Lords Sitting of 12 June 1969

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich

S.E.A.T.O. FOREIGN MINISTERS' MEETING
LORD BROCKWAY: 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 what conclusions were reached at the meeting of Foreign Ministers of the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, my noble friend the Minister of State, Lord Shepherd, attended this meeting in Bangkok as leader of the United Kingdom delegation. He is at present visiting other countries in South-East Asia and hence cannot, as I am sure he would otherwise have wished to do, answer this Question himself.
The conclusions of the meeting are set out in detail in the final communiqué, which is a long document, and of which a copy has now been placed in the Library of the House. The Council concluded briefly that the most significant development during the past year had been the prospects which had been opened up for peace in Vietnam. The Council reaffirmed the importance which it attached to the Organisation. It expressed its conviction that greater emphasis should be placed on political consultations, counter-insurgency, and economic and cultural co-operation, to make the Organisation more responsive to new tactics being employed to undermine the stability and orderly progress of free societies.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while expressing great appreciation of that reply, particularly in view of the absence of my noble friend Lord Shepherd, may
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I just ask this question? Did not the discussions by the Foreign Ministers at the SEATO Conference indicate the need for a reappraisal of our whole policy in South-East Asia? There were different attitudes—I will not list them all. Would it be possible, when my noble friend Lord Shepherd returns, for us to have a rather fuller discussion on this issue? This would be rather more than could be given in answer to a supplementary question.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I must, of course, leave to the usual channels the question of debates or further discussion. I would point out that we have already had a very radical reappraisal of our policy in South-East Asia, with certain results that have become obvious over past months. I will certainly convey to the Minister of State, when he returns, what my noble friend has said.

VICTORIA EMBANKMENT WORKS
3.8 p.m.
LORD TREFGARNE: 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—

(i) What is the nature of the work at present in progress along the Victoria Embankment;

(ii) When they expect it to be completed.]

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE, R.A.F. (LORD WINTER-BOTTOM): My Lords, London Transport are strengthening the roof of the District Line tunnel to withstand heavy, modern traffic on the road above. The work is being carried out in two stages. The section from Westminster to Charing Cross should be finished by September this year and the section from Charing Cross to the Temple by the end of the year.
LORD TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for that reply. Will he ask London Transport to ensure that the very minimum of inconvenience is caused along the Embankment while the work is in progress?

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Will he also ask them to ensure that they will do everything possible to see that the work is finished on time?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, it is my impression that this is taking place.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, may I ask the Minister if he would consider, when things like this happen—because so many Londoners are interested—whether it would be possible to put up a simple notice explaining to people what is happening? I am sure it would be very much appreciated if this could be done.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I think that is a very sensible suggestion. I hope that it will be noted by the appropriate authorities.

BRITISH TROOPS IN MALAYSIA
LORD SORENSEN: 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 how many British troops are stationed in Malaya; and in what circumstances, under the Anglo-Malayan Agreement they can be employed in the event of serious racial conflict recurring in Malaya.]
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, there are about 7,000 British troops, including Gurkhas, stationed in Malaysia. They are there under the provisions of the Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement which is concerned with external defence and mutual assistance. Internal civil law and order in the country is entirely a matter for the Malaysian Government, police and armed forces.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, do I understand from that reply that in fact in some circumstances British troops can be deployed in order to restore law and order in Malaya? May I also ask whether two stations in Singapore can be transferable either way?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: No, my Lords. My noble friend has not understood the situation correctly. The Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement is not concerned with matters of internal
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security in Malaysia. These are the responsibility of the Malaysian Government, and not of the British forces stationed there. As regards the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary, that is another question, and if my noble friend will put it down, I will answer it.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, although this may not have been the concern of the Agreement which has been entered into, nevertheless I would ask again whether outside that Agreement there is any kind of understanding by which, in certain grave circumstances, troops would be employed to restore law and order.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will realise that any request for the help of British troops would raise very serious problems for us and would have to be considered carefully against all relevant factors existing at the time.
LORD SEGAL: My Lords, can my noble friend give any information as to the number of Commonwealth troops stationed in Malaysia?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: My Lords, that is another question.

GOVERNMENT DEBT REDEMPTION PAYMENTS
3.12 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 what is the total amount of short-term internal debt maturing in the second six months of this year; what is the amount of maturing external debt renewed to date this year; also the total amount of internal and external debt falling due for repayment or renewal during the remainder of this year.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is not yet possible to estimate the amount of short-term internal debt which will mature in the second six months of this year. Much of this debt is in the form of Treasury Bills issued for three months or less, or Ways and Means advances. All external debt maturing this year to date has been repaid. None has been renewed.

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During the remainder of this year, Government Stock totalling £412 million falls due for redemption; and repayments of £261 million fall due on loans to Her Majesty's Government from overseas (including £167 million to the International Monetary Fund). What I have said does not cover transactions between central banks, details of which it is not customary to disclose.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, arising out of that reply and because the figures require some digesting, will the Minister, with a view to amplifying them, be prepared, should I put down a Question for Written Answer, to indicate in regard to them what is the average total debt service per annum for the life of this Government and compare it with the average of the much-maligned 13 years of the previous Administration?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am bound to say, with all due respect to the noble Lord, that I should not have thought that an average in this matter would be very sensible; but I shall always be glad to find any available information for any Question that is put down.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, arising out of the noble Lord's Answer, does he realise that the proposed issue of an unlimited amount of Special Drawing Rights which have no gold cover is calculated only to increase inflation and our own external indebtedness, and that the ultimate solution of this problem can lie only in a rise in the price of gold and the abandonment of fixed exchange rates, which no longer reflect reality?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I must refer the noble Lord to a debate which we had recently and which I thought answered conclusively the view which the noble Lord has now put forward again.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: Not conclusively.

DUDLEY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, that the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Earl of Listowel.)
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, forgive me for raising this matter at such a late stage. However, this is a Private Bill and it is one that I am afraid I did not know about until it had reached Third Reading stage. My point concerns only Clause 46 of the Bill, and this relates to provisions regarding self-operated laundrettes. I have bored your Lordships for a sufficient number of occasions in the past for it to be known that I have an interest in "Coin-Ops", but, may I hasten to add, none in Dudley.
Briefly, the provisions lay down that notice may be given to require owners to install sanitary conveniences in self-operated laundrettes. Although this Bill covers only Dudley, there is another Bill in another place which has this clause in it, and I believe that others also may contain it. Therefore I should like to bring it to your Lordships' attention. At first sight this may appear to be a laudable effort to improve public amenities, but in fact this is far from the case, for the following reasons. Many of these establishments are unattended, and experience has shown that it is essential that the whole of the premises open to the public should be in full view of the street. Hidden corners provide resting places for drug addicts and vandals and many other undesirables. A well-lit open laundrette is far less prone to attract these unpleasant elements in society. Should lavatories be installed with locking doors they would be an absolute haven for these people and could attract more sinister types who in some areas have made public lavatories places of danger for children and other young people. This may sound overdramatic, but I can assure your Lordships that these remarks are not overstatement. On an entirely practical note, I would add that these provisions would probably involve the removal of machines to provide sufficient room.
I believe that the Ministry of Housing were somewhat concerned by these provisions, and I know that the attention of the Home Office has been drawn to the police aspect of the dangers I have mentioned. At this stage of a Private Bill it would obviously be most improper to table an Amendment deleting Clause

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46, but I should be grateful if the Government would take note of these observations so that consideration can be given to the advisability of deleting this clause when the Bill is in another place.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, it would not be proper for me to reply to the arguments of the noble Lord, and I am sure he would not expect me to do so. But I am certain that his arguments will be noted both by the promoters of the Bill and by the Government Departments concerned, and that they will reply to these arguments, if given an opportunity to do so, when the Bill passes on from this House to another place.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

WARLEY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

SEA FISH INDUSTRY BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to the sea fishing industry. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, that the Bill be read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

STATUTE LAW (REPEALS) BILL [H.L.]
3.20 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I received this Bill only last month with the Law Commission's First Report on Statute Law Revision. The Commission undertook this task in pursuance of a proposal made in their first programme on consolidation and Statute Law revision. In that programme, which was published in January, 1966, the Commission proposed to review all the Statutes in chronological order with a view to recommending the repeal of all that cannot positively be shown to continue
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to perform a useful function. The Commission's method of working systematically through the Statutes was obviously sensible; but what was more important was their proposal to recommend the repeal not only of enactments which cannot strictly be treated as obsolete, but also all those that no longer serve a useful purpose. The early Statutes often contained no express provision for repeal, or merely repealed all previous Acts so far as there was inconsistency without showing which those Acts were. Although this type of Statute Law revision is now done as a matter of course by including repeal Schedules in amending Acts, there is still some room for it: for example, where temporary provisions have expired, or where there has been some change in circumstances, such as where the facts on which an Act operates can no longer occur.
In a sense, this Bill is another instalment of the long series of Statute Law Revision Bills the first of which was introduced in 1861. Forty-five of them have already found their way on to the Statute Book. Although this Bill in a sense continues the series of Statute Law Revision Bills, the Commission have adopted as its short title "Statute Law (Repeals) Bill" instead of Statute Law Revision Bill, to signify the fact that although it includes many proposals which could well have been included in conventional Statute Law Revision Bills, its scope is wider than that of such Bills and its Long Title makes it clear that the draft Bill's purpose is to
"promote the reform of the statute law by the repeal, in accordance with recommendations of the Law Commission, of certain enactments which (except in so far as their effect is preserved) are no longer of practical utility and by making other provision in connection with the repeal of those enactments".
Because Statute Law Revision Acts have in the past operated only on enactments which were clearly shown to be obsolete, spent, unnecessary or superseded, there remains on the Statute Book a good deal that has been passed over largely because it raises awkward and abstruse problems. A great deal of spade-work and consultation is needed to resolve these problems; but, unless they are resolved, our Statute Book will continue to be cluttered up with quite useless enactments. The Law Commission have undertaken a large amount of

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research and have had very full consultation with those who are primarily interested in the enactments that are proposed for repeal, and so are able to recommend the repeal of many enactments which cannot positively be shown to perform a useful function. This approach will make it possible to clear dead wood from the Statute Book and enable the editorial board of the Statute Law Committee to organise the production of a new edition of the Statutes which is free from useless enactments and much more handy for lawyers and laymen to use.
Shortly before Whitsun the House agreed to my Motion to extend the terms of reference of the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills to enable them to look at such Bills as this. A similar Motion has since been approved in another place. The Committee will no doubt consider the detailed provisions of this Bill and the repeals which are proposed, and your Lordships will not expect me to deal with them in any detail. My observations on the provisions of the Bill will therefore be of a rather general nature.
Clause 1 repeals the enactments which are included in the Schedule to the extent specified in column 3 of that Schedule. Clauses 2 and 3 merely reproduce in a modern form so much of the repealed enactments on advowsons and copyholds as are still required. Clause 4 provides that any common law right to inclose or approve common land is hereby abolished. Is it very doubtful whether any such right survives at all; but, if it does survive, it is clear that it is completely obsolete. I will now turn to the Schedule of enactments to be repealed. Part I contains constitutional enactments beginning with the Statute of Westminster the First of 1275. In their day some of these enactments were of great constitutional importance; but in the main what survives and is proposed for repeal are declarations of law which, although historically interesting, no longer serve any practical purpose.
I should like to mention the second Statute mentioned in the list in Part I, the confirmation of Magna Carta of 1297. Of the 37 Articles which originally comprised the Statute, 27 have already been repealed, so that 10 now survive. Eight
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of these remaining Articles are proposed for repeal on the ground that they are now of no practical significance, being either obsolete or superseded by the modern law on the subject. They relate to the obsolete aspects of widowhood and dower; the relationship between the Crown and its debtors; the making of bridges, obstruction of rivers and putting down of weirs; and the treatment of foreign merchants in time of war and peace. The Commission have not proposed the repeal of Article 9 which preserves the rights and privileges of cities, boroughs and towns, nor the repeal of Article 29, which contains the famous declaration of liberties.
Part II of the Schedule repeals ecclesiastical enactments which are either spent or are no longer necessary. There are among the enactments listed for repeal the Clergy Marriage Acts of 1548 and 1551, which first allowed the clergy to marry; but I am happy to say that the repeal of these obsolete enactments would not prevent the members of the clergy from marrying in future. Your Lordships will also have observed among the ecclesiastical enactments to be repealed some of which were designed to repudiate the authority of the See of Rome. They are now only of historical interest and their retention is no longer necessary.
Part III of the Schedule includes law of property enactments which are proposed for repeal. These are mostly consequential on the abolition of copy-holds and on the removal of disabilities that were formerly imposed on married women. Part IV contains enactments relating to Sunday observance. The proposals in this part are based largely on the recommendations contained in the Report of the Departmental Committee on the law of Sunday observance, which was published in 1964. The enactments are now largely obsolete and chiefly of historical interest, and while I respect the views of those, including members of the Lord's Day Observance Society, who are anxious that Sunday should be kept as a day of rest, it would be idle to pretend that the retention of these enactments would be of any value whatever. The proposed repeal of the hallmarking enactments in Part V is recommended largely as a consequence of the abolition of various assay offices throughout the country.

