Lords Sitting of 1 November 1966

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

PICTORIAL STAMPS OF RAILWAY ELECTRIFICATION
2.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: 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 will consider issuing an airmail postage stamp to illustrate the railway electrification equipment which, with the achievement of electrification in this country, is now available for export.]
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, my right honourable friend announced his stamp programme for next year on October 26. I understand also that he intimated in another place that he would issue stamps to mark the achievement of free trade within EFTA, and pictorial stamps depicting British flora, paintings and discoveries; and, further, that he will again issue Christmas stamps. I understand also that some 50 different suggestions have been made to him but that he cannot do otherwise than as I have stated. Therefore, he does not feel able to add to the list special stamps marking the subject suggested by the noble Lord. In any case, it is not Her Majesty's Government's policy to issue airmail stamps as such. I think I can assure the noble Lord that, although the Postmaster General does not completely stamp on the idea, nevertheless, for the time being he must adhere to his decision.
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I ask whether he could undertake to call upon his Department to reconsider this decision, in recognition of the fact that this is a great British
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achievement which has brought the manufacturers of this equipment to the forefront of world markets, and that they may have a chance to compete with exports abroad?
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I am sure the whole House appreciates the reference made by the noble Lord to the remarkable achievement, and I will certainly see that his suggestion is brought to the attention of the Postmaster General for any reconsideration on his part that is possible.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is my noble friend aware of the very great appreciation among a large number of our people of the colour, imagination and beauty which has been brought into "stampage" since we had a change of Postmaster General—and I am referring not to the recent change but to the previous one.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I acknowledge the compliment given by my noble friend; and I am sure that it is not due to the fact that one of the colours is red.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government remember the promise given to me by my noble friend Lord De La Warr many years ago, when he was Postmaster General, to the effect that when these large stamps are issued to commemorate some public event of this kind they will always have stamps of the normal size available for customers at the post offices, on the ground that it is quite intolerable that some young man who has to get his mail off through the post by licking stamps himself should have to expend twice as much spit?
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I will make inquiries to see whether Her Majesty's Government do remember the conversation which the noble Lord had with the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, if I may correct the noble Lord, it was not a conversation; it was a promise made in this House.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I will certainly emphasise that, as well.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that some people would prefer fewer issues of all these peculiar stamps

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and that we should keep to the usual stamp with Her Majesty's portrait in full?
Several noble Lords: Hear, hear!
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, without necessarily endorsing the adjective "peculiar", which itself is rather peculiar, I certainly agree that all of us appreciate Her Majesty's portrait on the stamp, as well as the other decorations.
LORD STRANGE: My Lords, is it possible to have a better flavour to the gum?

BARRISTERS AND PROFESSIONAL NEGLIGENCE
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: 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 it is proposed to introduce legislation to reverse the decision of the Court of Appeal that a barrister cannot be sued for negligence in the performance of his professional duty.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, the recent decision that a barrister is not liable for negligence in connection with the conduct or management of a case in court raises important issues of policy, but the time for applying for leave to appeal to your Lordships' House has not yet expired, and therefore it would be quite wrong for me to express any opinion to-day.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for his reply.

SOUTH WEST AFRICA
2.39 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: 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 it is true, as reported in the Press, that the United Kingdom Representation at the United Nations said on October 19 that the South African
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Republic had forfeited the right to administer South West Africa; and if so—

(a) what is the purpose of such interference with the internal affairs of South Africa, a friendly country; and

(b) why our large and satisfactory trade with South Africa should be thus imperilled when silence would have been more appropriate.]

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, it is true that my noble friend, the United Kingdom Representative at the United Nations, stated on October 19 that the South African Republic had forfeited the right to administer the mandate for South West Africa. This is not interference with the internal affairs of South Africa because South West Africa is not part of the Republic. It is a territory with international status, which has been administered by South Africa under a mandate from the League of Nations, and in respect of which the International Court stated in 1950 that South Africa was accountable to the United Nations. I do not accept that it would have been appropriate for the United Kingdom delegate to remain silent during a debate on a matter of such great concern.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, arising out of that reply, does the Minister not think it time that realism entered into the picture, because it is quite certain from Ministers in South Africa that in no circumstances, other than military compulsion, will they give up that territory to administration by anybody else? Secondly, can he explain why silence would not be preferable to damaging unnecessarily our trade with a friendly country—a trade which is so large and so important to this country?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I think that realism has always been—at least during the last few years for which I am entitled to speak—a strong point of our policies, both at home and abroad, but I cannot agree with the noble Lord that it is right on an occasion such as this to remain silent in the hope of getting some commercial benefit from our silence. I think that would be running away not only from our responsibilities but also

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from our principles, which I am quite sure the noble Lord would be the last to advocate we should do.
With regard to the commercial aspects of this question, we are still anxious to do trade with South Africa, as we are indeed with any country in the world, and we believe that the greater the trade the greater the chance of understanding. So I do not want the noble Lord to think that the remarks setting out the true facts and true feelings of Her Majesty's Government in any way indicate an unwillingness on our part to trade with South Africa or any other country.
Low FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, was not the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, merely an echo of the American statement? And is it not surprising that that great country should lend itself to a statement of the kind made by them and repeated by Lord Caradon, when at the time the League of Nations came to an end the United States, instead of leaving its island territories in the Pacific which were under mandate to them to go on under trusteeship, just gobbled them up themselves on strategic grounds? Is this not rather a humbug?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, my noble friend's statement was in no way an echo of the statement of the United States Government or indeed of any other Government. It was purely and simply a statement of the views and adherence to principle of Her Majesty's Government and, I believe, of this country. If it happened, as it did, that our views on this very important matter coincided with those of another friendly country which shares the great majority of our own views on important matters, it is hardly surprising that we spoke in very similar terms.
LORD OAKSHOTT: My Lords, referring to the noble Lord's desire expressed a moment ago to foster trade with all countries, for example with the Iron Curtain countries, the Chinese Republic and South Africa, is it a good idea to disparage in public your third best customer in the world, and does talk like this really accord with perfectly honourable self-interest?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, whether the statement is to be considered disparaging is for others to judge. But I
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repeat what I said to the noble Lord when he asked his Question: I do not believe that any Member of this House or anyone in this country would support a policy which advocated keeping quiet on matters of principle, of International L aw and right and wrong, in order to gain some commercial advantage.
LORD ROWLEY: My Lords, would it not be most regrettable if this House were to associate itself in any way with denigration of the International Court of Justice, which was established with the approval and co-operation of Her Majesty's Government? Is it not a fact that not only in 1950 but in 1955 and 1956 the International Court specifically gave an advisory opinion to the effect that the obligations under the 1920 mandate still continued so far as South Africa was concerned, and that the United Nations, as successors of the League of Nations, had supervisory powers over South West Africa?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No.
LORD ROWLEY: There is dissent from the other side, but that has been accepted and is embodied in the recent resolution passed by the General Assembly, and I imagine the General Assembly are just as well aware of the legal position as the noble Lord opposite. May I ask the Minister whether Her Majesty's Government would not propose that the International Court of Justice be asked to give another advisory opinion, this time as to whether or not South Africa has breached its obligations under the 1920 mandate, which would give a legal basis to any action taken by the Security Council under the recent General Assembly resolution?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, my noble friend is perfectly correct in what he says about the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 1950, in which it stated quite categorically as an advisory opinion that the mandate was still in force, that South Africa continued to have obligations under it and that supervisory functions were to be carried out by the United Nations. Whether or not a further request to the International Court for a further advisory opinion would in fact have reinforcing value is a matter which I think is well worth further consideration.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he can answer this question? I am not questioning at all his description of the opinion given by the International Court. What does he say about this statement that the South African Republic has forfeited the right to administer South West Africa? Is that an expression of a political view, or does it purport to be an expression of a legal view?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, it is perfectly true that some of the statements made during that debate went a good deal further than Her Majesty's Government and my noble friend were prepared to go; and in fact, as the noble Lord well knows, my noble friend abstained from voting on the resolution itself. But regarding the general proposition that we have already been through, I am in complete agreement with, and support, the action which was taken by my noble friend on this occasion.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I ask whether the noble Lord is aware how surprised many Members of this House are at the expressions—
LORD BARNBY: May I interrupt the noble Lord to ask the Leader of the House whether an ex-member of the Cabinet should have precedence?
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, I saw two Members rise; one Member sat down, and the other Lord Brockway, asked a question.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that explanation, which was contrary to the understanding of some of us.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, is my noble friend aware how surprised many of us are by the expressions of opinion which have been uttered on the other side of the House? Is it not the case that the Opposition as well as our own Government have declared against this annexation of South West Africa by the Republic of South Africa? Is it not also the case that not only have both sides of the House expressed this opposition, but that with only two dissentients the whole of the United Nations, 120 delegations, have expressed this opinion? In view of that fact, will my noble friend make it clear that those who
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have expressed these views are expressing the views of only a small minority of racialists in this country?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No, no!
LORD BROCKWAY: And may I also ask that the Front Opposition Bench should have the courage to-day to repeat what they have said?
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask that Standing Order No. 29 be read?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for drawing attention to this situation. I can only repeat what I have already said: that I cannot believe that there are any Members of this House, no matter on which side—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, the Motion has been made that Standing Order No. 29 be now read.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I will not press it. The noble Lord, Lord Brockway, sat down.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I had not quite finished answering my noble friend's question. I will simply repeat what I have already said once: that I cannot believe that there is any single Member of this House, no matter on which side he sits, who really believes that we should, in order to get some commercial advantage, forgo the principles expressed on both sides of the House on more than one occasion.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, may I put this question to the Minister of State? Is this the conclusion that we are to draw from all that has happened: that whereas Lord Caradon expressed a view on how South Africa had administered or failed to administer the mandate, he also stated that it would be clearly contrary, and indeed fatal, to the interests of this country to impose sanctions upon South Africa in order to try to enforce any particular point of view; that was why he abstained from the vote? May we therefore take it that, for all practical purposes, whatever may be the views expressed, Her Majesty's Government would be no party to imposing further sanctions upon South Africa?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I think that these questions are getting a little

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wide of the original Question; but I would again repeat what I said in an earlier answer to the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, that our policy in these matters is always a realistic policy, and my noble friend Lord Caradon, while making our stand absolutely clear, also made the realistic potentialities of this country completely clear, so that nobody can be under any misapprehension as to where we stand on either count.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, arising out of—
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, may I suggest that we are now turning what was originally a Question into a debate? If the House wishes to debate this matter, a Motion should appear on the Order Paper; otherwise we ought to confine our questions purely to the point which was raised by the original Question. I think that we have passed the point now where we are dealing with the original Question. May I suggest that we move on to the next Question?
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, may I, with all respect to the noble Lord, as the asker of the original Question, have permission to thank the noble Lord for the fulness of his reply, and, in his second reply to me, for his announced dedication to realism? Arising from that, may I ask what other means there are to administer South West Africa, except through the Republic of South Africa, in view of the vast amount of money they have poured into the railway system, of which they alone own the rolling stock? Secondly—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, secondly, since silence was not, in his judgment, permitted to our representative in the United Nations, why is that in contradistinction to other matters which can arise in the United Nations?

GIBRALTAR
2.56 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: 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 will make a clear and
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unequivocal declaration that they will sustain and support by all means in their power the determination of the loyal people of Gibraltar to remain within the territories of the British Crown.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made clear yesterday, Gibraltar is British by right, and it is our determination to safeguard the interests of the people of Gibraltar as the United Nations Charter requires.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I am sure we must all welcome the firm tone of the Government reply. I wish we had had such a tone earlier. But it invites, surely, this further question. We now know two important things: first, that in the view of the Government Gibraltar is British by right, and I take that to mean legal right. That is the view of the Government. Secondly, we know that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Gibraltar wish to remain British. In those circumstances, whatever made Her Majesty's Government take the step of submitting the question to the International Court? It is not we, but the Spanish Government, who wish to change the international status of Gibraltar. Why did we not leave it to them to take this question to the International Court if they so wished, instead of doing it ourselves?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, in answer to the first part of the noble Marquess's supplementary question, I would say that if the answers are firmer it is because the questions are more to the point. So far as the second part of the noble Marquess's supplementary question is concerned, the reason we have submitted this issue to the International Court is that we believe that matters of dispute between nations should go to that body for settlement.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, is not the most important circumstance in this matter the fact that Gibraltar is a member of the Commonwealth and is entitled to have the opinion of her own inhabitants safeguarded—in other words, self-determination should apply to Gibraltar

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as to any other part of the Commonwealth'?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not too certain what study the noble Lord has given to the Treaty of Utrecht. I suggest that he gives that Treaty further study and then puts down another Question on this point. A White Paper will be published on Thursday, and any further questions on this matter would, I should have thought, be better framed in the light of the information contained in that White Paper.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, is it not, and has it not been for many years, the policy of Her Majesty's Government that every member of the British Commonwealth is entitled to self-determination, and that no foreigner should interfere with that?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I think that there are here two issues, or rather two aspects of one issue. One is the legal aspect. This is in dispute, and we have therefore submitted it—or are prepared to submit it—to the International Court. The other aspect of this matter is the physical pressure which Spain is attempting to apply. So far as that aspect is concerned, one can say quite definitely that the attempt of Spain to secure her way by physical restriction will fail. There is absolutely no doubt as to the determination of the British Government in that regard.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he is aware that many of us do not wish to see him or his right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary browbeaten into making bellicose noises at a time when a matter of this kind should be resolved by legal means?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that I have no intention of being browbeaten, by one side of the House or another, or by one sex or the other.
BARONESS STOCKS: My Lords, I want to ask a question to which I really want to know the answer. Are there not a number of legal questions which arise, irrespective of our right to the sovereignty of Gibraltar, such as the use of the airstrip (which I think was a matter not dealt with by the Treaty of Utrecht, for
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obvious reasons), access to the port, various conditions in connection with the customs barrier at La Linea, all of which require legal interpretation but do not necessarily impugn our sovereignty of the Rock. Is that so?
LORD BESWICK: That is so, and a great many other things are so. I honestly feel that a number of people who ask questions and make statements about this matter would do well to read all the facts about it before they pose their questions.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, in view of the noble Lord's statement that it is improper for us to mention this subject, which is in fact what he did, may I say that it is perfectly improper for any member of the Government to try to muzzle this House in anyway whatever. We have a perfect right to say what we think, and I am now going to say something more. Did not the Government appreciate that such action by us in submitting this question to the International Court was only calculated to raise doubts, as it has done, both in Gibraltar and in this country, and, indeed, all over the world, as to whether the Government really thought our legal position as strong as we had always held before? Surely it was not a matter of civilised behaviour, as has been suggested, but merely asking for trouble.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, in the first place I have never suggested it was improper, and it would be quite wrong for me, a comparative newcomer to this House, to suggest that it was improper, for any noble Lord to raise any matter he thought was right. All I have tried to suggest on other occasions is that it is wrong in this matter to equate excitability with determination. What I have suggested as the sensible and civilised way of getting these legal matters settled, in the best interests of the people of Gibraltar as well as ourselves, is to have the matter properly considered by the International Court.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, will the noble Lord tell us that he appreciates that the Treaty of Utrecht was signed a good many years before the United Nations came into life? Might we therefore not go by that Treaty, rather

