Sitting of 3 April 1951

Preamble
The House—after the Adjournment on 22nd March, 1951, for the Easter Recess—met at Half-past Two o'Clock.
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Mr. SPEAKER'S RETURN
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Ede): May I be allowed to express to you, Mr. Speaker, the pleasure of hon. and right hon. Members at seeing you again in your accustomed place? [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] We congratulate you on your restoration to health, which we trust may soon be complete.
Mr. Eden: Perhaps I might be allowed to associate myself wholeheartedly with the phrases which the Leader of the House has so happily expressed.
Mr. Clement Davies: May I say, Sir, how glad we all are to see you back? May I add the desire of all of us that you should take greater care of your health, although we realise how ready we are to tender good advice and how reluctant we are to accept it ourselves?
Mr. Speaker: Though I gather that this is out of order, I should like to say "Thank you" to the right hon. Gentle-
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men and to all hon. Members of the House for welcoming me back. I was sorry to have to go away. To tell the honest truth, I felt just like a deserter when a battle was on, but my doctors were rather hard-hearted; they would not let me remain. I have to tell the House quite frankly that I am not, for the moment, supposed to sit up very late—[Laughter.]—and, therefore, I hope that the House will forgive me if I have to transfer my powers to my Deputy occupying the Chair.

NEW WRIT
For Harrow, West, in the room of Norman Adolph Henry Bower, esquire (Manor of Northstead).—[Mr. BuchanHepburn.]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  ABINGDON CORPORATION BILL
  As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.
CITY OF LONDON (CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT) BILL [Lords]
  LLOYD'S BILL [Lords]
    OXFORD MOTOR SERVICES BILL [Lords]
    Read a Second time and committed.
    FALKIRK BURGH EXTENSION, &C., ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
    Considered; to be read the Third time Tomorrow.
    FALKIRK BURGH EXTENSION, &C., ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
      PETITION

        PROPOSED AIRFIELD, NEWBURY
        Mr. Hurd: I desire to present a humble Petition from the residents in the Borough and district of Newbury in the county of Berks. It bears 10,330 signatures.
        The Petition states that the Air Ministry seek to construct a permanent airfield on Greenham and Crookham Commons at a distance of 1½ miles from the centre of the town of Newbury; that this proposal would entail for the local people the loss for ever of ancient common land and liberties which are essential parts of that peaceful way of life which the defence programme is designed to protect; and that the petitioners are far from satisfied that there is no adequate alternative site for the proposed airfield.
        The Petition concludes with the prayer:
        "Wherefore your Petitioners pray that the proposal for a permanent airfield on Greenham and Crookham Commons, Newbury, be abandoned. And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  MINISTRY OF WORKS

    Buildings (Repair Works)
    Mr. Derek Walker-Smithasked the Minister of Works what are the tests used by the officers of his Department to distinguish between licensable and non-licensable works in the interior of buildings for the purposes of Defence Regulation 56A.
    The Minister of Works (Mr. Stokes): In the vast majority of cases the licensable work is clearly distinguishable, but where any doubt arises my officers can obtain legal advice.
    Mr. Walker-Smith: Is not it the fact that the test they seek to apply is the distinction between landlord's fixtures and tenant's fixtures? Is not that a difficult test indeed to apply, and does not it give rise to a good deal of hardship in individual cases?
    Mr. Stokes: I agree that any test is difficult to apply, and ultimately of course these matters have to be decided by the courts. My officers have instructions, but they are subject to legal interpretation after that.

    Building Contracts (Government Departments)
    Mr. Walker-Smithasked the Minister of Works how far there is uniformity in respect of the form of building contract used in connection with work for the various Government Departments.
    Mr. Stokes: All the principal Government Departments placing building contracts use the standard General Conditions of Government contracts for Building Works (Forms CCC/Wks/1 or 2).
    Mr. Walker-Smith: Is it possible in any cases, if it is so desired by the contractor, for the standard form issued by the Royal Institute of British Architects to be used in this type of work?
    Mr. Stokes: No. We could not adopt that without considerable alteration.

    Statue, Whitehall
    Mr. Beverley Baxterasked the Minister of Works if he will consider removing the statue of the Duke of Cambridge in Whitehall and replacing it with a statue in memory of Alcock and Brown as the first men to fly the North Atlantic.
    Mr. Stokes: I do not think that Whitehall would be suitable for a memorial to Alcock and Brown. The Duke was for nearly 40 years Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, and I think that his statue is well placed between the War Office and the Horse Guards.
    Mr. Baxter: Will not the Minister agree that, imposing as is that record of the Duke, nevertheless the statue is too bulky for present-day traffic? Will not he also realise that a statue of a smaller size of Alcock and Brown would be inspiring to our own people and enlightening to the Americans?
    Mr. Stokes: I should like to see a statue of Alcock and Brown somewhere. As to the bulk of the statue of the Duke, I will go and have another look.
    Air Commodore Harvey: Does not the Minister realise that it is generally thought that an American was the first to fly the Atlantic? Does not he think we ought to pay a tribute to these great British pioneers, and cannot something be done about it?
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, certainly, but that is quite another question.

    No. 2 Park Street
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Minister of Works where his consultations with the catering trade on the subject of 2, Park Street, W.1, took place; who were the representatives of that trade for this purpose; and what was the result of these consultations.
    Mr. Stokes: There was no formal consultation. In answering the hon. Member's supplementary question on 23rd January I had in mind the informal notification of my intentions that I had conveyed to the British Hotels and Restaurants Association on 7th November and 15th January last.

    Government Buildings (Capital Expenditure)
    Mr. Shepherdasked the Minister of Works the capital value of the buildings erected for Government occupation under the building lessor scheme; and the amount allowed as capital expenditure in respect of these buildings in the Economic Surveys.
    Mr. Stokes: Capital expenditure on building by the lessors is estimated at about £13 million. Approximately £7 million of this was included in the figures for Government building published in Economic Surveys to the end of 1950, and most of the balance, which is for buildings already in course of erection, will be included in the figure for Government building in 1951.

    Traffic Ramp, Carlton House Terrace
    Mr. Hollisasked the Minister of Works whether a decision has yet been taken whether the proposed traffic ramp to the basement of Carlton House Terrace shall run from Waterloo Place or from Cockspur Street.
    Mr. Stokes: No, Sir.
    Mr. Hollis: Does that mean that the right hon. Gentleman has not got the matter under consideration at all? Is not he aware that there is very serious reason to think that inconvenience may be caused by the present site? People dining at the Athenæum may easily fall into the ramp.
    Mr. Stokes: The matter is not absolutely settled. A preliminary sketch plan
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    was approved by the Westminster City Council. The Royal Fine Art Commission wanted the entrance through Cockspur Street, but they forgot there was a Nash sewer in the way.
    Mr. Messer: Is this the only ramp the Minister is dealing with?

    Building Licences (Estate Roads)
    Mr. Gerald Williamsasked the Minister of Works why licences for work on the maintenance, repair and re-surfacing of estate roads and paths are now to be included in the allocation allowed for building licences.
    Mr. Stokes: There is no separate provision made in the investment programme for estate roads and paths and they are therefore included in the miscellaneous category, for which a general allocation is made. Within that allocation, the local authorities and my licensing officers license as much as they can of the more important work.
    Mr. Williams: Is not the Minister aware that this is a new departure and that much essential maintenance work is being held up, and thereby firms specialising in that type of work are seriously hit?
    Mr. Stokes: I can assure the hon. Member that I am as anxious as anyone about maintenance work, but it has to be put somewhere and it is put into the miscellaneous field of capital investment.
    Mr. Williams: It is cutting certain firms out altogether.
    Mr. Vane: Even if these roads have a direct benefit to a particular farm, do they still go into this miscellaneous category?
    Mr. Stokes: I could not answer that question without notice.

  FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN

    Lion and Unicorn Figures (Loan Offer)
    Wing Commander Bullusasked the Minister of Works what use he proposes to make of the Lion and Unicorn statues taken from Westminster Hall: and if they can be used on the South Bank Festival of Britain site.
    Mr. Stokes: The plaster figures of the Lion and the Unicorn have been offered on loan to the Festival authorities, but they are unable to make use of them. I have no other suggestion for their use at present.
    Wing Commander Bullus: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what he is going to do with them, and will he give an assurance that they will not be destroyed?
    Mr. Stokes: They are being carefully stored against the eventuality of any occasion when their appearance would be suitable.
    Mr. Cocks: Could they be used to adorn respectively the offices of the Government and Opposition Whips?
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Has the Minister thought of Madame Tussaud's?

    Pleasure Gardens
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Works if an early decision will be made for the continuation of the Festival Gardens, Battersea, in 1952, to ensure that there will be a profit to the taxpayers.
    Mr. Stokes: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his interest in the profit-making possibilities of the Festival Pleasure Gardens in Battersea Park, but a decision to keep them open in 1952 can hardly be made in advance of public opinion showing itself in favour of such a course, and of ascertaining the views of local authorities concerned, and of the people normally using the park.
    Mr. Dodds: May I ask whether the Minister is in sympathy with the suggestion as being in the best interests of the taxpayers?
    Mr. Stokes: The more I look into the matter, the more I am in sympathy with keeping the Gardens open.
    Captain Crookshank: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that they will, in fact, be open in 1951?
    Mr. Stokes: If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will wait, I am going to make a statement about it.
    Mr. Henry Strauss: Does the Minister recall that the Festival of Britain (Supplementary Provisions) Act was passed by this House on the express
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    assurance given by the Minister of Transport and the then Leader of the House that this area of the park would be taken for six months only, after which there would be reinstatement, and that this period was laid down in the Act? Can he give an assurance to the House that His Majesty's Government have no intention whatever of breaking faith with the local authorities and abandoning that assurance?
    Mr. Stokes: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs made a statement about this the other day. The position is as the hon. and learned Gentleman has stated; and unless public opinion and the House say otherwise, the course to be followed will be as laid down in the Act.
    Brigadier Medlicottasked the Minister of Works if he is now in a position to make a statement as to the progress of the investigation into the financial and administrative arrangements of Festival Gardens, Limited; in particular, as to who is conducting the investigation; and what measures of an urgent character are being taken to prevent still further increases of expenditure beyond the original estimates while the investigation is proceeding.
    Mr. Stokes: With the permission of Mr. Speaker and that of the House, I propose to answer this at the end of Questions.
    Later—
    Mr. Stokes: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and with the leave of the House, I should like to take the earliest opportunity of telling the House of the action which has already been taken regarding the Festival Pleasure Gardens, and in doing so to cover the points raised in Question No. 16.
    The Board of Festival Gardens, Limited, has at my request invited a leading firm of chartered accountants nominated by me, to investigate and to submit a report upon the circumstances which had caused the financial commitments of the company to be greatly in excess of the amount which was estimated would be sufficient in December last. Meanwhile many of the facts are not clear and until I receive this report, which I am expecting next week, hon. Members will appreciate that it will be inadvisable for