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The enactments relating to the Commonwealth which are listed in Part VI of the Schedule contain powers which were taken to give effect to various constitutional changes within the Commonwealth—chiefly the attainment of independence by a number of former Colonies and territories—and these powers are no longer required. Part VII proposes the repeal of a miscellaneous collection of enactments. Some of these are spent and the remainder no longer serve any useful purpose. Part VIII contains Acts of the Parliament of Ireland which are counterparts of some of the English Acts which are contained in the earlier parts of the Schedule and which are now obsolete. Part IX mentions a Church Assembly Measure which is spent.
As the Law Commission have explained in their Report which accompanies this Bill, they have, in the course of its preparation, consulted widely on its proposals and, so far as they are aware, there is no objection to any of the proposed repeals. I should like to mention in particular the Commission's consultations on the ecclesiastical enactments which are proposed for repeal. There have been full discussions with a committee of eminent lawyers under the chairmanship of the Dean of Arches, which was established by the most reverend Primates the Lords Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to whom I am greatly indebted for their assistance in this matter. The consideration of the law of property enactments in Part III of the Schedule was another highly technical matter, and the Commission have been very much helped by a committee comprising another group of distinguished lawyers, to whom I should like to express my gratitude. Finally, I would say that although this Bill is primarily the work of the Law Commission, it has been prepared in close consultation with the Scottish Law Commission. My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that it would not be appropriate to go into the details of the various items in the
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Schedule to this Bill. However, since this is the first of what I think may well be a number of measures of a similar nature, it is perhaps as well that the House should realise that this is so and realise exactly what we are doing. It is perfectly true that if the Bill passes on Second Reading here and in another place it will go to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, and I think it has already been provisionally arranged that some very substantial sittings shall take place to look into it. I think this is right, because, as is made plain in the text of the Appendix explaining the draft Bill which has been produced by the Law Commission, it is said, I am sure rightly, that a great deal of the legislation which it is proposed to repeal by this Bill has either been superseded or is unnecessary. It is in the case of legislation that has been superseded that I think the House ought to be particularly careful. This is not in any way intended to suggest that the Law Commission who have been engaged on this job, or indeed the draftsmen, are likely to have made any mistakes. But the fact remains that the Law Commission have told us that a number of fairly celebrated ancient Acts of Parliament, including some relating to the Constitution, are no longer necessary because there are modern Acts which take their place and in fact cover exactly the same ground. I think this is a very important point, and I hope that the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills will confirm that this is so because I believe that it is the duty of Parliament and those of us who are involved, not only to rely on the excellent work of the draftsmen and the Law Commission but also to satisfy ourselves that we are not repealing something that still remains of value. So there will be this important job to be done.
I would also remind the House of this fact. When the procedural Motion to send this Bill to the Joint Select Committee upstairs was being discussed, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor reminded the House that, if the procedure he was suggesting was adopted, when the Bill came back to this House on recommittal it would be open to noble Lords to deal with it as they can deal with any Public Bill, and to put down Amendments and discuss any of the Bill's provisions in it. I imagine that there will be a recommittal, so probably

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it will be formally a Committee stage. I hope that the House will not consider that this is a purely technical matter. If they see something in the text of the Bill for which they do not care, there will be a full opportunity to discuss it. I think that it might be very useful if, perhaps after the Joint Committee have considered the Bill, any large matters of principle which emerged were then discussed again in the Whole House in Committee, so that we can make sure that there is no difficulty in relation to the procedure or in relation to specific matters dealt with in the Bill.
There are one or two small points that I should like just to mention to the noble and learned Lord at this stage. I see that the Law Commission have, in their usual way, discussed very fully, not only, as the noble and learned Lord described, on the ecclesiastical side and in relation to the law of property amendments, but in other cases as well. But the repeals of the Forest of Dean legislation have been discussed (and this appears on page 37) only with the Forestry Commission. I am unable to look at the Acts themselves because every single one of them is out of the Library; all the Statutes relating to this, I imagine, are being used for the purpose of advising on this Bill. But the titles of the Acts also indicate that they are to do with mines, and it is well known that there are, or used to be, coal mines in the Forest of Dean. I hope, therefore, that it was sufficient merely to discuss with the Forestry Commission the provisions which it is proposed for repeal. If not, it might be more satisfactory to ask the noble Lord, Lord Robens, and his team also whether they have any comments. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord is right in saying that the fullest possible consultation must be made before any Bill of this sort is brought forward. I only hope that I have not discovered one possible loophole; I am sure I shall be told I have not.
I am a little surprised that the part of the Schedule relating to Sunday observance laws finds its place in this Bill. I understand that a Bill on this subject is before another place; and, as was indicated by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, it is not a subject that is by any means free from controversy. I should have thought there
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would not have been very great difficulty in putting repeals of this sort of legislation into a specific Sunday Observance Bill, if one comes forward, at any rate to this House, in this Session; and it may be that we should find it more suitable to take out this Part of the Schedule, Part IV, and consider it in conjunction with the whole subject of Sunday observance when this comes up in another measure. But this is a matter of principle, and it can be discussed later in the House, perhaps when the other Bill has proceeded further and we can see what its fate is likely to be.
There is one final point that I would make, and it is a very difficult one. A number of instances have been quoted by the Law Commission in their notes where the repeal of Statutes that prevented something which previously occurred will not, by virtue of the Interpretation Act 1893, revive whatever it is that the repealed Statutes used to prevent. There are all sort of cases of this; and I do not think I need draw particular attention to any of them. On the other hand, there is a technical difficulty here. Your Lordships will see that in Clause 4 of the Bill (and of course the Bill is unusual in that it replaces by a short modern statement some of the law thought worthy of maintaining) there is a specific abolition of any common law right to inclose or approve common land. Previously, as I understand it, this right, if it existed at all—which is very doubtful—was supported by two ancient Statutes, one the Statute of Merton, which was not repealed until 1953—in fact long after the Interpretation Act became law—reinforced by one of the Chapers in the Statute of Westminster, the First, and this is down for repeal in this Bill. There must, therefore, be a correlation between previous common law which has been either confirmed or, conceivably, repealed by subsequent Statutes and what happens when these Statutes are repealed.
I can see that it is arguable that in the case of the common law right referred to in Clause 4 all that had happened was that there were two confirming Statutes which had been passed sometime in the 13th century and the matter therefore needs to be cleared up. Nevertheless, there are ancient Acts. Some of them appear in this particular Bill, and some of them appear in such old law as will

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remain unrepealed and which may be the subject of further Bills of this sort. Some of these ancient Acts deal with very much more important matters of common law, of Parliamentary privilege, and relate sometimes to the Royal Prerogative and matters of that sort. Some of those old Statutes declared what was the law; some of them, like the ones to do with the See of Rome, said that it was no longer to apply, but others confirmed it. In every case, I think, it is extremely difficult to know what is the effect of repealing that ancient Statute in relation to the revival of what went on before. It is quite plain from the text of this Bill itself that repealing a confirmatory Statute does not in any way affect the common law that ran with it.
I do not know, however, whether the Interpretation Act applies to matters like Parliamentary privilege; whether it applies to the Royal Prerogative. Before we finally sweep away a lot of what may be thought to be ancient and out-dated legislation, which did, however, at its time deal with extremely important constitutional issues, we ought to be perfectly certain, and the House ought to be advised and to be quite sure, that none of the mischiefs and difficulties which these old Statutes were set up to deal with will now, by some side wind, come back. I do not suppose many of them will be of great importance, but some of them are, or were in their time, issues of tremendous principle, over which long battles were fought at various times throughout our history, and I think that the general concept of how far Section 38(2)(a) of the Interpretation Act goes in dealing with this sort of ancient law of a common law type (because it may not just be the common law; it may have other facets as well) should be most carefully examined.
This is an occasion on which it could be done, but if there are to be even more important repeals carried out in future, then the matter will be even more important still. I think it is something upon which the House at some stage would like to hear a word from the noble and learned Lord himself, perhaps after he has had an opportunity to consider it and, it may be, in relation to another Bill. That is the sort of problem that is going to arise on this type of legislation. It
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is a most important problem, and one on which constitutional lawyers and academic lawyers could make a great contribution if they were able to find time to turn their minds to it. I believe it would be of great assistance to Parliament if somebody could do this for them.
Meanwhile, there is ahead a long programme of detailed discussion of this Bill. I will try to persuade the Committee upstairs that the opinion that I wrote a few years ago relying on the prohibition in Magna Carta of obstructing rivers was in fact right, that I was correct in relying on it, and that therefore we ought not to repeal that chapter of Magna Carta. I have no doubt I was wrong, but it is strange how occasionally these old laws, even in Norman French, crop up. For all I know, I may move an Amendment on that point when the Bill comes back from the Joint Committee upstairs. Meanwhile, I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading so that it may go upstairs for that examination.
3.44 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH: My Lords, I should like at the outset of my brief comments on this Bill to say unequivocally that the Church of England welcomes the Bill so far as it concerns Ecclesiastical Law. The mediaeval Statutes affecting the Church and the considerable body of Tudor legislation present a daunting aspect to the student and an impediment to Church authorities. The Bill will effect a notable simplification, and the Church is grateful to the Law Commission for their initiative and work in this field.
The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has already referred to the Law Commission's consultations with the Church, and I should like to give your Lordships an assurance that the Church is satisfied as a result of these consultations and its own examinations of the Statutes concerned that all the repeals can be safely and properly made. It may be noted that the group of enactments—those of 1531, 1532, 1533, 1536, 1558 and 1571—which abolish the jurisdiction of the Pope in this country in respect of appointments, licences, dispensations and appeals, will not revive the Pope's judisdiction, because of the section

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in the Interpretation Act 1889 which provides that a repeal is not to revive anything not in force before that repeal. I should also add that Section 8 of the Act of Supremacy 1558, establishing the Sovereign as Head of the Church, is excepted from repeal.
A further group of enactments—those of 1535, 1539, part of 1549, 1545 and 1592—are concerned with the suppression of religious houses and the dissolution of colleges. Those enactments are spent, but because they are not formally repealed they still clutter up the volumes of Halsbury containing the Ecclesiastical Statutes. The repeal of the Clergy Marriage Acts 1548 and 1551 will, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has already assured us, not revive the rule forbidding the clergy to marry. The effects of the repeals of the Acts of Uniformity of 1548, 1551 and 1558 (except for two sections) will greatly simplify a confusing situation by removing penal provisions which have become obsolete. Only Section 7 of the 1548 Act which allows psalms and prayers out of the Bible to form part of a service, and Section 13 of the 1558 Act which is the statutory position of the present law relating to "ornaments", are excepted from repeal.
Perhaps I should mention the Act of 1429, which gave freedom from arrest to members of Convocation. I am sure that I am not the only member of that body to have been wholly unaware of this privilege. Perhaps that was just as well. This privilege was granted in the days when Convocation had quasi-Parliamentary duties and has not been claimed in modern times. It does not apply to Church Assembly. Both Convocations have agreed to its repeal.
Turning to Part IV on the Sunday Observance section of the Statute Law Repeals which are listed at pages 13 and 14, perhaps I should say that the law on Sunday observance has recently been the subject of a good deal of attention. It was debated in the Church Assembly in July, 1965. Two Bills on the subject have already been through this House—the Shops (Sunday Trading) Bill, debated on February 5, 1968, and the Sunday Entertainments Bill, debated on several occasions in this House and now in Committee in another place. Several Bishops have participated in those debates in this
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House. As a result of all this, it can be said that a consensus of considered opinion would certainly support the repeals embodied in this Bill in view of the anomalous and confused situation created by the Sunday Observation Prosecution Act 1871 and the Shops Act 1950. The question of the extent to which the repeals would be supported apart from this is quite irrelevant to this Bill.
The primary substance of the provisions dons repealed by Part IV of the Schedule of the Bill deserves, I think, a brief mention to allay possible anxieties in regard to Sunday observance. The Sunday Fairs Act 1448 prohibits the
"showing of any goods or merchandise (Necessary victual only except)"
on a Sunday. The Sunday Observance Act 1625 prohibits meetings for sports by people out of their own parishes and bear-baitings et cetera within them, on the Lord's Day. The Act of 1627 forbids butchers to "kill or sell any victual" on Sunday. The Act of 1677 provides that:
"Noe tradesman, artificer workeman labourer or other person whatsoever shall doe or exercise any worldly labour, business or worke of their ordinary callings upon the Lords day (works of charity onely excepted)."
Also it prohibits exposing wares for sale, and drovers travelling. Also it says:
"noe person shall use employ or travell upon the Lords day with any boate, wherry, lighter or barge."
But there is a proviso in this Act of 1677 that:
"nothing in this Act contained shall extend to the prohibiting of dressing or selling of meat in inns, cookshops or victualling houses nor to the crying or selling of milke before nine of the clocke in the morning or after foure of the clocke in the afternoon."
The Sunday Observation Prosecution Act 1871 provides that prosecution under the Act of 1677 may be brought only with the written consent of a chief constable or judicial authority—which, of course, is to-day never given. The Shops Act 1950 is the main Act now governing Sunday trading and provides that trading carried on in accordance with its provisions 5 hall not be an offence against the Acts of 1448, 1627 and 1667; which means that these Acts are substantially ineffective.
This Bill, as I have said, does not involve the contentious arguments concerning Sunday as a day apart; the arguments of those who wish to see Sunday more

