Lords Sitting of 23 July 1964

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chichester

REDEVELOPMENT OF HISTORIC TOWNS
3.5 p.m.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I beg leave 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 they are aware of the widespread anxiety that current pressures for redevelopment are damaging the character of our historic towns; and what steps they propose to take in the matter.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD HASTINGS): My Lords, it is the policy of the Government that the character of historic towns should be preserved, but it will, I believe, be generally recognised that in order to thrive these towns must be adapted to modern needs. There are established procedures for ensuring the preservation of the fine buildings of the past; the problem is how to provide for the necessary changes while conserving the character of each town. My right honourable friends, the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Minister of Transport, have called attention to this subject in planning bulletins published in the last two years.
A new publication is now to be prepared dealing specifically with our ancient towns and the historic areas which survive in other towns. The intention is to illustrate from detailed studies of particular places the qualities to be preserved and how current needs can best be reconciled with the retention of these qualities. The Advisory Committee on Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, under the chairmanship of Sir William Holford, will be closely associated with this work.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this reply will give considerable satisfaction to those concerned with preservation? But, of course, the success of the bulletin will depend upon some more practical assistance being given by the Government to those local authorities who are trying at the same time to develop their towns and to preserve their historic buildings.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his welcome to this announcement, and I will, of course, convey the latter part of his remarks to both my right honourable friends.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what special steps will be taken for early consultation with local authorities who are much concerned? I have in mind, for example, towns like King's Lynn and Norwich, where there are very large numbers of extremely beautiful buildings some of which have already been put to very good commercial use. But a great deal of planning and co-operation at all stages is needed, in addition to the help to which the noble Lord referred. Can the Minister say something about that?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, the planning is in its preliminary stages and I cannot tell the noble Lord yet which particular places will be chosen for this study. But, of course, when they are chosen, necessarily the local authorities will have to be consulted and the studies worked out in conjunction with them.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, does this mean that if the local authority concerned is not interested and does not apply for advice or study the pamphlet there is nothing the Government propose to do or can do?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I hope it would not mean anything of the sort, and that that situation would not arise.

POST OFFICE PAY DISPUTE
3.9 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask, as this is the usual time to ask about Business, whether to-day's Business will include any statement by the Government upon the present position in the Post Office dispute?
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, I understand that there is a Private Notice Question on this subject down for Answer in another place. Therefore, that Answer will be repeated here as soon after half-past three as is convenient.

GOODS VEHICLES (KEEPING OF RECORDS) ORDER, 1964
3.10 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, in asking your Lordships to approve this Order I think I should point out that it continues in force indefinitely the provisions of Section 21 of the Road Traffic Act, 1962, which removed from the users of certain small goods vehicles the obligation to keep records of drivers' hours and other related matters, which otherwise would fall upon them under Section 186 of the Road Traffic Act, 1960. The vehicles affected are "C" licensed vehicles weighing not more than 16 cwt. unladen weight when they are on journeys within five miles of their base. This really means small vans on local delivery work.
Records required under Section 186 of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, are used mainly to enforce the statutory limits on drivers' hours. These limits are laid down in Section 73 of the Act, which says that drivers must not drive for more than five and a half hours without at least half-an-hour's break, or for more than 11 hours in 24. It also says that a driver must have 10 hours continuous rest away from his vehicle in every 24. The danger that drivers of small local delivery vans will exceed these limits is in practice very slight, and this was the reason why the exemption was introduced. But as it was something new, a new departure, we made the exemption for an experimental period of two years to see what would happen. This period lapses on October 31. When the exemption first came into force we asked the licensing authorities, whose staff enforce the hours rules, to
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let us have reports on its effects. The licensing authorities have found no evidence of any abuse due to the exemption. It has clearly given a useful, although perhaps small, relief from unnecessary paperwork to van drivers. Both sides of the industry agree that it should continue. So, my Lords, do Her Majesty's Government, and I therefore beg to move.
Moved, That the Goods Vehicles (Keeping of Records) Order, 1964, be approved.—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, we wholly support this Order. The noble Lord is quite right in saying that it has not led to any abuse, but has saved a good deal of unnecessary paper work. I would ask him, however, whether he is aware that, in our view, the great difficulty is the abuse of record-keeping in the much wider field of vehicles which is not dealt with in this Order. That, in our view, is one of the contributory factors, not only to the exploitation of the men who drive the vehicles but also in the incidence of accidents, and I wonder whether the noble Lord's Department has anything in mind for dealing with this.
LORD CHESHAM: Yes, my Lords. I am glad to give the noble Lord some reassurance on this matter, because we are engaged at the moment on a careful and detailed study of how enforcement can be stepped up. I am grateful to the noble Lord because he was one of those, among, I think, all of us, who originally had misgivings to some degree about this particular Order. I think I can reasonably say it has worked out all right, and he has confirmed what I said. The only other point I might mention is that I think I remember the noble Lord saying at the time that he thought this was probably the thin end of the wedge to extension of this kind of thing. Frankly it is not, and there is no evidence that it should be, because we share something of his concern about abuse over the wider field, and that is why we feel we ought to tackle it very carefully and seriously at the moment.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WHITE FISH SUBSIDY (UNITED KINGDOM) SCHEME, 1964
3.13 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (LORD ST. OSWALD): My Lords, I beg to move that the White Fish Subsidy (United Kingdom) Scheme, 1964, be approved. I suggest that it might be convenient for your Lordships if we were to discuss at the same time the other Order relating to the white fish industry, the White Fish Industry (Grants for Improvement of Fishing Vessels) Scheme. I think it might be useful for me to give first of all a brief account of the considerations that have led us to fix the rates of subsidy for white fish contained in this scheme.
I am very pleased to be able to tell your Lordships that there has been a considerable improvement in the financial returns for fishing since we last discussed subsidies, about a year ago. The value of white fish caught by all sections of the British fleet in 1962 was just under £45 million. In 1963 it was £47¼ million, an increase of £2¼ million. This improvement has been continued in the first five months of 1964. Comparing January to May, 1964, with January to May, 1963, there has been a further increase in the value of the catch of £1·4 million. This increase in value has not been due to scarcity, as the quantity of the catch has remained much the same.
Most sections of the fleet have shared in this improvement. The financial returns for the trawlers, that is the vessels over 80 feet in length, have improved considerably, starting with the near and middle water trawlers in 1963 and distant water vessels later on in that year. The results of these vessels have continued to improve in recent months. Our estimate of profits for the six months ending March 31, 1964 (our latest figures), shows that all but one of the main sections of the fleet were making profits, and in some cases quite considerable profits. There were, however, certain exceptions at some of the ports in England and Wales. Turning to the inshore section of the fleet, we again find this improvement but with perhaps more exceptions.
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These are the facts on which the Government has based the subsidy proposals contained in the Scheme before your Lordships. As your Lordships know, under the Sea Fish Industry Act basic subsidies have to be reduced each year by between 7½ per cent. and 12½ per cent, of the rates as originally fixed in 1962. Your Lordships will, however, remember that we agreed with the leaders of the trawler owners in 1961 that the first two reductions should be at the minimum rate laid down in the Act, that is, 7½ per cent. This year is the second of these reductions, and the basic rates in the Order have been fixed in accordance with this agreement.
We have, however, had to consider whether we should pay special subsidies in addition to these basic subsidies. The arguments for this were examined very carefully, in the light of the results which I have just indicated to the House, and the Government came to the conclusion that no special payments were justified for any group of vessels operating from the Scottish ports, and only for a very few groups of vessels operating from ports in England and Wales. These are set out in Part III of Schedule 1 to the Scheme. This position will be reviewed again in the autumn, as fishing results can change rapidly. We also decided, taking into account the varied experience of the inshore section of the industry, that it would be right and proper to make no change in the subsidies for inshore vessels.
The second Order before the House is something quite new. We have given grants in the past for new vessels and for new engines and existing vessels. This Scheme—the Fishing Vessels Improvement Scheme—extends the system of grant to improvements to existing vessels. Your Lordships may know that this is a part of the proposals made some time ago by the Chairman of the White Fish Authority, and I should like to tell your Lordships something about the rest of his proposals.
In the first place, Mr. Matthews proposed an increase in the amount available for subsidies, and the House will understand from what I have just been saying about the 1964 Subsidy Scheme why we think that there is no need at present to make any radical change in existing legislation. Nor have we felt

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it possible to meet Mr. Matthews' requests for financial assistance to wholesalers and retailers in the fishing trade, as we do not do this for other food trades. We have, however, agreed to meet Mr. Matthews' request for further help on research and development.
Mr. Matthews is also going to discuss with the industry his ideas on improvements in quality and on a statutory minimum price scheme, together with his suggestion of support prices for fish of good quality that cannot find a market. The Government have agreed that he should discuss these proposals with all sections of the industry and the trade, and then come back to us with the results of his discussion. But as my right honourable friend has said in another place, the Government do not feel able to give any advance commitments as to their attitude to these proposals. We must keep an open mind until the Authority has had its consultations and come up with its conclusions.
I am, my Lords, very gratified to be able to report the improvement I mentioned earlier in the position of the fishing industry. I trust and hope that it will be a lasting improvement. But this is a hunting industry and no one can forecast future catches or the prices they will fetch. I hope your Lordships will agree with me that the subsidies proposed are right and that the new Fishing Vessels Improvements Scheme could make a substantial contribution to increased efficiency. I therefore commend these Schemes to your Lordships for approval.
Moved, That the White Fish Subsidy (United Kingdom) Scheme, 1964, be approved.—(Lord St. Oswald.)
3.21 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, the White Fish Industry Schemes are now becoming a hardy annual, but it is nice to know that year by year improvements take place. Both Schemes have been ably referred to by the Minister. In some respects they are difficult for the layman to understand, but at any rate the Schemes have been well received in another place. They were fully discussed by Members there who have fishing interests and represent fishing constituencies, and they were approved without any objection whatsoever.
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In regard to the first Scheme, this replaces two previous Schemes, the first of which related to August 1, 1963. That particular Scheme was not found to be sufficient for the purposes required and was revised by a subsequent Scheme on February 1 of this year. That particular Scheme ceases to be operative after July 31, next week, and the Scheme which we are now considering will take its place. It is therefore necessary that we should accept this particular Scheme so that it can operate on the appointed day. As I said, the Scheme has been fully explained; it is explicit in regard to the conditions which have to be complied with. No doubt they are understandable by those who have had experience of past Schemes and by those who have benefited from them. Naturally, as the Minister has explained, the financial provisions follow upon those of the past and apparently are acceptable to the industry. For that reason also I think we can accept them. I was glad to hear the reference to Mr. Matthews, and I hope that the negotiations which are taking place will be successful and beneficial to the industry.
It is essential that we should keep our fishing industry in good form, with the ability, the manpower, equipment and improvements necessary to provide the nation with an important article of food. Fishermen are subjected to hazards and hard conditions and their rewards should be fully adequate. Apparently they are becoming more adequate as the years go by. Lean times have not been unknown, and, of course, they may come again. Catches may be unremunerative or disappointing; so subsidies or grants cannot at this time be denied for the purpose of continuing fishing operations and keeping the fleets afloat.
It is the province of the Government to protect both the producers and consumers and, at the same time, not to overburden the economy with excessive expenditure. Improving catches in fishing does not always produce additional profits, and we must bear in mind that rising costs, as in other industries, operate in the fishing industry. I commend the Scheme.
3.25 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I am sure the whole House will welcome the statement made by the Minister indicating

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the substantial improvement in the fishing industry over the past twelve months. While I have no comment to make concerning these Schemes, I was particularly interested in the statement that further negotiations are taking place with the industry in regard to securing increasing developments of the fishing interests. I wonder how far these discussions are concerned with research into the protection of existing fishing fields and the development of new fishing fields.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, so far as I know, no particular frontiers have been set to these discussions. They are, of course, in the early stage. I do not know of any restrictions such as the noble Lord asked about.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

HERRING SUBSIDY (UNITED KINGDOM) SCHEME, 1964
3.27 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON): My Lords, I beg to move that the Herring Subsidy (United Kingdom) Scheme, 1964, be approved. In the Herring industry, proceeds over the year as a whole have not changed much from the previous year; so the grants and subsidies which your Lordships approved about this time last year remain unchanged this year. The 1964 Scheme differs materially therefore from the 1963 Scheme only in two minor respects. First, for the convenience of those who operate under both the Herring Subsidy and the White Fish Subsidy Schemes the opportunity has been taken to make drafting changes to bring the wording of these two Schemes, where appropriate, into line; and secondly, fourteen small ports at which small quantities of herring were sometimes landed have, for the convenience of fishermen, been added to the schedule of ports at which herring landings can qualify for subsidy. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Herring Subsidy (United Kingdom) Scheme, 1964, be approved.—(Lord Craigton.)
LORD WISE: My Lords, there is only one question that I wish to raise on this particular Order. In the Order which
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we have passed in regard to white fish, the day of sale of the white fish can be reckoned as the day on which payment is made. But in the Herring Industry Scheme no such privilege has been allowed to the fishermen who catch herrings. Can the Minister explain why that should be so?
LORD CRAIGTON: Yes, my Lords. The white fish fishermen normally fish during the daytime, and therefore the white fish fishermen who catch fish for six days can qualify for six days' subsidy. But herrings are caught in the night, and therefore herring fishermen fishing for five nights also qualify for six days' subsidy.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask the Minister a question with regard to the general position of the trade? What proportion of it now is export trade? I can remember being engaged constantly upon this nearly forty years ago, and the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, had a great deal to do with it then. What about the export trade to Russia, for example? How is that side of the herring business going?
LORD CRAIGTON: My Lords, from 1960 to 1963 exports as a whole have fallen slightly, from £2 million-odd in 1960 to £1,800,000 in 1963. For Russia there has been a big drop, from £117,000 to £50,000. But in other areas the exports have gone up quite considerably—for instance, to the European Economic Community from £366,000 to £469,000. So the picture is varying throughout the various markets; but on the whole, it shows a slight decline over the year.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, has that been affected at all by the fact that certain countries which are engaged in the herring fishing industry are giving wider protection to their own herring fishing, and perhaps intruding a great deal more on ours?
LORD CRAIGTON: My Lords, that must be one of the factors. But I think there are a great many factors involved in the various markets concerned.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WHITE FISH INDUSTRY (GRANTS FOR IMPROVEMENT OF FISHING VESSELS) SCHEME, 1964
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the White Fish Industry (Grants for Improvement of Fishing Vessels), Scheme, 1964, be approved.—(Lord St. Oswald.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

JOHN F. KENNEDY MEMORIAL BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

FISHERY LIMITS BILL
House in Committee (according to Order).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 20), Bill read 3a, and passed.