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    me to say anything which might prejudice its findings. I have, however, several times personally visited the site as well as the offices of Festival Gardens, Limited. I have seen all those principally concerned, and have taken such steps as seem to me advisable.
    The House will, I am sure, agree with me that when something appears to be wrong with the control of expenditure of public money it is right that changes in the top direction should be made. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That was a bit of bad timing! Sir Henry French, the present Chairman of Festival Gardens, Limited, who shares this view on the matter of principle, has tendered his resignation from the Board, which I have accepted. I wish to recognise the unpaid service which Sir Henry has rendered in working out the scheme for the Gardens and in putting it into execution so quickly in spite of so many difficulties.
    The Board have also, at my request, strengthened their managerial arrangements by inviting Major H. D. Joseph to become Managing Director, with full executive powers. This invitation has been accepted and the appointment will be confirmed at the Board meeting on Thursday. Major Joseph is a man of the highest standing and experience in the successful provision of outdoor entertainment, and the company are fortunate in having secured his whole-time services unpaid for the 1951 season.
    I have felt that the successful management of the Gardens and the control of finance with, I hope, the consequent recoupment of as much as possible of the expenditure is now the paramount objective. I am consulting with the board with a view to finding a new Chairman of the appropriate qualifications and will make a further statement on this as soon as possible.
    This is all I am in a position to say at the moment.
    Brigadier Medlicott: Is the Minister aware that what has happened in this case is an illustration of the effect which follows from the example of extravagance and profligacy set by the Government, and that the House is entitled to know why these measures which are now being announced were not taken very much earlier? May I also ask whether we shall be given the opportunity of seeing the report of the accountants?
    Mr. Stokes: It would be quite improper for me to express an opinion on how this has all happened. When I see the report, consideration will be given to the question whether it should or should not be published.
    Mr. Eden: I think we would all be ready to await this report. There is one point, however, which must be in the minds of many hon. Members. This, of course, was a Government-sponsored organisation, and it seems strange that accountants have to be called in now. Have not accountants been in constant touch, watching over these matters, while they were going on under an earlier administration?
    Mr. Stokes: I thought it desirable to have an independent accountant's report. Accounts, of course, have been kept. [Laughter.] I am treating this with all seriousness. I think if hon. Members opposite will study my statement, they will agree that the steps I have taken are all that could have been taken in the time. As soon as I have this report, I will consider what next to do. The report will be prepared by an entirely independent accountant.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that until the inquiry has been concluded no advances will be made to this company from the Civil Contingencies Fund?
    Mr. Stokes: No, I cannot do that. The job has got to go on. As was indicated at Question Time today, we are anxious that the job should be completed in time for the proper opening date, and I could not possibly give that assurance.
    Mr. Duncan Sandys: As the Board was to a large extent nominated by the Government, and includes serving civil servants, can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the Government accept their full share of responsibility for what has happened?
    Mr. Stokes: I think we had better wait for the report before commenting on these things. When this report does come out, it will be quite clear what has happened, and I should think it would be fairer not to anticipate it.
    Mr. Eden: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is right, but he will remember, and the House will remember, that we

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    were assured that legislation would be required for the expenditure of this money. We should like to be assured that the publication of the report will not hold up the legislation.
    Mr. Stokes: Certainly not. I hope the Bill will be introduced very shortly.
    Mr. Hamilton: Do the Government accept the principle of the publication of accounts of all public bodies, and if so, will my right hon. Friend ask the Opposition to follow the example and publish their accounts?
    Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: Who authorised the use of the Civil Contingencies Fund to make payments which are not in accordance with the policy laid down by Parliament? Surely, it is an accepted principle that the Civil Contingencies Fund is used only to implement commitments that have been undertaken in consequence of policies which have been approved by Parliament when those commitments have proved to be bigger than was anticipated. But as in this case it was not in consequence of policy laid down by Parliament, who authorised the use of the Fund for that purpose?
    Mr. Stokes: That is a little bit before my day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer authorised the payment, but not before the announcement to this House that the Bill would be laid.
    Mr. Nigel Fisher: Why is it that this praiseworthy and selfless example of Sir Henry French in resigning in the case of failure has not been followed in the past by Ministers of the Crown?
    Sir Waldron Smithers: Will the Minister give the name of the firm of accountants?
    Hon. Members: Answer.

    Opening Ceremonies (Workers)
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Works what provision is being made to ensure that the workers engaged in the various Festival of Britain features will be adequately and prominently represented at the opening ceremonies.
    Mr. Stokes: Fifty representatives of the workers engaged in the preparation of the Festival of Britain Exhibitions are being invited to the Service of Dedication
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    at St. Paul's Cathedral on 3rd May and are being allotted seats which are well placed; and a larger number are being invited to the South Bank Exhibition on the occasion of the first visit of Their Majesties on 4th May.
    Mr. Dodds: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this news will be welcomed, and that although there are some unruly elements, the majority of the men have a very big interest in this Exhibition being completed?
    Mr. Stokes: I am sure that that is the case.
    Mr. Osborne: Has the Minister seen the announcement in "The Times" today that the date may have to be postponed, because the Exhibition will not be ready, and can he make a statement about it?
    Mr. Stokes: I have already said that I am making a statement about that.

    Sailplane Exhibit
    Mr. Turtonasked the Minister of Works why the Eon Olympia, a sailplane of German design, is to be exhibited in the Transport and Communications Pavilion at the Festival of Britain; and whether he will confine the exhibition to products of British design and manufacture.
    Mr. Stokes: The hon. Member has been misinformed. The design of the Eon Olympia sailplane to be exhibited at the South Bank Exhibition is based on a German design, but is the product of development and modification in this country so extensive as to justify its inclusion as a British exhibit.
    Mr. Turton: Arising out of that, is the Minister aware that this German plane was to have been in the German exhibits for the 1940 Olympic Games, and would not it be much better to confine the exhibit to sailplanes such as the Slingsby Sky sailplane, which would bring great credit to British designers and manufacturers?
    Mr. Stokes: That may be, but the Council of Industrial Design recommended that this should be included. There are always marginal cases, and it is absolutely impossible to guarantee that everything is 100 per cent. British from its conception.

    South Bank Exhibition (Expenditure)
    Commander Nobleasked the Minister of Works how much has so far been spent on the South Bank site of the Festival of Britain; what further expenditure is expected; how these figures compare with the original estimates; and how they will affect the final profit and loss account.
    Mr. Stokes: About £2,500,000 has so far been spent on the South Bank Exhibition. The further expenditure on the South Bank Exhibition is estimated at under £4 million, much of which is already committed. The original estimate for the South Bank Exhibition given more than two years ago was about £6 million, but a general contingency was also provided from which part of the estimated increased expenditure will be met. As a result of other adjustments, it is anticipated that the profit and loss account of the Festival as a whole will not be affected. It is, however, not possible to be definite on this point since revenue depends largely on attendances, sales of publications, etc.
    Mr. Bossom: Can the Minister state whether that figure includes the removal of all these things after it is over?
    Mr. Stokes: My impression is, yes; but I should like to make sure.
    Mr. Duncan Sandys: Does the Minister's statement mean that he is, so far as he can foresee, confirming the estimate of £6 million for the South Bank Exhibition?
    Mr. Stokes: If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the Question and Answer again he will see that it does not quite work out at that. Some things will cost more and some will cost less, but the overall figure will be inside the estimated total.

    Members' Visits
    Mr. Michael Footasked the Minister of Works whether he has any further statement to make about visits by Members of Parliament to the South Bank and Festival Gardens sites.
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, Sir. As I told the House in reply to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Woodside (Mr. Bennett), on 15th March, no ban has been or will be put on visits by Members of Parliament to the site of the South Bank Exhibition but because of the vital importance of avoiding as much as possible any interruption
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    to this last stage of preparation for the opening day, I feel that even visits by Members of Parliament should be limited somewhat and I must, therefore, ask that such visits shall be confined to Tuesdays, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., both to the South Bank and to Festival Gardens.
    I would remind hon. Members that if they want to visit the site they should make an appointment beforehand with the Director General of the Festival for the South Bank or with the Secretary of Festival Gardens, Limited, for the Gardens.

  EMPLOYMENT

    New Factories
    Major Guy Lloydasked the Minister of Labour under what circumstances his regulations require an application by a concern wanting to build a new factory to meet orders for defence equipment to be referred to his Department; and what action he takes.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Frederick Lee): There are no such regulations. My Department is consulted as necessary, however, on the labour aspects of proposals to build new factories or extensions.

    Demolition Work, Liverpool (Accidents)
    Mr. J. R. Bevinsasked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been drawn to the five recent fatal accidents arising out of demolition work in the main shopping area of Liverpool; and what steps have been taken by the factory inspectorate to ensure compliance with the Building (Safety, Health and Welfare) Regulations, 1948.
    Mr. Lee: Four fatalities caused by accidents during the course of demolition work in Liverpool have recently been reported to me. The firm of contractors responsible for the first of these accidents involving two deaths was prosecuted and fined £100 on 29th March. Proceedings are contemplated in respect of the second accident which, like the first, involved two fatalities.
    Mr. Bevins: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that since this Question was put down there has been a further serious

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    accident on one of these sites? Will he take steps to tighten up the enforcement of the building regulations in crowded city districts?
    Mr. Lee: I am aware that there has been another accident since the hon. Gentleman put down the Question. I note that in his Question he mentions five fatalities: actually, there have been four. If he has any further information on that aspect, I should be very pleased to have it.
    Mrs. Braddock: Can my hon. Friend tell me when this site moved out of the Exchange Division of Liverpool into the Toxteth Division of Liverpool?
    Mr. Lee: Not without notice.

    Trade Disputes
    Sir John Mellorasked the Minister of Labour what trade disputes have been reported to him in connection with the Festival of Britain preparations during the past six months; how many men were involved; and for how many days.
    Mr. Lee: During the six months ended March, 1951, four stoppages of work arising from industrial disputes at the Lambeth or Battersea Festival of Britain sites have been reported to my Department, and a fifth stoppage was reported in connection with Festival of Britain work at the Science Museum, Kensington. The aggregate number of workers involved in these five stoppages was about 1,450 and the aggregate time lost was about 3,500 working days.

  RETAIL PRICES INDEX
  Mr. Russellasked the Minister of Labour if the Cost of Living Advisory Committee has now reached a decision on the revision of the interim index of retail prices.
  Mr. Lee: The Cost of Living Advisory Committee has not yet made any recommendations. The Committee has a heavy programme of work and will no doubt report to me as soon as it is able to do so.
  Mr. Osborne: Can the hon. Gentleman say how many times the Committee has met since it was reconstructed in January?
  Mr. Lee: Yes, Sir. The Committee met on 7th February, 1st March, and 15th March, and it will meet again on 13th April.
  Mr. Osborne: When will it report?
  Mr. Russell: Can the hon. Gentleman say what he means by the words "a heavy programme of work?" Is it a terrifically heavy programme to consider what items should come into the index?
  Mr. Lee: From their terms of reference it is obvious that many decisions must be taken which should not be taken lightly.
  Mr. Digbyasked the Minister of Labour what is the percentage increase in the price of clothing, fuel and light and household durable goods respectively, between August, 1945, and February, 1951.
  Mr. Lee: On the basis of the information collected for the purpose of the interim index of retail prices, which commenced in June, 1947, the average percentage increases between that date and February, 1951, in the retail prices of clothing, fuel and light and household durable goods were 28, 26 and 24, respectively. Using such information as is available regarding the price changes for these groups of items before June, 1947, it is estimated that over the whole period from August, 1945, to February, 1951, the percentage increases were about 31 for clothing, about 25 for fuel and light, and about 29 for household durable goods.
  Captain Duncan: Are these figures the wholesale or retail prices?
  Mr. Lee: They are from the retail index.

