Retail of Motor FuelM (Weights and Measures) (Hansard, 4 February 1981)

§ Mr. Matthew Parris (Derbyshire, West)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make subject to statutory instrument subject to the approval of both Houses of Parliament changes in the system of measurement according to which motor fuels are retailed. I realise that the House is impatient to move on to the main business of the day and so I shall try to be brief. The gallon is on its death bed and I do not wish it to go without at least a brief swan song. I wish to make changes in the system of measurement according to which motor fuels are retailed.
The Bill would simply return to Parliament the powers that it relinquished in 1897 to decide the pace and timing of the metrication of fuels. It would return to Parliament the power either to promote, or if Parliament wishes, to block that process altogether.
The major oil companies plan to abandon the gallon later this year. They are free by law to do so. I accept that they have some substantial reasons for doing so. The House may accept their reasons or it may not. At present it has no say. My Bill would give the House the final say. It is overdue. The whole thing is in the most unholy mess. For instance, are we to measure petrol in litres and distance in miles? Will we have to calculate fuel consumption in miles per litre? What sort of hybrid instrument panels will motor manufacturers have to fit to their cars? For how long will it all continue?
The metrication of distance is coming, so we are told. We do not know when. It has been coming for the last 100 years or so but so has Christmas and so has the Channel tunnel and the reform of the common agricultural policy.
There is a case, although I oppose it, for abandoning both the gallon and the mile now. There is also a case for reprieving both of them for a while. There can be no case for staggering awkwardly into the most difficult position of all, with one foot in each camp—one in the metric and one in the imperial camp.
The oil companies are impatient. When the price of petrol reaches £2 a gallon petrol pumps will not be able to do the calculation without fairly expensive modification. Reducing the unit of measurement to a litre will obviate that.
Hon. Members with more than a passing acquaintance with the internal gearing mechanism of petrol pumps will understand the reasons for that. Hon. Members who have no such knowledge perhaps will accept my assurance and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), who has been in the Army and understands these matters, that there are problems involved in changing the mechanism of petrol pumps. He and I, at the kind invitation of my hon. Friend the Minister for Consumer Affairs, visited the National Weights and Measures Council laboratory. We were grateful for the patience of the officers who explained the problems to us.
We do not deny that there are problems, but we believe that there are other ways of meeting them. I shall not dwell on them this afternoon, because the point of my Bill is not to pre-empt the decision but to give the House, and not the oil companies alone, the opportunity to make the decision.
310 If there were free and vigorous competition in the retail of petrol there would be no such need. The public could choose between metric petrol stations and imperial petrol stations. I have little doubt which most people would choose. But when the trade is dominated as it is by a cartel the choice is denied the consumer. The cost in terms of bother is imposed upon the consumer without redress.
In our law and commercial practice a large bother caused to a single individual must be paid for one way or another. However, a multitude of small bothers caused to a large number of individuals is a cost which can rarely be charged to anybody. So it is in this case. The motorist, for instance, cannot insist that he pays for his petrol in deutschemarks because Parliament has protected garage owners against such insistence. However, the garage owner can insist that the motorist accepts his fuel in litres—at any rate he would be so able unless the House accepts my Bill which will enable us to provide that element of protection for the motorist.
At this stage I should cease the pretence of objectivity and come clean with the House. I must tell the House why I hate litres. I apologise for sounding like a sociology lecturer, but I believe that metrication causes alienation. Just as much as by high principles, economic forces and policemen, society is held together by custom, by familiarity, by good humour, by a thousand common understandings, common ways of seeing and doing things and a hundred familiar arrangements. Habits and affections are as powerful as passion, Lord Denning and the money supply rolled into one. They all contribute to the sense of belonging to a society, the ways of which are ours. When that sense weakens other more tangible parts of the social order will also weaken.
I do not pretend that our systems of measurement are an integral part of the social order. Clearly, they are not. They are only one small part of what is habitual and familiar. Alone they are dispensable. So was the threepenny bit, the county of Rutland and the North Riding. In each case there was a reasonable, rational argument for making the change.
Some hon. Members might say "What a pretentious argument to deploy in such a trifling cause." It is a trifling cause and it is a pretentious argument. However, against each of the modest and inoffensive steps that we have made in the name of progress and rationalisation, the argument has always seemed pretentious.
We have taken away from people their system of money, their systems of measurement, their county names, their county boundaries, their town councils and their village schools. At each stage there have been sensible arguments for the change. As each familiar landmark recedes, only the eccentric refuse to move on. Only the eccentric ever do.
It has been a long and weary road. How unfamiliar and unfriendly the landscape is beginning to look. I know the arguments for metrication. They are powerful arguments. They are the same arguments that can be used and will be used for changing over to driving on the right hand side of the road.
I can hear it now. There will be murmurings about our European partners, the needs of the motor industry, increasing traffic to and from the Continent and hazards to life and limb inherent in the divide. Admittedly, short-term cost people will say "What a nuisance"—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman was so interesting that I overlooked the fact that he should not say what he would say if he had had permission. He has to make out the reasons why his Bill should be given precedence.

§ Mr. Parris
I shall not pursue that line of argument Mr. Speaker. I was trying to demonstrate that the arguments for metrication were weak because they could be used for other things which I do not believe that the House would be disposed to accept. I confess to a deviant preference. I prefer driving on the left. I prefer gallons. I prefer feet, inches and miles. I do not care if my hon. Friends report me to my constituency association for disloyalty to Europe. They may try anonymous telephone tip-offs if they wish.
As such people dance merrily off behind the Pied Piper towards some distant butter mountain, some of us are limping sceptically behind. Garlic, EEC directives, litres and lederhosen are all part of the same thing. I imagine it will all end in our giving away Gibraltar.
I beg my right hon. Friend the Minister for Consumer Affairs—of whom I have not yet despaired—to hang behind with the rest of us, lest her good name be impugned among the petrol pumps or she be exposed to comment on the forecourt.
Most of us know in our heads that metrication must come. Many of us wish in our hearts that it would not. My Bill poses no challenge to that certainty, but it offers the House an opportunity for a small display of petulance fuelled by sentiment.