REFRESHMENT HOUSES BILL
3.31 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the Report of the Amendment to be received.
THE MINISTER OF STATE HOME OFFICE (LORD DERWENT): My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Lord Derwent.)
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I am astonished that the noble Lord should get up and simply move that the Report should now be received, without dealing with the manuscript Amendment with which he said on Monday he would deal. It is rather astonishing that this has happened, and also discourteous. He will recall that when we were dealing with this Bill in Committee I said that I was considering submitting a manuscript Amendment. I was anxious to know how the Government felt about it, and said that I would not press it on that occasion but would submit it to the noble Lord first. The noble Lord read out my Amendment and said that as he had had
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only a short time to examine it, he could not reject it or approve it there and then but would certainly consider the matter. I have waited during the last two days, expecting to hear from the noble Lord, but I said to myself "The Report stage is coming up and surely the noble Lord will say something about the Amendment which he undertook to consider"—incidentally, an Amendment of a very important nature. But the noble Lord to-day stands up and in a few seconds expects to get the Report stage agreed without even mentioning the Amendment at all. I feel that I have a grievance on this matter. I should like to put to your Lordships the purpose of the Amendment, and I feel that I shall have the agreement of both sides of the House.
We have been discussing a little Bill called the Refreshment Houses Bill which proposes to prohibit the use of touts outside these establishments. Originally, when the Bill first came to this House touts used between the hours of ten o'clock at night and five in the morning were to be prohibited, but an Amendment was passed in this House two or three days ago aimed at prohibiting the employment of touts outside refreshment houses even at two o'clock in the afternoon. I am reminding your Lordships of this in order that you should realise that the Government have appreciated that touting is bad and should be prohibited. However, I was advised by the police that if they suspected a man of touting, watched him and went up and challenged him, the tout could get away with it as he need not furnish his own name and address after being requested to do so by a policeman, and, indeed need not furnish the address of the refreshment house for which he is touting. Therefore I thought that if this Bill is to be effective, if we are to put some "teeth" into it and if it is to be enforceable, we must give the police the power to extract the name and address of the tout or the name of the refreshment house involved.
The noble Lord said, in answer to this suggestion, that the local authority had a list of the refreshment houses, but the case was put to him that in a long street in Soho there might be two or three of these houses with only one tout and that it would be impossible to know to which of the houses the tout was attached. Secondly, if the man refuses

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to give the policeman his name and address or the name of the establishment the police cannot arrest him and detain him, so he simply is allowed to go. In the light of this I drafted a manuscript Amendment which would have obliged the tout to give the policeman his name and address and the name of the establishment. I submitted it to the noble Lord and asked him for his advice, and asked whether the Government thought that this would strengthen the Bill. The noble Lord on Committee stage said that the time had been rather short, and he would consider it and decide what to do, and he went away with the Amendment. But this afternoon the noble Lord gets up without any mention of this important Amendment, an Amendment which, in my opinion, is absolutely essential if the Bill is going to be enforced. He has not even mentioned it, and is prepared simply to move the Motion, That the Report be now received.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, when the noble Baroness has been in the House a little longer, and perhaps knows that our customs here are sometimes rather different, she will probably do the same as I did and ask what is the usual procedure in these cases when in Committee stage a Minister has undertaken to look into a point. I am advised that it is customary in your Lordships' House for the person who is asking the question to put down an Amendment on Report stage; or, if the Member concerned does not wish to put down an Amendment but wants further information, then on the Question, That the Report be now received, which is put by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, the Member seeking the information gets up and speaks, as the noble Baroness has done, but usually without a lecture. I have indeed gone into this point, and I am ready to answer the noble Baroness, for I expected her to ask these things to-day after what we said last time.
The main offence created by subsection (2) of Clause 1 of the Bill is that of seeking custom for a known refreshment house, in respect of which seeking custom by personal solicitation is prohibited. If there is no evidence, whether based on the actions of the person to whom the touting was addressed or not,
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which indicates one particular refreshment house, then no offence can be said to have been committed. The manuscript Amendment which the noble Baroness tabled in draft on Committee stage entails two propositions which I think I shall have to consider separately. It is first suggested that there is an obligation on the tout to give her own name and address (I say "her" own, because these touts are usually girls); and the second is an obligation to give the name of her employer.
As to the obligation to give her own name and address, in general it is not an offence to refuse to give one's name and address to a constable. It is not unknown, of course, for a Statute to make it an offence to do so—I am thinking in particular of the Road Traffic Act, where one is dealing with a rather different sort of person. But touts are far more likely, if challenged, to have recourse to lying rather than to dignified silence. I have consulted the police about this, and they say that the problem is not really one of refusal to give a name and address, but rather of the giving of a name and address which, if not entirely fictitious, is probably very transitory in character. The real way to deal with this particular problem which the noble Baroness has raised, and which has been dealt with in certain Statutes, is for Parliament, if it thinks fit, to confer a power of arrest without warrant. But such powers are, rightly, very jealously guarded by Parliament and we do not think that the power of arrest without warrant in this case would be justified.
Then the second part of the noble Lady's Amendment said that the tout must give her employer's name. I explained during the last stage of the Bill that, once an establishment is identified—and I repeat that under the Bill unless it is identified there is no offence by the establishment—there is no difficulty in prosecuting, because under the Bill it is quite clear that lists have to be kept and the owner is traceable. It is hoped that under this Bill prosecutions will be against employers and premises, rather than against individual touts, because, after all, touts can be changed.
The suggestion that the noble Baroness put forward in Committee was that, unless the tout could be compelled to

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identify the establishment she was working for, it would not be possible to be sure whether an offence was being committed at all; or if all the available establishments were licensed and prohibited from touting, one could not be sure which one of them should be prosecuted. My Lords, I do not think one can accept an Amendment on those grounds. It is a well-established principle in this country and in many other countries that a person should not be compelled to convict himself out of his own mouth; and it would seem quite wrong, at any rate in the case of a summary offence, that he or she should be required to convict anyone else either. Until it can be proved in a court of law that someone is touting for a particular establishment which is subject to the prohibitions of the Bill, it cannot be said that an offence has been committed at all. Until that stage has been reached we think it would be wrong for the police or anyone else to be invested with special powers in this particular matter. I hope that, in view of what I have said in explaining the position, the noble Baroness is satisfied.
3.44 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I do not know what the noble Baroness thinks about it, but I must say, with regard to references to Ministers on matters of this kind, that we have usually had—I must pay a compliment to noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite—very great courtesy exercised in giving advice when advice has been asked for. Here was a case in which my noble friend Baroness Summerskill had been definitely approached and the matter explained to her by the Police Federation. A great deal of trouble has been created by Press reports and other reports of what people are saying about the police, asking why nothing is done about this, that and the other, and when the Police Federation feels strongly about something it is at least a matter for grave consideration.
I do not understand the position now of the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, on two points. First of all, I should have thought he could have exercised the usual courtesy we get, and which I greatly acknowledge, from Ministers on the other side, that when we ask them privately about a matter like this they
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telephone us or write to us and say what they really think. Secondly, having apparently done the other side of his homework and got all the facts as the Home Office see them on the point which has been raised by my noble friend, the noble Lord gets up this afternoon and moves, That the Report be received. He has the whole brief in his hand and has not even the courtesy to say that the noble Baroness has approached him. He has the brief and the answer on the point.
In the present circumstances I do not think that the House is really in a fit state to receive the Report. If we had had the usual piece of courtesy of being given the advice that was asked for, and the noble Baroness had been informed, she would at once have made a decision, in consultation with her friends, as to whether the Amendment went on the Marshalled List. If that had been done the Amendment would have been in the possession of the House, for noble Lords to consider for themselves how they would look at any decision which was announced by the Government. Therefore, my point of view at the present time is that we are not in a proper position to receive the Report.
3.47 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I support my noble friend in this matter? I think the noble Lord will agree that it was only on Monday that we took the Committee stage, and there is a postal strike and many other difficulties. This is not a Party matter. We made a serious effort on Committee stage to improve this Bill; and in one respect we have improved it by the Government's accepting the Amendment of my noble friend. We are now trying to make sure that the Bill can be enforced to deal with certain black spots in London and perhaps in other towns.
Where an authority feel that a refreshment house is not being conducted properly, they are able, under the Bill, to withdraw the licence. One of the reasons for which they can withdraw a licence is that a refreshment house has been guilty of touting. I think the noble Lord was quite correct in saying that what has to be seen, when we are examining the position of the tout, is the tout's connection with a particular refreshment house. I am quite sure that at some

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time or other, in his youth or in his later age, the noble Lord has been around Soho, even if it was only to go to one of the better restaurants. He will know that there are many of these establishments within a limited number of streets, and there are quite a number of refreshment houses of this type in one street. If there is a tout who is obviously touting for business it will be seen that he is accosting people in the street. Perhaps at the present time it would be lawful for him to tout; he would be soliciting or canvassing for business. But this Bill says that it shall not be lawful for that person now to do that.
If a policeman sees a person soliciting or touting he will obviously see it as a fact. The policeman approaches the individual and says, "I have reason to believe that you are infringing the Refreshment Houses Act. Whom are you working for?" As I see it, to-day the man can say, "I will not tell you." The policeman asks, "Can I have your name and address?", and receives the reply, "I will not tell you." The only way by which the policeman could find any evidence, I presume, would be for him to shadow the man back to his employer, but that is not likely to be done unless some plain clothes policemen were put on to the job. But one of the objects of this Bill is to reduce the amount of police work.
Whether the Amendment of my noble friend fully meets the point, and whether it would need to be amended slightly to cover some of the difficulties that the noble Lord has mentioned in his statement this afternoon—and I appreciate the difficulty of time and the fact that we have only one further week—I do not know, but I should have thought it would not be unreasonable, in view of the importance of the Bill and the real desire on this side of the House to improve it, for the Report stage to be put off till Monday. There would then be an opportunity for both sides to consider what could be done to meet this point. If the Government were to respond in that way, I am quite sure that my noble friends would be willing to expedite the Bill through its remaining stages next week so that it could receive the Royal Assent. We want as much as the Government to see this
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Bill on the Statute Book, and we will help if they will respond to that plea.
3.49 p.m.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, I wonder if I may ask my noble friend whether he can explain how the policeman would know that the tout was touting for somebody to go into a refreshment house, unless he could hear him speak or knew that he was a tout because there were refreshment houses in that street? My difficulty is that if the policeman sees what he thinks may be a tout speaking to somebody in that street, how can he prove that he is touting for custom for a refreshment house? I think the noble Lady said last time that there might be three refreshment houses in a row and therefore the policeman would not know for which of the three the man was touting. But would that very much matter? I cannot see how the policeman is to be sure that the individual is touting, unless he can hear him touting and asking someone to patronise a particular place.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am sorry if anyone thinks I have been discourteous. I knew that I was going to have to answer this to-day. As I have already said, there were two ways of doing this. I thought the noble Baroness would put down an Amendment. If I had thought I could meet her, I should have put down an Amendment myself. As she had not put down an Amendment, I naturally thought that she was not going to raise it. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, I do not think that it is worth taking this matter back for reconsideration, because the short answer is that under most Statutes it is not an offence to refuse to give a name and address. It is not an offence at all—and here we are asking for it to be made an offence—unless you give a power of arrest without warrant in respect of a secondary person, because it is the establishment which is the principal offender. We have been into this matter very carefully, and we do not think—and I am afraid we are not likely to alter our minds—that this is a case which ought to be made an exception.
My noble friend Lady Horsbrugh asked how one could prove this offence unless a policeman overheard. There are ways, and one of them, I am

821
advised, is that if you see a woman stopping two or three men and they then all go into one particular establishment, you know she is touting for that establishment. That really is the position. I am sorry, but I do not think it is worth taking this matter back. I think what is proposed is trying to make this sort of touting, although an offence, too grave an offence, and we really must not give exceptional powers to the police in what is a comparatively minor matter in so far as the tout is concerned. There is the further point that I have already mentioned, that under the Bill it is not
Resolved in the affirmative, and Report received accordingly.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolu-
an offence unless you can prove the touting for a particular refreshment house. That, of course, was the point of the noble Baroness's suggestion; but we think it would be going too far to give these very exceptional powers to the police in this comparatively minor matter.
3.53 p.m.
On Question, Whether the Report shall be now received?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 72; Not-Contents, 36.

CONTENTS

Abinger, L.

Devonshire, D.

Long, V.

Ailwyn, L.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Luke, L.

Albemarle, E.

Ebbisham, L.

Margesson, V.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Effingham, E.

Merrivale, L.

Allerton, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Meston, L.

Alport, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Milverton, L.

Arbuthnott, V.

Falkland, V.

Molson, L.

Auckland, L.

Ferrers, E.

Monsell, V.

Balerno, L.

Ferrier, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Barnby, L.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Bossom, L.

Fortescue, E.

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Boston, L.

Fraser of North Cape, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Brain, L.

Gage, V.

Sandwich, E.

Brecon, L.

Glasgow, E.

Selkirk, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Sinclair of Cleeve, L.

Carrington, L.

Grantchester, L.

Somers, L.

Chesham, L.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

Soulbury, V.

Conesford, L.

Hawke, L.

Strang, L.

Cowley, E.

Horsbrugh, B.

Stuart of Findhorn, V.

Crathorne, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Swinton, E.

Daventry, V.

Ilford, L.

Thurlow, L.

De La Warr, E.

Killearn, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Denham, L.

Lambert, V.

Twining, L.

Derwent, L.

Lansdowne, M.

Wakefield of Kendal, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Hobson, L.

Shackleton, L.

Airedale, L.

Huntingdon, E.

Shepherd, L.