  SCOTTISH NATIONAL CONGRESS (RESOLUTION)
  Major Lloydasked the Lord Advocate if he has considered the legal aspects involved in the resolution passed at the conference of the Scottish National Congress in Glasgow on 17th March, to which his attention has been called; and whether he now proposes to take action in order to prevent this conspiracy and direct incitement to sedition among His Majesty's subjects in Scotland from being carried into effect.
  The Lord Advocate (Mr. John Wheatley): I have considered the resolution referred to by the hon. and gallant Member. I do not propose to take any action on the resolution, but should any developments follow thereon which involve a breach of the criminal law, appropriate steps will be taken to deal with the matter.
  Major Lloyd: As the right hon. and learned Gentleman is obviously reluctant to take any further action—it may be rightly so—will he consider suggesting to the Scottish Nationalists that they should strike silver medals which in future would be given to those who break the law in Scotland?
  The Lord Advocate: The hon. and gallant Gentleman will have to distinguish between revolutionary bodies and "resolutionary" bodies.

  WAR PENSIONS AND ALLOWANCES
  Sir Ian Fraserasked the Minister of Pensions if he now has any statement to make as to the Government's review of war pensions and allowances.
  The Minister of Pensions (Mr. Isaacs): No, Sir, I am not yet in a position to make a statement.
  Sir I. Fraser: Will the right hon. Gentleman use all his powers of persuasion with the Cabinet and the Chancellor of the Exchequer so that proper provision may be made in the Budget to meet the needs of these men?
  Mr. Isaacs: I cannot make any guess about the Budget, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am using my powers of persuasion.

  BRITISH ARMY

    Arrested Soldier (Letter to M.P.)
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Secretary of State for War why a letter sent on 20th December, 1950, to the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames by a constituent held in close arrest at B Camp Guardroom, Royal Engineers Depot, Barton Stacey, was not forwarded until on or about 28th January, 1951.
    The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Strachey): I have made inquiries but have been unable to find any evidence that the military authorities were responsible for the alleged delay in forwarding this letter.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how, when a man is in close arrest, anybody else could be responsible for a delay in his correspondence?
    Mr. Strachey: As the hon. Member, quite naturally, had not kept the envelope, we were not able to make any conclusive investigation in the matter. The man himself cannot remember to whom he handed the letter at the time, so it is difficult to come to any conclusion.

    Private Fargie (Court-Martial Proceedings)
    Mr. Bellengerasked the Secretary of State for War whether he will place in the Library of the House a copy of the court-martial proceedings concerning Driver Fargie.
    Mr. C. S. Taylorasked the Secretary of State for War whether he will now make a statement about the case of Private Fargie.
    Mr. Strachey: A copy of the proceedings of the court-martial in this case has now arrived in this country. As soon as I have had an opportunity to examine it, I will have a copy placed in the Library of the House and I will consider making a statement.
    Mr. Sydney Silverman: When my right hon. Friend places the copy of the proceedings in the Library, will he also place with it a copy of the Commander-in-Chief's reasons for interfering with the court-martial sentence?
    Mr. Strachey: That is another question.
    Mr. Silverman: Will my right hon. Friend consider that?
    Mr. Strachey: I should like to have notice of that question.

    Troops, Korea
    MajorTufton Beamishasked the Secretary of State for War (1) whether he is aware that boots issued to the 27th and 29th Brigades in Korea have proved inadequate and been the cause of complaint and suffering; on what date he first

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    heard of these complaints; when it was decided to issue a new type of boot; in what way the present boots have been found unsuitable and inferior to those used by the Americans; and on what date all British troops in the fighting line will be issued with the new type of boot;
    (2) whether he is aware that in spite of recent assurances to the contrary some units among British troops fighting in Korea have still not got adequate supplies of good quality boots, waterproof capes and battle-dress trousers; that as a result of this morale has already suffered; and if he will now take steps to put these matters right.
    Mr. Strachey: The Finnish pattern boot has not proved satisfactory for marching troops in all of the weather conditions encountered in Korea mainly because the upper leather has cracked and the stitching has broken. Neither the United States nor any other country fighting in Korea has provided a completely satisfactory boot for the alternating wet and dry cold of the climate. Complaints regarding the Finnish pattern boots were received in the War Office in February and in the same month, following interdepartmental consultations, the Ministry of Supply were asked to produce an improved type of boot for wet and dry cold. Meanwhile, orders had already been given for the production of a special boot which can be worn with heavy duffel socks for dry cold weather, and sufficient numbers of both types of boots will be produced to equip the whole British force in Korea for next winter if this should prove necessary.
    I am not aware of any inadequacy in either the quality or the supply of ponchos or battledress trousers, ample stocks of which have been in Korea and Japan for months. There have, however, been considerable difficulties in effecting distribution locally. I should be glad to investigate any specific complaints the hon. and gallant Member may have.
    Sir Waldron Smithers: Would it not be better to provide with proper equipment these men fighting for freedom in Korea rather than to provide thousands of overcoats and so-called battle dress for the Civil Defence people in this country?
    Brigadier Clarkeasked the Secretary of State for War if the troops in
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    Korea are getting fresh meat and vegetables; and if he will state the weight of fresh meat provided per man per week.
    Mr. Strachey: At present the British troops in Korea are provided from British sources with either compo rations or preserved field service rations, neither of which contains fresh meat or vegetables. Arrangements have, however, been made for fresh meat and vegetables, when available, to be drawn from United States Army sources in place of tinned meat and vegetables. The weekly scale of issue per man in such cases is 98 oz. of fresh meat and 56 oz. of fresh vegetables (excluding potatoes, of which fresh supplies are not obtainable).
    Major Beamishasked the Secretary of State for War how long the 27th and 29th Brigades have now been on active service in Korea; and what arrangements he is making for these formations to be relieved.
    Mr. Strachey: The 27th Infantry Brigade arrived in Korea in August, 1950. It has distinguished itself in action and spent seven months almost continuously in the fighting line. Plans are now in hand for its relief. 29th Infantry Brigade Group arrived in Korea in November, 1950, and has completed four months distinguished service. No arrangements for its relief have yet been made, but the matter is being kept under review.

    Sentries (Orders)
    Mr. Ian Harveyasked the Secretary of State for War whether he will now review the question of the issue of orders to sentries, especially when on active service, in order that they may be more precise.
    Mr. Strachey: In July, 1950, all Commanders-in-Chief were requested to take immediate steps to re-examine existing orders for armed sentries and to ensure that they were appropriate, clearly and definitely worded, and fully understood by the sentries. A further letter was sent to Commanders-in-Chief in December, 1950, to clarify the position. The actual orders which are issued to sentries overseas or on active service must be left to the discretion of the Commander-in-Chief concerned according to the local circumstances.
    Mr. Harvey: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that recent cases have indicated that far too much has been left to the discretion of the sentry on duty, and that in one case there was a suggestion that a legal decision should be made; and is he further aware that it is absolutely essential that these men should have orders upon which they are clear, so that their duties are automatic, in order that these unfortunate events should not occur?
    Mr. Strachey: We have twice emphasised this point to Commanders-in-Chief, but, of course, we must not take the actual drafting of the orders out of their hands.

    Class Z Reservists (Recall)
    Brigadier Clarkeasked the Secretary of State for War what proportion of Class Z reservists have failed to reply to their call-up notices to date; and how many notices have been returned to his Department as untraceable.
    Mr. Strachey: Some 7.4 per cent. of reservists warned for recall have not yet acknowledged the receipt of a warning notice. Acknowledgments are, however, still being received. In addition, 1,734 warning notices, or some 0.9 per cent. of the whole, have been returned as untraceable.

    Home Guard
    Brigadier Smythasked the Secretary of State for War if he will give an assurance that the plans indicated for the organisation of the Home Guard and its rôle in any future emergency will be worked out in time for the Home Guard to be included in home defence exercises this summer.
    Mr. Strachey: Instructions regarding planning for the Home Guard were issued to commands on 2nd March, 1951, and planning has begun. As the House has already been informed, however, it is not proposed actually to raise the Home Guard at present.
    Brigadier Smyth: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that when, on 14th March, I asked the Minister of Defence whether any exercises were to be carried on this summer in order to make clear the rôle of the Home Guard in home defence, the Minister replied that plans
    22
    for the organisation of the Home Guard, and its rôle in any future emergency, were then being worked out? Can the right hon. Gentleman now give any indication of what those plans are to be?
    Mr. Strachey: The planning is going on, and that is being organised in the commands, but it has been decided that the actual raising of the force should not go on for the present.
    Mr. Eden: I have no dispute about the raising of the force, but I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman if this planning includes the appointment of commanders so that, if need be, the raising of the force could rapidly follow?
    Mr. Strachey: In these cases, it includes the appointment of officers responsible within the commands.
    Mr. Eden: But it does not include commanding officers of units?
    Mr. Strachey: No, not the commanding officers of the units.
    Mr. Eden: That does not get us very far.
    Mr. Bossom: Can the Minister say whether he has got the arms ready for them, so that they will be available when they are called up?
    Mr. Strachey: There are considerable reserves of rifles in this country.
    Mr. Nabarro: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider a matter upon which I asked the Under-Secretary a question three or four weeks ago; that is, the matter of recruiting at this stage county weapon cadres of trained officers whose services are not being used at this time?
    Mr. Strachey: That can only be considered by officers appointed to the staffs of Commands.
    Brigadier Smyth: Would the right hon. Gentleman realise that any potential aggressor in the West must consider very seriously the possibility of direct attack on this country by means of airborne landings, and does he really think that the existing arrangements for home defence, particularly in regard to Civil Defence and the Home Guard, are such as would deter an aggressor at the present moment?
    Mr. Strachey: That is a very much wider question, and I cannot, in reply to a supplementary question, add anything to the considerations which have led my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence and myself to decide that the order of priority should not be for the actual raising of the Home Guard at the moment.

    Detention Barracks, Maryhill (Escapes)
    Mr. Emrys Hughesasked the Secretary of State for War if he will now make a statement on the recent escapes from the detention barracks at Maryhill, Glasgow.
    Mr. Strachey: I have not yet received the proceedings of the court of inquiry, which are under consideration by the competent military authorities in Scotland.

    Reinforcements, Far East (Training)
    Mr. Hurdasked the Secretary of State for War if he has now taken steps to ensure that all young soldiers sent to Malaya receive adequate training there in jungle fighting before they join operational units.
    Mr. Strachey: Reinforcements arriving in the Far East are not sent on operations before they have been in the command for a suitable period—normally four weeks—for acclimatization and for training in the tasks they are likely to be required to perform in jungle operations.
    Mr. Hurd: Are we to gather from this answer that every young soldier being sent out to Malaya is given four weeks' intensive jungle training before being sent to join his operational unit?
    Mr. Strachey: He is given training, but he joins his unit at once. To that extent he is subject to the same risks to which everybody is subject in Malaya.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: Can the right hon. Gentleman say if the procedure which is now envisaged is one that has been recently introduced?
    Mr. Strachey: No, Sir. I emphasise that men join their units as soon as they arrive there, and it is considered the best form of training, but they are not sent out on jungle patrols or on active operations.

