Lords Sitting of 30 June 1959

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool

PIRACY OF BRITISH BOOKS
2.35 p.m.
VISCOUT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether their attention has been drawn to the piracy of British books by firms on the island of Formosa; and whether they can suggest means of putting an end to this illegal and obnoxious practice.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORT-FOLIO (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, I have seen Press reports of pirated copies made in Formosa being sold in Hong Kong. Formosa is not a party to either of the international Copyright Conventions, but pirated copies cap be seized if imported into British Colonies.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to thank the noble Earl for his Answer. May I take it that everything the Government can possibly do to put an end to this piracy will be done?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, the initiative is with the owners of the copyright. They can apply for the pirated copies either to be prohibited imports or to be seized when they are marketed in any country in the British Commonwealth.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: The noble Earl will, will he not, let it be known that the Government are wholly opposed to this piracy in every shape and form. Will he do that?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I do not think it would be likely that we should let it be known that we were in favour of piracy. But the noble Viscount's Question asks what means we can
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suggest for putting an end to it, and the Answer is that the means already exist. The copyright owners can take action in the courts against persons infringing copyrights. They can also request the customs authorities to prohibit the importation of pirated books.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, as this matter affects British publishers and British authors, could the Government make strong representations to the authorities on Formosa?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, we have no information on the subject, apart from the Press reports to which I have referred; but I think the law as I have described it, if it is used by the people who are injured, ought to be sufficient to protect them.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, could the noble Earl say what type of book is being pirated in Formosa?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: No, my Lords, I could not.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, would the noble Earl say whether the position will be very much better owing to the Government's excellent new policy of spending £500,000 on subsidising British titles abroad? They will have a financial interest in stopping this piracy, and surely they will take more stringent action with our own money than leaving it to the owners of the copyrights.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, it seems to me the action which can now be taken is sufficiently stringent.

RAINFALL STORAGE FACILITIES
2.38 p.m.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many gallons of water were represented by the rainfall in Scotland and England and Wales in 1957, and for how many gallons were national and municipal storage facilities available.]
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, in 1957 the rainfall in Scotland was estimated to be 23·3 million million gallons, and for England it was estimated to be

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29·8 million million gallons. I trust that the noble Viscount will give a little latitude in those figures either way. Public water undertakers have storage facilities for an estimated 76,000 million gallons and 222,000 million gallons respectively. Those figures take no account of water stored in natural lakes, underground strata and canals or in the storage provided by hydro-electric works, industry or private agencies.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to thank the noble Earl for his comprehensive Answer; it will take a little study to arrive at the magnitude of its depths. May I, with the permission of the House, congratulate the Sub-Committee on the Growing Demand for Water and the Sub-Committee on Information on Water Resources on the excellent work they have carried out and on their admirable Reports? May I ask the noble Earl whether he is aware, as no doubt he is, that the Report of the first Sub-Committee says, at paragraph 34:
"An important factor in the rate at which capital works can be carried out is governmental policy in the matter of capital investment. The effect of the control of expenditure on an essential service such as water has been comparatively mild but some schemes have been postponed or scaled down on grounds of economy and such schemes can be expected to swell the rate of expenditure when restraints are lifted "
Is the noble Earl aware that, although schemes are planned up to 1965, the future seems to be somewhat in doubt? One of the conditions necessary is that capital investment is permitted on the requisite scale. Will the noble Earl convey to his colleagues that if there is any necessity for further capital investment, then that should be permitted: that, far from stepping-down capital investment, permission will be given to carry it on?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I must thank the noble Viscount for his compliment, and I will certainly pass it on to my right honourable friend and the Sub-Committees concerned. I am quite certain that my right honourable friend is well aware of the position as it will be after 1965 and is making plans towards meeting it.

LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT AND RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS BILL [H.L.]
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to make provision for the enfranchisement of residential property held under long leases; for the modification or extinction of certain restrictive covenants; and for purposes connected therewith. I beg to move that this Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

POTATOES (GUARANTEED PRICES) ORDER, 1959
2.41 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE)THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE) rose to move, That the Potatoes (Guaranteed Prices) Order, 1959, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on June 10. The noble Earl said: With your Lordships' permission, I would propose to deal with the two somewhat complicated Orders which stand in my name on the Order Paper at the same time. They relate to the whole of the United Kingdom. The first Order, the Potatoes (Guaranteed Prices) Order, 1959, gives effect to the changes which my right honourable friend announced in another place a year ago to-day, on June 30, 1958. Briefly, the new arrangements substitute for the purchase of surplus potatoes on Government account arrangements that assure a minimum return to the industry as a whole related to the requirements of potatoes for human consumption. A guaranteed price for such potatoes will be determined each year in the light of the conclusions reached from Reviews held under the Agriculture Act, 1947. The guaranteed price is determined this year at £12 14s. 0d. a ton. If in any year the average price received by producers for potatoes for human consumption is less than the guaranteed price, then the deficiency will be made good from Exchequer funds. In Great Britain the amount due will be paid to the Potato Marketing Board, and in Northern Ireland to the Ministry of Agriculture

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for Northern Ireland for the benefit of producers.
I feel sure that your Lordships will recognise the necessity for a change from the existing support price arrangements. The old arrangements derive from the war-time system of control. They were originally devised to meet conditions in which the Government wanted a surplus of potatoes as an insurance against shortages of other foods. Farmers were directed to grow potatoes in areas and on land where potato-growing would not normally be an economic proposition. It was a corollary of this system that the Government should undertake to buy any surplus for which the grower could not find a market.
The guarantee arrangements for many other commodities—for instance, livestock and cereals—have already been changed following decontrol to meet the changed conditions. But the basic features of the potato guarantee arrangements remained unaltered when the Potato Marketing Board was revived in 1955. The Government came to the conclusion last year that it must introduce a guarantee system for potatoes more suited to present-day conditions and the needs of a freer economy. These regulations implement that decision.
The main reasons for this decision are briefly these. The present system involves State trading in surplus potatoes which it is the Government's policy to bring to an end. Moreover, it leads to costly and often unnecessary movement of surplus potatoes, whereas in many cases the most economic outlet is to use them for stockfeed on the farms where grown—as was the general practice before the war. It is also a grave weakness of the support price system that it has led to fraud and other irregularities at the taxpayers' expense. We are convinced that this difficulty can be overcome only by fundamental changes in the arrangements.
We believe that the new deficiency system will eliminate these and other weaknesses. We are satisfied that it will greatly reduce the scope for fraud and other malpractices. But, more than that, we feel that the new system is justified on its own merits, for it has positive long-term advantages. It will, for instance, introduce greater flexibility in
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production and marketing, and will give growers more incentive to produce the type of potatoes demanded by the consumer and to improve grading and standards generally.
It is understandable that some growers were a little nervous about the cessation of the individual guarantee they received in the past. But I want to emphasise that the income of the industry as a whole will still be supported by the Government. It is true that surplus potatoes not required for human consumption will no longer be covered by the guarantee; but the Government have taken account of this by increasing the guaranteed price for potatoes for human consumption. The farmers' unions have agreed that the higher guaranteed price of £12 14s. 0d. per ton is equivalent to the lower price of £11 9s. 0d. per ton which is current now under the support price system. The new system for potatoes is similar in principle to those for fat-stock and cereals, but takes account of the existence of a producer Marketing Board for potatoes which there is not for the other two commodities I have mentioned. This Board has an important part to play in the operation of the guarantee.
I hope that I do not weary your Lordships in going through the scheme in some detail because it is a radical departure from the system which we are using at the moment. It may be helpful if, briefly, I go through the main features of the Order. Article 3 provides for the determination each year of a guaranteed price per ton for potatoes. As I have said, at this Price Review that has been determined at £12 14s. 0d. Article 4 is a very important matter. It deals with the estimation of the quantity of potatoes sold for human consumption in each year and the average price received by producers for such potatoes. The detailed arrangements for calculating what is referred to as the "annual quantity" and the average price have been worked out in consultation with the producers' representatives.
I should mention here that for the 1959 crop only, while the new machinery is running in, it has been agreed that the annual quantity will be estimated at 3,809,000 tons. This arrangement has been made following representations by

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the farmers' unions and the Potato Marketing Board and was announced in the White Paper, in paragraph 16 or 17, on the last Annual Review. Article 5 provides for the payment of any deficiency. As I said before, in Great Britain payment will be made to the Potato Marketing Board on behalf of producers, and in Northern Ireland payment will be made to the Ministry of Agriculture for Northern Ireland who will use it for the benefit of producers in that country. Article 6 enables the Minister to make a contribution towards the Potato Marketing Board's administrative expenses. This is to be limited to a maximum of not more than 50 per cent. of the administrative expenses, and to not more than £300,000 in the first two years. Article 7 allows advances to be made to the Board for deficiency payments and administrative expenses. Article 8 deals with the special arrangements necessary for Northern Ireland. I think I need not say any more on that Order.
The second Order is the Potatoes (Protection of Guarantees) Order, which comes into force on August 1, 1959. As its title suggests, it is intended to safeguard the new guarantee arrangements. It follows the general pattern of similar Orders for other commodities in making provision for records to be kept by traders and for other matters, so that Ministers may satisfy themselves and Parliament that public money has been properly expended. We have discussed these provisions with the trade associations concerned, and I should like to take this opportunity of thanking them for their co-operation.
I have endeavoured to give your Lordships some indication of the reasons why the Government have found it necessary to make these changes. The two Orders under discussion provide the machinery for giving effect to the Government's decision and I feel confident that they will meet with your Lordships' approval.
Moved, That the Potatoes (Guaranteed Prices) Order, 1959, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on June 10.—(Earl Waldegrave.)
2.50 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, there are just one or two things I should like to say about these Orders before they are passed through your Lordships' House. First of all, the Minister said there was
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some doubt as to whether this new arrangement will be acceptable to the producer and the trade, but I am glad to hear from him that consultation has taken place with the National Farmers' Union and others concerned and that they are agreed that this particular method of dealing with potatoes should at any rate have a trial. I feel that the Order should be read in conjunction with the February Review of Prices—the White Paper—as it was there suggested that these Orders should be made; and I also noticed that the Minister referred, as does the White Paper, to the industry as a whole.
I am rather concerned as to whether or not the producer who sells direct to the retailer, institutions or private consumers will benefit by these particular orders. For instance, in the White Paper (on page 20, at paragraph 16), as no doubt the noble Earl the Minister will note, there is a description of the various producers whose products will be taken note of in the amounts sold for human consumption. The description of "producers" in Section 4 (1) of Order No. 983 does not appear to tally with the description given in the White Paper. I am wondering, therefore, whether the producers to whom I have referred are included, and whether they have to come under any kind of licence from the Ministry.
In that particular section there is repeated reference to "licensed grower-salesmen" and "licensed merchants". I am wondering whether the ordinary producer who sells direct has to be licensed in any way, and whether, when deficiency payments are made by the Potato Marketing Board, not only will his products be considered but the deficiency payment, received by other producers, will be received by the direct seller. The noble Earl the Minister mentioned the basis on which deficiency payments would be arrived at on a tonnage of 3,809,000 acres——
EARL WALDEGRAVE: It is tons.
LORD WISE: Yes, on that tonnage. I notice that the estimate of production for the year just ending was given in the White Paper as 5,556,000 tons. That is a difference of 1,747,000 tons, which is about one-third of the whole of the potato production. It seems to me that even if we estimate the tonnage of

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potatoes used for feed, for stock-feed and for export, there is a big loss between the tonnage of potatoes produced and the amount consumed for food. I do not know whether that figure is right. According to the White Paper also, the area of potatoes last year was 822,000 acres and the average tonnage per acre, therefore, was roughly about 7.
I come now to the question of the amount of the deficiency payment. In the White Paper the amount of the price support to the potato industry is estimated this year at £6,900,000, which also includes some loss—described in the Paper as "a small trading loss"—by reason of the fact that the Government had to purchase surplus potatoes. I want to ask the noble Earl the Minister whether the estimate for the first year under this new system will be higher as a deficiency payment than the surplus payment last year. As a matter of interest I might break up that figure of £6,900,000. The tonnage of our potatoes was roughly 4 million for human consumption and the cost, admitting the slight trading loss, might be estimated at £6 million, which is £1 10s. per ton. In round figures, that means about £10 an acre, and I am wondering, therefore, whether the noble Earl has yet reached any conclusion in his calculations as to what the amount of deficiency payment per acre is likely to be this year. I notice that in the previous year, 1957, the deficiency payment was higher by just over £1 million than it will be for this year, and I am wondering whether next year it is likely to go up.
There is just one other point I should like to raise on these Orders. That is in regard to the Potato Marketing Board. The functions of the Board are not very thoroughly defined in the Orders, and I am hoping that one of the functions of the Board will be to protect the producer and the Government in regard to prices. The fact that the guaranteed price this year will be £12 14s., as against the support price last year of £11 9s., rather suggests that unless in some way or other, we control the price which the merchant pays to the producer, the Government may have to face a higher deficiency payment than was made last year. I am most anxious, therefore, not only that the producer should be safeguarded in
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regard to the price he obtains for his product but also that the consumer and the Government should have a fair deal at the hands of merchants who buy our potatoes.
3.0 p.m.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, there is one question I should like to ask the noble Earl. He made a passing reference to giving the consumer what he wanted. I should like to ask him what there is in these Orders that will ensure for the consumer a better quality of potato than he has been having in the past. I hope that the noble Earl is aware that there is hardly any article of food in this country which causes more dissatisfaction to the consumer than the potatoes which are commonly obtainable in large towns and cities. They entirely lack flavour; they are frequently of very poor quality, requiring the housewife to pare large fractions off them before she can cook them, and they frequently turn black when they are cooked. We are apparently to continue to spend a considerable amount of money in subsidising the production of potatoes, but what guarantee is there that the consumer is going to get any better article?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, with permission, I should like to reply briefly to the points that have been raised. The noble Lord, Lord Wise, asked about retail sales. I assure him there is no discrepancy between the White Paper and the Order which I have just moved. The point is that under Article 4 of the Order the producer who wants to sell direct has to obtain a licence from the Potato Marketing Board, and then he becomes a licensed grower-salesman; that is how he is described. Then his sales are taken into consideration in these calculations to arrive at the average price and quantities, and so on. The only persons who sell potatoes for human consumption whose transactions are not taken into consideration are the small wayside sellers who are not licensed, though really they ought to be, and who sell a few pounds of potatoes to passers-by. There would be no practical means of collecting statistics about such sales as those. I hope that covers the point.
As to the discrepancy, as there was stated to be, between the tonnage, the figures which the noble Lord, Lord

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Wise quoted were for the gross product and there is always a great difference between the gross and net figures. There are to be considered nearly one million tons of seed potatoes, to begin with; all the potatoes fed to farm livestock, and some used for industrial purposes and so on. I can assure noble Lords that the reason why we put in a figure this year, which is an agreed figure, for what we should be using as the agreed quantity was that the machinery might be a little creaky in its first year in getting the returns in, and we wanted to be quite certain that we were doing no injustice to anyone. That is an agreed figure, as a reasonable figure, on which this calculation should be made. It will remain fixed whether sales for human consumption turn out to be more or less than that, so it is a basis.
The noble Lord spoke of the deficiency payment under this scheme. Let us get clear that there is not going to be a deficiency payment to an individual producer under the old price support basis. The deficiency payment is paid in a lump sum to the Potato Marketing Board, or the Ministry in Northern Ireland. They will do what they like with it, and will deal with it in the interests of their own producers; and the Potato Marketing Board are the producers' Board, so they should know. As to the deficiency payment, I do not know whether there will be a deficiency payment at all.
That leads me to my next point: that the real function of the Board and of the purpose of this scheme, as the noble Lord, Lord Wise, said, is to use the riddle to market potatoes. That, again, leads me, to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch. I cannot agree with him that there is really great dissatisfaction with the quality of potatoes we buy now; but whether or not there is dissatisfaction the object of this exercise is to promote the better marketing of potatoes; to get people to grow and to use efforts to sell what the public want. By that means the growers will get a better price and the whole scheme will work. The system whereby all that was produced, of whatever quality, and wherever it was produced, was supported by a Government payment did not lead to that end, and that is why we so much believe that this new scheme will
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produce a better quality potato than we have had before.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

