I am distressed that the Minister does not appear to regard this as a significant point. The hon. Lady may feel that we have had a long debate. However. I hope that she will not take the view that because an argument comes from a Scottish Member it can be ignored. Sometimes Ministers give the impression that, because a question comes from a Scottish Member, it can be turned aside lightly and ignored.

The Whip on duty, the hon. Member for Bothwell (Mr. Hamilton), is a most conscientious Member. I think that he will agree that when an amendment has Scottish aspects, a Scottish Minister should be present. I am grateful for the fact that the hon. Member for Bothwell is on the Bench, but it would help if there were a Scottish Minister who could answer the points that I wish to make.

Obviously the Government do not want to accept Amendment No. 6, because it could widen the scope of the scheme. There has been a great deal of talk about university libraries. There is almost an obsession about universities on both sides of the House.

One change which I have noticed since I have been a Member is that the Opposition are becoming dominated by Members who have gone straight from school to university, from university to the research department of ICI or a merchant bank, and then to the House of Commons. In the same way, we are seeing more teachers and lecturers coming in on the Government side. These are all people with experience of universities. But about 96 per cent. of the population have no direct experience of universities. That includes those who serve meals in and deliver the milk to universities.

It is all very well to say that universities are used to running libraries. But what about some of the more popular libraries? My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) will know that the Missions to Seamen run effective libraries which are widely used. They do not have the same number of obscene books as some of our public libraries.

Mr. Ridley

How does my hon. Friend define an obscene book?

Mr. Taylor

My hon. Friend knows exactly what I mean by an obscene book. There are far too many of them and it is time there were fewer. One does not find them in the seamen's missions and if more libraries were like those, our libraries would be better.

The amendment concerns the power to extend the Bill to other libraries. We have no indication of whether it will apply to libraries run for no profit. Some of the most successful organisations before the war—and we must be careful about referring to before and after the war, because some younger hon. Members do not think in such terms—were the commercial libraries.

Mr. Robert Cooke

I direct my hon. Friend's attention to the Committee Hansard. In Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) drew the attention of hon. Members to the many highly successful commercial libraries, including Smiths. Boots and Mudies.

Mr. Taylor

My hon. Friend often surprises me, not only in this context. He is a good guy but he does and says some funny things. There is no point in hiding that—I am not being critical of him.

Mr. Gow

To which hon. Member is my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) referring—my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) or my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Cooke)?

Mr. Taylor

I was referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West is an able person who speaks with common sense. I wish that we had more like him. I was referring to my hon. Friend who is the Shadow Minister. He sometimes says things which astonish me. I do not always want to be associated with him, but in the Conservative Party we try to stick together.

If we consider extending the Bill to commercial libraries, there is a danger of discriminating against the big boys, the type of organisation to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West referred. For instance, Sir Hugh Fraser is boss of Scottish Universal Investment Trusts. That is a big company, as we know from the balance sheets. If we extend the Bill to commercial libraries, the big boys will be picked out.

Mr. Robert Cooke

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford deplored that the commercial libraries have ceased to exist, but he mentioned them to indicate that the pendulum might swing back. He did not mean that the big boys would be singled out, but that people with a small beginnings would be brought within the scheme.

Mr. Taylor

There is a tendency to think of Harrods, Smiths and Boots when talking of commercial libraries. But Boots ran its libraries as a means of getting people into the shops. The library was always on the top floor and to get there to borrow a book customers had to walk passed the razor blades and toothpaste.

It is a great mistake for Governments to put more and more burdens on the big firms simply because they have the administrative organisation to cope. I should be very unhappy if under Amendment No. 6 the larger firms with the big share capital were to be told "You can meet the extra administrative cost" and the local shops with libraries were treated differently. Where is the equity? Surely an author is an author and a book is a book. Whether a book is in a one-man store or what used to be the Boots library, the principle is the same.

Mr. Lawson

My hon. Friend keeps referring to Amendment No. 6. I see nowhere in that amendment discrimination against multi-national conglomerate libraries compared with the small shops. Where does my hon. Friend find it?

Mr. Taylor

I find it in the discretion given in the words such other libraries as may from time to time be stipulated". My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford specified the big boys in his speeches in Committee. He did not talk about what happened in his High Street.

Mr. David Walder

My hon. Friend seems to have a prejudice in regard to what he calls the big boys. I understand the Bill to be intended to be in the interests of authors. My hon. Friend is the author of an extremely funny novel, "Hearts of Stone". The big boys might be better at handling it than the small library in the High Street in Chelmsford. Does not my hon. Friend think that it might be a good idea for them to make a contribution to him?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I am glad that the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Walder) reminded me that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) did not declare an interest in this matter.