  HEALTH SERVICES (COMMITTEE'S REPORT)
  Sir W. Smithersasked the Prime Minister if the committee appointed to examine the industrial health services has reported; what were their recommendations; what is the present liability of the industrial health services; and if he will make a statement.
  The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Herbert Morrison): I have been asked to reply.
  I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave on 26th February to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. H. Wallace) and to the Committee's Report, which was published as a White Paper on that day.
  Sir W. Smithers: Is there nothing to add since that Question was answered?
  Mr. Morrison: No, Sir. I thought the reply was very comprehensive, and the White Paper has since been presented.

  NATIONAL FINANCE

    Betting and Entertainments (Taxation)
    Major Lloydasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what rates of duty or tax are at present charged on betting, bookmakers, horse and dog racing, totalisators, sporting and other entertainments open to the public.
    The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gaitskell): The duties are Pool Betting duty, Bookmakers' Licence Duty and Entertainments Duty. I am sending the hon. and gallant Member a statement setting out the statutory rates.
    Major Lloyd: Will not the right hon. Gentleman take an early opportunity of considering bringing these varying imposts to some kind of order and uniformity, so as to make them more just and equitable between the various forms of entertainment?
    Mr. Gaitskell: The hon. and gallant Gentleman will not expect me to anticipate my Budget statement.

    Gas Council (Taxation)
    Sir W. Smithersasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if his attention has been called to paragraph 132 of the First Report of the Gas Council; what steps have been taken to clear the obscurity about the liability of the council to Income Tax and Profits Tax; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Gaitskell: I have read the paragraph to which the hon. Member refers, but as I have already told him, I cannot make statements about the liability to tax of particular taxpayers.
    Sir W. Smithers: Can the Chancellor of the Exchequer give an assurance that the Gas Council is treated for the purposes of tax in exactly the same way as a private company?
    Mr. Gaitskell: In exactly the same way as a private company in the same position would be.

    Troops, Korea (Presents)
    Brigadier Clarkeasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what duty-free concession vouchers are given to troops in Korea to enable them to send home presents to their wives and families.
    Mr. Gaitskell: Troops serving abroad are allowed to send home presents, other than tobacco, scent and liquor, to a value of 10s. free of Customs charges. In addition, gift parcels of food weighing not more than 22 lb. gross are admitted free.
    Brigadier Clarke: Will the right hon. Gentleman say how often they can send a 10s. voucher, and does he appreciate that a 10s. voucher does not help the people at home when they have to pay a duty which is much greater than the value of the present?
    Mr. Gaitskell: There is no restriction on the number of parcels that may be sent.
    Mr. Bellenger: May I urge on my right hon. Friend that he should consider the system which operated very well in wartime of allowing troops on active operations to send home so many duty-free parcels, the value of which came to more than 10s. per parcel?
    Mr. Gaitskell: I should be more ready to consider that, if I felt satisfied that there was any real dissatisfaction with the present arrangements.
    Mr. Braine: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a parcel recently sent from Korea, by a soldier to his mother, the value of which was 20s., attracted no less than 17s. 4d. in Customs Duty and Purchase Tax? Would it not be fair to extend to serving men overseas the generous concession which obtained during the war?
    Mr. Gaitskell: I do not think there is anything I can add. Obviously, if a parcel is worth more than 10s., it will become liable to Customs duty, but I think it is very unusual for that kind of difficulty to arise.

    Emigrants, Canada (Currency)
    Mr. Russellasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will now ease the currency restrictions imposed on emigrants to Canada.
    Mr. Gaitskell: I am afraid that this is, still not possible.
    Mr. Russell: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it very advisable to do everything possible to stimulate emigration to Canada? In view of the improved dollar position, will not he look into the matter again?
    Mr. Gaitskell: That is one of the considerations kept under continuous review.
    Mr. A. R. W. Low: Has the right hon. Gentleman discussed it recently with his opposite number in Canada and with the Government of Canada?
    Mr. Gaitskell: I am not aware of any recent official or Ministerial discussions.
    Mr. Low: Will the Chancellor have discussions as soon as possible?

    Imported Snow (Customs Duty)
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer under what authority £20 Customs Duty was demanded on 55 crates of snow presented by Norwegian sporting organisations for use in a sporting event in this country; and whether he intends to insist on this payment.
    Mr. Gaitskell: The Import Duties Act, 1932, imposed a Customs duty of 10 per cent. ad valorem on all goods imported into this country, with certain exceptions. This snow was described

    27
    for Customs purposes by the importers as having a value of £200 and was technically liable to duty of £20. No difficulty would have arisen if the importers had applied for duty-free admission, as was done in similar circumstances last year. On advice from the Customs Department, they have now done so and duty relief has been allowed.
    Mr. Oliver Lyttelton: Can the Chancellor say whether this import has since been liquidated?
    Mr. Gaitskell: I think it is self-liquidating.
    Mr. Henry Strauss: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the proposal to levy a duty on this snow was originally made in the "Manchester Guardian" by way of a joke? Is the explanation of the attempted charge that this was read by a civil servant who did not know it was a joke?

    Food Subsidies
    Mr. Marplesasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give an estimate of the effect on the cost of living index if subsidies on meat, eggs, sugar and tea were abolished.
    Mr. Gaitskell: On the basis of present procurement prices, the Interim Index of Retail Prices would be raised by 2.56 points.

    Land Values (Depreciation Claims)
    Mr. Marplesasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many claims for compensation out of the global figure of £300 million under Sections 58 and 60 of the Town and Country Planning Act have been agreed; and what sum of money they amount to.
    Mr. Gaitskell: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary on 7th March to the hon. Member for Angus, North and Mearns (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley).
    Mr. Marplesasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the sum claimed for compensation out of the global figure of £300 million under Sections 58 and 60 of the Town and Country Planning Act by the 807,153 applicants in England and
    28
    Wales, and the 137,354 applicants in Scotland, respectively.
    Mr. Gaitskell: As claimants were not required to state the amount claimed and the majority have not done so, this information is not available.
    Mr. Marples: When do the Government expect to agree on these claims?
    Mr. Gaitskell: Some time between now and 1953.

    Unrequited Exports
    Mr. Osborneasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been the total of unrequited exports since 1945; and to what countries principally have they gone.
    Mr. Gaitskell: I am not sure what definition the hon. Member has in mind for "unrequited exports." If it is the excess of current exports over current imports, the answer is certainly negative. If he has some other definition in mind, I suggest that he draws his own conclusion from the Balance of Payments White Paper, which will be published on Thursday.
    Mr. Osborne: Without having had a preview of the White Paper, may I ask the Chancellor how much of the war-time accumulated sterling debts we have still to pay off by way of unrequited exports?
    Mr. Gaitskell: I must have notice of that question.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE

    Exported Paper Bags
    Mr. Ian Winterbottomasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will adopt a sliding scale for the calculation of drawback of duty on exported paper bags.
    The Secretary for Overseas Trade (Mr. Bottomley): As the trade interests concerned have already been informed, we are ready to consider this proposal sympathetically as soon as we receive from them certain additional information for which they have been asked.
    Mr. Winterbottom: Is my hon. Friend aware that very valuable export trade is being lost as a result of the lack of this sliding scale? Will he do his best to get an early agreement with the trade?
    Mr. Bottomley: We are awaiting a reply from the trade association and as soon as we get that we shall try to reach an agreement.

    Trade Commissioners
    Sir W. Smithersasked the President of the Board of Trade how many trade commissioners and assistant trade commissioners have been appointed since 1945; and what steps were taken before the appointments were made to make sure that they were qualified for their work.
    Mr. Bottomley: Since 1945, 49 and 56 appointments have been made to the rank of trade commissioner and assistant trade commissioner respectively. Of these appointments 33 and 28 were to new posts, the remainder being to fill vacancies in existing posts. Before appointment, each candidate appears before a selection board which is so constitued as to ensure that full consideration is given to all the qualities which the work requires.
    Sir W. Smithers: Although I have no personal knowledge of this, is the Minister aware that it is stated that many of those appointed have no qualifications whatever and know nothing at all about the job? Will he look into the matter again?
    Mr. Bottomley: That is certainly contrary to all the information we have. Perhaps I can refer the hon. Member to the remarks of his hon. Friend the Member for Southgate (Mr. Baxter) in a recent debate on Anglo-Canadian trade.

  HOTELS (ADVERTISEMENTS)
  Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Mooreasked the Minister of Local Government and Planning whether he is aware that the present advertisement regulations do not permit country hotels to put up, without special authority, an advertisement more than 12 feet square; and whether, in view of the fact that this in insufficiently large in the case of those country hotels which are set back some distance from the roadway, he will amend the regulations so as to permit an advertisement of greater size.
  Mr. Roland Robinsonasked the Minister of Local Government and Planning whether he is aware that, under the present advertisement regulations, signs on the front of hotels must not be higher than
  30
  12 feet above ground level in an area not of special control or not more than 15 feet above ground level in other areas; and that, in view of the fact that the ground floor of many hotels is often itself of greater height than 15 feet, such signs cannot be erected without cutting right across the ground floor frontage; and whether, when the regulations are next amended, he will take steps to permit hotels to place their signs at least between the ground and first floor or the first and second floor.
  The Minister of Local Government and Planning (Mr. Dalton): Local planning authorities already have power to allow larger advertisements.
  Sir T. Moore: Will the right hon. Gentleman pass that information on to the local planning officers so that when the expected visitors come to this country for the Festival of Britain and are on the look-out for rest and food, they will be able to see that these places exist, which they cannot do at present?
  Mr. Dalton: There will be no difficulty. Any hotel proprietor can apply to the local planning authority and request larger advertisements than those laid down in the regulations as a free maximum, and I have not doubt that those requests will be reasonably treated.

  ISRAEL AND JORDAN (COMPENSATION PAYMENTS)
  Mr. Marloweasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs upon what date he notified the Governments of Israel and Transjordan of the acceptance by Mrs. Nixon of the sums offered by them by way of compensation for the death of her husband; why these sums have not yet been paid; and what steps he is taking to recover payment.
  The Minister of State (Mr. Younger): His Majesty's Government on 13th February accepted an offer by the Jordan Government to make an ex gratia payment of £3,000 in respect of the deaths of Mr. Nixon and his companion Mr. Woodford. I am glad to say that this money has now been received. The Israel Government on the 23rd March offered a similar payment of £9,500 and instructions were sent to His Majesty's

  31
  Minister at Tel Aviv on 27th March to accept this offer and to report as soon as payment was made.
  Mr. Marlowe: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the widow referred to in the Question is desperately in need of some maintenance? Will he take every step he can to see that the money is transferred to this country as soon as possible?
  Mr. Younger: We are very well aware that several of the dependants are in need, and particularly the one to whom the hon. and learned Member has referred.

