Lords Sitting of 12 March 1959

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

OVERSEAS SALE OF BRITISH BOOKS
3.5 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government if they will now state their policy for increasing the distribution and sale overseas of British books and periodicals, particularly in countries where there are sterling difficulties.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE): My Lords, noble Lords will remember that, in reply to a similar Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on December 8 last, I replied that Her Majesty's Government were fully aware of the need to increase the export of books and were giving consideration to the measures which are needed to promote this. The White Paper on Overseas Information Services (Cmd. 685) presented to Parliament on March 2 stated at paragraph 13 that
"The Government are studying ways of encouraging the flow of British publications overseas."
Her Majesty's Government share with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, the belief in the importance of this matter, and as soon as the study is completed a statement will be made.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is the noble Marquess aware that the White Paper to which he has referred is a splendid job, which should give the greatest possible encouragement to everyone in the country, irrespective of Party, but that it is marred by the failure to come to a decision on this vital question of books? Is he further aware that the moment the Prime Minister landed in Moscow he told the Russians that we were not the Britain of Dickens' day? But that is exactly
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what the Russians are spreading abroad. If we can spend £1,500 million on defence, surely we can spend £1,500,000 in an effort to capture men's hearts and minds. Cannot we overcome the technical difficulties in exactly the same way as the Americans have overcome them?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I will pass on, and I am sure that my right honourable friend will be encouraged by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. As I said in my original Answer, Her Majesty's Government share the believe in the importance of this matter, and let me once again assure noble Lords that as soon as it is possible to make a statement, that statement will be made.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if I had been born female, my middle name would have been Patience. I raised this subject four months ago. It is very important, and I hope that these technical difficulties can soon be solved.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I am sure we all appreciate the patience shown by the noble Lord, and we must all share in that patience. As the noble Lord is aware, this is not an easy matter and work is actively being done on it at the moment, as noble Lords well know.

HIGH WYCOMBE BY-PASS
EARL HOWE: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the extreme concentration of traffic, there are any proposals in existence or in prospect for a by-pass for traffic proceeding through High Wycombe and, if so, when it may be anticipated that they will be completed.]
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, my right honourable friend, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, proposes to built an 11-mile long by-pass at High Wycombe. Plans are still at an early stage, but an aerial survey of the route has already been made and a draft Statutory Instrument showing the proposed line of the road should be published this

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summer. The by-pass will run from Loudwater, on A.40, and then to the south of High Wycombe to rejoin the existing trunk road, A.40, at Stokenchurch. I am unable to say yet when the construction of this road will start.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his Answer. Would he remember that High Wycombe constitutes one of the major traffic blocks on an arterial road in this country? Would he also remember that at present it takes about half an hour for any ordinary vehicle to pass through the High Wycombe area, a distance of about three miles; and that this road is one of the main traffic arteries to the West Midlands and to the Welsh industrial areas? May I ask the noble Earl whether something cannot be done effectively to accelerate progress? This matter has been talked about for years, but nothing has been done until now.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I do not think the noble Earl could have been listening to the Answer which I gave to his Question. We are certainly getting on with it.
EARL HOWE: While realising the noble Earl's point of view, I am afraid it did not convey to me the sense of urgency which is required in order to deal with a very difficult situation—Markyate on a big scale.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I regret that my words did not convey the sense of urgency the noble Earl would require. I can assure him that it is being dealt with with great urgency.
THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: My Lords, further to that supplementary question, may I ask the noble Earl to impress upon his right honourable friend the urgency of this matter? Does he realise, and does his right honourable friend realise, that in really heavy traffic, especially at Christmas time, it can take an hour or an hour and a half to get from West Wycombe to Loudwater, and vice versa?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I certainly realise that this is a bad bottleneck. I have experienced it myself many times.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, does the noble Earl have any reasonable hope that in four years' time we shall not be told that this work has been held up owing to difficulties about land acquisition.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: I think that that is a hypothetical question.

SURCHARGE ON JET AIRCRAFT FARES
3.13 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what representations to the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation they are making with reference to the recommendation of the Committee of the Organisation that there shall be a surcharge on passages in jet aircraft.]
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I assume that the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, is referring to the recent recommendation of the International Air Transport Association that there should be a small surcharge on pure jet aircraft on the North Atlantic route and on routes between North and South America. Her Majesty's Government would prefer to avoid increases in air fares at the present time, but there are the following special considerations in this case.
This was a compromise agreement, accepted by all the member airlines of the International Air Transport Association, which was reached only after months of hard negotiation. The proposed surcharge is small, between 4 and 6 per cent. So far as B.O.A.C. is concerned, this surcharge will apply only to their pure jet aircraft operating on the North Atlantic route; and it will not affect their passengers travelling by tourist or economy class, since they will not be carried on B.O.A.C.'s pure jet aircraft, anyhow during this coming year. In any event, the whole matter of surcharges will be reconsidered for next year.
For these reasons Her Majesty's Government intend to inform the International Air Transport Association that it will approve the recommendation.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his Answer. Does this also mean that when B.O.A.C. put jets on the African and Far Eastern routes they also will have to pay a surcharge?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I said in my reply that this applied only to the North Atlantic routes and to routes between North and South America. It does not, therefore, apply elsewhere.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, do we understand that there is no fear that the action taken so far as the North Atlantic routes are concerned will be used as a precedent for introducing the surcharge on the Far Eastern and Australian and South African services?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, so far as I know, there is no question of its being used as a precedent at all.

HOUSE PURCHASE AND HOUSING BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a and to be printed.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, for the convenience of the House I should like to inform you that it is proposed to take the Second Reading of this Bill on Monday, March 23, and there will be a debate on the Egyptian Financial Agreement on Tuesday, March 24.

MOCK AUCTIONS BILL [H.L.]
3.15 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I realise that in moving the Second Reading of this Bill I am faced with the difficulty that few of your Lordships will know exactly what a mock auction is. A mock auction is a method of selling cheapjack goods, obtaining high prices for them by a travesty of usual auction procedure and under the pretence that they are genuine surplus stocks. To explain the provisions of this Bill it will be necessary for me first of all to explain to your Lordships as shortly and as clearly as possible the course of a mock auction sale. Unfortunately,
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the shortest description will by no means be the clearest.
I could describe the course of a mock auction sale in one sentence by using the jargon of the mock auctioneer: "The pitch-getter gets the pitch, and then hands over to the top man, who first nails the mugs, then runs out the Hinton lots and finally gazoomphs the sarkers." Perhaps I had better construe. The "pitch" is the audience to whom the goods are sold, and the only job of the "pitch-getter" is to collect an audience inside the shop where the sale is to take place. When he has done that he hands over to the "top man" or auctioneer, who then "nails the mugs"—that is, sorts out the "mugs" from the rest of the audience, and ensures (by a method which I shall explain later) that they stay in the shop until the sale is over. Then he "runs out," pretends to sell, the "Hinton lots", those lots which are never in fact sold, and finally "gazoomphs," or cheats, the "sarkers," those of the "mugs" who have enough money on them to be worth his while. This description may not make the matter very much clearer to your Lordships, but it should certainly show you the amount of good faith there is in this type of sale.
I think the easiest way to explain to your Lordships exactly what goes on at these sales is first to describe how a mock auction sale would appear to the "mug" who is tricked, and then explain how the trick is worked. The "mug" is on holiday; he has money in his pocket, and is walking down a shopping street in London or some other big holiday resort. He comes to a shop, outside which is displayed a notice saying "Grand Clearance Sale". At the door a man is standing behind a table on which are displayed cigarette lighters, alarum clocks, leather shaving sets, table lighters, a camera, electric razors, pairs of binoculars. The man beats on the table with a hammer, and explains that all these goods will be sold at give-away prices later on inside the shop: the clocks and lighters for a shilling each, shaving sets for half a crown each, cameras at 5s. each, et cetera.
The "mug" is interested, and he joins the crowd beginning to form round the shop entrance. As people collect, the man moves the table further and further back into the shop and so draws the

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crowd in after him. Then the articles are taken from the table and put on a high counter at the back of the shop, the table folded up and put away, and the second man, the auctioneer himself, takes over from behind the high counter. The auctioneer first of all produces one or two cheap articles not shown on the table—such things as penknives, screwdrivers, plastic sponges, which, to keep the interest of the people, he sells for a few pennies over the counter, or even gives away.
After he has done that he produces a sealed package and explains to the audience that he wants to find one among them who is sporting enough to make a bid for this sealed package without knowing what is inside it. He promises that whoever finally gets the sealed package will not be disappointed; if he is not satisfied he will not be allowed to take it out of the shop. He puts the sealed package up for auction and knocks it down for 10s. He then produces eleven more sealed packages, exactly similar to the first, and explains that there are exactly the same contents inside; and he then asks for eleven more people from the audience to pay 10s. each for one of these sealed packages. Then he says that only those people who show enough confidence in him, the auctioneer, to pay 10s. for a sealed package without knowing what is inside will be allowed to take part in the rest of the sale and buy such things as cigarette lighters, alarum clocks, and cameras.
The "mug", who has been watching this wants to take part in the rest of the sale—he wants to buy some of these things cheaply. He reasons to himself as follows: that if a cigarette lighter is going to be sold for 1s., how much more valuable a thing will he get for 10s., especially as he is to be rewarded for his confidence in buying the thing blind without knowing what is inside it; and so he hands over 10s. to the auctioneer's assistant. But he is not given his sealed parcel; instead, he is given a plastic token to show that he is eligible to take part in the rest of the sale.
The auctioneer then picks up one of these cigarette lighters and says, "Which of you people who are eligible to take part in the sale would like to buy one of these for 1s.?" Immediately all twelve
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of them hold up their hands and hold out their shillings, the "mug" among them. The auctioneer says, "Well, that puts me in rather a difficult position, because twelve of you want these cigarette lighters and I have only four of them. There is only one fair way to get round the problem. I am going to put this cigarette lighter up for auction, and whoever gets it I will reward." So he puts the cigarette lighter up for auction, and knocks it down for 20s.
As soon as it has been knocked down he says to his assistant, "Go and collect the money from the gentleman who has bought this", and he fills in the time while the assistant is collecting the money by distributing one or two other cheap give-away lots over the counter. When the assistant comes back with the money he says to the man who has bought the cigarette lighter, "You have paid 20s. for this cigarette lighter. I am not going to charge you 20s. or 15s., or 10s. or even 'five bob'. You can have it for 1s." He tells his assistant to take the cigarette lighter and wrap it up into a neat parcel, and hands back 19s. of the buyer's money with it. So that in fact the buyer will have got a cigarette lighter for 1s., which was the price the assistant, outside the shop, had originally stated it was going to be sold for before the sale started. The auctioneer then proceeds to sell off all the goods that were originally on the table outside the shop in this way. He sells an alarum clock—knocks it down for 25s. When the assistant comes back with the money he gives back all but 1s. He puts a clock and a lighter together and knocks them down for £2, and gives back all but 2s. He knocks the camera down for £2 10s., gives back all but 5s.
So it goes on. In that way all the things on the counter are sold. Each time, while the assistant is collecting the money from the highest bidder, the auctioneer gives away a few articles over the counter; each time the "mug" makes a bid, and each time the lot is knocked down to somebody else. The auctioneer then says that he is coming to his last lot. He takes four of the articles, which have not been seen before, either outside or inside the shop—they are a canteen of cutlery, a set of two canvas holdalls, a table lamp and a wristwatch. He explains that only one of these four lots is to be sold, and that

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that is only by way of advertisement. The highest bidder is to have his choice of the four lots for his money, and the rest of the articles will be put back into stock. The auctioneer puts this up for auction, and the "mug", who has watched all these cheap lots going at give-away prices, is by now desperately anxious and bids hard for this particular lot. It is knocked down to him. The "mug" is asked to hand over the money. He hands over £5 to the auctioneer's assistant, and is asked to make his choice, which of the four articles he will select. He chooses to have the canteen of cutlery. But at that moment the auctioneer stops the sale. He says that he has heard a suggestion among the audience that the "mug" was a friend of his, and that the whole sale was rigged. The auctioneer becomes very annoyed about this, and says to the "mug": "Have you ever seen me before?" The mug says "No". Then the auctioneer says: "There is only one way I can disprove this allegation that the sale is rigged. I am going to treat everybody who has bought one of my sealed packages the same way as I treat the highest bidder. If you each hand over £5, you can each have a similar lot to one of these four."
The auctioneer's assistants try to stop him doing this: they say it is much too generous. But the auctioneer is adamant: he is in charge, and he will do exactly what he likes. So he collects, or tells his assistants to collect £5 from each of the other men and women in the shop who, having bought one of the sealed packages, are eligible to take part in the sale; and he asks them to choose which of the four lots they will have. Then the auctioneer says, "You have each paid £5 for one of these lots. All of you have handed over your money. To show that yours was a genuine bid, are you quite certain that you want to pay £5 for this?" All of the audience then say "Yes"—thinking they are going to get their £5 back. Then the auctioneer asks, "If you walk out of this shop with any article that you have chosen for your £5, you will be quite satisfied, will you not?", and they all say "Yes". They still think that they are going to get their money back.
Then the auctioneer says "Right. You have trusted me and I am not going to let you down. Each of you has paid
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£5 for one of these articles, and I am going to give you something else for your £5 as well as the article you have chosen." He holds up a fountain pen, pencil and ball-point pen set in a smart little cardboard box, and says, "This is what I am going to give to each of the members of the audience who have spent £5 with me." At this stage he picks up one of the sealed packages that were sold at the beginning of the sale, unwraps it and shows that inside it was a bottle of scent. He explains to the audience that there is a bottle of scent inside each of the sealed packages, and that all are exactly the same.
The "mug" is then handed a carrier bag in which has been put the canteen of cutlery he has chosen, his pen and pencil set and his sealed package containing a bottle of scent. He does not get back any of the £5 that he bid. When he gets home he finds that all the articles in his carrier bag are worthless trash; and he realises that he has been cheated somehow, though he is not quite sure how. The object of this sale, of course, is to sell as many as possible of the canteens of cutlery, the canvas holdalls, the table lamps and wristwatches. The whole of the rest of the sale has just been leading up to that. All these articles have been made specially for the occasion. They look good; they look expensive; but actually they are of such poor quality that they are virtually worthless.
As well as stocks of canteens of cutlery, et cetera, which the auctioneer wants to sell, he needs two other types of goods in order to carry out a mock auction. He needs his alarum clocks, his shaving sets, cameras, electric razors and binoculars. These are all perfectly genuine goods, made by well-known manufacturers. They are never in fact sold; they never leave the shop and they are part of the mock autioneer's permanent equipment, appearing at sale after sale. The second thing he needs is a number of cheap articles that he can give away to distract the crowd's attention at difficult times and to encourage them to bid in the rest of the sale. These are such items as screwdrivers, bread knives, pen knives, pencils, plastic sponges and tooth brushes.
The sales are carried out by three men—the pitch-getter, who collects the crowds at the beginning of the sale; the floor man, who is the auctioneer's assistant, and who collects the money;

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and the auctioneer himself, who is known as the "top man" and is head of the outfit. The first part of the sale, the collecting of the crowd inside the shop is carried out by the pitch-getter, and on his table at the door of the shop are put the genuine articles which are not, in fact, sold. He lures the customers inside by leading them falsely to believe that if they come in to the shop they will be able to buy a lighter or alarm clock for 1s. When the crowd is inside the shop the auctioneer is faced with a number of people some of whom who are going to be "mugs" and some of whom are going to be clever and watch to see what goes on. Some of them will have money in their pocket, and some will not.
At this part of the sale it is the business of the auctioneer to find out which is which, and so he produces the sealed packages. The object of this is as follows. First, anyone who is gullible enough to buy a sealed packet for 10s., without knowing what is inside it, is gullible enough to be cheated later on. Since the money for the sealed packages is collected without the packages being given to the people who have bought them, unless those people forfeit their money they must stay in the shop until the end of the sale. Hence these sealed packages are known as "nailers", because they "nail" the crowd inside the shop. There is one point about the manner in which these sealed packages are sold. The mock auctioneer wants to sell twelve of them, or as many as he can; and in order to do so he puts the first one up for auction, gets for it as high a price as he thinks he can get—perhaps about 10s.—and does not bother to auction the rest. He sells those at the price at which the first package was knocked down.
Having now sorted out which are the "mugs" among the crowd the auctioneer has to persuade them that if they make a bid for any article they will be asked to pay only a fraction of the actual sum they bid. The genuine goods—cigarette lighters, clocks and so on—are produced, and the auctioneer pretends to auction them one after another. When the money has been collected and handed to him he then tells his assistants to hand back the money to those who have paid it. In fact, these particular articles are never sold. They are never knocked down to a genuine bid. The bids before the last
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are genuine, but if the auctioneer is putting up, say, a cigarette lighter, he will take bids up to perhaps 18s., 19s., or 20s., and if that is the last bid he will say, "Right, 21s., over there!" He then points to the back of the shop and tells an assistant, "Go and collect the money from that gentleman over there." Then he asks his audience to gather round his high counter and starts giving away the free lots. As a result, no one sees to whom the assistant goes to collect the money for the cigarette lighter. In fact, the assistant walks to the back of the crowd and at the right moment takes the money from his own pocket and comes back and hands it to the auctioneer; so none of those articles is ever, in fact, sold.
The "mugs" have now got definitely in their heads the idea that they will be asked to pay only a fraction of the amount they may bid and hand over, and they now have to be cheated of their money. So that they shall not be disillusioned it is necessary for them all to be cheated at once. If those in the crowd saw the first man hand over £5 for an article and not get back any of his £5, they would realise that something was wrong, and because of that the pretence is made by the auctioneer that only one of the lots is going to be sold to the highest bidder and that the rest of the articles will be put back into stock. Then the auctioneer pretends to hear somebody from the back of the crowd suggest that the sale is "rigged" and he has ready his excuse to "prove" his honesty by allowing everyone to have one of the lots for £5. In this way each of the "mugs" thinks he will get £5 worth of goods for about 10s., believing, of course, that they will get £4 10s. back. In fact the "mugs" will get about 25s. worth of goods for £5.
My Lords, that may not be a very clear description of a mock auction sale, but it is as clear a description as I can give in a short time. There seems always to be some doubt about whether or not the law is broken by mock auctions. On July 10, 1953, replying to a Motion for the Adjournment in another place by Mr. Norman Dodds, the Joint Undersecretary of State for the Home Department said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 517, col. 1682]:
"It is not a fact that law is deficient. There is ample power to prevent these abuses and punish them where they occur."

