LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 26 July 1949)

§ THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

My Lords, your Lordships will remember that the effect of this Amendment at page 10, line 32, which I am asking your Lordships not to insist upon, was to prevent the Postmaster-General serving an enforcement notice, even when serious interference is taking place, if the cost of removing the interference would exceed one florin in respect of a piece of domestic electrical apparatus causing the interference but otherwise in a reasonable state of repair. I think noble Lords will agree that that is a fair summary of the proposition which is before the House. This Amendment has been rejected in another place on a number of grounds, and with your Lordships' permission I will give as briefly as I can the reasons which have been advanced.

In the first place, the Amendment fixes at an arbitrary figure of two shillings the maximum amount which a person can be compelled to pay in order to prevent interference with his neighbours. The figure, is surely arbitrary because it is not fixed in relation to the income of the person causing the interference, who may equally belong to an extremely poor or an extremely wealthy household. Every household is not impecunious. I am sure noble Lords agree with that proposition. On the other hand, some housewives may be so impecunious that even to be forced to make a payment of two shillings might be imposing a hardship on them and mil-hi be asking them for more than they should be expected to pay. Both those propositions, I think, are so obvious that they will not be challenged, The question really is whether or not a housewife can be adequately protected. Ibis Amendment gives no indication, en the face of it, of whether hardship would in fact be caused by the payment of a larger sum 515 than two shillings, and there will obviously be many occasions on which a larger figure—say a few shillings more than two shillings—could not be accepted in relation to the means of the housewife and could not be afforded without causing financial hardship to the person whose domestic apparatus causes the interference.

In the second place—this is the second objection to the Amendment—the Amendment discriminates in favour of a certain class of person who are users of domestic electrical apparatus. It takes no account at all of the hardship and deprivation to wireless listeners, who may also be housewives and who in many cases may be in the habit of listening to the wireless in the evening, or during the daytime while they are at work. I am informed that as many as a hundred listeners may be interfered with by a single piece of domestic apparatus. Thirdly, there can be little doubt that fewer people will voluntarily buy suppressors to prevent interference when they know that the law gives exemption to a certain class of individuals. Everyone hopes—I know that all of us here share that hope—that the great majority of users of electrical apparatus that is causing trouble will be willing to cooperate as good neighbours in order to avoid being a nuisance to other households in their neighbourhood. I think that the last thing we should want to do would be to enact legislation which would in any degree discourage such willing co-operation.

Finally—and this to my mind is a really conclusive argument against the Amendment—the housewife is in fact already protected from the risk of hardship far more effectively by Clause 19 (5), a subsection which was inserted when the Bill came before your Lordships' House on a previous occasion. I think your Lordships will agree that this provision has just that element of flexibility and generality which the Amendment lacks. It obliges the tribunal to allow interference to continue if to do otherwise —and here I quote the words of the sub-section— would unreasonably cause hardship to the person using or desiring to use the apparatus. It would therefore happen, in cases of real hardship, if they ever reached the 516 tribunal—and I am sure the Post Office would be most reluctant to bring cases of real hardship before the tribunal at all; as a rule they would not press the obligation to suppress interference in such cases—that the tribunal would place the housewife in the position of paying nothing at all, not even the two shillings maximum suggested in the Amendment.

I would like, if I may, to read Clause 19 (5), because I think it achieves the object we all desire. We all want to prevent the housewife being penalised by having to pay an unfair amount in order to fit a suppressor to a piece of electrical apparatus which she is using in her home. We all have the same object in mind, and I think that on consideration your Lordships will agree that this subsection gives the housewife even better protection than the Amendment which we are now discussing. The subsection reads: In considering for any of the purposes of this Act, whether, in any particular case, any interference with any wireless telegraphy caused or likely to be caused by the use of any apparatus, is or is not undue interference, regard shall be had to all the known circumstances of the case and the interference shall not be regarded as undue interference if so to regard it would unreasonably cause hardship to the person using or desiring to use the apparatus. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this Amendment should not be insisted upon. I beg to move.

§ LORD CHERWELL

My Lords, I do not propose to ask the House to insist on this Amendment, but I must say that I am deeply shocked that the Government should have refused to accept it. The sole purpose of the Amendment is to protect the housewife against undue charges being imposed upon her merely because she is using electrical apparatus for ordinary domestic purposes. For twenty or thirty years now, apparatus of this sort has been in use in almost every household which has electricity laid on. Electric cookers, electric stoves, electric sweepers, electric irons and a host of other appliances have been a commonplace of everybody's existence. Occasionally the radiation emitted by such appliances, or disturbances injected by them into the mains, cause trouble to neighbouring listeners. 517 When this happens, the Post Office, acting, I understand, on behalf of the B.B.C., search out the cause and practically always manage to get the matter put right by voluntary co-operation.

Now, by this Bill this friendly cooperation—so typical it seems to me of this country—is to be swept away. Snoopers are to be allowed to force their way into the house, and the unhappy housewife is to be compelled to pay any sum required to fit suppressors or whatever it may be so as to prevent interference of any sort or kind with some rich man's television set in the neighbourhood. The noble Earl has told us that the housewife herself is often a listener, so that her own reception will be benefited. If so, no doubt she will co-operate without any need for compulsory powers. The noble Earl also told us, and he added that he regarded this as conclusive, that she could always appeal to the tribunal which can take account of cases of hardship. I think that to put this argument forward seriously shows that one is quite out of touch with reality. Does any noble Lord really believe that the ordinary housewife, faced with the demand to spend, say, ten shillings, twenty shillings, or thirty shillings, to suppress interference from her electric iron, or whatever it may be, will have the time or the knowledge, or indeed the courage, to go to some tribunal and plead her case?

The idea is quite absurd. It costs the B.B.C., acting through the Post Office, something like £2 to trace these sources of interference. If it costs only a few shillings to correct them, surely that small amount might be thrown in out of the revenues of £11,000,000 or so which the B.B.C. enjoys. If it costs more than a few shillings, then it is monstrous to impose this expenditure upon innocent people who have purchased appliances, perfectly legally, in good faith, kept them in good order and are using them for their proper purposes, merely because some neighbour thinks it might improve his radio reception.

This House is always anxious to protect humble individuals against exactions by the Executive. This Amendment was designed to do this, and would have achieved it. That it should have been voted down by a Socialist majority throws a lurid light on the unreality of that Party's claim that its main concern 518 is to protect the interests of the poor and weak against the rich and powerful. I hope that the country will take note of this new instance of callous disregard of that most important, most long-suffering and most uncomplaining body, the nation's housewives, who will be injuriously affected.