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Kinnoull, E.

Silkin, L.

Attlee, E.

Lawson, L.

Sinha, L.

Burden, L. [Teller]

Lindsay of Birker, L.

Stonham, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Listowel, E.

Summerskill, B.

Champion, L. [Teller.]

Morrison, L.

Taylor, L.

Citrine, L.

Morrison of Lambeth, L.

Uvedale of North End, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Moyne, L.

Walston, L.

Elton, L.

Peddie, L.

Williams, L.

Francis-Williams, L.

St. Davids, V

Williams of Barnburgh, L.

Henderson, L.

Samuel, V.

Wise, L.

tion of July 20), Bill read 3a, with the Amendment, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

POST OFFICE PAY DISPUTE
4.1 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON:My Lords, I said earlier this afternoon that I would repeat a Statement which had been made in another place in reply to a private notice Question about the postal disputes. The Question was as follows:
"To ask the Postmaster General what steps Her Majesty's Government are taking to secure the maintenance of postal services in view of the postal strike called to begin at midnight on Saturday."
My right honourable friend the Postmaster General replied as follows:
"My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I have seen representatives of the Union of Post Office Workers this morning and put a proposal to them. The emergency committee of the Union is now considering this proposal."
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, we are all obliged to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for having made that Statement. The position as reported in the public Press and the broadcast News last night and this morning was very disturbing. The fact the Government have made a move of this kind will, I hope, help to make progress towards peace in this unfortunate dispute.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl. I think we all hope that this dispute will be settled satisfactorily.

BRITISH NORTH AMERICA BILL
4.4 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES(THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): My Lords, this Bill, which is in effect purely formal in character, has already passed through all its stages in the other House. It has been introduced in order to give effect to an Address to the Queen by both Houses of the Canadian Parliament that a Bill
824
in these terms should be passed by this Parliament. Many of your Lordships will be aware why it is that, at this stage of history, the Parliament of the United Kingdom should be asked to pass legislation on a matter purely of concern to Canada, but, in case any of your Lordships feel somewhat surprised, I will give a very brief explanation. The British North America Act, 1867, which, together with subsequent amendments, forms the Constitution of Canada, contained no provision for amendment by Canada itself. When the Statute of Westminster was passed in 1931, a provision (Section 7) was included, in order to satisfy the Canadian Provinces, maintaining this position. An Act of 1949 has enabled the Canadian Parliament to amend the British North America Act except as regards matters relating to the Provinces, and in such a matter legislation by the United Kingdom Parliament is still necessary. The present Bill is such a matter.
The question of a procedure whereby the British North America Act could be amended in all respects by the Canadian Parliament has been under discussion in Canada for many years, but it has been impossible so far to obtain agreement of all the Provinces on this. The Prime Minister of Canada recently stated that the Canadian Government intend to pursue the question, and that the matter will be included in the agenda for the next Federal-Provincial Conference. I accordingly commend the Bill to your Lordships, and beg to move that it be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Duke of Devonshire.)
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I do not think that a request from another Commonwealth Parliament to us to legislate should pass us by without receiving the cordial support of the Opposition. We, of course, all agree that the Canadian Parliament is completely entitled to legislate, as it proposes in this Bill, about old-age pensions. It is surprising, as the noble Duke has said, that this request should have to be made to us; the Canadian Parliament is the only Parliament in the Commonwealth that has to come to us to ask permission to legislate about domestic matters. I was glad to hear from the noble Duke that the Canadian Government are considering getting the

825
agreement of the Provinces to an amendment of the Constitution as contained in the British North America Act, 1867. That is all I wish to say in order to express the cordial support of the Opposition for this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 20), Bill read 3a, and passed.

SHIPPING CONTRACTS AND COMMERCIAL DOCUMENTS BILL
4.8 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRANG in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Directions with respect to documents required by foreign courts, etc.]:
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, after subsection (2), to insert:
"() For the purposes of this section any request or demand for the supply of a document or information which, pursuant to the requirement of any court, tribunal or authority of a foreign country, is addressed to a person in the United Kingdom shall be treated as a requirement to produce or furnish that document or information to that court, tribunal or authority, and directions under this section may be given accordingly for prohibiting compliance therewith."
The noble Lord said: I have one Amendment, modest in size but reasonably important, to ask the Committee to accept. As I explained the other day, a clause of the Bill enables the Minister to protect documents and information from having to be produced or furnished in response to a requirement imposed directly on a person which, of course, includes a company in the United Kingdom, by a foreign country or authority. This Amendment will enable him to extend this protection to cases where the requirement is imposed indirectly—for instance, when an American court or authority orders a parent company in America to get from its British subsidiary a document located in the United Kingdom. This Amendment will enable the
826
Minister concerned to give directions under Clause 2 of the Bill in such a case, if he could have done so had the demand been made directly to the British subsidiary company.
It is drawn widely enough to cover a case where the request is made by a foreign subsidiary to its British parent and also where the request passes between two companies, both of which are subsidiaries of a parent company in a third country. Without this protection in such a case a British company might feel that they are obliged to protect their associates in another country by complying with the request. But if they are backed by a direction of the Minister of the Crown not to supply the document, then I think it is reasonable to suppose that the foreign associate would be able to plead that they had tried to secure the document in question, but that it was against the law of the country for the other company to supply it. The Amendment is really for the purpose of making certain that there is no loophole. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 4, at end insert the said sub-section.—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD SILKIN: I do not rise to oppose this Amendment, but I am not quite clear about the position. A person who is required to give information to a foreign country and does not do so is liable to a penalty or to be committed for contempt of court or can be dealt with in some other way under the law of the country that requests the information. If that person does give the information, then under this Amendment he is liable to be penalised for giving it. I raised this point on Second Reading and the noble Lord said that this was better than the existing position. I do not think that the position of a person who is required to give information is very satisfactory. I can only hope that the discussions that are taking place will obviate putting any British subject in the position of having to break either the law of a foreign country or the law of this country. But it is a bargaining point, I suppose, and I hope it will be resolved in the next few days.
LORD CHESHAM: I am sorry if I have not made this matter as clear as I had hoped. I certainly echo the noble Lord's wish, that this will never have to be put into force. I said so on the last

827
occasion. This Amendment does not introduce any new point of principle, but merely applies the principle already in the Bill by seeking to provide protection by indirect means. We should stop this loophole if we are going to have the Bill, but I still hope that it will not be used.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with an Amendment.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to Resolution of July 20) Report received. Bill read 3a, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS BILL
4.16 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Derwent.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRANG in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Obscene articles intended for publication for gain
7 & 8 Eliz. 2. c. 66
1.—
(2)For the purpose of any proceedings for an offence against the said section 2 a person shall be deemed to have an article for publication for gain if with a view to such publication he has the article in his ownership, possession or control.
LORD DARWEN LORD DARWEN moved to leave out subsection (2). The noble Lord said: In accordance with the custom of your Lordships' House whereby a Member with a possible financial interest in the subject on which he speaks declares that interest, I mention that I am a book publisher; that, so far as I am aware, I have published no books which could be called "pornographic"; but that my company does publish books on sex—in fact, books on sex education for young
828
people have been, and are, a feature of our list and a matter of special interest to me personally.
Let me say at the outset that in moving the Amendment which stands in my name, I do not seek to torpedo the Bill. The aim of the Bill is entirely acceptable, but I think that certain Amendments are necessary in order to make it fair to all parties concerned, and in this respect I will certainly support the Amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams. Although I accept the aim of the Bill, I am not altogether happy with the way it has been drafted. I listened to the debate in your Lordships' House on Tuesday and found it most interesting. Had I been in another place, I would have been on my feet on more than one occasion, trying to catch the Speaker's eye. The moral case was eloquently argued, particularly by the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Newcastle. Moreover, the need to stop the importation of hundreds of thousands of obscene paperbacks is desirable, I think we all agree, not only on moral grounds but—and here I speak as a publisher—in order to clear the normal trade channels for normal trade.
May I be allowed to refer back to 1959 when I think that I may claim that I was the first Member of your Lordships' House to utter in this House the words, "Lady Chatterley's Lover". At that time, I put a question to the then Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, and this is what I asked him. It is most relevant [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 217, col. 82]:
"First, suppose I am in the street with a friend and happen to have a copy of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover unexpurgated, and I pass this copy to my friend. Am I in danger of prosecution (a) under the existing Common Law and (b) more so if this Amendment passes into law? Then again, even more disturbing is the thought that if this Amendment passes into law it would seem quite in order for a policeman to look through the curtains of a private house if he saw the flickering of a cinematograph and had any reason to suppose that pictures were being shown that might be of an obscene nature."
This is, briefly, what the then Lord Chancellor said in reply (col. 84):
"Lord Darwen asked me about the position where he hands a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover to his friend. I am not going into the question of the intrinsic position of that book but only into the comparative position, because

829
that is really what he wanted to know. Even under my Amendment, if he lends the book to his friend the chance of anyone being able to prove that it tended to deprave or corrupt his friend is extremely small—I am not making any reflection on the noble Lord's friends, but I am envisaging the circle to whom the noble Lord would be likely to give or lend the book."
Subsection (2) of Clause 1 seems to make the matter even worse. The trouble with the Bill, so far as I can see, is that it tries to meet the special requirements of all kinds of pornography collectively instead of separately. This, I think, is in part the reason for the introduction of the subsection which I am asking your Lordships to omit. I should like to read the subsection to your Lordships. It says:
"For the purpose of any proceedings for an offence against the said section 2 a person shall be deemed to have an article for publication for gain if with a view to such publication he has the article in his ownership, possession or control."
My objection to this subsection has nothing to do with my being a publisher, and not much to do with my views on obscenity. It is simply that I feel that the subsection does not reflect the general principles of British justice.
The difficulty is that both obscenity and publication are hard to define in practical terms. The effect of the subsection is to define publication, or the intention to publish, by reason of possession. Thus, a single article judged to be obscene is of itself sufficient evidence for proceedings to be initiated. This I consider to be an infringement of the liberty of the person. The effect, as I understand it, is that any person having in his possession any article (it might be a book, picture, photograph or a statue) which might in the judgment of the police tend to deprave and corrupt someone—it need not be the owner, and it certainly would not be held to be the police officer—could, under the Bill as it now stands, be hauled up before the magistrate's court. His intention to publish is by this subsection(2)irrelevant, in so far as the mere possession of such an article would be for the purpose of proceedings for an offence under the section to be sufficient evidence of having an article for publication for gain.
I dare say I shall be told by my very near namesake who sits opposite (we are divided only by a "t", and that
830
only a small one)that there is no danger for the private individual, who has nothing to fear from the provisions of the Bill. But that is hardly a satisfactory answer. The point is that the State assumes the role of a keeper of the individual's private taste in art and in morals. This subsection is, in my view, an invasion of the privacy of the individual and, as such, so far as I can see, is utterly contrary to our idea of justice. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 12, leave out subsection (2)—(Lord Darwen.)
LORD SHACKLETON: I am not yet certain whether I am able to support my noble friend Lord Darwen in this Amendment, but if his contentions are soundly based, then clearly this is a serious matter. If, for instance, my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth obtained, as he advised me to do, a copy of Fanny Hill from the House of Commons Library (I was unable to do so, since it is booked up for the next seven months), would my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth be in trouble if he possessed it, or if he showed it to me, admittedly in the public interest—because we are going to debate this? I should hope that this would not be so. If there is a point in my noble friend Lord Darwen's argument, I hope the Government will make the situation as clear as possible.
LORD MOYNE: If I may interpose for a moment, I should not wish to see the Amendment adopted and the subsection deleted, because without the subsection I think a valuable weapon would be removed. But I do not like the subsection as it stands. I suggest to my noble friend that he should look at this again from the point of view of making the presumption rebuttable. Otherwise it seems to me that a young man might go to a shop and buy a book entitled Marriage Advice, or something perfectly reasonable on the cover, but inside containing something obscene. He would render himself liable to prosecution, because he had in his possession something obscene. This seems to me utterly wrong. The police might be unlikely to prosecute, but I do not like to see a law going on to the Statute Book which goes beyond the intentions of Parliament.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: There is one point on this Amendment that I should like to draw to your Lordships' attention on the question of possession and intention to publish. I should be grateful if the noble Lord who is to reply could explain how it could be defined whether a publisher is going to publish or not, and what his intention is. For instance, there might be a publisher of good repute who was publishing, say, the works of some classic poet, like Lord Byron, which might have some very erotic passages that might be deemed to be obscene. It could be held that he had the intention to publish them, though he may not have that intention. This might put a publisher in an invidious position. His only safeguard is that he may prove under the Bill that he did not know what the poems were. This might be very difficult. I should be grateful if the noble Lord could explain the situation.
4.30 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: I shall reply at some length, because I think this point requires a full explanation. I regret to say that the noble Lord, Lord Darwen, has got it wrong, and so has my noble friend behind me. This is a question of publication for gain—of publication for gain—having an article in your possession with a view to publication for gain. I have said those words three times. It does not mean having an obscene book in your pocket which you know is obscene. You have no intention of publishing it for gain, or even of selling it, and you pass it on to a friend. That is perfectly all right. The definition in subsection (2) refers to the words in subsection (1):
"there shall be inserted the words' or who has an obscene article for publication for gain (whether gain to himself or gain to another)'."
I think that answers the main point.
The noble Lord brought up his argument with the noble and learned Lord who was then on the Woolsack. I think I had better explain the wording of this subsection. I want to say why the wording is necessary. It is necessary to include "ownership" to cover the case where a person who owns the obscene article never has physical possession of it—as, for example, where a publisher has books sent direct from the printer to the wholesaler for distribution. That is the point of that word.
832
"Possession" covers the obvious case in which the person has physical possession of an obscene article—that is quite clear—and the inclusion of "control" in the definition will enable the prosecuting authorities to bring proceedings against the principal concerned in obscene traffic without having to go into questions of legal ownership or actual physical possession. I hope that explains the wording. If we did not have this wording in, and if we simply had the wording in subsection (1),
"has an obscene article for publication for gain"
without definition, the whole thing would remain rather equivocal. I hope that that explains the point to the noble Lord. I do not think he quite understood that when he got up.
The question raised by the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, is really a question of a publisher who has in his office obscene literature which he has not even looked at, but which has been sent to him for reading.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: Or he may have looked at it.
LORD DERWENT: I think the noble Earl's fears are really groundless. The Bill makes no change whatever in relation to unpublished manuscripts. The new offence of having an obscene article with a view to publication for gain can arise only after the decision to publish has been taken. That is the first point about that. Moreover, in any case where an article has not yet been examined—which might well be the case if it is in the publisher's office—then Clause 1(3)(a) provides a defence because obscenity is not suspected by him. It is only after publication is decided for gain that the Bill bites. I hope that clears up the point for the noble Earl.
I hope that I have now satisfactorily explained the matter to the noble Lord, Lord Darwen. I do not think there is anything he need be frightened of. It is absolutely essential to have this wording to cover the evil that he also wants to stop, the trade in mass pornography. I do not think it will affect in any way the genuine publisher. It does not really alter the existing Act in that respect, and I therefore hope the noble Lord may decide to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD DARWEN: I thank the noble Lord the Minister of State for his answer. Of course, he is much better acquainted with the legal phrasing of these things than I am, and perhaps I have read more into this subsection than should have been read. I will withdraw my Amendment, but before I do so I should be indebted to the noble Lord if he could briefly give me an answer to another layman's query, if I may put it in that way. Supposing that I have in my possession some erotic drawings, regardless of the fact that I am a publisher—my job is something else; we will say a doctor—what is to prevent my being prosecuted under this Bill? It seems to me that the only way in which the Bill defines publication for gain is that I possess these things. If I possess them, then I may well publish them for gain.
LORD DERWENT: The answer is, of course, that there is nothing to stop anyone from being prosecuted for anything, but the prosecutor has to prove that the person accused is going to publish, or that he has published, and that he has done it for gain. On the facts given to me by the noble Lord as I heard them, he might well be prosecuted, as any of us could be, but I should not have thought there was the slightest chance of his being convicted.
LORD DARWEN: I thank the noble Lord and ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.37 p.m.
LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS moved, after subsection (2), to insert:
"() Where an article is seized under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (which provides for the seizure of obscene articles kept for publication for gain) and a summons is issued under subsection (3) of that section if the Author or maker of such articles entitled to appear under subsection (4) appears and satisfies the Court that he intends to persist in publication and bona fide intends to raise a defence that the said article is not obscene or that its publication is justified as being for the public good on the grounds that it is in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern and wishes to have the said issues determined by a jury the Court shall adjourn the proceedings under section 3 of the said Act and shall direct a charge of having the article for publication for gain to be preferred under section 2 of the said Act against the person so appearing."
The noble Lord said: As your Lordships will perceive, the Amendment which stands in my name and that of my noble friends Lord Brain, Lord Shackleton, and Lord Gardiner, is a very modest Amendment. It is designed solely to give statutory powers to what we have already been told, both here and in another place, is the Government's intention. I should like to ask your Lordships to consider what this Amendment would do, and what it would not do—and both are equally important.
I would begin by referring to the assurance—and it was a very valuable and acceptable assurance—that was given by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, in the Second Reading debate, when he said, after an interjection by my noble friend Lord Shackleton [col. 617]:
"If it is obvious to the prosecutor—the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney General—that a man is making a genuine case that a book is a work of great literary merit, then we say that we will see, if he says that he is going to persist in it, that he is prosecuted".
Being prosecuted, he has, of course, the right to go to a higher court and he tried before a jury. The noble Lord went on:
"That does not give him the right to ask for a prosecution. In the other type of case, where it is quite obvious that this is done to try to avoid forfeiture for purely financial reasons, the prosecution would not operate in that way."
This Amendment has been drawn only to ensure that there shall be the right to trial by jury in cases where the Government have already said that they believe that this right should be offered. It does not seek to give that right where they have been opposed—as many others, including many of my noble friends would be opposed, and, I think, rightly opposed—to such a right being given. It gives no sustenance or support to the common purveyors of filth, but only to those whom the Government themselves agree ought to have it: the reputable authors and makers—that is, the publishers, in the normal literary sense, and not, as I take it, in the strict legal sense, the distributor or disseminator of a book charged with being obscene.
It may be asked why, in view of the assurance given by the noble Lord. Lord Derwent, on behalf of the Attorney