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than be browbeaten, as noble Lords have said, by the United Nations?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right: the United Nations has emerged since the original Treaty, and, as the noble Baroness on this side of the House mentioned, the airstrip also has been constructed since the Treaty was signed. All this goes to indicate the complexity of this matter, which I think is best sorted out by the proper international authority.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, but when it comes to instituting litigation before any court, is it not usually the party which is not satisfied with the status quo that institutes the litigation and not the party which is perfectly satisfied with things as they are?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I should not have thought that this was litigation.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
LORD BESWICK: I turn to some of those who are more expert in legal matters, but I personally should not have thought that this was litigation. We have offered to submit this dispute to a proper international body, the International Court, which I should have thought was in accordance with the support given to its institution by both sides of this House. This is not a question of going in for litigation; we are proposing that the matter be settled by the International Court.
LRD OGMORE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that one of the objects of Question Time, and indeed of any discussion in this House, is to ascertain the facts? We who are possibly more ignorant than he is on the facts are anxious that he will put us right on them. Therefore, it is not for him to lecture us and to take away from our privileges in this House by suggesting that we should get up our facts before we come here. We have got up our facts. We were hoping for some more facts from him.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has another factual question to put on the Order Paper, I will endeavour to give him a factual answer.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I should like to know from the noble Lord what our position will be supposing the International Court decides against us?
LORD BESWICK: We have already stated that we are so confident of our case—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Oh!
LORD BESWICK: Noble Lords may smile, but certainly we are more confident of our case than, apparently, are noble Lords opposite, and we are prepared to accept the decision of the Court.

THE ABERFAN DISASTER
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will be making a Statement about Aberfan.
LEE VALLEY REGIONAL PARK BILL
Read 2a, and committed to a Select Committee.

ARBITRATION (INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT DISPUTES) BILL [H.L.]
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to implement an international Convention on the settlement of investment disputes between States and nationals of other States. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Walston.)
On Question Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

CRIMINAL LAW BILL [H.L.]
3.8 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that the Criminal Law Bill be read a second time. This Bill has two main purposes. First to abolish all distinctions between felony and

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misdemeanour, and second, to abolish certain ancient criminal offences which have become obsolete. The Bill is part of the process, which we all welcome, of modernising the criminal law. It implements recommendations made by two distinguished bodies. Part I follows the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Sellers; Part II of the Bill, which is new, follows the recommendations of the Law Commission under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Scarman. Here I would say a word of grateful thanks for the excellent work which has been and is being done by these two bodies—together, in the civil field, with the Law Reform Committee under Lord Pearson—in their long term, exacting, but very necessary work of law reform. And a special tribute also for the painstaking way in which they approach their tasks, and for the care and thoroughness with which they examine the subjects under review, as illustrated by the two Reports which give rise to this Bill.
It has long been recognised that the division of criminal offences into felonies and misdemeanours has ceased to serve any useful purpose. Indeed, it is difficult nowadays to discover what the word "felony" really means. If you looked it up in a dozen different dictionaries and reference books you would probably get as many different answers. I believe that Dr. Johnson described it as a "crime denounced as capital by the law"—and perhaps this was apt in his day, because up to the nineteenth century felonies were generally punishable by death and the forfeiture of all property. As a legal term, the word "felony" seems to have been first used to describe what were once among the most heinous offences—those involving the betrayal of trust and faith between a man and his overlord; and in feudal times a felony signified any offence for which the offender was liable to forfeit his fief or land to the lord of the fee—though probably few of these offences would nowadays be considered crimes at all.
Eventually, "felony" came to be used to denote the gravest crimes, carrying the severest penalties, while "misdemeanour" was used to describe offences less than a felony. Special consequences, however, still attach to conviction for felony, and there are special procedures which must
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be observed in trials for this class of offence, although to-day these differences have no real justification. Moreover, with the gradual development of the criminal law over the years, the creation of new offences, and changing attitudes towards different kinds of crime, the original distinction between felonies and misdemeanours has become blurred and many anomalies have crept in.
Just a few examples will show how absurd the distinction is. A person who commits the age-old crime of stealing, even if the article stolen is worth only a penny, is guilty of felony, but the swindler who commits the more modern offence of fraudulent conversion, involving perhaps many thousands of pounds, is guilty only of a misdemeanour. Rape is a felony; incest a misdemeanour. Possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life is a felony; using it with intent to resist arrest is a misdemeanour. It is a felony to destroy a burial register book; to solemnise a marriage outside permitted hours; unlawfully to vote for someone else at an election, or to embezzle from your employer, however small the sum involved. But it is only a misdemeanour to commit perjury, most forms of assault and indecent assault, and to obtain money by false pretences. Indeed, the whole calendar of crime is an indefensible mix-up of felonies and misdemeanours.
But, while it is easy enough to recognise that anomalies exist, it is far more difficult to decide how to remedy them. The Common and Statute Law on this subject is complex, and before abandoning a centuries-old distinction it was necessary to know what was involved. It was in these circumstances that the then Home Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, referred the matter to the Criminal Law Revision Committee in March, 1964, and asked them to consider:
"Whether the present division of indictable offences into felonies and misdemeanours should be retained and, if not, what revision of the law should be made in consequence of its abolition."
The Committee's Report—their seventh—was published in May, 1965. As might have been expected, they had no difficulty in deciding the first question put to them. They had no doubt whatever that the distinction between felony and misdemeanour should be abolished. The bulk of the Committee's Report—as of Part I of the Bill now before us—is concerned

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with the adaptations of the law required as a result of the abolition. In general, these consequential provisions are intended to consolidate and clarify the existing law, but they also include some modifications, not directly arising from the abolition of the distinction between felony and misdemeanour.
The Government accept the Committee's recommendations and, indeed, a Bill to give effect to them was introduced in the last Parliament and given a Second Reading in another place, but, of course, that Bill lapsed with the Dissolution of Parliament. Part I of the present Bill is substantially the same as the earlier one, although we have made a few changes to meet points made in the debates at that time. But substantially Part I of the Bill is the same as before, and follows, with a few alterations, the draft Bill annexed to the Committee's Report.
I turn now to the Bill's particular provisions. Clause 1 carries out the main purpose of Part I of the Bill. It abolishes all distinctions between felony and misdemeanour and provides that, subject to various exemptions specified in later clauses, the present law and practice relating to misdemeanours shall apply to all offences, including piracy. It is necessary to refer specifically to piracy because that offence, although generally treated as felony, is sometimes treated as an offence of a separate class, and because the reference facilitates repeals.
Certain provisions of the criminal law at present dependent on felony are replaced, with suitable modifications, by the subsequent provisions of the Bill. But there are some matters which apply only to felonies and not to misdemeanours, including certain peculiarities in the mode of trial, which are not being replaced and will simply lapse with the abolition of felony. Details of these are given in paragraphs 58 onwards of the Committee's Report. They include the formal giving of the accused in charge of the jury, and the rule that for felony the accused must be in court throughout the trial: it is occasionally convenient for the trial to continue in the absence of one or more of the accused, particularly if the trial is a long one, and there are several accused, and this will now be permissible for all trials on indictment, but clearly the power would only be used sparingly
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and only when it would not prejudice the defence.
Another peculiarity of a trial for felony which will disappear is the allocutus. This is the procedure by which a person convicted of felony is asked formally whether he has anything to say why the court should not give judgment according to law. The custom dates from the time when no felon was allowed a lawyer and no prisoner could give evidence for himself. Its purpose, in times when conviction of felony meant death, was to give the felon a chance to escape this fate by pleading "benefit of clergy" and being handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, whose punishments, I am told, were more lenient. It is now a mere technicality and is often misunderstood. It does not allow the offender to make a plea in mitigation in the modern sense, and its abolition will in no way affect the present practice of the courts in giving the accused a reasonable opportunity to say anything he wishes to say in mitigation of sentence.
The present statutory disqualifications arising from conviction of felony will also disappear. By Section 2 of the Forfeiture Act 1870, conviction of felony resulting in imprisonment for over twelve months disqualifies the offender from holding office under the Crown, or various other offices; from membership of either House of Parliament; from voting at elections and from entitlement to a pension payable out of any public fund. No similar consequences follow from any conviction in Scotland, and the Government agree with the Criminal Law Revision Committee that these automatic disqualifications should not be continued.
In Clause 2 and 3 there are some very important consequential provisions arising from the abolition of felony. Clause 2 deals with powers of arrest without warrant. Subsections (1) to (6) create certain new powers of summary arrest to replace existing Common Law powers that are dependent on the crime being a felony, while subsection (7) preserves certain other existing powers of arrest. At present some of the most important powers of arrest, under Common Law, apply only where the crime is a felony. If we are to have proper enforcement of the law we must clearly preserve a power to arrest immediately, without warrant, persons who have committed, or who are

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reasonably suspected of having committed, the most serious offences.
With the disappearance of felony it is necessary to establish a new criterion for identifying those serious offences to which a general power of summary arrest will apply, and this is done by Clause 2(1). In future there will be a general power of arrest, without warrant, for offences for which the sentence is fixed by law (that, for all practical purposes, means treason and murder); for all offences which carry a statutory maximum penalty of at least five years' imprisonment; and for attempts to commit any such offence. The offences covered by this general power of arrest will be known collectively as "arrestable offences"—a term which I believe will soon come to be understood and accepted. It should be at least as easy—indeed, I think easier—for the police, and anybody else who might have occasion to arrest a person without warrant, to remember which offences carry five years' imprisonment as to remember which offences are felonies.
In practice the new powers of summary arrest will not differ greatly from the existing ones. They embrace all offences which are now felonies, with a few unimportant exceptions for which a power to arrest without warrant is unlikely to be required. For example, it is a felony carrying a maximum of two years' imprisonment for a bankrupt to abscond with £20 worth or more of property which ought by law to be divided among his creditors. This offence, which was "arrestable" as a felony, will not come within the new powers of summary arrest because the maximum penalty is less than five years. But the new powers also bring in the most serious misdemeanours, although generally these are offences for which it will seldom be necessary to arrest a person without warrant. The most important additions, for which the power of summary arrest may be useful, are the offences of obtaining property by false pretences and causing death by dangerous driving, both of which are at present misdemeanours carrying a maximum of five years' imprisonment.
Subsections (2) to (5) of Clause 2 define the circumstances in which the new power of summary arrest may be exercised. They embrace the powers of a private citizen as well as of a constable, and are of such importance that I think it right that I
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should repeat their effect. There are four situations. First, any person may arrest anyone who is, or whom he reasonably suspects to be, in the act of committing any arrestable offence. Second, where an arrestable offence has been committed, any person may arrest anyone who is, or whom he reasonably suspects to be, guilty of the offence. Third, where an arrestable offence is suspected, a constable—and only a constable—may arrest anyone whom he reasonably suspects to have committed it. Lastly, a constable may arrest without warrant any person who is, or whom he reasonably suspects to be, about to commit an arrestable offence. Subsection (6) provides, in addition, that a constable may enter—if need be, by force—and search any place in order to arrest a person suspected of an arrestable offence.
Subsection (7) makes necessary savings with regard to the operation of any statutory restriction on the institution of proceedings for an offence and other powers of arrest not dependent on the offence being a felony. The Common Law power to arrest for the purpose of preventing a breach of the peace is preserved. So, too, are the powers under Section 11 of the Prevention of Offences Act 1851 to arrest any person found committing an indictable offence by night, and the many other statutory powers to arrest for particular offences, such as the power under the Licensing Acts to arrest persons found drunk and disorderly or drunk and incapable.
Clause 3, which makes statutory provision in a field hitherto left to the Common Law, allows the use of reasonable force in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders. I understand that this clause has given rise to a certain amount of concern, and that there is some fear that it may extend the law by giving general sanction for the use of extreme measures to protect land and property. We shall, of course, consider this in more detail in Committee, but I think it may be helpful to say a few words now about what is intended.
The Common Law on the matter is very obscure, but there is reason to think that it allows the use of force, where necessary, to carry out an arrest or to prevent crime, although it is possible that the extent of the existing powers may depend on whether the crime is a felony

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or a misdemeanour. The clause has been included to prevent any argument that the law has been changed because of the disappearance of felonies. The intention is to place on a statutory basis what is probably the existing law on the matter. It would not be practicable to attempt to define what is meant by "reasonable force", but we do not think that the provision would be held to permit the use of force where no force is necessary, or to permit the use of more force than is required to effect the arrest or to prevent crime. We think that it would very likely be held that it would not be reasonable to use even the slightest force to prevent trivial offences.
Clause 4 replaces the present Common Law offence of being an accessory after the fact to felony—which will disappear with the abolition of felony. First, there will be a new general offence of doing acts intended to impede the apprehension or prosecution of offenders for arrestable offences. This will be generally similar to the present offence of being an accessory after the fact to felony. It will cover such conduct as driving a criminal away after a crime, providing a car for the purpose, hiding him from the police or destroying finger-prints or other traces of the crime. As a safeguard against unjustified prosecutions, and to secure consistency of prosecution policy, proceedings for this offence may be instituted only by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Subsection (2) of Clause 4 provides, however, for the case where an offender is on trial for an arrestable offence but it appears on the evidence that he has committed only the new offence of assisting the main offender. In these circumstances, he can be found guilty of the assisting offence without its being necessary to start fresh proceedings against him or to obtain the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Subsection (3) makes important changes in the penalties for assisting offenders. At present, the maximum penalty for being an accessory after the fact to a felony other than murder is two years' imprisonment. This penalty is substantially increased, and will in future depend on the gravity of the main offence. For example, if the main offence carries a maxi-
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mum of under 10 years, the maximum penalty for assisting the offender will be 3 years, but if the maximum for the main offence is 14 years or over, the maximum for assisting will be 7 years. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that in these days of planned crime these increases in penalties for accessories are to be welcomed.
The other substantial change to be made in consequence of the disappearance of accessories to felonies is in subsection (7) of Clause 4. This extends the present offence of receiving stolen property to cover dishonestly undertaking, or assisting in, its retention, removal, disposal or realisation. There are various activities in connection with the disposal of stolen property which ought to be punishable, but which are not at present covered by the law relating to receiving. The extension now proposed will stop this gap. It will, for example, penalise those who knowingly convey stolen property to any place after a theft, those who take charge of it and keep it on their premises or hide it on the approach of the police, and those who negotiate for its sale.
I turn now to Clause 5 of the Bill, which deals with two further forms of obstruction of the enforcement of the criminal law. First, there is a new offence of accepting reward for not disclosing information about an arrestable offence. This will replace the existing offences of misprision of felony and compounding a felony. Secondly, it will be made a statutory offence deliberately to waste the time of the police by giving false information. This will apply not only to false information about the commission of offences, but also to any false story giving rise to apprehension for the safety of persons or property. It will bring in such cases as the bomb hoaxer, if he can be caught. Cases of this kind cause serious loss of time for the police, and may throw suspicion on innocent people. Offenders were at one time prosecuted for public mischief, but in a case in 1954 the practice was critised by the Court of Criminal Appeal, which suggested that there should be a specific statutory offence aimed at this kind of conduct. Proceedings for these obstruction offences may be instituted only by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Again this is intended to ensure consistency of