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On July 4, 1957, in reply to a question by Mr. Norman Dodds, the Home Secretary said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 572, col. 1277]:
"The Metropolitan Police has given this matter much attention since 1953, but has not been able to find any evidence to justify the institution of criminal proceedings."
These two statements seem to be slightly conflicting. I took counsel's opinion upon this point of whether the law was broken. I gave counsel a description of a mock auction sale, in much the same way as I have described it to your Lordships, and asked him whether any law was broken. His opinion says this:
"There are only three offences which I think could be considered as covering such transaction—cheating, larceny by a trick and obtaining money by false pretences. Cheating at Common Law has been confined to obtaining money by using false scales or false marks on spurious articles, and although everyone would agree that a mock auction was a clear instance in common parlance of cheating, yet I am firmly of opinion that a prosecution alleging cheating would fail.
"The real substance of the cheating is the conduct of the auctioneer and his cronies in the early stages of the mock auction whereby the members of the public are induced to believe that, whatever they may bid for a particular article, they will not be required to pay that sum or indeed even a substantial part of it.
"In larceny by a trick, possession of money or goods, but not the property in the money or goods, is obtained by some trick or artifice. Clearly, on the facts before me the members of the public are intending to buy goods and to pass the property in the money which they hand over, although they hope that some of it will be returned to them. Thus the field is narrowed to the offence of obtaining money by false pretences, for in this offence the property in the money is obtained by the false statement or false representation by conduct. The crux of the matter is as to whether what takes place involves a false statement or false representation by conduct.
"It has been laid down by the courts in innumerable authorities that the representation must be as to an existing fact. I have been unable to find any decision where the facts were in any degree similar to the facts before me, and I have come to the opinion, firstly, that the conduct complained of does not amount to a false representation, because there is no dear indication that part of the money bid will be returned to the bidder, although he has been led to hope that it will, and secondly, that even if the conduct did amount to a false representation, it would be a representation as to future conduct, namely, to repay part of the money. Accordingly I am of opinion that a prosecution would be doomed to failure and I am fortified in my opinion by the fact that, so far as I am aware, no prosecution has ever been launched or succeeded on such facts as are now before me."
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I think it is fairly clear from this opinion that mock auctions are not against the law. There is, however, one law which mock auctioneers invariably break and which, if it were rigorously enforced, might prove a slight discouragement to them. The Auctions Act of 1845 lays down that every auctioneer must display prominently in the premises where the sale is taking place, and throughout the sale, a card clearly giving his true name and address for everybody to read. The mock auctioneers might not be quite so keen to cheat the public if the victims knew exactly who they were and where they lived. I should like to ask the noble Lord who will reply for Her Majesty's Government whether Her Majesty's Government will take the necessary steps to see that this law is enforced so far as mock auctions are concerned.
As to the issue of whether anything should be done about mock auctions, the question arises: how far should the law go to protect the fool from his folly? To answer that I should like to give just one or two facts and figures about mock auctioneers. First of all, a word about the value of the goods that are sold. I got a set of the cutlery that I mentioned in the description of the sale and had it valued. I was told that it was made of chromium plate and that the chromium plate would not last a year. The forks buckle when given any hard push. One of these sets can be bought at a cheapjack shop for 39s. 6d.—that is the retail price, and presumably allows for a certain amount of profit. The mock auctioneer sells these sets for £5 each. As to the numbers of these mock auction sales, there is one shop in Oxford Street which has about five sales a day on about six days a week. There are two mock auction shops in Petticoat Lane which are open on Sunday morning, and there are anything up to sixteen mock auction stalls in Petticoat Lane. There are mock auctions in twenty-six municipal boroughs and in eight urban districts. This may not seem a very large number, but when we consider that each of these shops has five sales a day and that at each sale at least ten people are cheated out of at least £5 each, we realise that the turnover of one single shop is, at the very minimum, £1,000 a week, of which about three-quarters is clear profit.
Next as to the victims of these auctions. Most of the people "caught" by them are holiday-makers with money in their

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pocket, housewives out with the housekeeping money who come across one of these places and get cheated, and, in London at any rate, a very large percentage of foreigners who come into one of these shops. They do not realise that they can be openly cheated in an English shop, and they must carry back a very bad impression of what goes on in an English shopping street. We cannot protect people from being cheated in every single way, but there are some ways where the odds against the "mugs" are too great, and then the law must protect them; and in this case there is added to the crookedness of the sale the excitement that people usually feel at a perfectly genuine auction sale. There is something about even a perfectly honest auction sale that makes people bid much more than they want to pay, and which makes people bid for things which they do not really want. If we add that to the crookedness of somebody who is going to get money by cheating, that makes it very difficult for people to see through.
My Lords, in 1929 my noble friend Lord Gorell introduced a Bill in your Lordships' House to deal with mock auctions. His Bill laid down that:
"No person conducting or assisting to conduct a public sale of goods by auction or otherwise shall knowingly misdescribe by word or implication the purposes of such sale, the origin of the goods to be sold, or the nature, quality, or substance of such goods."
The noble Lord will be speaking later on and so I will not say any more about that Bill, except to say that, after getting a Second Reading in your Lordships' House, it was referred to a Select Committee, and the Select Committee came to the conclusion upon the evidence that the Bill was not required for the reason that
"The law as it stands is sufficient to deal with any cases which could be successfully alleged as infringing the provisions of this Bill were it to become law."
There are left three methods by which laws could be made to control mock auctions. The first is to control auctioneers by licence; secondly, to control auction premises by registration; and thirdly, to make illegal certain of the individual practices of mock auctioneers. The first suggestion, licences for auctioneers, was suggested by a Select Committee of your Lordships' House on
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Auctioneers', House Agents' and Valuers' Licences in 1935. Up to the year 1948 it was necessary for every auctioneer to have a licence, but this cost £10 and was purely a matter of revenue. One did not need to have qualifications: one paid over the £10 and got the licence. The Select Committee on Auctioneers', House Agents' and Valuers' Licences of your Lordships' House suggested that licences should continue to be issued by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise, but only to the holder of a certificate granted by a petty sessional court, which should have power to refuse that certificate.
There are various objections against that method of control. The first is that there would be the difficulty and expense of setting up a whole new machinery, first to introduce auctioneers' licences, and secondly, machinery whereby only people who had special qualifications could be issued with licences. The second point is that mock auctions are not at the moment illegal. Therefore, if a mock auctioneer were to apply for a licence or certificate in order to get a licence from a court, I do not think that the court could refuse his application purely on the grounds of his being a mock auctioneer.
The second method is registration of premises. In 1956 Brighton Corporation introduced a clause in their Private Bill enacting that all premises used in the town for auction sales must be registered by the Corporation, and giving the Corporation power to refuse such registration in certain cases. The Corporation could refuse registration either because the premises were unsuitable or because they had been used other than in good faith or because the applicant had been convicted of fraud. Several other towns followed suit and introduced Private Bills to this effect. I feel that this is a matter which is so widespread that it should not be left to Private Bills to deal with. First of all, it would be a long time before the whole country was covered by Private Bills, and the moment one town introduced private legislation the mock auctioneers would just move down the coast to the next seaside resort and open up there. Then there are some towns which cannot afford the expense of introducing private legislation. It would be possible to have a public Bill on the lines of registration of premises, but how effective it

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would be I do not know. It certainly worked in the towns where these provisions have been in force under private legislation. But if the provisions covered the whole country, mock auction men would have nowhere else to go. Now, instead of having to trouble to stay and appeal against refusal to register their premises, it is much easier for them to move to another town. If there were not another town for them to move to, then they might well stay and appeal. As mock auctions are not against the law, if the premises are all right and if the man who applies has not been convicted of fraud, how are we going to justify refusal to register his premises should he appeal to the courts? It needs only one successful appeal of an auctioneer to make such a Bill ineffective.
That leaves the third method I have adopted in my Bill: to make illegal certain of the practices of mock auctioneers. The main practice of a mock auctioneer, whereby his sale differs from a normal auction, is that he gives back a large part of the money bid for some of his lots so as to lead people to think that he is going to do that every time. Clause 1, subsection (1), of my Bill makes it illegal for a person who conducts or assists in conducting a sale at which an assembly of persons or any of them are invited to acquire prescribed articles by competitive bidding to
"accept or offer to accept from the highest bidder for any prescribed article less than the amount of his highest bid; or
(b) during the proceedings of the sale sell any prescribed article otherwise than by competitive bidding …"
That is to stop the practice of mock auctioneers of putting the first of a number of lots up for auction, knocking it down at a high price, and then selling the rest of the lots, not by auction, but at the price fetched by the first.
Then, in paragraph (c), it is made illegal to
"impose as a condition of the sale that no bid shall be accepted from any person who has not first bought some specified article; …"
The purpose of that is to stop the "nailer", the sealed packages. That is when the auctioneer lays it down as a condition that nobody can bid in the rest of the sale who has not first bought one of those. Then:
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"(d) during the proceedings of the sale make or promise or offer in connection with the sale any gift to any person in or about the premises used for the sale; …"
My Lords, there are certain safeguards in this Bill. Clause 1, subsection (1), paragraph (b), sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii), are safeguards in order not to make illegal certain legitimate practices of bona-fide auctioneers; and also Clause 1, subsection (2).
With a Bill of this kind it is a most important consideration to consider how its provisions might affect the bona-fide auctioneer, and with this in view I have consulted three of the main professional bodies: the Chartered Auctioneers' and Estate Agents' Institute, the Incorporated Society of Auctioneers, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. They have given me a great deal of help in the phrasing of the Bill. The first two of those bodies have discussed the Bill with their councils and have decided that the activities of their members are outside the sphere of this Bill. They have therefore decided not to oppose it in its present form. This Bill is supported by the Association of Municipal Corporations, the Association of Urban District Councils, and the National Chamber of Trade.
Finally, I should like to quote from a speech delivered on the Second Reading of the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Gorell. It is the speech of the noble and learned Viscount, the late Lord Hail-sham, who sat on the Woolsack at the time. The noble Viscount said:
"I do not think that any one of your Lordships would attempt to justify or other than reprobate such practices as were described by the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading. The methods of the persons at whom he aims his Bill are as discreditable as their language appears to be obscure. But it is not enough to say that there are people who are doing discreditable things. You have to ascertain, I think, first of all, exactly what is the gap in the law through which they are at present enabled to escape punishment, and, secondly, you have to be sure that that gap is effectively closed, and no more than closed, by the Bill which is submitted to the House."
My Lords, that gap has been open for thirty years since then, and I would submit to your Lordships that this Bill closes it, and no more than closes it. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Denham.)
3.55 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Denham, is, I think, to be congratulated on his introduction of this Bill, and on the manner in which he has introduced it. I think he has demonstrated most ably his understanding of quite a complex subject; and his demonstration of his understanding has had the merit not only of being able, but, I venture to think, of being diverting to your Lordships. Clearly he has made a very extensive personal study of this problem, and I am sure your Lordships will join with me in hoping that it has not been at any great personal loss. If he will also allow me to say so, his complete mastery of this procedure and technique—and, indeed, of the jargon—leads me to feel very thankful that it is only a Dispatch Box that I am standing before, and not a rostrum. I think all your Lordships, as I do, will appreciate the painstaking interest and resourcefulness which the noble Lord has shown in bringing forward this very ingenious measure; and, whatever may be the outcome, I consider he has performed a very valuable service in giving publicity to this subject.
A well-known old proverb says, "A fool and his money are soon parted," and to-day we are all, I think, constantly submitted to high-pressure salesmanship and advertising of one sort or another designed to convince us of the merits of some particular product or service or entertainment—and, in general, parting with our money is made as attractive and painless as it can be. Sometimes, perhaps, we even go so far as to ignore Mr. Micawber's advice, and we spend more than we can afford: but that, my Lords, is a hazard which is common to everybody, and we do not expect the law to protect us from that. This afternoon, however, we are considering a practice which I think we should all agree goes further than that; it is deliberately designed to exploit the more gullible members of the community by unscrupulous and by deceitful methods. It must be distressing to everyone to see people being tricked by sharp practices, particularly when they are elderly people who cannot afford it; and I completely agree with the noble Lord when he draws attention to the undesirability of giving a very bad impression to visitors from overseas who may be caught in this way.
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My Lords, if, after analysing the noble Lord's Bill, the Government do not feel able to commend it to your Lordships' approval wholeheartedly, it is not from any desire to condone or encourage the activities of mock auctioneers, or from any lack of concern for those who may fall victims. What we have to decide is whether it is practicable or desirable to deal with the problem by means of the sanctions which the noble Lord has proposed in his Bill. It must be a serious matter to add to the general criminal law—and the criminal law is not perhaps always the most effective weapon in a matter of this sort.
Lord Denham correctly drew attention to the position of mock auctions and the existing law, making it clear that we are not really concerned with a breach of existing provisions. Basically, the evil we are concerned with is that goods are sold at prices much higher than their generally accepted value. That is not an offence in itself. Various devices are used, as we have heard, to induce people to buy the goods; but, generally speaking, the noble Lord was right when he said that there was nothing in the practices which constitutes a conspiracy to defraud or false pretences, or anything like that. It can be said that mock auctioneers are careful to keep within the law as it stands.
Talking of the law, the noble Lord mentioned the requirement under the Act of 1845 that all auctioneers should put up a signboard of some sort with their true and full Christian and surnames and residence in large letters, and he asked that that requirement should be complied with. The position about that is that it is a hangover from a very old Act and the requirement was originally made in connection with Customs and Excise duties which were charged at the time. They have since been abolished, but the noble Lord is perfectly correct, so far as I can see, in saying that the necessity for an auctioneer to put up his name and address is still valid. For the reasons I have mentioned, it is not a requirement which is enforced by the police at the present time. I may say that I had someone go round to a mock auction yesterday to see whether they knew anything about it and had put up a board. A Home Office official went round and there was no sign of any board, and,

1137
apart from a pair of shoddy free curl links, he had no other progress to report. I would say to the noble Lord on that point that if there is a breach of the law it is a matter not for Government action but for the police—for the local police of the area in which the infringement may take place. If the noble Lord wishes, I will certainly ask my right honourable friend to ask the Commissioner to look into the matter in the Metropolitan area, but further than that I cannot go. I should think, however, that the publicity the noble Lord has given to this matter may possibly spread about and local chief constables will decide to do something about it.
May I go back to the Bill? Clause 1 prohibits certain specific practices. The noble Lord has told us about them, and he has taken care not to interfere with the methods used by legitimate auctioneers. I do not think I should examine these restrictions in detail; they would be more a matter for the Committee stage if it was decided to give the Bill a Second Reading. I would ask your Lordships to consider a few general observations. Mock auctioneers have operated in various ways for a considerable number of years, and no doubt they improve and perfect their technique. The present form is the one they consider to be the most successful. The successful perpetration depends on two or three practices, descriptions or blandishments whatever you choose to call them, which create the "get-something-for-nothing" atmosphere, about which we have heard. It is unnecessary for me to repeat the kind of thing that goes on—Lord Denham was very lucid about it.
The Bill seeks to prohibit the practices he described, but there must be always a risk that mock auctioneers will not have much difficulty in devising new practices that will evade this and other precise prohibitions which are in the Bill. They world no doubt be restricted in their methods by this Bill and perhaps temporarily inconvenienced, but I feel that the final result may turn out to be the same problem in some new form. I cannot myself suggest any specific ways whereby they could get round the provisions of this Bill. Probably, if I possessed that degree of distorted ingenuity I should be busy operating a mock auction instead
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of talking to your Lordships. But no one who has seen mock auctioneers in operation would underestimate their capacity for devising ways and means to relieve an unsuspecting person of his cash.
On the question of infringement, I should think that the offences created by the Bill are complicated, and proof of suspected breaches would be somewhat difficult and certainly highly technical. For another reason, it is a well-known fact that people who have been caught by sharp practices are usually very reluctant to admit it and help the police by giving the necessary evidence. The noble Lord drew attention to the extent of these activities and I feel I must briefly do the same. They obviously depend for their victims on a changing population, people who have little opportunity to come back and complain and warn others, and thus holiday resorts and large towns are the obvious choice. Since 1954 eight local authorities have sought to control mock auctions by local legislation which requires registration of the premises used for auctions, and a few more authorities are seeking similar powers. But I do not think—and I listened carefully to what Lord Denham said as to the extent of these activities—that there is evidence that they are very widespread, or that they are increasing. I think we must consider very carefully whether the problem is, in fact, large enough to justify general legislation.
If general legislation is thought to be needed, it is then for consideration whether the method proposed by the noble Lord is likely to be the most effective that can be devised. I have mentioned local legislation on this subject, and Lord Denham himself told us the form that it takes. I will therefore only say that although most of the local Acts in existence are fairly recent and it is a little early to claim that they are a complete solution, from inquiries that have been made there is certainly reason to believe that they have had some deterrent effect. Mock auctioneers have apparently judged it wiser not to apply for registration and therefore have had to cease operating in the areas concerned. It may be that local legislation on these lines is the best way to deal with a local problem. If it is said, as Lord Denham did say, that local authorities cannot all afford the expense of promoting Private