835
General in another place, we seek to make this a statutory right. I suggest to your Lordships that it is not proper that such important matters should be subject to administrative decision, but that a statutory right should be involved. Attitudes can change. Indeed, if we are to judge from the reports in the newspapers and questions that have been asked in another place, they are now changing, following the recent appointment of a new Director of Public Prosecutions, as regards the institution of proceedings in cases of homosexual acts between consenting adults. I am not arguing whether or not that is a change which your Lordships would approve. All I am saying is that it is an indication, and there have been many other indications on many occasions, that attitudes can change, that they change with the climate of opinion and with new men coming in with new ideas. They can at one time be very rigid and at other times very liberal.
Therefore, in an important and basic matter of this kind, greatly concerning literary values and also the rights of individuals, the author and the publisher, that intention, that willingness to ensure that where there is a legitimate case of public right and public good there should be the right to go to a higher court, before a jury, should be made a statutory right and not left to the decision of officials. If it is suggested—and it was suggested on other Amendments not the same as this; this is a much narrower Amendment than those which were put at various stages in another place—that the law is unable to give statutory force to this requirement, then I am bound, as a layman, to say that I feel in this matter that the law is an ass, a perverse and malevolent ass in this particular case—indeed, not so much an ass as a mule.
But is it legally impossible? Certainly the legal advice I have taken and the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, whose legal competence would not, I think, be challenged, has felt it possible to put his name to this Amendment, indicate that there is no legal bar whatever in the way of such an Amendment. The difficulty arises, if it arises at all, because of the forfeiture procedure, because forfeiture, as your Lordships know, is not a criminal proceeding. It
836
is, as I think I attempted to describe it during the Second Reading debate, a form of sewage disposal. Administratively, it is very helpful and very handy, and I and my noble friends do not wish to seek to get in the way. It is a very helpful, useful and valuable procedure in cases where there is material of obvious pornographic intent, in which forfeiture proceedings can be taken before a magistrates' court and where no case of genuine literary merit could be, or indeed is, advanced.
But it is a fact that there can arise in such instances cases where the reputation and livelihood of a reputable author, a maker of books or a publisher, can be caught out, and although forfeiture is not, in legal effect, a criminal proceeding, to be found guilty in a forfeiture proceeding can be, and is, just as damaging to the reputation, to the standing and to the ability for future livelihood of men of honest repute who have believed honestly that they were seeking to publish material of great merit. Admittedly they may be wrong, but even if they are they ought to have the opportunity to argue their case before a jury before a decision is taken.
It is to protect them that this Amendment is designed. It is not against prosecution and punishment in any way, if they are, in fact, guilty, but against what one might almost describe as their punishment by default without a proper trial before a jury where their case can be stated before twelve of their fellow citizens guided by a Judge, and a decision reached after evidence by expert witnesses, and so on, has been called. That is all that this Amendment seeks to do. In the vast majority of cases the forfeiture proceeding is used against obvious filth of no literary or other merit. Such poronographic material is largely anonymous; to use a famous phrase, it is without pride of parent or hope of posterity. It is a product of darkness for which those who peddle it do so successfully if they can, and are prepared, if found out, to get away with it as easily as they may. I suggest that it is highly improbable that those who are subject to forfeiture proceedings of this kind if they are found out, and if they are concerned only with the peddling of pornography, will seek to have the matter transferred to another court and to undergo all the

837
risks and dangers which face them if it does, in fact, go to a higher court and they are convicted.
But it is important, and it is accepted in the 1959 Act in a section which this Bill does not seek to amend in any way, that where material is seized under a forfeiture act there may be an interest of others, of the author or the maker, and they are given the right to appear in that forfeiture case. All that this Amendment asks is that if they do so appear, and if they convince the court that they "intend to persist in publication"—and I use the Minister's own phrase in this regard—and intend to put forward a defence of literary merit and the public interest, then the court (not they), having listened to this argument, shall have the right to decide that the matter shall go under the other section of the Act and be subject to a criminal prosecution and, therefore, to trial before a jury. The right so to decide is the right of the court, after hearing the evidence put forward by those who, under the existing Act, are given the right to appear and who have to convince the court of those two things. And that seems to me to implement entirely what the Government has said is its intention, that when there are matters in which serious issues of this kind are concerned it would be the normal procedure of the prosecuting authorities to bring them under that section of the Act.
The arguments that have been put against various proposals to amend the Act along such lines in the past, but which I hope this present Amendment meets, are, first, the one which I have already referred to: that it might lead to jamming of the courts. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, slightly gave away his case on this ground during the Second Reading debate when he said that there was no instance in any of these forfeiture cases where there had been an appeal to quarter sessions. And I should have thought that was so, because in the vast majority of these cases, as I say, those whose material is subject——
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I think my noble friend cannot have been able to get sufficient access to the records. I have a distinct recollection
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myself of appearing in forfeiture proceedings in quarter sessions many years ago.
LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack; but my understanding of the statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, was that the position was as I indicated. In any event, the number of such cases in which there is an appeal to the quarter sessions is very small; and it is very small because, as I say, these are people of the darkness and the night, who are concerned only to get the forfeiture proceedings through as rapidly as possible, in the hope that they will then be able to turn to some other way of earning a dishonest penny by pandering to the pathetic vices of those who are available, they hope, to them for exploitation.
But this possibility of the court's being jammed is, I think, in any event, even if it could be said to exist, met by the narrow terms of this Amendment: because the right to appear and to put forward a case that the matter should be dealt with under Section 2 of the Act is restricted to makers and authors of the books. As I have said, it requires that they shall be able to convince the court that they intend to persist in publication, and it requires that they shall be able to convince the court that they intend bona fide to put forward the defence of literary merit. In other words, it separates the maker and the author from the distributor, from the back-street shop which makes a practice of selling pornographic filth of this kind.
Moreover, that separation is accepted by the Government, because in another place the Solicitor General, in reply to a question by my honourable and learned friend Mr. Niall MacDermot, made it clear that the assurance given by the Government meant that in such circumstances the publisher, the maker or the author would be tried alone: that is, not linked with those who had been using material, perhaps completely contrary to his wishes and desires, peddling it in back-street pornographic shops—not against that background but against the wider and more important background of the book as a book. This, I think, is very important. It is important not only as one more way of preventing the courts from being jammed, but because it might well often

839
arise—indeed, it does arise—in the case of scientific and medical books; and particularly, perhaps, books on abnormal psychology, which are important because they may make great contributions to knowledge that should be available for study by students, doctors and so on.
It has sometimes been the case that such books have been bought by these little back-street Soho shops and displayed in their windows clearly in the hope of using them as a bait for pornographic sales. And it is essential that the position of the author and the maker of books should be considered apart from that of the distributor, who may not be in any sense an authorised distributor. I think, for example, of the works on abnormal psychology of Havelock Ellis which for a long time, because they happened to be taken up and sold in shops devoted to pornography, gathered around themselves in many circles this kind of salacious reputation. This Amendment is an attempt to recognise that all the procedures which are available to stamp out the trade in filth for money's sake should be given the full power and force to be effective, but also that it is very necessary, in the interests of literature and in the interests of private individuals of reputation and integrity, that this statutory right to go for trial before a jury should be maintained.
The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, argued in the earlier debate in your Lordships' House that it was quite wrong—and of course I thoroughly accept this—to say that in forfeiture proceedings the decision was the decision of one man only. He pointed out that before coming before the magistrate the matter would have been considered by the Public Prosecutor's Office, by the police and a whole chain of people who decided whether this was a fit subject for such a case. But I ask your Lordships to consider also those who are involved in the publication of a book which may be of great literary merit. There is not one man involved in that either. There is the author, who may have taken a long, long time writing his book believing that he is producing something of great literary importance. The book then goes to the publisher. He will send it to a reader; and, where
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necessary, to those who he believes can give him expert advice.
So it is a whole group of people who decide that the book is one that should be published, and that it has literary merit which justifies publication. They may be wrong, just as the officials in the police authorities, or in the Prosecutor's office, or the magistrate may also be either right or wrong. But this is surely exactly the kind of case, where there is a strong difference of opinion between two groups of experts, that ought to go before a jury. That is my case for this Amendment; that this is a matter which touches upon important human rights and important questions of literary value, and my Amendment will in no way weaken the Bill but will strengthen and humanise it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 15, at end insert the said sub-section.—(Lord Francis-Williams.)
5.0 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: I hope I can be brief on this. I should like to say, first of all, that although this Amendment is moved under powerful auspices, we are not regarding it as a Party matter, and some of us—and, speaking for myself, certainly I—would not be in a position to support it. In my view, the Amendment would completely nullify Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act, 1959, which I regard as a valuable part of it. It enables the court, where a case is quite clear, to go through the procedure of forfeiture while giving the person who is accused every opportunity of justifying his case, of putting up the argument that this is not an obscene publication, that it is a work of literary merit, and so on. It gives him a right of appeal to quarter sessions, and even of having a case stated for the opinion of the High Court. I think that such a person is fully protected under this valuable Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act.
I do not want to be too critical of the wording of this Amendment, but it is inherent in the Amendment that anybody can obtain the right to go to the High Court and a jury. All he has to do is to satisfy the court that he intends to go on with the publication—not a difficult or onerous condition—and that he