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prosecution policy and to prevent prosecutions for trival offences.
There is one other provision arising from Part I of the Bill to which I should like to draw particular attention. It is paragraph 9 of Schedule 2, and it deals with the powers of the courts to require an offender to pay compensation to his victim—a subject which has aroused keen public interest. At present, Section 4 of the Forfeiture Act 1870 empowers a court to award compensation of up to £100 for loss of property arising from a felony. The disappearance of felony makes it necessary to amend this section and the opportunity is taken to strengthen the power of the courts substantially. By this amendment they will be able to award compensation on conviction of any offences triable on indictment, and to award compensation for damage to property as well as for loss of property. The maximum limit on the amount that can be awarded is also increased from £100 to £400.
I think I have covered the most important provisions of Part I of the Bill. In addition, it contains many other detailed and consequential amendments and, I hope, improvements of the law. They include provisions relating both to the trial of offences and to the courts' powers in dealing with offenders. Generally they represent a clarification and restatement of the existing law, with suitable adaptation to take account both of the abolition of felony and of modern needs and circumstances.
I turn now to Part II of the Bill, which abolishes certain obsolete offences, which to-day's Guardian, in an excellent leading article, describes as "a huge pile of legislative deadwood…for a parliamentary bonfire". Included among them it alleges, will be laws written in language which sometimes breaks into the region of poetry. I am sadly conscious of the lack of poetry in what I have been saying, but I am confident that we shall have much better, more just and more workable laws.
One of the items in the first programme of the Law Commission was a review of certain ancient crimes. The Commission completed their review earlier this year and their findings were published in a Report laid before Parliament on June 21. The Government have
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accepted the Commission's recommendations, and Part II and Schedule 4 to the present Bill give effect to them. The offences being abolished—some of them statutory, some at Common Law—as the Law Commission explain in their Report, are now wholly obsolete. To mention just a few, we are abolishing the Common Law misdemeanour of issuing a challenge to fight.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Good!
LORD STONHAM: I am quite sure that my noble friend will be happy about that. It dates from the efforts to suppress duelling. We are also abolishing the offence of being a common night-walker; that is, being out and about when decent folks are abed.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I take it that it is still an offence for noble, as opposed to common, night-walkers.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I was speaking about Common Law, and of course "common" includes nobles.
Among the statutory offences which will disappear are those under the Profane Oaths Act 1745—which makes it an offence to profanely curse, or swear; and grades the penalty according to the status of the offender: 1s. if you are a day labourer, or a common soldier or seaman; 2s. if you are any other person under the degree of gentlemen, and 5s. (noble Lords may be sorry to hear) for gentlemen and above. I have no doubt that that is the origin of the phrase, "a rich oath".
One question which may arise here is why we are limiting our repeal of obsolete offences to those mentioned in this Bill. It may well be asked whether there are no other offences which are now completely out of date and ripe for repeal. My Lords, I have little doubt that there are others. But the review of the law is a long-term process, and experience has shown that even an apparently simple change can have wide implications. This Bill alone makes it clear that the apparently simple matter of doing away with the wholly unnecessary and obsolete distinction between felony and misdemeanour has widespread ramifications which could not have been fully realised without the careful consideration given to the matter by the Criminal Law Revision Committee. It is therefore essential that before steps are

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taken to repeal old laws, a thorough examination should be made of all that this entails, so that we can fully consider whether the old law is completely obsolete or whether some new law should be put in its place. This is a continuing process and even now further reviews are being made. For example, the Criminal Law Revision Committee are at present undertaking a review of Common Law misdemeanours. I am sure the House will agree that it would be wrong to wait until the whole review is completed before making changes in the law, and I hope noble Lords will also agree that we should not go beyond the scope of the recommendations which have been made so far. This Bill, then, implements two valuable Reports, proposes a major clarification and modernisation of the law, and advances in no small way the simplification of the Statute Book. I hope that the House on those grounds will welcome it as an important step forward. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Stonham.)
3.39 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the full description of this Bill which has just been given to the House by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will, I think, have been of the greatest assistance to those who might on first looking at the Bill consider it rather complicated—indeed, the further they go with it the more complicated it appears to become. The value of the two Reports on which the Bill is based is undoubted. I should like to join with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in expressing gratitude to those who have taken so much time and trouble in preparing the matter which now forms the provisions of this Bill. Indeed, in this case I think it was no mean task, because the consequential provisions of the abolition of the distinction between felony and misdemeanour go into the most unexpected realms of the law. My Lords, I think this is the most difficult Bill that I have seen for a long time about which to make a Second Reading speech, because if one accepts, as I do at once, that it is a good idea to abolish the distinction between felony and misdemeanour, almost all of the rest of the subject becomes a matter of detail. Therefore I will try not to make too long a speech
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at this stage; although I believe that there are certain matters which we ought to consider as a House in Committee later on. It is perfectly true, also, that the matter had a Committee Second Reading in another place in the last Session and various useful comments which were made there I understand have been to some degree incorporated in the present draft.
Having abolished the distinction between felony and misdemeanour, the Bill follows the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee in setting out in statutory form the alternatives in those matters, like the crime of being an accessory after the fact of felony and misprision, or compounding a felony, which otherwise would have fallen to the ground and require to he replaced. Again as a matter of principle I cannot believe there is anybody in the House who would object to a replacement being provided for those offences which otherwise would disappear. Whether, again, the details of them are altogether acceptable is a matter which I do not think it would be right to consider at this stage. Nevertheless, there are one or two points which I should like to raise on the Bill as it stands and at this stage. First of all, looking at Clause 2 we find the first appearance of this new expression "arrestable offence". I will leave it to my noble friend Lord Conesford to make his representations upon the phraseology, and for the purpose of my speech I will continue to use the phrase "arrestable offence" until it is altered by him or by anybody else.
The distinction now being introduced is a new division of the criminal law to replace the division which used to take place between felony and misdemeanour. It is not just a question of nomenclature, because a number of matters follow from it, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. In the first place, it sets out the circumstances where either an ordinary member of the public or a police constable may arrest, and these specifications of the law apply only to arrestable offences. Secondly, it sets out the whole system of dealing with what had previously been accessories or misprisions or compounding a felony. Therefore it seems to me important to make quite sure that the crimes which are in future to be arrestable offences cover the

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whole spectrum of those which ought to be included. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, confirmed what I thought to be the case, that when Clause 2(1) says that an arrestable offence shall be one where the sentence is fixed by law or, by virtue of any enactment, as a term of five years or more, the Common Law department of this is really confined to treason, murder—if that is still a Common Law offence at all—and manslaughter.
There are Common Law offences of a serious nature for which, so far as I know, the penalty is not fixed in that way. In other words, it is not a life penalty. Perhaps the most important of them is causing an affray. As I understand the drafting of this Bill, causing an affray would not be an arrestable offence. There are others. There are certain matters in conspiracy; there are matters of sedition and seditious libel. So far as the latter two are concerned, I do not suppose it will very often be the case that a member of the public, or indeed a police constable, will wish to arrest offenders without a warrant and thereby bring into play the provisions of subsections (2) to (5) of Clause 2.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Viscount? My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, when he winds up the debate, will be dealing with any points that are raised, but I should not like the point which the noble Viscount has just made to go by without challenge. I think that if he looks at Clause 2(7) he will find that this must be covered; and, indeed, in my speech I referred to offences likely to cause a breach of the peace, or injury, and I should have thought that an affray would have been likely to cause injury and therefore would still be arrestable.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I suppose this may well be so; but if that is the case, the difficulty would then arise that we have serious offences where we have not, after all, set out, as I had hoped we should have done, the rights of the public and of the police so far as powers of arresting are concerned in this Bill. The noble Lord may be right about this, but I thought that one of the merits of this operation was that, having abolished this distinction, with all the uncertainties of law which flowed from it, we should at any rate state in
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statutory form what were people's rights, and that the only thing we should require them to remember was whether or not the penalty was five years set down by Statute or life by Common Law. If the noble Lord is saying that the matters with which I have just been dealing are, after all, going to come within a third category, it would seem to me, since my study of Archbold shows there are very few of them, that there might be a case for seeing whether we cannot bring them within the scope of the Bill instead of leaving them to some rather vague statement or interpretation of subsection (7). I make this point because the offence of causing an affray was one which was resuscitated quite recently to deal with certain offences and was found extremely useful, and one, I should have thought, eminently suitable for arrest by both members of the public and by constables; and I think that members of the public and the police force ought to know where they are. I therefore commend this for further study.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, would not the noble Viscount agree that almost all of these cases would come under Clause 3? I thought of the same point as he has thought of. Clause 3 is a very valuable clause and I think it would cover most of them.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has suggested yet another interpretation of the law. If the noble Lord is right, this may well be the answer, but what I had hoped to find in the Bill was a clear statement of what the public might do and the circumstances in which a member of the public might effect an arrest without a warrant, and similarly in the case of police constables. The moment one suggests the Common Law offence one immediately gets a barrage from those who say, "It is perfectly all right; it is covered by something else". The opportunity is here to get it straight in the Bill and make it perfectly apparent to all. The point I am making is that I think the House should consider whether this is done or not.
The other subsidiary point, which arises, I think, on Clause 2 and on Clause 3, is whether or not this supersedes the Common Law. I am sure that I shall be told by the noble and learned Lord,

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the Lord Chancellor, that, as a matter of drafting, this is apparently so; even though it does not say so in the Bill. But if we are attempting to replace the existing law of the country in realms where it is extremely dubious with clear statutory provisions, there should be no room left, where a matter does not appear to be covered by the Bill, for a reliance on doubtful cases of Common Law. I suggest again that, as a matter of principle, the House might like to consider whether we hope to repeal any rules of law previously enforced and replace them quite clearly with what this Bill says.
In another place a point was raised on Clause 4 about the position of a husband or wife who might have been doing something which would be an offence under subsection (1) of the clause, and a certain plea for compassion was made that this should not be affected by this new offence as a substitution for being an accessory after the fact of felony. I have studied this point and I believe that here the policy in the Bill (because I think that this is a matter of policy) is one which ought to be supported. First of all, I cannot believe that anybody would lack confidence in the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions under subsection (4) whether or not to prosecute in a case. Secondly, it does not, so far as I can make out, affect the position of a husband or wife being an accessory before a fact or inciting to crime. This is not touched. Thirdly, I understand it does not prejudice in any way the defence of coercion which is set up under Section 47 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925—in other words, the wife, even though committing an offence technically under subsection(1), can still plead that she did so only because she was coerced by her husband, and this is a statutory defence. Therefore I am happy with this, and I think that the Government have reached the right conclusion. I believe that subsection (7) will be a useful addition to the criminal law and one that will hold the fort until such time as the whole law of larceny and subsidiary matters is reconsidered.
I would make just one other particular point before coming to the later stages of the Bill. The point was raised in another place about the civil consequen-
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ces of the abolition of the distinction between a felony and a misdemeanour. Most of them have been dealt with, but one on which no comment was made is one which I think is of some importance. There is a rule that no person, by a will or intestacy, may take advantage of a death which has taken places as the result of his own felony. This is perfectly sensible so far as murder and manslaughter are concerned. Obviously one can see the public policy for it. However, the abolition of the distinction leaves the civil court in some doubt about whether this distinction, the arrestable offence, can be adapted to the previous rule for a felony. If so, does this mean that if two members of a family are involved in a motor accident, for which one of them is prosecuted and convicted for causing the death of the other by dangerous driving, which is an arrestable offence, as the noble Lord told us, then he will not he able to profit by the other's will I may not have put this very well, but the person who may profit by a felony may have killed the person in the motor car and I wonder what would be the consequences in a civil action as a result of the new clause.
On Clause 6, I should be grateful if the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, would clear my mind on two points. The first arises on subsection (3) where we have the provision set out that on a person's trial on indictment for any offence other than treason or murder a jury may find him guilty of another offence which would have been included in the charge for which he was originally indicted. This has to be tied up with the provision in Clause 4(2) whereby even if he is not found guilty of any of the actual charges he can still be found guilty under Clause 4(1) of being what is at present an accessory after the fact. If the noble and learned Lord can tell me how in practice this can work in a judge's summing-up and in what a jury is to consider, he would be doing a considerable service to the class of legal practitioners who are worried about it, because the Solicitor General did not deal with this matter on Second Reading in another place and it is an important point. I hope express directions will not have to be given in the summing-up, and express decisions given by the jury whether or not they are going to