  IRON AND STEEL PRICES ORDER (SCHEDULES)
  Sir J. Mellorasked the Minister of Supply if he will now state why copies of deposited Schedules 91 to 95, inclusive, to the Iron and Steel Prices Order, 1951, were laid before the House of Commons in dummy form on 20th February, although certified by an Under-Secretary of his Department to be correct copies; whether these five Schedules are included in the 97 deposited Schedules defined in the Order; and what they contain.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply (Mr. John Freeman): Schedules 91 to 95 to this Order, included in the 97 Schedules to the Order, contain detailed prices for a wide variety of rainwater and soil pipes and gutters and connections. I have now investigated the matter and find that copies of certain deposited Schedules, which should have been identified with earlier deposited Schedules laid before the House, were, owing to a misunderstanding for which I apologise, not so identified and were therefore incomplete. Complete copies of these Schedules were accordingly relaid yesterday. The certified originals were, of course, complete.
  Sir J. Mellor: Is not this a matter for you to consider, Mr. Speaker? In view of the Minister's answer that this Order has been improperly laid, is it not now a matter for your decision whether the Order has been laid at all? At a convenient opportunity, could you give a Ruling on that point at an early date?
  Mr. Speaker: I could not answer that question without notice. It seems to me
  32
  to be rather complicated and I should like to be able to think about it.
  Sir J. Mellor: I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker. The Minister gave an answer on the day before we rose for Easter in which he said he was discussing the matter with the authorities of the House and, therefore, I think you will find that the matter has been carefully considered by your advisers.
  Mr. Speaker: I am sorry, but I am afraid I have no knowledge of it.

COUNCIL OF EUROPE (UNITED KINGDOM REPRESENTATIVES)
Mr. H. Morrison: I desire, Mr. Speaker, with your permission, to make a statement in the absence of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
The Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe will meet at Strasbourg in May, and it is therefore desirable that the 18 representatives from the United Kingdom should be appointed as soon as possible. The distribution of these appointments between the parties remains the same as it was last year; that is to say, nine Members of the Labour Party, eight of the Conservative Party and one of the Liberal Party.
My right hon. Friend has arranged these appointments, and, in the case of the Conservative and Liberal Parties, they have, of course, been made on the basis of nominations by the Leaders of these parties. The representatives from the Government benches are:
My right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall); my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon), Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. Blyton), Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion), Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Crosland), Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy), Reading, North (Mr. R. Mackay), and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison).
The representatives of His Majesty's Opposition are: The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill), the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan), the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member

33
for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe), the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), the hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Boothby), the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster), and the hon. Gentlemen the Members for Taunton (Mr. Hopkinson), and Belfast, South (Mr. Gage).
The Liberal representative is the noble Lord, Lord Layton.
These appointments are for the Third Session of the Assembly, and will hold good until either the beginning of the Fourth Session, or the election of the next United Kingdom Parliament—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—patience would not do any harm—whichever is the earlier.

LONDON TRAFFIC CONGESTION (RECOMMENDATIONS)
The Minister of Transport (Mr. Barnes): With permission, I will briefly indicate my views on the Report of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee on London traffic congestion and will circulate a fuller statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
I accept in principle the recommendations of the Committee for further restricting waiting vehicles and slow-moving traffic and will consider, in consultation with them, the introduction of the necessary regulations, which may sometimes be experimental.
I also accept in principle a number of recommendations which can be, and some of which are already being dealt with administratively, such as those relating to education and propaganda, to co-ordination of undertakers' street works, and to direction signs and street name-plates. In some of these matters I have not the primary responsibility. I am discussing with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary the important question of strengthening mobile police patrols.
The Committee rightly attached great importance to the problem of car parking. I cannot commit the Government to financial assistance in this matter, but subject to this I propose to invite representatives of the various Departments and
34
interests mainly concerned to formulate proposals on the basis of the Committee's recommendations.
I will consider the street improvements recommended by the Committee in consultation with the London County Council, although in present circumstances early execution of expensive schemes cannot be expected.
Major Sir David Maxwell Fyfe: With regard to such administrative matters as street works, direction signs and name-plates, and also with regard to car parking, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether he can hold out any hope of improvements for this summer in view of the special amount of traffic which is expected?
Mr. Barnes: With regard to street direction signs, a good deal is already being undertaken in that direction and on this experiment in connection with the Festival of Britain we hope to build a permanent direction-sign system at least for the main routes in London. With regard to car parking, those parts of the Committee's recommendations which deal with no waiting or unilateral waiting or the special provision of car parks in side streets will be pursued vigorously but, as I have indicated, I cannot undertake any immediate provision for the more ambitious schemes which involve the investment of capital. I have followed this procedure of publishing in the OFFICIAL REPORT the details of the recommendations which I have accepted and I think that if hon. Members refer to the Report itself it will give them a good indication of the steps which are being taken.
Professor Savory: Is it with the right hon. Gentleman's approval that Green Street and all the surrounding streets are to become a permanent car park, so that I have the utmost difficulty in obtaining access to my home?
Sir Harold Webbe: Will the Minister say whether the authorities to be consulted by him in connection with car parks and street improvements will include the city and borough councils?
Mr. Barnes: Most certainly. I shall take steps to consult all the interests concerned and in the instance of the City of Westminster, which represents the area

35
with the most acute car parking problem, the City of Westminster Council will be consulted.
Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Does my right hon. Friend's reference to car parks mean that he contemplates arranging some uniformity in car park charges in the London area which at present are a source of abuse and complaint?
Mr. Barnes: I have indicated that some of these matters are not primarily my responsibility and require consultations with the authorities concerned which, as I have said, I shall carry out.
Mr. Shepherd: Is this not a fair summary of the Minister's statement in regard to car parking: that he intends to put further restrictions on waiting without making any provision whatsoever for additional car parking facilities? Is it not unreasonable for him to come to the House and say that he wants to deal with the problem and also to indicate at the same time that no grant will be given to local authorities for this purpose?
Mr. Barnes: I do not think so. After all, this Committee have done a very valuable piece of work. They recognised that some of the long-term solutions cannot be put into operation at the moment, but the Committee advanced some immediate measures and those will be put in hand as quickly as possible.
Miss Irene Ward: Does the right hon. Gentleman really intend to take the advice of the local authorities concerned or does his view supersede the advice of the local authorities?
Mr. Barnes: I always consider very fully the advice of the local authorities.
Following is the statement:
In my answer of 5th March I divided the Committee's recommendations into four main categories and I will now indicate my views with reference to the same categories and to the numbers prefixed to the recommendations in the summary given on pages 7 to 10 of the report.
(1) Recommendations requiring new regulations or legislation
I accept in principle Nos. 9, 10, 15, 16, 19 and 20. This means that I will consider in consultation with the Committee the introduction of regulations, which
36
may sometimes be experimental in the first instance, to prohibit loading and unloading in short lengths of certain main thoroughfares during specified hours; to extend the restrictions on horse-drawn and other slow traffic; to prohibit at certain times all forms of waiting for a distance of 45 ft. from the more important controlled intersections; to prohibit right-hand turns at some further intersections; and to establish a system of unilateral waiting in certain additional streets.
I am consulting the London County Council and the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee on Recommendation No. 17, which suggests that legislation should be considered to give further control over street trading in order to prevent congestion.
As regards Recommendations Nos. 3 and 4, I regret that I am not prepared to propose legislation to enable assistance to be given from central funds towards the extra cost of double-shift and week-end working on street repairs.
(2) Recommendations which can be dealt with by administrative action
I accept in principle Recommendations Nos. 1, 5, 21, 22, 23, 24, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55 and 56. This means that I will consider the possibilities of arcading in consultation with those of my colleagues and with the local authorities who are concerned; that I will arrange for the further co-ordination of street works to be discussed with the statutory undertakers; that I will bring to the notice of those who issue the Directory of Road Transport Cafes the suggestion that it should contain a route map for London; that I will arrange for suitable education and propaganda on the general problem of traffic congestion and on particular points to which the Committee call attention; and that I will do what I can to help the operators, whose responsibility it is, to find a permanent site for a coach station in North London.
In some matters touched on by the Committee administrative action is already proceeding. Thus as regards Recommendation No. 49, working parties are already working out a scheme for permanent direction signs and a good deal has already been done in the way of temporary signposting. As regards Recommendation No. 50, I am about to

37
issue a circular about street name plates. As regards Recommendations Nos. 53 and 54, it is already the policy to introduce "cross-now" or "all-red" phases in traffic signals where practicable and to encourage pedestrians to cross the road at specified points, using subways when they are provided.
In view of the present restrictions on expenditure I do not feel able to accept Recommendation No. 52 in regard to subway escalators for pedestrians.
As regards Recommendation No. 56, I am already discussing with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary as a general question the possibility of employing additional mobile police patrols both in London and elsewhere to assist in relieving congestion as well as in the interests of safety and, while the existing police manpower position renders any large increases out of the question in London at the moment, I hope that some strengthening of the patrols may be found possible.
The recommendations on traffic signals (Recommendations Nos. 43 to 48) do not, I think, call for any specific action on my part. I have no doubt that the local authorities concerned will consider those designed to secure that traffic signals are well maintained and kept reasonably up to date. I am not in favour of advance warning signs for intersections in built-up areas as proposed in Recommendations Nos. 48 and 51. Recommendation No. 51 also suggests the marking of traffic lanes
38
with white lines at intersections. Such lines help to sort traffic and, subject to limitations imposed by scarcity of funds and materials, I commend this suggestion to the consideration of highway authorities.
(3) The problem of parking (Recommendations Nos. 25 to 42)
I accept Recommendation No. 26 and am arranging for a survey of demand and available off-street sites to be put in hand. I further propose to invite representatives of the various Departments and interests mainly concerned to confer with my officers with a view to formulating proposals within the general framework of the Committee's recommendations, subject to the caveat that the Government cannot commit themselves on the question of financial assistance.
(4) Street Improvements (Recommendation No. 2)
I am inviting the views of the London County Council, as improvement authority, so far as they are not already known to me, on the schemes recommended in the report. With the present limitation of funds and need for strict control over capital investment, it would be wrong of me to be very optimistic in regard to the early execution of the more expensive schemes.
Recommendations Nos. 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 18 do not call for any immediate action on my part.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SUPPLIES AND SERVICES (DEFENCE PURPOSES) [MONEY]
  Resolution reported:
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to extend, for defence purposes and purposes relating to world peace and security, the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, and Defence Regulations and other instruments having effect by virtue of that Act, and to make provision for the stopping up or diversion of highways for such purposes and for matters incidental thereto, it is expedient—

  (a) to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any expenses incurred by any Minister of the Crown or Government department in consequence of the passing of the said Act of the present Session, and any increase attributable to the passing of the said Act in any sums falling to be paid under any other enactment out of moneys provided by Parliament; and

  (b) to authorise the payment into the Exchequer of any sums which, in consequence of the passing of the said Act, are recovered under section two of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, as applied by the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers') Act, 1945.

  Resolution agreed to.

