§ Mr. MoyleI beg to move amendment no. 47, in page 18, line 22, leave out "one year" and insert "two years".
This seeks to correct an amendment made in Committee. The Bill went to Committee saying that a scheme of elections should be prepared within two years. The Committee considered the matter and, after some debate and a Division, concluded that one year was quite sufficient to prepare for the elections to the national boards which will follow the completion of the first three-year period of the appointed Council and the national boards.
I have thought long and deeply about this problem. The debate in Committee turned almost entirely on the electoral preparations for producing elections but not to any great extent on the preliminary work which would have to be undertaken by the Central Council before it got round to considering the electoral arrangements.
Let me set out those arrangements so that right hon. and hon. Members may appreciate some of the problems. After the appointed Council meets for the first time, it will have to decide the terms and conditions of service of its chief officers and then it will have to appoint them. After that, it will have to draft standing orders for its procedures and adopt those. Then it will have to turn its mind to agreement on its staffing structure, establishment and the terms and conditions of service. Having done that, it will have to begin appointing staff below the rank of chief officer. To prepare for electoral registration work and to prepare a scheme of election, it will have to appoint fairly junior staff, including filing clerks, shorthand typists, and so on, as well as setting up an office. Then, before it can set up an electoral register it will have to decide on what the nurse register is to be based.
That latter part will be quite a complicated business because there are in existence three registers, five rolls and two lists. These will have to be amalgamated and harmonised. They are not all live registers in the proper sense of the word. Some people on them apparently have 500 died in the literal sense. Others are dead registrations in a technical sense.
The order which affirms the eventual register produced from all this will have to be laid before the House of Commons and debated and, of course, there will have to be consultations with the interested parties during the whole exercise. Incidentally, the consultation period is unlikely to be less than three months.
Having done that, only then can the Central Council turn its mind to preparing a draft election scheme and to preparing an election register from the nurse register which it has compiled. After that, there will be the compilation of an election register and other arrangements which are inevitably involved in preparation for any election. Although I had hoped that this work would be completed in under two years, I thought that it was taking a risk to insist that it was done in less than one year. I am therefore advising the House to revert to two years
§ Mr. HodgsonIn moving amendment no. 46 the Minister showed that he realised the need for urgency in getting past the run-in stage of this new structure. He now moves another amendment which will make that run-in stage more prolonged. I can only describe the issues covered in his speech as displaying bureaucratic inertia. They were fully covered in Committee. As the Minister has remarked many times, a degree of unanimity has finally been brought to the nursing profession by the knowledge that the legislation was being proceeded with. Some agreement had to be reached because the legislation was rolling on remorselessly. The longer the intervening period before the new electoral arrangements come into force, the more the danger exists of the chance for second thoughts and fresh disagreement.
I did not find the Minister's arguments about the administrative system, particularly his reference to filing clerks and so on, very endearing or, indeed, polite to future employees of the Central Council. But where there is a will, there is a way. Because of the progress made by the various parties in the time since the Bill went into Committee at the end of November, I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of man to introduce an electoral scheme within the period laid 501 down in the Bill, as amended in Standing Committee.
§ Mr. PavittI regret that my right hon. Friend is seeking to reverse the decision of the Committee upstairs. We debated the matter fully, and at this time of evening I do not propose to press my opposition to a Division. My right hon. Friend brought me nearly to tears when I realised the burden of work to be placed on the 45 members of this new Council. Nevertheless, the proposition in the schedule that we are amending from one year to two years does not mean that the electoral register shall be prepared, that a scheme shall be operating, or that people must be appointed to posts.
The point of the schedule is merely that a scheme shall be submitted. I do not believe it is impossible within the first 12 months to submit a scheme. We are not asking that it should be operative. We are not asking for all the details to be completed. There are a number of different alternatives. With a Council of 45 members, I would have thought that a small sub-committee could be hived off to produce a scheme quickly, although I take my right hon. Friend's submission that it would take further time to get the machinery into operation.
If the matter is left two years, my main concern is that the Bill will not bite quickly enough. The more we delay, the longer it will take for real effective action to take place.
§ Mr. MoyleI think that the opposition, to this amendment is entirely misconceived, particularly by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Hodgson). As a result of the amendments that the House has accepted, the first elections will take place three years after the appointed Central Council comes into existence. The amendment will not accelerate or decelerate that process: it will merely allow the Council time within that period to produce its election scheme. The elections are bound to take place three years after the original Council is appointed, so the opposition is entirely misconceived.
§ Mr. HodgsonThe Minister referred to amendment no. 46, but that provides that three years is a maximum, not a minimum. It is therefore not true to say that an election will take place three years 502 after the Act comes into force. It could be up to three years, and we hope that it will be much less. The Minister showed commendable urgency in inserting that maximum proviso. Why could he not show similar urgency here, particularly since, as the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) says, we are talking only about schemes and not about actual elections?
§ Mr. MoyleThe hon. Gentleman will realise that we are cutting the period within which the first elections must be held from between three and five years to three years, so it is highly unlikely that there will be an election before three years are up anyway.
§ Amendment agreed to.