POTATOES (PROTECTION OF GUARANTEES) ORDER, 1959
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I beg to move the second Order.
Moved, That the Potatoes (Protection of Guarantees) Order, 1959, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on June 10.—(Earl Waldegrave.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

AGRICULTURE (STATIONARY MACHINERY) REGULATIONS, 1959
3.6 p.m.
EARL WALDEGRAVE EARL WALDEGRAVE rose to move, That the Agriculture (Stationary Machinery) Regulations, 1959, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on June 16. The noble Earl said: My Lords, the purpose of these Regulations, like that of most of their predecessors under the Agriculture Safety Act, 1956, is to safeguard the worker. The Regulations apply to Great Britain. Your Lordships will remember that, under this Act, we have already brought in Regulations for first aid, power take-offs, ladders, work places, circular saws, and the safety of children, and now we come to stationary machinery. The Regulations now before your Lordships deal with a group of farm machines under the general heading of "Stationary machinery" and their scope includes farm machinery designed or adapted for stationary use only. Prime movers used to drive such machines are also included. Threshers, hullers, balers and trussers need special treatment and are left for a later set of Regulations.
Guards of adequate strength must be provided for components such as shafting, pulleys, belts, flywheels and so forth, unless these components are safely positioned, out of the way of workers. Conveyors or other slow-moving belts or chains need only be guarded at the run-on point where they go on to the pulley; this also applies to primary driving belts, except where they are part of a fixed installation, when the whole length of

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the belt must be guarded. Machines which grind or similarly treat grain, and those which prepare feeding-stuffs such as roots, hay, et cetera, must have guards on their feeding inlets and discharge outlets.
Readily accessible stopping devices must be available for both machines and prime movers. These will, for prime movers, often be switches, and there are special requirements for their effectiveness, such as clear identification with the prime mover concerned. For most of the requirements employers will be allowed two years to make the necessary arrangements. The comparatively easy guarding of feeding inlets and discharge outlets of certain machines that deal with grain must be done in twelve months. This shorter period also applies to provision of adequate light and maintenance of belts.
As with earlier Safety Regulations, responsibility is largely on the employer, in that he must not let a worker use prescribed machinery unless it conforms with the regulations. But the employee must use the facilities provided and must keep guards in position. He must also report damage to guards. No responsibility has been laid on manufacturers and dealers. The guards required frequently depend on the position of the machine in relation to the worker or to other machines of which the manufacturer could not be expected to be aware. The layout of an installation is primarily the concern of the farmer. Nevertheless, organisations representing both manufacturers and dealers have been consulted during the framing of the Regulations, and I am confident that they will co-operate.
As with some earlier Safety Regulations, we have made provision for certificates of exemption. But, once again, these would be considered only in very special circumstances, and not just because compliance might, for some reason, be difficult. The safety measures required are essentially simple. We have endeavoured to deal with causes of accidents in a realistic but flexible manner. Interested organisations have been consulted, and the Regulations as drafted have been accepted by all sides of the farming industry. We shall again use all available means to inform people
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concerned of their responsibilities: publicity will include leaflets explaining the detailed requirements, and more general announcements as reminders. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Agriculture (Stationary Machinery) Regulations, 1959, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on June 16.—(Earl Waldegrave.)
LORD WISE: May I briefly commend these particular Regulations? I well remember the passing of the Act which we brought into operation in order to safeguard the farm worker in his daily task. The great point about the Regulations is that they cover all the likely troubles, and I am glad to hear that publicity will be given to them, because the Regulations and the Act not only affect the employers but also throw an obligation on the employee. I think that, with these two working together, we shall be able to reduce the very large number of accidents which do happen and which could be avoided by the best farming practice. I am glad to commend the Regulations.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COTTON INDUSTRY BILL
3.11 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is an enabling Bill which empowers the President of the Board of Trade, who will be advised by a special committee of the Cotton Board, to do certain things, which are not specified in detail in the Bill and which I cannot specify in detail to-day, although they may be rather clearer in outline when the reorganisation schemes to which the Bill refers are submitted, as they will have to be, for your Lordships' approval, before the end of next month. The purpose of the Bill is not to reorganise the cotton industry, but to help the cotton industry to reorganise itself by applying certain limited grants of public money at the points where we think it will do most good, and at a moment of time which seems to us to be the most favourable moment at which to take this action.

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I am not an authority on cotton. I know very little about it and I am not going to try to give a lecture on the historical causes, or on the recent causes, which have led to the difficulties with which the industry is now confronted. Some authorities think, or say, that the real trouble is that the cotton industry had far too long a start over the rest of the world. It had an almost unchallenged monopoly of export markets for too many generations before it had to face any kind of competition. Other people say that those who work and manage the industry are too conservative and not sufficiently disposed to change their methods. And there are some authorities who say that everything would have been all right if it had not been for the sellers' market after the war, which created too easy and deceptive conditions and led to the postponement of methods of reform which ought to have been taken earlier and which have now become extremely urgent.
I prefer to start with what everybody appears to agree ought to be done now, and on which there seems to be agreement not only with the Government, but among all sections of the industry, both management and labour. That is, that what the industry needs is a great deal more modern equipment, up-to-date machinery—for instance, automatic looms instead of Lancashire looms, ring spindles instead of mule spindles, and so on—in order to compete with the very much more up-to-date machinery which is now established both in Asia and in Europe.
It is agreed, moreover, that it is no use trying to encourage more up-to-date machinery in the cotton industry unless you can first get rid of redundant capacity. As the White Paper on Reorganisation of the Cotton Industry says in paragraph 16, referring to redundancy:
"While this exists there is no possible way to restore the confidence necessary to modernise and re-equip on the scale needed to give the industry the strength to compete in world markets."
Unless this excess capacity, very often obsolete but still in existence, is removed, production will continue to be inefficiently distributed over a large number of mills working below capacity. The stifling atmosphere of weakness will continue to pervade the industry and even
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efficient firms will have neither the means nor the confidence to modernise and re-equip.
If the Government did nothing, would it be possible for the cotton industry to do these things itself? I have no doubt that in the long run it would. But I think it would be a very long and painful process, during which many skilled workers would lose their jobs without compensation. The livelihood of those who remained in the industry would go on being insecure, and it would be unlikely to attract young people or those, whether on the labour or management side, with enterprise and ability. What the Government hope to do by the measures we are proposing to take is to enable the industry to carry through this necessary process of re-equipping itself much more quickly, a great deal less painfully and, we hope, a great deal more efficiently than would otherwise be the case.
It was eight months ago, last October, when the Prime Minister gave an assurance to the cotton industry that if they put forward plans which involved a measure of direct help, the Government would give them sympathetic attention. The Prime Minister chose that time to say this because it seemed probable that the agreement which has since been concluded with Hong Kong would be made; and, as your Lordships know, it is hoped that it will be followed by voluntary agreement with India and Pakistan to restrict imports, which are hurting Lancashire, from Commonwealth countries. We cannot give any protection by duties or quotas against Commonwealth imports because of the Ottawa Agreement which is so important to our trade, but it is acknowledged that in the interests of the Commonwealth as a whole it is not a good thing that Lancashire cotton should be knocked out. That is why Hong Kong agreed to do this and why we hope that Pakistan and India will make similar arrangements.
The Government felt that the timing of this matter was very important; when dealing with the very hardworking, but hard-headed, realistic and sometimes, perhaps, a little obstinate people managing the cotton industry, timing is important. The present moment, with the agreement with Hong Kong and the coming agreements with Pakistan and India, is the most

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favourable time at which to take the action we are now proposing.
My Lords, what this Bill does is to give sanction—partly, as it will be, retrospective sanction—to the plans and procedures which were first announced to your Lordships on April 23 and subsequently embodied in the White Paper. The first clause of the Bill provides for reorganisation schemes in which the Government will pay two-thirds of the amount of compensation to be received by the owners of plant which is scrapped. The second clause provides for a Government grant of 25 per cent. towards the installation of new, up-to-date machinery. The third clause sets up the administration through which the scheme will be run—that is, a special committee of the Cotton Board. That committee is already at work and the Bill provides that what it is doing now shall have effect as if the Bill had already been passed when it was done. The special committee consists of my noble friend Lord Rochdale, Chairman of the Cotton Board, the two other independent members of the Board, and two new outside members—one a leading North of England manufacturer of woodworking machinery, Mr. J. C. Robinson; and the other a leading trade unionist, Mr. E. Hall, of the National Union of Mineworkers.
This special committee, whose executive officer will be Mr. Burney, as has already been announced in the White Paper, is now busily engaged in discussions with representatives of the various sections of the industry in order to produce, as we hope will happen next month, three reorganisation schemes: one for the spinning section, one for the doubling section, and one for the weaving section. The finishing section is more complicated, and will probably come later; but it is urgently desired to get the reorganisation schemes for those three sections of the industry approved before August. These reorganisation schemes will deal with the amount of surplus capacity which, in the opinion of our advisers, is the minimum amount necessary to make the scheme worth while. Then it will impose a time limit during which people who want to apply for a grant for scrapping their machinery may do so; and it will also decide the amount of compensation to be paid.
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I cannot, of course, give any figures now on any of these subjects. Some of your Lordships expressed a good deal of interest, I remember, on what sort of proportion of equipment in the industry was redundant and was likely to be scrapped. I was very careful at that time not to give any figure. The White Paper was not quite so careful, and in paragraph 12 it gives one estimate from the Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association, who suggest that the aim should be to reduce capacity in the weaving section by at least 70,000 looms. I would remind your Lordships that that figure is not one for which the Government are responsible. We are merely quoting an early estimate which was given by the Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association.
Since then, of course, they have spent a lot of time discussing this matter with the special committee of the Cotton Board. Whether they have revised that first estimate or not, I do not know; but the figures which will be fixed in these reorganisation schemes will be minimum figures, not maximum figures. They may be exceeded. The figure laid down of the number of looms or spindles, as the case may be, to be scrapped, will be the minimum figure which is considered worth while; and if that minimum figure is not in fact reached, if there are not enough applications to reach the minimum figure, then the scheme will fall to the ground and cannot be proceeded with. So it is very important from the point of view of the industry that enough people will take advantage of the opportunity of getting this grant for scrapping their surplus plant, in order to make the scheme worth while. That is the first thing that the draft reorganisation schemes will lay down—the minimum: not necessarily the final amount, but the minimum amount of machinery to be scrapped.
Then they will lay down a maximum time during which people may apply for a grant, which will be short. The White Paper says, "say, a month"—and I do not quite know what qualification is intended by the word "say". Probably it will depend a great deal on the estimated effect of the holiday season on the timetable; but, at any rate, the period will be short. The President of the Board of Trade will not recommend the draft schemes to Parliament unless

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he is satisfied that the minimum amount of redundant machinery proposed to be scrapped is enough to justify the expenditure of public money on it, and the schemes will be then submitted to both Houses of Parliament.
Outside the scheme there is another kind of compensation—compensation to displaced employees. There will be two levies on the industry, which will be compulsory levies. One will be to provide the remaining one-third of the cost of the scrapping of redundant machinery, which is not to be paid by the Government. That levy will be paid to the Cotton Board, who will act through their special committee as the agents of the Government. The other levy, for compensating workpeople who may be displaced, will be paid to a committee consisting of representatives of employers and trade unions, which will administer the fund and pay out compensation. The Government have always taken the view that they are not going to prescribe any particular conditions for the payment of compensation, because we think it is far better that it should be worked out and agreed on entirely between the representatives of the trade unions and the employers.
I think the agreement which has so far been reached is very encouraging indeed. In fact, I did not think they would reach so much agreement in so short a time. Agreement in principle on arrangements for compensation has been reached between the employers and the unions in the spinning, doubling and weaving sections. One half of the compensation is to take the form of unconditional lump sum payments; the other half is to be in weekly payments at a rate which will not conflict with the worker's entitlement to unemployment benefit, and these weekly payments will be affected by the extent to which an operative obtains new employment. There are still a few details which have not yet been agreed, but I think it is satisfactory that so much agreement in principle has already been reached.
My Lords, if these draft reorganisation schemes are judged to be satisfactory, if they are approved by Parliament, and if the necessary amount of surplus, redundant machinery is scrapped, then we come on to the next purpose of the Bill,
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which, although it is secondary in time, is far more important, and that is the re-equipping of the industry with new machinery. The Government will provide a grant of 25 per cent. in cases where the installation of new machinery is approved; and in this case there is a fixed time-table put in the Bill. In the case of the reorganisation schemes, it is all left to negotiation between the special sub-committee and the industry. In the Bill three years is fixed as the limit during which application for grant may be made for new machinery and five years is the limit during which the machinery may actually be installed. Compensation for loss of employment can be paid if it results from the installation of new machinery in place of old machinery, but it is not expected that that will be great. Indeed, even in the case of reorganisation schemes, although it is an important part of policy that compensation should be paid, I think it may be found that the number of people affected may not be quite so large as we may be apt to think at the beginning; but perhaps that may be optimistic—I do not know.
The reasons which justify this limited and temporary amount of assistance to the cotton industry are that it is suffering this peculiarly difficult competition, largely from members of the Common wealth, against whom no protection can be given on account of the Ottawa Agreements, and made possible by Asiatic labour, and that the industry is so much concentrated in one part of the country. The assistance we are able to give cannot go on for ever and cannot be an unlimited amount, and I hope very much that full advantage will be taken of the opportunity which this Bill will provide. Your Lordships will all have been delighted to see in the last month or two, for various reasons which I will not take up your Lordships' time by going into, that there has been an improvement in the cotton industry. We are glad to see that, but we hope that the result of this temporary improvement will not be to discourage the industry from taking advantage of the provisions of this Bill.
I do not know whether your Lordships have seen an article in the Financial Times of this morning, which concludes by saying:

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"The real danger of the present improvement in textiles is that it may lull Lancashire into a state of forgetfulness of its problems. Companies which so recently were preparing to quit the industry because of their difficulties would be well advised to take advantage of the Indian summer and accept the opportunities now offered by reorganisation proposals."
I would earnestly recommend those words to the leaders of the cotton industry in Lancashire.
Although our assistance on economic grounds can be justified only by the special conditions I have mentioned. I am sure that your Lordships will be anxious to give this kind of help to the cotton industry on much wider grounds. Whether we live in Lancashire or somewhere else, whether we know Lancashire or do not know it—and I am afraid that I do not know Lancashire very well—we have all read about the great history of the Lancashire cotton industry, of the inventions of Arkwright which started off the Industrial Revolution, of the enormous wealth which it brought to this country, of the way in which the cotton workers all tightened their belts during the American Civil War because they were determined not to do anything which might support the institution of slavery, and of all that Lancashire cotton has meant to the political and the industrial life of this country. Whatever new industries may be established in Lancashire, and many are being established, it would be very sad to see this old one going downhill. It seems fairly certain that we are now entering into a new Industrial Revolution, which may mean more to the wealth and prosperity of human beings than the former Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. I hope that it may be carried through in a more humane way and with better distribution of wealth. I am sure that your Lordships will all hope that the spinners and weavers of Lancashire, who led the world in the old Industrial Revolution, will prosper and flourish in this new one.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Dundee.)
3.37 p.m.
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for the clear exposition he
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has given of this complicated Bill. I wish that it were possible to respond by more enthusiastic approval of this proposal than I feel able to give, although I must welcome the somewhat feeble and belated recognition by the Government that the cotton industry is in a bad way and that some degree of national planning is the only thing that is going to save it. I regret very much that this was not recognised before and that years have gone by with this industry languishing worse and worse without the Government doing anything at all.
Since the present Government came into office, to go back no further, the export of cotton yarn has gone down from 65 million to 27 million lb. and linear yards of cloth from 858 million to 371 million. There has been a startling decline in the number of operatives in this basic British industry from nearly 300,000 to under 200,000. All this has gone on for everybody to see and the reasons for it have been well known for a long time. At last the Government come along with a plan, which must be welcomed as some attempt, but it still leaves a great deal to be hoped for, though one cannot be at all sure that there is any reasonable chance of those hopes being justified.
The scheme falls into three phases, as I understand it. I would ask your Lordships to excuse me if I am inexpert in this matter as I know more about the worsted industry than about cotton. The first phase deals with the redundancy of machinery and work-people and it is in this connection that the compensation proposals are made. It seems to me dangerous to separate in point of time, and make separate schemes to deal with, redundancy and re-equipment, which is the vital thing. It is necessary to deal not only with redundancy, but also with the organisation of the industry. There is far too much piecemeal organisation in this industry, and all the horizontal arrangements really need reorganising on a vertical basis. I should feel much happier about this scheme if it were an integrated scheme, and if everything depended from the beginning on re-equipment with modern machines, being used by a modern vertical organisation which could cope with modern conditions. As it is, this scheme pays out, it may be, large sums to compensate for the