  SUPPLIES AND SERVICES (DEFENCE PURPOSES) BILL
  Considered in Committee.
  [Major MILNER in the Chair]

  SUPPLIES AND SERVICES (DEFENCE PURPOSES) BILL

    Clause 1.—(PURPOSES OF SUPPLIES AND SERVICES (TRANSITIONAL POWERS) ACT, 1945, TO INCLUDE DEFENCE AND MAINTENANCE OF WORLD PEACE.)
    3.38 p.m.
    Mr. McCorquodale: I beg to move, in page 1, line 7, to leave out "and always to have included."
    This Clause of the Bill is indeed its most important one. Perhaps I may read out the part in which these words appear:
    "The purposes specified in subsection (1) of section one of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, shall be deemed to include, and always to have included, the purposes of—"
    This Bill extends the powers under the previous Supplies and Services Act to certain defence purposes. I heard it described in very much those words last night on the B.B.C. If the words which we propose to delete are left in the Bill
    40
    they whitewash and legalise anything which may have been done by any Minister in the past under the previous Acts, even though it was not proper. We challenged the Minister on this subject on the Second Reading and said that if we were not given a satisfactory answer we should probe the matter to the full. The Minister was making very heavy weather with his reply, as the House will remember, when a life-line was thrown to him by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) who asked whether the words were not restrospective but declaratory. The Secretary of State for Air, who was replying, seized hold of that life-line with great eagerness and said that the hon. Gentleman had put it even better than he could have done himself.
    I suggest that this description was not entirely accurate. These words may to a certain extent be regarded as declaratory, but they are certainly retrospective as well. Probably the hon. Member who threw the life-line did not appreciate at the time that the words cover not only the 1947 Act but the 1945 Act as well, and certainly the purposes described in this Bill could not possibly be regarded as being covered by the 1945 Act. These words go right back to the beginning of the complicated legal history of the Supplies and Services Act.
    Therefore, I think we can take it that these words are retrospective as well as declaratory. Indeed, I am emboldened to argue further on that point, citing the Foreign Secretary himself, who, introducing the Bill on Second Reading, said:
    "We are satisfied that if existing powers can be used for those new purposes…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st February, 1951; Vol. 484, c. 1316.]
    "Those new purposes." Therefore, I suggest that to say that these words are merely declaratory is not strictly accurate. They are certainly retrospective as well. We on this side of the Committee frankly do not like retrospective action, and especially do we not like retrospective action in a Bill which gives such sweeping powers to the Government, and we want the clearest proofs of the necessity of any Clause such as this before we can agree with it. Certainly, we had no such proofs on Second Reading from the Secretary of State for Air. Indeed, we had nothing of any value whatever, if I may say so.

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    I ventured to quote on Second Reading the words used by the Foreign Secretary when he introduced the 1947 Bill. He referred to Ministers using these sweeping powers—or who might use these sweeping powers—improperly for purposes which had not been strictly defined in the previous Act. Let me repeat the relevant words to the House. I think they are of some interest. This is what the Foreign Secretary said:
    "We do not want Ministers to stretch the meaning of the law in the framing and administration of Defence Regulations. It would be unconstitutional, undesirable and thoroughly objectionable."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th August, 1947; Vol. 441, c. 1796.]
    It would be unconstitutional; it would be undesirable; and it would be thoroughly objectionable. If that is the case, then we challenge the Minister to tell us which of his colleagues has been responsible for acting in this remarkable way; or if, on the other hand, no Minister has acted in this thoroughly undesirable and objectionable manner, why then are the words necessary? The Secretary of State, in reply, announced over and over again that none of his colleagues had in any way acted unconstitutionally or improperly. I would quote some of his words:
    "I can assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we have no reason to believe that any Minister has done anything which requires an Act of indemnity…. There is nothing in the Bill which is in the nature of an indemnity"
    And so on. He went on to say:
    "All I can say is that there is nothing new in inserting in a Bill the words to which I have referred."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st February, 1951; Vol. 484, c. 1375–7.]
    He maintained, therefore, that no Minister had in any way exceeded the powers granted by any previous Act. We asked him, but got no reply, why on earth these words were inserted in the Bill if they were not necessary. I say we got no reply. An hon. Friend of mine has referred me, and I should like to refer the House, to a passage in that classic story called "Through the Looking Glass," because that is the only world in which one can find any examples which correspond to the action of the Government, and of the Secretary of State for Air, who replied for the Government, and gave the excuse for the introduction of these retrospective words. These were the words used by Alice in the story:
    "I was wondering what the mousetrap was for," said Alice. "It is not likely that there
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    will be any mice on the horse's back." "Not very likely, perhaps," said the White Knight, "but if they do come I do not choose to have them running all about. You see, it is as well to be provided with everything. That is the reason the horse has all those anklets round its feet." "But what are they for?" Alice asked.
    This is worthy of the Secretary of State for Air.
    "To guard against the bites of sharks," the White Knight replied. "It is an invention of my own."
    3.45 p.m.
    I do not think these words are an invention of the Government's own, but the only excuse that the Secretary of State for Air gave us, in virtually the last sentence of his speech on this subject, was: "All I can say is that there is nothing new in inserting words of this sort in the Bill." Of all the lamentable excuses for bringing into a most important piece of legislation giving sweeping powers over the subjects of the Crown, a retrospective Clause going right back to the beginning of the whole series of Acts based on this principle! To say, "All I can say is, there is nothing new in it," is not really sufficient for this House.
    It is outrageous that the Government, in a Bill of this sort, should come down and put in words of this character—retrospective words: if I may say So, offensively retrospective words—when they proclaim that there is not the slightest necessity for them. They have not even the excuse that they are words of their own invention. They are put in not because they are words of their own invention. There is no need for them whatever. We hope the Minister will reconsider this matter, and will agree with us that this retrospective Clause can be omitted, and that we can get on with our further business. I am sure that something very much better than what was put up to us on Second Reading will be necessary before my hon. Friends will be willing to pass a Clause of this sort.
    The Solicitor-General (Sir Frank Soskice): As I understand the argument that has been addressed to us today, and, I think, the argument that was addressed from the opposite benches during the Second Reading debate on this Bill, it really amounts to this: Hon. Members opposite, in effect, say, as I understand

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    them, "If this is purely declaratory—in other words, if all you are doing by these words is removing doubts about what the pre-existing legislation means—then we do not mind its being retrospective." On the other hand, I think they are saying, "Suppose by this Clause you are giving some additional powers to those which are already possessed by the Government, then we object to the powers being made retrospective, and in particular do we object if the effect of their being made retrospective is to give an indemnity to some Minister who, in the past, has exceeded the powers which he has." Well now, I hope hon. Gentlemen opposite will accept that as a fair summary of their argument.
    Mr. McCorquodale: We accept the second part of it but not the first.
    The Solicitor-General: May I qualify what I said then by saying that I now assume that they object to its being retrospective in any event. But I think they will probably go this length with me, in saying that they do not mind so much its being retrospective if it is purely declaratory, as that they do object to any Clause which gives powers in addition to those which were previously possessed.
    Let me answer that argument. We feel—and we felt—that it is certainly arguable that the existing powers under the 1945 and 1947 Acts do cover all that is required; but, particularly in relation to two categories of action, we think that there may be some reasonable room for doubt as to whether they do go as far as that. The Foreign Secretary, in opening the debate on Second Reading, indicated what those two cases were. One related to the requisitioning of ships for the hostilities in Korea, and the other related to denying to potential enemies services and supplies which might be useful to them.
    With regard to all other defence purposes we felt that the existing Acts went far enough, but with regard to those two categories of action we thought that, although it was arguable whether existing Acts covered them, there was real doubt as to whether the existing Acts were wide enough to embrace them. In those circumstances we thought it necessary, as the Foreign Secretary explained, to be quite certain that we were acting within
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    the four corners of the law in taking that kind of action, that kind of action being action which was indispensable for the preparation of our defence system.
    I therefore address myself now to the first question put to me this afternoon. It is rather difficult to say whether this is purely declaratory or whether it is not. If we were right in thinking—as we were rather disposed to feel—that the existing legislation goes far enough, it follows that this new Clause is simply declaratory, simply removing a possible doubt. If, on the other hand, our caution is justified, and we are right in thinking that perhaps the existing legislation does not go as far as that, then obviously this Clause gives additional powers to those we already possess. That is how the matter stands at the moment.
    Proceeding to the other point under discussion, I have looked into the matter and I can assure the Committee that, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Air said during Second Reading, there is no question of giving any Minister retrospective indemnity. We are not conscious of doubt having arisen about whether any action taken by any Minister with regard to this class of legislation can be called into question. Therefore I can relieve hon. Members opposite of any anxiety in that respect. We are not trying by a side-wind to indemnify any particular Minister in respect of any action he has already taken. That is not our purpose in making this provision retrospective, whether it is declaratory or whether it confers additional powers.
    We are making this provision retrospective because if we did not do so we would be importing a doubt as to what the pre-existing legislation means. Hon. Members who have had cause to consider drafting problems will be very familiar with that kind of question. In a subsequent Act of Parliament wording is introduced, and as a result doubts begin to arise as to whether action which was thought to be safe and within the four corners of the pre-existing legislation is in fact covered. We thought it desirable to make this provision retrospective because we felt that if we did not, if in 1951 we suddenly began to indicate for the first time that defence measures were within the provisions of these successor

    45
    Supplies and Services Acts, we would begin to raise all sorts of doubts in the minds of those who are already administering these matters under the terms of the previous Acts.
    I hope hon. Members opposite will agree that it would be most undesirable to give rise to those sorts of doubts. The right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) was Attorney-General at one time, and he will know perfectly well the danger of that kind of thing arising. If in 1951 we suddenly started enacting that, in effect, anything to do with defence is now for the first time to be included in this scheme of legislation, we should immediately begin to give rise to doubts in the minds of those who have to consider the pre-existing legislation as to how far it went.
    Hon. Members will be familiar with the 1945 and 1947 Acts and will know the general terms of the purposes embodied in those Acts. The relevant purpose in the 1945 Act is
    "for the purpose of so maintaining controlling and regulating supplies and services as—(a) to secure a sufficiency of those essential to the wellbeing of the community."
    Those words, which go very far, are supplemented by the further words in Section 1 (1, c) of the 1947 Act, which deals with
    "ensuring that the whole resources of the community are available for use, and are used, in a manner best calculated to serve the interests of the community."
    Now, of necessity it is not possible to put any precise limit on those words. During Second Reading, hon. Members opposite gave expression to their general view on these enabling Acts. Those broad questions of policy are not immediately relevant to the rather narrow issue we are now discussing, and when they see our purpose in making this retrospective I hope they will feel it would have been very foolish not to make it retrospective, whether or not it is declaratory.
    I have indicated the difficulty I find in answering the question whether, strictly, it is declaratory or whether it goes further, but I hope the Committee will agree, on looking at it, that from the commonsense point of view there is no alternative but to take the course we have in order not to give rise to the innumerable doubts which would make it extremely difficult to implement this Bill and the other two Acts. It is for that reason that this provision is put in. In particular, I hope
    46
    their anxiety that this was really a side-wind device to give indemnity to some Minister without indicating to the Committee that it was being done will have vanished. We are not doing so. We are simply making this provision retrospective for the purpose I have indicated, and I hope the Committee will accept it.
    Sir Patrick Spens: In listening to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said I had in front of me the main provisions of the old Acts, and I am bound to say it comes as a shock to me to think that under those provisions it would be legally possible to requisition on a large scale ships to take troops and supplies to Korea. That seems to me to be stretching the words of those Acts beyond any possible legal interpretation. When speaking of supplies and services, to say that the phrases
    "to secure a sufficiency of those essential to the wellbeing of the community or their equitable distribution, or their availability at fair prices,"
    and
    "generally for ensuring that the whole resources of the community are available for use, and are used, in a manner best calculated to serve the interests of the community,"
    authorise a general requisitioning of the mercantile marine to take troops and supplies to Korea seems to me almost beyond the belief to which any party in this Committee could come.
    In those circumstances, the existing retrospective legislation, if it is to cover those actions, becomes obviously necessary; but then the Committee has been completely deceived by what was said by the Secretary of State for Air when he told the House that it was not to cover any action of that sort, which clearly went beyond the law as it exists. Therefore it seems essential that the Committee should realise that it is not a question of possibility but of very great probability that this Committee is being now asked to make legal what was illegal six months ago.
    It is something which obviously the Government have got to do, but the Government should have come here straight away, when they would have got those powers, as this House always gives powers for anything which is essential to defence or anything of that nature. But to have this Bill introduced, as the Foreign Secretary said, as a matter of