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bona fide believes that it is in the interests of science, or literature, and so on. How does he satisfy a court that he bona fide believes that? He will say, "I have 35 witnesses, including a bishop, who are prepared to go in the box and to say that it is a work of literary merit," et cetera. On that, of course, any court would be bound to let the case go to a jury.
I cannot help feeling that this is an Amendment which is not in the interests of justice or of anything else. It so happens that in a notorious case the defendants were successful in going to a jury, I think by sheer weight of evidence, and by the sheer—perhaps I should not say this—weariness of the court in having all this evidence placed before it. Of course trial by jury is one phase, and it is a valuable part of British justice. But there is a danger—is there not?—of so swamping a jury with facts as to confuse them, to tire them out, to weary them, so that at the end of the day they really do not know which way they go? It doss not surprise one that in some cases they may take the line of least resistance and call it a day.
I think that in appropriate cases there should be a trial by jury, but to give persons the automatic right as this Amendment would do in practice, though not in theory—as I have said, the conditions are so easy to fulfil before a magistrate that one can go to a jury as a matter of right—is going much too far. After all, this is a Bill to prevent, and not to encourage, obscene publications. We do not want to make it too easy for obscene publications to be distributed among the public. Therefore, I think the Bill as it stands, with the 1959 Act, is right. I think it would be a great mistake to weaken Section 3 of the 1959 Act and, speaking for myself, I hope that the Government will not be prepared to accept this Amendment.
5.4 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think it may be for the convenience of the Committee if I now reply to the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams. As I expected, he moved it with great persuasiveness and sought to make it look as attractive as possible; dressed it up in most attractive garments, and there were no topless parts missing
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or anything else. But when he began by saying that it was a modest Amendment, merely to give statutory form to the Government's intention, I am sorry to say that I could not agree with him at all. It does not give statutory form to the Government's intention at all. My difficulty in replying to this Amendment is that there are so many cogent arguments which can be advanced against it that it is rather difficult for me to know where to begin.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for the support and encouragement he has already given. I should like to remind your Lordships that this Bill has a quite limited effect. Its intention is to block the loopholes which decisions in the courts have shown to exist in the 1959 Act. I think there is absolute agreement that those loopholes must be blocked effectively. The 1959 Act was a Private Members' Act and, if I may express a personal view, I do not think it was an Act which would get the first prize as a model of legislation. But these defects which have appeared as the result of decisions in the courts are defects which the Bill seeks to remedy.
There is also the defect, in some eyes, that a work such as Fanny Hill was condemned without the verdict of a jury; but there are equally those who regard it as a defect that a work like Lady Chatterley's Lover should escape condemnation. The time may come when the Act will require to be reviewed, but the recent decisions of the courts and the influx of obscene trash from overseas into this country make it essential to pass this Bill to block the particular loopholes which experience has shown now exist.
I would not think it right now to reopen the issues decided in 1959 on a wider field. A compromise was reached then, and until there is a complete review of the whole question it ought not to be disturbed. For practical reasons, it is really not possible to provide for trial by jury in all forfeiture proceedings. I will not elaborate upon that; I am sure your Lordships will agree that that really is not practicable, because it would mean that the whole machinery of justice could be clogged. I think it is true that those who put forward this proposal and support it now recognise that, because although it was pressed for

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in another place it has not been pressed for here.
In saying what I propose to say, I do not wish it to be thought that the Government think that trial by jury is not appropriate for determining questions of obscenity; but, in my view, trial by jury is inappropriate in forfeiture proceedings. I must confess, too, that I am a little intrigued as to the enthusiasm with which some people seek to secure trial by jury. I cannot agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, said in the grounds that he advanced for that. Important questions of fact affecting the liberty, and indeed the reputation, of many individuals are tried and properly determined in the magistrates' courts, without any appearance before a jury. And there is, of course, the appeal from the magistrates' court. Obscenity is a question of fact. As I have said, very important questions of fact are decided by magistrates.
Oddly enough, years ago I must confess to having had a not inconsiderable practice in what I might call the forfeiture field. There was one particular publication, whose name I will not mention because, for all I know, it may be published now, which was a source of considerable income to me. Whenever there were forfeiture proceedings up and down the country usually this publication, which those who published it claimed to be entirely reputable, was among the articles seized, with the satisfactory result that I received a brief, which took me to many parts of the country. One of the difficulties then was that in the forfeiture proceedings the person in possession of the documents had to show cause why they should not be forfeited. The actual publishers for whom I was appearing had no locus standi and no right of audience, and it was difficult to get one. One managed to do so by also appearing for the shop assistant or something of the sort. The point is now that in these proceedings the publisher has a right of intervening, and that is a very important change.
Then also in these forfeiture proceedings before magistrates, as indeed before a jury, expert evidence can be called and its weight assessed. And your Lordships
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will bear in mind that expert witnesses are those who are allowed to give evidence of their opinion because of their special training or experience on the subject in question. The example that springs to one's mind is the calling of doctors on medical questions. I must confess that I have always been rather puzzled as to the characteristics of those who come forward to give evidence as experts when any question of obscenity arises. I should like to make it clear that I believe the Bishop of Woolwich, who has been referred to earlier in this debate, was allowed to give evidence as an expert on ethics, a topic which I do not think the courts have previously regarded as approprate for evidence by experts. However that may be, there is this desire for the determination of the question of obscenity before a jury. It was argued in favour of this proposal if I may quote the words of the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, that where there was a strong difference of expert opinion then the case was a stronger case to go before a jury. I beg leave to doubt that. The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, rather suggested in the Second Reading debate that one of the reasons for this enthusiasm for trial by jury was that it might prove easier to avoid conviction in such a trial. If that were the case, the argument for this Amendment is rather special pleading. I am not expressing a view on that, but if that were the case then the argument for this innovation seems to be a rather thin one.
LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS: May I interrupt the noble and learned Lord simply to say that that is not the case which has been put forward? It is not because my noble friends and I believe that when a case comes before a jury it is necessarily likely to be more easily dismissed than if it comes before a magistrate: it is because we believe that when issues of this kind are raised they ought to go before a jury for decision.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Is that right, when one bears in mind the number of serious issues of questions of fact, involving people's reputations and perhaps their liberty, which are determined by magistrates? I do not want your Lordships to think from what I have been saying that I am against trial by

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jury—I am not. But I am making these general observations before dealing with this particular Amendment.
This Amendment creates a striking and, I think, unprecedented innovation. The noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, referred to Amendments of a similar character which were put forward in another place, and he sought to suggest that this Amendment was preferable to those Amendments. I rather doubt whether it is, in fact, but it is not for me to comment on the efforts to produce a good Amendment of this kind. I want to deal with the point of principle as well as the content of the Amendment. I think it will be convenient if I deal first with the form of the Amendment, because it does not really achieve what Lord Francis-Williams, if I understood him correctly, wants it to achieve. By drawing attention to the form of the Amendment, it will help me to be shorter in dealing with the objections of principle.
The object of the Amendment is to enable the author or publisher of a work in respect of which forfeiture proceedings have been instituted to require that a prosecution should be instituted against him with trial before a jury. The Amendment does not bring that object about. Your Lordships will see that it does not apply to a publisher in the ordinary sense of the word. It talks about the "author". The author, we know, is the writer. It talks about the "maker". The maker is an apt word for someone who makes a figure or statuette or something of that kind; but in fact the Amendment does not refer to the publisher. Secondly, one sees that it requires the author or maker—and I use the words of the Amendment—to satisfy the court that he, the author or maker, intends to persist in publication and bona fide intends to raise a defence——
LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS: May I interrupt the noble and learned Lord when he takes up the question of the word "maker"? The term "maker" which he apparently regards as imprecise is, in fact, exactly the word used in Section 3(4) of the 1959 Act, which says:
"In addition to the person summoned, any other person being the owner, author or maker of any of the articles … shall be entitled to appear …"
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I was rather struck when I saw the words which the noble Lord has left out. The words of subsection (4) are
"owner, author or maker of any of the articles brought before the court"
and then come the words which the noble Lord left out
"or any other person through whose hands they had passed before being seized …"
Those words are apt to cover a publisher. They are not going to do so in this Amendment. That is a minor point; but the author or maker simply could not, except in the most exceptional circumstances, ever satisfy the court that he intended to persist in publication.
I ask your Lordships to bear in mind that the question whether anyone wants to persist in publication does not arise in forfeiture proceedings. The only question that arises in forfeiture proceedings is whether the person brought before the court can show cause why the articles or any of them should not be forfeited; and if the court is satisfied, in respect of any of the articles, that they were obscene articles kept for publication for gain, they should be ordered to be forfeited. There is no question before the court in forfeiture proceedings of further publication.
If this provision were inserted in the Bill it would mean that everybody brought before the court in forfeiture proceedings could say, to take the case of the 500 negatives, "I am the author or maker and intend to persist in the publication of these negatives." Then they would have the right, if the Amendment were accepted, to go to trial and, presumably, if there were 500 negatives there would have to be 500 counts on the indictment, because each negative would presumably be different. Although it might be said when the case got to trial that the court would have to proceed on one count and not on 500, when the guilt or innocence in relation to that particular one had been established there would still be 499 which would presumably have to go back and be dealt with simply on the forfeiture proceedings. So although I appreciate what the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, said, that it was not his desire to interfere at all with the forfeiture process which he commended, in fact the effect of this Amendment would really be to wreck that procedure.

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Then may I point out this? If it were carried, the Amendment would require the prosecution to charge a man with having an article for publication for gain, even if the prosecution could produce no evidence that he had the article at all, or, if they could prove that he had the article, no evidence that he had it for publication. Even if they got over that fence and had evidence that he had it for publication, that he had it for publication for gain, and without consideration of the question whether there would be any evidence available on those issues to support a charge under Section 2 of the Act, the acceptance of this Amendment would require the prosecution to institute a charge under that section. As I have pointed out, and I think this is an objection of substance, the present Amendment requires the institution of proceedings by the prosecution even if they have no evidence of the ingredients of the offence to be charged against the accused.
This Amendment would make a very striking innovation in our criminal procedure, for it is fundamental to the administration of the criminal law that prosecutors enjoy a discretion whether or not to prosecute in any particular case. There is not a single instance that I can find in our law where prosecution is mandatory on the direction of a court, on prima facie evidence of an offence being available. Although by the Amendment—the noble Lord was perfectly frank about it—it is merely sought to take discretion away from the Director of Public Prosecutions and to make it mandatory to prosecute, in effect the Amendment confers the discretion on the accused himself as to what charge will be preferred against him. That is, I think, a complete reversal of the fundamental principles of the criminal law, and I must advise your Lordships to reject it.
I want, if I may, to make one other point clear. The object of proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act is not, as is sometimes thought, to determine as an objective question whether or not a particular article is per se obscene. That is not the question the court has to decide, and the procedures available under the Act are not apt for determining that question. It may be
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true that an acquittal usually produces the result that no further proceedings are taken by the police in respect of other copies of the article, but the converse is not true. A conviction of publication to a minor will not necessarily lead to a prosecution for publication to an adult. The procedures available must be used for the purposes for which they were made available, and on that basis the procedure under Section 2 is punitive and the procedure under Section 3 is preventive.
It would be just as wrong to put prosecuting authorities in the position of having to use the punitive procedure, where in their view the conduct of the person concerned did not call for punitive measures, as it would be to require them to take proceedings for forfeiture in a case where, in their view, the public interest required them to prosecute. The effect of this Amendment appears to be that if, for instance, a medical work is seized in Soho or in a children's bookshop, the publisher of the book is to have the right to come forward and demand that he should be prosecuted for having other copies of the book available for sale to medical practitioners, and that the forfeiture proceedings should stand adjourned until he has been so prosecuted. I think that really is too much. This illustration serves to show that forfeiture proceedings cannot be tied to litigation concerning the publication or proposed publication of other copies of the work, or even of the same copies in other circumstances for a different class of persons.
I could pursue this matter at some length, but I hope that I have summarised at least the main arguments on this point. After again giving this consideration—because in substance what has been proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, was proposed in another place and discussed there—I want to make it clear that I am in no way departing from what was said by my right honourable and learned friend the Solicitor General in another place, as to the practice which is followed in considering what steps to take with regard to the institution of a prosecution.
May I just make it quite clear that, before the matter gets before the courts (this Amendment, of course, deals with

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what should happen when the matter is before the courts), the prosecution have to consider what steps they will take. Then, as my noble friend Lord Derwent said, if it appears in those early inquiries before a charge is preferred, that it is the intention of the publisher to persist in publication—I am not seeking to quote the words that he used; they are on record—then the noble Lord has the assurance that the proceedings will be brought under Section 2. I do not wish to add to, or in any way to depart from, and I hope I have not varied from, anything that my noble and learned friend said. But I should have thought that was, or should be, a satisfactory assurance for those for whom the noble Lord has spoken so eloquently this afternoon. I cannot advise your Lordships to accept this Amendment. I could elaborate the objections to it at greater length, but I feel that noble Lords will not require me to do so. I should like to conclude by saying that we have carefully considered the position but cannot see any room for an Amendment to meet the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, which could be effected without doing substantial injury to the application of the Bill.
LORD DARWEN: Before the noble and learned Lord sits down, I should be most grateful if he would explain to us the precise mechanics under which it is possible for a publisher to go to trial by jury. If, for example, a forfeiture of a number of obscene books is made from a bookseller, where does the publisher go from that point?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: If forfeiture proceedings have started the publisher is given by the 1959 Act a right, which did not exist before, of intervening in those proceedings. As I stressed before, the person in whose possession the articles are found must show cause why they should not be forfeited. If the court comes to the conclusion that they are obscene, then it will order them to be forfeited. That is the preventive, as distinct from the punitive, process. The 1959 Act made what I thought was the very considerable improvement, certainly in the light of my experience many years ago, of giving the publisher the right of inter-
850
vening. He has the right of intervening; he can call evidence, if he wishes, and the case which has come before the magistrates' court can go to the higher court if they so desire. If the charge is preferred under Section 2—that is, the punitive provision—then there is a right to trial.
The undertaking which was given as to the practice which is followed relates, of course, to the decision as to whether to institute, in the magistrates' court, proceedings for forfeiture, or whether to institute proceedings under Section 2. It appears at the stage before the proceedings are instituted; and that is one reason why (if I may end on the note on which I began) the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, does not, in fact, embody in a statutory form the undertaking given by my right honourable and learned friend.
5.32 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: If I may intervene only very briefly, I think the Committee must be very grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for a very powerful and clear exposition. If he will not regard it as patronising, I must say that I think his explanations in the last few months have gone on getting more and more convincing. I only hope that he will not have the opportunity much longer. I am sure my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams—I do not know about other noble Lords involved—must be convinced by the arguments of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor; and it is no reflection on the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, who did his best on an earlier occasion, that he had to call in these heavier guns to support him on this matter.
I take it—this is to clarify one or two points in my mind—that proceedings for forfeiture were previously taken under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act, and it may presumably be at this point that the dfficulty in discovering whether appeals had taken place arose. It may be the Home Office were looking only at proceedings under the 1959 Act.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think the answer to that is that I doubt very much whether any records of such appeals are kept. I certainly cannot