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find a prisoner guilty in the whole series of offences or attempted offences, simply as a result of the provisions of this Bill.
Under subsection (5), when the new Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal deals with a case where there have been two indictments, will the result of the new provisions of an automatic plea of not guilty be to debar it from sentencing the appealing prisoner on one of the counts on which, under this particular subsection, he appears now to be given an automatic acquittal merely by pleading guilty to one of the lesser charges in the indictment? This may be in some way a limitation on the powers of the Criminal Division which at the moment they do not have, and I do not think it has been considered by the Criminal Law Revision Committee.
Much of the rest of Part I of the Bill is detailed and I do not think it necessary to say anything about those clauses at this stage. So far as Part II is concerned, we are grateful to the Law Commission for studying this matter, and particularly for their assurance that the abolition of these offences is not in any way going to prevent or hinder the battle against the more sophisticated types of crime which, in an amazing way, can so often still be charged under medieval Statutes. Their references to the modern practice of "bugging" and the use of other listening devices is very important. If, indeed, it cannot he claimed to be an offence under the ancient law of eavesdropping, it would be perfectly justifiable to abolish that offence; but I am hoping, all the same, that we shall take the opportunity to have another look at this matter and see whether there is not room for the creation of a new offence to deal with this matter.
There is only one other point which I should like to put to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. For some time he has been making speeches about this matter. I hope he will not take this amiss, but he has almost an obsession about maintenance and champerty. The noble and learned Lord said last week that he had just received a report from the Law Commission proposing sweeping changes in the law relating to maintenance and "charity"—I think that he meant champerty but the OFFICIAL REPORT got it wrong—though I should not be too abusive of
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charity, because we may all be dependent on it before very long.
In Schedule 3 there are a number of repeals which I would suggest have nothing whatever to do with the distinction between felony and misdemeanour. Among matters of most remarkable historic interest, we find that the second Statute (the Statutum de Conspiratoribus) in Part I is about champerty, and so are the Statutes, 28 Edw. 1. c. 11, and 1. Edw. 3., and 3 Edw. 1. Chapter 25 (The Statute of Westminster the First); but the Bill does not appear to go on to repeal 33 Edw. 1., which gives the definition of champerty. There are a number of other matters about champerty and maintenance in this Schedule. On page 18, there is 1. Ric. 2. c. 4. and 32 Hen. 8. c. 9, both of which relate to maintenance and champerty. I agree that some of these matters should have been looked at, and I understand that the Law Commission have been doing so; but why in this Bill do we choose to deal with this particular matter?
Rather worse than that, there is a certain amount of alteration in this Schedule from that which was proposed by the Criminal Law Revision Committee. Your Lordships will see that on page 19, at line 39, there is the repeal of Section 61 of the Juries Act 1825. Perhaps your Lordships may think that is not a particularly notable affair, but I would tell your Lordships that this is not one of the repeals suggested by the Committee—perhaps with justification, because this is what it says:
"Provided always, that, notwithstanding anything herein contained, every person who shall be guilty of the offence of embracery, and every juror who shall wilfully or corruptly consent thereto, shall and may be respectively proceeded against by indictment or information, and he punished by fine or imprisonment, in like manner as every such person and juror might have been before the passing of this Act."
I do not think that this has anything to do with the main part of this Bill at all. It was not recommended by the Committee. And I suggest that this matter of embracery should be left out of the Schedule and Repeals altogether, to say nothing about the series of offences under the Act of Edward I, not mentioned by the Committee, and I dare say not so important.

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There is one other matter in these Repeals. The Treason Act 1543 is also being repealed. I appreciate that the Bill has gone on the basis that it is trying to assimilate the crime of treason with that of murder. On the other hand, according to Archbold, that very ancient Act gives the only jurisdiction to the courts of this country for trying a prisoner who has committed treason outside the jurisdiction. It is not anything like as obsolete as might be thought, because the case of R. v. Lynch in 1903 was founded on this Act and dealt with treasonable activities which led up to the South African War. Again, I do not insist that this Act is necessary or that it should not be replaced, but it does not seem to me that changes of this nature not explained by the Committee ought to be accepted by the House without further ado. I would ask that when it comes to Committee stage noble Lords should look at these matters with some care in order to see whether these repeals are entirely necessary in the present form.
These, of course, are matters of detail, and I should not wish to press them at the moment except to say that they are not within the realm of the general principle that we are discussing. The general principle is one that I most heartily welcome, and I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading this afternoon and that we can look forward to many fascinating discussions about these details at a later stage of the Bill.

THE ABERFAN DISASTER: ATTORNEY GENERAL'S STATEMENT
4.1 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (THE LORD GARDINER): My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to repeat a Statement that has been made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place. His words were:
"Last Tuesday this House resolved that a Tribunal be established under the 1921 Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act to inquire into the causes of and all the circumstances relating to the Aberfan disaster. Last Thursday my right honourable friend the Attorney General made a statement on the implications of that decision. In view
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of the misunderstanding and gross misrepresentation of his action, I now find it necessary to ask permission to make a Statement about some of the consequences of the decision the House took, and also about the position of the Attorney General.
"The House fully recognises the unique position of the Attorney General. In addition to being a member of the Government with collective responsibility for Government decisions, he has certain important duties in connection with the administration of justice which are non-political and on which no Prime Minister nor he himself would allow any pressures to be put. But he has a third capacity, that of adviser on matters of law to this House and through this House to the country. It was in this third capacity that my right honourable and learned friend acted last Thursday.
" It is now being widely suggested that my right honourable and learned friend in the statement he made last week did what he did for political, indeed for Party political, reasons. This is a gross and contemptible slur on my right honourable and learned friend which should be sharply repudiated by every Member of this House.
"I think it right now that the House should be told of the considerations which led him to make the statement.
"On Tuesday last this House resolved to establish the Tribunal and clothed it with all the powers of a judicial inquiry. Every Member of the House who agreed to that Motion must have known the consequences of that decision. They were set out in fact on a similar occasion by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Macmillan, when he referred to a 1921 Act Tribunal as:
'…a Tribunal armed with the power of subpoena, armed with the power to put witnesses on Oath, armed with the power to pursue them for perjury if they tell untruths, armed with the power to examine and cross-examine, and where witnesses will be protected by privilege, irrespective of the evidence they give.'
"Since it is the earnest desire of every Member of this House, and of the whole public, including Press, television and radio, that this Tribunal must be enabled to get at the truth, to establish responsibility where responsibility may be shown to lie, it is vital

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that nothing be done which in any way weakens the power and ability of the Tribunal to do the job we have given it to do.
"Before he made the statement my right honourable and learned friend consulted the Chairman of the Tribunal and his statement was made with Lord Justice Edmund Davies' full knowledge and approval. And there was good reason for the statement.
"On the Friday of the disaster and subsequently the great majority of Press reporters and also television and radio did their duty with great responsibility and consideration—indeed I myself in Aberfan paid tribute to the Press for the great responsibility and restraint they had shown. But certain television interviews had involved cross-examination of potential witnesses of a kind so searching that they appeared to be seeking to do the work of the Tribunal in advance without all the powers and safeguards for a Judicial Inquiry on which this House has insisted, as in the words I have just quoted from Mr. Macmillan.
"Statements describing action taken or actions which it is considered should have been taken are matters to be elucidated by the Tribunal. Once statements have been elucidated by television interviewers under non-judicial procedures, they are on the record in a form which could hinder the Tribunal's ability to get at the truth.
"Moreover, those who have attacked my right honourable and learned friend and impute unworthy motives to him disregard the precedents he was following. In a previous Tribunal it was the Prime Minister, and not the Law Officer of the Crown responsible, who in moving the Resolution to establish the Committee said this:
'I do most sincerely and most earnestly deprecate publication in any form or in any conditions, of any speculation as to what happened, now that a court has been set up to investigate the circumstances. It clearly will be impossible to obtain any indication of the real causes of this terrible disaster until the evidence has been given and considered by the Tribunal. I hope, therefore, whatever people may have thought or said in the past, that they will now say no more about it until the Tribunal reports.'
"That was the Thetis disaster.
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"Indeed, Mr. Speaker, the House itself has, from the earliest days of these Tribunals, ruled through the mouths of a number of your distinguished predecessors in the Chair that, having established a court with full judicial powers, this House itself could not discuss any matter within the competence of the Tribunal. The original rule, Mr. Speaker, was made on March 21, 1921, by Mr. Speaker Lowther when he ruled that as a matter before the Tribunal had been referred to that Tribunal it should not be raised or discussed in the House.
"In 1959, for example, the then Lord Advocate refused to answer Questions to him even before the Motion had been confirmed before the House on the ground that a Motion was awaiting decision by the House.
"In November, 1962, when the Vassall Tribunal was set up your predecessor gave a ruling which strictly followed that of Mr. Speaker Lowther.
"The then Leader of the House, the right honourable Member for Enfield West, then submitted a Motion to the House referring this whole matter to the Select Committee on Procedure which reported on March 5, 1963, confirming in the strongest terms the rulings which your predecessors had given. The House approved that report in July, 1963.
"If Parliament has consistently and rigorously restrained its own functions in this matter because of the sub judice ruling, my right honourable and learned friend was abundantly justified in acting as he did so that others outside this House were advised of the legal position. The more so in view of the fact that since the House first ruled on these matters a new and more formidable instrument of interrogation, namely the television interview, has been evolved. It was the more necessary in that those whose duty it is to assist the Tribunal had already begun their work in Aberfan and were in process of collecting evidence and taking statements from witnesses who therefore by this time had become witnesses of the Tribunal.
"I trust, having quoted the precedents and recorded the facts, that the House as a whole will agree that my right honourable and learned friend

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was fully justified in the action he took in the discharge of his duties to the House and the country."
That is the end of the Statement made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.
4.10 p.m.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for reading out that rather long Statement which the Prime Minister has made in another place. I must say, first of all, that we on these Benches are extremely dissatisfied that such a very important Statement as that made by the Attorney General last Thursday, which has drawn world-wide comment, was not repeated in your Lordships' House, and I hope we may have some explanation of that.
In spite of the long Statement, is it not still clear that, whatever the legal position may be, the Attorney General went too far in threatening the Press, radio and television on this occasion? Who felt that it was necessary to make a statement at this time? From the Statement we have just heard, it is quite clear that no previous Prime Minister or Attorney General has found it necessary to use that threatening language on any other occasion. Is it not also clear from the Statement that the interviews which are complained of—and I think they are confined largely to the B.B.C.—were all interviews which took place before the Tribunal was set up? And is there any evidence in this Statement, in spite of all the research that has been done upon it, of any comment in the Press or on the radio which was likely adversely to affect the working of the Tribunal? Therefore, would the noble and learned Lord not agree that in the circumstances the Attorney General's statement was at least clumsily worded, and was guaranteed to give the maximum affront to the Press, radio and television?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, on the first point, I regret that there was some misunderstanding or failure of co-ordination between the usual channels. It has been the practice for many years to repeat Statements made in another place, after consultation through the usual channels and, of course, taking into account the interests of Members generally. The Chief Whips of
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various Governments, through their contacts with all Government Departments, have sought to ensure that the House is informed, but sometimes, due to the short period between the decision to make a Statement and the making of it, information is not available in sufficient time. I understand that this was the case last Thursday, and neither I nor the usual channels in this House were aware that the Statement was being made. I regret that.
On the second point raised, I think first of all one has to see what the facts were and the sort of thing which was happening. On Sunday my right honourable friend the Prime Minister had announced that there would be an Inquiry—he had announced it on Friday, I think—under the 1921 Act, and that Lord Justice Edmund Davies would lead it. The sort of thing which took place was that on the Monday, in "24 Hours"—which I understand has an enormous listening audience—a witness was interviewed and cross-examined. The interviewer described him as:
"a man who surely knows more about the behaviour and nature of coal tips than anyone."
Some of us, without being civil engineers, know a little about the angle of repose. These questions are manifestly civil engineering questions. The man who was described as
"a man who surely knows more about the behaviour and nature of coal tips than anyone"
was the local chargehand who had been at the pit for some 25 years. This man was severely cross-examined as to what the dangers may be, whether the tip was regularly inspected, and so forth.
Perhaps I might pause there to observe that one of the dangers which television introduces is this. When you are asked a question you do not expect, you give what must necessarily be an unconsidered reply. You may realise a moment afterwards that you have said something wrong. If you were in the witness box, of course you would have every opportunity to put that right before you left the witness box, but in these scrappy television interviews the interviewer then goes on to something else and says, "Time is up; thank you very much", and you have no opportunity to correct it.
What is a man likely to do when he comes before the Tribunal, when he knows that millions of people have

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already heard him make an important statement which he subsequently realised was erroneous? The interview ended by the interviewer looking straight at the camera, and saying to us who heard it:
"Now I have, as a young journalist, attended and reported several public inquiries into pit disasters, disasters involving men working underground. And in nearly every case I have to report to you that when grief had safely abated the final report was a frustrating exercise in official 'whitewashing'."
This was a deliberate attack on the bona fides of the Tribunal, when the head of the Tribunal had already been announced and made known to millions of people, at a time when, as we all know, emotions very naturally were running high.
It is perhaps not surprising, though it may have been unusual, that on the following night the Lord Justice felt bound to go on the same programme. Those of us who heard it will remember the simple, sincere and moving way in which he said:
"These are my own people. I can assure you that I shall leave no stone unturned to see that we arrive at the truth."
But I venture to think that no fair Englishman, once it had been announced that there was to be a Tribunal under the Act, with a Lord Justice to lead it—would suggest to millions of people that the probability was that it would be a 'whitewashing' exercise. From the other statements in the Press it is quite plain what they meant: that because this is a Labour Government, and because the National Coal Board is a nationalised industry, in some improper way they were going to try to secure that there should be a "whitewashing" Report. I have no doubt at all that not only was my right honourable friend the Attorney General justified in saying what he did, but it was high time somebody reminded the newspapers and television of what the law was. It is, I think, quite possible that they imagined that, because a Tribunal under the Act is not a law court, the law of contempt of court does not apply. But it does; and they were rightly reminded that it does.
LORD HARLECH: My Lords, in reply to that, may I say that of course I would not for one moment try to defend the kind of comments that were expressed on television on Monday night. But I would point out that that was a programme which took place before the Tribunal was set up, and no mention had
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been made of any such adverse or prejudicial comment in the Press or on the radio, and it seemed to me that this was using extravagant language in order to bring home, no doubt quite rightly, to certain sections of public communication media a warning that, once the Tribunal had been set up, the case was sub judice.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack for repeating this long Statement. I think it is quite right that it should have been repeated here to-day. May I say that I entirely acquit Sir Elwyn Jones, whom I have known for many years, and for whom I have a high regard, of making any statement for political or Party political reasons in this context. I am quite sure that he did not do that at all.
May I also say, as I said when the Statement was originally made by the noble and learned Lord, that I have every confidence in Sir Edmund Davies. I think, however, that in the circumstances, in view of the feeling in the country about this terrible disaster, it would have been better, if a warning was needed, to let Sir Edmund Davies make it, rather than the Attorney General. That, I think, was a mistake—no doubt a natural mistake in the circumstances—and, as I say, I believe that if any warning was required it would have come much better from Sir Edmund Davies.
I hope now that, when all these protests have been made, when the long Statement has been repeated in this House and made by the Prime Minister in another place, all the arguments and disputes in this matter in regard to the statement made by Sir Elwyn Jones will cease. We are dealing with a terribly serious matter, one on which there is very strong feeling in my country, as well as in England, and I believe we should now let the Tribunal under the distinguished Judge get on with their work, so that we may, in the not too distant future, receive the benefit of their findings.
4.20 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may one who agrees entirely with what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said on the subject of certain interviews on television (which I did not see) and on radio, reinforce what has just been