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firmly protected as a day of rest and worship; the arguments of those who wish to see Sunday freed as a day of recreation or freed from any restrictions whatsoever, or the arguments of those who resent or respect the varying claims of Sunday observance. So far as I understand the matter, such issues are not involved in the provisions of the Bill before us. It seeks to remove obsolete and irrelevant provisions which can do nothing but harm. The existence of such provisions provides a weapon for those who want to ridicule or denigrate all statutory restrictions on Sunday observance, and in no way aids an appropriate contemporary solution of the problem. I speak only for the two sections of this Bill which concern ecclesiastical law, but, judged by those, the Law Commission are to be congratulated on this Bill, and not least on the manner in which the consultations—which have been an important aspect of the formulation of it—have been conducted. My Lords, I therefore wish to support the Second Reading of this Bill.
3.51 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I also wish to support the Second Reading, and to express my agreement with the proposal of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack that the provisions should now be carefully examined by the Joint Select Committee. I rise only to make public one point relating to the Act of 1297 of King Edward I confirming Magna Carta. to which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has already referred. I can add a short footnote to what he said because of my own experience in this matter over twenty years ago when I was in another place. At that time, when the late Lord Attlee was Prime Minister, a Finance Bill was introduced, one clause of which contained provisions that I thought were quite inconsistent with the provision of Magna Carta dealing with merchants in war and peace, to which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has already alluded. It seemed to me that that clause—which I may say was not a clause of which I approved—was utterly inconsistent with that section of Magna Carta which, speaking from memory, I think was Chapter 41.
In my zeal to ensure that legislation should at least be logical and tidy, I
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drafted and put down an Amendment in Committee saying, "Chapter 41 of Magna Carta is hereby repealed". At that time my noble friend Lord Mac-Andrew was Chairman of Ways and Means in another place—and, as we all know, a most admirable Chairman—and I regret to say he did not call my Amendment. Had he called it, the provision now in the Bill which will be examined by the Select Committee would have been discussed then, and, had my Amendment been carried, that provision would have gone over twenty years ago. Now I come to the incredible part of my story. When I approached my noble friend and asked him why he had not called my Amendment, he made the unbelievable reply that he had come to the conclusion that it had been set down in a spirit of mockery. My Lords, nobody will suspect the Law Commission, and the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, of a spirit of mockery, and the fact that over twenty years ago I made the proposal they are now making shows that for once my noble friend was wrong in his interpretation of my motives.
LORD MacANDREW: My Lords, I well remember the incident in another place, to which my old friend has referred, and I apologise to him for ever being so foolish as to think he might ever do anything in a spirit of mockery. I might add, for his consolation, that even had I thought that the Amendment was serious I should not have selected it.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, I understand that this Bill proposes to repeal nearly all that is left of Magna Carta. I am not sure whether it affects a particular provision which I think is still of very great importance, and that is the Article which says:
"To none will we deny, to none will we delay or sell right and justice."
I do not think that that has been replaced by any other legislation. I recall that I had occasion, a number of years ago, to put it to a tribunal before which I was appearing and which, without any good reason, had granted adjournment after adjournment to my opponents; and after I had quoted that I got a great deal more expedition. So I hope that that is something which will remain.
3.55 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have welcomed this Bill. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, referred to the legislation regarding the Forest of Dean. I have no doubt that one of the principal tasks of the Joint Committee will be to ascertain from the Law Commission exactly whom they did consult on the different classes of enactments. With regard to the Sunday observance laws, I would respectfully agree with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich has said. What we can and cannot do on Sunday to-day is, in substance, governed by Acts of a more recent date than those proposed for repeal. The old ones were not repealed but they have, in effect, been superseded by the most recent Acts.
The Joint Committee will, I have no doubt, read everything which noble Lords have said here to-day. The principle of the Bill having been accepted, the only effect of giving the Bill a Second Reading is to send it to the Joint Committee. One thing I can say, on behalf of the whole House, is that of course the noble Viscount was quite right in saying that there is nothing in the Bill to stop either House taking any course with this Bill it thinks fit after it has come from the Joint Committee. The only effect, therefore, of giving the Bill a Second Reading is that the House will be in a very much better position to consider the details of this legislation than it would be if it attempted to do so without the Joint Committee's assistance. I am quite sure that the whole House is greatly indebted to the Joint Committee for the labours which they are about to undertake.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

POST OFFICE BILL
3.58 p.m.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The main purpose of the Bill is to transfer what I believe is the biggest business in the country from having been a Department of State for over 400 years to a public corporation. This corporation will be known as the Post Office and will have a staff of over 400,000, as well
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as 23,000 sub-postmasters; a capital investment programme of £2,000 million in five years; a total turnover of about £9,000 million; 10,000 buildings and 25,000 retail counters. I think noble Lords will agree that I have not exaggerated in my claim that this is the largest business in the country.
While I was considering my speech during the Recess I happened to come across an article by Alistair Cooke in the Guardian dated May 29, and perhaps I may quote one or two of his sentences. He is talking, of course, about the United States Post Office. He said:
"A tiny crack of light appeared to-day at the end of the dark and tortuous tunnel which 82 billion pieces of U.S. mail pass through every year and wind up some times at the proper address. President Nixon has asked Congress to abolish the Post Office as a Government agency and set it up as a public corporation run by a board of nine directors … What has long been plain to the public and only reluctantly conceded by Congress, is that the Post Office is the most decrepit of public services …"
He goes on to say,
"There is only one postal delivery a day in this country, and none on Saturdays and Sundays. The misadventures and misdirection of ordinary mail would provide enough agonising material for a comic strip series. The outlook for early legislation along the lines the President has laid down is dim. But sooner or later, the Administration believes, the operating deficit of a billion dollars a year"—
that is, nearly £400 million a year—
"and the consequent further decay of the post offices and their laborious handling of the mail, will force a change."
I should like very much to congratulate my noble friend Lord Hall on becoming Chairman-designate of the new Post Office. According to the Press he is making a considerable financial sacrifice, but against that is this superb challenge. We all wish him good luck. Over all the years up to 1933, this great business organisation was treated as a Revenue Department of the Crown. This meant that any surplus of income over expenditure was automatically absorbed into the central revenue and used in the same way as the proceeds of taxation. This financial status for Post Office services was, of course, never really appropriate. And indeed this was recognised as long ago as 1912, when separate commercial accounts balancing income against expenditure were published for the first

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time. But the special case of the Post Office, as in truth a business on a vast scale, was fully accepted for the first time by the Committee of Inquiry into the Post Office in 1932. As a result of their Report, a limited contribution for the Exchequer was fixed, beyond which any net savings were at the disposal of the Post Office.
These arrangements were suspended during the war, but in 1955 the Post Office was encouraged to conduct its business as a commercial enterprise. Since then, the commercial accounts have governed the Post Office financial policy. Nevertheless, no radical change was made at that stage in the Parliamentary accounting procedures.
The last step in the history of the status of the Post Office so far was taken in 1961. In the light of their experience of the 1955 arrangements, the then Government decided that they should be carried a step further and that the commercial character of the Post Office should be recognised by Parliament in statutory terms. The new arrangements were embodied in the Post Office Act 1961. Their effect, as your Lordships will know, is in broad terms that from the financial point of view the Post Office is in much the same position as the recognised nationalised industries. But constitutionally it is still a Government Department with a Minister of the Crown at its head, who answers to Parliament for its day to day operation. As soon as they came to power in 1964, the present Government set in hand a fundamental review of the situation. Such a review we felt was essential
As I have said, the principal object of the Bill is to change the methods and structure of the Post Office. It is most important that we should all recognise the influence which the terms of the Bill itself will have on the success with which this result is produced. We shall be making a heavy demand on Post Office managers in asking them to accustom themselves overnight, as it were, to a brand-new world and fully to exploit its potential. Yet this is what they will have to do if the new undertaking is to succeed. We must never forget that it is to this Bill, if it becomes an Act, that they will look as their primary guide to their new role. The chances that they will
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respond as we all hope to the change depend very largely on the sense of independence and of implicit public trust which the Bill will give them.
Her Majesty's Government have given very careful thought indeed to the implications of these aspects of the change. They have weighed them most carefully against the need for independent management which I have emphasised so far. Your Lordships will have noted various provisions in the Bill which bear upon these very points. They are the result of considerable heart-searching to find what we believe to be the right balance between the freedom which the management of the new Post Office will share with the existing nationalised industries, and these rather special features of its responsibilities.
I have already dealt with Part I of the Bill, which is concerned solely with the abolition of my right honourable friend's present office. Part II provides for Her Majesty to appoint his successor. He will be known as the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and provision is made for him to be supported by a Parliamentary Secretary in the usual way. This Part of the Bill also provides for the transfer to the new Minister of a number of the Postmaster General's present functions in the wireless telegraphy and broadcasting fields. There will, of course, be no change in the constitutional position as regards the arrangements for the regulation of wireless telegraphy and the oversight of the broadcasting authorities. In addition, the new Ministry will have an important role as the successor to the Post Office in the field of international affairs concerned with posts and telecommunications.
The Post Office is given power to manufacture for its own consumption by Clause 7(2)(a), to acquire by Clause 7(2)(f), or to promote research and development work by Clause 7(2)(k) and (l). A second category of power is concerned with minor ancillary activities, such as Clause 7(2)(d) which authorises the provision of consultancy services to other countries. This is a worthwhile activity which the Post Office is doing on an increasing scale. Finally, Clause 7(2) provides for the Post Office to turn any spare resources which it may have to account. I should emphasise to your

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Lordships that it is not the intention of Her Majesty's Government that the Post Office should engage in its own right, and separate from its main activities, in a whole range of activities which take it well out of the spheres referred to in Clause 7(1). But like other nationalised industries the Post Office must be able to get an adequate return on the money invested.
Clause 11 incorporates the Minister's principal powers of control over the Post Office. It is these powers, of course, which provide the statutory basis for his sponsorship of the new authority. The powers broadly reproduce those possessed by the sponsoring Ministers of other industries. Clause 12 of the Bill incorporates powers of direction for the Minister, which provide the safeguard for the Post Office's key role in giving services for the Government, like payment of pensions at post offices. Your Lordships should know that the future relationship between the Post Office and the Departments which employ it will be, in principle, a business one. It is intended that the payments which the Post Office receives should include a margin above cost designed to make an appropriate contribution to the current financial obligations of the postal service. But the Government felt it essential that there should be a safeguard against the possibility, however unlikely, of a dispute between the Post Office and the Government about these services.
Clause 13 provides that before the Post Office undertakes manufacture for its own use or for use by others in connection with its service on a scale substantially greater than that which it will inherit on vesting day, it must consult with the Minister. If the Post Office has it in mind to go into manufacture for supply to other people for other purposes, it is required to seek the approval of the Minister before it does so.
The Bill also provides for the establishment, functioning, rights and duties of the Post Office Users' National Council and Users' Country Councils for Scotland, Wales and Monmouthshire and Northern Ireland. These consultative councils will be wholly independent of the Post Office. Unlike those of some of the existing industries, they will not be dependent on it for secretarial and other services, but will get these from
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the Minister. The Users' National Council shall have direct access to the Minister on any matter which it wishes to take up to do with Post Office services. Clause 15 gives the Users' National Council important statutory rights to be consulted in advance about any major Post Office proposals affecting any of the main services.
Clause 28 will confer power on the new authority to make schemes for determining the charges and conditions for its services. The purpose of these powers is to enable legal effect to be given to the charges and conditions. Your Lord-ships will naturally be interested, however, in the wider question of the freedom of the Post Office to fix its charges from the policy point of view. Broadly, it will be in the same position in this respect as the other nationalised industries. Your Lordships will be aware of the arrangements for the charges of nationalised industries referred to in paragraph 26 of the White Paper, Nationalised Industries—A Review of Economic and Financial Objectives (Cmnd. 3437). In particular, the Government decision that all major price increases in the nationalised industries should be referred to the National Board for Prices and Incomes will, of course, apply to the Post Office. In addition, Clause 15 of the Bill will oblige the Post Office to consult the National Users' Council in advance about major tariff proposals affecting the main services.
I should now like to refer to the staff of the Post Office. When all the technological possibilities are realised, the Post Office will still be an organisation of people. The service the Post Office gives will depend ultimately on its staff. There are many matters affecting them which are the subject of discussions with the staff associations, and until these are decided there are bound to be uncertainties and possible anxieties about the changeover. I do not think that it is appropriate for me to go into detail on these points because of the discussions going on, except to say that as your Lordships will be aware the Government gave certain assurances which are set out in paragraph 50 of the White Paper, Reorganisation of the Post Office. These assurances will be honoured.
As regards the position of Parliament, the constitution and responsibilities of

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the Corporation will be embodied in legislation. Its accountability to Parliament will be different from that at present. There will no longer be a Minister answerable to Parliament for its day-to-day activities; but both Houses will have the opportunity to consider the Report and Accounts of the Corporation when these are laid before Parliament every year. The work of the Corporation will be subject to scrutiny by Committees of the House of Commons. Increases in the total amount it may borrow will need to be approved by the House of Commons.
The Minister responsible for the Government's functions in relation to the Corporation will be answerable to Parliament for the discharge of these functions and for the exercise of his powers.
In conclusion, I should like to quote the final paragraph of the White Paper, which says:
"The services which the new Corporation will take over from the Post Office have an exciting future. The technologies on which they draw are advancing at unprecedented speed and economic and social progress will continually create new openings for their exploitation. The changes set out in this White Paper are being made to meet this challenge. They will provide a context in which the spirit of service which has inspired the Post Office in the past can be carried forward successfully into the future."
On behalf of the whole House, I wish my noble friend Lord Hall, the Chairman, other members of the Board and the staff the very best of luck in the future. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Bowles.)
4.13 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, it is a year and a day since the Second Reading in your Lordships' House of the Transport Bill. That Bill was, I believe, the longest Bill in the history of Parliament. The Bill before us this afternoon is even longer, which is another record. I suppose I might therefore be justified in making the longest speech I have ever made in my life; but your Lordships will be relieved to know that I am not going to do that. I shall do my best to follow the admirable example of the noble Lord, Lord Bowles—and I am sure we are all grateful to him for telling us so much
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about the Bill in such a short time. I do not know whether I can be quite as quick as him, but I shall do my best.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, I want to begin by offering our colleague, the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, my congratulations and best wishes on his appointment as first Chairman of the Corporation. The noble Viscount is (dare I mention it?) an hereditary Peer. It is, I am sure, always a pleasure to your Lordships when one of our number is appointed by a Government to a highly important post, and all the more so when he is already a Member of the House and not just the recipient of a peerage which, so to speak, came with the job. That said, I must make a mild protest that the name of the Chairman should have been announced even before the Bill received its First Reading in this House, let alone its Second Reading. I can, of course, see the practical advantage of having the Chairman-designate unofficially in the saddle some time before vesting day, but that does not seem to me to excuse discourtesy to this House, and it is discourteous to take it for granted that it is a foregone conclusion that this House is going to pass the Bill. I also think it is rather extraordinary that the Government should now be treating the House as a rubber stamp, in view of their attitude and behaviour towards your Lordships' House during the last year, since the disagreement over the Rhodesia Order.
However, as I say, we welcome the appointment of the noble Viscount, and wish him luck. He will carry heavy responsibilities and will wield colossal power. I strongly suspect that if the Bill becomes law in its present form he will be the most powerful single individual in the country, more able to exert his personal will over the lives of all of us than even the Prime Minister himself. He and his board will be as god-like, it seems to me, in their potentiality as Zeus and the other ancient deities of Mount Olympus. Indeed, so Zeus-like will the noble Viscount be that if he thought it a good method of telecommunicating he could manufacture and hurl thunderbolts and, so far as I can see, nobody could stop him, unless, I suppose, he committed some damage to life or property. If your Lordships think