Mr. Taylor

I am sorry if I made an error, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that when one had put one's interest in the Register of Members' Interests, that was enough.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

It is still the practice of the House for an hon. Member taking part in the debate to declare his interest.

Mr. Sproat

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Many of us, including me, have declared an interest in that we would benefit from the Bill, but have said that we were nevertheless against it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

What is the point of order?

Mr. Sproat

It is a serious matter, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Do you wish us to declare our interest on every amendment, or is it sufficient to declare it on Second Reading and, as in my own case, in Committee?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I think that the hon. Gentleman is being facetious. One declaration of interest will cover all the amendments, no matter what time of night or early morning we take them.

Mr. Gow

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Do you think that those of us who hope one day to publish our memoirs—"Twenty Years as a Cabinet Minister", or whatever the title may be—should declare our prospective interest?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

It all depends on the Member and his importance. My ruling would be guided by the importance of the Member and the success which his memoirs might achieve. In the ordinary Member's case, I do not think that he needs to declare his interest.

1.15 a.m.

Mr. Ridley

Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Supposing a Member had written a book which was not accepted by the public libraries but was only in private libraries such as are referred to in the amendment, would he have to declare an interest?

Mr. Deputy Speaker. Of course. It is obvious that he must, because he would be speaking to an amendment which, if accepted, might enable him through his book to achieve some substantial revenue.

Mr. Taylor

I always declare my extensive interests, but I was rather reluctant to do so in this instance because I thought it might be regarded as a form of advertising. We have not only a large number of Members present but there are also the people in the Strangers' Gallery.

Mr. Lawson rose—

Mr. Taylor

I wrote a novel called "Hearts of Stone" which was published—

Mr. Lawson

On a point of order—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The hon. Member for Cathcart must not refer to anyone in the Strangers' Gallery.

Mr. Taylor

I was not thinking so much of the Strangers' Gallery as of someone in the Official Box who, I think, has just woken up and appears to be reading a book.

The novel to which I referred sold very well and was serialised in the Scottish Daily Express. I hope that those who read it enjoyed it. I enjoyed writing it, and it is because of this that I have a passionate interest in authors. But my interest in authors and in my book is as nothing compared with my interest in having workable legislation. My fear is that if we accept the amendment there will be a danger that we shall not have workable legislation.

We have a good number of big boys, and some small ones like my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson)—that is, in size. But I am talking here of the size of business, of course, and there is a danger to which Governments are prone. They put more and more burdens on firms which have not the administration to cope with them.

My fear is that, given this discretion, we might very well find that the Government would specify those commercial libraries with a turnover of more than a certain number of books, or with a share capital of so much. That would be unfair, because it would not be just to the authors. Sometimes we find small libraries and shops in small streets or in narrow streets—

Mr. Lawson

My hon. Friend is harping on commercial libraries but there is nothing in the amendment confining it to commercial libraries. Had he been able to be here for the whole of this interesting debate he would have heard that a great deal of it has been concerned with libraries which are not commercial libraries at all but which are in the public sector—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

The hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) is usurping the function of the Chair by declaring whether something is in order. That is the duty of the Chair. What the hon. Member for Cathcart is trying to establish is that if the amendment were carried, it would be the larger firms, which have the administration, as opposed to the smaller firms, which lack the administration, which would be included. The larger firms would be allowed to carry on.

Mr. Lawson

The university libraries and so on are not in the commercial sector at all.

Mr. Taylor rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

The hon. Member for Cathcart is looking at his watch. I hope that it has not stopped. I remind hon. Members that Christmas is a little way off still and that it is a bit too early for the pantomime season.

Mr. Taylor

I found your own guidance to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with respect, far more helpful than the interventions of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby, which are usually helpful but on this occasion have tended to draw me off my precise argument on the amendment. I would remind my hon. Friend that we are talking about Amendment No. 6, which I regard as a narrow amendment.

I wish to point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby that there is no indication in the amendment whether it includes commercial or non-commercial libraries. If it applies to commercial libraries which make profits, that could have a significant effect on the tax revenue. It is a matter about which the Government must think carefully. If these provisions were to apply to commercial libraries which make profits and pay taxes, what would be the allowable costs in such an exercise?

I do not know whether the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science can say anything about Scottish legislation in this regard, but I hope that at least she knows a little about tax law. Would this be an allowable expense, and would it thus reduce the amount of revenue available to the Government? I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby knows these things. He knows all about sums, deficits, liquidations and all the rest of it, and I am sure that he is aware of the danger of reducing Government revenue in taxation terms, if the amendment is accepted in an unthinking kind of way.