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elimination of excess capacity, without any guarantee that it will be followed by really thorough reorganisation and re-equipment with up-to-date machinery. The elimination of excess capacity by itself will do nothing but put public money into private pockets. The only hope of the industry is that it shall be re-equipped and reorganised to cope with modern conditions. There is no guarantee in this scheme that the second phase will follow the first.
There are already some misgivings that the scheme will not work. The behavior of various elements in this industry is quite different. Some cotton firms have made a distinguished attempt to reorganise and re-equip their industry. They will be called upon to pay heavy sums for these levies to re-equip their less efficient competitors; and they may be reluctant to do so. There seems to me to be no guarantee, unless you integrate the two main parts of the scheme, that the elimination of excess capacity will automatically be followed by re-equipment and reorganisation. I beg the Government to pay some attention to this aspect of the matter, because unless they do, the whole thing may go the same way as the pre-war attempt—I think it was called the Cotton Spindles Act—by which public money was paid out to eliminate excess capacity, but which did nothing at all to modernise the industry; and here we are again faced with the same problem.
I should like to say a word or two about the method by which the payments are going to be made to the operatives who are displaced from their jobs by reason of the elimination of the excess capacity. It is, I think, unfair and undesirable that these weekly payments should be conditional upon not securing other employment. The payments for redundant, excess or scrapped plant will be cash payments. The payments to officials who are displaced will, I assume, be cash compensation payments. But the payments to the operatives who lose their jobs will be weekly doles, as I understand it, conditional in part at any rate, upon their not getting other employment. This is a most undesirable feature of the scheme, which will discourage people from seeking new employment, and I think it should be eliminated.
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The second point that I think we should consider is whether it is safe and desirable to leave this entirely to voluntary agreements. Are we not going to be entitled to see the kind of plan upon which public money is to be expended? Did I understand the noble Earl to say that later on these schemes would come before the House for approval? If that is so, it is most welcome.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: They have to go before both Houses for approval. And what I think I told your Lordships was that in regard to the three main sections of spinning, doubling and weaving, it is hoped that they will all be ready before the end of July.
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: That is most welcome information. And I take it that it will be open to Parliament to criticise and express a view. Therefore, perhaps we can leave this part of the examination of the matter until we actually see the schemes. It is, in my view, important that the nature of the scheme should be examined by Parliament before public expenditure is embarked upon.
A further matter is that there is no mention in the Bill of the social aspect of the redundancy provisions. This industry, as the noble Earl rightly said, is concentrated in one part of the country; and not only that, but in many cases whole communities are almost wholly dependent upon it. In closing down these plants there are considerations to be borne in mind other than the actual financial or efficiency standards of the various units concerned; there are the social effects. To close down plants which would involve the virtual loss of employment by a large part of a whole old-established community is a serious thing to contemplate, particularly if it takes place as the result of an imposed scheme. I think the Government would be wise to insist that that aspect of the matter should be well borne in mind when these schemes come up for examination.
I wish it had been possible for the noble Earl to say something also about what steps the Government are taking to provide alternative employment. The record of the Government in Lancashire and territories adjoining is, in this regard, not a very good one; the provision of

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alternative employment and the encouragement of the growth of development areas in this part of the country has been most disappointing. It would be a sad thing if, with the expenditure of this amount of public money on a major attempt to deal with this industry, there were not side by side with it a really big scheme for the provision of alternative employment. That is a policy which has proved highly successful in other parts of the country. In Cumberland, in South Wales and on the North-East Coast this policy of the development area has been a resounding success; and this is the sort of lesson that we should apply to dealing with this problem of Lancashire.
In making these comments on, and possibly criticisms of, this plan, I do so in a constructive sense. I regret very much that the Bill is not of a more cohesive type; that it is not a more courageous attempt to enter into partnership with this industry and to see it through over a longer term. It is most undesirable that we should continually see this spectacle of the refusal of the Government to recognise the problems of an industry until it has almost expired, and then to come forward with doles and help in this form. A constructive partnership through the years, it seems to me, would have been a much better policy. But perhaps this is the beginning of something new and something better, and I think we all have a duty to try to make it so.
3.49 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I am happy to find myself in the position of following the noble Lord who has just sat down, because we should at least be in agreement that this is not a Party question. He speaks as one who has in the past been a guardian of the workers' interests, when in the Socialist Government, and he now speaks with the knowledge of a large employer in the textile industry. I am glad to see in his place my noble friend Lord Rochdale, who is to be charged with a high role of great responsibility in the carrying out of this measure, and we wish him well in his efforts. The noble Earl, in moving this Bill, succeeded, in the time at his disposal, in explaining to us with clarity its
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provisions, and I am sure they will have convinced all who heard him of the justification for action.
For myself, I intervene to say that I support the Bill but with misgivings of some of its proposals, and with reservations about others. I have no financial interest in the cotton trade, but I have alt my life been associated with the wool textile industry. The problems which are dealt with in the Bill will raise precedents which, let us not deceive ourselves, will have possible great effects in many of the light industries in this country at some future time. It is because of my interest in light industry that I intervene, and also because we are rightly the guardians of the taxpayer. This is a proposal to spend £30 million-plus of the public money in subvention to an industry. The noble Earl made reference to the urgent need for it. He also made reference to the great historical achievements of this industry and its great contribution to our past industrial greatness. Some are apt to forget the great contribution it made to our resources in its early days and how it added to our international competitive power. At any rate, to-day there will be no argument that it merits some action.
The White Paper gave indication of the desirability of its contraction. There appears to be some confusion. We talk of contraction in the industry, and yet hope for increased volume. There have been full discussions on the Bill in another place. Indeed, with great diligence I have read all the Hansard reports on it, and I found them extremely interesting, because so many angles of the effects of this proposal were naturally brought up. My right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade dealt with skill, patience and clarity with most of the problems that were raised in this matter. The causes which bring about this situation are increasing development of the industry and also, to some extent, increasing imports. The cotton trade is necessarily one dependent upon the triangular and multiangular trade. But it brings up all sorts of questions—basically, as the noble Earl said, respect for the Commonwealth Preferences. He avoided reference to the shackles of G.A.T.T., and uncertainties now arise about the European Free Trade Area proposals. He referred to the Hong Kong

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Agreement, but there is no specified duration for that. There is no assurance that it will be implemented, and still less that Pakistan and India will follow, as hoped.
Frankly, it is really tariff making which brings this problem about, and I want to emphasise that statesmen will need to recognise that there is a fundamental point here. Low-cost Asiatic wages are something which will have to be recognised in tariff making at some point. That strikes us at this moment when we are proposing to vote a large amount of public money to assist the reorganisation of this industry. There must be recognition in tariff making that you can have a low freight and high wage content product or a high freight and a small wage content product. Textiles are an example of the former; cement and metal products of the latter. Freight gives them a larger protection which is not afforded to the low freight content in the light industries.
May I remind your Lordships that public money has been voted—I quote from another place—amounting to £260 million a year in subsidies to agriculture and in other subventions. The amount dealt with in this scheme is £30 million-plus spread over five years. It is not big, but it is an important precedent. The principle of compensation to workers is accepted. It is not a large amount, and undoubtedly requires to be agreed to as the Government have asked. But surely the hardships have been exaggerated, and also the specialised skill. The noble Earl referred to mule spinning, which has been obsolete for years. The operatives have been continuing to work in an industry which they know is bound to be faced with death. There is no obligation for operatives to work in those conditions.
On this question of skill, I cannot avoid supporting my suggestions by an illustration from the United States. We have the example there of the tremendous shrinkage in the equipment which has taken place, admittedly contributed to, to some extent, by the movement from the Northern to the Southern states. It emptied whole towns like Fall River and New Bedford, and the same problem arises elsewhere as has been growing here. But it was different because there was a tariff protection. In Amoseag, New Hampshire, there was one mill with over 600,000 spindles and 23,000 looms
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(and that is probably three times as big as anything in Lancashire) which was completely dismantled.
Lurid pictures have been drawn of the rapacious employers exploiting oppressed workers. But who are the managers and owners of these mills? The managers in the main are men who have risen from the bottom themselves to positions of responsibility. All honour to their achievement! Who are the owners? They are millions of small shareholders, largely workers in Lancashire, who have subscribed to the capital of these mills, and it is being wrongly represented that it is the wealthy owners who control all the mills. Attention has also been drawn to the high salaries of these managers and also to the compensation of directors. There are contractual agreements under a three-years' election of directors. After all, these amounts are small compared with the fantastic earnings of well-known entertainers, those curvacious sexy sirens who get these high monies from the T.V. viewers and the readers of the pornographic high-circulation Press. There should be no misunderstanding about who are the people concerned.
I turn to the provisions of the Bill and my own objections. There is no time to cover the whole industry, and I will take the opportunity of confining myself to one section as an illustration; that is the spinning, which is a pivotal section in the industry. I would here insert that I hope the noble Earl, in replying, will indicate what is going to happen if the amounts of machinery offered for elimination fail to come up to the minimum required. Is the Whole scheme then to fall to the ground? The White Paper suggested that, out of 24 million spindles, 12 million were considered redundant. I venture to suggest that it is not a question of the number of spindles or the amount of machinery: the real point is that there should be measurement by the running time of the machinery which is installed. There should, of course, be measurement of the output of the workers, but the operation of these machines must be multi-shift. International competition decides this matter.
I must ask your Lordships' indulgence if I quote in order to make clear what I am trying to bring out: that it is not the

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amount of machinery that is installed; it is the hours that that machinery operates. That is obvious. It is recorded that in the United States, in cotton spinning, the active spindles worked, on an average, in 1956–57 6,000 hours-odd; in Germany 4,000 hours; in Japan 4,800 hours; in Hong Kong 8,000 hours; and in the United Kingdom 2,100 hours. This means that the machinery, if it is to be properly used, must run multi-shift. That, of course, raises many social problems. Until recently there was in Lancashire, among the organised workers, a refusal to work shifts, even to work overtime; they refused to take the money when it was being offered. Fortunately, wisdom has now come, and that attitude has recently been modified.
But, again, if this means that there is now to be a 40-hour shift to be paid at 45 hours, obviously the money we propose voting today or supporting today is going to be thrown away. I do not know whether or not it can be argued that much of the agricultural subsidies are wasted, but in this case it would be clear that that would happen. There are social inconveniences which have got to be faced. Very naturally, people do not like starting work at six o'clock in the morning, which means an early start from home, or finishing at ten o'clock at night in the case of women.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: I wonder why they should like it.
LORD BARNBY: The only comment I would make on that to the noble Viscount is that, curiously enough, in a high standard state like the United States, where there is a high standard of living, it is readily accepted that people work round the clock; and, of course, in many cases, six days a week. It seems to suit their convenience that they earn the money. That must be the answer. I make no defence of it; I am stating facts. The whole thing is whether we can meet the competition from abroad. That is the point.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I do not think this applies specifically to the weaving and spinning industries; but when we talk about hours like that the fact is that we keep in touch with trade union friends in the United
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States of America, and we get bulletins from the American Embassy here. There are many trade union agreements being operated in the United States with hours of no more than 34 or 35 a week.
LORD BARNBY: I take it that the noble Viscount is referring to hours worked by individual operatives. The point I was making was the hours for which the machinery runs. It cannot compete with foreign competition unless there is this full running.
Another point I wish to make is that the import of machinery is essential if it is evident to employers that, in spite of the high efficiency of much British machinery, foreign machinery is particularly suitable. I hope the noble Earl will give some assurance on that point, because there have been suggestions that this will be accompanied by steps by Her Majesty's Government to limit the importation of particularly suitable foreign machinery.
I have two further points, and I would ask your Lordships' indulgence in putting them. The first is (this has been emphasised very strongly in another place, and it is an obvious thing to anybody who looks at it intelligently) that if we are going to use public money to put new machinery into an old shell, where it cannot possibly run continuously or effectively, we might as well throw the money away. That fact must be recognised. I earnestly hope that the noble Earl will consider, with his colleagues, some supplementary arrangements whereby public assistance will be made available in some way, as has been done through the development areas, so that suitable appropriate single-storey buildings are available to house the machinery which it is intended shall put the industry on its feet.
That brings me to the question of what is going to be the future of the multi-storey building. There was much stress in another place too, on the problem of the disused obsolete mills. It was suggested that they should be removed at the cost of the owners. I am glad that my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade pointed out the inequity of such a course, as against the removal of slag-heaps or old dwellings, which, in the interests of the community, might appropriately be removed. Surely

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it would be unfair to place on individuals, in this case on the individual mills which would be affected under this scheme, responsibility for removing these old mills when manifestly it must be something for which the community as a whole should take responsibility. It is obvious that in many of these towns the space occupied by these old buildings could well be used for housing, and I think that under Section 26 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, there are powers.
I hope that in the course of the Passage of the Bill the noble Earl may give some reference to up-to-date thoughts of the Government, beyond those in their minds when it left the other place, and will tell us what are the intentions which my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade promised to look into with regard to this matter. The Commons debate contained a moving picture of amenity devastation and human anxieties of a sad past. In spite of some proposals in the Bill, it is a worthy attack on a vital problem and it gives a promise for the future. All those who are associated with the textile industry must have a strong sense of concern about how this scheme will work out. I think that they will hope that there will be a response to the appeal which the noble Earl has made, and for which the noble Lord has such a high responsibility. Perhaps the words of the familiar hymn would seem appropriate:
"The strife is fierce, the warfare long;
Falls on the ear the distant triumph song,
Then hearts are stout again, and arms are strong."
May that be the future of the cotton industry! My Lords, I support the Bill.
4.12 p.m.
LORD DARWEN: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Wilmot of Selmeston has already dealt very ably, if I may say so, with the detailed provisions of the Bill before your Lordships' House, and I should prefer to look at this matter from a slightly different angle. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, is going to find any answer to his comments in what I have to say; I think possibly he may do so. I began my working life as a weaver in a cotton mill. I was 16 at the time, and for ten years—the ten most impressionable years
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of young manhood—I had as my place of work a cotton mill. I was at that time the sole representative of the fourth generation of my family to be engaged in the cotton trade.
I hope noble Lords will forgive me for these autobiographical details, and if they detect a certain note of pride in the mention of them they will not be wrong. On the other hand, I must not mislead your Lordships into supposing that, because I speak from these Benches, and because I have mentioned the fact that I began my working life as a weaver, I am an ex-trade union member. In fact my great grandfather founded the firm of which my grandfather and my father were, in turn, managing directors, and of which eventually I myself became a director. So that, whatever first-hand experience I have of the cotton trade—I am afraid that it is not very profound and not very recent—is that of an employer, rather than an employee. I hope that these few introductory remarks will lend a kind of perspective to the attitude that I adopt towards the Bill. In short, my attitude is that the Bill is belated and perpetuates a state of uncertainty which prevails, and has prevailed, in the industry for many years.
The White Paper shows that the principal cause of the decline in the cotton industry has been the continuous loss of export trade. Roughly speaking, despite minor booms, this process has been going on since 1914. In this connection, I well remember the vituperative comments which were heaped upon those Lancastrians who ventured out into the countries of the Far East, into India and China and Japan, and sold their heritage of skill to those peoples. But, looking back, the industrialisation of these and other parts of the world was inevitable; and whether the motive of these pioneers was a handful of silver or better living conditions for starving millions is, in the particular context in which I am speaking, hardly relevant. The point is that the changes had to come and the markets were bound to be lost to Lancashire.
During the 'thirties my father invited Gandhi to visit our factory and to stay with us at our home. He did so with a view to discussing with the Indian leader the possibility of raising the boycott. At that time, things were far from good in Lancashire. The average wage for