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said by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, and indeed by my noble Leader, by suggesting that all this trouble might have been avoided if, when the Attorney General thought it necessary to make a statement in the House of Commons, he had revealed what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minister revealed to-day: that he made it with the assent and approval of the Chairman of the Tribunal. I think the trouble was caused by the apparently threatening language used by the Attorney General in the House of Commons, where, of course, this statement had no more the force of law than if someone had made it outside. If the Attorney General had given a warning in another way, I think that this trouble might have been avoided. I agree with what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, and I hope this now clears up the matter.
However, may I ask the Lord Chancellor one other question, which I hope he will not think entirely irrelevant to what has happened? It will remind the House of a short speech made by my noble and learned friend Lord Dilhorne on the occasion when this House approved the setting-up of the Tribunal. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor heard the one o'clock News on the Home Service yesterday? If not, I hope he will obtain a transcript from the B.B.C. Immediately after the News, in a programme called "The World at One", an interview took place between somebody at the B.B.C. and a convict recently released from Wormwood Scrubs, who answered a number of questions about Blake, about his guilt of the offences for which he was imprisoned, how he had behaved in prison and where he had probably now gone.
My Lords, I am well aware that no Tribunal has been set up in that case but I believe that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor may think those questions and that interview quite as improper, from the point of view of the Inquiry now taking place into prison escapes, as the other matters to which he alluded.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think I had probably better not get involved in the Blake case, although I will consider what the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, has said. On the other point,
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I think my right honourable friend the Attorney General was properly anxious not to involve the learned Lord Justice in any way, and, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, I should have thought it was undesirable that the Judge himself should get directly involved in controversies with the Press and that the proper way of dealing with the matter was the way in which it was, in fact, dealt with by my right honourable friend the Attorney General; that is, by reminding Parliament, and through Parliament the country, what the law on this point was—of which, of course, he, as well as the learned Lord Justice, was aware.
I entirely agree with the hope that this controversy will now end. It is perhaps right to remind those of your Lordships who have not seen it that the Daily Express of this morning says this:
"Of course it is very annoying if the first of the major nationalised industries is involved in an inquiry arising out of an immense tragedy at the very time when it is planned to extend the area of nationalisation. But that is no reason to attempt to threaten the Press in a statement issued under the wig and gown of a senior law officer."
I hope that that type of journalism, which I venture to characterise as a disgraceful one, will also end.

CRIMINAL LAW BILL [H.L.]
4.27 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, this is a very important Bill and I do not think that anyone will question its main object. The reform of the law which the Bill embodies has been recommended by a powerful Committee, under the chairmanship of Lord Justice Sellers, and I would join with all others who have spoken in this matter in expressing our gratitude to his Committee. What is in fact proposed is the abolition of an archaism that unnecessarily complicates our law. Therefore with the main object of the measure I do not think there will be any disagreement.
There are, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, explained, many consequential changes, some for re-stating the existing law in a way now rendered necessary by the abolition of the distinction between felony and misdemeanour. Some remove doubts which would otherwise exist, and some make actual changes

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as a matter of policy. These make very important, and in some cases controversial, changes in the law—perhaps I should not say controversial changes, but, at any rate, changes that need a great deal of examination and careful discussion—and I should like to make a plea about the Committee stage. I do not myself propose to-day to deal with many of the points which could, I think, more usefully be raised during the Committee stage. I want to say only two things.
The first is how very useful I found, and I think others who wish to study this Bill will find, the proceedings in another place on February 9 of this year. They took place in what did not exist in my day in the House of Commons; namely, the Second Reading Committee. I think this is the first occasion on which it has been my duty or good fortune to study the proceedings in the Second Reading Committee of another place, and while I am sure that it would be improper to express any criticism of proceedings in another place, I hope that it is not improper for me to record my admiration in this case. It seemed to me that in one brief debate a number of extremely useful criticisms and suggestions were made, and I was pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that some had led to a difference in the Bill now before us from the Bill that was then before another place.
The other comment that I would make about our Committee proceedings is that I cannot believe there is any other Bill on which it would be more useful to be advised in Committee by the noble and learned Law Lords. I therefore hope very much that the Committee stage will take place at times convenient to the noble and learned Law Lords. I am very glad to see that two of them are to intervene in our debate this afternoon, and that alone, I think, would be sufficient to deter me from raising any difficult legal points. On the detail, therefore, I confine myself to saying that I think there will be a great many points which we shall wish to raise on the Committee stage but which I do not propose to go into this afternoon.
There is one point, however, that I regard as of very great importance and on which I hope to have the sympathy of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I think he is always quite kindly disposed when I venture to bring
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forward considerations of language. My criticism of the Bill and of the Report, on which alone I am going to speak in detail this afternoon, concerns the phrase "arrestable offence". I am going to point out what appear to me to be very serious disadvantages of this almost illiterate expression. This is a lawyers' Bill. We are abolishing an historic distinction in English law. I think we are abolishing it for good cause. But I am horrified that what will be ascribed to noble and learned Lords Justices, Law Lords and others should contain something which will be an example in the schools of the illiterate use of English.
This expression, "arrestable offence", is also extremely inconvenient, as I hope to show. The clause in which the expression occurs is Clause 2, and the clause goes on to deal with the rights of arrest. Perhaps at this point I might give what I believe to be the answer to an intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, while my noble friend was speaking, when he said he thought that, whatever may be the shortcomings of the rights of arrest given in Clause 2, they were probably put right by what appeared in Clause 3. I should like to mention in passing why I do not think that can be quite the case.
LORD CHORLEY: I was dealing with the particular point, affray. I agree that it does not cover all the possible cases.
LORD CONESFORD: Perhaps what I am about to point out is what the noble Lord also had in mind. Clause 3 is concerned with the use of
"reasonable force in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders",
but what is lawful arrest will largely depend on the previous clause. First of all, what is the ordinary rule in English, or the ordinary practice concerning words ending in "able" or "ible"? If "able" or "ible" follows a transitive verb it normally means liable or requiring to be whatever the verb is in the passive. "Arrestable" would mean "liable to be arrested", and that is the only thing it could mean. To give a simple example, if you say, "Is the dog teachable?", you do not mean, "Is it able to teach?", you mean, "Can it be taught?". That is the ordinary rule in the English language about the use of "able" following a

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transitive verb. Whatever else is true of such an offence, it is not capable of being arrested in the sense in which "arrest" is used in this Bill.
But there is another very astonishing fact which some noble Lords may not have noticed. They may think that at least the arrestable offences mentioned in Clause 2 are all the offences for which it is possible to arrest. But they are not; and the Committee realise they are not. Let me read a short passage in paragraph 12 of their Report. This is what the Committee themselves say about their expression:
"The term will not of course cover offences which are punishable with less than five years' imprisonment but for which there is a statutory power of arrest; but we do not think that this will cause any confusion."
What optimists they are! They use an expression, a simple but simply illiterate expression, like "arrestable offence", and then they say that it will not cause any confusion, even if it does not include offences for which people can be arrested. I really am asking for the sympathy of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and for the highly skilled assistance of the Parliamentary draftsmen.
Let me say at once that this is a matter in which the Parliamentary draftsmen are not themselves guilty, because they are simply carrying out the recommendation of this Committee. Therefore there is nothing, so far as I can see, to prevent the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the Parliamentary draftsmen from putting their admirable brains together and giving us something better. And I think that this is necessary for the reputation of Parliament and for the reputation of the legal profession. I am delighted to know that I have the sympathy in this matter of at least one of the noble Lords and learned Law Lords who is to follow in this debate.
Perhaps I might deal with the three possible ways that occur to me of remedying the defect. Many others may occur to the Lord Chancellor. One is this—and it was indicated, I think, in the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross. He said—and I rather think that the same point may be made by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, who is to follow me—that Clause 2 is supposed
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to give some guidance to members of the public in knowing what their rights are with regard to arrest. But they do not know what the maximum penalty is under various Statutes, and do not know, therefore, what will constitute the offences known as an "arrestable offence". They will have at some point to see a list.
One of the possibilities of dealing with this matter and it may be, in the long run, the most useful (I think something like it was suggested by my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross), is that there should be a list of the offences concerned, so that the public may have some idea of what their rights are. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for whose careful speech and explanation of the Bill I should like to express gratitude, said that it would not be too difficult for a constable to learn what is an "arrestable offence". I dare say the constable may be taught it; but it is rather rough luck on the public if they have no idea of what their rights are in the matter.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord will allow me to intervene, I did not say that "it would not be too difficult"; what I said was that it would be as easy, if not easier, for the constable to know what was an "arrestable offence" as to distinguish between felony and misdemeanour.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I think that I should cordially agree with that. I am sure that he could learn it. But I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is not without sympathy with the point that I am making, that we should, if possible, try to be a little helpful to the public. I say that the clause as it stands, with this expression which I am attacking, does not help the public at all to know what is meant. So I suggest that one possible way of dealing with it is to say "listed offence", or something of that sort, and then have a list or a schedule. That is one possibility.
The second way is to have some different word altogether from anything incorporating the word "arrest". I do not pretend that I have thought of a good one, though one noble and learned Law Lord, if my memory is right, in discussing the matter with me, suggested for consideration a "holding offence". There may be difficulties about that, but

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it might be useful to give to the noble and learned. Lord the Lord Chancellor any suggestion that he might find useful even in discussion.
But there is a third possibility, that the Government find it vital or necessary to use the word "arrest" in some form or other. Then I say still that an "arrestable offence" would be definitely wrong. Better than "arrestable" would be "arrest", treating it purely as an adjective. If the noble Lord will refer to Clause 4(6) in the Bill before him he will find there a reference to "an extradition crime". We do not say "extraditable crime"; we say "extradition crime". In exactly the same way you might use "arrest" as an adjective—an "arrest offence". I am not recommending it. I do not think it would be good, but I say it would be better than "arrestable". Then, thirdly, you might say an "arresting offence". That would be an offence for which, in certain circumstances, a man would be entitled to arrest. The one thing that seems to me quite intolerable is "arrestable offence".
I hope it will not be thought that this point is in any way frivolous or unimportant. I am putting it forward perfectly seriously, and it is meant to be helpful. I shall do the best I can on this Bill, of the main purpose of which I approve, whatever is done about the expression; but for the honour of Parliament and the reputation of the legal profession I shall fight with all the force I can the expression "arrestable offence".
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, may I add one termination to what the noble Lord has referred to. In Clause 3 there appear the words:
"A person may use reasonable force in the prevention of crime."
If a householder finds someone in his house whom he is reasonably confident is going to commit a burglary, is he able to use force against him without contravention?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, there is one point in my notes to which I did not refer, and perhaps I should. I do not want it to be supposed that I am so ignorant of the English language as not to be acquainted with the fact that the termination "able" or "ible" when it
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does not follow a transitive verb may have a different sort of usage. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack may still be acquainted with the article of Fowler on the subject in his Dictionary of English Usage. There are three obvious examples; I could give many more. There is the word "laughable"; there is the word, perhaps more relevant to our present consideration, "actionable", with which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack is quite familiar; and there is another word familiar to the noble and learned Lord, "merchantable". But I say that these precedents are no sort of precedent, nor can any precedent be found, for the use of which I am complaining.
4.47 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, we have had a most interesting debate on an important subject, and I should like to add some comments. I hope that your Lordships will excuse me if I do not stay until the end of the debate. When I put down my name to speak I was assured that this debate would end much sooner than it shows any signs of doing. Of course, we have had rather long discussions on other matters. They have been most valuable discussions, but they have taken up a great deal of time.
I entirely agree with everything that has been said this afternoon as to the value of this Bill, and I should like also to join my congratulations to those of other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for the extraordinarily lucid presentation of a most complicated Bill. The Bar lost a natural leader when Lord Stonham failed to join the profession. Lucidity in argument is possibly the supreme quality of a great advocate. The noble Lord has certainly shown that he possesses it.
I hope that the fact that this Bill is going to be followed shortly by another Bill dealing with the criminal law, which will undoubtedly arouse greater public interest, will not be allowed to obscure the great importance of the Bill before us this afternoon. Although it does not say so in express terms, for all practical purposes it has, I suppose, the effect of abolishing from our criminal law that particular type of crime which is called a felony. I for one am a little sorry that this is not done in express terms. For

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several centuries the felony cast a black cloud over the whole social life of this country, and inflicting as it did the death penalty for numerous crimes which were really of but little importance, and resulting in the transportation of thousands of citizens to far distant colonies, it was really a terrible defect in our criminal law—perhaps the most terrible of all the defects in a criminal law which, into the early years of the nineteenth century, was perhaps the harshest in the whole civilised world.
Many of the worst aspects of the felony have now disappeared, but it still carries with it a terrible connotation. I should like to have seen it swept out of the vocabulary of the law, and I am sorry that the draftsmen of this Bill did not take the opportunity of bringing that about. Although the worst aspects of the felony were in fact eliminated in the 19th century with the abolition of the death penalty for almost all felonies, it has continued to hold a most anomalous place in our criminal law. For over a century nobody has had a good name for it, and almost every criminal lawyer, whether he be in a university or in practice, who has spoken about the matter has advocated that it should be abolished, or at any rate that the differences between it and the misdemeanour should be abolished. I think it is a reflection on the inadequacy of our methods of law reform that we have had to wait until this year, or it may be next year, before this Bill receives the Royal Assent in order to get rid of this stain on our criminal law.
One of the reasons for that is that the various points on which the felony impinges on the criminal law as a whole are so many that it is a complicated business to get rid of it. One cannot just eliminate it by a one-clause Bill. One has to follow up the various points at which it impinges on the criminal law as a whole, and that is what has been done by the Criminal Law Revision Committee under Lord Justice Sellers. I add my tribute to what has been said about that Committee in this debate and express my personal gratitude to the Lord Justice—an old colleague of my own on the Northern Circuit—and his colleagues. The North is accustomed to breeding great lawyers and capable business men, and I think this Report shows that the
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Lord Justice has the qualities of both. It is a remarkable achievement, as my noble friend Lord Stonham pointed out, that this task was entrusted to the Sellers Committee in March, 1964, and that they presented their Report in April of the following year. One has only to read the Report and study this Bill to realise what a tremendous achievement that was. I am sure we are all greatly obliged and grateful to them for their work.
This Bill makes a substantial number of important reforms in the law. I counted seven or eight as the noble Lord introduced it, and not one of them was other than a substantial and important change, most of which affect the ordinary citizen. I do not want to discuss them all now for some are highly technical, but, as I say, there are several which are of substantial importance to the life of the ordinary citizen. This is particularly the case in regard to arrest, about which I should like to say a few words.
It was only a felony which gave the right to the citizen to arrest the felon, and indeed it imposes a duty on him to do so; though I do not think many citizens realise that that is so. But this right is almost a trap to the ordinary citizen, because there is no method by which anybody who is not a lawyer can distinguish a felony from a misdemeanour; and unless a felony has in fact been committed it is not enough to have every reason to suppose that a felony has been committed. It was held in a case in your Lordships' House not many years ago that in this connection a felony must have been committed, and that the man who did the arrest must have reasonable grounds for suspecting that the man whom he had arrested had in fact committed a felony. That is asking quite a lot. One may have good reasons for supposing that a felony has been committed, but in fact it may not have been committed. What has been done may not be a felony at all; although it is a serious crime, it may be only a misdemeanour. In some of these cases even a trained lawyer cannot know whether what has been done amounts to a felony or is only a misdemeanour.
In regard to the crime of receiving stolen goods—which is much wider than just stealing—what the man has done, and whether it is a felony or a misdemeanour, depends on the way the goods