1139
Bills, then the possibility should be considered by those who feel, as Lord Denham does, that this problem is big enough, as to whether it would justify legislation in a Public Bill giving similar powers to all local authorities who wish to adopt them.
I have laid before the House some considerations which I think your Lordships should bear in mind when deciding your attitude to the Bill. To sum up, mock auctions undoubtedly exist and no one would wish to defend them. The question for the House to consider is whether the nuisance is such as to justify general rather than local legislation; and if the answer to that is "Yes", then what form the legislation should take. I have had to suggest some doubts about the efficacy of this Bill. It is for the House to consider these doubts and the alternative that I have mentioned of an adoptive Bill giving local powers to require the registration of premises. I think that the House should consider the Bill entirely on its merits as they may be put forward in argument during the debate.
4.11 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I rise, perhaps with some trepidation to support the Bill, if only because in his speech the noble Lord, Lord Denham, dealt so comprehensively with the way in which crooks are running these mock auctions. I rise not only to support the Bill but also to congratulate the noble Lord on all the work he has put into it. It is now eleven months since he first put on the Order Paper here what was then a Motion, which he subsequently turned into a Bill, and it is within my knowledge that in the intervening period he has busied himself with consultations with all the various authorities dealing with trade and industry, and with local control, as well as with those responsible for genuine auctioneers. And now he comes to us with a Bill which, if not perfect, at least represents something which the people who have looked into this have tried to do but which successive Governments have failed to deal with since I was first in politics in 1921.
I think that part of the ingenuity of the Bill is the fact that the only place in which the word "auctions" appears is in the Title. The noble Lord has thus managed to draft a Bill which avoids all the difficulties that might have occurred
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with genuine auctioneers and those holding auctions. I am not going to say that I know enough about legal draftsmanship to say that this is necessarily the particular form of Bill which should commend itself to your Lordships' House for final adoption as an Act of Parliament, but it is certainly, in my view, a Bill which should be given a Second Reading, and should move through to a Committee stage, where we ought to have the benefit of advice and consultation between the mover of the Bill and the representatives of the Home Office.
I first came into this matter as long ago as 1923, as Chairman of the North Islington Labour Party, on complaints about mock auctions in the Holloway Road. I have since seen this problem on complaints from working people again and again, and in more recent years I have seen it on complaints by local authorities and the manufacturers of goods who were concerned about the way in which this subject was dealt with. I was interested in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, in 1929; and more recently my colleagues of the Labour Party in the other place played some part in a campaign in 1953, when there was considerable publicity, started by the Daily Herald, involving posters outside mock auction shops in many seaside towns during 1953 and 1954. Without doubt the weapon of publicity is one of the vital weapons to use, apart from legislation—indeed, in some ways, if it is possible to use it, it is the best weapon.
The truth is, however, that this gets beyond merely the stage of talking about fools who are parted from their money. I know that it can well be argued that this House cannot always bother itself to make certain that fools are looked after—although it is a fact that Parliament has to spend much time in protecting fools. If that were not so, we should not be dealing with police cases about confidence tricksters in hotels in London and the like. The mock auction is, in fact, in many cases, only a form of confidence trick carried out in a different way. But this problem goes beyond the suggestion of fools being parted from their money: it runs into the serious suggestion of what is happening to certain aspects of British trade.
I appreciate the importance of the reference by the noble Lord when he

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moved the Second Reading, to the support he had had from the National Chamber of Trade. Not only the Chamber of Trade, as such, but various manufacturing firms also are concerned about what is going on. While it is perfectly true that if you took a census in the month of February of the shops and establishments where mock auctions are being carried out you might get the low kind of figure to which the noble Lord referred in his speech, on the information in the possession of some of us in the Labour Party in 1924 there were operating at one given moment in the summer 1,500 of these establishments: indeed, that is the reason for the legislation which was sought by a number of local authorities. The best estimate by those concerned with the trade protection at that time was that in the course of a year £8 million worth of good; were being distributed by this method.
The goods themselves are especially shoddily made, and they are packaged artificially. There are four main firms in this country specialising in the production of the goods, and there are certain printing works specialising in the production of fake containers and cartons; so that when you do, in fact, finally get a clock knocked down to you at 30s., you get it in a case which shows a price of two guineas, thus proving what a bargain you have got because you do not see the invoice which shows that it was sold to the people at 12s. 11d.
This practice is doing a lot of harm to a number of genuine trades and industries in this country, and one of the latest to erupt on the matter and send letters to the Prime Minister, to other members of the Government and to Parliament, is the Sheffield cutlery industry, which has caused the Sheffield people to make considerable representations in the last four or five weeks. Indeed, in January the City Council of Sheffield passed a resolution, about which the noble Lord who spoke for the Government must know, since it was sent to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, to this effect:
"That this Council deplores the growth of mock auctions within the City and the exploitation of the public which takes place thereat. They strongly urge Her Majesty's Government to introduce or facilitate the introduction of legislation designed to control, and protect the public from, the activities of those persons responsible for these auctions."
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Why the Council and the cutlery industry there are concerned is because Sheffield is the major producing city of high-quality cutlery in the world, and they know that stamped-out cheap cutlery material is being foisted on the market allegedly coming from Sheffield. It is useless for us to stand here and denounce, as some of us have in the past, the productions which come from Japan marked "Made in Sheffield" as being a terrible infringement of our rights and something to be condemned as an attack on our industry if, at the same time, we are prepared to sit idly by and allow in this country four firms to produce material like that—and in Sheffield, in one case—so as to put on the world (and I say,
"the world" by way of reference to foreign visitors who come here and buy "Made in Sheffield" goods) goods which let down the high quality for which Britain stands in the normality of its production. As I say, I think this matter goes beyond the separation of fools from their money and into the realms of the trade and standing of this country.
I do not want to keep the House by going into great detail, although there are many sides to this fraud. One part of it is a glib tongue. I have myself seen that shocking sale of a pen supposed to be the one which holds the Royal Warrant of Her Majesty. They merely hold up a box with a pen in it. It is apparently of red plush, marked in gold, with a crown on the top. They say: "What am I bid for this? What is good enough for her is good enough for you". All the emphasis is on the crown which is being flourished. That is the kind of thing that is going on all the time.
Whenever the matter is raised in another place or here—whether by the right honourable gentleman moving it in another place or the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, here in 1929—nobody from the Home Office ever does anything. I may remind the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack that one of the jobs he had to do when Home Secretary was to get up in another place and to express regret that there was no time for legislation on this matter. Apparently there has been no time since I have been connected with Parliament—that is from 1921 until now. I am not an expert who is able to say what is the right form the legislation should take. But I am the critic who can see that the Home Office

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never seem to be certain which leg they are standing on. The leg which the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, stood on this afternoon is a different one from that which was stood on a year ago. It was different again from the one three years ago. As I see it, we are told a different story each time.
We were told by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in another place on July 10, 1953, that the existing laws contained very substantial powers to deal with these matters. We are told this afternoon that it is doubtful whether anything would be done which was likely to break the law. We were also promised that, if we wanted it, the Home Secretary would cause the Commissioner of Police to have a look at the matter to see what the position was. He has been doing that and reporting to the Home Secretary; and the Home Secretary has been busy making statements. But the Commissioner found that he could do nothing about it, notwithstanding all the provisions in the law—and there are plenty of provisions if anybody knows how to deal with them.
For example, there is the Sale of Goods Act, 1893, which makes it unlawful for the seller of goods being auctioned to bid or employ persons to bid on his behalf. That law is broken. There is the Betting and Lotteries Act, 1934, which deals with the question of the boxes to which the noble Lord referred, because if it is suggested that one has a valuable content and the other a less valuable content, there is a technical breach. There are also the offences of obtaining money by false pretences, conspiracy to defraud, larceny by intimidation, larceny by means of a trick and fraudulent conversion—all things which could be put up as breaches of the law if the evidence could be obtained. As has been pointed out, the difficulty is to produce the facts and prove them so as to make prosecution effective.
Unless anyone should think that the House to-day is better educated in its glossary of the terms used in mock auctions, may I in this connection, refer to a speech made by the late Lord Hailsham, in which he said:
"A person who has unwittingly become a 'sarker' and has been 'gazoomphed' is not anxious to advertise his own gullibility and to give evidence in a court of law, or even to make a complaint to the police."
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I might say to your Lordships, in passing, that that shows what heredity is: the great knowledge of words which was possessed by the late Lord Hailsham is also possessed by his distinguished son, our revered Deputy Leader of the House at the moment. But let me say straight away that his Lordship was right: it is difficult to get people to make complaints; and if they do they know what it means. A working man who makes a complaint and ties himself up to be party to a prosecution is tying himself up to be brought from his place of employment and to lose his work in order to spend a day or days in police courts, or in higher courts in due course, in order that the case may be proved.
The present law is useless as a safeguard. When two well-known operators were caught in 1953, one got two years' imprisonment and the other one year. They managed to go to the Court of Criminal Appeal, and the Lord Chief Justice, regrettably, had to quash the convictions; and so the only two the Metropolitan Police did think they had caught got away. The local authorities who have suffered from this have committed themselves again and again to statements, both to the Home Office and to newspapers, of their complete inability to deal with these matters. For instance, at the time of the last trouble in Scarborough, the town clerk said in a statement:
"The Home Secretary says we have adequate powers. I will tell him, with some emphasis, that the powers are not worth printing on paper. If he gives us the weapon—a short Bill—we will kill mock auctions stone dead."
In the nearby town of Bridlington, suffering at the same time, the chairman of the committee dealing with this matter said:
"We have tried all methods—town planning, foot path obstruction laws and the Shops Acts. We get nowhere. We need a Bill."
I say, therefore, that I am sure the noble Lord is right in coming to this House and saying that a new law is needed—something more than we have at the moment. He has selected one of the three methods available, and I believe that he has selected the only one that was possible. A few local authorities have sought special powers, the original case being that of Brighton. They have had to spend a lot of money and go to a lot of trouble to get it. I believe that Brighton Corporation spent £2,000 on costs in trying to promote a Bill in this House. Once they have powers for

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registration and direction of premises, they must run a costly machine inside their own local authority in order to deal with the matter.
However, I am not here to say that every phrase and every clause in the noble Lord's Bill is right, because I do not know. What I do know is that it is the first attempt to deal with this matter, and it is an attempt which, in my view should now receive the support of the Government. What we should expect is not that the noble Lord should come to the Committee stage and fight this through on his own, but that from now, after the Second Reading is given, as I hope it will be, there should be such co-operation from the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, and the Department he represents that the noble Lord presenting the Bill, who has spent so much of his valuable time on this, should have the backing of all of us, so that the House may get its teeth into the subject.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I put him straight about one thing? I am sure he would not willingly be guilty of misquoting me, and perhaps he did not quite understand what I said about asking the Home Secretary to pass the matter on to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I was talking about the specific instance of this ancient law requiring auctioneers to display their names and addresses and not about the whole problem. Because, quite honestly, if the noble Lord said, as I understood him to say, that I should ask for the law to be looked at when we knew there was nothing wrong with it, I do not think that would be quite right.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord—I did misunderstand him. The reference I was making was to the statement which the Home Secretary made in the last two years, that, having gone to the Commissioner of Police, he felt that nothing could be done. If I said anything to criticise the noble Lord with his charming personality I should wish to withdraw it.
4.30 p.m.
LORD GORELL: My Lords, I am sure we all agree with the opening remarks of the noble Lord who spoke for the Government in congratulating the mover of this Bill on the clarity with which
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he presented his case and the immense amount of trouble which he has taken to prepare it. So far as I know, and I have been at some pains to try to find out, he has taken the views of every single person or institution concerned and has been into this matter with extreme thoroughness. I take almost a parental interest in it because it is just over thirty years ago since I moved the Bill to which reference has been made. That was passed by your Lordships without a dissentient voice. The only noble Lord who spoke doubtfully on that occasion was the noble Lord, Lord Darling, who was not quite sure whether the form of my Bill was adequate to meet the injustices which had been revealed; but everybody, including the noble and learned Viscount then on the Woolsack, Lord Hailsham, admitted that there was a great deal of swindling going on, that the law as it then stood was not sufficiently elastic to allow prosecutions and that something ought to be done.
That was thirty years ago and nothing has been done, and I must say I am a little disappointed at the reply that we have had from the Home Office. They neither support nor oppose this Bill; they just throw it to your Lordships without really any clear guidance as to what they think should be done. They admit that there is a good deal of swindling going on and that the law is not sufficiently adequate to enable it to be remedied, but I think we should have had a little more positive guidance. I hope, at any rate, that as a result of this debate the Second Reacting will be given in order that any further examination may be made, if necessary, in a Select Committee. My Bill went to a Select Committee thirty years ago, and then it was held that the law was sufficient to deal with the grievances that had been shown, but I think the interval has proved that that is not so; the law is not sufficient.
We have been given a very clear explanation of the way in which these mock auctions are run, and it is not necessary for me to mention anything more about that. I almost wish the noble Lord had gone a little further into the strange language that these gentlemen use. I think I was the first to use the phrase in your Lordships' House "gazoomphing the sarker", which is fairly expressive and there are many others. We might

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have had some explanation perhaps this afternoon of what is meant by "smitzing the bogey to hinton to noise the edge". The point is that these gangs have a little code language among themselves so that they can call out terms from one to another, from the top man to the man going round, in such a way that nobody understands in the least what is being said, and the "sarker", of whom we are told one is born every minute, is gradually drawn nearer and nearer into the net.
I think the debate so far as it has gone, particularly that very expressive argument from Sheffield as to the excellence of our goods and the need for maintaining their excellence and standard, has shown conclusively that there is a need to hold an inquiry. It may be that in the opinion of the legal experts the present Bill does not entirely meet the case, but I think that that would not be in any way a sufficient reason why Second Reading should be refused. I hope very much, as the Government has no opposition to the Second Reading but merely leave it to your Lordships' House, that we may get the Second Reading (and the noble Lord who moved the Motion I think fully deserves that), and we should have, if necessary, further full examination in a Select Committee. I hope that that course will be taken by your Lordships.
4.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I hope I did not hear my noble friend Lord Chesham say, when he intervened in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Crook, a short time ago, that he thought the law was all right on this subject.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? He did not.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I am glad to hear it. If he had said so I should have had to disagree strongly. I have had the great advantage of accompanying the noble Lord, Lord Denham, to a mock auction and I have also gone so far as to join Lord Chesham's friend from the Home Office in buying a small souvenir on that occasion, and very nasty it was too. One thing that impressed me when I went there was the two other
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"mugs" who stood beside me, one of whom was on holiday from Glasgow, and I was sorry to see a fellow countryman of mine so easily parted from £10; the other was a visitor from Iraq who did very nearly as badly. If those are the victims, I feel that we should be very far from satisfied with the present law.
I think it was a new admission, or a comparatively new one, that the noble Lord made, that at the moment the procedure described by the noble Lord, Lord Denham, this afternoon is not in any way a criminal offence. I am afraid I muss very respectfully differ from the noble Lord, Lord Crook, in some of the things he said about this. I went into it in great detail and I am also of the opinion, very humbly, that no criminal offence is committed by the perpetrators of the sort of mock auction which has been described to the House this afternoon, except—and this is one exception—that it might be possible that they could have committed the offence of conspiracy, because that is one offence which does not necessarily need a criminal ingredient apart from the actual conspiracy itself. The aim which is sought by the conspirators may be one which is highly immoral or most injurious to the public. There have been cases—there was one in 1928—when mock auctioneers have been convicted for conspiracy. Otherwise might I say that the Sale of Goods Act, Section 58, in my reading does not impose a criminal offence. For the rest of them the mock auctioneers are very clever; they know a great deal about the law—certainly a great deal more than I do—and they take the maximum amount of trouble to avoid breaking it. They know exactly how far they can go, and they go to that point and no further.
It may be that some mock auctioneers do break the law, but here the trouble is and always has been, with very few exceptions in the past, as the noble Lord, Lord Crook, said, that the victim is most unwilling to come forward and give evidence to say how silly he has been. I would add one other point from personal experience. Even were it a case for a criminal prosecution and I were the victim who came forward to give evidence, I should be entirely unable to remember what had happened or what had been said, because the business is so quick and