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weavers was something around 35s. for four looms—a good weaver might earn £2—and there was a good deal of unemployment. Gandhi asked to see some of the dwellings in which the cotton workers lived and of course this was arranged. But in the way that these things happen, the best and neatest homes were chosen, and the house-proud Lancastrians made sure that, whatever hardships they might be suffering, they still maintained a high standard of housewifery and were the best of hosts. The result was that Gandhi was not at all impressed; and he told us later in discussion that if we called this poverty we had no conception of the poverty in the Far East, and he compared the conditions of the Lancashire weaver, in receipt of 35s., with the conditions of the peasant in India. He suggested that the peasant would regard the conditions of the weaver as absolute luxury compared with the mud huts and mats and the empty rice bowl which were the lot of the Indian at that time—and, in many cases, I am afraid, still are to this day.
I have digressed a little, but perhaps what I have said illustrates the inevitableness of the shrinkage of Lancashire's trade. During the 1930s many employers hung on, using obsolete machinery, unable to re-equip, always "in the red" with the bank and taking orders at less than cost, but—and I would emphasise this—feeling a responsibility towards their workers to keep going as long as possible. In my experience, this feeling was a very real thing. Even the miserable wages of the cotton operatives at that time were wealth compared to the dole. A great deal of criticism has been levied against Lancashire employers and your Lordships will be aware that although I am no longer a cotton employer I am speaking very much as if I were one, because I have that sympathy.
The employers have been freely criticised, and I should like to say a few words in defence of their action, or inaction. They have been criticised for lack of foresight and initiative in re-equipping with modern looms, of which we have heard a great deal. It should be remembered, however, that when automatic looms were being installed abroad Lancashire was losing trade at a crippling rate; and to-day the value of
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exports of textiles is little more than one-twentieth of what it was in 1914. I have seen it stated that the exports have been halved in each decade since that date. So not only was there a lack of money, but there was also, very naturally, a lack of confidence. Thus there was no statistical or psychological inducement for capital to be attracted into the industry from outside.
In the 1920s machinery was still sound and, in the hands of skilled operatives, versatile; and the unions, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, were opposed to the two-shift system, which was essential to the re-equipment with automatic looms. By the 1930s most employers were well aware of the desirability of re-equipping but, as I have said, they had not the money. The war years provided no opportunity, and then came a chance in the peak period—1951. But there was still a great deal of uncertainty as to the degree to which the Asian countries were going to take over the markets in this country. This state of affairs perpetuated the lack of confidence in the future of the Lancashire cotton trade so that most manufacturers adopted a wait-and-see policy. Admittedly this may have been a moment when there might have been more action. Possibly it was a mistake not to go in for more wholesale re-equipment at that time; but the failure to do so is very understandable in the circumstances. Had all the mills been re-equipped at that time, we should not have seen a situation so greatly different from that which we have to-day, because there would still have been the great loss of export trade which nothing in the way of re-equipment could have arrested; and the extent to which we should have been in a position to compete with the cloth produced in Hong Kong, India or Pakistan is doubtful.
That brings me to the second major factor in the decline of the trade—namely, the rising imports from the Asian Commonwealth countries. During the last six or seven years the two processes—the shrinking export markets and the increasing imports—have taken a dual toll of trade from the industry, and they are responsible, or mainly responsible, for its present plight. So my point is that, even if employers had taken a bold course in 1951 and re-equipped, given the lack of consideration which Her

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Majesty's Government have displayed most of them would have been no better off, and would perhaps have been even worse off, than they are to-day. The Asian countries would still have reached the point where they could not only satisfy their home markets but could enter the European markets, with cloth produced on better machinery and with much lower labour costs.
One third factor which is responsible for the decline in trade concerns the home market. The increasing use of synthetic fibres has meant that where the demand for textiles has greatly increased, as indeed it has in the home market, largely because of the improved standard of living, cotton has not been able to claim a share of the increased trade to the extent which might have been expected if the new developments had not come. What is now proposed by Her Majesty's Government may—I hope will—do something to improve the position of the cotton trade; but, as I have said, it is ill-timed and laced with uncertainty. If it had come sooner much more might have been achieved, possibly without cost to the taxpayer. If it were more certain in operation I believe there would be a better chance of restoring confidence in an industry which has done so much to provide this country with the sinews of our greatness.
As it is, however, what confidence can the industry have in the present Agreement with the Asian part of the Commonwealth?—because it is quite un-certain how long that Agreement can last. It is a purely temporary agreement and there is no certainty that it can be continued. The question arises whether it can continue long enough for the re-equipment that is necessary to be paid for; or whether, to look at the matter from the individual worker's standpoint, the cotton worker who is courageous enough to stay on in the trade until he is too old to make a change may not be laid off without even having the compensation to which, under somewhat uncertain conditions, under the Government's plan he would be entitled. I admit that there is a great difficulty here, because in our view—I think I may speak as from these Benches—it is only right that we should allow the Asian countries to raise their standard of living. Indeed, it can be
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said that until they do so there cannot be any parity of competition. As it is now, the most modern mill will not be able to compete with Asian products until wages in places like Hong Kong and India reach a level which approximates to that of our own.
Other industries—agriculture has been mentioned; and of course the nationalised industries of coal and the railways—have received a considerable amount of Government help; and there are yet other industries which I believe are hoping to get it. But Lancashire, it seems to me, has all along been treated almost as an outsider, and this belated recognition of a responsibility by the present Government smacks to me of a sort of pension scheme—though this time it is not for old people but for an industry which has, in truth, deserved better. My Lords, although I am not confident that the present Bill is sufficiently thoroughgoing or clear-cut, I nevertheless very much hope that, in spite of my misgivings, it may achieve something to improve the position of the industry.
4.33 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, only for a moment, and through the courtesy of the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, will I detain your Lordships on two points. The first main point is that the Bill does not breach the principle of free entry of Commonwealth goods which was laid down in Ottawa in 1932. It must have been a difficult decision for Her Majesty's Government to take, because one is aware that the implementation of that principle is indeed one of the causes of the need for the present Bill. Indeed, we know that there is a voluntary agreement with Hong Kong and prospects of voluntary agreements with India and Pakistan. As my noble friend Lord Barnby said, there is no security in those agreements as to their execution; nor is there certainty of the length of time which the Hong Kong agreement will be in operation. But, in spite of those unknowns, I think that those of us who believe in the entity of the Commonwealth, economic and political, must rejoice that Her Majesty's Government have faced that difficulty and have come down without any doubt at all upon the side of maintaining that principle.

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The second point I would touch on for a moment is the question of compensation for redundancy. It seems to me that here Lancashire has a chance of being in the van of what I would term the new industrial outlook, where men have, as far as possible, security of work and compensation when they are deprived of work through the change of economic circumstances of our country. I believe that many of your Lordships, like myself, must have felt shocked in days gone by that a man who had worked hard all his life in industry was very often only one hour away from unemployment. Later on it was a week. Now it is—and I think we all, on all sides of your Lordships' House, must rejoice—in the thoughts of all those who are responsible for trade unions, who are in management, or who are partners and shareholders in industry, that their partnership should be expressed in terms of advantage for all and security for all; and this Bill gives a chance of Lancashire being in the van of the movement of what I would term the new outlook on industrial security. So, with those two comments, I should like to give support to the Bill which Her Majesty's Government now bring forward.
4.37 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, may I first say that I associate myself with the previous speakers in the tribute to the clarity with which the Bill was explained. We could be under no illusion at all as to the limited nature of the Bill, after we had listened to that explanation. We have had a most interesting speech from my noble friend Lord Darwen, based upon not only his personal experience but the traditions and experience of his father and forbears. I have not any experience like that to offer, but I am bound to say that I have a certain nostalgic feeling about these discussions to-day, because I sat in the chair of the Committee set up by Mr. William Graham in 1929 for about six or seven months, inquiring into the difficulties of the cotton industry.
I have the Report of that Committee in front of me to-day. I promise your Lordships at once that I am not going to quote from it. I have re-read it again very carefully, and I am the only surviving member of the Committee. It seems
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to have had in its set-up much of the kind of feeling that is behind the words that have been spoken to-day with regard to cotton. There was serving on it a leading finance, shipping and commercial magnate who became a great friend of mine afterwards, Sir Alan Anderson; there was an accountant, Sir William McLintock; and there was a trade unionist who also happened to be a friend of mine and who was associated with the miners' union, just as the trade union representative who, it is now forecast, will be on the new body—the same sort of thing. We went into the whole position of the cotton industry month after month. Finally, because of the London Naval Conference, the chair was taken over by the late John Clynes.
I must say that as I hear the reports of the condition of the industry which are really summarised in the White Paper which preceded the Bill, I am not surprised. The 1929 depression was the first really deep depression that had come upon the industry in a cumulative form. Up to 1914 and the opening of the war, the cotton industry in Lancashire was growing all the time. It seems strange to look back upon it. Then came the war. When you deal with some of the great industrial problems of Britain you must not forget that the disturbance of the two great wars which we have had to fight for liberty and the cost it has entailed, has had a remarkable effect on both our industrial organisation and our industrial and financial resources. Nevertheless, there was the usual sort of thing that you get after a war and the period of recession from the purchase of this or that type of commodity produced by industry.
There was a boom in 1920, and it is as well for us to remember that the cotton industry to-day still suffers from the damage done to the industry then—the boom of 1920 and the awful financial manipulations. Still, as I look at it to-day, I find that in the basis structure of the industry none of the things that we discovered as a Committee in 1929–30 have really been remedied to any great extent. Mind you, I agree with my noble friend Lord Darwen that very unfair criticism was levelled at individual managers and directors or owners of certain mills, because some of them had been sufficiently enterprising, in the face of the

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greatest possible difficulty, in introducing some form of modernisation.
On the other hand, I am bound to say from my recollection that all the witnesses that came before the inquiry of 1929 struck me, whether they came from the labour or the capitalist side, as being extraordinarily conservative. We suffer now from the very things we pointed out then. You talk about the reducing of capacity, which is the first phase of the objective of the Bill. You deal with spindles and you find that there are to-day millions of spindles which are said to be surplus to present requirements. In those days of 1929 we were urging upon the industry, in order to get into some markets from which we had been largely driven, to adopt a wider use of the ring spindles instead of the mule. But mule spindles are still working to-day.
It is true that a good many additions have been made in the meantime in the use of ring spindles, and in automatic loom there have been some developments. But in the limited time since those days in which I have been able to pay attention to the cotton industry, I have not seen the advance in the substitution of the automatic loom that could have been made if the problem had been tackled properly. Noble Lords may say, why did we not make a more firm and comprehensive Report in 1930? It was largely because we did not have a Labour majority in the Government to be able to recommend the type of policy which some of us then would have liked to see initiated.
The other question raised by my noble friend Lord Wilmot of Selmeston in his interesting speech to-day was the need, so greatly stressed in our Report, for getting the industry on a different basis of structural organisation. How did it appear to us, who examined and cross-examined the witnesses on the question? First, there was the raw cotton and the treatment of raw cotton up to the stage of its being handed over to the spinners, all the overheads, profits, transport in between, having to be met. There were the spinners with a separate organisation but always with the same problem: separate overheads, merchanting, costs and profits to be handed on to the weaver. The weavers were in exactly the same position, having all these overheads, profit to be added, and to be
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passed on to the finishers, dyers, printers and the lot. As if that were not sufficient, they too had their overheads and profits which had to be passed on to the next stage. At every stage there was the addition of profit and the cost of transport and the special packing firms who did nothing but packing. Added to that, at the end was the whole line of merchants to take their share of the product before passing it on to an export market.
I am not at all surprised to learn to-day that a great deal of the fierce competition we are meeting is because in many places the textile industry has become vertically organised and many of these other costs can be eliminated. Take a look at the Asian trade and markets which have been referred to. It may well be that we have lost markets in India, Pakistan and Japan; but it has not always been because of special Commonwealth arrangements. In the case of India, Pakistan and Hong Kong I remember very distinctly the evidence that came before us in 1929. Even in those days a lot of British markets, in India for example—which was then, of course not divided into Pakistan and India—were lost because of the fierce competition in India from the product of the Japanese automatic loom, which had hardly been introduced to any extent in Lancashire.
When I look at the hopeful thoughts arising from the good work done by Lord Rochdale to get arrangements with Hong Kong, which may lead to similar arrangements with India and Pakistan, I am reminded that that is just what we said in 1929–30. And it is now thirty years on. In the years 1945 to 1950–51 we had here again something of the same sort of thing as happened after the other war—quite a boom in industry, and maintained for much longer than would have otherwise have been the case because of the continuance of certain measures of control, helping them in what was admittedly, of course, a sellers' market. In my view, and in the view of many other people, it has been the failure to keep some of that control in operation, despite the condition of the industry, that has helped to speed what many of us foresaw would be the inevitable result after the post-war boom had begun to decline. I think that what really closed the door was the winding up of the Raw Cotton

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Control and the reopening the brokers' markets, instead of collective purchase and controlled distribution.
That leads us, therefore, to the present situation. I am quite sure that we cannot maintain the cotton industry in the export markets of the world at the position it holds to-day unless we can have much more modern equipment; so that one objective of the Bill is to be welcomed. But I am quite sure we cannot expand it to any great extent unless the whole basis of the industry is reorganised and we eliminate all these other intervening processes, and so on, and come into straight competition with the conditions that we, together with other people who are sending their exports abroad, have to face.
But that leads us to a great social question; because nobody who knows Lancashire at all will be able to forget how the communities have grown up in villages, in small urban districts, around what is only one of the horizontal sections of the industry. If you were to try to secure an arrangement under which you had a vertical organisation of the industry, if you were going to have it all in one centre, or in a limited number of centres, you would have to change entirely the whole communal life of those villages or urban districts. But you could go a long way towards what would be equal to vertical organisation by seeing that there was adequate amalgamation of the processes, and you could put them under the control of one firm. I do not know what the position is to-day, but I should be extremely interested to know, for instance, to what extent the Lancashire Cotton Corporation, which was already in existence after the war, has been able to cover any of this ground in its wide and often successful operations.
As to the general conditions which are to be operated under the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, has argued with some success that £30 million spread over five years does not seem a very large sum. I think that if he had put it separately, without comment upon other subventions, we could have accepted his words much more easily. But certainly he will not expect us to agree with what he said, almost as a sort of interlude in his speech, when he suggested that a
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subsidy such as that given to agriculture is largely wasted. Believe me, the subsidy to agriculture is not wasted. It has meant an enormous fillip to industry, including some of the light industries in which the noble Lord has been interested, and in the provision of modern equipment for the farmer.
LORD BARNBY: If the noble Viscount would permit an interruption, would he care to express a view whether, should this country unfortunately be faced with an industrial depression anything like that to which he has referred as existing in 1929, the industrial population would be prepared to accept the continuance of a burden on its exports equal to the amount required to pay high subsidies on agriculture, which would raise the cost of living considerably?
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: Of course, if we had a depression of that kind, many people would be just as anxious to keep up the orders of the farmers to the industries of this country which, in a modern agriculture, they still need. Otherwise, there would be an even greater depression in the heavier industries of the country. As to the possibility of a depression, let me be quite frank about my gradual change of view over thirty years—and I have mentioned it once before in this House. If it had not been for the protective duties given to a large range of our industries in the last thirty years we should never have recovered from the great depression after the First Great War. Farmers and agriculture, with the exception of a small section of agriculture, would not have any protective tariff—none at all. Representatives of the Government the noble Lord supports have again and again suggested—up till now, at any rate—that a subsidy was perfectly justified in the absence of a protective tariff such as has been afforded by this country to other industries; so I hope the noble Lord will not keep that particular bee in his bonnet.
When he comes to talk about the conditions of work and labour, I think I must say this: that one thing that always comes back to me like a boomerang when he talks like that is Lancashire. It was in Rochdale in 1844 that the weavers of Rochdale gathered