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I am exaggerating absurdly in saying this, please reserve judgment until I have finished speaking.
As I see it, at any rate, the fundamental objectives of the Bill are: first, to transfer what has up to now been mainly a service industry from a Government Department to a national Corporation—and the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, made that point himself; secondly, to create the lightest possible monopoly, much tighter than the General Post Office at present enjoys; and, thirdly, to permit the Corporation to diversify its activities in virtually any way it chose—or so it appears to me, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, may have said about the intentions of the Government. As I shall go on to explain, we on this side are apprehensive about the second and third objectives, but we support the first in principle.
I think that most people now agree that the time has come when the Post Office should be run on more commercially businesslike lines—and that is one way of saying that Ministers, who are often and inevitably swayed by political considerations, should cease to be responsible for day-to-day managerial decisions. But, my Lords, when you create a gigantic State monopoly such as this, there are grave risks in not keeping adequate Ministerial control, and that is why I and some of my noble friends are not really happy about giving one Corporation responsibility for both telecommunications and posts.
The telecommunications industry is a growth industry with almost unlimited scope for profitable development, but that is not true of the postal service—or so it seems to me, at any rate. There is, therefore, the danger of hidden cross-subsidisation of the post by telecommunications, which I think would be the worst possible solution. I do not want to be unkind, so I shall put it mildly and say that from time to time the Post Office provides opportunities for criticism of the postal service—and I am thinking particularly of its inept public relations handling of the two-tier letter and the disingenuous attempt, initially, at any rate, to persuade the public that the two-tier system was really a boon and a blessing because it offered the opportunity for
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individual choice. Nevertheless, I agree with those who take the view that our postal service is probably the best in the world. I only hope that it is going to remain so. One reason why I think this has been the case in the past is that the labour content is so high.
I am sure that the postal service will be the Corporation's biggest challenge. If the Corporation can improve, or at least maintain, the present standards, and do so profitably without imposing unreasonably high charges, it will deserve the thanks of each and all of us. If it cannot do that it will be faced with four possible courses, all of them undesirable: subsidising the postal service by making unduly high profits on its other activities; perpetual borrowing from the Minister and the banks; putting up postal charges to unreasonable levels, or lowering the standards of the service. I do not want, any more than anyone else does, to see the standards of the postal service lowered. I recognise that in years to come, as wage costs rise, a subsidy may be necessary, although I hope not. But if it is it should be a perfectly open subsidy from the Exchequer. There is an element of social service in the postal service and it is easier to make a case for subsidising it than one for subsidising uneconomic railway lines, since rail is not the only means of travel open to the public.
I come now to the second fundamental objective of the Bill, which is to create the tightest possible monopoly in the field of communications. It is the Post-master General's frankly admitted intention that the monopoly should be 100 per cent. complete. Thus the Corporation will, as I see it, be in a position to define and administer its own monoply. It will anticipate all inventions in the field of communications and monopolise them from birth. Mr. Stonehouse explained in a Standing Committee of the other place that he wishes possible technical developments to be caught within the monopoly before they are even in-vented. To quote his own words:
"The monopoly is the monopoly is the monopoly. That is the whole point. We say there must be a monopoly. If there is a monopoly, there is a monopoly—that is all there is to it."
I do not know how your Lordships regard this; but I find it all rather

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frightening. I will try to explain why. So far as other national corporations are concerned, from the point of view of the customer there is at least some element of competition and choice. If one travels abroad one does not have to fly by B.E.A. or B.O.A.C.: one can go by boat, by rail, by car, or even by bicycle. If one travels at home, one does not have to use the services of British Rail. If one is dissatisfied with the quality or the price of the coal one buys from the National Coal Board one can burn oil, gas or electricity. But if one wants to communicate by letter or telephone one has to use the Post Office. There is no competition, no choice. The customer has to "like it or lump it".
It is true that the Post Office has always enjoyed a position of monopoly. What is new is that the Post Office is to cease to be a Government Department, so that its customers will no longer have the very real protection against abuse of monopolistic powers. The Postmaster General has been the head of the industry, responsible and accountable to Parliament for every decision and every activity, down to the smallest detail of day-to-day administration. This protection is now to go, under the Bill. Members of the other place will no longer be able to question the Government about the grievances of their constituents. It is not for me to comment on the rights and privileges of another place; but the proceedings on this Bill in the other place clearly indicated the anxiety of members of all Parties there; and I cannot say that I am surprised that this should be so.
What safeguards then are there to be? What protection will there be against abuse by the Corporation of its unrivalled powers or against its failure to carry out the duties expected of it? The answer, as I see it, is pretty little. I am aware of the elaborate machinery that is to be set up, the machinery of the users' councils. But so far as I can see they will be purely consultative bodies, and quite toothless if their views are ignored.
Take Clause 9 of the Bill, which purports to define the general duty of the Post Office. Subsection (1) says:
"It shall be the duty of the Post Office (consistently with any directions given to it under the following provisions of this Part
800
of this Act) so to exercise its powers as to meet the social, industrial and commercial needs of the British Islands in regard to matters that are subserved by those powers and, in particular, to provide throughout those Islands (save in so far as the provision thereof is, in its opinion, impracticable or not reasonably practicable) such services for the conveyance of letters and such telephone services as satisfy all reasonable demands for them."
Note the words of the saving—because they seem to me to make this subsection virtually useless from the point of view of protecting the public. I will read the saving again. The words in brackets are:
"… (save in so far as the provision thereof is, in its opinion, impracticable or not reasonably practical) …"
The words used are "in its opinion"—not the opinion of the Minister, not the opinion of Parliament, not the opinion of the Users' Councils, but the Corporation's own opinion.
Furthermore, let us look at the ominous words in subsection (4) of the same clause:
"Nothing in this section shall be construed as imposing upon the Post Office, either directly or indirectly, any form of duty or liability enforceable by proceedings before any court."
Even this amount of immunity granted to the Corporation is not considered to be sufficient; for later on in the Bill we have Clause 29 which confers upon the Corporation a large degree of immunity from liability at law enjoyed by a Department of the Crown.
My Lords, since the courts cannot require this gigantic monopoly to fulfil the duties or honour the liabilities laid upon it in Clause 9, who can? The theoretical answer, I suppose, is the Minister—but only to the limited extent to which I will come in a moment. The Minister may give limited directions, and the Bill says that the Post Office shall comply with his directions. But the Bill does not appear to me to say (I am open to correction on this, and I hope that I am wrong) what the Minister can do if the Corporation does not comply with his directions. Under Paragraph 5 of Schedule 1, he can sack individual members of the board for specified reasons. But I do not believe that that paragraph in Schedule 1 covers refusal of the board to comply with his directions. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, who is to reply, whether he will be good enough to tell us exactly what action

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under the Bill as drafted the Government can take in the case of non-compliance by the board.
Please do not think that this is just a frivolous debating question asked by a fractious Opposition: because here Parliament is being invited to create the largest and most carefully entrenched monopoly that this country has ever known, and I do not think it is good enough to be told by the Government that reasonable people—and reasonable people will be appointed to the board—behave reasonably. Reasonableness is a matter of opinion, and a man's opinion of what is reasonable is often determined by the calculation of what the consequences to him may be if he is unreasonable. It is not inconceivable that the Post Office Corporation, in its impregnable tower, may consider a Ministerial direction to be unreasonable. What then, I am asking the Government, would happen?
Whether or not Ministerial directions are in fact enforceable under the Bill, to see actually how limited is the power of Ministerial direction, and therefore how limited is the power of Parliament, one has to study Clause 11. Subsections (1) and (2) of that clause say:
"(1) The Minister may, after consultation with the Post Office, give to it such directions of a general character as to the exercise by it of its powers as appear to the Minister to be requisite in the national interest.
(2) If it appears to the Minister that there is a defect in the general plans or arrangements of the Post Office for exercising any of its powers, he may, after consultation with it, give it directions of a general character for remedying the defect."
I ask your Lordships to note the careful use of the word "general" which I take it to mean that the Minister will not be able to issue directions about matters of day-to-day management.
Suppose, my Lords, that the Post Office was to decide—and for the illustration of this argument, I am going to take a fairly extreme example—that it was no longer "practicable" (that is the word in Clause 9) to deliver second-class mail except on Tuesdays and Thursdays; and that the minimum rate for first-class mail would go up to 9d. Presumably there would be a considerable outcry both inside and outside Parliament, but what could the Minister do? Would he have to shrug his shoulders and say that it was none
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of his business, or would he be able to issue a direction? I hope again that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, will give us the answer to that question in his reply to the debate.
Before I leave the subject of monopoly, I must mention two other points. The first is the proposed treatment of the relay services. As your Lordships will know, relay services are the means of providing reception of radio and television programmes without the use of individual aerials. They are not broadcasting systems, the signals being piped by vires. Since the 1920s these services have been provided by commercial companies under licence from the Postmaster General. However, it Is proposed in the Bill that when the current licences expire in 1976 the licensing authority shall be the Post Office from whose decisions there shall be no appeal whatsoever. By then the Post Office will be in substantial competition with the relay companies and yet the Corporation is to be judge and jury in its own cause. The Postmaster General admits this, indeed he revels in it. This may be the milk of Socialism pure and un-defiled, but to my mind it is a gross breach of natural justice and we shall have to return to it at a later stage in the proceeding on this Bill.
Secondly, my Lords, there is the question of optical broadcasting, a system of broadcasting by means of light wives instead of electromagnetic waves. It has been invented by Mr. David Williams, of Leicester University. It could become of world-wide importance, and we could be the leading country in this field. Mr. Williams wants to facilitate his research and develop his own invention by operating his own broadcasting station; but under the provisions of the Bill optical broadcasting will come within the Post Office monopoly and Mr. Williams's proposed station will be put out of business. This seems to me to be quite monstrous and one can hardly credit it happening anywhere this side of the Iron Curtain. The third fundamental objective of this Bill, as I see it, is to permit the Post Office to diversify its activities. At present the Post Office has eight small factories. They are mainly devoted to repair work although they are, I understand, increasingly extending into the field of manufacture.

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Clause 7 empowers these factories to expand to any extent and indeed to manufacture anything, even sweets for example. At any rate that is my reading of the clause. I may be wrong—I understood the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, to say that it is not the Government's intention that they should do that. But what matters is not what the Government intend—they have precious little power as I have already indicated—but what the Bill as written empowers the Post Office to do. The powers that I have mentioned were originally restricted, when the Bill received a Second Reading in another place, by the then Clause 13, which did not permit any significant expansion of present manufacturing activities or any entry into new fields without a particular authorisation by the Minister. But later, under considerable pressure from his own supporters in another place, the Postmaster General introduced the present Clause 13 which, so far as I can see, merely requires the Post Office to consult the Minister before extending its manufacturing activities.
I do not need to emphasise the difference between consultation and obtaining authority, but if I am wrong about this, and the Post Office will still need the authority of the Minister before branching out in this way, I should be very glad to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, precisely under what clause and subsection the necessity still to require the authority of the Minister is to be found. Meanwhile, naturally many firms fear that contracts on which they are largely dependent may be abruptly ended, and others fear that competition from Post Office factories might be unfair since there would be no guarantee that their activities would not be subsidised. So this is another matter to which we shall have to return later.
Meanwhile, may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, this question, which is related in a way, and of which I have given him notice. On May 15, during Question Time in another place, the Postmaster General stated that he was having talks with manufacturers about the direct supply of equipment to consumers. I should be very grateful if the noble Lord could clarify that statement of the Postmaster General.
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I am afraid that I have spoken for a little longer than the noble Lord, Lord Bowles. I have sought to confine myself to what seemed to me, at any rate, to be the major features of this long and important Bill and indeed I would think the more controversial ones. Unlike the Transport Bill, which was similar in certain ways, this Bill was not guillotined in another place. On the contrary, it was very fully discussed, and I do not think, therefore, that so far as the Opposition is concerned a long Committee stage will be needed. But my noble friends and I will seek to move some Amendments in order to try to improve the Bill.
4.39 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I find it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for this very long Bill. I did not find it very exciting when it was first published, and the perusing of the long proceedings in another place has rather taken the edge off any appetite for it that I originally had. In fact, possibly the most one can say in favour of it is that, unlike some legislation, it will probably not do much positive harm. In spite of the admirably concise and informative speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, I am still unable to find much that may be said in favour of it. It is true that it will enable the present Government to claim at the next Election that it has halved the Civil Service. It is true that it will relieve the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, from the sometimes difficult task of trying to explain to your Lordships the principles of the 4d. and 5d. post. But these, although good in themselves, are, it would seem to me, insufficient reasons to take up the time of Parliament.
Although I intend to be short, if I may I would digress for a moment here. I am amazed at the appetite of the Government for producing Bills which take up a great deal of time and often put the Government in jeopardy and which promote irrelevant, unwanted, turgid and marginal legislation. They started, as your Lordships will remember, with the Bill for the nationalisation of steel, a subject which awoke no interest or enthusiasm except in the hearts of a few steel masters, on the one hand, and of a few dedicated Socialists, on the other. It nearly brought the Labour Government