1149
so slick that one comes away with a recollection completely blurred. I should be of no use to the police whatsoever and should fall down at once on cross-examination.
The point has been put: is this the best method of dealing with this subject? I should have said that it is. First of all, the Bill as it stands is designed to do away with the very difficulty about which I have just spoken, because it is not the victim in this case who will be giving evidence but, as I believe the noble Lord, Lord Denham, hopes, it will be the police officer. He, being on the look out, on the alert, and writing down each particular point as it arises, will be able to give exact evidence and knowledgeable evidence as to what has gone on. The other point I would make is that if the alternative step is taken of a general registration Bill, it must be admitted that as the present law does not bestow any criminal offence upon the mock auctioneer there is no earthly reason to stop his being registered as a perfectly ordinary auctioneer. If we do not have this Bill his registration will go through; he will continue in exactly the same way as heretofore.
At present the limited number of registration Bills that have been passed by local authorities have had the effect of scaring mock auctioneers away, because they are not very brave when it comes to facing the law, and they would rather give up in that area and go elsewhere Suppose this were nation-wide registration, there would be nowhere else for them to go; they would stand upon their rights and fight the appeal, and I see no reason why they should not be registered and carry on as before. Therefore I feel sure that this Bill is the right way to do it. Even if it does need more examination in Committee, I hope that your Lordships will support it and give it a Second Reading.
4.40 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND
FERRARD: My Lords, I shall speak for only an extremely short time. My object is to support my noble friend Lord Denham who has, I know, taken infinite pains over this Bill and has gone to tremendous trouble to obtain all his facts. Your Lordships have heard him explain most ably how these frauds are perpetrated on the public, and he has told you all the standard jargon which belongs
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to Flook and Bodger of the Daily Mail—I cannot repeat the words, because I have not in any way the knowledge of these matters which he has; but I have been to these auctions, and it is obvious that a very great fraud is perpetrated. Some people say that if a man is fool enough to be cheated by such an act he ought to be prepared to take the consequences. I do not agree with that view. Surely one of the objects of the law is to protect the weak and the ignorant.
We live to-day in an age of high-wage packets, but, unfortunately, wisdom does not necessarily increase hand in hand with income. To-day, we have thousands of people who have a lot of cash in their hands and who are extremely easy game for these unscrupulous racketeers. One of the more unsavoury aspects of this matter concerns tourists from overseas and visitors from the Commonwealth and Colonies. On the occasions I have attended these auctions, I should say that easily half, and sometimes two-thirds, of the audience are foreigners or visitors from the Colonies. If a foreigner or somebody from our Commonwealth leaves England having been cheated, it leaves a nasty taste in his mouth.
I understood my noble friend, Lord Chesham, to say that he thought that this matter was not very widespread—that these auctions were not carried on in great numbers. But we have heard my noble friend Lord Denham say that the average auction turns over £1,000 a week. If there are only 50 of them that means that £50,000 a week is being procured by fraud. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, said that £8 million worth of these shoddy goods—I presume for these auctions—are manufactured. If that is so, and they are sold at four times their true value, that is £24 million a year of which the public are being defrauded. One cannot call that a small matter. I cannot understand why the Home Office cannot get down to this problem, and try to do something about it. This Bill appears to be the answer. I only hope that the Government will really be serious and that they will allow legislation on this matter. I fully support the Bill.
4.46 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I understand that the Bill applies to Scotland. Before the noble Lord who introduced the Bill replies, would he, in his final remarks, indicate the position in regard

1151
to Scotland? I may be wrong, but I think that an auctioneer in Scotland has to be licensed and that his licence must be either displayed or available for inspection. I may be wrong about that, but that is my impression.
4.47 p.m.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, may I answer that last point first? I am not sure about the state of the law in Scotland as to auctioneers' licences. I know that there are mock auctions in Scotland, but I have been unable to find out how large their numbers are. I have been in correspondence with the Royal Burghs Association about it, but I believe that they thought that they would leave it until after this Bill came up before they decided whether or not to support it. So at the moment Scotland is included, but it may not be necessary for Scotland to be included in the Bill.
I should like to thank all noble Lords who have supported me on this Bill. I am not going to say very much because I am afraid that I kept your Lordships rather a long time when I spoke first. I wish to say just two things. First, I firmly believe that a new law is necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, said that perhaps one of the best methods of combating mock auctions was publicity. Well, there has been a great deal of publicity in the Press over the years about mock auctions. The trouble is that somebody reads about a mock auction in his paper, and one can only suppose that the next year he has already forgotten about it. You cannot expect the papers to publicise the matter the whole time. I believe that a new law is necessary, and I feel that the method which I have adopted with this Bill is the most satisfactory of the three.
The noble Lord, Lord Chesham, suggested that mock auctioneers might devise new tricks to get round the provisions of this Bill. The only way in which I have been able to find that they can get round the provisions of the Bill is by taking out from these sales all the elements of competitive bidding. If they do that as a result of this Bill, I shall be quite satisfied with that result, because it is the auction element which makes this particular form of fraud so virulent. This Bill is by no means perfect. It could do with a great deal of overhauling and
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alteration, but I feel that much of the alteration it needs could be done in Committee if your Lordships would give it a Second Reading. I therefore ask your Lordships to do so now.
On Question, Bill read 2a.

POST OFFICE WORKS BILL [H.L.]
4.50 p.m.
House in Committee (according to Order) on Report from the Select Committee.
[The EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE in the Chair.]
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: My Lords, I understand that there are no Amendments, apart from those made by the Select Committee. I therefore call upon the noble Lord, Lord Chesham.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, in asking your Lordships to agree to the Amendments which were made upstairs I can be very brief; for, so far as the Post Office is concerned, if your Lordships approve of these Amendments the Bill as amended will be entirely satisfactory to us. I need only say that the first two Amendments are improvements, from the owners' point of view, on the subject of compensation, about which the noble Lords, Lord Silkin and Lord Lucan, expressed some doubt on Second Reading. Any doubt they had was also expressed by the Petitioners, and those two clauses improve the compensation aspect. The third Amendment is a formal agreement saving an agreement previously made with the Prudential Assurance Company about one of their sites. I beg to move that the Amendments made by the Select Committee be agreed to.
Moved, That the said Amendments be agreed to.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

ELECTRICITY (BORROWING POWERS) BILL
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
TRANSPORT (BORROWING POWERS) BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

BUILDING (SCOTLAND) BILL
4.57 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Constitution of buildings authorities:
(4) The jurisdiction and functions conferred by this Act on a buildings authority which is a dean of guild court shall be in lieu of any jurisdiction or functions which would be exercisable by the court apart from this Act, whether by custom or by virtue of any enactment, except so far as—

(a) conferred by the enactments specified in the First Schedule to this Act, or

(b) relating to matters of private right; and in relation to the area of any such buildings authority the provisions of this Act shall be in lieu of any enactment or rule of law in force immediately before the commencement of this Act making it unlawful to erect, alter, repair or otherwise deal with a building, or occupy a building in any particular way, without the sanction of the dean of guild court for that area.

LORD MATHERS LORD MATHERS moved, in subsection (4), after "any jurisdiction" to insert "corresponding". The noble Lord said: This and the next Amendment go together, and they also work with Amendment No. 18, which proposes that the First Schedule be omitted. I should explain to the Committee that these Amendments originated with my noble friend Lord Greenhill, who unfortunately is unable to be present with your Lordships to-day. I wish he had been here for he is so much more capable than I ant of dealing with any subject concerning this Bill. His long experience in Glasgow Corporation entitles me to say that he would have dealt with these matters much more authoritatively than I can hope to do. My local authority experience was not even in Scotland, so
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that I am far from being an authority on matters affecting dean of guild courts and other matters that come under consideration here.
The purpose of this and the second Amendment is to amend the provisions of Clause 1 (4) of the Bill and the First Schedule which provides, subject to certain exceptions, for the supersession of the functions and jurisdiction of the dean of guild, which in Edinburgh is the dean of guild court under local Acts and by custom and law. Under Clause 1 (4) and the First Schedule, these functions and the said jurisdiction are dealt with in two different ways. First, the functions and jurisdiction relating to certain matters are left unaffected by the Bill. These matters comprise mainly provisions relating to streets and are detailed in paragraph 4 of the First Schedule. Secondly, all other functions and jurisdiction are repealed or abrogated by the Bill but may, before it comes into operation, be reinstated by order of the Secretary of State.
The purpose of the Amendments is to provide that all the powers and jurisdiction of the Dean of Guild in Glasgow or the Dean of Guild in Edinburgh which do not correspond with the provisions of the Bill or the proposed building code shall be dealt with in the same way and left unaffected by the Bill, but with power to the Secretary of State, under Clause 28, to make an order under Clause 28 (3), to deal with anything in any local Act which requires to be amended, any such order being subject to special Parliamentary procedure. The Corporations of Edinburgh and Glasgow see no reason whatever why the functions and jurisdiction of the clean of guild and dean of guild courts should be superseded by the Bill, unless they relate to matters which are dealt with by the Bill or the proposed building code. In Glasgow and, to a lesser extent, in Edinburgh, there are a great many matters on which the dean of guild exercises jurisdiction but which are entirely outside the scope of the Bill, and it seems to be quite Gilbertian to repeal all these provisions and for the Secretary of State to make an order restoring them before the repeal comes into operation. It is the case that all these provisions may be restored by order of the Secretary of State, but why repeal them first and then restore them?
The fact that this apparently absurd procedure is adopted gives ground for apprehension that there may be a difference between the local authorities and the Secretary of State as to the restoration of these provisions. In the event of any such difference the local authorities would be entirely in the hands of the Secretary of State, who, by refusing to make an order under paragraph 5 of the First Schedule would deprive the local authorities of powers which they wish to retain—powers, indeed, which they may possibly have been at great expense to secure. If, on the other hand, the Amendments are effective, the Secretary of State could make an order repealing whatever he thought should be repealed, but such an order would be subject to special Parliamentary procedure, thereby providing a safeguard for the local authorities.
The Corporations fully recognise and accept that in so far as the Bill and proposed building code deal with the same matters as local enactments these local enactments must be superseded. They do not, however, see that there is any justification for repealing, by the Bill, functions and jurisdictions of the dean of guild which in no way correspond with the provisions of the Bill or the building code, and the Amendments are designed to prevent this, while prescribing to the Secretary of State all necessary powers to repeal or amend all local enactments which the provisions of the Bill or the building code render unnecessary or which ought to be repealed or amended consequent thereon.
In talking about the powers that the authorities have, I would say that I have here a list of thirty-seven items in local Acts with which Glasgow has authority to deal at the present time. I will not read the thirty-seven items—it would be too much—but I may mention that private streets may be declared public streets by the dean of guild. There are also the questions of paving a private street; the construction and repair of common sewers; the construction and repair of private sewers. These are merely samples of the kind of things that would be repealed where it is considered quite unnecessary to apply that repeal. The City of Glasgow, as I say, possesses these powers and the Corporation would
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be placed in jeopardy if this Bill were enacted as presently drafted.
Clause 4 (1) of the Bill in its present form is, it is believed, a complete departure from precedent in dealing with local Acts affected by a Public Bill, while the Amendments are in line with precedent as, for example the Police (Scotland) Act, 1956, Section 37.
Finally it is urged that if the Government cannot see their way to accept the Amendments in Committee—there has not been much opportunity for considering these representations—they might at least agree to go into the matter again with a view to amending the Bill on Report. I think that is an easy way of enabling the Minister of State (who of course has not quite the power of the Minister in another place), to deal with these matters. Certainly I hope that this Bill will be passed eventually in a form that will not menace the position of these Corporations in the way that it presently does.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 7, after ("any") insert ("corresponding").—(Lord Mathers.)
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I want to support this Amendment. My grounds, or my right, for doing so are very slender indeed. I can only claim to have been born in Edinburgh. Glasgow and Edinburgh are not always hand in hand in matters of this sort of thing; there is a certain amount of rivalry; but in this case they have come together and approached certain of us—unfortunately the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, is not here—to put their point of view. I have a slender connection with Glasgow, but a very important one, in that my forbears originated the family fortunes there, because they were one of the first people to make iron and steel—the name of William Baird and Company is not unknown.
The real point, so far as I see it—and it is extremely difficult for a layman with no knowledge of the law to comprehend these things—is that these cities have gone to great expense and great trouble in promoting provisional orders and all the other necessary machinery to get local enactments established as Acts. Most of us have sat as Commissioners on bodies dealing with these provisional orders and we know the enormous care and trouble that is gone to and the

1157
difficulty of ever getting an Act of that sort. Therefore to those who have got a local Act it is very precious indeed.
I should not like to support anything which I thought was not in the direction of progress or which I thought was retrograde in any shape or form; but in this case, as I understand it, the clearing away in one clean sweep of all these local enactments and then the replacing of them at the behest of the Secretary of State is a laborious procedure. The other point is that a lot of the enactments that are swept away have no bearing whatsoever on the building by-laws and the code of practice dealing with stability of buildings, health matters and suchlike essential things, which I am all in favour of—they have no bearing whatever on them. I may be incorrect, but I think I am right in saying that the sort of provisions that would be swept away might concern the fact, for example, that the Dean of Guild Court in Edinburgh have provisions regulating bonfires lit in the streets. That may seem a peculiar thing to talk about, but it is a time-honoured traditional custom in Edinburgh. It may be reprehensible; nevertheless, only last year, when I spoke on a provisional order, we had a terrific feeling about this matter. Furthermore, it is a tourist attraction. Now that will be swept away. The noble Lord will know, and if I am talking of something which is irrelevant I hope he will stop me, but I do not think I am. That is the type of thing which will be swept away. Now, so far as I understand it, it would not be the subject of a local inquiry whether the Secretary of State should put it back or not: that will probably be decided down here, although I do not know.
It seems to me that there is wasted talent in the Scottish Office. With all this wonderful logic, how on earth can we set up our institutions, with all the necessary clerical staff and individuals and experts, to take all these things out of the Bill, if we see fit, when we have not put them in first? That appears to me to be second-degree logic; but it is logic. If it is not put in a Bill first, you cannot take it out, I agree. I really think that that would be a very suitable thing for a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera—it needs only the tune to be written into the Bill. As it stands, I hope that the noble Lord will consider the matter very
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fully, and will see whether he cannot help us a little at a later stage of the Bill.
5.12 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD FORBES): The subject here is both legal and technical, and as it is extremely complex perhaps your Lordships will bear with me while I go into this matter in some detail. The noble Lord, Lord Mathers, pointed out that at one time we were considering repealing thirty-seven provisions in the Glasgow Corporation Act, I think it was. The noble Lord did not also point out that it is only thirty-seven provisions out of a total of some 255: so I feel that we are probably making hills out of small molehills.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: May I ask the noble Lord a question? Either I have understood the point wrongly, or he has not answered quite the right point. The point is that those thirty-seven enactments have nothing whatever to do with the subject of this Bill, and that is why the number is only thirty-seven. Speaking without any actual detailed knowledge, I would point out that there are such matters as the bonfire question. I may have incorrectly quoted it, but that is the type of thing. The thirty-seven are entirely irrelevant to the matter which is the subject of this Bill, but are provisions which have been placed in the local Acts after a great deal of careful consideration and after a lot of expense by the Corporation. That is the point—and the only point, I may say, so far as I am concerned.
LORD FORBES: Yes, the thirty-seven are local provisions which are completely outside this Bill; that is quite true.
There is one consistent principle that runs through the whole of this Bill, and that is that the only effective way of dealing with the confused state of Scottish building legislation is to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start. This is a principle emphasised more than once by the Guest Committee and accepted by the Government. To retain the existing mass of differing requirements and to consolidate and improve on it would leave us no better off than we were before. The whole point of this Bill is that it has been shown beyond question that the time has come when a fresh start must be made.

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The application of this principle in this particular case is that it is desirable that, within the field of building control, the jurisdiction and functions of dean of guild courts should be clearly understood, clearly expressed, and accessible to anyone who wants to know what they are. At present, in addition to their statutory jurisdiction, dean of guild courts possess common law jurisdiction which cannot easily be defined. One of the complaints made to the Guest Committee—and this is a matter on which some of your Lordships may have had some experience—is that the applicant to a dean of guild court for permission to build may find that there is no way of knowing in advance what requirements the court may place upon him by the exercise of their common law jurisdiction. The Bill therefore seeks to put the question beyond any reasonable doubt by stating in terms the limits of the jurisdiction of the court. The obvious jurisdiction will, of course, be the application of the Building Standards Regulations; but over and above that there are other jurisdictions specified in the First Schedule which are not in any way interfered with. In addition (and this, I think, is the point which we are disputing about), the First Schedule enables the Secretary of State to preserve by order additional provisions of local Acts.
The idea behind the Amendment we have under consideration is that, instead of doing things in this way, the Bill, and the regulations made under it, should simply replace what the Amendment calls "corresponding jurisdictions and functions". Everything else will be left in existence, except that the Secretary of State would have the general power conferred by Clause 28, subsection (3), to repeal local Act provisions. But this would not achieve the desired objective. The obscurity which is an objectionable feature of the present situation would, I am quite certain, be perpetuated by doubts about the effect of the word "corresponding". The door would be open to the refusal of warrant on the basis of common law jurisdiction in a case where that jurisdiction could be argued to apply to an aspect of building not dealt with by anything in the Bill or the regulations.
Furthermore, the obligation, if accepted, would mean that the only way of repealing unwanted provisions of local Acts
1160
would be for the Secretary of State to seek them out and repeal them. This, in the Government's view, is wrong. Surely it is appropriate that the case for preserving local Act provisions should be made by the local authorities themselves. They are in a position to know how these local Act provisions fit local conditions. I need hardly say that the local authorities need have no apprehension that they will find the mind of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State already made up, or unreceptive to suggestions. Where a good case can he made out they can be certain it will be listened to sympathetically.
It would, however, in the Government view, be quite wrong to put on the Secretary of State the duty of saying which of the provisions of the local Acts should be repealed, and thus require him to take the whole initiative. Let me make it clear, my Lords, that there is no question whatsoever, as has been suggested in some quarters, that the Bill will automatically repeal local Act provisions which will then have to be painfully recreated by the Secretary of State. The mere passing of this Bill will not, in itself, effect any repeal. Nothing will be repealed until the relevant clauses come into effect at a date appointed; and that cannot be, at the earliest, until the Building Standards Regulations have been drafted and are ready to be put into effect—that is to say, in probably about two years' time. The intention is that full discussions will take place with the local authorities concerned during that period, and that the orders saving all those local Act provisions which ought to be saved will be made during that time.
The position therefore is that where there is a good case for the preservation of the local Act provisions they will not be repealed as a result of anything in this Bill. Let me sum up by saying that the effect of the Bill as drafted is that the charter of every dean of guild court will be clearly defined. The Government are convinced that this is the right course, and I hope, from the assurances I have given, that the noble Lord will see his way to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD MATHERS: As I see the position, what the Minister of State is doing, in the refusal he has made to the representations of the local authorities, is building up for himself a great controversy for the future. I am sorry he takes