Mr. Sproat

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) is making a shrewd point, and I hope that the Minister will answer it. But does he not agree that the problem of the reduction of income to the Treasury could be obviated if the Government were to introduce a scheme whereby those who used local authority libraries had to pay something towards them? The matter would then be self-financing, and there would be no question of the Treasury losing money. It could be done by paying a small sum per book—as happens, say, in Harrods library.

Mr. Taylor

Although I am seeking information from the Government, I appreciate that Amendment No. 6 is not a Government amendment but an amendment tabled by some of my hon. Friends. Therefore, I am entitled to ask them whether they mean to include commercial libraries and whether they have considered the tax implications.

I am grateful to see on the Government Front Bench the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, who obviously has taken time off from his devolution duties to come to answer some of my points. I have two simple straight questions to put on the Scottish aspects of Amendment No. 6. The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will be aware that Amendment No. 6 does something which on the face of it appears to be simple. Clause 1(1) says: In accordance with a scheme to be prepared and brought into force by the Secretary of State, there shall be conferred on authors a right, known as public lending right, to receive from time to time out of a Central Fund payments in respect of such of their works as are lent out to the public by local library authorities in the United Kingdom. The Bill uses the phrase "United Kingdom", and some day in this Chamber we might talk not about the "United Kingdom" but something quite different. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will rethink some of his obsession with the principle of devolution.

The Government use the phrase "local library authorities" but the amendment seeks to substitute the words and by such other such libraries as may from time to time be stipulated by the Secretary of State ". Is the Secretary of State mentioned in the amendment the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Secretary of State for Education and Science?

Mr. Robert Cooke

My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. JohnStevas), whose amendment this is and who I wish would return to answer some of these questions, could tell my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) that "Secretary of State" means any Secretary of State. They all act one for the other. It could even be the Secretary of State for Social Services if that pleased my hon. Friend.

Mr. Taylor

That intervention makes me very much less happy about the amendment. I should be very concerned if it were proposed that the Secretary of State for Social Services should stipulate Scottish libraries—that is a real tongue twister.

The amendment refers to the Secretary of State stipulating other libraries, but would the recommendation of stipulation be made by the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Secretary of State for Education? This may seem a small point of no great significance, but on page 5 of the Bill there is a definition of local library authority. Those of us who regard ourselves as British may think that this phrase can have only one meaning, but, like so many other things, it is deceptive.

I have found that many subjects, including, for example, the Common Market when studied, lived and experienced, are very different from the promises of those who advocated them at first. The vain promises of politicians and economists have often produced something totally different in reality.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I have listened patiently, but I am beginning to think that the hon. Gentleman is indulging in a bit of filibustering, and I shall not stand for that. Let the hon. Gentleman look at his watch. These points have already been made.

Mr. Taylor

I have not even started on these points, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I do not see how it can be said that I have already made them.

Mr. Ridley

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Not long ago you said to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) that it was still early and that he should not hurry. Now you are telling him to look at his watch.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

The hon. Member for Cathcart was asking hon. Members not to intervene because he was anxious to get on. Perhaps he felt in need of a drink of some kind.

Mr. Taylor

With great respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in all the time I have been here—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a teetotaller. I was referring to a glass of water.

Mr. Taylor

I have always treated the Chair with very great respect and I have a very high regard for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but when you referred to me—a leading official of the temperance movement—as needing a drink—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

I apologise if the hon. Member thought for a moment that I was referring to a drink in the ordinary sense of the word. I know that he is an absolute teetotaller. I was referring to a drink of water.

1.30 a.m.

Mr. Taylor

I am particularly grateful for your apology, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which I accept unreservedly and without qualification. I apologise for having to continue for a little longer.

It is clear that the Minister responsible—at present, the Under-Secretary of State for Employment—is finding great difficulty in following my argument. That is why I am speaking rather more slowly than usual. If the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland had the responsibility, I am sure that we should be progressing much more quickly. He has not only a sharp mind but the further ability of knowing very thoroughly the difficulties of Scottish administration.

"Local library authority" means different things in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and in England. For England it means a library authority under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. That is clear and we all know what that means. It is the Act of 1964 that applies to England and Wales. For the purposes of this amendment, if one wants to know what a library authority is for England and Wales, one looks at that Act.

Library authorities in Northern Ireland are quite different. There it is an Education and Library Board within the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1972. In Scotland, however, we have a quite different definition. That is a statutory library authority within the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act 1955. If there were any change in Scottish library legislation, if we had, for example, a Public Libraries (Scotland) Act 1979, presumably the new definition would go in there.