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down. We find it reaching a climax in the Industrial Relations Bill, a Bill which, I would certainly argue, is totally marginal for the whole problem of industrial relations in this country and which looks like taking up so much time that there is the rumour that your Lordships' House may even be recalled in the middle of the Summer Recess to deal with it.
Now we have this Post Office Bill. As I said, I can find little to be said in favour of it; but when I consider that the reform of your Lordships' House, a highly important constitutional move which would have had a great effect on the whole future of government in this country and which was agreed upon more or less by all three political Parties and approved in principle by an overwhelming majority of your Lordships, went by the board because, we were told, of the shortage of Parliamentary time, and that therefore presumably this Bill is one of the substitutes for it, I feel positively antagonistic.
I should be much more positive in my reaction if I could detect any consistent principle in this Bill, even that of
"the common ownership of production, distribution and exchange and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service,"
as Clause 4 of the Labour Party Constitution has it. Because unless we get down to the basic principle of how to run the nationalised industries, those industries which need social support, and the natural monopolies, and try to establish some coherent basis for dealing with them logically, there is little point in all this monkeying about with changes in name and function.
Again, one of the feelings one has about this Government is that they have invented departments, boards, commissions, corporations and bodies of one kind or another to fill every individual gap, without much kind of rhyme or reason about the overall plan. I believe that there is an important principle which should be established and which we are far from establishing. It is a principle which came up in the Transport Bill and which I think is absolutely right. It came up again this afternoon in the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton. The principle is this: all industries and services must be in some way answerable to the public.
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The private enterprise system is. not perfect for this purpose but it is at least reasonable. In the case of the great majority of goods and services where there is not a public monopoly, the consumer can vote with his feet and his money and thus exercise some form of control. But where this cannot happen, where there is a natural monopoly or where there are social services, social benefits and social costs which are difficult to account into the free enterprise system, I maintain that we have not tried hard enough to do this; these services should be provided by public bodies, which should be totally answerable to the public. And where the monopoly is absolute—as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has pointed out, is the case With the Post Office—the more need there is for answerability. In these cases of total monopoly there should be answer-ability through Parliament to Members of Parliament.
It appears to me that the worst of both worlds is incorporated in the present decision, which does not make the Post Office in the slightest bit more competitive but merely removes some, or a large proportion, of its accountability. Whereas I welcome the provision for Post Office Users' Councils, the record of experience of the consultative bodies already established in various industries and the amount of attention paid to their recommendations or complaints provide not a very good precedent.
There are one or two sections of the Post Office which might be more seriously considered for handing over to private enterprise. This is true of the telephone system. A system of regional telephone networks, coming up for tender every few years, as is the case with the independent television authorities, would produce some form of competition which would keep prices down and services up. It would have the extra advantage of being able to tap private capital. Where schemes like this are not applicable, it seems to me right that the Post Office should be very closely under the eyes of the elected and the nominated representatives of the people in Parliament.
I think it is not too late to insert some form of greater public responsibility into this Bill. I do not see why we should not have, instead of one Post Office

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board, one for each country. That seems to me to be an advantage. Whether or not that is so, why should not the members of the board be elected instead of being appointed? Their electorate could well be the Members of Parliament representing the constituencies in each particular country, voting by proportional representation. That is unprecedented in British constitutional history, but it is a perfectly workable system, which would at least keep some control in the hands of Parliament. That is merely one suggestion, and there are plenty of other ways by which this answerability could be brought about.
I do not prophesy doom for this Bill. I do not forecast that we shall see a tremendous falling-off of the Post Office services if the Bill goes through. I merely think it is a shadow measure, with which it is a great pity to take up the time of Parliament. I can only wish that before long a Government of this country will try to impose a coherent and rational attitude towards the relative roles of State and private enterprise instead of the present jungle. That day does not yet look as if it is anywhere near.
4.48 p.m.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, I want to thank my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith, who has agreed to allow me to precede him because I have another engagement later to-night, and I apologise to the House if I have to leave before the end of the debate.
I wanted particularly to speak in this debate, and I was pleased that I intended to do so when I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Newton, speaking from the Opposition Bench. My mind went back to the days when the same arguments as he used to-day were brought forward on the Bills to nationalise coal and gas and electricity. The argument then was that the monopolies given to the national Boards would mean that the Boards would exploit the public; there would be no Government control over the work they did. But in all those nationalisation Acts, and in this Bill the Minister can by direction in the national interest protect the public against anything he may consider an outrage upon them. When I sat on the Select Committee in another place the Conservative Party four times
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refused to allow the Coal Board to increase the price of coal, and this resulted in a huge deficit in their accounts in four years in the 13 years the Conservatives were in office. So the argument put forward to-day, that monopolies are no safeguard for the public, falls by the board because of the past history that is embodied in all the nationalisation Acts.
The noble Lord who preceded me talked about accountability. I agree that this has been a thorny problem in the whole of the nationalisation Acts, and Parliament has tried to get over this by giving to a Select Committee in the House of Commons great powers to examine witnesses of all the nationalised industries each year, and to issue a Report that is debated in Parliament if the Government of the day has a mind to bring it forward for debate. That is the method of accountability that we have been able to reach over the period of the nationalisation Acts.
I listened with great interest and attention to my noble friend Lord Bowles. I am sure we all are grateful to him for the clear exposition he gave us of the reasons for the change and of the Bill itself. It is a long and complex Bill, I agree, but I think his speech went far in clarifying it and helping us to understand it. It is not my intention to speak at any great length, but this is such an important Bill that I should like to address myself to the issues.
I do not know of any other organisation in this country that is in a similar position to the Post Office. On the one hand, it is an enormous employer, with a very large turnover, a huge capital investment programme, and an industry that has to be equipped to meet the technological changes of the future; on the other hand, what the Post Office does makes a difference to every single person in the country on almost every day of the year. I should be surprised if there were many of your Lordships here to-day who have not had some service or other from the Post Office during the course of the day. It is not just the sheer size of the Post Office operations that strikes one, but the many different things they cover. There are letters, parcels, telegrams; the telephone service; the issue of pensions, family allowances, sickness pay, wireless and television licences, car licences; radio

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interference, and many other services. I am sure that one could talk for a long time about the things that everybody knows the Post Office covers.
What matters to the man in the street, I suppose, is whether the Bill before us will make any difference. We have had complaints about the Post Office from time to time in the past, and probably we shall have them again in the future; and it would be surprising if we did not have complaints about such a huge organisation doing all these things in society. Nevertheless, I think we shall all agree that there is a tradition of service in the Post Office and that over the years it has done a wonderful job for us all.
As I see it, the question which the Government faced was whether the Post Office could be expected to go on doing as good a job in the future if it remained as a Government Department. The noble Lord who opened the debate has explained clearly why it could not; and in my opinion the Government are right. These are technically based services which must be run by professionals and experts in that field. They need to work out their own methods, organisation and skills, especially for Post Office needs. With all its virtues, the Government machine cannot be the right place to do this for the future, especially in the changing technical world that we see around us. I believe that once they are set free in this way, and led, as they will be under the hoard, whose principal members have been announced, Post Office management, under my noble friend Lord Hall, will have an opportunity to do a really first-class job for this country. This will be what the man in the street will expect and what I am sure he will see.
The main purpose of this Bill is to set up a new national Corporation to join the great statutory authorities that we already have. For my part, I am proud of the British nationalised industries and of the part that my Party and the distinguished members of my Party have played in bringing them into being. This Bill is largely based on the previous nationalisation Acts, and it is all the better for that. Some people, and especially Members in another place, have complained on various occasions that the Bill contains little in the way of innovation
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on the constitutional side. To me, this is a good thing, and not a bad thing.
The general framework of the nationalisation Acts has now been tested over many years and has been shown to work successfully, and it is absolutely right to apply it to the latest industry which is to be set up under this Bill. There is, in fact, an important feature of this Bill which is an improvement on the earlier nationalisation Acts, and that is the new arrangement for users' councils to be completely independent of the industry and to have important statutory rights of their own. We are all naturally concerned to make sure that the interests of the consumer are properly provided for in Acts of this kind, and I am sure that, from that point of view, this is an important step forward. I draw the attention of the House also to the care which the Government have taken to protect in the future the social security and other welfare services in which the Post Office is involved.
There is another side to this whole operation which we should not forget. We are witnessing a hiving-off of a major function of Government, and one involving a large part of the Civil Service. I am sure that many will recognise the enormous problems which have had to be solved, and we should not overlook the importance of the Bill itself as an experiment in transferring to independent statutory authorities the functions hitherto carried out by the Government. The Fulton Report (Cmnd. 3638, paragaphs 188 to 191) proposed that the possibility of further hiving-off of this kind should be studied, and the Post Office under this Bill will provide most valuable experience in this connection.
I should like now to say a word about the staff. There are more than 400,000 people in the Post Office. That is something like one in every 130 of the whole population of this country. Every one of us must realise how important this change is to them, and in many cases their fears as to what will happen to many of them as a result of this change. We all know the work that postmen, telephone operators and post office engineers put into their jobs. From my own experience in life I can understand the questions which must be in their minds at this moment. But I believe they will find that this change is a good thing for them. I

811
know that it is easy to talk about great new horizons, great opportunities, and all that sort of thing. Yet I consider that this Bill will bring all these to the Post Office staff.
What the ordinary employee wants to know is whether he is going to have a good job, a secure future and a good employer, with promotion based on merit. As I have looked at the Bill, I am quite sure that it will make certain of this; indeed, those in the Post Office are lucky, because, unlike some other nationalised industries, the Post Office is growing and not contracting. Further, in the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, we have a man who understands the feelings and aspirations of working people. He had his grounding in the mines in his early life, and he was brought up in a trade union atmosphere. I am certain that the staff and the trade unions will receive every help and sympathy from him in all the changes that the Bill proposes.
Finally, I would say that the Bill should be examined very carefully in its further stages, but I am confident that the principles embodied in it are right. It is because of this that I am happy to offer this Bill, and the great project which it authorises, my warm support.
5.5 p.m.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, this is a big Bill, as has already been said. That is indeed apparent at the most casual glance. I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that it is not also an important Bill, raising very many interesting and important issues. I have been associated all my working life with the trade union organisation of Post Office staff. I am still deeply involved as an officer of one of the trade unions, and associated with a number of others.
I must confess that if I developed all the points which come to my mind, even as appropriate for Second Reading, I should strain to the point of abuse even the tolerant rules of your Lordships' House. I, too, like others, must confine myself to a relatively few observations. Naturally, I must begin by adding my congratulations and good wishes to those of other noble Lords to my noble friend Lord Hall on taking up the post as Chairman of the Corporation. In this hard
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and challenging post he will, I believe, have the good wishes and good will of Post Office staff from the highest to the humblest ranks. He will be taking over a going concern, one which has already developed marked characteristics and traditions. It is an organisation with great strengths and great weaknesses. Its greatest strength is perhaps that which my noble friend Lord Blyton touched upon, the tradition of service, and the remarkable tradition of loyalty which it has enjoyed over so many years from its staff at all levels. Although that tradition may to some degree have been weakened by changing circumstances, and may often have been strained, it is a tradition which still exists. It did not come about by chance; it derives in part from the fact that the work which the Post Office performs is done for the public. Post Office staff know that their efforts do not add to profits which go into private pockets—they add to the public good.
The Post Office also recognised, long before many other employers, the value in building up staff morale, of seeking to ensure permanence of employment for all their staff with a pension at the end. Moreover, its policies in respect of negotiation with the staff on their conditions have always been subject to scrutiny. People are not paid or promoted in the Post Office in an arbitrary or an invidious way, but in accordance with procedures which have normally been negotiated, which are recognised, are clearly stated and honourably observed by the employer.
The Post Office, in face of the task which now confronts it, has also, I believe, large weaknesses. Perhaps the most serious is the character and atmosphere which its condition as a Government Department has almost inevitably created. Post Office staff have always had to observe certain criteria in doing their work and exercising their responsibilities. They have always been expected to have in mind that the Postmaster General in Parliament might be called upon to answer in question or debate for anything they may have done. If a Department is operating in the field of social policy, or is deeply concerned in all that it does with the rights of the individual, this preoccupation with Parliamentary responsibility of a most detailed

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day-to-day kind is right and necessary. But for a body which is more and more analogous in its tasks to an ordinary commercial concern (certainly to another nationalised industry), Parliamentary opinion in day-to-day matters, or reliance on Parliamentary opinion in day-to-day matters, can be inhibiting. If I may say so, I think the noble Lord, Lord Newton, did less than justice in what he said as to the degree to which Parliament will retain a very firm control over the broad policies which the Corporation follows.
Whatever changes may take place, certainly there should be no impression that this piece of legislation weakens in any way the fundamental principle that the operations of the Post Office should continue to be conducted on the basis of public ownership and public accountability. In another place there has been a good deal of reference to the possibility of private enterprise providing better services than the Post Office provides. There is, if I may say so, an element of humbug in this argument. It is never advanced in respect of the postal service. Whatever criticism may be made of the postal service, it is always in respect of the telecommunications service that this argument is advanced. The greater the prospects of profit in the telecommunications service have become, the keener has become the cry that those profits should go, at any rate in part, into private pockets.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is the view now being expressed by a section of opinion that these profits should go into American pockets. I had hardly taken this seriously until I read an article last month in the Investor's Chronicle which suggested; that it was an idea which was commending itself seriously to a section of Conservative opinion. But there is the other idea, that there can be injected some element of competition in some telephone functions: for example, in the actual installation of telephones as distinct from the operation of exchanges and trunk lines.
There are some serious administrative and technical objections to a policy of that kind. But more serious still is the fact that such a partial injection of private competition would mean that the private firms which engage in this work would naturally choose to do so in the
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large centres of population where, for obvious reasons, installation is a cheaper and easier job, no doubt leaving to the public enterprise the duty—the statutory duty—of providing the service in the remoter and more sparsely populated parts, where private enterprise would not flourish and where public enterprise could be left to stand the losses.
It is not, though, the right course for us to be discussing this matter in terms of competition between private and public enterprise. There is on the telecommunications side of the Post Office a field of immensely exciting and a field development. This whole field of telecommunications is a vast, constantly changing and constantly expanding one. To take only the Post Office part of it, there is the tremendous growth now going on in the conventional telephone service, with new telephones being installed at something like the rate of one million a year. There is the development in Telex; there is the immensely important involvement with the transmission of data and links with computers, likely to become so important that in a few years the number of communications in this form will exceed the number of communications by voice. Or, to put it less accurately but more graphically, there will be more telephone conversations between computers than between human beings.
In addition (and this point was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, who indicated that he would pursue it in Committee), there is the experiment which is going on with the possibility of providing a single communications inlet in a citizen's residence catering for telephone, piped television, piped radio and other services which can be associated with a network of this kind. Lastly, telecommunications represents—and I hope we shall never forget it—one of the most rapidly growing items in international trade. It therefore seems regrettable that, so far as the figures indicate, this country, which has such a significant place in world telecommunications, has been failing to hold its share of the rapidly expanding world market.
So, my Lords, this piece of legislation which we are considering to-day is relevant to all these, and to the other immensely important, developments in this field. It is, I am sure, a short-sighted