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    minor importance giving only a few unessential powers, when anybody who took the trouble to read Clause 1 would see that it was for conferring vast additional powers on the Executive, then to be told by the Secretary of State for Air that there was nothing of this sort in contemplation, then to listen to the speech we have just heard from the Solicitor-General, to look at the phrases in the old Acts and then to be asked to believe that nothing substantial is being done by making this Bill retrospective, is to my mind beyond what reasonable men should be asked to accept.
    4.0 p.m.
    The Committee should realise that it is essential that the Government should have these retrospective powers to justify what has been done in respect of Korea, and it is up to the Committee to make up its mind in the circumstances whether they are going to grant them. If the Government had come to the House immediately the Korea affair started and informed the House what powers they required in order to get forces and supplies to Korea and had said that there was a perfectly obvious doubt about the matter, I do not think that the learned Attorney-General or the learned Solicitor-General would have had the slightest hesitation in advising that the House should give the Departments the powers essential, so that they could have clear powers to do what they wanted to do.
    Mr. Sydney Silverman: The hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) is a very distinguished member of a profession to which I in a humble capacity also belong, but I must say that I found that the argument which he addressed to the Committee extraordinary. If he is right, it means that all that has been done since last June to carry out our obligations to the United Nations has been done without any legal powers—
    Sir P. Spens: Under the existing Acts.
    Mr. Silverman: I am wondering when it was that the hon. and learned Gentleman found that out, because, so far as I know, there has not been a single question during all these months directed either from the Opposition or from this side of the Committee to the Government about it What has the hon. and learned Gentle-
    48
    man been doing all that time? Has he known about it all that time and kept silent, allowing the executive to do things which it had no legal power to do at all?
    Sir P. Spens: If the hon. Gentleman really wants an answer, it is this: The attention of the House was not drawn to the matter at all until this Bill was introduced. The present Foreign Secretary said that there was nothing in this Bill of any importance. The Secretary of State for Air said that there was no question of validating anything that had been wrongly done in the past.
    The Solicitor-General: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman is under a misapprehension for which, I am quite sure, I was responsible. No ships in fact were requisitioned. I say quite frankly that I think that the previous Acts would not have covered requisitioning. The doubt was whether the previous Acts would have covered requisitioning. I think that probably they would not have done so. The fact was that these ships were not requisitioned for that purpose; they were chartered. The necessity may arise to requisition ships, and it is in order that power should be clearly within the existing powers that we are introducing this Bill.
    Sir P. Spens: If the Government require new powers they can get them without this retrospective action. They have done nothing wrong in the past.
    Mr. Silverman: If they have done nothing wrong in the past, there is no reason why the hon. and learned Gentleman should have made his speech at all.
    Sir P. Spens: I confess at once that I understood from the learned Solicitor-General that ships had been requisitioned since the war in Korea began. I understand now that none has been requisitioned. All I can say is that that makes the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech for retrospective legislation far weaker than it was.
    Mr. Silverman: I thought that what the Solicitor-General was doing was to make this declaratory and not retrospective. I thought that the difference between declaratory legislation and retrospective legislation was this: In the case of retrospective legislation, one was legislating in order to make legal an act done that was illegal when it was done; whereas

    49
    declaratory legislation makes clear the legality of an act if it is done, though the actual act has not in fact been done.
    Mr. Pickthorn: Oh!
    Mr. Silverman: I think that is perfectly clear, and if the hon. Gentleman will exercise his very real intelligence, which he does occasionally though not often in his contributions to the Committee, he will see the point which I am making. Whether a particular phrase in a particular Act of Parliament is retrospective in its effect or declaratory in its effect depends largely on whether acts have been done or not, and if there are any invalid acts to validate.
    If the hon. and learned Gentleman was thinking of the requisitioning of ships then, of course, he could have no complaint or objection to the declaratory phrase which the object of this Amendment is to remove from the Bill. The hon. and learned Gentleman no doubt clearly sees that if the Committee were to accept the Amendment, on his argument, there would be no power to requisition ships to take troops to Korea or to bring them home.
    Sir P. Spens: No.
    Mr. Silverman: Is that not right? If not, perhaps he will explain. I thought that what he was saying was: Of course the Government ought to have power to requisition ships. If under the old Act they had not the power to requisition ships, they ought to take that power to requisition ships. If, in the words in the Bill, as the Government have drawn it, they will in future have that power, of what is the hon. and learned Gentleman complaining?
    Sir P. Spens: If these words are left out, the Government will take and will have in the future, the powers which they want.
    Mr. Silverman: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman must make up his mind. If his point is that the words now in the Bill give the Government powers which they did not have before, then it is impossible to regard his objection as anything but empty rhetoric. If, on the other hand, he thinks that the words now give the Government power which they had not before, and if he concedes that the Government ought to have that power, then it is impossible to
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    think that he will oppose the Bill. He did not go so far in his speech as to say that he supported the Amendment. Perhaps the explanation of that is that he carefully avoided saying any such thing because it would be completely inconsistent with his argument.
    That seems to me to dispose of the non-political side of his argument. When we come to put it into its political context, then perhaps his argument is not so difficult to understand, coming from where it does. Hon. Members opposite have always had a limited view on the well-being of the community. His argument was that the words "well-being of the community" were not sufficient to cover us. There may be a difference of opinion as to how far this kind of action should take place and when and in what variety of political conditions; but to say that the question of the peace of the world is not contained in the idea of the well-being of the community is an idea which could only be put forward from that side of the Committee and which would never be accepted on this side. I should have thought, if there was any doubt, "the well-being of the community," as properly understood, would certainly give the Government powers to deal with all the matters that have been in dispute between the two sides in the course of this discussion.
    Mr. Henderson Stewart: Is not the hon. Member putting forward a case in direct contradiction to that put forward by the Solicitor-General, who said that it was necessary because he had some doubts? I take it that the hon. Member does not have any doubts.
    Mr. Silverman: I do not think it very important whether I have any doubts or not. What I am saying is that if there are any circumstances, or any persons, or any set of facts which might import into this phrase any degree of doubt, if it was argued in any responsible quarter that there is some doubt, then it is surely a very good thing to have that doubt removed, especially if, at the same time, it is conceded the law is not being altered.
    Major Sir David Maxwell Fyfe: I understood the Solicitor-General to say that in his opinion the previous Acts did not cover requisitioning.
    Mr. Silverman: No.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I should like to get it clear.
    The Solicitor-General: On balance, although I think it is arguable both ways, I think the previous Acts would not cover requisitioning.
    Mr. Silverman: That is the exact situation in which a declaratory Clause is obviously the appropriate course to take when there is a new Bill. If there is a balance of argument, if some may interpret one way and some another, then those are ideal circumstances in which to have a declaratory phrase to resolve the matter. The alternative is to leave the doubt in every one's mind, leaving it to be argued and challenged in the courts, and leaving, if the Solicitor-General is right, the balance of the argument on the side where every one does not want it to be.
    Mr. Hopkin Morris: The hon. Member says that there is doubt and that all we need is a declaratory statement to resolve the doubt. The doubt is about the requisitioning of ships.
    Mr. Silverman: It never happened.
    Mr. Hopkin Morris: Then whether the doubt is there or not is quite immaterial.
    Mr. Silverman: I think that the hon. and learned Member has inadvertently missed my point. Suppose that in future we wanted to requisition ships. We are back again to the point I thought we had disposed of—the difference between declaratory and retrospective legislation. It is desired that the Government shall have power to requisition ships. There is doubt whether under the old Acts there would have been any such powers. If the Government had in fact requisitioned ships, then in those circumstances this phrase that it is sought to delete would have been retrospective legislation. But since these acts did not take place, these words are not retrospective legislation but declaratory legislation to which there cannot be any objection.
    4.15 p.m.
    Lieut.-Commander Gurney Braithwaite: The Committee is working under a certain handicap, in that the Ministers who first paraded this Bill on Second Reading have disappeared from the scene. We are now confronted
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    with a change of bowling at both ends. At one end we have the Minister of Labour, always a versatile player, who looks to me as if he would rather be over here ridiculing these words—he would enjoy himself greatly—and at the other the Solicitor-General who, I imagine, is loosening his muscles prior to the lengthy spell he will shortly be having on the Finance Bill—I imagine that he has been put up to introduce that soothing atmosphere which he always imparts to our discussions.
    I was glad to hear the Solicitor-General say one thing, which will now be on record, namely, that he and his friends disapprove of a general indemnity for something that has happened in the past. He feels, with us, that where a Minister takes action which is not covered by legislation there should be a special Bill to indemnify the Minister for that action, rather than have it put into a Bill of this kind by a side wind. We agree that there should not be restrospective legislation of any kind without some compelling and good reason.
    I followed the right hon. and learned Gentleman so far, but it was when he moved to his next point that he confused me. That confusion has been added to considerably by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). The right hon. and learned Gentleman went on to say that the retrospective aspect of these words was to remove some doubt which existed in the mind of the Government regarding their powers under previous legislation. I take that to mean the Supplies and Services Acts of 1945 and 1947, which were of course a hang-over from the sweeping powers taken during the war and were revised in the aftermath of the last Parliament.
    The Solicitor-General went on to say that nothing has gone wrong since; that no Minister has committed any act which requires indemnity. Nothing has gone wrong, and because nothing has gone wrong we must take retrospective powers about the future. That is where, in my lay mind, I begin to feel how right it was that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom (Mr. McCorquodale) introduced the simile of the adventures of Alice in "Through the Looking-Glass." Therefore, this Bill is surely concerned only with the present or the future. That seems inescapable.