1161
that line. I am not prepared to withdraw the Amendment. He must take the responsibility—and, along with him, your other Lordships, if you agree with the Minister of State—of defeating the Amendment I have moved.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2 to 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Application of building standards regulations and building operations regulations to construction or demolition, and to change of use, of buildings]:
LORD FORBES: I propose, for the convenience of the House, to speak on Amendments 3 and 4 together. As the Bill stands, the procedure in subsections (11) and (12) of Clause 6, enabling permission to be given to deposit materials on roads while building is in progress, is tied up with the granting of a warrant; so this does not cover repair and maintenance work. The new clause will give the buildings authorities permission for the materials being used, not only for maintenance, but for building and demolition, to be deposited on roads. In addition, it gives authority for the buildings authority to delegate their responsibility in this respect to the clerk or master of works. It really comes down to this: if the owner in a landward area does apply for this permission he avoids any possibility of his having his materials moved off the road under the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act, 1878. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 12, leave out subsections (11) and (12).—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 7 agreed to.
LORD FORBES: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause—
Occupation of parts of roads for deposit of materials, etc.
(".—(1) A buildings authority, on application made to them, may grant permission in writing to any person conducting operations for the construction, repair, maintenance or demolition of any building to occupy temporarily, for the purpose of depositing materials or otherwise in connection with those operations, such portion of any road, whether public or private, adjoining the building as may be specified in the permission, and
1162
may by such permission authorise the erection of staging or scaffolding so as to project over that portion of the road or such other portion of the road as may be so specified; and notwithstanding anything in any enactment or rule of law, any person who complies with any permission granted under this section (including any conditions to which the permission is subject by virtue of the next following subsection) shall not thereby be guilty of an offence.
(2) Any permission granted under this section may be granted either unconditionally or subject to such conditions as may be specified in the permission.
(3) A buildings authority may delegate their functions under this section, as respects such cases and subject to such conditions as they may determine,—

(a) to their clerk, or

(b) with the consent of the local authority, to the master of works appointed by the local authority:

Provided that where by virtue of any regulations made under section two of this Act an application for permission under this section is combined with an application for a warrant the application for permission under this section shall be dealt with by the same authority (whether the buildings authority, the clerk or the master of works), as the application for the warrant.")
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 8 [Certificates of completion]:
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN moved, in subsection (6), to leave out "because of exceptional circumstances,". The noble Viscount said: This Amendment is a small one. It really increases an Amendment which was granted in another place. The situation is slightly different now as it can no longer be claimed that owing to Parliamentary time other Amendments cannot be considered. As Amendments have been accepted, the Bill will have to go to another place, in any case. The Amendment I want to move is to leave out in subsection (6) the words "because of exceptional circumstances." Now temporary occupation of buildings, if it appears to the buildings authority reasonable, seems to me very fair indeed; but if you add "because of exceptional circumstances" there are a large number of ways of pleading exceptional circumstances.
Very rightly indeed, my noble friend the Minister has stressed that one of the objects of the Bill is to get uniform fairness, and to get everything beyond doubt. I entirely agree with him. It is a very worthy object. But it occurs to me that if he leaves in the words "exceptional circumstances" he is leaving in words

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that could give rise to difficulties by different consideration by different people. If, on the other hand, he takes them out, it appears to me, as a layman, that he has all the protection necessary because it has to be a reasonable application, deemed to be reasonable by the local authorities. I think that this additional qualification is unnecessary and—unless he would like to make a snap decision which I do not expect he does—if he could give me an assurance that he would consider it at a later stage I should be happy to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD FORBES: The value of the words the Amendment seeks to leave out is as a signpost giving a broad indication to the buildings authorities and to the applicants. A certificate of completion, as your Lordships will appreciate, is an important part of the new and better system of building control for which the Bill provides. It is at the stage of the issue of a certificate of completion that the applicant ends the process he began when he applied for a warrant and satisfies the buildings authority that what he has done is in accordance with the building regulations. It would be wrong to do anything to undermine this. The whole point of enabling temporary permission for occupation to be given is to meet the situation where hardship would result because something unforeseen has happened, such as the early onset of bad weather or failure to obtain some component part of the building. The Government's intention is that this facility should be used only where there are exceptional circumstances, and it seems right and helpful to all concerned that this intention should be expressed in the Statute. However, in view of what my noble friend Lord Stonehaven has said I will certainly undertake to consider this matter further.
LORD STONEHAVEN: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Powers in relation to buildings constructed without warrant or in contravention of conditions of warrant, and buildings whose life has expired]:
5.30 p.m.
LORD FORBES: For your Lordships' convenience, perhaps I can speak on Amendments Nos. 6, 7, 8 and 10 together.
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Amendments Nos. 6, 7 and 8 are purely drafting Amendments preparing the way for the new clause which is introduced by Amendment No. 10. This new clause gathers together a number of supplementary provisions which will in certain circumstances be relevant where the buildings authority or the local authority require work to be carried out under the Bill. Subsection (1) makes these supplementary provisions available in cases of, first of all, a building contravening the conditions of a warrant; secondly, an existing building ordered to be brought up to standard; and thirdly, a dangerous building being made safe. Subsection (2) deals with a building of historic or architectural interest. In this case the provisions of special enactments for these buildings will take precedence over this Bill.
Subsection (3) deals with the case of an owner required to carry out works. It enables him to enter his building for this purpose irrespective of any agreement he may have with a tenant. Subsections (4) and (5) provide that a trustee ordered to carry out works can only be required to pay to the limit of the estate under his control—in other words, limited liability. Subsections (6) and (7) cover the case where the person who is ordered to carry out the work can show that some other person is financially responsible in whole or in part for the work. In this case an apportionment of the payment can be made, and if there is any dispute over this the matter can be taken to the sheriff. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 20, at beginning insert ("Subject to the provisions of section (Supplementary provisions as to works required to be carried out) of this Act,")—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 10 [Power of local authorities to require buildings to conform to building standards regulations]:
LORD FORBES: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 15, at beginning insert ("Subject to the provisions of section (Supplementary provisions as to works required to be carried out) of this Act,")—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 [Action to be taken in respect of buildings found to be dangerous]:
LORD FORBES: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 35, after ("shall") insert (", subject to the provisions of section (Supplementary provisions as to works required to be carried out) of this Act,")—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 12, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 13 and 14 agreed to.
Clause 15 [Appeals]:
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN moved, in subsection (1), to add to paragraph (c):
"or to grant a permission under subsection (6) of section 8,".
The noble Viscount said: The purpose of this Amendment is that it seems reasonable, if one has the right of appeal to the sheriff in the case of being aggrieved at the refusal of a completion certificate, that one should also have the right of appeal to the sheriff if one is aggrieved by not being allowed temporary use of the building under Clause 8 (6) The noble Lord, Lord Forbes, said last time that his words might be necessary there as a signpost. I should like to use that same argument here: that a signpost of appeal to the sheriff is a useful thing to have, as it will mean that the decisions of the local authorities are much more seriously considered. If they have the threat of an appeal to the sheriff hanging over them they will make sure that they are right in their decisions. Having this right of appeal would, I think, have no detrimental effect on the Bill; in fact, I think it would have a beneficial effect, even if only a sign-posting effect. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 16, line 38, at end insert the said words.—(Viscount Stonehaven.)
LORD FORBES: Under Clause 8 (7), as read with Clause 7 (3), applications for permission will in normal circumstances be made to the master of works. If he refuses, the applicant can require the matter to be dealt with by the buildings authority themselves, so that there is, in fact, at least one stage of appeal open to a disappointed applicant. I am sure the noble Viscount will agree with me that the Bill will provide a considerable improvement on the existing law, where
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there is at present no right of appeal whatsoever against refusal of permission to occupy a building. While I must say that I have every sympathy with the noble Viscount for wishing to have as wide a right of appeal as possible, I do not think that an appeal to the sheriff in this case would afford any useful purpose to the aggrieved person. After all, an appeal to the sheriff would in some cases, I think, take at least three months, and the permission we are seeking here is only temporary permission for a short time to occupy a building. In those circumstances, I hope the noble Viscount can see his way to withdraw the Amendment.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I think it is rather a pity, because under the conditions which the noble Lord quoted when talking of the necessity of having the phrase "in exceptional circumstances" he pointed out the hardship that would arise when a building could not be occupied without temporary permission on the non-delivery of possibly machinery or possibly certain materials. In my experience, that sort of thing can go on far at least a year. Therefore, with respect, I do not really think his argument on the matter of three months—I was sorry to hear it—has much force. I will withdraw the Amendment, but I feel that the noble Lord should look into this matter a little further, because I do not think his argument is well founded. I admit that an actual appeal to the sheriff is most unlikely, because it is expensive, it is cumbersome and, as the noble Lord said, it takes a long time; but it is a fact that the party who is aggrieved would have that behind him to give him the feeling of extra security. If this proposal damaged the Bill in any way—which I do not understand—I would stop at once; but, so far as I know, it does not. I do not think there is any real reason why this Amendment should not be put into the Bill.
LORD FORBES: I will certainly look into the matter, but I cannot hold out any special hope to the noble Viscount that I shall be able to accept the Amendment.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 15 agreed to.
LORD FORBES: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 15, insert the following new clause—
Supplementary provisions as to works required to be carried out
(".—(1) The provisions of this section shall have effect where a person is required by any order or notice under section nine, ten or twelve of this Act (in this section referred to as a "requirement") to demolish, or carry out operations in relation to, a building.
(2) If the building is—

(a) a building in respect of which a notice under subsection (1) of section six of the Ancient Monuments Act, 1931, has been served, or is deemed under subsection (4) of that section to have been served, and which has not ceased to be included in any such list as is mentioned in the said subsection (1),

(b) subject to a building preservation order under section twenty-seven of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1947,

(c) included in a list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest, being a list compiled or approved under section twenty-eight of the said Act of 1947, or

(d) subject to an interim preservation notice under section ten, or a preservation order under section eleven, of the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act, 1953,

the requirement shall have effect only in so far as it is not inconsistent with any provision of the said Act of 1931, the said Act of 1947 or, as the case may be, the said Act of 1953 relating to the execution or carrying out of works or operations on or in relation to the building.
(3) If the person is not in occupation of the building he shall nevertheless, on giving to the occupier such notice as is reasonable in the circumstances, be entitled, notwithstanding any term to the contrary in any lease or other contract, to enter on the building, and any land adjacent thereto and held in connection therewith, for the purpose of complying with the requirement.
(4) Where, in pursuance of any provision of the said section nine, ten or twelve, the local authority seek to recover from the person any expenses incurred by them in carrying out operations in relation to the building, then, if the person proves—

(a) that he has no interest in the building except in the capacity of a trustee, tutor, curator, judicial factor or liquidator of a company, and

(b) that he has not, and since the date of the service on him of a demand for payment of the expenses aforesaid has not had, in his hands in that capacity sufficient funds, rents and other assets to discharge the whole demand of the authority.

his liability shall, notwithstanding anything in the said section nine, ten or twelve, be limited to the total amount of the funds, rents and other assets which he has, or has had, in his hands as aforesaid.
(5) In the case of a requirement being an order under the said section nine or the said section ten, it shall be a defence to any complaint charging the person with failure to comply with the requirement to prove that at the date of the making of the requirement—

(a) the person had no interest in the building except in the capacity of a trustee, tutor, curator, judicial factor or liquidator of a company, and

(b) the amount of the funds, rents and other assets in his possession in that capacity was less than the amount of the expenses which would have been incurred if the requirement had been complied with.

(6) If the person alleges that the whole or any part of the expenses incurred or to be incurred in complying with the requirement ought to be borne by any other person having an interest in the building, he may apply to the sheriff, and the sheriff may make such order concerning the expenses or their apportionment as appears to him, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, including the terms of any contract between the parties, to be equitable.
(7) The provisions of subsection (3) of the last foregoing section relating to the determination of the sheriff on an appeal under subsection (1) of that section shall apply to the order of the sheriff in an application under the last foregoing subsection as they apply to such a determination, with the substitution for any reference to the appeal under the said subsection (1) of a reference to the application.")—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16 [Inspection and Tests]:
5.41 p.m.
LORD FORBES: Perhaps I may move Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 together. These two Amendments provide that, where an owner wishes to carry out building with an unusual form of material—something like solidified porridge—the building authority can ask for the material to be tested before granting the warrant. I think your Lordships will agree that provisions such as that are reasonable. I beg to move.
Amendments moved—
Page 20, line 11, at end insert ("for a warrant in respect of a building, or")
line 16, leave out ("being used") and insert ("used or proposed to be used").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
LORD FORBES: This is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 20, line 23, leave out the first ("the") and insert ("their").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 17 to 26 agreed to.
Clause 27 [Interpretation]:
27.—(1)
"building" means any structure or erection of what kind or nature soever, whether temporary or permanent, and every part thereof including any fixture affixed thereto, not being a structure or erection or part thereof consisting of, or ancillary to,—
(e) any large reservoir within the meaning of the Reservoirs (Safety Provisions) Act, 1930; or
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN had given Notice of two Amendments to the definition of "building". The first was after "being" to insert "(1)" and the second to add, after paragraph (e):
"or
(2) a structure or erection or part thereof (other than a dwellinghouse) situate upon land used for the purposes of agriculture as defined in section one hundred and eighty-four of the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1950;"
The noble Viscount said: With your Lordships' permission, I will speak to Amendments Nos. 14 and 15, because they hang together. I find myself in rather an awkward predicament here—I believe it is called being hoist by one's own petard. The Minister undertook to go into the question of the position of the law at the moment regarding agricultural buildings on the landward area. Very courteously, he wrote me a letter explaining the position. In spite of the fact that I am one of the people on the local authority supposed to be administering that Act, I find that, in common with others—I am in good company—I have been breaking the law.
It is quite illegal to-day, I understand, to dig a silo pit without a building permit. One does not need planning permission—that is a different thing entirely—but, as the law stands, a building permit is required to dig a silo pit. I have dug five. A little north of me there is the River Don, and there are some farms on Don-side where silage pits have been dug. It has become a general practice, I am afraid, not to hold the law in disrepute but to turn a blind eye to it, and to such an extent that many of us are confused as to the state of the law. I would say that is very common in Scotland to-day which is, I admit, justification for this Bill.
The Amendment I have put down probably goes further than I desire. What
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I want is to make it practicable, simple and easy for the law to be carried out. The type of building I have in mind is a small structure which I would say almost every farmer in Scotland has put up without building permission—and I would add that, in my opinion, he will continue to do so. If he could obtain permission to build in a small way merely by sending in a sketch on a piece of notepaper, and a few simple dimensions on an application form, then I should be quite happy; but as the law stands he must put in proper application forms and proper drawings. Although one is never held to it, the prints are supposed to be on linen, but locally that has been abolished. That kind of thing could make it a burden.
I should like the noble Lord to say that the kind of absurdities which I and others could point out will be excluded by these committees who are going to make these regulations. He has never said they will. He has said that he thinks they may be. I should like him to say that in that type of case they definitely will be. I do not think he ought to have much difficulty in committing himself that far. As the law stands to-day, one is covered, I think I am right in saying, by the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1892. All buildings, including temporary structures, are covered. Technically, you are infringing the law every time you make an electric fence. You cannot clean out a ditch without a permit. You cannot erect a lambing pen when you get bad weather without infringing the law. A water trough, a gate into a field—all those are things you cannot touch. All I want the noble Lord to do is to give me an assurance that things of that sort will definitely be excluded. I do not want him to say that in his opinion they may be; I want him to say they will be. If he will do that, I shall be happy to withdraw the Amendment. I beg to move the first Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 24, line 33, after ("being") insert ("(1)").—(Viscount Stonehaven.)
LORD KINNAIRD: I should like, in a word, to support what my noble friend Lord Stonehaven has said. One always dislikes a position when the law is broken. I am afraid that at present in most counties in Scotland, as the Minister will know, the law is broken. I should

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not like to feel that we are going to produce a law which will not be carried out because it is too cumbersome. There are two dangers. One is that if you ask small farmers—and I speak particularly for the small farmers, who do not employ architects—to produce plans they will probably delay doing anything, and in many cases will do nothing. That is a danger, because that will interfere with production, which we do not want. The Minister will probably say that this matter will come up on the regulations, and can be provided for then. I trust that the whole group of small buildings will be carefully defined, and will be excluded as a group.
The second danger is that, if they are not excluded as a group, the county councils will be inundated by people making individual applications for warrants and plans. That would be unfortunate, because again it would mean delay. Therefore I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that the subjects which the noble Lord, Lord Stonehaven, has mentioned will be carefully considered as a whole class, and will not require individual warrants.
LORD MATHERS: It has surprised me greatly to find my noble friends (as I should prefer to think of them) on the other side of the House, urging such things upon the Minister. It seems to me that, if an extreme view were taken of this, it would be that they were urging the Minister to compound a felony. I would point out, in any case, that if he were to make a concession like that he would be binding only himself and the present Ministers, and one would not expect that future Ministers would consider themselves bound by such flagrant permission to break the law.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I often find myself in agreement with the noble Lord who has just spoken, but not on this occasion. I warmly support the considerations put before the House by the two noble Lords who spoke previously. I confess that the Minister may find himself in considerable difficulties in trying to put into the Bill provisions which meet the request which has been made. Nevertheless, it seems to me perfectly ridiculous that, if something is not done—if this is the law at the moment—a farmer who wishes to put a temporary
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bridge over a burn in order to get to one of his fields must apply to the local authority for permission. He never will; it does not matter what is put into the law. I have to confess that I may have been in breach of the law; I have dug silage pits, and people will continue to dig silage pits without going to the county council to get permission to do so. You will not get the law complied with unless you make the penalty so heavy as to make the whole situation ridiculous. I would urge the Minister to look at this very seriously, though I confess that I see great difficulty in being able to meet the situation.
LORD FORBES: From what my noble friends, Lord Stonehaven and Lord Kinnaird, have said I think it is extremely fortunate that they are in your Lordships' House this afternoon and not behind bars. Noble Lords have argued that agricultural buildings other than dwelling-houses should be removed altogether from the scope of the Bill and that, in consequence, the building standards regulations should not apply to them. May I say right away that I fully understand the circumstances which have led to this suggestion, and that to a great extent I sympathise with the views that have been expressed.
As your Lordships will be aware, the proposal in the Bill is for exemption to be given by regulations made by the Secretary of State under Clause 3 of the Bill. In addition, certain works which would otherwise come within the very wide scope of the word "building" are excluded by the definition in Clause 27 of the Bill. These exclusions from the definition, however, are not intended to take the place of exemptions; they merely make it clear that the exemptions mentioned are works which, while they fall within the scope of the definition, are not what would normally be regarded as buildings. This arrangement of removing from the definition only the obviously inappropriate structures and leaving the main task of exemption to the regulations is the arrangement which the Government are convinced is the best one.
Let me explain the point a little further. As your Lordships will appreciate, there is a good case for exemption in many fields of activity other than agriculture. Statutory undertakers, such as Electricity and Gas Boards, industrialists and others,