815
policy from a national point of view, and from the point of view of the many important private interests in this field as well, to look askance at the powers which the Corporation will have. This is a field so vast, so important, so rapidly developing, that there is room for all. It would indeed, if I may submit the view, be to the detriment of the private interests themselves, as well as of the nation, if the Corporation which this Bill establishes were to be subject to artificial confining restrictions; if it were to be pressed to interpret its powers in the narrowest and most restrictive way, or if anything were to be done to inhibit its initiative or to inhibit the vigorous use of all the assets which it will have.
Related to this there is the issue of the manufacturing powers which the Corporation will have. Nobody wants to see manufacturing capacity built up in a reckless fashion, ill-advisedly on some doctrinaire basis, where there is no need for it. But there are reasons why this is a very important aspect of the powers which the Bill confers. Let me mention only two. It is by no means established that we have as yet in this country manufacturing capacity for the most modern types of telecommunications equipment and apparatus, completely adequate to meet our own rapidly growing needs here at home as well as to meet the important possibilities of the export trade. If indeed there is a suggestion that the Corporation should not as a matter of principle exercise the powers which this Bill confers, it is I think the very minimum requirement of the critics to show that the existing capacity is adequate for prospective needs.
But there is a further consideration, and that is that experience has shown that it is beyond any reasonable doubt advantageous to a large organisation operating a telecommunications system both to play a substantial part in research and development and to have a substantial direct stake in manufacture. This is not an argument that the Corporation should have a monopoly of manufacture, still less a monopoly of research, but that it should have at least a share in the manufacturing task. The absence of this share, this capacity, has without a shadow of doubt on past occasions put the Post Office at a disadvantage with the sellers from whom it purchases much of
816
its equipment. That I think cannot be denied. It is also true that if a large operating organisation has a stake in manufacture there will be a feedback of information which is valuable both to the manufacturing component and to the operating system. A Select Committee drawn from another place which examined this matter was impressed by the fact that both the most efficient and progressive privately owned system in the world—the American—and the most efficient and progressive publicly owned telephone system in the world—the Swedish—have a substantial stake in the manufacture of the equipment which they require.
However, my Lords, what I want above all to do is to revert to a point I made earlier: that there is in this field of telecommunications scope and room for all—for private concerns and public concerns. We need, I suggest, what we do not so far appear to have had: a great national telecommunications policy in which both the public concerns and the private concerns can play a part. That is what I mean when I say that I hope the Post Office will retain the monopoly envisaged under this piece of legislation. But it must operate that monopoly with the very extensive powers which that monopoly gives and the other very extensive monopoly powers which it will have. It must operate those policies with efficiency, with foresight and with a great breadth of vision to promote, I hope in conjunction with the Ministry of Technology, a national telecommunications policy which can assist us, not only in meeting our telephone needs as we conventionally think of them but, as a nation, in developing our industry by all the varied new types of telecommunication devices which are coming along, and which can also make a most valuable contribution to our international position by a more substantial and more successful effort in the export trade.
Before I conclude (and I think I have already gone to the length of your Lordships' patience) I should like, if I may, to say a word on the question of the position of the staff and the industrial relations, on which again my noble friend Lord Blyton has touched. The nature of the work which is done in the Post Office is such that for the great part one cannot have a supervisor breathing down

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men's necks. One cannot have a supervisor breathing down the neck of the postman as he delivers his letters; one cannot have a supervisor breathing down the neck of the engineer as he installs or repairs a telephone in somebody's house or office. It is for this reason, if no other, that morale is of such immense importance, and has always been recognised as such, in Post Office operations.
It has been valuable to the Post Office to have the tradition of loyalty and devotion to the public service which I mentioned. But circumstances have been straining that tradition. Permanence and pensionability are important, but they are not of course nowadays respects in which Post Office employment represents such an immense relative advantage for the general run of workers as they did a generation ago. Therefore it is inevitable that more and more Post Office workers tend to compare, not their conditions as a whole but their pay packets with those of workers in outside employment. The wages of a fully skilled telephone craftsman, sometimes called on to exercise two or three skills, outside London rise to £19 10s. a week at the maximum of his scale. Those of a postman outside London, at the maximum of his scale, rise to £16 8s. Noble Lords who are conversant with the wage levels that apply in many fields of employment for skilled and responsible workers will recognise that these figures speak for themselves.
Further, the Post Office is not yet evoking to the full degree that it could the enthusiasm and the pride in craft of the staff that it employs. Some two years ago the Government published a White Paper setting out their plans for the Post Office Corporation. That White Paper had a section on staff relations—a very well conceived section—which concluded with this sentence:
"The Government indeed believe that the change in status presents an opportunity for developments in industrial democracy within the Corporation leading both to increasing the contribution of the staff to the efficient running of the services and to increasing the satisfaction of the staff with their conditions and place in the organisation."
In the preparations in the past two years for the change of status there has been little sign that the activating and energising principles set out in the short passage
818
I have quoted have yet had much effect. Indeed, there are some fields in which the new Corporation will find itself faced with difficult and serious industrial relations problems. But the underlying loyalty, the underlying good will, the underlying devotion to the service, and the opportunities which are inherent in the passage from the White Paper which I have just quoted are still there if the Corporation which this Bill brings into existence will recogonise their existence.
5.25 p.m.
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Newton has dealt fully and clearly with the attitude of my noble friends on these Benches to this Bill, and it only remains for me, at the end of this relatively short but comprehensive debate, to underline our main reservations Before I do so, I should like to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, and welcoming his appointment.
With regard to the Corporation itself, we are not quite convinced that Her Majesty's Government were wise to miss the opportunity of separating the two functions of the Post Office, post and telecommunications. The pamphlet prepared by the Post Office Preparing for Corporation Status, which was written only about two years ago, suggested that these two functions should be separated as quickly as possible. If the post business had been kept as a Government Department and the telecommunications business alone handed over to the Corporation, it would have got rid of a lot of the criticism of this Bill—criticism of its enormous size, enormous monopoly, and so on—while keeping its obvious advantages.
We are worried about some of the consequences of retaining and extending the monopoly. There is a danger that "catching developments within the monopoly before they are invented" may well prevent an invention from being invented at all. For an invention one must have incentive to the inventor and one mast, if necessary, have others to take advantage of, and develop, the invention, if the most obvious users are too short-sighted to take it up. We all of us know many examples in recent years of other countries reaping the benefits of a break-through made in this country because

819
people here were too blind to take advantage of it. I hope the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that this Bill probably will not do any actual harm, will be true in this case.
My Lords, we do not like the back door nationalisation provisions of this Bill, any more than we liked them in much the same form in the Transport Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, defended the manufacturing powers in the Bill, but we feel there is no need for these powers to be as enormously wide as they are. However, perhaps the aspect of the Bill that worries me more than any other is the fact that Post Office matters generally will no longer be under such close scrutiny and control of Parliament. It is right that the new Corporation should be as free as possible, so that it can make a commercial "go" of things. But where there is a monopoly there must also be a firmly entrenched responsibility to provide the services the public need in the way that they need them. Because if the holder of the monopoly does not provide those services, no one else can. The Post Office monopoly, which the Corporation will continue to hold, is a more drastic one than that held by any other nationalised industry. In the first place, it plays a more intimate and indispensable part in the life of every family in the country, and in the second place, it is a more complete monopoly. Every other nationalised industry with which the general public is directly concerned has competition at least from other nationalised industries, and usually from private enterprise. My noble friend Lord Newton enlarged on that point. If you do not like a train service you can take a bus, or use a car. If you are "fed-up" with the electricity supply service you can turn to gas or oil. In the last resort you can even install your own oil-fired generator. But if the various methods of communication provided by the Post Office—telephone, telegraph, post—should seem to you to be inefficient or over-expensive, what other recourse have you? Carrier pigeons?
The Post Office has always had this monopoly, but up to now the Postmaster General has been answerable to Parliament for their stewardship. The noble
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Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, says that we shall still have the protection of Parliament for general policies. But what will happen in the future if something happens like last year's proposal to do away with the London telephone book? Questions in Parliament will get the answer, "It is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to interfere with the day-to-day running of nationalised industry corporations". Will Her Majesty's Government try during the passage of this Bill through your Lordships' House to work out some means more effective than those envisaged at the moment, whereby the wishes and needs of the consumer, the British public, will be known and acted upon?
5.30 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I wish that I could follow the example of brevity set by the noble Lord, Lord Denham, but in view of what has been said I fear that it will be necessary for me to take up a little longer of your Lordships' time. I am deeply grateful for what has been said by my noble friends Lord Blyton and Lord Delacourt-Smith. They have spared me the necessity of replying to some of the points made by noble Lords opposite.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the Bill has received a wildly excited welcome from the other side of the House; on the other hand, no one has seriously suggested that the proposed change is mistaken. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, said that he thought the Bill as a whole was turgid. I agree that it is not quite so exciting as some of the matters in which the noble Lord interests himself, properly, and I hope that I am not doing him an injustice when I say that possibly he might find anything solid and constructive to do with administration a little turgid. But these are important areas of our national life which we have to look at. It is not the Labour Government or the Labour Party which has thought up boards and corporations. These things become necessary by the economic facts of life: the great accretions of capital, the necessity for larger-scale enterprise. All these have led us into the formation of these new economic forms, and I am afraid that the noble Lord will have to learn to live with them.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I think the noble Lord does me a slight injustice, if I may say so. I am not objecting to the turgidity of the administration, and I realise that a very great deal of extremely detailed work has to go into this—indeed, this is one of the kinds of things that interest me immensely. The turgidity I was complaining of is the turgidity in trying to decide on what principles these relationships should be allocated.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I expressed the hope that I had not done the noble Lord an injustice. I see that I did, and I am sorry.
I was going on to say that I appreciate that some of the fears expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Newton and Lord Denham, and the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, were understandable. They may have exaggerated their fears but, as I say, I think they are understandable. Here we do have this gigantic monopoly; a monopoly, as they say, quite unique in our economic system, including an organisation which has in recent years been the subject—let us face it—of a certain amount of public criticism, being handed over to a body which is less and not more under direct control of Parliament. I am glad to see, however, that they do not challenge the administrative idea of monopoly. I do not really see how you can get away from the conception of administrative monopoly here. You cannot have two lots of telephone cables down any particular street; you cannot have two postmen coming along and competing firms delivering letters. There must obviously be a monopoly in this field.
However, I see the noble Lords' point about putting this gigantic monopoly further away from immediate public control through Parliament. This normally is a step which requires very careful thought, and it does not require me to say that careful thought has, of course, been given to this before the step was taken. I am greatly impressed with the fact that members of all Parties in the Select Committee, and people with great knowledge of public administration—men like my noble friends Lord Delacourt-Smith and Lord Blyton—and some who have been insisting over the years that some of the other public corporations
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should be brought back under Parliamentary control, under the control of a Minister in the House, have all gone on record, as my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith has to-day, in saying that the proposals in this Bill are correct; that they accept them as being the best in the circumstances with which we have to deal.
But there is a conflict between the idea of giving greater independence of managerial control and yet having at the same time Ministerial Parliamentary responsibility. I suppose that the conflict of considerations was stated nowhere more clearly than in the Select Committee's Report on Nationalised Industries. I would remind noble Lords of what the Select Committee said on this subject:
"It was clearly intended by Parliament that Ministers should to some extent or other exercise control over the nationalised inclustries: for this was one of the major purposes of nationalising them. On the other hand, it was equally clearly intended that the industries should benefit from some degree of managerial autonomy, and that some limit should thus be set to Ministerial control: otherwise there would be no point in establishing public corporations with 'high powered chairmen' and their own independent staff."
My Lords, the claim which I would make, and which the Government make, is that a real balance has been struck by the terms of this Bill. After all, the Post Office will not, after the Bill becomes law, be entirely disembodied: it will be responsible, in the final count, to Parliament through the Minister. There are controls; there are general powers of direction, as Lord Blyton said, in Clause 11; there are specific controls in other parts of the Bill. Indeed, if I were to list all the different provisions that are made for formal powers of direction—Clauses 11, 12, 32, 42—and the provisions for Ministerial control in Clauses 6, 11, 13, 23, 27, 35, 42, 43, 49, 55 and 56—one wonders not that there is going to be no Ministerial control but whether we are not riveting on to this new body too much power of Ministerial control.
On the other hand, I agree that it will be no longer possible for an aggrieved individual who wants a telephone Kiosk at the end of his street, or thinks that the mail was delivered too late on Tuesday and Wednesday, to put to his Member of Parliament that these things should