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together, twenty-eight of them, and said, "We are poor because we are robbed; and we are robbed because we are poor"; and they proceeded to lay the foundation stone of the constitution of the British consumers' Co-operative Movement—now an enormous organisation. It was not because of the subsequent two generations of success in the cotton industry; it was because of the famine of the hungry 'forties: and if anybody wants to try to deal with the present situation by reducing the standard of life, or the hours of work, or the conditions of shifts in employment, then I think he would be making a vast mistake, because it would do the industry no good.
I was not at all surprised to see a Member of Parliament say—I must not quote too much from another place, but I may make just a passing reference to it—that he had never yet reconciled himself to the adoption of a three-shift system for women. In discussing the question of modernisation, such matters as that have to be taken into close account; for in the last few weeks, since the White Paper has been issued, there has been a great deal of talk about the three-shift system as well as the two-shift system. In fact, it is already necessary, as everybody knows, if the automatic loom is to be operated.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, will the noble Viscount permit me to intervene? Is he suggesting that the three-shift system, if worked, must necessarily be worked by females, instead of having two shifts worked by females and one by males?
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, I am not suggesting anything in detail on a matter like this. I am talking on principle. I am saying that many people hold that it is a bad thing to work three shifts in an industry where women are employed. It may well be that many people do not agree with me on that. The only women who have to work on a three-shift system are those in the nursing profession. There they certainly have to do that. But in this matter of employment, I should think the answer is, "No."
With regard to administration, I was struck by what my noble friend Lord Wilmot of Selmeston said about the phasing of these proposals; and this
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point was emphasised by what my noble friend Lord Darwen said about uncertainty. If any real good is to be done by this scheme, then we must pay attention to this question of uncertainty. I do not think anybody can deny that the scheme is belated. If we look at the debate in another place in 1954, in the time of the previous Conservative Government, and read the case put on behalf of the cotton industry for something being done immediately, and consider how the position has deteriorated since then, it is hard not to accuse the Government of being very belated in their operations. As regards uncertainty, it seems to me that under the scheme so much depends on whether or not individuals in the industry are willing to co-operate in it. If they are not willing, then the scheme falls, and we go on to the next stage of the general decline of the industry. I do not think that the scheme is capable of giving us much hope for the recovery of the industry to enable it to begin to expand again in production and export. But if the schemes are to be laid before us in four or five weeks' time, and we know then what is the response within the industry, perhaps we shall be able to begin to form a better judgment on the matter.
The other point I want to raise concerns compensation. When I heard the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, explain how compensation to the workers is to be worked, I thought that, whilst it is perfectly true, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, said, that there has been a vast change in conditions, and workers can be made mobile, in an industry like this, rooted for generations in families of workers, to pay compensation, where mills are closed down, on the basis of a weekly payment for a few weeks, as a sort of addition to unemployment benefit, seems a very mean and niggardly way of dealing with the matter. It certainly is not good enough, and I hope that something more will be done. I would add only one other word. To-morrow week we shall have the opportunity, on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Ebury, of debating the question of the continued uncertainty of the limits of State control. When he comes to consider what he is going to say on this uncertainty, I hope that he will be able to say something about the uncertainty in the cotton industry without control.
5.4 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I am grateful for the support which your Lordships have given to this Bill. The only general criticisms have been that it is too late—that it ought to have been introduced, long ago; and that it is too limited—it does not go far enough. As there was no general vein of opposition running through the debate, I think the best I can do is to try to deal separately with the various interesting questions which have been raised by those of your Lordships who have spoken.
The last matter raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, was also alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Wilmot of Selmeston, near the beginning of his speech—namely, the compensation to be paid to operatives who are displaced by a redundancy scheme. The noble Lord, Lord Wilmot of Selmeston did not approve of weekly payments being made or being in any way dependent on the subsequent employment of the operatives in other industries. The Government feel very decidely, and always have, that they ought not to interfere or try to impose any ideas of their own on the arrangements which are made about compensation. What we insist upon is that before any compensation is paid to the owners of scrap machinery under a redundancy scheme, the President of the Board of Trade shall first be satisfied that arrangements have been made to compensate the workers and that these arrangements have been agreed to by the trade unions and the employers.
I would call your Lordships' attention to Clause 1, subsection (2) (c), because it was not in the Bill when first printed. It was an Amendment inserted in another place. It provides:
"that bodies representing the interests of a majority of the persons employed in the section have agreed to those arrangements so far as they relate to persons whose interests are represented by those bodies."
We feel that it is very important that the agreement should be freely arrived at by the people concerned, the employers and the trade unions, without Government pressure and interference. Therefore I am not expressing any view of my own on the merits of the different kinds of compensation. What I understand has
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been agreed to is that half the compensation shall be in a lump sum and the other half in weekly payments. Although I do not want to go into details, which may not yet be fully worked out by the parties concerned, I think that what they have in mind is that the amount of compensation should depend on the number of years during which a worker has been employed. A worker aged 30 would get less than a worker aged 50, who in turn would get less than a worker aged 65. After compensation has been ascertained, the idea is that half should be paid in a lump sum and the other half in weekly payments. I have no doubt that when the discussions are finally concluded—I 'understand that there are still a few points to be cleared up—we shall be able to study the proposals as a whole: but the Government do not propose, provided they are agreed to by the trade unions, to criticise the results or do other than make it a condition, as we certainly shall do, that compensation is paid on those agreed plans.
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves that point, may I say how grateful I am to him for making that clear? I understand that the Government will not insist that some part of the payment shall be by weekly payments.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: No, my Lords, certainly not. The Government will agree to that because it has been agreed to by the trade unions, but the Government will not take the initiative in prescribing the nature of the compensation. The noble Lord, Lord Wilmot of Selmeston, spoke about the social aspect of the redundancy provisions, and if I may I would say a word on that. I know that suggestions have been made that account should have been taken of the local unemployment position or the extent to which a locality is dependent on cotton in determining which mills shall be closed under reorganisation schemes, but we do not think that this is acceptable as part of this policy. While we are fully aware of the importance of bringing new employment to the cotton areas, any proposals to write social factors into the conditions for determining which capacity shall be eliminated would, I think, cut right across the whole object of bringing about reorganisation of the cotton industry on really efficient lines. If we did

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not stick to the principle of achieving an efficient industry when the job is done, it would, in our view, endanger the jobs of many thousands of people who will continue to work in the cotton industry. I think it must be left to firms themselves to decide whether or not to accept the offer of compensation for scrapping excess capacity; and I think it would be wrong to withhold compensation from firms which came to the conclusion that their interests lay in accepting the offer rather than struggling on in the industry.
Perhaps this question should be considered together with the other matter dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Wilmot of Selmeston, in his speech—namely, measures to provide alternative employment. I was grateful to hear the noble Lord say that the other development area schemes apart from Lancashire have been a resounding success, because that is not always said by the Party opposite; I am glad to hear that he thinks that they have. However, I do not think that the development area in North-East Lancashire has been other than a success; a great deal has already been done there towards establishing new industries.
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: It is rather small.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Yes. But the D.A.T.A.C. provisions, as the noble Lord knows, have been extended to a large number of cotton towns, and we are hoping to do a good deal more there. I should perhaps have said something about this in my opening speech if I had not felt that it might be better to wait and see if any of your Lordships were interested. It is, I think, wrong to overlook the great diversification of economy in Lancashire which has taken place in recent years. The total numbers of those wholly unemployed in the cotton towns at the present time is less than in a good many other areas, and short-time working in the cotton industry has been falling considerably, as have the unemployment figures, in a number of cotton towns. So we cannot necessarily be expected to give absolute priority to the cotton areas over other areas in Great Britain where existing unemployment is much higher. But with that proviso, Lancashire's need for more new industry to deal with whatever lack of employment may eventually arise
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from reorganisation schemes is recognised and everything will be done to meet it.
Some particular figures and examples were given by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary in another place. He mentioned the Michelin and Mullard factories at Burnley, in particular, one of which is employing 1,000 men; and he also referred to the D.A.T.A.C. list, which includes Accrington, Blackburn, the Oldham district and the Rochdale district, and to which has now been added Todmorden. The D.A.T.A.C. procedure is still in its early stages, but a number of applications are being considered and it is certainly a fundamental part of our industrial policy that we should do whatever we can to create a greater diversity of employment in these towns.
The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, asked a number of questions about various matters, and perhaps the most important was that of working two or three shifts, which was also referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, said about the necessity, as far as possible, of making the machines work all the time in order that we may be really competitive. With regard to the operatives, again I did not deal with this in my original remarks because I do not think the trade unions in Lancashire have ever made any difficulty, except in cases where they think that the machinery is out of date, about agreeing to a two or three shift system of working. I think it is generally recognised in Lancashire that the future of this industry and its ability to compete will depend on having new automatic machines which can be worked all day, and possibly all night, and that will involve a shift system.
But with regard to the particular question of women, which was raised in the course of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough—and I think he was interrupted by the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, on this point—I must make it clear that under the Factories Acts women are not allowed to work a night shift. I know they do in hospitals—and I do not know how we should get on without them—but a hospital is not a factory. So far as factories are concerned, I think the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough,

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referred to a Member of another place who said that he could not agree with women working at night. It does not matter whether this Member agreed or not; it is contrary to the law and cannot be done under the Factories Acts.
The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, referred to Hong Kong, saying that he was not sure whether the agreement would be implemented. I think that it is only right and fair to Hong Kong to say that everyone should realise that their undertaking is working now. I do not know whether the noble Lord was suggesting that it might not be renewed after the end of the period.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, it is not that I criticised whether it would be implemented, but that I wanted to know for what duration its existence would continue.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: For the duration that has been agreed. I hope the noble Lord is not suggesting that Hong Kong will run out of the agreement before the expiry of the agreed period, because that would be unfair to Hong Kong, and it might be undesirable if the impression were given that any of us thought that. I do not think there is any likelihood of that happening.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: It is only for three years.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Yes. That is why I mentioned the agreed period, which is three years.
LORD BARNBY: I do not think I insinuated that Hong Kong would discontinue with that agreement, but I was referring to the expiry of the time of three years.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: I am grateful to the noble Lord. I only wanted to make it clear that when the noble Lord asked if the idea was going to be implemented, there was no question of anybody suggesting that Hong Kong intended to break it and not to carry out their undertakings. The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, also asked what would happen if the minimum target of excess machinery scrapped under a reorganisation scheme is not reached by the number of applications which will be made.
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Technically, of course, there is power in the Bill for a scheme to be revoked and a new one introduced. But, as I have explained, the President of the Board of Trade does not intend to agree to the expenditure of public money on this scheme unless he is satisfied that a sufficient amount of excess machinery is going to be scrapped to justify the expenditure. If, in the event envisaged by my noble friend—which I hope will not occur—there were not enough applications and not enough decisions to scrap in order to reach the minimum target set by the scheme, then the result would be that the scheme would fall down and not be implemented, and the cotton industry would have lost the opportunity which it now has of ridding itself of this excess machinery. Therefore, I hope very much that they will not miss that opportunity. Perhaps the alternative might be that another scheme, imposed later by a different Government upon the industry, would be tried. I do not know. But it would mean that the industry would have missed the bus so far as this Bill is concerned.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl a question I intended to ask on scrapping? I am quite satisfied with the answer the noble Earl has made on that point. When the schemes are made for scrapping, is there to be anything in them with regard to the use made of the machinery which is to go out of use? Are the machines to be sold to competitors abroad? Are they to be finally broken up, or what? Is there any plan as to what you are going to do with them?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: They must be scrapped. They must not be sold and used again. I understand that it is also the intention of the special committee of the Cotton Board to recommend in their schemes that if later on new machinery is put in, in applying for the 25 per cent. grant more old machinery must be scrapped in order that the new machinery may replace it. It must not be in replacement of old machinery for whose scrapping the two-thirds grant has already been paid. If it is proposed to put in new machinery in place of old which has already received a scrapping grant, then a condition will be made

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that the greater part of the first grant must be refunded—what is called, I believe, the "claw-back."
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Darwen, for giving us the benefit of his most interesting experience as an employer, and in many other ways. When he told us about the great discrepancy between the living standards of the Indian workers and Lancashire workers at time of Gandhi, it occurred to me that the gap was even wider now, and probably a great deal wider. It certainly ought to be part of our general policy to try to raise the standard of living of backward peoples, both in the Commonwealth and elsewhere. It certainly is our hope to work towards that end. The noble Lord, Lord Darwen, ended up—this is one point on which I must disagree with him—by alluding to this Bill as a pension scheme. That is very far indeed from what it is intended to be. It is intended to be an injection, giving new life to the industry, and not to pension it off as an old out-of-date concern; in the words of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye, who I thought expressed it very well, to put it in the van of a new industrial outlook. That is what we are intending, and not to pension it off.
I was most interested in the debate on agriculture which took place between the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, and my noble friend, Lord Barnby. I found it just as interesting as the debate on cotton, but I do not think I had better enter into it.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: Why not?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Because we are talking about cotton. What I thought while the noble Viscount was speaking, and also when the noble Lord, Lord Wilmot of Selmeston, was opening, was this. In general, noble Lords opposite and we are entirely agreed both about what ought to be done and on the priorities. We are both agreed that scrapping of excess machinery should come first, and after that should follow re-equipment. Perhaps the difference is that noble Lords opposite, quite understandably, feel that a comprehensive plan should be made by the Government and carried out. When the noble Viscount, Loud Alexander of Hillsborough, was
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speaking, he spoke about the witnesses he had interviewed in 1929. He told us how all witnesses, whether employers or workers, were the most conservative people he had ever heard. I think that that is probably still true. The people in Lancashire in the cotton industry, whether they are employers or workers, all seem to be the most conservative and individualistic people in the world, and I should not care to be the Minister in charge of a Bill imposing a comprehensive scheme of reorganisation on the cotton industry.
What the Government feel is that if you want a reasonable chance of a reorganization scheme succeeding, you must let the industry make its own scheme and help it where you can. Ideally, it may not be so logical, and it may not look so well on paper, but I think it is far more likely to work in practice, and that is what we are trying to do. We have asked the industry to prepare its own scheme, and we have told them exactly how we can help them. We have given them this chance—it may be their last chance—and I hope and pray that they will take it.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, I should like to apologise to him that I was not here to hear his introduction of this important Bill. I should like to ask him whether it is the Government's intention to issue White Papers prior to laying the various Orders for the different sections of the cotton industry before Parliament. I think the noble Earl would agree that the industry is a very complicated structure, and I feel that the House should be nut into the picture as to what are the Government's proposals for each section before we are asked to pass those orders. I wonder whether the noble Earl can give us that information?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I do not think that there would be time for another White Paper. We have had this general White Paper. We hope that these three schemes for the three sections, spinning, doubling and weaving, will be ready to be laid on the Table of both Houses before the end of July. We feel it is very important that they should be approved, if they are satisfactory, before Parliament rises for the Summer Recess. I have no doubt that

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everything will be done to arrange for a reasonable interval between the time they are published and the time they are discussed. Obviously, we must have time to read them and learn exactly what details they contain. But that time cannot be very long, because it is now June 30, and our timetable will probably contemplate their being approved within the next three weeks, although they have not yet been drafted.
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: My Lords, would the noble Earl forgive just one other question? In laying the schemes before the House, will he ask his right honourable friend to give us, if possible, some indication not only of the scheme for compensation, but of what amount of refitting of the industry will follow it in the section?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: The noble Lord is referring to the compensation for scrapping machinery, and not to the compensation for displaced workers?
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: For scrapping machinery.
THE EARL OF DUNDEEDetails of compensation for scrapped machinery will be in the draft reorganisation schemes. But I do not think there will be any indication in these schemes as to the number of applications which will be made later on for grants for new machinery, because the period allowed in the Bill for the making of an application is three years.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