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are all concerned with structures to which, for special reasons, the building standards regulations may well be inappropriate. We simply cannot put the line of demarcation into the Bill, because it is impossible to say where it should fall until it has been decided just what provisions should go into the building standards regulations. Surely the only practical and fair way of proceeding is to enter into discussion with the interests involved and arrive at a satisfactory list of exemptions. I hope that what I have said will give a certain amount of relief to a good many noble Lords about this subject. There will, of course, be ample time for such discussions. Indeed, it is hoped that in many ways the new system of building control will be less irksome than the old one.
I should like especially to make it clear that the Government understand very well the special circumstances of building works on farms, and we have every intention of ensuring that undue formalities are avoided. I should think it probable that there will be many classes of agricultural buildings that will be exempted outright; others will be classed as requiring only a minor warrant. When the time comes for procedural regulations to be made, we intend that, wherever possible, in the case of agricultural works the simplest of administrative arrangements should be made. The preparation and production of plans, for example, will be reduced to the minimum; and, in particular, care will be taken that no unnecessary work will be demanded that might embarrass or impede the farmer who wishes to get on with the job. Regarding the minor warrant, this will probably cover all small agricultural buildings, and in the case of minor warrants it is quite reasonable to expect that only sketch plans would be required. Therefore, there is no question of expensive and complicated plans having to be submitted for any small works on a farm.
Noble Lords seem apprehensive that the provisions of this Bill are designed to hurt or to be vexatious to the landowner or the farmer. Quite frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. If there are any teething troubles—and personally I do not foresee any—noble Lords and others should make their representations about this and other matters when the draft building standards
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regulations are drawn up, not now. If they are still not satisfied at that stage they can then demand a public inquiry. I can assure noble Lords that if they adopt this procedure they will certainly, unlike the Russians, prevent any possible teething trouble from developing into toothache. I can assure noble Lords that we have no intention whatsoever of creating difficulties for anyone, least of all the farmers. With this assurance, I hope that the noble Viscount will not press his Amendment.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I have no intention of pressing my Amendment, but perhaps I did not make myself quite clear on one point. What I did say to begin with was that I recognised that my Amendment went much too far, but I used it as a peg to hang my hat on, so to speak, to discuss the general problem, and to get, as we have done, a fairly satisfactory statement from the Minister. But I am very sorry indeed that my noble friend opposite thinks that I ought to be in gaol. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.0 p.m.
LORD FORBES: This Amendment expands the definition of the word "road". The Amendment does not in any way change the intention of the original definition, but it puts it beyond doubt that the definition is as wide as it should be—including pavement, footpath, drain, ditch or verge at the side of a road or street. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 26, line 6, at end insert ("and any pavement, footpath, drain, ditch or verge at the side of a road or street:")—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD FORBES: This is a technical drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 26, line 34, after ("amended") insert ("applied").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 27, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 28 to 30 agreed to.
First Schedule [Enactments relating to dean of guild court functions]:
LORD MATHERS: Noble Lords know that I included this Amendment in the remarks that I made previously. I

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formally move that the First Schedule be omitted.
Amendment moved—
Leave out the First Schedule.—(Lord Mathers.)
LORD FORBES: For the reasons I gave at the beginning of this Committee stage, I cannot accept this Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
First Schedule agreed to.
Second and Third Schedules agreed to.
Fourth Schedule [Matters in regard to which building standards regulations may be made]:
LORD FORBES: The Fourth Schedule to the Bill gives a broad indication of the matters which will in due course be covered in detail by the building standards regulations. This Amendment adds to the Fourth Schedule a specific reference to gas and electricity installations, since it is the Government's intention to be able to include in the regulations provisions designed to secure the fullest measure of safety in gas and electricity installations. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 32, line 18, after ("including") insert ("services, installations and ancillary equipment for the supply or use of gas or electricity and").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Fourth Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
Fifth Schedule agreed to.
Sixth Schedule [Recovery of expenses by charging order]:
LORD FORBES: This is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 33, line 32, leave out first ("and").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Sixth Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
Seventh Schedule agreed to.
Eighth Schedule [Transitional provisions]:
LORD FORBES: This Amendment provides for inspection and tests to be carried out on buildings which have been begun before the coming into effect of the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 35, line 3, leave out ("section six and section nine") and insert ("sections six, nine and sixteen").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD FORBES: This is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 36, line 11, after ("subsections") insert ("(2)").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Eighth Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
Ninth Schedule [Minor and consequential amendments of enactments]:
6.6 p.m.
LORD FORBES: This Amendment has the effect of adjusting the existing law in landward areas, which at present enables the local authority to prevent undue obstruction of roads by building materials by empowering them to take the materials away and sell them, but provides that the builder can protect himself by obtaining permission in advance. This adjustment marries up with the new clause which we have already discussed, by providing that permission can be given by the buildings authority under that clause. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 37, line 2, at end insert—
("1. In the Turnpike Roads (Scotland) Act, 1831 (as set out in Schedule C to the Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act, 1878), section eighty-seven shall have effect as if for the proviso to that section there were substituted the following proviso, that is to say,—
'Provided that nothing in this section shall apply to any materials laid or left upon any road or any footpath or side drain or ditch of such road in pursuance of a permission granted under section (Occupation of parts of roads for deposit of materials, etc.) of the Building (Scotland) Act, 1959.' ")—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD FORBES: This is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 37, line 13, leave out ("erecting, taking down") and insert ("constructing, extending, demolishing, maintaining").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD FORBES: This is another drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 37, line 15, leave out ("subsection (11) of section six") and insert ("section (Occupa-

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tion of parts of roads for deposit of materials, etc.)").—(Lord Forbes.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Ninth Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining Schedule agreed to.
House resumed.

TAKE-OVER BIDS
6.9 p.m.
LORD MESTON LORD MESTON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider introducing legislation for the purpose of dealing with the situation which arises when take-over bids are made for undertakings; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion which stands in my name. I should like at the outset to make two preliminary observations. In the first place, there is no criticism at all of the Stock Exchange. As your Lordships know, the Stock Exchange is one of the most honest institutions in the world. It exists only for the purpose of providing a free market in the exchange of stocks and shares and other commodities, and therefore I wish to say nothing which reflects in any way on the practice of the Stock Exchange or the integrity of its members.
The second observation I would make is that, speaking subject to correction, I understand that there is nothing illegal about a take-over bid, and therefore I am not for a moment suggesting that there has been any illegality in any of the takeover bids which have already taken place. While I am making these preliminary observations I might make a third. The take-over bids to which I am going to refer apply not only to public companies but also to some private companies. As your Lordships know, some private companies are very big concerns and, without mentioning any names, I happen to know one very large company which at the present time is the subject of a somewhat embarrassing financial operation.
There is no definition of a take-over bid, but we all know what it means: broadly speaking, any acquisition of control of a company through the purchase of its shares by an outsider is a bid. The control of a company is taken over by such a bid. The motives of a bidder are always interesting. A bidder may obtain control of a company simply from a desire
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for power or ultimate gain, or he may operate in this fashion in order to enlarge the activities of another company of which he is a director and virtual owner. In a great number of cases there is no objection whatsoever to a take-over bid. It may happen, for example, that a person who is already a director and shareholder in a company may acquire a controlling interest in the same company and so become the virtual owner of the undertaking. That may raise personal objections in the company, but so far as the public are concerned they are not really interested.
On the other hand, when an outsider—that is to say, a person who is neither a director nor a shareholder in a company—acquires a majority or controlling interest in the shares of that company, different considerations may arise. The public may become alarmed at a person obtaining control of a company about whose business he knows nothing or cares less. In order to obtain control of a company the take-over bidder must acquire a majority of those shares with voting rights. This involves offering the shareholders, for their shares, a sum of money in excess, and frequently substantially in excess, of the existing market value of the shares.
The techniques employed by the takeover bidder may be and probably are better known to many of your Lordships than to myself, and may vary according to circumstances. The following is a very simple example. The bidder finds out who holds the shares of the company. He starts operations by buying some of the company's shares, not in his own name but in that of a nominee. He will be careful to buy a comparatively small number of shares so as not to drive up the price of the shares suddenly and thereby cause bid rumours to circulate. Let me say at once that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was an amateur compared with some of these financial snakes who pound their way into the compound. The bidder then contacts the board of directors of the company with an offer for the ordinary shares.
Suppose the market value of the shares is 20s. The offer may be in the region of 30s. per share. The board of directors may react favourably or otherwise to this proposal. At all events, the bidder cannot stand still, and after a few days he sends out his formal offer. This states

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the price he is bidding and any relevant details about the future of the business. The offer will also announce the date by which acceptances must be received by the bidder. The usual stipulation is 90 per cent. acceptances or such lesser proportion as the bidder is willing to accept. The acceptances may come in gaily and the directors may recommend acceptance of the offer made by the bidder. Then all is plain sailing.
On the other hand, the directors may strongly oppose the efforts of the bidder to obtain control of the company. In that case the bidder will have to go over the heads of the directors—and then the trouble starts. Somebody has said that then all the Scotsmen, like myself, appear on the scene, some with bagpipes, some without—mostly without. As your Lordships know, in some of these cases there is not merely one take-over bidder but several, all seeking to find favour with the shareholders of the doomed company. The effect upon the market value of the shares may be phenomenal. It is no exaggeration to say that a share marked at, say, 30s. may soon be marked at 60s. People "in the know"—of whom I am never one—buy at 30s. and sell at 60s. People not "in the know"—like myself—buy at 60s. expecting a further phenomenal rise and then perhaps the take-over bid does not come off and they sell out eventually at about 20s.
I would point out to your Lordships that all that is perfectly legitimate. There is no legal objection whatsoever to it. People sometimes say that take-over bids stimulate the directors of a company to declare higher dividends. I cannot stop people talking nonsense; I do that myself sometimes. There is no law against it; but of all the nonsensical observations, that is the most foolish I have ever heard. The declaration of dividends must surely proceed along somewhat conventional lines. The directors look at the existing profits of the company and its assets and future prospects. Having deducted interest on debentures and other fixed charges, and placed so much to reserve, a sum of money may remain available for dividend. To apply artificial stimulation by means of a threatened take-over bid cannot, in my submission, be in the real interests of the shareholders, the company or industry generally.
There is another extremely delicate matter which I wish to mention. As a result of a take-over bid the control of a company registered and situate in Great Britain may pass, entirely or substantially, into the hands of persons of other nationality. There is nothing immoral in this happening, but it is a matter which comes to mind when discussing this subject. Should anything be done about the matter? Some people say take-over bids are somewhat robust financial operations but are perfectly legal and should not be touched in any way. I am a psychologist; I can see into the bosom of Her Majesty's Government, and that is what they are going to say to me to-day.
On the other hand there are people, including myself, who say that a take-over bid may—and I emphasise the word may"—in certain circumstances not be in the interest of the shareholders or of industry generally. I am merely here to make a suggestion and no more. My suggestion is that the appropriate Government Department—that is to say, the Treasury or the Board of Trade—should be entitled, on application made to them by an interested party, to suspend transactions in the ordinary shares of a certain company for a period of, say, three months unless permission is given by the Government Department.
I am not for one moment suggesting that there should ever be any absolute suspension. There must always be some transfer of shares in a company, to pay death duties, if for no other reason. A suspension of three months would enable shareholders to find out who the takeover bidder really was. The identity of the take-over bidder may, of course, be apparent from the word "Go". On the other hand, the real take-over bidder may be up in the Highlands and the apparent take-over bidder down in London. Shareholders would then have time to form a proper opinion as to whether the take-over bid was really in their interests. That is all I have to say on this subject. I am particularly anxious to ascertain what is the Government's view of the matter; and I am sorry to say that they are going to say that nothing will be done. I beg to move for Papers.
6.20 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord who brought up this extremely complicated

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question. I only wish I could think that the solution that he has proposed for this problem would solve it. In the course of the few remarks I have to make I do not intend to suggest for one moment that there is any immediate solution; I do not believe there is. Nor should I think that any noble Lords would want to go on record as suggesting that there is any real alternative in the system in which we live (and this is not an occasion to suggest that we change the capitalist system in any very marked degree), for the progress of industry, to the process, in many highly desirable instances, of the take-over bid.
I do not think we can pursue too actively to-day the very special position of the private company. I would say that in certain circumstances one of the most objectionable of all actions could be the take-over bid in the private company, because the position of its shareholders tends to be much weaker than that of shareholders in a public company. But I am concerned now mainly with some of the recent events that have over the past few years caused a good deal of controversy and a great deal of adverse comment in the public Press and among leaders of industry, and particularly leaders of commerce. Clearly, the build-up of industry will, to a large extent, take place by amalgamations, and again I would repeat that I am not myself attempting to suggest that this is not highly desirable in many cases. But there are some examples where there are very undesirable consequences, and the general effect is apt to be such that I should hope that some action would be taken to look into the subject.
The objectionable instances are where a take-over bid takes place, if not solely for what might be called financial reasons—and I should not attempt to define those—then when the main purpose is the quick profit. A number of industrial and commercial leaders have drawn attention to this as being an undesirable development. I do not propose to mention many cases, but there is no doubt, I think, that the public and public commentators have been considerably worried by certain of the developments that we have read about—and I would say, of course, straight away, that all noble Lords will be aware of the considerable anxiety that was expressed over the take-over of the British Aluminium Company.
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I should like to look at this question from the point of view of the individual director, the individual manager and the individual employee. I have myself been in the position—and this comes back to the small private company where I think this practice is so objectionable—of a director faced by a take-over bid. The pressure that can be brought on a director in those circumstances, in terms of his own security, can be enough to distort his judgment—I say no more—as to what is his duty to the shareholders. Then there is the position of the manager. We have all been at great pains in all political Parties to emphasise the importance of managerial efficiency and to build up the position of the manager who is concentrating on raising productivity. Suddenly a take-over bid appears on the scene, or there is a rumour. The effect on morale, on the status and on the understanding of the importance of his work needs little imagination for us to realise.
Finally, there is the position of the worker. It is, I think—I hope—common ground between us that the directors of a large private enterprise owe a duty which goes beyond that of their duty to their shareholders. I am not arguing that the primary obligation of most companies is not to conduct their company at a profit; but they have an obligation, which they recognise; and the obligation which is recognised by the enlightened management to their employees and those who work in their company is that they, like the public, have an interest in that company.
We have seen recent examples in which companies have been sold and the employees literally sold with them, without any guarantee or without any protection of their rights. I happen to be myself—and this is fortunate, and has no reference to my earlier experience—a director of a large undertaking employing 12,000 people where no take-over bid is possible, because no part of that company greater than 5 per cent. can be disposed of at any one time without the consent of the workers. It is a rather unusual organisation and not typical, but I should like very much to see whether it would not be possible to provide some sort of protection of and opportunity for consultation with the employees in a business as to what their own interests and their own