823
be rectified and have the matter raised on the Floor of the House. I agree, too, that it will be no longer possible for noble Lords in this House on the Benches opposite to put to my noble friend Lord Bowles Questions about particular deliveries to particular Squares in London.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, surely it will always be possible in this House for these Questions to be asked. Whether they are answered is another matter.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is always possible to do things which are not productive, but I should not have thought it would be worth while to put down such Questions in your Lordships' House. But do noble Lords opposite really want, in the modern world, this kind of control? I do not think that that is what they seek.
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, accepting what I have said, that the Minister could give a direction, what would happen if the Post Office declined to comply with a direction; and he quoted from Clause 11, which he thought was insufficiently powerful so far as the Minister was concerned. But if he looks at subsection (5) of the clause he will see that it states:
"The Post Office shall comply with directions given to it under any of the foregoing provisions of this section."
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I quite agree with that. I said in the course of my speech, although I did not quote subsection (5), that the Bill says the Post Office "shall comply with directions". The first question I asked the noble Lord was what would happen if the Post Office declined to comply with a direction.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is inconceivable to me that a public organisation in this country should refuse to comply according to law. This really is pursuing a bogey which I would have thought, is too far under the bed to bother about.
LORD NEWTON: That is the whole point of my asking. When this gigantic organisation is set up it will be impossible to take action in the courts against the Post Office. That is quite clearly so.
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The noble Lord is now telling me that there is nothing that could be done if, in its folly, the Post Office declined to comply with the direction.
LORD BESWICK: What I am telling the noble Lord is that in my judgment he is getting unnecessarily fearful.
LORD NEWTON: That is another matter.
LORD BESWICK: But if that contingency did arise; if, for example, my noble friend Lord Hall went berserk and, as the noble Lord said, overnight put up the price of the first-class mail to 9d., abolished the second-class mail, and did a lot of other extraordinary things of that kind, there are ways and means if one looks at the control—
LORD NEWTON: Are there? This is what I am asking about. What are they?
LORD BESWICK: I should have thought it was very doubtful whether the Chairman's position on the board would be very secure. I should have thought that the control which rests with the Minister over the accounts of the Post Office could be used here most effectively. I would invite the noble Lord to look at all the controls vested in the Minister. If he will do so, he will see that it would be a most peculiar—let me put it no higher than that—Chairman of the Post Office who would refuse to act according to law.
LORD NEWTON: May I say this? Of course I quite accept that I have to try to settle all these matters for myself. I have done my best. But I am entitled, and so is any noble Lord in this House to ask a Minister of the Crown responsible for the Post Office to answer these questions; and, with the greatest respect, I think I am entitled to an answer.
LORD BESWICK: I am sorry. I will endeavour to spell it out. The noble Lord seemed to think that there was sufficient latitude in Clause 11 to enable the Post Office to disobey a general direction. I am saying that in Clause 11 it is laid down—and it is mandatory—that the Post Office should obey a general direction. I am saying that in the first place. The noble Lord then went on to pursue the matter further, asking what would happen if the Chairman refused to obey what the law required. I have

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pointed out to him that the whole position of the Chairman would come under review, and I say to him that the powers of Clause 32(4) would be important, the powers of the appointment of the members of the authority would be concerned, the powers of control over capital programme and powers to call for information would also be relevant, and that in Clause 35 there is power over the control of borrowing. Really, it is quite inconceivable that with all those powers any Chairman would set himself up in defiance of the Minister of the day.
The noble Lord then went on to ask another question, that is, whether it was possible to make a direction on a matter of day-to-day management. That was a more reasonable question to put to me. The answer is, No, that it would not be possible to make a direction on a matter of day-to-day management. On the other hand, if this matter of which complaint is made went on day after day, then it would become not a question of day-to-day control, but one of more general interest; and then, of course, it would be possible for the Minister to make a direction.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord once more, but I will be brief. We are all familiar with another public Corporation, the B.B.C. Quite frequently I have asked Questions in this House about their policy, and the answer that I have always received was that the B.B.C. were an entirely autonomous organisation and that they must decide their own policy. Can the noble Lord give us some assurance that that will not he the case with regard to the Post Office?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, it is difficult for me to say in advance what reply there would be on any particular issue. The power of control contained in this Bill is rather greater than is vested in the present Postmaster General in regard to the B.B.C. That is quite clear. I was also asked by the noble Lord, Lord Newton—he was kind enough to give me notice of the question—about the talks which the Minister, in an Answer given in another place, indicated that he was having with the manufacturers about the supply of equipment to consumers. He asked whether I would clarify that statement. The purpose of these discussions is
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to explore the widening of the range of approved designs of equipment which the public can obtain direct from the manufacturers. The aim also is to wider the range of designs of apparatus which are purchased from industry by the Post Office for retailing to its customers. In both cases, the aim is to give the customer a wider range of choice of apparatus and a greater opportunity to influence the trend of design through the exercise of that choice. I am given to understand that these discussions are proceeding satisfactorily, and I am sure that the noble Lord would be in agreement with the intention of the discussions.
The noble Lord made one point about the manufacturing clauses of the Bill, which I thought indicated a slight misunderstanding. He said that that was the only consultation that the Minister would require for any kind of manufacturing. That, of course, is not quite so. In fact the Post Office cannot manufacture things to sell to outsiders in ways unconnected with the Post Office, without the permission of the Minister. In this respect the clause is quite stringent.
LORD NEWTON: Can the noble Lord tell me under which clause that is required?
LORD BESWICK: It is Clause 13. I was also asked about the matter of relay services and a letter on this subject in The Times. On this there seems to me to be a certain amount of misapprehension. I do not think that the details of this are such that I can go into them at this point. I should be happy to go into them later, but I would say that the Report to which reference is made in that letter has not yet been published and it is therefore difficult to comment upon it. My understanding is that the letter made assumptions about the contents of the Report which are not entirely justified. But that is something to which possibly we could return at a later sage of the Bill.
I was also asked about this matter of Radio Love and optical broadcasting. This circular from Radio Love, which was sent to me and, I suppose, to noble Lords opposite, argues that since optical broadcasting cannot involve interference as can broadcasting by means of wireless telegraphy it should not be liable to control by Government. This argument is

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totally ill-conceived. Successive Governments have taken the view that the social and economic implications of broadcasting, in the sense of transmission by means of wireless telegraphy, are such as to require that the right and duty to provide a service should be vested in public corporations answerable to Parliament. Therefore, the promoters of Radio Love are wrong in supposing that the policy follows from the technical need to control the allocation and use of frequencies so as to prevent, or minimise, interference. It would be perfectly possible to allocate a VHF frequency for Radio Love for use in a way which would not involve interference, but the policy pursued by successive Governments precludes this. Indeed, it may well be that later development of this system is something which the national organisation will wish to develop.
I have referred to the appointment of my noble friend Lord Hall, but I have not, I fear, added my congratulations and good wishes to those already expressed, and this I wish to do. He has taken on an immense task; he is faced with a wonderful opportunity, and I have no doubt that he feels it a tremendous privilege. No service has so consistently enjoyed over the years the same affection from the public as the Post Office. Here I refer to what was said by my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith. In the Post Office they have been absolute pioneers in the conception of participation and joint consultation. I know with what great interest I read the works published some twenty years ago, and I pay my tribute to their pioneering work in industrial democracy. I think it would be a great tragedy if all that was to go. My noble friend asked me questions about this point. As he knows, discussions are now taking place, and I think it would be wrong for me to say anything at this stage, except that I will ensure that what he has said will be studied both by my right honourable friend and by my noble friend Lord Hall.
I saw a phrase somewhere in the notes connected with this Bill about a radical change of attitude being required from the former civil servants who will now move over to this new Corporation. I only hope that the change will not be all that radical. I think that the sense of
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public service which they have had will be maintained. If we can get the right combination of public service to go with the proper exploitation of the new electronic and telecommunication devices, then this new Corporation can serve this country well; and I hope that under the Leadership of my noble friend we shall see them develop in the way we wish. My Lords, I now hope that we can give this Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

AUCTIONS (BIDDING AGREEMENTS) BILL
5.53 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I suppose that all your Lordships will agree that the operation at auctions of rings of those who are bidding there is objectionable. It does the person who is selling the items which are open to auction an injustice, in that the price that is received is probably far too low. More widely, if this happens with any degree of frequency at all it tarnishes the image of the auctioneering profession and the market which it serves, wherever that may be. I would not for one moment wish the House to suppose that because I present this Bill to amend previous legislation there is anything in it to suggest that auctioneers and other people who take part in auctions are in any way widely dishonest. It must be the rarest possible exception, and one which I have no doubt is greatly resented by the honest members of the profession and those who take part.
Nevertheless, in the years about 1925, 1926, and 1927, people were concerned about the operation of rings in the auctions of livestock, pigs, sheep, cows and so on, at agricultural markets. More recently, it has been in the picture and fine art world that an occasion has been seen where it seems highly suspicious that an auction ring may have operated. That, of course, was the case of the picture by Duccio. This is a matter that has been investigated by the right honourable gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, and he has in his hands a report which, for reasons he set out in his statement of March 18, he does not think he

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can publish. Nevertheless, having made those investigations he has advised members of another place that the legislation to which I am now hoping to persuade your Lordships to give a Second Reading, would be an improvement in the law.
The provisions of the 1927 Act were very simple. They made it an offence for a dealer—and a dealer is defined in the Act—to enter into an agreement, or give or offer any gift or consideration to any other person as an inducement or reward for abstaining from bidding at a sale by auction, and anybody who accepts the gift, or attempts to persuade another bidder to take part in such an agreement, is also guilty. The difficulty about it is that it was a summary offence, and so not only are the penalties confined—at least they arc now confined—to six months' imprisonment or a fine of £400, but there is also the general provision in the Magistrates' Courts Act which means that no prosecution can be brought more than six months after the offence.
The result of that Act of 1927 has been extremely poor, in that I believe there has been only one prosecution, and I do not even know whether that succeeded—and it was a very long time ago at that. One of the difficulties that always emerges if you are attempting to investigate a ring operating at an auction is that it may be very difficult indeed to collect any evidence. It is quite plain that the people concerned are hardly likely to go around explaining to all and sundry what they have done, and it may be very difficult for the police—and indeed for anybody investigating—to come upon anyone who is prepared to give evidence. So the time may pass by and the six months may run out.
I am not suggesting that some bulls and other agricultural animals are not of extreme value—indeed they are—but nowadays the amount of money that can be made in the sale and purchase of works of art, furniture, pictures and so on is, as your Lordships will all know, astronomical. Therefore, the penalties under the 1927 Act may not seem to be altogether consonant with the gravity of the offence. Therefore it occurred to my honourable friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe that amending legislation would be a good plan, and he introduced the Bill which I am now recommending to your Lordships.
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The provisions of the Bill are not very difficult to understand. Clause I increases the penalties which can be imposed upon those who are caught under the offence as in the 1927 Act. Of course, magistrates are still confined in the same way as they were before, because in the case of a summary prosecution that is the most that magistrates can ever impose by way of penalty In addition, there is now provision for a prosecution on indictment, and that will carry an unlimited fine and a maximum of two years' imprisonment, or both. Your Lordships may think that this is much better fitted to the sort of money which can now be made by this sort of dishonest conduct.
Furthermore, the time during which the magistrates, on a summary offence, can try a matter of this sort has been expressly extended in subsection (2) of Clause 1, so that it is five years rather than six months, subject to a certain limitation in that the Attorney General (who of course had always to sanction a prosecution under the 1927 Act) must bring the prosecution within three months after the date on which evidence, sufficient in his opinion, comes to his knowledge. The same thing applies in Scotland, except that the Lord Advocate replaces the Attorney General.
Clause 2 was put in at the Committee stage in another place as the result of an Amendment moved by my honourable friend the Member for Southend, West. With the greatest possible respect to him, however, I do not think he got is quite right, and I propose, if this Bill is given a Second Reading to-day, to ask your Lordships in Committee to consider one or two Amendments to it. It is, I think, probably a good idea. What the clause is at any rate intended to produce is a power in the court to strike off, as it were, the person convicted from going to any more auctions and participating in them for a certain length of time. The period certainly ought to be one of not more than one year, in the case of summary conviction, and not more than three years in the case of conviction on indictment, whereas the clause as it is printed says, "not less"; and that is plainly a mistake.
There is also a difficulty, as I believe the clause is at the present moment being