STREET OFFENCES BILL
5.30 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the Bill to be considered on Report.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That this Report be now received.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
Clause 1:
Loitering or soliciting for purposes of prostitution
1.—(1) It shall be an offence for a common prostitute to loiter or solicit in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution.
THE MARQUESS OF READING THE MARQUESS OF READING moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "a common prostitute" and insert "any person habitually". The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I have not up to this point taken any part in this particular Bill, and I offer my apologies to the House for intruding at so late a stage. The fact is that, having studied the Bill afresh after it left this House on the Committee stage, I found myself greatly disquieted by the first subsection of Clause 1, and I set myself the task of seeing whether I could devise any Amendment, not because I alone was disquieted by the position but also because I believe that a large number of your Lordships shared my feelings in regard to it. Therefore I have put down for consideration at this late stage of the Bill the Amendment which to-day stands in my name, and which would make Clause 1 (1) read as follows:
"It shall be an offence for any person habitually to loiter or solicit in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution."
On the Committee stage my noble and learned friend Lord Denning and others had down an Amendment to insert the words "any person". The difference—and in my submission to the House it is a very substantial difference—is that in the Amendment which your Lordships are now asked to consider the word "habitually" appears for the first time. I think that that substantially changes the whole aspect.
The Amendment that I have put down is designed to deal with two matters, the one of substance, the other perhaps more of form than of substance, though not necessarily for that reason less important. The matter of substance is that, if my Amendment were adopted, the Bill would include, in the expression "any person habitually" loitering or soliciting, male prostitutes as well as female prostitutes. We are told that the main purpose of this Bill is to clean up the streets in this country; and how you clean up the streets if you succeed by this Bill in sweeping at least a majority of the women off them and giving the men prostitutes a free rein in their place, I simply do not begin to understand. It may be that I am somewhat old-fashioned in these matters, but in my view the presence of male prostitutes infesting the streets is a good deal more

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repellent and a good deal more scandalous than the presence of the females.
I think there is this to be said, too; that one might hope that if this Amendment were accepted there would be a real, solid chance of effecting some considerable reduction not only in the number of male prostitutes on the streets, but also in the number of male prostitutes plying their nauseating trade. Because they would not be in the same position as the women, since they could not resort to any sort of adaptation of the call-girl system; nor could they have recourse to the display of advertisements to which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, called attention on the Committee stage, for the reason that if they attempted to do either of those things they would be immediately involved in the criminal law.
When this matter was discussed on a slightly differently phrased Amendment on the Committee stage, we were told that there already existed machinery under the criminal law to deal with this question of male prostitutes. I should be inclined to reply to that assertion two things: first, that there is no great harm in having a second string to your bow, particularly if the first string is proving increasingly ineffectual in its purpose. I have not the temerity to walk about the streets myself at night, but I am told by those more adventurous than myself that it is virtually impossible to walk about any street in the West End of London at night without being accosted by male prostitutes, with all the danger of blackmail that is involved in that sort of encounter. Surely, when we are dealing with this Bill—and there is nothing in the Title of the Bill to make it impossible—we ought to sweep into the net the male prostitutes who at present pollute our streets in no less degree than the females.
I may be told that it is difficult to deal with the word "habitual" in regard to the male. On that, I would say two things. I think it is right to say that in the Acts which affect them at present there appear the words "soliciting and importuning", but not the word "loitering"; and therefore, if your Lordships accepted this Amendment, you would have a new offence as regards the male prostitute of habitually loitering
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as well as soliciting, which I submit would be a not unuseful weapon to have in your hands. You have, I think, in another context in connection with the criminal law as regards male prostitutes, the word "persistently", and I see no more difficulty in proving that a man is habitually soliciting for prostitution than in proving that he is persistently doing so. It seems to me the two are very much on a par. I should not have thought there was any greater difficulty about the police recognising an habitual male prostitute than about their recognising an habitual female prostitute. They have, in fact, their same beats, just as much as the women and the police have their beats. It seems to me that a policeman, seeing a male prostitute obviously loitering for the purpose of prostitution night after night, would be perfectly able to give evidence to a magistrate that that man had been habitually loitering for the purpose of prostitution.
My Lords, that is the point of substance, and I have put it as shortly as I can. It has been argued already at great length in the House, but not with the word "habitual" attached. The point of the word "habitual", in its application to both men and women, is that it is designed to remove the danger of some person quite innocently walking up and down a street and being arrested for loitering, and to exclude the case of a woman who, perhaps from sheer financial necessity, may once or twice go on the streets in order to earn a little money but is not properly described as a common prostitute.
The second point of this Amendment is the removal from the clause of the words "common prostitute". It might be arguable, I suppose, that "common prostitute," in effect, would apply equally to male and female prostitutes. But in such Statutes as those in which it has already been used, it has always been confined to women; and even if that were arguable I would suggest that it ought to be made quite plain that it did in this case apply to men as well as women. What I dislike in this phrase as it stands at present in this clause, "common prostitute", is that it is thrust so very much into the forefront of the battle.
I think the effect of the Amendment I suggest is really little more than drafting. None the less, I think it is important, because many people might believe that, under the clause as it at present figures in the Bill, being a common prostitute is not one of the allegations which has to be proved if and when a woman is brought up for trial. I know, of course, that this is not so; and I have no doubt that your Lordships know that one of the ingredients of the offence is that she is a common prostitute, and that that has to be proved just as much as the fact that she was loitering or soliciting in the street for the purpose of prostitution. But in the Bill as drafted it looks too much, in my view, as if it is only necessary for a policeman to point a finger at a woman and say, "You are a common prostitute. I am now going to charge you, not with being a common prostitute, but with loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution". If my Amendment were adopted, the position would be quite clear, because he would have to prove that she was habitually loitering or soliciting in the street for the purpose of prostitution.
My Amendment does not, so to speak, take the words "common prostitute" and put them right at the beginning, divorced from the rest of the offence. It makes it, I hope, quite clear that there are the four ingredients to the offence: that the woman is loitering, or soliciting, in a street for the purpose of prostitution, and that she is doing it habitually. It then becomes quite clear that that is what has to be proved. The prosecution cannot start off with a mere allegation that the woman is a common prostitute, and then, having made that allegation, prove merely that she has been loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution. I think the word "habitually" excludes—at least, it is designed to obviate—the possibility thaxt a woman who was quite innocently walking up the street might be arrested, under this clause, on suspicion of loitering or soliciting; because that woman the policeman could not prove to be habitually loitering, since he would not have seen her before, except once or, perhaps, twice. But he would know the "old-timer". Those are the people who can, and ought to be, within the four
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corners of this Bill, and in order that they, together with, in my submission, no less certainly the male prostitute, may be subject to conditions which will at least introduce some greater degree of decency in our streets than exists to-day. I beg to move the Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 5, leave out ("a common prostitute") and insert ("any person habitually").—(The Marquess of Reading.)
5.44 p.m.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: My Lords, I rise to support this Amendment. It is a most ingenious one. We have had a debate already on the word "person", but the addition of the word "habitually" seems to have changed the whole situation and will render the reply by the Lord Chancellor a good deal more difficult than it was the other day. I have the highest regard for the Lord Chancellor; I place him very high in affection and among great men, and frankly, I do not like seeing him used as a Home Office hack. You might think that all the wisdom of the ages was vested in the Home Office. That is a very depressing thought! Of course, you can argue the hind leg off a donkey, but at the end the hind leg remains. I must say that the other day the Lord Chancellor's dialectics over the "person versus common prostitute" Amendment was nothing else but a tour de force—it was astounding. But what gave rise to no little surprise did not convince my noble and learned friend, the great lawyer Lord Denning, on my right; nor did it convince many of your Lordships who, I am perfectly certain, as I was, were left in a quagmire of argument such as few of us were able to understand.
I consider that this Bill, which might be called the "Mayfair Benefit Bill", would be considerably improved by this Amendment, because not only does it do away with the objectionable start of the label of "common prostitute" but it includes men. I want to make a different point from that of the noble Marquess about the male prostitute. I am talking about the males who go to pick up prostitutes. I want to refer to them. I think it would do more, because it would encourage them to shift the locality of assembly, which is what this Bill is aiming to do.

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In a previous debate it was pointed out most conclusively that prostitutes only assemble—this is axiomatic—where there are men; that they do not go there to look at each other but that they go there to meet men. Yet no word has ever been given us about, nor has any blame been attached to, the men who make prostitution so advantageous in Mayfair. Who are they? They are not local people. Where do they come from? Certainly, they come for one purpose only—namely, to pick up these women. If you can discourage them, which I believe this Amendment would do in that they would not be there habitually, it would consequently change the locality and defeat this assembly of prostitutes which, after all, is at the root of the Bill.
I think that in this measure we have an example of sex prejudice. All we are doing is, first of all, to complain of a nuisance, and then we are being exceedingly hard and harsh on one of the sexes, attributing no blame to the other, and hard on a class of women who cannot speak for themselves. We know the Lord Chancellor and we know the Home Secretary. We know them as good, decent, human, kindly people—friends of ours whom we like. I cannot help asking myself repeatedly, when I think of this Bill, who was responsible for this sadistic measure, because it comes from a sadistic mind. There are the elements of the bully in it. The atmosphere of "Holier than thou" pervades it. There is the Pharisaic outlook which I find so deplorable. There is a lack of humanity, a lack of understanding. There is no charity in it, and it is full of intolerance. To me, and I think to others, fundamentally the whole measure smells.
What is a prostitute? One who lets her body out for hire—a dreadful thing. Are we ourselves so innocent? For instance, do not lawyers let out their brains for hire? Are we not all tarred with the same brush in that we prostitute our gifts from God for gain? Is it worse to let out for hire your body, which is of the earth, earthy, than to let out one's brain, which is of the spirit, spiritual? Ethically, I find the latter the more culpable. Yet, all through this measure there is the idea that we are dealing with the untouchables, the despised and rejected, people who are sub-human. This is not so. I think we fail to remember that these girls are not
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criminals; they are indulging in their profession by virtue of the desires of men, and for no other reason. We who are privileged to be legislators, and who can with such ease impose extra penalties on a defenceless class of women, ought to remember the saying of our Lord when He said:
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."
It is all very late now. The measure is almost through, but I will return good for evil and hope that the noble and learned Viscount and the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary and all who have voted for this measure will not be kept awake at night by their conscience reminding them that they have imposed on a class of our people, whose lot is not, and never has been, a pleasant one, more misery than before. I most earnestly hope that Her Majesty's Government will not be bullied by a Department this time, but will accept this Amendment so admirably put by my noble friend., for if that is done I believe it will take away a good deal of the objection to this Bill and will help to dissipate that congregation of prostitutes, which is what we are trying to do. For we must remember the fundamental truth of the whole situation: no men, no prostitutes.
5.52 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I was prepared originally to deal with the Amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Reading. My noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara has raised again the principle of this Bill, and I must spend some time upon that. I do not think I ought to spend too much, because your Lordships have approved the principle and have ratified your approval by rejecting the Amendment proposed on the Committee stage to have the words "any person."
My noble friend, Lord Brabazon of Tara has re-read his Pickwick Papers and noted the advice there given so succinctly: "Weak case—abuse plaintiff's attorney!" I should like to tell him that I do not at all resent that part of his speech, but I want to make it quite clear that I do not resile from my responsibility for this Bill. I was Home Secretary for three years. During that time I was constantly pressed by decent people

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who found life impossible in Paddington and other places. There were deputations led by members of both Parties, and by clergymen, consisting of ordinary people. That was a state of things which I did not think it right to leave alone. I did not rush into legislation. I appointed a Committee under Sir James Wolfenden which, so far as the constitution was concerned, commanded general support. That Committee inquired into the problem. It is a problem which had been inquired into before, but I wanted to have an up-to-date inquiry; and this Bill gives legislative form to what that Committee have suggested. If that is sadistic conduct, as my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara has said, then everything that I have known and heard of the late Marquis de Sade has been completely wrong.
The position which the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, takes up is one by which it is always easy to get some facile popular acclaim—to ignore the ordinary decent, well-behaved person and his troubles, and transmit sympathy and support to those who would not for a moment claim to be attempting to lead an ordinary, reasonable and decent life. I have stated before to your Lordships, and I venture to state again, that the function of the use of compulsion by legislation is to secure and preserve a decent minimum standard for ordinary people. As I have said, that was why the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, and those who acted with him a hundred years ago, brought in compulsory process in order to keep a minimum standard of safety in our factories and mines. That is why the Government of Mr. Disraeli, followed by Governments of a different kind, introduced a minimum standard of decency in public health and the conditions under which people live. That is what this Bill does. It gets rid of what has been admitted to be a general nuisance, affecting particular neighbourhoods and also the position and reputation of London as a whole. And I ask your Lordships earnestly to consider the origin and the facts before, at this stage, you reject the result of the years of inquiry and work.
My noble friend Lord Reading has brought forward a compromise. As he told us, he had seen the difficulty which
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was raised by the Amendment to leave out "a common prostitute" and substitute "any person". I want to make clear to your Lordships again that there is no question under the Bill as it stands of the onus on the prosecution—the burden which the police have to carry if they prosecute—being in any way lightened. They have, first, to show that the woman in question is a common prostitute—and I have discussed, and your Lordships have heard, what that connotes: a woman who commonly offers her body for reward. They then have to show that the defendant was either loitering or soliciting; and thirdly, they have to show that she was loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution. But the Bill is aimed at the nuisance created by prostitutes who ply their trade in the street, and I believe your Lordships realised and supported the necessity of identifying the woman who, as a way of life, commonly offers herself in the streets.
The main difficulty of the Amendment of the noble Marquess is a practical one—and I should like him to know that not only I but my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and the Law Officers also have given it full consideration. We have all come to the conclusion that in order to sustain a charge under the language which my noble friend would substitute it would, to the best of our view, be necessary to produce fresh—I repeat, fresh—evidence every time a prostitute was charged that she solicited habitually. If the substitution were made, the habitual element could not be proved even partially by evidence on which a previous conviction had been founded.
The ground for this view would be that as the woman had been convicted and punished—and I ask my noble friend to note the point, because this is what has presented the difficulty to myself and my right honourable and learned friend—she has, on the hypothesis of my noble friend Lord Reading, been convicted of habitually soliciting or loitering and she could thereafter be convicted only in respect of an entirely fresh course of conduct which would constitute a further offence of habitually soliciting or loitering. That would mean the prostitute would have to be kept under observation for whatever period the court thought necessary to establish that a loitering and solicitation was habitual; not merely

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before her first prosecution but before every subsequent prosecution. As a result, the prostitute would know that after every conviction there would be a "close season", during which she could solicit without being arrested while the police were obtaining evidence of a further course of conduct; and the amount of observation by the police required before an arrest could be made would be greatly increased, and the effectiveness of the enforcement of the law would be correspondingly reduced.
My noble friend made the point about male prostitutes and, my Lords, I hope that not one of your Lordships would suspect that my view in regard to male prostitutes is any less strong or less adverse than that of the noble Marquess. I think those of your Lordships who heard my speech in a debate on that aspect of affairs would be in little doubt as to my view on this point. But there is a difficulty in having both the noble Marquess's suggested provision and the provision to which he referred, Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act, 1956. With all respect, I do not think that it is usually a good thing to have two competing strings to your bow in your bow at once; I do not think that the arrow proceeds as straightly or as clearly in these circumstances.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: Or not at all.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Marquess did, of course, with complete frankness and candour, remind your Lordships that under Section 32 the offence is for a man persistently to solicit or importune in a public place for an immoral purpose. I think the noble Marquess would agree with me that "habitual" and "persistent" do not mean the same thing. Under Section 32 a man commits an offence if he solicits by word or gesture a series of individuals within a relatively short period, such as a single evening. I think that that is what you want to catch in the case of the male prostitute. I think that this is a state of things in which he well deserves to be prosecuted and convicted under Section 32. But habitual solicitation implies soliciting as a habit or way of life over a longer perod, and in these circumstances I should prefer, from the point of view of administering the criminal law, to leave it as it was.
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Some reference has been made to the customer. As I said when we were discussing this matter before, the customer does not normally solicit or loiter, and even if he did I do not think that it would ever be held that he did it for the purpose of prostitution; because, of course, there is no question of his offering his own body for reward. As to the case of the person who pesters or annoys women, I think that can be dealt with under the various Acts which I have drawn to your Lordships' attention in many cases. For these reasons, while we have considered this Amendment, and are most grateful to the noble Marquess for the time and thought that he has spent upon it, we consider that the objections which I suggest, and which your Lordships approved, to the expression" any person", though to some extent less, would not be overcome by the introduction of the word "habitually"; and as explained, the administration of a provision containing that word would give rise to practical difficulties.
At the end of the day we have to face the situation of this general nuisance which is caused to a very great extent by the large number of female prostitutes. This question has been considered time and again. Every Committee has come to the conclusion that the old provision of annoyance makes the Act a dead letter. That has been said over and over again by independent people examining it. We had to deal with that point, and now we have put before your Lordships a solution which my noble friend Lord Reading says will, in his opinion, have the effect of getting most of the prostitutes off the streets. I know the reluctance of many noble Lords to take any step that means the employment of compulsion. I ask your Lordships to say that to resile now from the course along which we have taken a considerable number of steps would be once again, because of the fear of facing our responsibilities, to condemn our fellow-citizens in London to nuisance and circumstances to which we have no right to condemn them so long as we are in part responsible for the legislation of this country. Therefore, my Lords, with the greatest respect to my noble friend, and indeed—I am sure he believes me—not merely with a forensic or rhetorical gratitude, but with