My point is that if the change were made in the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 in 1979, there would be no problem. We would have a simple amendment at the back of the Act. At the back of all these things there is the small print—the consequential amendments. They are rather like a football pools coupon with lots of lines going up and down and across, involving lots of lines being altered in consequence.

If we were to change the English libraries legislation in 1979, there would be no problem. We would simply have a consequential amendment. If we wanted to change the Northern Ireland libraries legislation, there would be no problem if we still had direct rule. A change would be made in this House and it would be consequential.

However, what will happen in 1979 in Scotland? If there is new libraries legislation in 1979 in Scotland, it will not be made at Westminster. Hon. Members interested in Scottish libraries will not have a say in the matter. They may not be here. It may not even be this colour of paper. It might be red. It will not be a Bill like that before us at all.

Mr. Gow

Why does my hon. Friend assume that the Devolution Bill, if ever we see it, will become law?

Mr. Taylor

All I am saying is that the Government have said that this is what they intend. My hon. Friend and others, and probably public opinion and common sense, may lead us in a different direction. But what we expect a Government to do in considering an amendment such as this is at least to do some thinking and forward planning.

If we have a new Scottish library law made in 1979, not here but somewhere else, one cannot, on the basis of a White Paper, have a bit at the back of the Scottish law which would amend a British public lending right Act.

The simple point is that the moment one has a new library law passed as from 1978 in the event of a Devolution Bill being implemented, every Scottish library is removed from the right to carry out the functions of the Bill, because one thereby has a new definition of a Scottish library authority and a new Bill in this House is needed to amend it. We shall be having terrible pressure on legislative time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I am sorry, but I cannot allow a line of argument that involves what may happen in 1980 or 1999. Will the hon. Member please stick to the amendment?

Mr. Taylor

My point is exactly on the amendment, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The amendment says such other libraries as may from time to time be stipulated ". The Government are proposing instead local authority libraries only. What I am saying does not just relate to local authority libraries. If that was the case it would be simple. But we are talking about law.

The point is that I am not prepared to let this amendment go through if it could have the effect in a short time of ensuring that every English library would carry out this function but no Scottish library. I am simply pointing out that if no Scottish library Bill was implement, the automatic effect would be that Scottish public libraries would not be covered.

That is the one feature that attracts me to the amendment. If we do not have some provision for the Secretary of State to stipulate other libraries, in one minute we could exclude every Scottish library from the scope of this subsection.

That is something I do not want. While I accept that there are arguments both for and against, I shall not be happy to vote for this amendment unless I have clear assurances on this important point of Scottish administration.

Mr. David Walder

I intended to surprise you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by speaking to the amendment. I would have thought that the main purpose of the Bill was the interests of authors. I would have thought that the moving force of authors, in all respects, was that authors write books which were constantly borrowed by libraries, institutions and the like and but got no recompense for the process of borrowing.

I find it extraordinary that only public authority libraries are contained in the Bill. Naturally, one can imagine an author being slightly resentful if he sees his works being borrowed with no recompense to himself, not only from public authority libraries but from universities, service institutes and the like. I would have thought it was no great stretching of the Government to include at least the possibility that other libraries should be included in the Bill.

If we are aiming, as all authors' organisations have suggested—it is a terribly simplistic term which some of my hon. Friends may not like—at justice for authors, I would have thought we were aiming at justice for authors in other libraries which lent their books. 'that is the whole purpose of the Bill.

Amendment negatived.

Miss Margaret Jackson

I beg to move, That further consideration of the Bill, as amended, be now adjourned.

Mr. Robert Cooke

I must put on record that twice the Government failed to keep the House on Second Reading and that we had three goes to get Second Reading. In Standing Committee the Government failed to keep their forces present and proceedings were adjourned at least on one occasion.

Now, because the Government have failed to keep the House and have failed to produce enough Members to close the discussion, they are chickening out on the Public Lending Right Bill. Be it on the Government's head that this Bill is now unlikely to reach the statute book in this Session.

Mr. English

I must put on record that the Opposition Front Bench claimed to be in support of the Bill. The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. JohnStevas) even objected in the columns of The Guardian to my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Jenkins) claiming to be the author of the Bill The hon. Member for Chelmsford claimed that he was the author. It is the responsibility of both Front Benches to keep the House.

The point about the Bill is that it is unpopular in the House of Commons, and that is—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. We are discussing whether the debate should be adjourned.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill, as amended in the Standing Committee, to be further considered this day.

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1. EUROPEAN SECONDARY LEGISLATION, &c. 78 words
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2. ADJOURNMENT 68 words