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read, in that it is not altogether certain how wide is the discretion of the court in exercising this sort of power. My intention, although I should be very glad of the views of other noble Lords upon this matter, is that the court should have a fairly wide discretion. For instance, as the Bill stands the court could order only the person convicted—or both persons: because there are probably two if there is an agreement—not to attend or participate in auctions. Or possibly, if the person convicted was a member of a firm, and it did not appear that, on the whole, the firm was too reputable, the whole firm might be told that they could not go to the auctions or participate in them for the prescribed period. I believe that at the moment the Bill can be read so that there is only one form of order which the court can make, and that is to prevent the person convicted and his representative from going. I think it ought to be rather more widely drawn, so as to give courts a greater discretion according to the facts of the case. Again, I hope to move an Amendment to that effect.
I would further propose that there should be a procedure whereby a person who has had an order of this sort made against him can apply to the court after a certain length of time, as one can in the case of a disqualification and a taking away of one's driving licence, to have the ban removed. Those are suggestions which I would wish to discuss later in the Committee stage, together with any others which noble Lords may make on this clause.
I believe that, although the court might not often impose an order of this sort, the possibility that it might be done if a person was convicted will add to the deterrent power of this legislation. It may well be that if the fine were substantial it would be something which the person convicted disliked very much. But I believe that he would be still more apprehensive if the danger of taking part in a ring and being found out and convicted was that he would not be able to go to any more auctions—and perhaps nobody else would be able to go on his behalf—for a given period of time. I therefore think that, with a few Amendments, Clause 2 is probably one which ought to remain in the Bill.
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Clause 3 deals with the civil matter of recovery, from the people who have been engaged in the ring, of the loss which the seller has suffered as a result of the operation of this dishonest conduct. Noble Lords may think that it will not be altogether easy for the seller to prove the agreement between the people who have operated in the ring, but I would remind the House that Section 11 of the Civil Evidence Act 1968 is, as I believe, now in force, so that if those who operated a ring had already been convicted, evidence of that conviction would now be admissible in the civil courts. Therefore, there is a slight improvement in the possibility that the person who has been cheated in this way will be able to obtain redress under Clause 3.
Although the sale must take place after the coming into force of this Act, that power will apply even if the agreement had been made before the commencement of the Act. So that if there is a standing arrangement, or something of that nature, whereby somebody is cheated, he can then go back and use that power as a method of recovering from those who have been dishonest in this way the money lost through the operation of the ring. That clause really supersedes Section 2 of the 1927 Act, which gave a somewhat similar power but on a rather more limited scale. There is nothing new in Clause 4, because that only repeats the requirement that a copy of this Bill, together with one of the 1927 Act, should be displayed at auctions. Clause 5 says only that the Act will come into force one month after it is finally passed.
My Lords this Bill is a very simple extension to the existing law on the subject, but an extension which one hopes would put rather more teeth into this matter and enable the police to take action, and effective action. Subject to the Amendments to which I have referred—and I have not mentioned all of those which may be necessary to Clause 2, although I think I have mentioned the most important—the Bill has the extra teeth of the possibility of actually taking away the right of a dishonest person, a dishonest bidder or auctioneer, to go to auctions for a given period of time. With that explanation, I hope that the House will feel that this is an acceptable measure,

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and will therefore be prepared to give it a Second Reading. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)
6.7 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sure the House is grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for introducing this Bill. It had all-Party support in the other place and, as he said, it also has the support of the Department concerned. I agree with almost everything that the noble Viscount said; in particular, that the 1927 Act needs revision. As he pointed out, the penalties under it really bear no relation to what is required, and hardly act as a deterrent today, in view of the enormous sums involved. I agree also with the noble Viscount that it is necessary to make these offences indictable, if required, and for there to be no limit on the amount of the fine.
But, as he said, these offences will be very difficult to prove, and in fact there has been only one prosecution since the 1927 Act came into force. The noble Viscount asked when that was. I believe that it was in 1928, when I suppose it was fresh in everybody's memory, and there has not been one since. But I agree that, in spite of the difficulties, this Bill is necessary and I hope that when it becomes law it will serve as a deterrent.
Of course, rings are not at all a modern problem. I believe that they were operating in ancient Greece. They were certainly common in France in the 18th century, and I have no doubt that they will operate again from time to time in the future. But one hopes that this Bill will have the effect that, if the rings do operate, they will operate far less effectively; and indeed will be, as Sir Basil Blackwell has said, "like tarts driven off the streets".
The noble Viscount mentioned the Duccio case. I do not know whether this Bill would have caught that case at all. Here was a picture which was put up at a country auction at Ardwick Court in March, 1968. Of course, we do not know the full facts, because the Board of Trade has not published them. What we do know is that it was catalogued incorrectly as Siennese School, 15th century—. "Sienese" being spelt with two "n's"—
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instead of a Trecento painting, which was attributed even at that time to Duccio. In actual fact, in the auction it fetched £2,700. A City art gallery was the underbidder, but did not feel it could afford to go to any more, or did not wish to go to any more. At the knock-out it is suspected that it fetched only £7,000, so that might well have been the amount that it could have fetched at the public auction. There may, of course, have been a second knock-out in London later among the "big boys", but I do not know.
Of course, the National Gallery, who did not appear to be aware that the painting was being sold at all, although their provincial colleagues knew about it, had to pay £150,000. I think it was probably cheap at the price. It is a beautiful little painting. It has a tremendous quality and power, and is a very worthy addition to the other Duccios in our national collection. I think the point should also be made that if it had been put up for auction in London at one of the big houses, with the full panapoly of publicity and probably correctly catalogued, it would have fetched far more and would have cost the nation more when the nation decided, rightly, to keep it in the country after the purchase price had been offered by the Cleveland Art Gallery.
I think these rings operate mainly at the smaller auctions. In London, at any rate, I think there is very little evidence of them. There is a wide dissemination of catalogues; there are private people taking part; there is expert advice and publicity, and there is a keen public interest. It is at the smaller auctions in London and elsewhere that it is necessary for the vendors to be on the alert. But here again, my Lords, the law cannot stop people from acting foolishly or being swindled. What it can do, and what this Bill attempts to do, is to punish the guilty and to give restitution to the innocent when malpractices come to light.
The Bill also only really protects the vendor at auction sales, as is made clear in the preamble. It does nothing to protect the buyer from various abuses. As was said rightly by The Times on July 29, 1967:
"Almost no other type of sale is so open to deceitful and fraudulent practices as the auction".

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The Bill does nothing about "puffers", who are used to inflate prices. It does nothing about "trotting" or "taking the bids from the ceiling" by a dishonest auctioneer. It does nothing about illicit commission agreements between an agent, perhaps acting for an overseas buyer, and his accomplice, not to keep the prices low, as a ring does, but to inflate the price to the full limit of the commission so that he can get the largest amount of commission possible. The Bill does nothing about these things, but I agree that it does protect the vendor to a certain extent.
On the other hand, my Lords, I have certain reservations about some of the clauses, and I welcome the invitation of the noble Viscount to try to improve these in Committee; and I note that he himself will be putting forward some Amendments. I am not really happy about the word "dealer". According to Clause 3(5), this has the meaning assigned to it by the 1927 Act, but does this cover the modern type of part-time dealer who does not necessarily intend to re-sell the goods when he has purchased them but may decide to do so at a later date, possibly some years later? The meaning of the word "dealer" I think is particularly important, because under Clause 3(1) the seller is able to avoid the contract only if one of the parties to the agreement to abstain from bidding is a dealer.
There is also the question of the exclusion provision in Clause 2. Here, I wonder whether it is right to exclude the convicted person's representative for long periods from all auctions. The representative might be only an employee; he might be a member of the family who was himself quite innocent. His living could be in jeopardy. He might want to attend sales privately. For example, he might earn his living in the furniture trade but he might privately be a stamp collector, and he might like to go to stamp auctions. But under the Bill as it stands at present he will be excluded, possibly up to three years, from every type of auction sale. I suggest, therefore, that the Bill really needs a definition of "representative" at the end of Clause 3 following the definition of "dealer". But these are probably points that we can go into in more detail in Committee.
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We in this country have two of the finest auction houses in the world. I know that the Bill will be welcomed by them and by the great majority of reputable auctioneers throughout the country—and I fully endorse the tribute which the noble Viscount paid to them. It will also be welcomed by the British Antique Dealers' Association, which forbids its members to take part in rings; and by all honest dealers—the vast majority—in the fine art trade. It will be welcomed also, not least, by those members of the public who, in an ever-increasing number, care for beautiful things and are rightly indignant at the malpractices and rackets which have been going on. I warmly support the principles of this Bill, and I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading.
6.15 p.m.
TI1E EARL OF MAR: My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, in the fact that these rings are to be found at every country auction, and that they work to a large degree there.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but I did not say "every country auction". I said that they were more likely to occur at the smaller auctions—no more than that.
THE EARL OF MAR: I thank the noble Lord. They do. I have seen them working. But I think the main thing is for auctioneers to know their article; and if they have advised their customers as to what possible price they can expect to get for it, or even find out if they do not know, I think that will go a very long way towards stopping these rings. I wonder whether something on those lines could be incorporated in the Bill.
6.16 p.m.
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, it may be useful if I say a few words about the Government's attitude to this Bill. As your Lordships will see—and as, indeed, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, has outlined—the Bill has three main purposes. The first is to extend the time within which summary proceedings may be commenced for offences against the Act of 1927. The second is to enable more serious offences against that Act to be prosecuted on indictment, without time

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limit and with appropriately higher penalties. The third is to break the link which the present Act imposes between the special right of redress in the civil courts which it gives to a seller whose interests have suffered from the operation of an auction ring and a successful prosecution of the person he seeks to sue; and at the same time somewhat to improve the aggrieved seller's rights.
My Lords, these are modest but very useful improvements of the law on auction rings. We are bound to recognise—and this has been emphasised—that there is always likely to be difficulty in obtaining adequate evidence of the operation of an auction ring. That stems from the very nature of this kind of malpractice. But at least we can, as the Bill proposes, remove the additional difficulty of having to act to get the evidence in double-quick time; provide penalties more appropriately related to the prices which some classes of goods now fetch at auction, and set the seller who is willing and able to present a case in the civil courts free to do so. With one reservation, therefore, we welcome this Bill and I hope that your Lordships will find it acceptable.
My own reservation—and it seems also that of Lord Strabolgi and, to some degree, of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross—concerns Clause 2. This would introduce a new kind of penalty. I think it is evident from what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, recognised in introducing the Bill and from the subsequent speech of my noble friend Lord Strabolgi, that a number of Amendments will be needed in Committee before this clause is really fit for proper consideration by the House. Even then, I believe your Lordships will want to think very carefully about the implications and likely effectiveness of this proposed new penalty before deciding to endorse it, notwithstanding the merit which its sponsors in another place obviously attributed to this provision. However, that point can be considered at a later stage. For the moment, let me conclude by saving that we very much hope that the House will this evening give a Second Reading to this Bill.
6.21 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome
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that the Bill has received from the three speakers. May I just mention very briefly the points that have been raised? The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, said that a new kind of penalty was set out in Clause 2. I do not think that this is so. There are all sorts of provisions in the law whereby people who commit certain kinds of offences are prevented from operating in that field for a certain length of time. The classic case is that of the person who has his driving licence taken away. Also there are internal rules about jockeys, who are not allowed to race for a certain period if they have broken the rules of the Jockey Club. There are various other circumstances of that sort: doctors or solicitors who could be struck off for malpractice. I do not see that there is anything novel in principle, so long as the drafting is right. I agree with the noble Baroness that a great deal of work must be done on the drafting. I hope that your Lordships, nevertheless, will consider this matter and will take part in the Committee stage, to make sure that we get it right.
The noble Earl, Lord Mar, suggested that we might put something in the Bill about reserve prices. I do not think that there is any necessity for legislation about reserve prices. That goes on now. It is a wise thing, I believe, if you are selling by auction, to get the advice of the auctioneer, who will, if he is petent, tell you what is the right reserve. I do not think that there is a necessity to pass legislation on the matter to improve the situation which already exists. I agree with the noble Earl that it is often a wise thing to get the advice of the auctioneer; and if this debate does anything to spread that particular course of action then no doubt he has served a useful purpose in raising the matter.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, dealt with rather more complicated subjects. I do not think there is any need for a definition of "representative". Either the person is a representative of the person convicted or he is not. It is not very difficult to discover; there is no technicality involved. He is either there on behalf of the person convicted or he is not and he is there on his own account. If you can prove a link between them I should have thought that that was enough. But there are points on defences for representatives which I have in

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mind to put down as Amendments. When he sees them, perhaps the noble Lord will be satisfied.
He mentioned the question of the confinement of the provisions of Clause 3 to those who have been defrauded in this way by dealers. It would be something that one would have to consider very carefully, if one were to extend the scope of this legislation beyond dealers. A dealer is defined in Section 1(2) of the 1927 Act as
"…a person who in the normal course of his business attends sales by auction for the purpose of purchasing goods with a view to reselling them."
That is very much what the noble Lord said. If you start introducing the idea of recourse against people who are not dealers, you are going to get into a much wider field than has ever previously been taken in relation to auctions. You would also be introducing a civil remedy which is wider than the criminal proceedings can go. The criminal proceedings relate to dealers. I do not think that the civil proceedings ought to go any wider than that. Indeed, one of the points that I made was the difficulty of finding evidence for civil proceedings. It would not be available if a person not covered by the criminal clauses of the Bill and the 1927 Act was not the person convicted. There is enormous difficulty here. On this matter I think it would be right to leave the Bill as it is.
I do not know the facts about the Duccio case. If what the noble Lord says is what happened, then I am glad to accept his statement. We are all hampered. I do not think that anybody knows the facts about it except the Board of Trade. A great deal of the discussion in another pace on this Bill was concerned with the question of whether or not the report should be published. The decision has now been taken by the Government—I can understand the reasons for it—that it should not. We shall not know until the papers eventually come out of secrecy in, I think, 15 years' time, whether or not there would have been
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any opportunity to prosecute. The indications given by the right honourable gentleman the President of the Board of Trade were that it would not have been possible. That does not matter; the point is the principle. I use it merely as an illustration of the sort of thing that may or may not have happened. The problem is rings, wherever they operate.
I am glad to know that the House, on the whole, agrees that this is a requisite piece of legislation to deal with them. It certainly is not an attempt to draft for the Greek or the French Parliaments. I have no doubt that I should find it an interesting exercise to attempt to draft this Bill in ancient Greek; although I doubt that it would be a very progressive task. I am sorry to see that my noble friend Lord Denham is not here, being the expert on mock auctions that he is, to revel in the "puffing", the "trotting", the "bids from the ceiling" and the "commission agreements". He had, in fact, a finer range in technical terminology even than that when he was dealing, with mock auctions. I do not think I would put those into the Bill. If the noble Lord, Lord Strabolai, can find a proper method of expressing them in Parliamentary language, then his Amendments would form the basis of a fascinating discussion. I look forward greatly to seeing them on the Marshalled List in due course. Having thanked noble Lords and the noble Baroness for the welcome that they have given to this Bill, I hope that it will now be given a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to, with Amendments.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past six o'clock.