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were obtained in the first place. If it falls short of a stealing, then there is no felony, and any arrest, however reasonable it might be in all the circumstances, is not justified. The proposals in this Bill are an enormous improvement on that position. However, they certainly do not altogether tackle the problem, but it may well be insoluble.
The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, dealt with methods of bringing to the notice of the ordinary man what entitles him to effect an arrest. I do not think that putting a lot of crimes into a Schedule to a Bill will help him, for he cannot be expected to read Schedules to Bills. The ordinary man has a sort of idea that if he sees somebody committing a crime which seems to him to be a rather serious one, then as a good citizen it is up to him to hold the man until the police come. But that is a very dangerous assumption to make.
In my own county, only within the last few weeks, a peaceful man who was walking home from the cinema with his wife saw two young hooligans preparing to make off with a motor car. He advanced towards them to ask them what they were doing and to stop them if they were in fact taking the vehicle away. Taking away in these circumstances is an offence under the Road Traffic Act and is punishable with only one year's imprisonment. It is far from being a felony. One of these young villains took out a knife and stabbed the man, inflicting a serious wound in the chest, for which he came before the Assize Judge. A rather knowing member of the jury asked the Judge whether the victim was entitled to effect this arrest, and the judge had to say, of course, that he had not.
The Sellers Committee have just issued another Report in which they propose raising the punishment for going off with a motor car—"borrowing it", as it is in effect, because it is not stealing unless you intend to keep it for yourself. They propose to increase the punishment to three years' imprisonment. That would not bring it within this clause either. think that on the whole there is a case for putting down this five years at any rate to three years. A number of very serious offences are involved. It might even be well to extend it to all misdemeanours, or at any rate all misdemeanours involving any form of violence. This needs to be
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looked at again. It is an important matter, and I am not completely satisfied with the proposals of the Sellers Committee.
I have a great deal of sympathy, indeed I am in agreement, with what Lord Conesford said about the phrase "arrestable offence". This term will no doubt be used in the profession instead of "felony". Everybody I have spoken to about it dislikes it very much. It is difficult to avoid this sort of thing. We talk about a summary offence. Well, there is no such thing as a summary offence; an offence cannot be "summary". It means an offence triable summarily, and really what we are dealing with here is an offence justifying arrest. I do not see why you should not put in the extra word, which would then get over many of these difficulties and would not really add very much to the Bill.
I think the next set of proposals, which deal with participation in crime and felony, in connection with which, again, there have been some quite ridiculous differences between the position of the misdemeanant and the felon in relation to those who are assisting him, whether before or after the offence, are exceptionally well thought out. This is highly technical and I do not want to say anything more about it.
On the proposal for displacing misprision of felony, the Committee and the Bill have struck a most happy compromise. Some years ago in your Lordships' House it was decided in the case of Sykes that the mere fact that you did not report to the police a felony of which you had come to have knowledge amounted to the offence of misprision of felony. I think everybody would agree that in the circumstances of that case it was just that that man should have been found guilty of a criminal offence, but it was a very sweeping decision. It meant, as was pointed out in a learned article in one of the journals, that any father failing—to use a colloquialism—to "split" on his son, or any son failing to "split" on his father, about a felony would be guilty of misprision of felony. That was very like the sort of situation which used to exist in Nazi Germany and which aroused in this country such scathing, and properly scathing, criticism of the Nazi regime. I think we should agree that this compromise is a good one. In

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effect, it is only the man who accepts a bribe for not disclosing knowledge about a felony who is going to be guilty of an offence.
In the next clause—and all lawyers will be very glad to see that—we resolve the controversy arising out of the case of Manley; the lady who went to the police and said that a man had snatched her handbag. She gave a very detailed description of him, which the police circulated to all the police stations in London, and it was not until a suspicious sergeant accused her of inventing a cock-and-bull story that she admitted that that was so. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, she was prosecuted for a public mischief, which was a crime which had not been before the criminal courts for well over a century. But in cases where there had been indictments for public mischiefs, there had not been conduct resembling in any way this action on the part of Mrs. Manley. There was a great controversy at the time as to whether when what was in effect a new misdemeanour was created, it ought not to be done by Parliament rather than by the judges.
I think it was in the Newlands case that the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, expressed some sympathy with that view, and said he hoped that this matter would eventually be put into a Bill. So here it is, and I am sure we ought to welcome it, but I should have liked to see it in rather wider terms, because I agree with those who say that it is now for Parliament to create new crimes and not for the judges. However valuable the work of the judges may have been in earlier centuries in relation to this, there is an element of feeling that when some new sort of mischief, which had not previously been brought before the criminal courts, is held to be a criminal offence, there is a very real danger of an infraction of what is one of the most fundamental principles of the whole of our criminal law—nullapœna sine lege; no punishment without a law which provides for it. If ex post facto it is held by a court that some sort of conduct, which previously had not been regarded as criminal, is in future to be criminal, surely that is an infraction of this basic rule. Therefore, I am glad that so far as this goes the Manley
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case now comes into the Statute, and I hope that that will be followed by the same treatment of this sort of conduct.
The only other point which I wish to mention, and to say how much I am in agreement with it, is the fact that all those misdemeanours for which a sentence is not fixed by the Statute which creates them, are in future to receive a maximum of two years imprisonment. That was generally regarded as the Common Law punishment for a misdemeanour. Not so very long ago the Court of Criminal Appeal said that that was a mistake, and that, although no one would ever impose the punishment, a misdemeanour could be punished by a term of imprisonment however long, even up to a life sentence. This view was received with horror by very many lawyers. It may well have been historically well-founded, but I think that every liberal lawyer, and, indeed, most practitioners in the criminal courts, will be very glad to see that now in this type of case two years is again reestablished as the proper maximum punishment for a misdemeanour.
Those are the main points. Your Lordships will see from what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has said, and from what other speakers have said this afternoon, that this is a Bill which affects the life of the citizen at very many sensitive points. I hope there will be no difficulty at all about getting it on to the Statute Book before many further months are over.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I just say that I entirely agree with him that the ordinary public cannot be expected to read the Schedules of Bills. But I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would agree that here is a purpose for which television and radio could be put to some use. Surely they could appoint somebody with legal experience to explain—and, may I say, explain in terms which the ordinary man can understand—which offences are (I will not use the word to which my noble friend objects) subject to arrest by the public and which are not.
5.7 p.m.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, I am sorry I was not able to be here at the earlier stages of this debate, but I should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Stonham,

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in expressing appreciation of the work of the Committee. Indeed, two of my colleagues, Lord Justice Sellers over the whole Committee, and Lord Justice Winn over the sub-committee, have done most valuable work in preparing not only the Report but also the draft Bill which was incorporated in it.
But when I see that those two old "lags", if I may so call them, of felonies and misdemeanours are up for sentence and sentenced to be outlawed, I cannot help feeling a passing tribute of a sigh. Those words "felonies and misdemeanours" are expressive words. They tell the people what they mean. A felony is a serious crime worthy of condign punishment, and a misdemeanour is something less. You can arrest for a felony, if it has been committed and you have reasonable ground for believing it to have been committed, but you cannot arrest for a misdemeanour. Those distinctions have come down in the law. I agree they are out of date now, but I cannot help feeling a little sigh on seeing them depart after all these centuries.
But what are we going to put in their place? When we hear of "arrestable" offences and "non-arrestable" offences, they may be meaningful words, but they are not expressive words. They are ugly words, and they are most inaccurate and misleading. There are a few arrestable offences here. There are those for which sentence is five years or over. But what about the hundreds of others for which we can arrest but which are not apparently to be called arrestable?
In my court, we are constantly having cases involving such powers of arrest. Take the case we had a little while ago, of the man who was charged with being unfit to drive his car through drink. A policeman can arrest a man he finds committing such an offence, yet that is not subject to a penalty of five years' imprisonment. Take the case, which I tried myself, of the couple who were kissing in a car and who were arrested by a policeman for committing an act of gross indecency in the street. That offence is not subject to five years' imprisonment. Or take the case of a man who does not pay his fare on the railway and refuses to give his name and address. He can be arrested, yet that offence is not subject to five years' imprisonment. To draw such a distinction between arrestable
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offences and non-arrestable offences is quite inappropriate and quite misleading. I would really rather retain my old friends than have this; but if anyone can invent a new name, a name better than "arrestable" or "non-arrestable", I should like to hear it. I should even prefer what the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, suggests. I would rather have "an offence justifying an arrest", or "a five-year offence", or something of that kind, than the phrase "arrestable offences", which is ugly, hideous and inaccurate.
Seeing these old friends pass, I should like to touch, first, upon one or two procedural differences. In our old courts, a charge of felony produced dramatic effects. We have dropped many of them now, but, previously, if a felon was charged and he pleaded not guilty the clerk always asked him, "How will you be tried?", and he answered, "By God and my country". Then he was put in the charge of the jury, who were told, "He has put himself upon his country—which country you are." We have dropped all that now, but we have still kept the allocutus, as it is called, at the end, when the clerk says to the accused, "You stand convicted of felony. Have you anything to say why the sentence of the court should not be pronounced upon you?". That procedure is peculiar to felony, and is now to be dropped. Let it be dropped, perhaps, but, as a judge, I would always ask a man, "Have you anything to say?"
Another little procedural distinction is noted in this Report. In the case of a felony, the man has to be in the dock. In the case of a misdemeanour, he can be invited round to sit behind his counsel, or even beside his counsel. That is quite a good thing—I have done it myself. That distinction will go. If a misdemeanour is to be the same as a felony, as it is, he can be invited round in both cases. I shall still keep the man in the dock, though, where there is a bar, subject to any injustice being remedied by inviting him round, if need be. Those, my Lords, are some of the procedural differences between felonies and misdemeanours. As to arrest, once you get over the wording this is really just what we have had before in regard to felony. But I should like to mention two old crimes which

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are now going by the board. I do not like to see any offences go by the board these days, when we are trying to keep track of these criminals.
Take the offence of misprision of felony. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, rather indicates that this House was wrong to keep that offence in being. My Lords, take the case which we had in this House of the theft of arms from an American munition dump in Norfolk. They were stolen, and were on their way through to Ireland. They had got as far as Manchester when the police found the contact man who was seeking to get intermediaries to take them from Manchester through to Ireland, to the I.R.A. He was prosecuted for misprision of felony. He could not be charged with receiving stolen property because he had not received it; he was just the contact man. This House held that that was misprision of felony. He had concealed information which he had of the felony. He was found guilty, and was duly sentenced. Then, only a few weeks ago there was a case in which there was no evidence against a man except that after the robbers had been to the bank and had brought the money back to some place, he there helped count out the money and put it into bags. Was he guilty of any offence? The Court of Criminal Appeal held that he was guilty of misprision of felony.
My Lords, such a case is being taken care of (to use that Americanism) in one clause of this Bill, but there are other misprisions of felony which are not. One particular one comes from Australia, and is an instance of gang warfare. Certain members of a gang had maliciously wounded another, and the police asked the man who was wounded, "Who did this?" He said, "I am not going to tell you. If I did, I would 'cop it' all right. I will look after it myself." In other words, the gang were going to dispense their own gang justice among themselves, and he was not going to tell the police about it. The courts in Australia held that that was misprision of felony. So far as I can see, if this offence of misprision is abolished, that sort of behaviour will not constitute an offence here. I do not like doing away with offences in these days.
Then there is the offence of compounding a felony. Compounding a felony has for centuries been an offence. If a prose-
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cutor tells a man or his relatives, "I will not prosecute if you will give me back the £500"—or whatever it was—"that you have stolen or taken", he commits the offence of compounding a felony. My Lords, I can understand the reason for the clause which says that it is no longer to be an offence for a prosecutor to say to a man or his relatives, "I will not prosecute you if you pay me back what you have stolen, or what you have taken", but it is altering the law a good deal. Furthermore, I wonder what will happen in our civil courts. Up to now, an agreement of that kind—an agreement to stifle a prosecution—has been unlawful, and the courts would refuse to enforce it. There are many such cases in the books, where a prosecutor who has said that a man has taken money from him has gone to a relative and said, "I will not prosecute if you will pay me the £500", or whatever it may be. Such action has up to now been unlawful. I am not sure, but it looks to me as though, under this Bill, it is no longer to be a criminal offence. I do not know what the impact of that will be on our civil law, but I think it ought to be made quite clear.
My Lords, those are just some of the consequences which flow from this Bill. Taking it generally, I think it is an excellent Bill; on the other hand, there are just one or two points that may need clearing up. With those observations, my Lords, I would say that I very much welcome the Bill and what is being done through it.
5.19 p.m.
LORD MORRIS OF BORTH-Y-GEST: My Lords, having been engaged on the business of your Lordships' House in a Judicial capacity, I did not have the advantage and the pleasure of hearing the introductory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham; and although I did not have the opportunity of hearing the opening stages of this debate, I hope your Lordships will allow me to offer just a few reflections. Like other noble Lords, I wish to express in general a warm welcome to this Bill. I should also like to add my tribute to the painstaking and scholarly work undertaken by the Committee and Sub-Committee, under the chairmanships respectively of Lord Justice Sellers and Lord Justice Winn. Sharing to a considerable extent that passing sigh which my noble and learned