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a real gratitude, for his applying his mind to this problem, I ask him not to press the Amendment before the House.
6.9 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I speak as one who is in favour of the principle of the Bill and as one who is as anxious as the noble and learned Viscount to remove the nuisance and annoyance that is caused in the streets of our large cities, but I must say that I find the speech of the noble and learned Viscount most unconvincing. I do not think that he dealt at all with the two main objections that exist and which the noble Marquess brought out so clearly to the clause as it stands. The first was that he is assuming, and from the experience of a great many people, assuming wrongly, that the evil is due solely to female prostitution. But there is a great amount of evidence that the nuisance we are dealing with, this infestation of the streets of certain parts of London and the big cities, is caused as much by male prostitutes as female. The Amendment is designed to secure that male prostitutes should be dealt with in the same way as females. The noble and learned Viscount said they were already dealt with under Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act, 1956. But they are not dealt with in the same way. The noble and learned Viscount made this point on the Committee stage and I then drew attention to the fact that Section 32 did not deal with the offence of loitering. It left out loitering, and loitering is the essence of the whole thing. If one leaves out loitering one is treating male and female prostitutes in different ways.
In order to make the two offences, by male and female, comparable one would have to amend Section 32, and I see no insuperable difficulty. I imagine the noble Marquess would be very willing to have a sort of consequential Amendment in the Bill which would deal with Section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act, so as to ensure that there are not two different types of treatment for the same offence. The second difficulty is that we all find it obnoxious and repugnant to use a term of opprobrium in advance of establishing the guilt of a person. One does not say "that you, being a common receiver of stolen property, have received this stolen property". It introduces straight
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away a note of prejudice. I accept the fact that when the common prostitute comes before the court it has to be proved that she is a common prostitute. Nevertheless, she starts off with that disability of already having been labelled. It is something over which we all have a certain feeling of repugnance. I am sorry the Government have not felt it necessary to do something to remove this feeling of repugnance that we have about labelling a person before she has been proved guilty of the label.
Finally, the noble and learned Viscount made some play of the fact that it is difficult to prove that the person is an habitual offender. "Habitual" is something that is quite well known in our criminal code. We have to deal with habitual offenders of all sorts. The term is introduced in legislation. I cannot understand the practical difference between a person who habitually loiters and solicits and the common prostitute who habitually plies her trade. I should have thought that one would have to establish the same kind of proof in both cases. The noble and learned Viscount shakes his head, but I think that that is so. In both cases one has to establish a degree of habitualness to establish the guilt of the person. I should have thought that that, in itself, was certainly not a ground for rejecting the Amendment. I hope my noble friends will support the Amendment, because we think it is right and, as has already been said, an ingenious attempt to get over a difficulty which I am sure every noble Lord in this House feels we ought to make every attempt to get over.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lord, I did not use the words, but I must ask your Lordships to face up to the fact that in my considered opinion and in the considered opinion of the Home Secretary and the Law Officers of the Crown, to make this Amendment will wreck the Bill. You must do it on that basis.
6.16 p.m.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, one substantial point the noble and learned Viscount has made against this Amendment is that it would make it difficult on the occasion of a second offence to provide the necessary proof, unless there had been a series of observations of the offender subsequent

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to the first offence. That is why he says that this would wreck the Bill and make it impossible to administer. But to state that is to state that, under the Bill as it stands, a woman will be labelled as a common prostitute and that fact will stick to her, and it is on that account that on the second offence it will not be necessary, in effect, to prove it. That is the essential difference between the Bill as it stands and the Amendment which the noble Marquess has moved in what I consider to be a most masterly speech.
Now may I venture to make a suggestion that there is a possibility of making an Amendment which would meet both points of view? Because if I understood correctly what the noble and learned Viscount said, he saw no difficulty if, instead of the word "habitual" there were inserted the word "persistently", which, in fact, is used in certain sections of the Sexual Offences Act. I wonder whether that alteration would not reconcile both points of view and enable this measure to proceed with an accurate definition of the offence.
6.19 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, I put down this Amendment, as I told your Lordships, in the hope that it might resolve a difficulty which I think was obsessing the minds of a good many noble Lords. I hoped it might provide such a solution, and I confess to more than a little disappointment, not on personal grounds but on grounds of public good, that my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack has not found himself able to accept it. I still believe that there is a strong feeling, not only in the House but in the country, that some form of words might still, even at this last moment, be devised which would, at least to a degree, assuage the feeling of discomfort with which so many people are, I think, attacked over this Bill. But, my Lords, my attempt has obviously failed to make any impression upon the Government.
I am not going to speculate upon what the result would be if I asked the view of the House, because—and I have come regretfully to this conclusion—if the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor assures me that the weight of his opinion, that of the Home Secretary, and that of the Attorney-General, is that to accept this Amendment would make
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the Bill less effective and would impede the process of law which it is designed to carry out, then I do not feel that I could go further in opposing the Government's view. But I regret that they have found themselves driven to that point of view; and I would still appeal to my noble and learned friend, even at this stage, to look again at the position before we have a Third Reading debate.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, may I say to my noble and learned friend, in thanking him for the extremely generous attitude which he has adopted, that of course I will do what he has asked. I will convey to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary not only his first speech, but what I understand to be the sense of his last remarks—that is, that even if we feel that this Amendment will not work, in the view of my noble and learned friend Lord Reading we ought still to look for an improvement. I will certainly do that. I will convey that to my right honourable friend, and I will, of course, personally see him upon it. I will do that with the greatest of pleasure; and I am most indebted to the noble and learned Marquess for the generous way in which he has acted.
EARL ATTLEE: My Lords, I have listened to this debate as one who has no special knowledge of the subject but I have listened to it carefully. And I am bound to say that I am wholly unconvinced by what the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has said. I do not think he has shown in the slightest degree that this would not work; and I really cannot rest on the ipse dixit of the Attorney General that it will not work. We have other distinguished lawyers in the House here and we have heard their views. It is profoundly unsatisfactory, after listening to the noble Marquess and to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, who made what, to my mind, were most convincing speeches.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, I should like very briefly to add my own opinion to what has just been said. I am not speaking now of this particular Amendment. It may be that the word "habitual" is not a suitable word, and that the word in the noble Marquess's Amendment is not a good word in this

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connection. Nevertheless, I feel most strongly that for Parliament to pass an enactment saying "It shall be an offence for a common prostitute" to do this or that, would be a blot upon our Statute Book. I do not know what the right word is, but I am quite convinced that those are the wrong words. I therefore trust that when the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor and his colleagues consider the matter afresh, they will do so from that point of view, in order to get rid of those words.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Do I understand that the noble Marquess wishes leave to withdraw his Amendment?
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, the position is not that I wish it withdrawn, but that I feel bound to withdraw it. I do so all the more readily, however, in view of the slight encouragement which has come from the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack; and I feel that that encouragement may have been stimulated by what has fallen from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel. I think the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, if I may say so respectfully, will have realised from listening to this debate that it would bring real relief to the minds and consciences of a great many Members of your Lordships' House if, before the next stage of this Bill, he were, with his colleagues, to devise some form of words which would bring us some comfort in our problems.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.25 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I wonder whether it would be to the convenience of the noble Earl if we dealt with Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4 together. That is, of course, only if that course suits his convenience.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I think that is certainly a very convenient course. The Amendments all hang together, and form part of a single proposition. The first Amendment is in subsection (1), after "prostitution" to insert:
"if that street or public place is or is part of an area which common prostitutes are accustomed to frequent so as to cause a nuisance".
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I would suggest to the House that, in view of what has happened on the last Amendment, and of the unwillingness with which we accepted the considered legal opinion of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor and of the Law Officers—and, personally, I entirely agree with my noble friend; I should have felt bound to do the same, because when the noble and learned Viscount pronounces on a matter of law from that place then it really is not a question of policy or politics: he is giving us the considered opinion of all those legal authorities to whom the Government have access—it makes these Amendments that I have put down all the more important. They are designed to give effect to a proposal which was considerably discussed on the last occasion and which I think had a large measure of support, in principle, in the House—and for which, indeed, the noble and learned Viscount himself said he felt sympathy and would consider, as I am sure he has, in a fully sympathetic manner.
On the last occasion the proposal also had the support of the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. He regrets that he is unable to be here to-day, but he has written to me to express his views, and has given me his full authority to communicate them to the House—and I think the House would wish to have them. What his view comes to is this: that if the limited purpose of this Bill—that is, that it deals only with common prostitutes—is to be accepted, then there should be a definition of the nuisance or offence created. The most reverend Primate therefore thinks that the Amendments which I have put on the Paper agree well with the limited purpose of the Bill, and that if that limited purpose is to be accepted, the Amendments will be very helpful.
I think we should all agree that it is desirable to have the Bill in a form which commands the largest measure of support. There is general agreement on the problem and on the need to solve it; there is general agreement that it is the congregation of prostitutes in particular places which causes the scandal and public, nuisance; and there is general agreement that that has got to be stopped. I think we also all agree that

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it ought not to be necessary for any individual person to prove individual annoyance. In that, we are all in agreement, think, with the Macmillan Committee originally, and the Wolfenden Committee later. But probably most of us would agree, particularly when we come to create new criminal offences and new penalties, that we ought not to go beyond what is necessary. The punishment should fit the crime, but we should not punish where there is no crime.
Now what is the crime here? We have been told repeatedly that this is not a Bill to enforce morality; that it is not a Bill to penalise fornication; that it is not a Bill to suppress prostitution. It is a Bill with one object, and that is to abate a nuisance and to ensure decent behaviour in public places. My Lords, I submit that that is exactly what my Amendments would do. These Amendments would make it a criminal offence to loiter or solicit in any public place in respect of which a local authority declares that prostitutes are a nuisance; and it makes such a declaration by a local authority conclusive evidence. But the Bill as it is drafted makes every prostitute who loiters or solicits in any public place a criminal. Surely, that is going too far.
I would ask the noble and learned Viscount this: do you intend to prosecute every prostitute? I am sure you do not. Well, if not, presumably the Home Secretary or the local police authorities will give administrative directions to the police that they should prosecute only where the numbers or conduct of prostitutes create a scandal or a nuisance. If that is so, why not put it in the Bill? It could be done in as wide language as is administratively necessary. It certainly need not be proved, and I am not asking that it should be, that a particular nuisance is being committed at the time a prostitute is arrested or that she herself added or contributed to the nuisance. I give the local authority full power to declare that any place is a nuisance area and I submit that in this form the Bill would do what is intended, and do that without widening the criminal scope of the Bill unnecessarily.
It has been said that the proposal I am making is open to the criticism that if the concept of nuisance is imported
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into the Bill, it would be necessary to prove that the woman charged was herself committing a nuisance. But the whole basis of the Bill is that any prostitute anywhere in any public place is a self-evident nuisance. I do not think that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor would challenge that. But he admits that he does not seek to make prostitution by itself a crime. Yet his Bill does, in fact, make every prostitute in a public place a criminal. On what ground? Not because she is a prostitute but because she is committing a nuisance. In short, the noble and learned Viscount lays down by law that every prostitute in a public place is a nuisance, without any proof at all. I propose that she should be held to be a nuisance in places where the local authority declare that prostitutes are a nuisance, and I say that that proposition is more reasonable and fairer and more in line with the purpose of the Bill.
Then it is said that if there are areas where the nuisance is prevented because they are declared nuisance areas, prostitutes will congregate and create a nuisance elsewhere, and that these areas will have to be declared nuisance areas, too; or that, alternatively, a local authority may declare the whole of its area a nuisance area. As a matter of fact, if it did, the women would be no worse off than they are under the Bill. But I believe that both local authorities and prostitutes would be more circumspect. I think that the Home Secretary has already told us that in more than one area the nuisance has already been abated, or largely reduced, in anticipation of the Bill. If that is so, then it is an answer to the last criticism and a justification of my Amendments. It is sometimes wise to proceed by trial and error, and not least when we are creating new criminal offences. Certainly it is always wise to legislate by general consent, if that is possible. I would venture to suggest to your Lordships' House that the proposals I have put upon the Marshalled List satisfy both those desirable objects. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 7, after ("prostitution") insert ("if that street or public place is or is part of an area which common prostitutes are accustomed to frequent so as to cause a nuisance").—(The Earl of Swinton.)
6.35 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, for forty years now I have admired the ingenuity and ability of my noble friend Lord Swinton, and I certainly admire immensely the ingenuity which he has shown in this series of Amendments. I would ask your Lordships to believe that there is nothing more distasteful for a Minister of the Crown, even if he occupies my position, than to put again and again the legal difficulties which in my view exist. I know exactly how your Lordships must be feeling about what I have to do, and I would ask your Lordships to bear with me, because the one thing we all desire to do is to put on the Statute Book legislation which will be workable and will deal with the mischief on which we are legislating.
My noble friend's Amendments would have this effect: first, of providing that a local authority could declare any street or public place within its area an area which common prostitutes are accustomed to frequent so as to cause a nuisance; and secondly, of providing that any common prostitute loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution in such an area could be charged with an offence under subsection (1), whether or not it could be proved that she was actually contributing to the nuisance. If the noble Lord will allow me to say so, I was impressed by the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in the Amendments which he put down on the Committee stage, because they dealt with the gravamen of the difficulty—that is, the fact that, as we all agree, it is a nuisance for ordinary people.
But as the noble Lord, and also my noble friend Lord Swinton, will remember, I was brought up against the problem that, while it is good law that it is enough if you can prove a nuisance and that someone is contributing to that nuisance, there might be some difficulty in proving a nuisance. That is the point my noble friend has sought to meet. I am in this difficulty, however, especially after the opinion which your Lordships have expressed this afternoon. The clause deals with a criminal offence, and if the concept of nuisance is to be imported into the Bill it is extremely difficult, having regard to the ordinary principles of criminal liability, to provide that the offence is committed even if the
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woman does not contribute to the nuisance. That is the difficulty with which we are faced, and my noble friend knows of it.
If the express qualification of nuisance were imported in this way, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, then the existence of a nuisance, and the fact that the woman was causing or contributing to it, would have to be proved as an ingredient of the offence; and it would not be enough, I think, to prove that by calling a police officer or an officer of the local authority. It would be necessary to show that, at least at the time in question, a number of prostitutes, including the accused, were soliciting for the purpose of prostitution in that area and were thereby causing a nuisance. For the reasons I have stated, it would be extremely difficult to prove that fact.
Therefore we are in this dilemma—and I am afraid that we have not got to the solution now: that either we are going to say that someone is a criminal, on the grounds of nuisance, when she has not contributed to the nuisance, or we are in the old difficulty, which I put to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, of proving the general nuisance. I think there are two difficulties which this collection of Amendments raises—and I do not use the word "collection" in any derogatory sense; I mean the whole scheme which my noble friend has put forward—because the means by which my noble friend seeks to relate the individual prostitute's activities to the existence of a general nuisance is that a street is to be deemed to be the area which common prostitutes are accustomed to frequent so as to cause the nuisance if the local authority declares it to be so. My noble friend has not said (I do not hold this against him, but it is a problem) on what evidence the local authority is to declare the area to be such an area. I think one gets into this further difficulty: that no local authority is likely to say that an area has ceased to be an area where prostitutes congregate, because that would immediately send the prostitutes into that area. I think that must be so. Therefore what would be likely to happen would be that the local authority would extend the area to the whole of the local authority's area, at any rate in Central London. The result would be that it