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remember having seen the statistics myself. When the noble Lord, Lord Francis-Williams, said there had never been any appeals, and quoted my noble friend, I had a recollection of myself undertaking one, and so I intervened to make that correction.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am much obliged. As I understand it—and this seems the important point—the 1959 Act made it possible for a publisher to be a party. I must say I was interested, because I had shared, with my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams, the view that the publisher was covered by the word "maker", whereas, if I understand the noble and learned Lord aright, it is in fact not the publisher who is covered by this but the person into whose hands the articles have passed. Am I understanding that correctly?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think "maker" as it stands would ordinarily be construed as the person who has constructed the particular object, whatever kind of object it may be. It is contrasted here with "author"; but subsection (4) is deliberately drawn as wide as it is to cover anyone through whose hands the article has passed before being seized, and so as to make it quite clear that those who are concerned in the production of the article, in its distribution and in its publication, will have the right of intervention. It is deliberately drawn very widely.
LORD SHACKLETON: I am much obliged. Then, obviously the printer could be the maker as well.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes.
LORD SHACKLETON: This shows quite clearly in what a difficult field this is for the Private Peer or Private Member to operate. We all remember the 1959 Act, and the difficulties then. As the noble Lord has said, this Bill is a compromise. Our real concern was that, since the Government had taken the opportunity to amend certain loopholes which had arisen, and which we accept the need to plug, this was another one which needed attention. But I see that it does not arise specifically out of the 1959 Act. In a sense, it arises out of the 1857 Act plus the extra discretion that is given in the 1959 Act.
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I hope there is no difference between us on the principle; and, since I think some noble Lords have a view that this is either licentiousness or malice on the part of noble Lords who, like myself, support this Amendment, I want to say only that we have a serious issue at heart. It is not a desire to find an easy way to enable pornographers to escape. There is an unsatisfactory state of affairs here, as shown by the case of Fanny Hill. It may well be that it would have been better if, in that case, there had been a prosecution and the prosecution had in fact been successful, as I think, following opinions I have heard, it is likely such a prosecution might have been. This is the case that we have made, but I fully accept that we really cannot do much more to tamper with the Bill, and I expect my noble friend will accept that.
5.38 p.m.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: I do not wish to say much. I am more interested in the ethics and the morals of this matter than the law, though of course the law is undoubtedly connected with those things. But I am sure we are very much obliged to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his exceedingly able and clear exposition of the legal points, which to me, as a layman, seem unanswerable. I think the Committee is also indebted to my noble friend Lord Silkin for the very clear indication which he gave as to what he thought of it, speaking with legal knowledge as he does. I would only say, on the point my noble friend Lord Shackleton has raised about Fanny Hill, that I would not put it past a jury to pass Fanny Hill, remembering all the witnesses that could have been called. There were 35 witnesses in the Lady Chatterley case, including one Bishop—and they need not have stopped at one Bishop; they could have got one or two more.
LORD HOBSON: They would have queued up.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: Bishops are sometimes a very curious lot of people. Mind you, they are not the only curious lot of people: there are other religious people who are curious as well. But I am glad that Fanny Hill did not go before a jury, because I

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think it might have been passed. Whatever might be said about Lady Chatterley's Lover—and I think there is a case to be made that it is pornographic—Fanny Hill certainly is pornographic. I have read it, as I told the House before, as part of my Parliamentary duty. If that had gone before a jury, with a string of the right witnesses, including a Bishop or two, it might perhaps have passed through without challenge. But I think that, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the Solicitor General in another place have said, the Bill as it stands would give it a chance to go for trial by a jury. Although I do not want to deny trial by jury, I nevertheless think that the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover was an experience to make one think and pause a little.
However, we have had a good discussion, and it has been good-tempered. My noble friend Lord Francis-Williams made an eloquent speech, and I do not propose to compete with him or to repeat what I said on Second Reading. I think it has been a useful discussion, and the facts, legal and otherwise, have, I hope, become clear. While I am prepared to vote if necessary, I nevertheless hope that, in the light of the discussion, my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams, as suggested by Lord Shackleton, will think that in all the circumstances of the case it is not necessary to press the Amendment to a Division.
5.40 p.m.
LORD CITRINE: Before this matter is brought to an issue, may I make one or two observations? I have had the good fortune, for an extended period, to be in New Zealand, away from this House and its deliberations; and as the proceedings of our Parliament are not very extensively reported (within my observation) in New Zealand or Australia, I am in complete ignorance of what has preceded the discussion this afternoon. Therefore I speak from that wealth of ignorance which enables people to say things they would otherwise be deterred from saying. I think that most of us to-day know that pornography has a quite different meaning from what it had many years ago. Nowadays it seems to me almost standard practice for authors to interlard their writings with a sort
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of pornography. I thought it rather startling in the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover that certain people were brought forward—some of them young women, presumably of virtuous repute—apparently to give evidence on the use of what many people would call scurrility.
I was myself in a divided state of mind about the Amendment. I would have supported it but for what has been said by the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, who seems to have made it appear completely unworkable. But I do not like the Bill for all that, We are here in the realm of opinion, and those people who could digest readily Rabelais or Ovid as classics might be very strongly offended by some of the references in Lady Chatterley's Lover. What are we going to do about this opinion? We are going to put the determination as to whether a book or an article is obscene, in the first instance in the hands of a local magistrate—a local magistrate who has reasonable grounds for suspecting that something obscene is on sale. He, in turn, issues a search warrant, and authorises the police, or any police constable, to go and make a search. If anything is found which, in the opinion of that constable, is obscene, the constable can proceed to seize what he assumes is an obscene article.
We are coming down by stages. We started off with a magistrate; now we are coming to a constable. Apparently the constable is not limited in any way by the nature of the warrant that has been issued, as the warrant seems to me to mean, as it were, any article that may be within the premises referred to, even though the magistrate issuing the warrant had no knowledge of the existence of that article. If the constable has reason to think the articles are obscene he has the power to seize them. I do not know what is going to happen to the morals of the British constabulary, if you consider the things that go on. If the purpose of the Bill is to prevent corruption of the mind by obscene publications, the poor police will be making representations that there is added danger in their occupation and, consequently, applying for an increase in their salaries.
There is another inconsistency, it seems to me. According to what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said, seizure in the particular shop

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or premises and a determination of forfeiture of the article would apply only to those premises. So the position could arise of books or articles seized in a particular premises and articles of an identical nature being sold elsewhere. I hope I am not wrong about that. I understand that that was what was said. We are getting into a proper knot about this. In other words, seizure takes place in a particular shop—I use the term "shop" because "premises" is wider and that is what is used in the Bill; but I mean the same thing. These articles are seized, but they can be on sale for a week or more because the order does not take effect for fourteen days. Consequently, there might be an extended sale of those allegedly obscene articles in the interim period. I do not know what happens to the obscene articles that are seized. Do they remain in the possession of the court indefinitely? Supposing an appeal is made to quarter sessions, what happens to the articles that have been seized? Would they remain seized although no decision on forfeiture had been made? I am puzzled.
I do not know how this Bill is going to work. I can see all sorts of inconsistencies, with obscene articles being forfeited in particular parts of the country yet being on sale in other parts; and perhaps completely different conceptions of what is obscenity being raised by magistrates in different parts of the country. I wish I could support the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams. The idea is a good one. But in this realm of opinion it ought not to be put in the hands of individuals to determine whether or not an article is obscene. The nearest thing we can come to justice in this country is trial by jury. In the Magna Charta it is pretty well laid down that that was the opinion when it was drawn up. I hope it will always continue, because no matter how learned a person may be in this realm, it eventually comes down to a matter of opinion. What is obscene in England under these provisions might be regarded as a quite commonplace and legitimate article of sale in many other lands. I am sorry I cannot support the Amendment because of the inconsistencies shown in it; but I should have liked to see the right of appeal to a jury established.
5.48 p.m.
LORD BURDEN: Those of us associated with this Amendment were worried about the procedure in regard to forfeiture, and it was because of our anxiety that injustice should not be done so far as forfeiture is concerned that the Amendment was put down. May we go back and examine the background to the 1959 Act? It arose out of a series of legal decisions in various courts which caused consternation and dismay among both publishers and authors. One of the most unhappy incidents, I think, before the 1959 Act, was when a police officer at Swindon seized copies of The Decameron, priced at three guineas, in 1954, and the magistrates at Swindon declared the book to be obscene. Probably my good friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth, if he ever dipped into those pages, might agree with the magistrates of Swindon. But in 1954 there was an appeal to quarter sessions when the opinion of the Swindon magistrates was reversed.
What we were afraid of was that appeal in regard to forfeiture cases would be lost under this Bill. For instance, had The Decameron been forfeited and destroyed, it would have made us the laughing stock of the whole civilised world. We should not want something like that to happen again. A police officer might go into a bookshop and his eye might light upon The Golden Ass by Apuleius. He might pick it up and turn to one of the chapters which he would probably regard as obscene. I wonder whether that would be seized and destroyed, on a decision of the magistrates, and hold us up to derision throughout the world. On the assurance that, in these forfeitures, the right of appeal still remains, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams, having done a useful service to both publishers and authors in having this point brought out clearly, will be willing to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD FRANCIS-WILLIAMS: I should like to thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his lucid and clear exposition of the effects which he saw might arise from my proposed Amendment. Though I recognise the force of what he said, I hope he will forgive me if, even now, as a layman, I really do not believe that it should be completely beyond legal wit to get over

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some of these legal difficulties and embody the intention of the Amendment in a clause which would be workable. The noble and learned Lord tells me that my Amendment would not be workable and manifestly I must bow to his superior knowledge in this matter. But I am grateful to him for the reiteration of the assurance, which had earlier been given by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, and in another place, that where instances of the kind I was concerned with, of serious publications by serious authors and publishers, who believe that they are doing something of literary merit, are the subject of prosecution, they will be dealt with under Section 2. Therefore, with your Lordships' permission, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to the Resolution of July 20), Report received. Bill read 3a; and passed.

HAIRDRESSERS (REGISTRATION) BILL
Report of Amendments received (according to Order).
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of July 20), Bill read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

NEW FOREST BILL [H.L.]
5.54 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of Commons Amendments.
LORD CRATHORNE: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered. If it is convenient to your Lordships, I think it might save time if I explained the Amendments now, and then, if your Lordships think fit, vie might take these minor Amendments en bloc.
Amendment No. 1 is a new subsection to Clause 3. It provides for the service of notice upon an owner and
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occupier of land where the verderers intend to erect fencing, in pursuance of subsection (6), in order to limit the area which is unfenced or inadequately fenced. Notice of objection may be given to the verderers and there is also a right of appeal to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I think that this is an improvement to the Bill.
The other Amendments are purely formal. Amendment No. 2 proposes new words to correct a clerical error. Amendment No. 3, to Clause 10, proposes new words to correct a grammatical error. Amendments Nos. 4 and 5, which deal with the expense clauses of the Bill, are necessary because, in theory, the increase in expenditure to which the Bill gives rise could be reflected in rate-deficiency grants and Exchequer equalisation grants under enactments relating to local government in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales. That is the effect of the Amendments on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Crathorne.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[The references are to Bill [121] as first printed for the House of Commons]
Clause 3, page 4, line 29, at end insert—
("(7) (a) In any case in which, under the powers conferred on them by the foregoing subsection, the verderers propose to erect fencing on or adjacent to any land they shall, before applying to the Minister for his consent, serve notice on the owner and occupier of such land (unless, in either case, his identity cannot after reasonable enquiry be ascertained) specifying their proposals and the period, which shall not be less than twenty-eight days, within which notice of objection to the proposals may be sent in writing to the verderers, and including notice of the right of appeal under paragraph (b) of this subsection.
(b) (i) A person on whom notice is served under the foregoing paragraph may, within twenty-eight days after receiving the notice thereof, appeal to the Minister against the proposals to which the notice relates.
(ii) An appeal under this paragraph shall be made by notice in writing to the Minister, which shall indicate the grounds of the objection; and on any such appeal the Minister shall, if either the appellant, or the verderers so desire, afford to each of them an opportunity of appearing before, and being heard by, a person appointed by the Minister for the purpose.")
Clause 4, page 5, line 29, leave out ("the last foregoing subsection") and insert ("subsection (1) of this section")
Clause 10, page 7, line 24, leave out ("may") and insert ("to")
Clause 14, page 8, line 21, after ("Grant") insert ("or Exchequer Equalisation Grant")
Clause 14, page 8, line 22, after ("Wales") insert ("or in Scotland")
LORD CRATHORNE: My Lords, with the leave of the House I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendments, Nos. 1 to 5.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Crathorne.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PROBLEMS OF BRITISH COMMUNITIES ABROAD
5.58 p.m.
LORD ALPORT LORD ALPORT rose to ask Her Majesty's Government to examine the special problems facing British communities resident abroad as a result of changing world conditions. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. It was framed, many months ago, as a Motion. I make no complaint that it was impossible to find time to discuss it as a Motion; indeed, I am grateful that your Lordships have been able to fit it in before the end of the Session as an Unstarred Question. But that it did not form a Motion is perhaps symptomatic of the fact that many people in this country do not realise that the changes which have taken place in the circumstances of the British position overseas have produced a new problem, which I think is worth the attention of your Lordships, and of Parliament as a whole—that is, the problem of the welfare of British communities overseas.
I am not referring, of course, to British communities resident in Europe. I have no doubt that those in Paris and Monte Carlo are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. I am concerned with those communities, particularly in African and Asian countries, who still form very much an element of British overseas representation and of our economic and trade activities, and who are going to live in these countries in increasingly difficult and different
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circumstances in the years that lie ahead.
I recognise that to-night I have to convince your Lordships that these communities do provide a problem. Perhaps I can best start by reading an extract from a letter I have received from the wife of one of our Ambassadors in a newly-independent African country. She said this:
"The idea"—
that is, the idea of having an information bureau run by the ladies of the British community in that country—
"arose last year because we found so many British people here had problems which could easily be solved with a little co-operation. I think many people do not realise the need for this because they are not aware how the community has changed. It used to be much more closely knit, and every one who came was part of some organisation and was automatically looked after. Now so many come for a short term, and have never left England before and are not part of an organisation. It is a pity if they get discouraged and leave unnecessarily, especially as people here have so much goodwill towards the British. This happy relationship will not automatically continue: it needs to be fostered."
I therefore put it to your Lordships that there is a problem, and it is one which with the passage of time will be more important and in which our national interest is involved.
Both the other place and your Lordships' House very properly spend much time and express much concern over safeguarding the rights of State servants whose careers and prospects have been altered, and perhaps damaged, as a result of great constitutional changes. But in future that class of person is going to be represented in our overseas communities to a very small extent only. The vast majority of the British overseas, whose importance to Britain will remain very great, and perhaps increase, will not be officials. They will not be people who have behind them the support of the influence and organisation of any State Department or service. In the majority of cases they will be going, as my correspondent from Africa said, temporarily, without previous experience of life in the countries in which they are going to live, and not necessarily under the auspices of any organisation which can look after them, either while they are abroad or when they return to this country. They will go as engineers,