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future should be. To this extent, the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that there should be some opportunity for delay in such circumstances, some opportunity in which the opinion of the shareholders and the workers alike could be obtained, would be a valuable step forward.
I have one final criticism. In the debate last night, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, in one of the more moderate passages of his speech, stated that one of the reasons (and I hope I am not misquoting him) or causes for the present economic situation and degree of unemployment has been the refusal of trade unions to practise wage restraint or to answer the appeals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for wage restraint. It is the atmosphere of the quick profit; it is the atmosphere in which in the negotiations over the Savoy Hotel deal a profit was made, an estimated capital gain, of £200,000 or £300,000 by one of the participants who, in the end, did not himself take over that particular undertaking, which is to blame. It was that particular atmosphere and these particular bits of information which have been so destructive and so fatal to any attempts to achieve wage restraint in this country; and I would urge the Government to consider very seriously just how demoralising this sort of development and this sort of practice is.
It is part of the belief that there are easy ways of making money. It is part of the belief that there is a way in which riches, great riches, can be obtained without effort. I know that there are many replies that noble Lords might think of about the pools and so on; and I do not propose to go into that rather dangerous territory. But I would argue, quite sincerely, and without any very constructive proposal, I fear, that these developments are undesirable. They are the type of action which in its extreme form is liable to bring in the end extreme remedies. It is liable to increase very strongly the case for a capital gains tax, which it would be inappropriate to argue. Therefore, I ask Her Majesty's Government to give very serious consideration to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Meston. I, no more than he, expect them to accept it; but it would be very pleasant to hear them say that they would consider it and, even
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more, would consider setting up an inquiry, which has been urged on previous occasions and was not unacceptable to the more responsible leaders of commerce and industry.
6.30 p.m.
LORD KINNAIRD: My Lords, I should like to say one word about one remark only that Lord Meston made. I understood him to say that one of the objections to take-over bids was that foreign capital might get control of British companies. What I want to ask is: what is the objection to foreign capital and foreign management coming into this country? Should we not welcome it? The point is not who manages the company, but who does the work; and if we can get into this country developments from other countries, and if the work and the production are done here, then let us welcome them, not question the fact that it is foreign management.
May I mention one instance, of which I am aware? The noble Earl who is to reply will know to what I refer, but I will not mention any names. There is one large company in my neighbourhood, in a big town nearby, which has set up an industry developed in another country, in America. It has trained thousands of local employees—and it has spent very large sums on capital development. This company now makes the product that it set out to make, and sells it in its own country, in competition with their productions. British goods, made in Britain, are now sold by the American management in their own country, in competition with their own goods; and they are encouraged to do so. Now, that can be only to the very great benefit of this country: and I think that any legislation which is brought in that might make people hesitate to come and develop in this country might have far-reaching and disastrous effects.
That is on the point of American money here: the other point is retaliation. If we are going to make difficulties about foreign management in this country, what about all our industries abroad? There would be retaliation, and that would have the most disastrous effects. I do not think that point need be developed: I think it is obvious. I hope, therefore, that, with regard to any legislation, the Government would give the most careful thought, and

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would bring in nothing which would either cause retaliation or prevent foreign money from coming into this country.
6.33 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if I may have the attention of the House for a few minutes, I do not want to speak for too long, after our late session last night, but I should like to reinforce the appeal that has been made by my noble friend Lord Shackleton for an inquiry into the whole question of take-over bids. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that the majority of take-over bids are conducted in the open. They are completely straightforward, and the public and the members of the Stock Exchange are aware of the interested party purchasing the shares. But there are—they are repeatedly reported in the Press—a small minority of cases which, frankly, leave a nasty taste in the mouth. There are some firms who acquire interests in other companies without disclosing their names. They do it anonymously, to disguise the whole operation and to keep the price down, as my noble friend Lord Meston himself described,
That method of operation is completely undesirable, but I believe that there is an even worse practice, and that is when there is (if I may use the word) connivance by the directors of a company with the purchaser to arrange the sale and transfer of shares without fully putting the shareholders into the picture. There is another method that is sometimes adopted. I am going to follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, in not mentioning any names, but there was a case not so long ago where a well-known financier wished to acquire the shares of an important company but was prevented by the articles of association from purchasing the shares because the directors and the other shareholders of the company had the first rights to the shares. So what did the financier do? He bought the voting rights of the shares. The shares were not transferred to him, but lie obtained control of that company, over the heads of the directors. He had not broken any law, yet the shareholder 'who sold his rights had broken his contract and his understanding with his other shareholders. I do not think this House would maintain that that is fair and honest business, or that it is desirable.
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What is the object of these underhand methods? As I say, I have no objection to the straightforward bid. In many cases it leads to a strengthening of the unit, which is to the good of the country. It is this underhand method of acquiring control of companies to which I and my friends strongly object. The purpose is generally to acquire a hidden asset—written-down value of stocks; written-down value of machinery; written-down value of land—property that has been written down in the company books, and the value of which is probably unknown to the vast majority of the shareholders. In other words, the whole operation is to acquire a large sum of capital and property for a small out-payment. If it is done in the open, one can only blame the shareholder concerned; but when it is done underhand, I believe that the shareholder is being cheated.
Now all these activities are perfectly legal, and I would therefore follow up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Meston: that it is possible for a foreign company to acquire the interest of a very important company—a company important strategically—through nominees. Can we imagine what would be the view of our noble friend Lord Elibank if Herr Krupp were able to obtain control of Colville's through nominees, and were then able to have the use of British Government capital? I am not saying that it is probable, but it is possible, and I think it is objectionable. If Herr Krupp wishes to get these shares, he should be required to do it in the open. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, was, I thought, rather unfair to the noble Lord, Lord Meston. I do not think the noble Lord has any objection to foreign capital coming into this country. What he wants—and I support him—is to prevent foreign companies from acquiring interests in British companies through nominees, and obtaining control before anything can be done to stop it.
My Lords, I think we must consider not only the interests of the shareholders in this matter: we must consider also the interests of the country and the workers; and I would go one stage further and add the interests of the customers of the company who are being acquired. In a take-over bid a company can be acquired for the property, for its machinery, and then be dispersed. It

1187
could upset a good deal of custom; it could have an effect on exports. So long as a take-over bid, the acquiring of shares, is carried out in the open, there cannot be any objection; but I feel that the Government should look into this question to see whether we cannot protect the shareholders and the country from these underhand methods of obtaining control. I do not think it is asking too much to ask the noble Earl, Lord Dundee to say that the Government will arrange for an inquiry; but in any event I think he could undertake to consult his colleagues in the Board of Trade and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to see whether an inquiry can be started and a report laid before Parliament.
6.42 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to add a few words. The noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, has raised a matter of interest and importance which is a little outside the main objective of Lord Meston's Motion; and Lord Shepherd has discussed the same point. I must say that I entirely agree with what my noble friend Lord Shepherd said about that. In many cases not only is there no objection to foreign capitalists setting up a company for industrial development in this country, but it is heartily to be welcomed. The objection, however, is that there is no effective control over these things. Some companies are operating in spheres in which direct national interest is not involved, and probably there is no need to exercise control over them. But there are quite obviously many spheres of industrial activity in which the national interest is very much at stake. There is no country in the world that recognises that more than the United States. We have seen only over the last week or two how British tenders have been, in effect, destroyed by what does not appear on the surface to be very scrupulous use of this argument in the United States.
I suggest that there are quite a number of spheres of industrial and commercial activity in which this country cannot afford to leave the matter to be exploited by foreign industrialists, however effective their work may be, because the national interest must come first. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, who brought up the matter said that there was obviously very great difficulty in handling
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this matter by way of legislation. The more one thinks about it the more the difficulties leap to the eye. I do not feel that his own suggestion is a very practical one. There are, however, a number of ways perhaps in which the danger can be to some extent averted.
The noble Lords, Lord Meston and Lord Shepherd, drew attention to the fact that in this type of operation nominees are used a great deal. The last Committee on Company Law Amendment, presided over by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cohen, when he was Lord Justice of Appeal, dealt with this matter of nominee shareholdings at considerable length in a most valuable Report, and they made certain suggestions which were very carefully considered by the Government of the day when the Companies Act of 1947 was passed. It was then felt that there were considerable practical difficulties in the way of adopting the proposals of the Cohen Committee, but I am not at all sure, in the light of subsequent events, that the stage has not now been reached when that matter should be looked at again.
The Cohen Committee was a very high-powered Committee, consisting not only of eminent lawyers but also of accountants and businessmen, and it may be that experimentation on the lines of their proposals would go a long way to getting rid of this problem of nominee shareholders. That would obviously improve the position a great deal. If we could have these dealings out in the open, and not carried on by nominees until the last moment, it would be an improvement. I believe that an improvement can be obtained by putting greater responsibility on the directors. Lord Shepherd pointed out that in many cases the assistance of the directors is enlisted by the take-over bidder. Sometimes it is done in a perfectly aboveboard way but in other cases in not quite such an above-board way. There are various ways, by means of compensation for loss of directorships, putting up pensions—even direct payments to directors for advising shareholders to accept the offer. Very often the directors hold large blocks of shares for which they receive a higher price.
My Lords, the Cohen Committee, although it did not specifically deal with the problem of take-over bids, was very much alive to this question of "getting

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at" the directors. It made a number of important proposals which I think the Companies Act of 1947 went some distance towards carrying out. Nevertheless, looking at the matter in the light of what happened more recently, it appears to me that perhaps the 1947 Act did not go quite so far as it might have done to prevent this unfortunate type of action on the part of the directors of a company. A board of directors can be paid a very substantial sum of money to persuade shareholders to agree to a proposal, and naturally in a situation of this kind the shareholders attach importance to the advice of the directors. But they may riot know that the directors are to have this large sum of money paid to them. So far as I can see, although, in the end, that may have to be made public, the situation may have crystallised before the fact conies to light; and when it does there is no method by which these directors may be made to "cough up" that large sum of money and have it divided among the shareholders or paid over to the company. I feel that the Companies Act can be tightened up to quite an extent in this direction—requiring a rather higher standard of disclosure, a rather higher standard of financial integrity on the part of boards of directors, who very frequently take dubious action in these matters.
I hope that the Government will be able to see their way to accept the suggestion that there should be an inquiry into these matters. Every twenty years or so there is a Committee like that of Lord Cohen. I think that the previous one was under Lord Greene, and it produced an equally admirable Report. We are perhaps getting near the stage when there should be another general inquiry into the working of company law. So much trade and business depend on the effectiveness of the law that the matter should be looked at from time to time by a first-class Commission or Committee of this kind. This is just one of a number of aspects of company law which might be made the subject of inquiry before too much longer, and I therefore hope that the Government will accept this suggestion in a reasonably favourable frame of mind and may even, perhaps, not think it necessary to limit any inquiry that may be initiated on the question of take-over bids.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I trust that I did not hear the noble Lord correctly, but I understood him to say that directors very frequently acted dubiously. Is that quite fair?
LORD CHORLEY: There have been a number of cases, as I understand it, in which directors have been paid substantial sums by take-over bidders to advise the shareholders to accept an offer which has been made. I have only been told that by people who practise in company law. That seems to me to be not necessarily dubious conduct if the directors say they have received this sum of money, and are going to do well out of it, but that nevertheless they are going into the matter and will advise that it is a good bid. But if these matters are not disclosed—and I do not think there is any law which requires them to be disclosed—then I feel that the shareholder is not aware of all the relevant circumstances which he ought to know when he is making up his mind as to whether the bid is a good one and one that ought to be accepted.
LORD FERRIER: My objection is to the words "very frequently". We know that there are a large number of cases of amalgamations and the like, some of which we call take-over bids, which, as the noble Lord said, are often perfectly justifiable and straight-forward transactions. It was for that reason that I felt "very frequently dubious" was perhaps the wrong way to put it.
LORD CLITHEROE: My Lords, I ask the noble Lord who recently sat down whether he is suggesting that directors receive corrupt payments in order to induce them to advise shareholders to sell their shares at a lower price than those directors think they are worth. If they did that, would not the noble Lord agree that they had committed a breach of trust and were not within the law?
LORD CHORLEY: They are not necessarily corrupt; they may be acting perfectly bona fide. But surely the shareholder ought to have this information. And I should think there is a case to be made for the fact that directors, who, after all, are the governing body of the company, ought to receive this money on behalf of the company and not to put into their own pockets.
6.53 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, before I make what I hope will be a short reply to this Motion, I want to correct a mistake which was made in a Parliamentary Answer which I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, on January 27, on a question which touches on this subject. The noble Lord asked about expediting consultation with shareholders, in view, as he put it, of the current climate for take-over bids, and I stated in my reply that a take-over bid which had to be discussed at a meeting with shareholders would normally necessitate the calling of an ad hoc committee and the passage of a special resolution. But, in fact, in most cases no discussion or meeting would be necessary, unless it was a private company in which shares could not be sold without the consent of the directors, or unless the directors owned the majority of the shares. In the normal case of a public company with shares distributed among large numbers of people, whether or not a meeting was considered desirable to discuss the take-over bid would be a matter entirely at the discretion of the shareholders.
LORD SHACKLETON: Did the noble Earl say that a meeting of shareholders would be necessary in a private company? It would not be.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: In the case of a private company shares cannot be sold to anybody without the consent of the directors, and therefore a meeting would be probably necessary, or at any rate a communication with the directors. No meeting would be necessary in the case of an ordinary public company.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am sorry, but I think the noble Earl is misleading the House again. First of all, this question of the transferability of shares will depend on the Articles of Association, and almost certainly a transfer will require the consent of the directors.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Having unwittingly misled the House once, and having taken the trouble to correct myself, I find it a little discouraging to be told that I am misleading the House again. I think it is unlikely that the Board of Trade could have made a mistake in correcting their own mistake. After all, the point is that a take-over
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bid is a transaction not between the person who takes over and the company as a whole, but between the person who makes the bid and the individual shareholders; and therefore no special meeting under the Companies Act is necessary.
I will certainly and gladly pass on to the proper quarters all that your Lordships have said, but since the noble Lord, Lord Meston, specifically asked me whether the Government intended at present to do anything, I must reply that the Government are not contemplating the assumption of any further powers which would enable them to discourage or restrain the process of take-over bids, the great majority of which, I have no doubt, are socially and economically beneficial to the country. We do not want to discourage take-over bids, as a whole, although there are no doubt some which, although perfectly legal, may incidentally involve some practices or procedures which some of us do not happen to like.
The only method by which take-over bids of any kind could be discouraged at the moment is by the use of the Exchange Control Act, which I had not thought it would be necessary for me to refer to, because I do not imagine the noble Lord, Lord Meston, was thinking of foreign take-over bids when he put forward his Motion. But the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, has put forward the hypothetical possibility that Colville's might be taken over by Krupp's. In a case of that kind, the consent of the Treasury under the Exchange Control Act would be necessary, and I have no doubt that it would not be granted. But in fact I do not think there has been any case yet in which Treasury consent has been refused. The only case in which it would be refused would be one of the kind envisaged by the noble Lord; that is, when security interests were involved. The Treasury are not anxious to withhold consent when the result of the take-over bid would bring in dollars and if there is no economic objection in the national interest to the transaction being allowed to go through.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, referred to the recent take-over bid which was authorised of the British Aluminium Company. In that case, although the company which took it over was a British one, it had an American connection, so that it required Treasury consent under

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exchange control, which was given. The noble Lord is no doubt aware that Mr. Harold Wilson in the other place applauded the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to defer taking a decision on this matter until the situation had been clarified, but said that now that it had been clarified he felt that the decision taken by the Treasury was the right one.
LORD SHEPHERD: If the noble Earl would permit me to say so, surely Treasury consent would not be required if a foreign company acquired the control of a company through nominees?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: If the nominees were British?
LORD SHEPHERD: Yes.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Yes; but I do not think the noble Lord can object to that being described as rather a farfetched supposition. The other method by which take-over bids might, to some extent, have been discouraged, would have been under the credit squeeze. The Bank of England, at the request of the Treasury, asked all the banks in the country to refuse advances for certain purposes, one purpose being speculation of any kind. The banks all agreed not to lend money to a person who wished to use that money in order to buy either a share or a piece of real property with the purpose of selling it again immediately to make a quick financial profit. Mr. Butler, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated in reply to a Parliamentary Question in 1953 that he had asked the Bank of England to keep a close watch on takeover bids in order that bank loans might not be advanced for such bids as were made for the purpose of speculation.
Of course, your Lordships will realise that this applies only to cases when the person who makes a take-over bid wants to borrow money from the bank to do so. In the great majority of cases persons who make take-over bids have ample cash resources of their own and in that case, of course, they are entitled to do what they like with their own money. Your Lordships will probably all be inclined to deprecate speculation for its own sake; but even if a take-over bid with nothing more than a speculative object is made and accepted, it seems to
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me that the process of speculation cannot go on for ever. The man who buys it may sell it a week later to someone else. The purchaser may sell it again, but sooner or later it must be bought by someone who desires to acquire the asset, whatever it may be, not for the purpose of speculation but for the purpose of use, and the price which is paid for it must be presumed to be its proper economic value. If the speculator finds that the purchaser's idea of economic value is lower than what he, the speculator, had hoped for, so that he loses money, then we need not sympathise with him. But if the purchaser pays the price which the speculator expected, one must presume that the purchaser thinks that the article which he is acquiring has an economic value which justifies the price which he has paid.
The subject of take-over bids, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Meston, began by stating, covers a very wide range of transactions, and has done for many generations. Since the war, it may be that there have been rather more takeover bids than there were before the war, and possibly one reason for that is the changed condition of our economy. The purchasing power of the wage-earning classes has been enormously increased, and that has naturally affected the general pattern of the retail trade in this country. Firms and companies with old-fashioned boards of directors, accustomed to pre-war conditions, may perhaps not be quick to take advantage of new market conditions. The more enterprising and efficient people, seeing that the firm is not earning as much as it could if it acted more energetically, and that the shares are therefore undervalued, may offer what they consider to be the right value of the shares in order that the company may be run on a more up-to-date basis, either by itself or in amalgamation with some other company.
I do not say that there is a particular case in my mind in this, but you may have a board of aged or aged and infirm directors who refuse to modernise their company and take advantage of modern market conditions, and who, if the shareholders were anxious to accept a take-over bid, might object. They are perfectly entitled to object and to submit to the shareholders their reasons for objecting.