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friend Lord Denning uttered, with his usual eloquence, I feel that now the time really has come when we should say farewell to the distinction between felonies and misdemeanours. I think it has been generally felt in the legal profession for some time past that the distinction between the two no longer has any real value.
I share with my noble and learned friend Lord Denning a little regret that we shall no longer have the allocutus. If there has been a conviction for a felony the accused is "called upon"; he does not have to be called upon if it is a misdemeanour. Having been convicted of a felony, he is asked whether he has anything to say, why judgment should not be passed upon him according to the law. As we all know, that dates from the time when somebody might wish to plead benefit of clergy; it dates from the time when somebody might wish to move in arrest of judgment; but the accused to-day treats it as an invitation to add to a plea of mitigation that has already been made. It is often very effective. Something perhaps spoken from the heart by the man principally involved in the proceedings may carry more warmth and weight and power than even the words of the most skilled advocate. But as is pointed out in the Report upon which this Bill is based, it does not follow that because the allocutus will no longer be necessary, because we shall not have felonies, that any judge or recorder or chairman may not, if he thinks it apposite, invite the accused, even at the end, to add anything in his own words that he wishes to add.
But this old structure is now to go. If you have a very old structure that has lasted for centuries, one to which there have been additions and alterations, and if you find the time has come when a few old beams are thought to be no longer serviceable or useful and you take them away, you find that there are all sorts of parts of the structure that will then need propping up and re-constructing. So I think has been the case once the decision was made to part with the distinction between felonies and misdemeanours. It was very easy to say: "This is now archaic; there are many historical origins for all this which arc of great interest but they no longer have value." With that I think we all agree;
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but it did become necessary, because of the abolition of felonies, to restate the law with regard to some matters: the law of arrest, the law relating to misprision, the law relating to compounding.
In restating the law concerning arrest we find these words which I felt sure would not escape the eagle eye of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford. I felt he would swoop down on that phrase and fight once again the sort of battle he fights with such distinction and success in this House for pure and good English. When I saw those words in the Bill I thought to myself, adapting a famous phrase, "I do not know what effect this phrase will have upon the offender, but it frightens me". The law states itself to be against murder. Need we, in a Criminal Law Bill, murder the English language? I endorse to the full all that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. It is, of course, easy to criticise and not so easy to suggest a replacement, but there have been some suggestions almost any one of which I respectfully think would be less unpleasing to the ear than the phrase we now have.
In regard to Clause 2 of the Bill, there is just one subsection which I would mention and about which I should like to ask a question. It is subsection (5), which says:
"A constable may arrest without warrant any person who is, or whom he, with reasonable cause, suspects to be, about to commit an arrestable offence."
I am sorry to have to use the phrase which I dislike, but we know what it is intended to mean. Are we really sure that we need to give this power to the police? We should all wish to arm the police, especially these days, with every reasonable and proper power, and I am one of those who have supreme confidence in and admiration for our police force. But is this power reasonably necessary? What does the constable do with the man when he has arrested him?—arrested him not for having committed any offence but because he suspected that he was about to commit an arrestable offence?
The Report of Lord Justice Sellers' Committee says this:
"There is some authority that any person may arrest without warrant anybody whom

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he reasonably suspects of being about to commit a felony."
I have no doubt that that is so. The Report goes on:
"It seems to us enough to confer corresponding power on constables in relation to arrestable offences."
Then it says:
"If the arrest is made before the person in question has committed or attempted to commit the arrestable offence, the constable will be able to bring him before a magistrates' court with a view to his being bound over to keep the peace and, if necessary, provide sureties."
Is it satisfactory to bring a man before a court and ask that he be bound over to keep the peace, when you start by saying he has not committed any offence? The Report goes on:
"Alternatively the constable could release him, when the danger of the arrestable offence being committed or attempted has passed, on the analogy of the power of a constable to detain a person temporarily in order to prevent the commission of a felony or breach of the peace."
I should like to pose the question, possibly for consideration or discussion, of whether we are happy that it is right to give this somewhat vague power to the police. Do they want it? Is it really desirable'?
I will not refer to a point which is perhaps more appropriate for the Committee stage; but in passing may I raise the question as to whether in Clause 3, which says
"A person may use reasonable force in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders"
it would be desirable to include the words:
"or suspected offenders."?
If a constable has any suspicion that an offence has been committed and he arrests somebody on that reasonable suspicion, he is doing a proper thing. If he uses reasonable force he is doing a proper thing. If, however, the man is ultimately acquitted, could he say, "Well, force was allowed only in the lawful arrest of offenders. I have been shown not to be an offender"? Is it possible that the clause would be a little improved by the addition of "suspected offenders"?
I should like to say a word in regard to Clause 5 of the Bill; and here may I say that my line of thinking has coincided
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very closely with that expressed by my noble and learned friend Lord Denning. May I add at once that we have not collogued in any way. I did not know what he was going to say; indeed, I wondered whether he was even going to be here. I share some of the anxieties he has expressed in regard to Clause 5. Reference has been made to the case decided in your Lordships' House of Sykes. My noble and learned friend presided in that case, and I had the pleasure of sitting with him. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goddard, was another Member of your Lordships' House who sat in that case. I will not embarrass my noble and learned friend by quoting what he said, but may I just quote a few words from the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goddard? He said:
"Misprision of felony is to-day an indictable misdemeanour at Common Law and a person is guilty of a crime if, knowing that a felony has been committed, he fails to disclose his knowledge to those responsible for the preservation of the peace, be they constables or justices, within a reasonable time and having a reasonable opportunity for so doing."
My Lords, is there anything wrong with that? Do we not wish to retain that? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Goddard, added this:
"It is very easy to poke ridicule at the offence and say that it obliges people to inform against a boy stealing an apple. The law is nowadays administered with dignity and common sense."
Suppose somebody had the misfortune to be an eyewitness of the commission of a brutal murder. Suppose he saw who the murderer was. Suppose he knew who he was, and could identify him. Ought he not, as a duty to the State, to disclose his knowledge? Suppose that the murderer is one who may strike again. Suppose he is a killer who may slaughter a child, or slaughter somebody else, and there is somebody who has knowledge of who is the missing man. Ought he not to owe, and ought the law not to say that he does owe, a duty to the State? Are we right to take away that content from the present armoury of the law? It may well be that one could have a provision that there be a prosecution only at the instance of the Director of Public Prosecutions; but, as the Bill now stands, the sort of person whom I mentioned would be committing no offence, provided he had no sort of contact with the culprit, the murderer.

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Another part of Clause 5 has been touched on by my noble and learned friend and that is the question of compounding. By Clause 5 it is specifically provided that compounding is to disappear. The wording is:
"The compounding of an offence other than treason shall riot be an offence otherwise than under this section."
There is no specific provision in regard to the misprision of felony, but I think the inference is that as felonies are to go, there cannot be misprision of felony, and there never has been misprision of misdemeanour. To return to the topic of compounding, here is a matter which often disturbs citizens. Suppose that somebody has cheated and robbed and has perhaps done the cheating and robbing in many places. The culprit is known, and somebody who has been defrauded is in touch with the culprit; and the culprit says, "If you don't inform about me, I will pay you back the money that I took from you." As I read Clause 5 it would not be an offence at all. The person concerned might go about the countryside repeating the cheating and false pretences that led him successfully in the particular case to take money which he is then willing to return.
My Lords, I do not suggest that if the office boy steals a few shillings from the till it is the public duty of the employer to inform; but are we sure that we are giving the right kind of guidance by this present clause to citizens who often are profoundly worried as to what their public duty is if they find themselves able to inform against somebody in regard to an offence but yet would be able themselves to have complete recompense in regard to all taken from them? I again just raise that as a subject that I submit merits a little further consideration.
May I add one other matter? There are many topics in this Bill that I am sure will need future discussion, but may I just refer to a provision that is, I think, on page 15 of the Bill? It provides for an amendment to the present Section 4 of the Forfeiture Act 1870. It is set out that that. Act allows a court, on a person's conviction for felony, to award compensation not exceeding £100 for the loss of property occasioned by the felony; and that £100 limit is to be raised. I welcome that. Although traditionally
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there has been great reluctance in criminal courts to deal with matters that may be the subject of civil remedies, I think it is increasingly happening in our criminal courts that there would be scope for making some financial order against accused persons. There is a provision in the Criminal Justice Act—I think it is Section 11—which provides that if somebody is placed on probation, or if there is a conditional or absolute discharge, the court may order that he pay compensation for injury or loss. This is a different provision, and I welcome this change.
The section of the Forfeiture Act does, however, provide that the court shall act upon the application of any person aggrieved. It will often happen that at the end of a trial a person aggrieved, who has been a witness, is not present. It is very unlikely that he will know of this provision. I do not know whether it is the duty of the court to bring it to his notice and ask whether he wishes to make an application. May I suggest for consideration that possibly there should be a further alteration to give that power to the court, irrespective of there being an application by the person aggrieved? May I suggest further that it is not necessary to limit this provision to compensation for any loss of property? The law has always been jealous of property, and this section limits this payment of compensation to property. Would it be possible or desirable further to amend this Act by making the compensation payable in cases where there has been some physical injury? I know that there are provisions which have recently been introduced, as the result of which victims of crimes of violence may be compensated out of public funds, but this is a provision for making an order against a person who has been convicted. I think we ought now in our criminal courts to make greater use of any powers of ordering financial payments to be made by a convicted person. I hope that the few points I have mentioned may he of some value for discussion some time. I repeat that I give a general warm welcome to this Bill.
5.40 p.m.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, if I may detain your Lordships for a few moments, I should like to join noble Lords who have commended this Bill to

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your Lordships' House, particularly because I think that to introduce clarity and simplification to the law is not only of benefit to the profession but also of benefit to the public generally. It is always a great pleasure to have an opportunity of following so many distinguished noble and learned Law Lords, because it gives one the opportunity of agreeing with them in everything they have said, and one cannot go wrong in so doing.
The points which I want to bring to your Lordships' attention may in the ordinary way be considered to be Committee points, and I am tempted to bring them forward now only because, in his opening speech, the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, touched on several points which I have in mind. The first one is with regard to Clause 3, which provides that a person may use reasonable force in the prevention of crime. According to the note which I made, the noble Lord indicated that at the present time the Common Law permits the use of reasonable force where necessary and that the phraseology used in Clause 3 is not such as would permit the use of force where it is not necessary. I am advised that this is an incorrect interpretation of the wording, and that the provision that a person may use reasonable force is an indication that force may be used even if it is not necessary. I believe this to be an alteration in the present state of the law, and if the wording read that a person "may use such force as is reasonably necessary" that would indicate that the use of force is not permitted if it is not necessary. I would commend these observations to the noble Lord in charge of the Bill in the hope that he will introduce some Amendments on Committee stage and save me the trouble.
On the next clause, I would call attention to the marginal heading which says "Penalties for assisting offenders". In fact, the clause introduces the offences and goes a long way beyond dealing simply with the penalties. Clause 4(3) says that
"A person committing an offence under subsection (1) above with intent to impede another person's apprehension or prosecution…".
In subsection (1) it states
"…with intent to impede his apprehension or prosecution…"
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I would submit to the noble Lord that the repetition of these words in subsection (3) is otiose and unnecessary. In Clause 4(7) we have the words:
"For purposes of section 33 of the Larceny Act 1916 and of any other enactment relating to receivers or receiving…".
These words are very vague. "Receiver" is a term not subject to any statutory or other definition, and I am informed that in the law it has half a dozen different connotations. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to reconsider these words with a view to making them clear.
Likewise, in Clause 4(7) we meet the word "dishonesty", in the phrase:
"…a person shall be treated as receiving property if he dishonestly undertakes or assists in its retention…".
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, interpreted that during the course of his remarks as "knowing that the property was stolen". That would be a very satisfactory conclusion and I wonder if it could be written into the Bill, instead of using the word "dishonestly", which is too wide and vague and implies that a person who was properly in possession of property but disposed of it dishonestly would be guilty of the offence even though he neither knew that the property was stolen nor was it stolen.
My Lords, those are the only remarks which I would make, save to express, like my noble and learned friend, Lord Denning, a passing sigh, not so much at the elimination or outlawing of felonies and misprisions, but at the removal of the offence of being a common scold. I wonder if the noble Lord could tell us when a prosecution last took place for that offence.
5.48 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, even in a bad dream I never imagined that it would fall to poor little me, with no professional legal training, to speak in your Lordships' House on a matter much of which is lawyers' law, sandwiched between two noble and learned Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. It is an esoteric subject, as all non-lawyers among your Lordships will agree, I am sure, and I know that I should find myself quickly in deep water if I entered upon any criticism of the details of what the noble

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and learned Lord, Lord Denning, described, at the end of a critically nostalgic speech, as "nevertheless an excellent Bill".
On detail, I would follow up only one point, raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, whose authoritative and weighty speech we all listened to with great respect. This concerns paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 with respect to compensation. That is founded on paragraph 78 of the Report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, which said that the provisions about compensation, which go back to the Forfeiture Act 1870, were to be considered by the Royal Commission on the Penal System, which was sitting at the time this Report came from the Committee, and their recommendation for increasing the limit of compensation from £100 to £400 was in these circumstances clearly an interim one. In fact, it would appear to be not much more than an adjustment based on the altered value of money over the years.
But this matter of compensation is very important, as the noble and learned Lord said. It certainly came forcibly to my attention when, as Home Secretary, I had to deal with the violence and rioting of the "Mods" and "Rockers" at Bank Holiday weekends in 1964. Now that the present Government have, for reasons of their own, disbanded the Royal Commission, I think it is reasonable to ask whether the Government are proposing by any other means to give further study to the question of compensation, which is an important matter of policy and not by any means a narrow point of law.
Time is getting on, and I promise your Lordships a short speech from me this afternoon. I am, in fact, the person responsible for inflicting this whole debate on your Lordships, for it was I who some two-and-a-half years ago asked the Criminal Law Revision Committee to consider and report on the division of indictable offences into felonies and misdemeanours. Something like nine-tenths of this Bill derives from their painstaking and admirable Report. I should like to express my own special thanks to Lord Justice Sellers, Lord Justice Winn and their colleagues, both for this and for all the other careful work which they undertook at my request.
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I seem to recollect a member of the Government, shortly after they came into power in the autumn of 1964, saying that it was hard for them to make a quick enough start on law reform because they found so little waiting for them from the work of the previous Conservative Government. They found little waiting for them in draft form because we had already acted on every one of the Reports that we had received from the Criminal Law Revision Committee and already put the reform measures that the Committee had recommended on to the Statute Book; all, that is, except one Report which was received so near to the end of that Parliament that there was literally no time to implement it before the Dissolution.
There were also at the time of that Dissolution several matters under consideration by the Criminal Law Revision Committee, which had been referred to them by me or by my predecessor, who took the vital step of setting up that Committee some seven years ago. One of these matters was the far-reaching question about felonies and misdemeanours, which I had referred to the Committee in March, 1964. I made that reference deliberately, and I believe I got the priorities right, because I cannot help thinking that to tackle this ancient division between felonies and misdemeanours was an essential preliminary to a great deal of other clearing up of the criminal law.
Let me, of course, make clear to your Lordships that, in saying this, I am in no sense disparaging either the value or the importance of the Law Commission that has subsequently been set up. But I think that this Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in his opening speech himself described as a really important step forward, is in itself a tribute to the Criminal Law Revision Committee and to the use which was made of that Committee by successive Conservative Home Secretaries.
5.54 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I, too, should like first to pay my tribute to the work done by the Criminal Law Revision Committee and the Law Commission in relation to this Bill. It is, I venture to think, a happy joining together of the work of those two bodies in a closely related field. I know from