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would all become a prohibited area, and we should be back in the same position as we are in under the Bill, except that there would be the other point: that soliciting would be an offence without proof that a particular woman caused or contributed to a nuisance.
The other difficulty I find is this. My noble friend has assumed that one prostitute could not herself become a nuisance. I wonder whether that is so from the practical point of view. I admit at once that the nuisance is more obvious, and more scandalous, where there is a congregation of prostitutes, as there is in many streets in the West End and elsewhere. But nuisance may not depend on there being many prostitutes. In some streets the persistent presence of one prostitute would be offensive and injurious. I think I gave two examples on the last occasion. One was where there was a small, quiet, residential street which one prostitute adopted as her walk, and as the place where she could he picked up and gone home with; and the other was where her pitch was outside a school. In the first of those cases, the residents of a respectable residential area would be scandalised if the prostitute adopted it as her pitch; and in the other case parents of the children at school would be scandalised. I should have thought that the public are entitled to protection against that form of scandal, just as the others. Again I find difficulty in seeing as a practical matter why, if a woman secures a whole street to herself, she is to be safe. It is not the law at the moment that a prostitute operating by herself commits no offence, and I do not think that it should be so. It is an essential element in dealing with general nuisance, and I think that that power has to be retained.
My noble friend knows that I have considered this matter most carefully, because he was good enough to ask me about it. I saw my right honourable friend the Home Secretary about it again to-day, and, as my noble friend knows, he had considered it before. We have really tried to approach this with unclouded minds. I know, as I said at the beginning of my speech, that it sounds as if I am just raising difficulties, but I assure my noble friend that I am not. All the difficulties I have raised to-night, I am afraid rather imperfectly, have been carefully considered. If my right
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honourable friend could have met my noble friend Lord Swinton he would have been glad to do it, but he is advised that, both from the legal point of view and the point of view of police administration, this proposal would not work. Therefore, while I will gladly have another look at this question if my noble friend thinks I have failed to appreciate any point, I hope he will not press the Amendment to-day.
6.46 p.m.
LORD GRANTCHESTER: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor for the consideration he has given to the suggestion that I made on the Committee stage. I felt rather depressed when he told me that he was unable to find a way, and if he could not do so I did not presume to try to find words which could be discussed this afternoon. But I still feel disturbed, as I am sure many of your Lordships are, that this point has not been dealt with, in the same way as we have been disturbed over the point raised in the Amendment moved by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading. The impression I get is that it is going to be a little more difficult if we introduce these points into the Bill. If it is going to be more difficult to prove that a crime has been committed, perhaps we would rather accept that than accept the provisions of this Bill as they stand. I would plead with the noble and learned Viscount to give this matter equal consideration with that raised by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, and see whether we cannot yet find an agreed solution. It seems to be a great pity that we should have the Church of England Moral Welfare Council and the National Council of Women opposed to the Bill on a matter which is not a Party matter at all and on which we, as sensible people, should be able to reach agreement.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I feel, as I think the whole House must, that we are in a difficult position. I am quite sure that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary have given this matter most careful consideration. I am sure that they would do that, because they said they would, and also because I have no doubt at all that if something like either the Amendment of my noble

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friend Lord Reading or the Amendments which I have introduced could be incorporated into the Bill it would be a much more popular Bill. I believe the Lord Chancellor entirely agrees with that. On a matter which has no Party politics in it at all, where we are all agreed that there is a problem to be met and one that must be met, it is extraordinarily unsatisfactory if the great majority of us feel uncomfortable as to the way in which that problem has been met.
I must accept, if the Lord Chancellor says it is so, that the Amendments I have put down would be so administratively difficult as really to prejudice the solution of the problem that we all wish to see solved. I do not think the Lord Chancellor is contending that to put into the Bill my provision that the local authority could declare a nuisance area, and that any prostitute soliciting within that area would be guilty of an offence, is an impossible or an impracticable thing to do. He maintains, as I understand it, that it would be contrary to an ideal concept of the criminal law that a nuisance ought to be proved against that particular woman, and that the local authority and/or the police—I think both—would have to prove to the court, not merely by their ipse dixit (though I must say I think they are the best people to judge) that the area is a nuisance area.
I am bound to say that I feel it rather difficult to accept that as a sort of moral principle of the criminal law. If we were merely creating a new offence—that to be a nuisance as a prostitute was a criminal offence—I would accept that. But what are we in fact doing? Under the Bill as it stands, no nuisance has to be proved against any prostitute anywhere, and any prostitute anywhere, once she has been warned twice, is guilty of a criminal offence if she solicits or loiters for prostitution in any place, although we should all admit that she was not annoying anybody or being a nuisance at all. Honestly, between the two concepts—the concept I have put to the House that the local authority can say that certain areas are nuisance areas, and the concept the Lord Chancellor has put into the Bill that every prostitute per se is a nuisance—I must say I think my concept is less repugnant, I hesitate to say to law, when
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arguing with the Lord Chancellor, but certainly I would have said to humanity and to common sense.
It is really very tiresome. This is not intended to be a moral Bill. We have been told that over and over again. This is a Bill to deal with a nuisance. That is the word which has been used over and over again. It has been said over and over again that that nuisance is the congregation of prostitutes in particular places. The Lord Chancellor now says—and I would not dissent from him—that one prostitute in exceptional circumstances may be a nuisance. All right, then, provide for that. But what you are putting in the Bill is that every prostitute anywhere is a nuisance, and you can convict her without any proof at all. I must say that I think that is a most unsatisfactory way of dealing with the nuisance of congregation or, if you please, the nuisance of a single prostitute in peculiar circumstances in a particular place. Not only to call them all common prostitutes, but to make them all criminals because they are common prostitutes, is really a most extraordinarily unfortunate way of dealing with this problem which we want to solve.
I will not press this Amendment to a Division now if the House will allow me to withdraw it. I am quite sure that what both my noble friend Lord Reading and I have said to the House to-day has commanded a great amount of sympathy in the House, and I think the Lord Chancellor and the noble Earl the Leader of the House will realise that. I hope that they will have a good look at this matter and see whether they cannot get this Bill, even at this late stage, into a form which will make the punishment fit the crime, will solve the problem and, at the same time, will satisfy the sentiment and, indeed, the conscience of this House and, I believe, of the whole country.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.56 p.m.
LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE moved to add to the Clause:
"Provided that where the only charge proved against a person is that he is living on the immoral earnings of one woman this section shall not apply."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, your Lordships will remember that during the Committee stage of this Bill I raised a

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question dealing with the substance of the Amendment I am proposing to-day. The noble and learned Viscount was good enough to express considerable sympathy with the object of my Amendment, but I think he used the words—I should not like to misquote him—that it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. By that I think he meant that while it was perfectly right to punish very severely persons who were guilty of major offences, the man who lived on the immoral earnings of one woman and was not otherwise objectionable ought not to have that larger penalty hanging over his head. He went so far as to say that he thought in general that he would not come into the larger penalty, but that he would be brought up only on a charge in a magistrates' court for the maximum penalty, which would be very much less.
The Lord Chancellor said that he would think over a form of words. In effect, he invited me to think over a form of words which would enable us to distinguish between these two types of people. I suggested—and I think my noble friend behind me suggested at the same time—something which applied merely to living on the earnings of one woman. The Lord Chancellor promised to consider that. But he said that a man might be living on the earnings of one woman and yet be a brute and a bully. He might be guilty of very serious offences in that direction. It is with the intention of meeting that point which the Lord Chancellor made that I put down my Amendment in the precise form in which it stands on the Order Paper: that where the only offence that is proved against a person is that of living on the earnings of one woman, he should not be liable to the larger penalties which it is proposed in Clause 4 to introduce. Therefore I do not think I need elaborate the matter any further. But I should like to put forward that view, and I hope the Lord Chancellor will be able, if he cannot accept my Amendment or the Amendment of my noble friend which follows, to do something himself to make this distinction. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 14, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Pethick-Lawrence.)
6.59 p.m.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I think it might be for the convenience of the House and save time if I spoke to my noble friend's Amendment and dealt at the same time with the Amendment in my name. At this late hour I will not elaborate on what I said on the Committee stage. I hope that some of your Lordships will have read the documents which I then mentioned—the book The Women of the Streets and the extremely interesting article in the magazine Encounter. If they have, cannot help thinking that many of them may have come, as I did, to a rather unexpected conclusion. I had never previously considered the position of the ponce or the pimp in society, and it was definitely, I may say, a surprise to find that research workers among prostitutes had found that the ponce was in many cases—indeed I gather in most cases—the most stable element in the unstable life of the prostitute. Therefore I have put down this Amendment, which, if I may say so, I prefer to that of my noble friend.
On the Committee stage the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor treated this point with the seriousness which I think it deserves, and also with the charming consideration which he always shows for propositions put up to him in your Lordships" House. I suggested then that perhaps it might be possible to differentiate between the man who lived on the immoral earnings of one woman only and those who live on the immoral earnings of more than one. For in the first case, as I said at that time, it might well be that the man was practically the woman's husband; whereas when he was exploiting more than one woman it would be an obvious conclusion that he was encouraging her way of life and, indeed, possibly forcing her to it for his own profit.
For that reason, because it seemed to me impossible to be sure that even a man living on one woman's immoral earnings was not responsible for her way of life and was not for his own profit driving her to that way of life, I have put down my Amendment to-day, with the provision that where a man is accused of living on the immoral earnings of only one woman
"it shall be necessary, for the prosecution to succeed, to show that he has constrained her to an immoral way of life."

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It seemed to me that in my noble friend's Amendment that possibility was lost sight of, and that anyone living on the immoral earnings of one woman only would slip through the net in which we should certainly all desire to catch the man who was exploiting a woman in this particular way.
LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE: He would not slip through the net; he would not be liable to the more severe penalties proposed in Clause 4. He does not slip through the net. He is still liable to come under the old section, but would not be liable to the more severe penalties.
LORD FARINGDON: I thank my noble friend very much for that explanation. I had thought that all the pains and penalties would cease to be operative in the case of such a person. I accept the noble Lord's assurance that he would come under the law as it now exists. I read it otherwise. The noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, will, I know, between the Committee stage and Report stage have considered the matter with the seriousness that he always gives to all our proposals and without, I know, any of the prejudice which is bound to attach to this particular form of human activity, and I therefore look forward with interest and with some hope to what he has to say in reply to this Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: May I first of all explain the difficulty of the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, which really drew the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence. The Amendment says:
"Provided always that where the accused is charged with living on the immoral earnings of one woman only it shall be necessary, for the prosecution to succeed"—
I repeat—"for the prosecution to succeed"—
"to show that he has constrained her to an immoral way of life"
I do not know whether the noble Lord intended to do it, but what he has done is to give the man a complete defence unless it can be shown that he forced the lady to be a prostitute.
LORD FARINGDON: That was quite intentional.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, is really considering the less radical point, that we should make such a man subject only to the old lesser penalties and not subject him to the new larger penalties.
I have found a great difficulty with regard to this matter. I should like to say what it is. Perhaps if I may give a case which I think illustrates the difficulty of attempting to draw a distinction of this kind—that is, the recent case of Atillio Messina. Whatever may have been thought about Messina, he was in fact convicted of living on the earnings of one prostitute who was named—there is no point in repeating the name here. He had been living on her earnings for more than ten years during which time she claimed to have brought him over £40,000. If the clause were amended as the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, suggests, and if that were the only offence on which Messina had been convicted, he would be liable to the lesser penalty. But that is very different from the case the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, had in mind. He had in mind the case—which attracted my sympathy, and still does—where you find a man, often a poor specimen, and unhealthy, who does very little, if any, work, and his wife goes out as a prostitute and thereby keeps him. Such a case, of course, is poles apart from a case like Messina's case, where the one woman in question has been providing him with an income of £4,000 a year for ten years.
That is the first difficulty. The second difficulty, of course, is the one which the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, with, if he will allow me to say so, all the candour one would expect, had in mind. The noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, is absolutely desirous, as I understand his point of view, of making the bully suffer. I do not think he is directing his mind to the exact penalty, but what Lord Faring-don had in mind was that where you have a bully who has constrained and forced a woman to act as a prostitute, then a stiff penalty is a good social provision for him. That is the other case that is still not subject to the differentiation of the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence. You might still have a man living on the immoral earnings of only one woman,

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but it might be a case like the Messina case, where he is working the woman to the extent of very large sums. Or you might have the other case which the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, had in mind, that of the bully (I use the phrase in its technical sense) who drives and constrains his wife to prostitution. For either of these offences I confess that I should be very glad to see that the man was in risk of seven years' penal servitude.
The other point at the other end of the scale which I do not think I can have made sufficiently clear is that although the maximum penalty is increased to seven years, that is the maxim um penalty. The courts are not required to impose it; they can impose one which fits the circumstances of the case. But the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, has this fear—and penologically it is one that I fully appreciate. He says that if you put forward this high penalty then you are automatically making the court lift the sights of its gun. I think the answer to that is that in the type of case which he has in mind—namely, of the poor specimen whose wife or mistress goes out to prostitution to keep him, and there is only one woman—it is almost inevitable that the police would bring the charge under the provision for a summary offence; that is, they would bring the charge in the magistrates' court. In that case, the maximum penalty which could be imposed on him would be six months.
I have considered this matter, and so has the Home Secretary and our advisers at the Home Office, and we really do not think that the case which has rightly, if I may say so, touched the heart of Lord Pethick-Lawrence—that is, the case of the poor specimen whose wife really wants to help him in this immoral way—presents any practical danger to him of ever being brought into a court where the seven years' penalty will apply. But the difficulty of the Messina or the bully is too much for us to accept the Amendment. I am sorry. I will have another look at it, because I always like to meet the noble Lord, Lord Puthick-Lawrence. I am afraid that I cannot, for these reasons, meet him to-day.
LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE: My Lords, I do not propose to press this Amendment to a Division. I do not think that the Lord Chancellor has quite met my point of view. I was not thinking solely of the man who was a weakling and whose wife went out to keep him; I was thinking of the man who, in the words of my noble friend, was a husband who stayed at home and she earned money in this way. But the point was that if a man commits this offence it is quite right, within the law, that if he is guilty he should pay the penalty. It is probable that he will, as the noble and learned Viscount says, be brought up on a summary charge and convicted, and will not receive a severe penalty. But I would regard him as at risk in regard to the imposition of a much larger penalty under the clause as it now stands, and the penalty might rise higher if we get many cases such as the Messina case, which the noble and learned Viscount quoted. I cannot help thinking that, if necessary, something more might have to be found against the man. I did not specify merely that it was only one woman, but that he had committed no other offence; and I thought possibly that in such a case some other offence might have to be found to have been committed.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Might I say that I have differentiated in regard to the Messina case because the police managed to prove that in that case he constrained the girl to prostitution. But I took it as an example of the case where you could not prove the second fact. I do not want to mislead the noble Lord for a moment. He is quite right.
LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE: I think the Lord Chancellor has got my point. I still think that it would be better to have some differentiation. I have tried my hand, and apparently the noble and learned Viscount has tried his, and we have not succeeded. I have not very much hope that if he tries again he will find a solution, but if he does, I shall be much obliged. In any case, I do not press the Amendment. I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
7.15 p.m.
LORD FARINGDON LORD FARINGDON had given Notice of his intention to move to insert the following proviso at the end of Clause 4:
"Provided always that where the accused is charged with living on the immoral earnings of one woman only it shall be necessary, for the prosecution to succeed, to show that he has constrained her to an immoral way of life."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I do not intend to press my Amendment, but, if I may say so with the greatest respect, I think that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor was a little less than fair in quoting the Messina case. If my Amendment had been the law of the land at that time, I suggest that the police could have shown—as they in fact did—that he had constrained the woman. Moreover, I do not think that in that case the police could have been put too much difficulty to find other women who had equally been constrained by Messina. Therefore, I think it was perhaps a little less than fair to give the example of that case. I am sorry that he cannot see his way to accepting this Amendment. It is a difficult subject and one which I think might well have been left out of the Bill, which is designed to deal with a nuisance of an entirely different kind. In any case, I do not intend to press my Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble Lord does not move the Amendment?
LORD FARINGDON: No.

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE BILL [H.L.]
7.17 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this is a Consolidation Bill and I beg formally to move that it be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

MENTAL HEALTH BILL
7.18 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be again in Committee read.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it has not been found convenient to continue sitting this evening to discuss the Mental Health Bill, but it has been arranged through the usual channels that we should continue the Committee stage to-morrow afternoon after the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in connection with National Parks.
Order of the Day discharged.
House adjourned at nineteen minutes past seven o'clock.