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And the shareholders are perfectly entitled to overrule their objections and to insist that the take-over bid shall be accepted. After all, it is the shareholders' money which is concerned, and they are the people who ought to have the decision.
I think most persons who make these take-over bids are usually people with expansionist ideas, and that the most common effect of take-over bids which are successfully carried out is to increase production and employment. Thus it would not be in the national interest to do anything which would be interpreted as generally discouraging take-over bids or regarding them as being in any way discreditable in themselves. I think the kind of take-over bid which your Lordships would be most inclined to deprecate would be a bid in which the purchaser intends not to carry on the business but to break it up, to bring it to an end, and to sell its various assets to different people. That is a perfectly legal thing to do, although it may sometimes be regrettable on many grounds. But it is extremely hard for any individual, or any Government, or any official, to judge whether or not it is in the best interests of the country that this kind of thing should happen. After all, if a man buys a motor car and if, instead of using it, he proceeds to pull it to pieces and sell it as scrap, either the man must be a fool—and you cannot legislate against human folly—or else the motor car cannot be a very good car and may perhaps be of more value as scrap than anything else.
The noble Lord, Lord Meston, made one positive suggestion which I must not omit to consider, and which will, of course, be considered in the right quarter. It was that if any party objected to a take-over bid (I presume he meant someone who was in a minority) and appealed to the Treasury or the Board of Trade, the Treasury or the Board of Trade should then have the power to decide that the matter should be delayed for three months in order to give the objectors an opportunity of finding out who was making the bid, and whether it was as desirable as had been supposed at first. I am not sure whether it would be right. After all, the shareholders have made their decision themselves, and it is they who are really responsible whether they
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are getting a fair deal or not. I do not know how far it would be equitable for a Government to interfere in order to protect the shareholders against themselves. Certainly I should not like to see officials of the Board of Trade or the Treasury decide whether a take-over bid had been in accordance with certain standards of conduct which do not seem to be very clearly defined—or at least, I should not like to see it unless I had some ill-natured desire to be entertained by the spectacle of other people unsuccessfully endeavouring to perform a task which was quite beyond their capacity. I do not think it is the kind of task which we ought to impose upon Government officials at all.
If there is any question of dishonesty or trickery, it is then possible for the Stock Exchange to stop dealings in the share, and the Stock Exchange is the right authority to decide a question of that kind. I feel very doubtful whether it would be practicable or desirable to ask Government officials to distinguish between a serpent entering the Garden of Eden and playing the bagpipes and the Archangel Michael driving out the unsuccessful directors who had not lived up to the opportunities which bad been afforded to them. But I am grateful to the noble Lord and to other noble Lords who have spoken for their most interesting speeches, and I will, of course, convey what they have said to my right honourable friends, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the President of the Board of Trade.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords before the noble Earl resumes his seat, I wonder whether he could explain this point under the currency regulations, about the Treasury having, so to speak, a power of control over whether a foreigner purchases a British company. I understood that the currency regulations are concerned with the export of sterling and not import of foreign currencies. Perhaps it is not a fair question; it is a little off the subject of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, but if the noble Earl could explain it I should be grateful.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, under the Exchange Control Act exchange control approval is required whenever a foreign company seeks to take over a United Kingdom company.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for his reply and for all the trouble which he has taken over this matter, and I would also thank all other noble Lords who have spoken. Without wishing to appear ungrateful, I feel that we have all been rather skirmishing this evening. We have avoided mentioning names, because I think it is not satisfactory to mention a name under the cloak of Parliamentary privilege when the unfortunate man has not a proper opportunity to reply. Therefore one should avoid mentioning names as much as possible. But there have recently been a number of what one might call undesirable in every way takeover bids, and in conclusion I think we should all be grateful if the noble Earl could urge upon the other members of the Government the desirability of holding an inquiry into this undoubtedly difficult subject. I thank him very much for his reply and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

RIGHTS OF BRITISH PASSPORT HOLDERS
7.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether the time has not arrived to reconsider the present inalienable right of any holder of a British passport from overseas to enter and reside in the United Kingdom without restrictions of any kind. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I feel that I ought to start by apologising for the fact that my Question comes at the end of a very long, tiring day. I hope that your Lordships will accept my apology. When I put the Question down on the Order Paper it was not so full. In an effort to compress a not very small subject as much as it is capable of being compressed I shall probably end up by not being able to read my compressed notes, in which case again I hope you will forgive me.
The first thing I want to say is that on November 20 I tried to get from the Government a statement reflecting their awareness of a situation which is becoming disturbing to some of us. The discomfort seems to be more evident in the East End, and no doubt similarly in the
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few great centres of population. Immigrants tend to collect and to move, as they must very often, to the poorer quarters and rather to stagnate there if conditions of employment are not favourable. I will start by quoting a testimony which is a good piece of evidence, I think, on the part of one who for fifty years now has elected to live among his neighbours in the East End. He is a friend to them all, since his character and most generous works are well known to all in the district. He is, moreover, an eminent man of business. He wrote to me as follows:
"I can think of nothing that had a more disturbing effect in the East End, except for the two wars, than the arrival of coloured people in such large numbers."
Naturally the problem is not the same to a person living, shall we say, in Devonshire, as it would appear to somebody living in a great city.
That mention of colour is one that I refuse to use; I refuse to differentiate between one human and another. I discriminate solely between one who is self-supporting, from skill and habit of work and certain of a definite job, and one who will run at once to the National Assistance and remain on their rolls, being not a contributor, by his efforts, to our Welfare State but a contributor to the already too heavy burden upon the backs of other people. If he is a "slap-happy" migrant coming here on chance from a country where the standards of life are lower, it means that he is in receipt of unearned income at the expense of other people already very heavily taxed, quite obviously overcrowded and in some parts suffering from unemployment. The idea that I have strongly in my mind is that fourteen years after the war is over we have still not got sufficiently back to normal to get rid of some of the discomforts that our people are suffering, as anybody who travels daily to and from work can see, whether it is by train or Underground or anything else. Congestion is the order of the day, and I feel that we ought not to add to it by bringing in people at such a time as we seem to be unfortunately going through now.
I want to get down as soon as I can, for the sake of the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, to the various questions of which I gave his Department notice. The first is a question of the powers that the various countries possess in regard to

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migration. I do not know whether I have it right, but, so far as I can make out, there are no powers of the West Indian ministers to prevent anybody from leaving their island for the United Kingdom, although since these federations are not weaned completely and have not yet become Sovereign States, they are still under the Colonial Secretary. But here is the curious thing: though they have no power to prevent any of their nationals from coming here, they can, and do, dissuade them when times are bad here. This, too, is a curious thing. The Minister in Barbados can prevent the entry from Jamaica of somebody whom he does not want, and vice versa. Yet we cannot do anything here. We have no kind of control, restriction or organisation. There is, in fact, no reciprocity. On occasions, as we know, when Rhodesia has been expanding rather too fast they put it about that there are not the houses for people to come to, and that people had better ease off a bit. We have seen the same thing in regard to Australia. I think that one ought to point out that at this moment there are no powers to stop free movement.
Then we have the question of Eire. Before 1949 we had the British Nationality Act which gave everybody who was eligible Commonwealth status or citizenship. In the following year, when Eire became a Republic, an Act was passed by which, on coming into this country, people from Eire were treated as non-foreigners, and nobody had power to say whether they could come or not. The only thing that they need is a landing permit, as I think it is called, which can be purchased for 1s. They do not need a passport.
In our debate the other day, when the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, spoke, we had a discussion in regard to people who come from Ireland. I was not at all clear whether one speaker did not say that a number of Commonwealth citizens come in from Ireland. I want to ask the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, not only the figures of Commonwealth citizens coming in through Northern Ireland, but also the figures of those coming into this country from Eire. My reason for doing so is that the migration report did not give one the figures, except at a guess of 60,000 a year; but there was no guess as to the
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number of those who went back to Ireland. Therefore I should like to ask the noble Lord whether we can have six months figures, in and out.
The other question concerns those who travel by air—migration by air. None of those figures have come into the Migration Report, because nobody keeps them. I should like to suggest that what is known as a landing ticket should be made use of—a perfectly simple card system—by which the officer who hands out landing cards would know exactly how many landing cards he had handed out, and would make at appropriate intervals a return to the offices. In air travel there are certain manifests. We have been answered previously by the Government that, somehow or other—I do not know how, or why—it could not be done; that it would occupy the time of too many people; that it would be too difficult, and I do not know what. I ask the noble Lord to see whether the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation cannot be pressed to give some little tally of landing cards or extracts from manifests; because quite obviously, if, as was said, migration out by air was as much as one-third of the whole number, it means that we are largely defrauded of valuable figures. In regard to Eire I presume that the same process of landing tickets could be inaugurated.
There is another question in regard to what powers are possessed. We have dealt with the Home Office, who are concerned with the United Kingdom, and foreigners and Eire; we have also dealt with the Colonial Office, who are in some way concerned with the confederations that are not yet fully weaned. On the question of figures, I should like to get something detailed from the noble Lord. My last question is: Can we demand at the port of entry details that will enable us to keep people out? I have an idea that we cannot. In this regard, I understand that information obtained by the Government from countries such as Pakistan, has been most helpful. The Pakistan Government have insisted on money being deposited against the return of those who cannot find employment here. They have been most zealous in "doing down" the gangs of forgers of passports. The net result, in regard to Pakistan, is, I am told, that instead of 19,000 coming in, the figure has sunk down to 5,000. One must be grateful for

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the co-operation which Pakistan has shown.
The congestion mentioned by my East End contemporary is, of course, a dreadful thing, because it has two-way hardships. It must be most depressing, disappointing and uncomfortable for those who come from a warm climate to our rather doubtful climate and cannot find employment or housing. When, some four or five years ago, we had trouble with housing the students from parts of Africa and other Dominions, much was done by making the British Council agents in regard to providing hostels. It seems to me that one of the reasons why people in the East End are unhappy about the existing conditions is that it is nobody's business to provide what might be called "temporary" homes—hostelisation—for those who find themselves stuck in London without the employment that they had expected.
The last time I raised this question I was told that there are many voluntary bodies which are doing wonderful work of this kind. That is true, of course; but I maintain that this is a matter in which Her Majesty's Government should be able to initiate plans for hostelisation, through an agency; for they cannot expect that of local authorities—like boroughs and urban councils—who cannot see the wood of Commonwealth-wide immigration for their own little parish trees. We cannot expect them to do that and they do not feel that their ratepayers would wish them to spend the money. In this particular instance, therefore, I maintain that we shall not have done enough until Her Majesty's Government do something, either by agency, or otherwise, to arrange temporary accommodation of that kind.
Perhaps I may go on to the basic stock phrase which has caused me to bother your Lordships with this Question, and which was mentioned on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, on November 19—that the holder of a British passport has "an inalienable right" to come to this country. I believe that that is a stock phrase and it is one which I cannot take. It was coined by someone for times long ago, from the beginning of the eighteenth century and right through the nineteenth century, when we were building up what we called the Empire. That is something quite different from a phrase like "a historic
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home for refugees", which this country has been many times in our history. If this inalienable right exists now I cannot see that there is any reason why it should continue, for I do not think it is in line with the modern world. It leaves our people unarmed against conditions of stringency and unheard of troubles which may come upon us.
I wish to see the end of the term "inalienable right" because I do not think it tallies or is in accordance with the position and the good of our own people. We should have a modern and sane method of restriction by quota, such as is used by other sovereign States, when we are up against some particular adversity. Each member of the Commonwealth must take stock of the size of its population and its acreage, and neither the sovereign Commonwealth States nor the components of those not fully weaned from federation should refrain from imposing quotas. With that, I beg leave to thank your Lordships for your patience. I have tried to make my speech as short as I could.
7.35 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: The noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, will not mind my pointing out that, as he said, he raised this issue, or something very like it, as recently as November 20; although at that time it was in special reference to water, farmland and housing. On that occasion my noble friend, Lord Waldegrave, in reply, summed up the position when he said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 212 (No. 12), col. 762]:
"Her Majesty's Government have no evidence to suggest that the pressure of the population on the available resources of these Islands has now reached a dangerous degree."
In his reply on that occasion my noble friend dealt very fully, I thought, with all the points that were then put to him about the net loss in our manpower resources through migration, the extent of our resources of water, farmland and housing, the loss of agricultural land for building and so on; and it is not really necessary for me to go over that ground again. The noble Lord has mentioned certain problems in the East End of London and possibly elsewhere. I would only say that we must remember that immigration to this country must, for accuracy, be regarded as a net, not a gross, figure; and for the five years to

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1957 there has been in every year a small outward, and not an inward, balance. I know that that does not cure local trouble spots, but it is not felt that the factors which exist, such as the problem in certain ports, would be sufficient justification for any reversal of opinion on the part of Her Majesty's Government.
I feel I need only say—and I wish to say very clearly—that in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, having regard to these and all other circumstances, the present situation does not justify ending the long tradition by which British subjects from overseas are free to enter and reside in the United Kingdom without restrictions of any kind. We know that this freedom of entry is greatly valued and respected throughout the Commonwealth, and Her Majesty's Government attach great importance to its maintenance because it is one of the ties that bind together the British Commonwealth of Nations.
This issue was also raised in the debate of November 19 on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, and in the course of that debate several noble Lords all round the House deprecated the possibility of legislation at the present time to control immigration from the Commonwealth. Perhaps I may quote the words of my noble friend Lord Perth who him-self quoted the words used by the Home Secretary [ibid. col. 680]:
"We should maintain the long and respected tradition of allowing citizens of the Commonwealth to come here."
My noble friend went on to say:
"I need not elaborate further on the value of this tradition with the United Kingdom as the heart of the Commonwealth. It would be a sad day if the tradition were broken."
I believe that his words on the subject of the heart of the Commonwealth are the answer to the feelings of the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, on the question of reciprocity. May I take the risk of wearying your Lordships by quoting a few words that I myself said on that occasion? [col. 716]:
"We feel that any departure from the time-honoured tradition of hospitality extended by the United Kingdom to members of all Commonwealth countries would require very strong justification. For our part, we should be very reluctant to see the ending of these important ties which help to bind the Commonwealth together."
I have said that in about four different ways, and I have done so because I wish
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to have been heard to say it extremely clearly and extremely firmly; because that is the opinion of Her Majesty's Government to-day.
The noble Earl asked me various questions and touched on the point of immigrants from various countries having jobs available to them before they came. He pointed out, quite correctly, that Pakistan is the only Commonwealth country, so far as I know, at any rate, that requires their nationals coming to the United Kingdom to work to produce evidence of having a job to come to. In both India and Pakistan restrictions are imposed on the issue of passports to persons who wish to come here. In Pakistan, a cash deposit of 2,500 rupees is normally required of an immigrant against the possibility of possible repatriation, and a knowledge of English is also required. In India applicants for passports to come here have, for some years, been required to produce evidence of sufficient means to ensure against destitution overseas. Also, they scrutinise offers of employment. As the result of the new measure in Pakistan, there has been a sharp decline in the number of immigrants from that country.
With regard to other colonial territories, the Government of the West Indies, who have, I agree, no powers in the matter, are in fact doing everthing they can to bring, to the notice of the intending immigrants the employment, accommodation and other difficulties that they will be faced with if they come; and to emphasise the desirability of having reasonable prospects of a job and accommodation to come to. In Cyprus prospective immigrants to this country are required to produce affidavits by persons in this country guaranteeing their support and accommodation. Other colonial territories, too, require certain applicants for passports to produce guarantees or to make cash deposits in case they become destitute here. All these various requirements in the various countries, although not primarily aimed at reducing immigration to this country, do really have that effect.
The noble Earl then asked about Commonwealth citizens entering the country through Eire; and there, of course, I have to say to him straight away that there are no figures available. He rather pointed that out and complained about it, but I cannot think that there is any reason to suppose that there are any substantial

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number of persons coming in that way: first, for the simple reason that it is a very uncomfortable journey, an unnecessarily difficult one, as there are virtually no direct air services or passenger liner services between Eire and the Commonwealth countries. It would be very inconvenient to come that way. Secondly, I believe that if large numbers were coming through that route we should know something about it. I feel that, although no figures are available, that fact is not contributing in any serious degree at all to any inaccuracy in the migration figures. The noble Earl also asked about the Irish immigrants themselves; and of course there are no figures for them—except the figure he mentioned of 60,000 people who annually enter National Insurance for the first time. It is the only check we have. There is no check as they go to and fro, any more than there is any check on our going to and fro ourselves.
The noble Earl then asked me about the rather large number of people who leave this country, of migrants who leave by air without trace. The estimate of one-third comes from the Report of the Overseas Migration Board. There is no reason to doubt that that estimate is somewhere about right. I have no estimate, or means of giving one, of the number of immigrants who come to this country by air, but there can be no doubt that the number is quite substantial. I must admit, and I do admit, that these air passages make a serious gap in the statistics; and I must say, too, that for some time the Government have been giving detailed consideration to how best to fill that gap. Various methods are being examined, and whilst I am afraid that I cannot make any statement about it at present, the Government do hope before long that they will introduce improvements in the arrangements for obtaining the statistics and making them more accurate. The noble Earl asked me whether we could demand the details of people at the ports, and the answer is, of course, No. In the case of holders of British passports, the immigration officer asks them to produce evidence of identity
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and of nationality. If they can be properly produced, the holder of the passport comes in and that is all there is to it.
The only other point I should like to take up, of which the noble Earl rather made much at the end, is the question of this word "inalienable". He complained about that, but in fact there is not an "inalienable right". It can be alienated at any moment by action of Parliament; Parliament could alienate that right at once if it saw fit to do so. All I am saying is that, so far as the Government are concerned—if I may sum up and say it once more—we do not consider the present to be the proper time to depart from that long-standing and most valuable tradition of freedom of entry for Commonwealth citizens.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I beg to thank the noble Lord for his reply.
LORD MATHERS: My Lords, I want to say, as a final word, it seems, this evening, a word of warm commendation to the Minister for the firm reply which he has given to the noble Earl. Let me say how sorry I was to hear the noble Earl drawing a distinction between our people and those coming from different parts of the Commonwealth. They are our people as much as any inhabitants of these islands. We are one great Commonwealth, and all the people of the Commonwealth are our people.

CALVINISTIC METHODIST AND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF WALES (AMENDMENT) BILL [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
ALL SAINTS CHELSEA BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES
Second Report from the Select Committee: made, and to be printed.