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administrative officers, salesmen, teachers, university professors, technicians, and, indeed, in a variety of private careers; and all the time they will be contributing greatly to our interests in the country, just as they will be contributing to the interests of the country in which they serve.
I speak in some degree from experience of two or three years overseas, but the problem is one that has been concerning me for a much longer time. The first thing that these people require is information about what is going on here in the United Kingdom. Their state of morale is extremely important. It usually happens that they hear the worst about events here in Britain. The Press in various parts of the world, naturally, as part of the whole pattern, is concerned to reproduce the bad news rather than the good news, the criticisms rather than the plaudits of progress. Very soon the attitude of a community overseas to their own country, and their sense of perspective about developments in Britain, can become distorted, however much money we as a Government here may spend on information directed towards the Government and inhabitants of these overseas countries, whether in the Commonwealth or outside it.
Very largely it is the local British community that sets the tone and attitude. Where their morale is high, the prestige of Britain will be high; where their morale is low, the prestige of Britain will be low. The maintenance of this morale cannot be done entirely by the diplomatic representative on the spot. His information officer and his information service can certainly help, but so far as my experience goes, this is not sufficient.
The second thing we must bear in mind is that in these new circumstances the type of person who will be going overseas, and who will continue to go overseas and be most useful to us and the receiving country in which they are to work, will not be youngsters, not those right at the beginning of their careers, but men and women, probably already married, and in many cases already with a family. If they are to go overseas, some arrangement must be made to deal with what is, for them, in the majority of cases, the overriding problem of education. In earlier days
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it was fairly easy to find a British-run and British pattern of education in countries anywhere in the Commonwealth. To-day that pattern is changing. It is inevitable that it should. The standard and, tone of education overseas are diverging more and more from what they are in this country. The result is that the child who goes overseas, and has part of his education overseas, will, when the parents come back to this country, or the child comes back to this country in order to continue its education here, find himself seriously handicapped.
The British community in Malaya, for instance, has established two schools, the Raeburn Park and Tanglin preparatory schools, at which there are 650 boys and girls. They, as they claim very proudly and properly, as a result of self-help have been able to meet this problem. Their circumstances are perhaps more fortunate and easier than those of British people elsewhere: they are a numerous community. In other parts of Africa and Asia it will not be so easy.
I am sure that those who have experienced this situation will agree that it is not always sufficient to be able to send one's child home to school here in Britain, with the long separations involved, and perhaps the knowledge that the child may, through public expense, or as a result of a contribution from the company, or as a result of some inroad into one's own savings, come out for one or possibly two holidays a year. I am sure that that pattern of education, that sacrifice, which has been fostered in the past, when people have gone out for a life career overseas, will no longer obtain in the future. We shall have to think in terms of providing, with the assistance, understanding and permission of the overseas Governments concerned, some British schools overseas, primarily for our own community but also providing vacancies for children from the country in which these schools are sited. There will be increasingly the problem of language, and, as I say, the problems of standards and curricula.
Then there is what in many cases and in many families is the problem of health. Again, in earlier days this provided no great difficulty. But from my experience (and I think my noble friend Lord Ferrier will bear this out when he follows me in this debate) I saw in

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Calcutta how the local community there had come together to establish a very fine nursing home, the Woodlands Nursing Home, primarily for the benefit of the European and British community, but having a number of beds available for Indian friends or Indian Africans. There was no question of race, but the problem of medicine in those cases is considerable. The dietary in an Indian hospital is not something possible or appropriate to a European patient. These are practical problems which have to be faced, and which are being faced in Calcutta, and no doubt elsewhere in India, and also in Malaya, where the Gleneagles Hospital has 70 European beds and 30 Asian beds. The contribution which that hospital makes to the sense of security of the British community is very great.
The same applies to club and community life. There was in the old days the feeling that the British or European club was essentially the totem of the ruling class. That is no longer the case, or should be no longer the case. Every community living away from their families, whether here in this country or a British community living abroad, need and deserve a certain amount of social community life. The clubs can and do provide it. They must not, of course, be exclusive, but they can, and must, provide a very important social centre for a British community; and here help, particularly in the smaller areas, as I have seen for myself, for instance, in Ceylon, should and could come appropriately in certain cases from the Government.
There is finally the problem of help in time of trouble and tragedy. The changing political circumstances in the Common-wealth and elsewhere leave behind a number of British people who cannot come back to this country and readjust themselves to live here, and who carry on getting older and less independent with the passage of time in communities overseas. To a great extent they are dependent in times of trouble either upon local Governments, who may not always be able to assist them, or upon the charity of the local European and British community. As their needs become greater, it often happens that the resources of private voluntary charity to help in circumstances of need are reduced.
These people are very much our concern. They are not officials, and very few of them have been officials. They are not, therefore, the responsibility of the State here. They are private individuals who have contributed, in their own way, through their own careers, to working for this country overseas in their younger days. As I said, I think they have some claim on us as they get older.
There is one other point to which I would draw your Lordships' attention in connection with British communities overseas, and that is the reabsorption of those who return to this country. It is very much in the national interest that people from Britain should be prepared to go overseas and make what are undoubtedly sacrifices as a result of their decision to cut into perhaps a steady career here in order to serve for a period in the Commonwealth. The problems of re-absorption here on returning to this country are very great.
I have had a number of letters which have referred to these problems of finding employment. May I read very shortly some passages from one or two of them? The first is from a very experienced and extremely clever and intelligent Englishman—I think, in fact, he was a Scotsman—who has spent a good deal of his career overseas serving in an Administration, but not coming into the category of H.M.O.C.S. He returned to this country, and these are some of his comments on the experience which he had when he arrived here in Britain, at the age of 50 or so, looking for a job:
"With almost no exceptions, I found that the really large firms want nothing to do with returning Britons. They have copied the U.K. Civil Service and their policy is not to recruit people over 26 to 27 years of age; the only difference is that the private firms are even more rigid in their policy than the U.K. Civil Service. Personnel officers—with some notable exceptions—are also menaces to the returning Briton. By the very nature of their work, personnel officers tend to be 'domesticated' people; anyone who has worked in another country is regarded rather as an exceptional—even exceptionable—fellow who does not readily fit into their card index categories. In fairness, however, there are some notable exceptions to this generalisation; the trouble seems to be that too many personnel officers are rather inferior human material (and paid accordingly—to avoid all 'seedy' personnel officers should be a guiding rule for the returning Briton)."
He goes on to say:
"As a model of what should be available for returning Britons, the Canadian National Employment Service could scarcely be bettered…the Canadian approach is quite different; they are orientated towards the future, not the past. They therefore judge a man's capacity in terms of the future fields in which they can employ him. Essentially, the difference is that the U.K. employer looks backwards at a man's past, and thinks of the future only in terms of that past, whereas the Canadians examine a man's past only to evaluate his capacity for work in what may be quite different future fields."
Whether those criticisms are correct or not, they are criticisms made as a result of personal experience by somebody of whose judgment and integrity in this matter I personally have no doubt at all.
The machinery for finding employment for those who return to the United Kingdom from service overseas, where they have been, so to speak, in private service and not in official service, is very important. I do not know whether the writer's praise of the Canadian machinery is justified or not, but clearly he has an important point there as to the sort of attitude towards prospective employees which the Canadians have as compared with that of employers in the United Kingdom. I do not know whether his praise is justified or not, but something along those lines might indeed help in two ways, not only to provide prospects for somebody who has served overseas and returned to this country, but also to encourage people to go overseas in the capacities in which we want recruits for overseas service, knowing, as they would, that when they return their chances and prospects of re-entering into a worthwhile career here are more or less assured to them. I know there are a number of organisations which are doing admirable work along lines of this sort. The Women's Corona Society, for instance, is one; and there are others organised and existing in overseas countries, usually as a result of local initiative, to give some help, and they also are doing admirable work.
What I should like to suggest, if I may, to Her Majesty's Government is that, if they feel that I have in any way been able to prove the case that this is a problem, they should investigate it through British representatives overseas, particularly in Asia and in Africa, and in conjunction with those organisations which are particularly concerned with
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such matters—for instance, the Joint Eastern Central African Board, which is concerned with Central Africa, the West African Committee, and the Indian, Burma, Ceylon and Pakistan Association (I hope I have the title correct) which is an association which deals with the four countries of the Indian sub-continent and the Far East. There are no doubt similar organisations which are concerned with non-official relationships with overseas countries of this sort.
I feel that, although the problem may not be one which at the present moment hits the headlines and has stirred the imagination and conscience of this country, it is one which will be extremely important in the years ahead. We should, therefore, at this time be prepared to cope with it, and have our plans ready and working to help to tackle the problem, which is not only economic and political but of national importance to this country. I hope that the suggestion that I make commends itself to your Lordships, and to the Government as well.
6.19 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I am indeed grateful, as I am sure the House is, to the noble Lord, Lord Alport, for putting down this Question. In a measure I share his regret that it was not in the form of a Motion. Speaking for myself, thanks to the postal strike I had rather short notice of the fact that it was coming up at all, due to the late delivery of my Paper. I propose to approach the matter from a slightly different angle from the points so ably raised by the noble Lord. Having spent many years as a member of the British mercantile community in what is now India and Pakistan, I am naturally interested in the communities there. Although I have no direct financial concern in present business activities there, I know something about their problems. Indeed, if my notes are not as tidy as I like them to be, it is because I had a surprise visit this afternoon from an old friend, a business colleague, an Indian with whom I spent the time when I should have been putting my notes into shape. Therefore, some of what I say is very much of the minute.
In so far as the noble Lord's Question refers to communities from this

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country who have gone to work abroad and intend to return, that is the basis of my study. Their problems are peculiar, and I, of course, refer, as I have said, to the Indian and Pakistan area. I agree very strongly with what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said, that their problems are not only peculiarly but desperately important to our export trade, quite apart from the human side, to which I shall refer, and on that side we have our regard and duty to our countrymen who go to serve abroad.
The noble Lord referred in his Question to the changing world conditions, and to take the measure of that change, certainly in regard to the position of the community in India and Pakistan, it is necessary to look back. Not only have the changes been very great, but in so far as those communities are concerned misunderstandings have been very marked. The fact, as it always appeared to me, that the Axis propaganda went to such lengths to malign and abuse the British overseas, goes to show the measure of the importance of those Britons in our Commonwealth. Lord "Haw-Haw" and Tokyo Rose did their work, and they succeeded all too well in introducing an unjustified and unjustifiable sneer into words like "settler", "colonise" and "exploiter", a sneer, my Lords, which has been too readily adopted by too many people in this country. They tried to build up—and largely succeeded in doing so—a picture of Britain sucking its dependencies dry, whereas, as a matter of fact, the reverse was the case. My experience is that as a nation we tend to plough back more than we take out of the ground.
There are so many contradictions of this sort. We used to say, for instance, that "trade follows the flag". That is quite wrong; the reverse was the case; the flag followed the trade. There were merchants right ahead of the flag except when you go right back to the days of (shall we say?) governmental piracy. But the flag followed the trade, and now that the flag has been withdrawn the trade remains; and, as the noble Lord has said, the people who carry on that trade and that industry deserve special care.
It is hard to realise that the whole European community in the Indian subcontinent before the war, exclusive of
868
troops and their families, was only some 25,000 in a country of two million square miles and 400 million people. In other words, the whole British civil community there, and it is about the same to-day—it is difficult to estimate it, because the figure of the European community before the war, to which I referred, included Germans, Americans and the like—is less than half the population of Watford. The very smallness of its numbers seems to me to point to individuals themselves as being important beyond peradaventure.
The contrast, of course, has been extraordinary between fact and fiction, and neither the Press nor the B.B.C. has really got the measure of the problem. Incidentally, I wish that the B.B.C. could have taken more care with their Kipling series, although recognition of his work is welcome. So far as contrasts are concerned, we talk too much of a "Solar" topi, whereas, of course, it a "Sola" topi. How many of us realise that calico came from Calicut, and that not so many centuries ago the flow of piece goods from the Indian sub-continent to this country was westwards, to be followed by an eastward flow when Lancashire attained its supremacy, again taken up to-day by the flow from the East? The trader became the merchant, the merchant became the entrepreneur and the industrialist. Of course, in terms of health, modern drugs have practically removed the perils of disease which struck down so many of our forefathers.
However, the greatest change is in the type of individual and the task that faces him when he seeks to work abroad today. The supply of younger sons and penniless orphans seeking their fortune has been dried up by two desperate wars and a new economy at home which puts a premium on playing safe—or, to put it another way round, which puts penalties on taking risks which are out of all proportion to a possible gain. These new conditions call for new considerations, which call for the examination for which the noble Lord has asked.
My Lords, it used to be "fun to export"—I quote from Mr. Harold Macmillan—and quite apart from the opportunities of financial gain, which were offset by risks to life and health which do not exist to-day, there was a sense of mission, of worthwhileness and of