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service on one of the Law Reform Committees that this work does take up a great deal of time, and the question with which the Criminal Law Revision Committee were concerned was perhaps not altogether an easy one.
I remember being told, in my Bar examinations, that all this about felonies and misdemeanours was absolute rubbish; that there had been a time when the standard punishment for all felonies was death, and there had been a time when the standard punishment for all misdemeanours was flogging at the cart's tail; but that now that stealing 6d. was a felony, and defrauding somebody of £500,000 was a misdemeanour, the whole thing was nonsense. But it had been nonsense for a long time, because when anybody proposed to abolish it, it was said: "How will the police know when they can and when they cannot arrest people." And when people tried to put this on paper, it was found that to abolish felonies involved many other problems. Nobody has really got down to it before, and I think we all owe a debt, not only to the previous Government and Home Secretary who referred this matter to the Committee, but to the Committee themselves for the work they have done.
A number of points have been raised, and if I do not mention them all they will certainly all be considered before the Committee stage of the Bill. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, asked whether these arrestable offences (if for the moment I may use that expression) were intended to be inclusive. Of course, they are not. The object of the Bill is to suggest new general powers of arrest to replace the powers of arrest for felony. The specific powers preserved by Clause 2(7) will be additions to these general powers. It was not the business of the Criminal Law Revision Committee to consider possible additional powers of arrest for specific offences; and it may be thought that the Bill would not be a suitable vehicle for it. Nevertheless, there may be something to be said for having a list, so to speak, in the Bill simply as a matter of convenience.
The statutory powers do not supersede the Common Law—which was the next question which the noble Viscount asked,
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That, I think, is clear from Clause 2(7), and also from paragraph 18 of the Report of the Committee. I do not think that any change is made in the law so far as affrays are concerned. There can be an arrest while an affray is taking place as a breach of the peace. But an affray, as a misdemeanour, was not an offence for which there could subsequently be an arrest. As to the effect of this Bill on the civil law, I do not think it will in fact make any change.
Then the noble Viscount was a little concerned about some parts of the Schedules to the Bill. It is, of course, important to appreciate which parts of the Schedules deal with which parts of the Bill. Clause 10 says:
"The enactments mentioned in Schedule 2 to this Act shall be amended in accordance with the provisions of that Schedule.
(2) The enactments mentioned in Schedule 3 to this Act (which includes in Part I certain enactments connected with matters in this Part of this Act but already spent, obsolete or redundant apart from this Act) are hereby repealed to the extent specified in the third column of that Schedule."
The Law Commission's part of the work does not really start until one gets to Schedule 4. So far as Section 61 of the Juries Act is concerned, I think the position is that this simply repeats the powers already existing at Common Law to deal with embracery and are therefore not necessary; and as parts of that section refer to criminal informations, which will now no longer exist, it would seem desirable to get rid of it altogether.
Most of the reasons, so far as Schedule 4 is concerned, are themselves included in the Report of the Law Commission. I hope that I have not got a mania about maintenance. I have sometimes used it simply because the reason it exists to-day, as the noble Viscount knows, is that in the middle ages the barons used to have on their staffs people called maintainers, and the sole job of the maintainer was to start frivolous litigation against the baron's opponents. I have always thought what fun it must be to be a maintainer. This is what led to its being not only a tort, but a criminal offence. But, while I am not a great authority on the social habits of the aristocracy, so far as I know no Barons have maintainers on their staff now, and it has always seemed to me that it was about time we got rid of it.

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As to the Maintenance and Embracery Act, the noble Viscount will find that the Law Commission's Report, in paragraph 6, points out—referring to Section 3—that:
"The original purpose of this section was to introduce as an alternative to a criminal prosecution an action by a common informer for certain types of interference with the course of justice in proceedings concerned with the title to land. Such common informer actions have now been converted into summary prosecutions by the Common Informers Act 1951and, so far as the offence is a live one at all, there is no sense in having a special rule in actions concerned with land. The abolition of the section does not affect proceedings on indictment at common law for maintenance (the procurement by financial assistance of another person to institute, carry on or defend civil proceedings without lawful justification) or for embracery (attempting by any corrupt means to influence or instruct any juryman.)"
So it is on any view unnecessary at the present day.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I am afraid I have not made my point clear to the noble and learned Lord. I entirely appreciate the object of repealing Section 3 of the Maintenance and Embracery Act 1540, which appears in Schedule 4. What I was talking about was the repeal of Sections 1, 4 and 6, which appear in Schedule 3, and, I think, raise entirely different points.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: In which part of Schedule 3?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: The first part.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I can only say, on the authority of Clause 10(2), if it is telling the truth, that this is an Act which is
"already spent, obsolete, or redundant apart from this Act."
Being in that Schedule it is not, of course, an obsolete Act which has been dealt with by the Law Commission, and I cannot say that, in the case of all those set out in the first three Schedules, I have been through the history of every Act. But we will certainly look at the point before we get to the Committee stage.
It is perhaps noteworthy that under the Schedules we shall, on the day this Bill receives the Royal Assent, have 33 fewer Acts of Parliament: 33 whole Acts, apart from parts of Acts, will be re-
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pealed. How long it will take this Government to make another 33 to take their place, I do not know. But for once, anyhow, we shall be gaining ground rather than losing it.
The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, dealt with the question of the words "arrestable offence." I must say that I have as much love of the English language as anybody else, and I do not like "arrestable offence." It suggests that it is an offence which is going to be arrested, whereas, of course, it is the offender. In a sense it is not the proper use of language. In saying that, I do not intend to criticise the Committee; they had to find the best phrase they could. The only thing I say is that either you must have some alternative two or three words or, whenever you are dealing with what is called in the Bill an "arrestable offence," you must have a very long phrase, such as "an offence upon the commission or the believed commission of which the offender can lawfully be arrested." You have to repeat that every time instead.
I am very doubtful, if I may say so, whether the alternative suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, or any other noble Lords, is really an improvement. A holding offence is not really what one is talking about. One is not talking about holding somebody, but arresting him. An arresting offence sounds to me rather an attractive one, and that would not, I should have thought, been wholly appropriate. Of course, one has to remember that there are precedents. After all, one of the most familiar expressions in this field is an indictable offence. But you do not indict the offence: you indict the offender. To a considerable extent this is an exact parallel. One would have to use a great many more words if one did not have the expression "indictable offence", but it is open to the same objections. And what about a bailable offence? You do not bail the offence, you bail the offender.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, may I suggest to the noble and learned Lord that an indictable offence is an offence which may be the subject of an indictment. By that token, an arrestable offence would be an offence which can be the subject of arrest. So, with the greatest respect, the indictable offence is not a

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justification for introducing an arrestable offence.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I suggest that we have comparable phrases at the moment with that and "bailable offence". It may be objected to, as to all three, that they appear to be applied to the offence when they really apply to the offender. That would seem to me to be really applicable to all of them. We will certainly consider the matter before the Committee stage, and if any noble Lord has any subsequent brilliant suggestion and would be good enough to let us know, we shall be delighted. I do not myself like "arrestable offence", but the question is whether we can find anything as short which would be an improvement.
The noble Earl asked whether a householder could use force against a burglar. The answer is, of course, that he can. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, was mistaken in thinking that the effect of the Act is to make two years the maximum sentence for any misdemeanour; it is only for statutory misdemeanours. Then I think he complained that taking a car away would not be—If I may still call it so—an arrestable offence. But that, I suggest, is not so, because if he looks at Clause 10(3) of the draft Theft Bill he will find that it follows from that that it will be an arrestable offence.
Then the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and other noble Lords, made what I appreciate is a very good point: that unless you set out all the other non-statutory arrestable offences in the Bill, how will the public know what their rights of arrest are? This is a perfectly good point, but the answer is that they will not know. They never have; they will not, and they never will. How any policeman ever learnt when he had a power to arrest somebody and when he did not, I could never understand. I hope it will be rather easier for him now. But whatever you do, the law, owing to the number of different offences there are, will be such that it will be absolutely impossible for any layman to know, if one is to be practical. I quite appreciate, as was subsequently suggested, that if they can be told on television, that is a help. We cannot order people to go on television and tell them, but we know that there are several helpful programmes
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when the law on simple points is explained to the public. But I should have thought that this vast list of what are arrestable offences and what are not is about the last thing that members of the public would in practice ever learn, and I see no answer to it.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, regretted the departure of the allocutus, as I think several of your Lordships have, but I think we shall all share in feeling that the time has come when probably we ought to say farewell to it. As to an agreement not to prosecute, again I do not want to take up time, and the Committee's view was fully set out in paragraph 43 of their Report as to why they thought that no further powers were necessary.
Then, as the noble and learned Lord said, one of the consequences of getting rid of felony is that, subject to the court, nobody now need sit in the dock. I must say that I am doubtful whether the existence of a dock is really consistent with a civilised country. In America, for example, there is no dock; a prisoner sits behind his lawyers where they can readily communicate with him; and this occurs in a murder case or any other kind of case. The Law Society have recently published a cogent memorandum urging the abolition of the dock. It is idle and unrealistic to suppose that it does no psychological harm with a jury to have a man sitting in the dock. So far as identity is concerned, a witness to identity is solemnly asked, "Would you look around the court and see whether you see him here"; and of course the witness looks at the dock, and there the man is. I have never thought that this practice was right, and I hope that I shah at some time consider with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary whether it is in fact necessary in our courts to retain the dock.
Apart from that, it is difficult for counsel to get instructions from his client. Occasions are bound to arise where a witness says something unexpected. Defending counsel does not know whether his client's case is that what has been ing over to the dock and having a said is true or untrue—and I may say that I was never very good at the art of walk-whispered conversation in tones sufficiently loud for the accused to hear

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but not sufficiently loud for the jury to hear. And even if one managed it oneself, the prisoner's reply was usually loud and devastating.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, referred to Clause 2(5), and clearly we must look at that again in relation to what other noble Lords have said. This was as to the constable and the use of reasonable force. If I may respectfully say so, I thought the noble and learned Lord went a little far when he suggested that the extended laws which there are in this Bill, creating offences about not sufficiently helping the police, ought to go further and that there ought to be a law that if a person sees a murder committed he must tell the police. This has never been our law. Of course the whole history of capital punishment would show that one could not divide murders for that purpose. I say that only because the noble and learned Lord said, "Suppose it was an awful murder committed by a maniac; he might do it again". I must say quite frankly that if this had been the law in the time of capital punishment, nothing would have induced me to go and report it to the police, whether it was contrary to the law or not; because I do not believe in turning one murder into two, and I think that a law which made it a criminal offence not to report to the police any crime one sees would be going too far.
I remember a libel action against somebody who had said of a member of a club that he was the man who gave away to the police the fact that there were fruit machines in the club. It was quite untrue; he had not done anything of the kind. But the result was that he was shunned by everyone else in the club, who thought that if a fellow clubman went and told the police that they had fruit machines in the club it was the limit. Is it really to be said that whenever a member of a motoring club sees a motor car travelling at more than 30 miles an hour in a restricted area he must go and report it to the police? I would respectfully suggest that is going too far. Again, as to agreements not to prosecute, I think that is covered by paragraph 43 of the Report.
A question was also raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning,
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and others as to the width of some of the clauses about receiving and dishonestly disposing of goods. I think it appears from the Report itself that the reasons for this are, first, the difficulty of catching and convicting receivers, and it is said in the Report that they are also considering—and I know they have now reported on—a complete revision of the law in regard to theft. The Committee say in their Report that these paragraphs are a part of what is going to be, if accepted by Parliament, their new code of the law and are purposely drafted in that way.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, asked whether it was proposed to give further study to the question of compensation. I think at the moment we are really waiting to see how the compensation board set up by the last Government progresses. So far it appears to be progressing well and to meet with satisfaction. Whether that should be extended will no doubt be primarily a matter for my right honourable friend the Home Secretary.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, if I might interrupt the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, I was not thinking so much about compensation for crimes of violence, where there is now compensation for personal injury and the like, but rather about the question whether the present law, as it will be amended by this Bill, in relation to compensation for loss or damage to property was satisfactory.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. I have always been in favour of a more extended use of ordering people to make good what they have done, because that in a sense is the natural form of punishment, and we shall certainly consider this question again before the Committee stage. I appreciate that there are limitations to property, and it may well be that provisions ought to be extended to injuries to people. Of course prima facie that would involve some duplication of the work of the compensation board, but I quite agree that the field is one which certainly repays study.
It was paragraph 36 to which I intended to refer so far as the disposal

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of property is concerned. Here the Committee say:
"We are proposing in our forthcoming report on larceny and related offences to recommend that the offence of receiving stolen property should be extended to include undertaking or assisting in its retention, removal, disposal or realisation or arranging to do so. If this recommendation is accepted, the cases mentioned will be covered; but in case Clause 4of the draft Bill becomes law before the proposals in our other report, we suggest that Section 33 of the 1916 Act should be amended so as to widen the present offence of receiving stolen property to cover the other kinds of conduct mentioned; Clause 4(7) provides accordingly. If legislation is introduced to give effect to the proposals as regards larceny in our other report, it could repeal what is now Clause 4(7) of the Criminal Law Bill."
My Lords, if there are any points to which I have not referred my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will nevertheless, I am sure, give them the closest attention; and I am sure that he, and indeed the Government, are grateful to your Lordships for all the points which have been raised in this interesting debate.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

LAND COMMISSION BILL
6.20 p.m.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

DEVELOPMENT OF INVENTIONS BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is a Consolidation Bill which will be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills in the ordinary way. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

SEA FISHERIES REGULATION BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this also is a Consolidation Bill. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past six o'clock.