869
fulfilment in going to work in the East and to give probably a whole lifetime of service. So, as I see it, any examination of this problem, such as the noble Lord seeks, has to be two-pronged, as it were. First, the sense of mission; and, second, the financial side.
As for the sense of mission, the solution, to my mind, rests very largely with public opinion, the Press, the broadcasting media and the educational authorities. I feel that there should be no sense of guilt about our nation's reputation. We have much more of which to be proud than of which to be ashamed. It is the latter which Axis propaganda taught the public to accept. All of us who understand can, I believe, do something to rebuild our trust in British skills, in British good faith; and it is in the interests of British exports, if not on the ethical side, that this should be done.
The fact is that it is no longer easy to persuade young men to go and work in tropical countries in the East. Why? The sense of mission, to which I have referred, except as an outrider of British trade or interest in industry, has more or less gone. Financially speaking, opportunities, especially for technical experts, are so numerous in this country that it requires a very substantial financial reward to compensate for the upheaval of going to work in the East and, by so doing, dropping out of one's industry or one's profession in this country. This is a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Alport, referred. It is a sacrifice that is all to easy to overlook and one that comes to the surface only when somebody of a certain age returns to look for work. It is necessary, therefore, as I shall show, that rewards and prospects in terms of re-employment should be substantial.
Our predecessors may not all have been technicians, and for every one who survived others left their bones in the East. Indeed, Kipling was not far wrong when he wrote:
"Never the lotos closes, never the wild fowl wake,
But a soul goes out on the East Wind, that died for England's sake."
The days of risks like that are gone, but the men who survived abroad did mighty works, and in picturing the background it is fair to remind your Lordships that the railways, cotton textiles, jute, tea,
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steel, cement and engineering industries in that sub-continent are witness to the work they did. It is not my intention, any more than it was the noble Lord's, to refer to Service personnel, with their better organised conditions of pension and—shall we use the word?—"after-care", but, in passing, it is well to refer to the extent to which they, particularly in the engineering sides, took their share in the developments to which I have referred. It is well to remember that until 1930 there were more acres irrigated in India and Pakistan than there were irrigated in the whole of the rest of the world put together.
So much for the sentimental side of the matter; but, before leaving that, I should like to turn to what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, said about existing organisations. I think it is safe to say that the communities in the Indian subcontinent are comparatively well organised by virtue of the fact that they have been longer at it. Of course, Indianisation was conceived many decades ago, and the Chambers of Commerce are now not all purely European associations at all. They have a great deal of control over the question of employment and the like. But the European associations and similar bodies, chiefly the European associations, both of India and of Pakistan, are available to do the very sort of work among the people there to which the noble Lord referred. The joint organisation is the India-Pakistan-Burma Association, and they, with their offices in London, are able to co-ordinate a great deal of the work which the noble Lord pointed out as being so important: that returning Britons should have somewhere to go in order to obtain advice.
So far as the communities out there are concerned, they are largely urban, or grouped around factories, except, of course, in so far as the planters are concerned; they still remain as scattered, as many used to be, in the lonely up-country stations. The motor car and improved transportation has done much to make association easier, but there are times when the weather means that they lead fairly lonely lives. But, except for the planters, they are well organised. The noble Lord is quite right about the work done in Calcutta over a hospital; in fact I think it is modelled on a hospital planned in Bombay called the Breach-Kandy Hospital, which like the one in

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Calcutta was promoted and inspired by the European community but is by no means confined to serving them alone. Many Indians, I am happy to say, are able to make use of the wonderful facilities available in that splendid air conditioned building.
Clubs of course have come in for their criticism, but it is many years now since clubs were exclusive, certainly in regard to association with Indians. The other great advantage which the communities in India and Pakistan have is the well-established and splendidly organised High Commissioners' offices, not only at the headquarters at Delhi or Karachi but in the districts also. They are available as focal points to which any European in distress can turn for assistance. So much for the sentiment of the matter.
Let us turn to the financial aspects, on which I apologise to your Lordships but I propose to spend a long time, because they have a direct bearing on what the noble Lord was saying: that the communities abroad are important to Britain, they are important to the Commonwealth and they are important to our industry and our exports; and that the individuals themselves should be healthy and should be happy is definitely a matter which calls for proper consideration. As I have said already, we must remember that our social structure to-day puts a penalty on commercial and personal adventure, and it follows that employers have to pay substantial salaries, allowances and pensions to attract and hold men of the right type.
These rewards have to be additionally high, thus augmenting the on-cost on trade and industry, because of the very high taxation both here and overseas, especially at the higher rates of income, and it is to people with those higher rates of income to which of course we refer. Although considerable concessions in tax-free allowances are in some cases made to technicians—I know that is the case in India—it follows that an examination could well be directed towards alleviating any extra pressures of tax which fall upon individuals by service abroad.
Let me illustrate. Many large British industries have subsidiaries in India and Pakistan. Not only are these off-shoots of British industry but they take a
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prominent place in the industries of the country in which they are situated. But they are abroad. The problem of staffing them presents difficulties which could, I believe, be reduced. Indianisation has, quite properly, gone forward apace, in which respect I have two comments to make. But when I say they are abroad I mean that, no matter that a man may go out from here seconded by a parent company to a subsidiary abroad, he then becomes taxable in the country in which he is employed. That is one of the difficulties.
One difficulty that people are inclined to overlook is the importance of skilled and trained management as well as technical skills. I refer to this in regard to the fact that very largely the management side in India and Pakistan is in the hands of nationals, and it seems to me that with the management largely in their hands—and this is quite a problem—one of the difficulties is that exchange control regulations in these countries in regard to the movement of their own nationals coming to this country, to Europe or the U.S.A., are very strict. And although my friend who, as I say, has been here to-day, tells me he believes steps are being taken to have these pressures alleviated, I think it would be worth while for the authorities in these countries to ease, so far as they can, the restrictions on funds available for the movement of their own nationals to come to this country. I am sure that this would be to the advantage of the industries concerned. As for British nationals who are seconded to associated companies overseas, and who come to be taxed abroad, sometimes they find difficulty in arranging finance when they visit this country and their home. Why? It is because, since they are resident abroad, any allowance which they have received here is taxable in their hands in India and Pakistan, and at rates which are quite onerous.
Another point which deserves examination here arises from the fact that an allowance paid to an employee such as I have described, when on leave in this country, because he is resident abroad and taxed abroad is not allowed in this country by the tax authorities as an expense when charged to the parent company here. I suggest that this

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point is worth examination. Some step might be taken to clear up this difficulty so that, as we have seen, special inducements can be given to those℄and I quote
"who are the bearers of 'know-how'".
and who, by being the bearers of "know-how" are acting in furtherance of the whole business. It is important that the movement of such men should not be curtailed by intricacies of this kind. It is not good for the overseas companies, and it is not good for the companies here.
There is another point in regard to remittances which affects people abroad, and applies especially to Pakistan. There are restrictions on the remittance of provident funds. I have heard of a case of hardship where somebody retiring with a provident fund has not been allowed to bring the whole lot home in one lump but has been forced, as a result of exchange restrictions, to have it remitted over a period of years. This is a real hardship at a time when somebody is coming to retire after a long period of years. Admittedly the countries concerned can say that they are tight in regard to exchange, but there is, I think, no restriction on remittances made, shall we say, by Pakistanis in this country to Pakistan; in fact I believe that large sums in savings pass Eastwards in this way.
There are also cases where hardship arises out of litigation, which is inevitably slow, due to the cluttering up of the courts and to consequent delays. I may say that I have personal experience of this, and it is an onerous matter. These difficulties are well-known to the High Commissioners and their offices, and I think it is safe to say that Britons have never been better served than they are at the moment by the High Commissioners and their staffs, both in India and in Pakistan. Further, it can be said that the relations between the High Commissioners and the Indian and Pakistan Governments are of the friendliest and at the highest level, as also are relations between the communities of whom we are speaking and local government offices. Nor was there ever such a fund of good will as there is to-day between the nationals of these countries and the British there, and vice versa.
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However, is it worth suggesting that a double-tax avoidance agreement might now be negotiated as between this country and India and Pakistan? Existing tax arrangements provide a measure of relief, but the details of the income tax coding on both sides are becoming so complicated that I would put forward for consideration this suggestion, for what it is worth. I suggest that the time may have come when a double-tax avoidance agreement might be made in order to smooth away some of the difficulties and obstacles to the industrial intercourse of which we have spoken and to the two-way flow of the personnel upon which we so much depend. An agreement of this sort would cut both ways. Both here and in the East the time has come for a simplication of the complex coding system which now exists.
My Lords, these are some of the special problems that I feel should have further examination, in the interests of the communities of which we speak. However, I come back more or less to where I began, to say that in my view the building of faith in the Commonwealth, belief in the place of the British people in it, and a re-kindling of the thrill to the individual of a business career is more important than anything else; and that thrill can be embellished by a more sympathetic understanding and encouragement from us here.
6.46 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend Lord Alport has managed to get a little time to raise this question in Parliament, because these British communities abroad of which he has spoken receive little recognition, either in the Press or among the public. But they deserve our fullest support because they are doing an immense amount of good, both to our own country and to the countries in which they reside. They are doing good to our commerce; they are doing good to the spread of our ideals of freedom in the world, and they are helping a lot in the development of schemes for aid to less developed areas and in the maintenance of British interests and prestige all over the world.
These British communities abroad are most varied. They give a picture of

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great diversity. I believe that in the United States there are nearly a quarter of a million British subjects living in scattered communities all over the territory of that country. There are some ancient communities further South. They have been there a long time. Within the last twelve months I have had the privilege of visiting five communities in South America, in Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentine and in Brazil. The Argentine, I should think, has probably the largest and best organised community living in one city. A great number of them in Buenos Aires are people of dual nationality, both British and Argentine. Some of these communities have been there for four or five generations. Meeting and talking to them, it is difficult to understand that some have never been to this country; but they are brought up as British, and you would never know that they were not born in Britain. They have a strong community sense. There are over 21,000 of them now.
There are few trades and professions in which the British community is not represented℄engineering, shipping, accountancy, insurance. The British Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Aires is a very active body, with over 300 members. The budget of the British Community Council last year was £53,000. Then there is the British and American Benevolent Society, which runs various homes for the aged. There is even a British Council school, with which I was particularly impressed. It is not only for British pupils, but for large numbers of Argentinians who want to learn English. It is now expanding its premises. While I was looking at that school my wife had the pleasure of looking at the British Hospital which was founded in 1844. It is one of the best-equipped and most efficient hospitals in Buenos Aires.
My noble friend spoke more of the communities in other continents, such as in Africa and Asia, and we are very conscious of the new difficulties which many of these communities have to face. So far as the Government are concerned, the Plowden Report on the Future of the Overseas Services said (and we agree) that it is one of the essential tasks of British missions overseas to protect and support the many-sided interests of
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British subjects and communities overseas. The officers of the Foreign Service and of the Commonwealth Service are always ready to give advice and assistance to individuals, as well as to the many voluntary societies representing British interests.
As my noble friend has said, the new problems arise very much from change of status. In Buenos Aires the status and position of the British community declined a great deal under the régime of Peron, but that does not mean they are not in good heart, for they are in very good heart indeed. All over the world one sees the same kind of epidemic disease; in the middle of this century it is getting worse and shows no sign of getting better: that is the disease of nationalism, which is a very evil thing. A great many of the new emergent countries which are acutely affected by this disease are in the habit of expropriating the property of foreigners who reside within their territories, or of taking various measures to restrict trade. They hurt themselves more than anybody else because they discourage investment and their own development. They also hold back the general development of world prosperity and the ability of all countries to help each other. Compared with that perhaps the harm they do to British residents is small, but we must charge ourselves with the duty of seeing that we do our best for the latter and that we get the best compensation we can. We always do our best, although it is not always anything like adequate.
My noble friend mentioned a great many topics, among them education and information. I agree that it would be a good thing to do more in the way of providing English education for British residents, but the demand for secondary schooling follows different patterns. Parents do not always want local schools for older children who can manage to go to school in this country. The very good secondary schools which were founded by earlier British residents have often benefited other nationalities as well as British children. They change with changing times. There are many schools in foreign and Commonwealth countries which still belong to the Headmasters' Conference.
Then our other support for schools is largely through the British Council. It is given to a number of English schools in

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twenty foreign countries and in some other countries it is given to local secondary schools. There are 18 schools in India and Pakistan; there are schools in Cyprus; and my noble friend mentioned one in Malaysia. There is also one which has received a grant of £6,000, the International School at Dar es Salaam. Their aims are similar to those mentioned by my noble friend. We agree that an extension of these educational facilities would have a good effect on recruitment to overseas posts.
He also rightly mentioned the problem of information, pointing out that it was bad for the morale of our residents abroad to hear the wrong news from the wrong people. The primary aim of our overseas information services is to help many people of other countries to better understanding, and the climate thus created will in turn benefit the British communities. As for maintaining morale among British communities abroad, the part played by the B.B.C. is outstanding. The General Overseas Service is on the air for 23 hours a day; in addition there are regional services in the English language for particular areas like the West Indies, North America, and Africa; and it is fair to say that this service, which is enjoyed by so many British residents abroad, is surpassed by no other nation. We also provide British Council libraries and British Information Service reading rooms where English newspapers can be read. In some countries there are information service bulletins produced by information services which are available to British residents.
There are many other points which my noble friend raised and which I was very interested to hear. Some countries, as he knows, have set up comprehensive organisations to which most of their nationals living abroad belong, but in Britain we have generally to a large extent met the needs of our communities abroad by means of a very large number of voluntary societies and institutions which by their presence and their work have done so much for the happiness of our people abroad. I should like to mention in connection with that the Voluntary Service Overseas organisation, consisting of young men and women from 18 to 22, who do not get much publicity but go out all over the world
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to the most remote places, and I think that they are probably doing just as good a job as the American Peace Corps. Any kind of organisation to help the purposes my noble friend has at heart would, of course, be much better if they did not overlap in any way with what we have already℄that is, our missions abroad, the British Council and this vast number of voluntary organisations. But we shall be glad both to consider what my noble friend has said this afternoon, and also to discuss with him any further ideas which his experience and service abroad will make particularly interesting and valuable to us.

WEST RIDING COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL
The Queen's Consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.