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    Then came my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens), who, with his great legal knowledge, stressed much the same point about the powers which existed under the Acts of 1945 and 1947 and reminded the Committee, as did the Solicitor-General, that the necessity for all this arose to a considerable extent from the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, which has become an almost universal umbrella for all kinds of unpleasant happenings, such as the rise in the cost of living—it now has a close rival in the battle of Waterloo after Saturday night.
    Nothing has gone wrong over the requisitioning of ships, we are told, but then the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne rises and says that it is all right as it is purely declaratory and we must make quite certain that nothing could have gone wrong since July last. But if nothing has gone wrong since the Korean aggression in June, and we have now got to the month of April, 1951, without any improper action by the Government then what we are now trying to do is to arm the Government with the necessary powers for the future and for the present. That is surely the first object.
    I cannot follow the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, who is so anxious to have these words included. There is no one to indemnify, and, therefore, they are unnecessary. I am sure that if the right hon. and learned Gentleman were sitting over here he would say that the words were redundant and even otiose. The Government would lose nothing by accepting the Amendment. They would lose no powers of any kind. They would still be fully equipped. I do not believe that the Solicitor-General has made out a case for the retention of these words, because they are no longer necessary. I cannot see how one can deal with the future in retrospect. If the Government want to avoid making themselves ridiculous in yet another field, they would be wise to accept the Amendment.
    Mr. Eric Fletcher: From the discussion that we have had it seems that the Opposition do not know what they want or the reason why they are putting forward the Amendment. I hope that before the debate is finished the right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) or the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames
    54
    (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) will give us their opinion whether or not it is necessary for these words to remain to cover anything that has been done since the beginning of the episode in Korea.
    Shortly before the defence powers under the Supplies and Services Acts were due to expire in December, we had a debate on 23rd October as to whether or not the existing powers under the Supplies and Services Acts of 1945 and 1947 should be renewed for another year. In October the events in Korea were very much in everybody's mind. The Leader of the House indicated why the existing defence regulations under those Acts should be renewed for another year; arguments were put forward based principally on the situation in which the events in Korea were taking place, the great debate we had had about the defence of the country, and the fact that we were committed to certain measures of re-armament, and so forth.
    Both sides of the House agreed that for the purposes of defence and preserving peace it was essential to renew those Acts. The only point on which any divergence occurred between the two sides was whether it was necessary for those wide powers to be retained by the Executive in peace-time. We thought they should, but the Opposition were opposed to it. But the Opposition conceded, because of the critical international situation which had then arisen, that it was essential to renew those powers for a year.
    The odd thing was that not a single hon. Gentleman opposite said—as presumably some of them will now say if they are honest in supporting the Amendment—that merely to renew the existing defence powers was not enough and that we needed to go further and to extend the purposes for which the defence regulations existed. It was assumed all round that the existing powers under those Acts were fully sufficient for all the purposes for which they were wanted and particularly for Korea, requisitioning ships, dealing with military preparations and so forth.
    The Government have now introduced this Bill, and particularly this Clause, with what is called "retrospective operation" because there may be some doubt as to whether what everybody agreed in

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    October was or was not the case. The Opposition are very prompt in criticising the Government on what they are pleased to call "retrospective legislation," but there is nothing of a retrospective character in the words proposed to be left out by the Amendment.
    I do not entirely agree with the distinction drawn by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) between retrospective legislation and declaratory legislation. Retrospective legislation, which the House has agreed is normal and proper in certain circumstances, is designed to legalise something which was quite definitely illegal at the time it was done. Declaratory legislation is intended to declare, so that there shall be no doubt whatever in future, something about which there was a doubt and which may or may not have been legal at the time it was done.
    Opinions may differ as to whether or not what the House assumed to be correct in October was or was not so. The only possible object of the declaratory words in the Clause is to give effect to the state of the law as hon. Members on both sides of the House assumed it to be in October last. For that reason, there seems to be no substance or sincerity in the Amendment.
    Mr. Pickthorn: I hope that one immodest legislator may forgivably thrust his way in where there have been so many modest lawyers, because I think that even my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Lieut-Commander Braithwaite) is in this matter a kind of a sea-lawyer, and I am bound to admit that when he spoke I did not think he was as good a sea-lawyer as I had supposed before, because he persisted in talking about side winds as if they were indecent, which I assure him—and so would anyone who has been "in sail" as they say—is not the fact.
    I really was puzzled by the Solicitor-General and a good deal more puzzled by his reinforcements from below the Gangway. Of course, it is true that no absolute and unadulterated good can be done except in eternity and by omnipotence. The nature of human life—I am speaking with the utmost seriousness, and all amateur theologians present will, I am sure, agree with me—is that the
    56
    human mind cannot conceive, still less execute, what is wholly good. We really must not be taken in by arguments of hon. and even learned Gentlemen who say that, provided they announce beforehand, "This is for the good of the people, or the well-being of the community, or the equitable distribution of material goods," they thereby put it out of court that there should be any criticism or resistance. As far as I could gather, that really was the substantial argument from below the Gangway.
    4.30 p.m.
    That the words in fact are retrospective seems quite plain to a layman on the face of it and, as I understand it, this was not merely admitted but asseverated by the Solicitor-General. He made it quite plain in terms that the Government had decided that it was necessary to make this provision retrospective. They cannot have thought of that merely to fill in some logical but not practical gap. I can quite understand the motive for making a provision that one's great grandfather was legitimate retrospective, if one wanted something to happen, legally, between the date of his unfortunate conception and one's own miserable appearance upon this sublunary scene. In the present case, the proudest boast of those who are responsible for its conception is that nothing ever came of it. That leaves one slightly puzzled.
    Although I am putting this point in a form which appears risible I hope that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite will take it seriously. If they are going to start laughing at me then my pride will compel me to go on until I have convinced them that this is a serious point.
    The Minister of Labour (Mr. Aneurin Bevan): I am not laughing at the hon. Gentleman, but with him.
    Mr. Pickthorn: I know. I was not grumbling about it, but merely trying to get the flattery down in HANSARD.
    Mr. Bevan: The hon. Gentleman will find it very lonely.
    Mr. Pickthorn: Perhaps I might go back for a moment to something which was said from a point so far above me in station, from South Kensington (Sir P. Spens.) The Committee will remember the argument which came to us from South Kensington. I think that it had

    57
    an important corollary which I do not think was specifically made. It is that upon the argument used by the Solicitor-General, and still more upon the argument from below the Gangway, it is difficult to see how in future Parliament is ever going to give powers for any at all general purpose without giving them for every other benevolent purpose. I do not know whether the Solicitor-General can bear to listen to this point, because I expect he has already seen it. If the argument used by himself and the fears from South Kensington are right, how in future is the House of Commons ever going so to draft a Clause as to give an at all general power without the generality becoming a universality?
    If it is to be said that for any general estimable purpose we could not do any good and do it wholly well without reaching all the other estimable purposes too, and that therefore because the general power was given in order to improve, say, the character of children or the distribution of milk, and because those things are all tied up with importing coarse grains from Manchuria or what not, and that therefore all other good purposes must be held not only to be, but always to have been, subsumed under and in the general power—if that is the argument—it is a serious matter for consideration whether we are not really making it impossible for Parliament in future ever to grant the Executive a general benevolent power for a highly estimable, in itself, unchallengeable object, without thereby granting those powers for all other estimable and hardly challengeable objects. The point I have been making seems to make the general argument against retrospection very much more difficult to remove in this specific case.
    Mr. Henry Strauss: I apologise to the Solicitor-General because I missed his speech, and because I do not normally intervene in a debate, even for a short time, without having heard the speech of the Minister. I want to reinforce some of the things which have been said, and in particular to answer some of the arguments of the two hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway who thought that the Amendment was unwise. The hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. E. Fletcher), kept speaking of "what is called 'this retrospective provision'." I wonder why he can never
    58
    understand a retrospective provision or recognise one when he sees one. One thing which is admitted in every quarter of the Committee by those most competent to speak is that this is a retrospective provision. It may be wise or unwise, but that it is retrospective cannot be doubted.
    The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), to whose argument I listened with care, as I always do, thought that the provision was not retrospective on the ground that it was declaratory. I think that, on reconsideration, he will probably agree with me that you can only call a provision in a statute "declaratory" if it declares what is believed to be the law. In so far as the Clause contains the words which we are attacking, it declares—to adopt the hon. Gentleman's phrase—as law in the past something which the Solicitor-General has said he believes was not law in the past. To say that we can describe as "declaratory" a provision that makes a false declaration about the law is an abuse of language. We can only describe a provision in a statute as declaratory if it declares what in fact is believed to be the law.
    Mr. S. Silverman: That cannot be quite right, can it? If a provision resolves doubts about the interpretation of a statute because a subsequent law has altered it, that is assuredly retrospective. If it is conceded that there is a doubt whether the law might be declared to be this or to be that then the law which declares it to be this or that is assuredly declaratory.
    Mr. Strauss: I do not think that the hon. Member is quite right in thinking that the words "declaratory" and "retrospective" are mutually exclusive. I think that he is labouring under a slight confusion. If we want to excuse what is at first sight a retrospective provision by saying that it is only declaratory, my submission is that that is only tolerable if what we declare to be the law is what the best authorities in the law declare was the law. The Solicitor-General has said, in so far as the words which we are attacking are concerned, that the effect of adopting them in the Bill is to declare that to have been law in the past which in fact was not the law in the past.
    My next submission, in which I hope most hon. Members will agree with me,

    59
    is that to do any such thing is wholly improper, unless an absolute necessity for doing it is proved. To declare that something has been the law which the Law Officers of the Crown advise us was not the law, seems, unless some case is put forward for doing it, a quite intolerable thing for the Committee to do.
    Mr. S. Silverman: Why?
    Mr. Strauss: From the moment when this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, the Government will have all the powers that they desire. The Government have no reason to think that there will be any act which they will want to cover, considering what has happened in the past and what will happen in the period between the present moment and the time when the Bill becomes an Act. Nevertheless, they ask us to pass these extraordinarily wide words, which will cover anything. There is no reason to think that there will be anything that the Government will wish to cover, but if something does occur, for which the Government need some indemnity, then it is surely better for them to come to this House and to describe what it is they want covered and for this House in a proper case to give an indemnity.
    To give an indemnity which will cover anything at a time when the Government have, in fact, nothing to which they can point as needing to be covered seems to be an intolerable abuse of the process of legislation. It is really reducing the care of Parliament for the rights of the citizen to an absolute nullity. We are taking no care at all. At the moment there is some doubt about the power which the Government may want in the future, and so the Government say, "Not only shall we have this power in the future, but it shall be deemed that we have always had it in the past." That is an intolerable situation. It is far better to come to the House and ask for an indemnity for specific matters if such indemnity is needed, than to put in such wide words as would cover everything, and then come to this Committee and ask for those words to be made law.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Member for Islington, East (Mr. E. Fletcher), was good enough to address a question to me. He asked whether in view of the Korean situation
    60
    I or any of my colleagues favoured the giving of the powers provided by this Bill. In so far as I am in order in answering that question on this Amendment, the answer must manifestly be "Yes." However, that does not conclude the matter of this Amendment as he appears to feel. We have had assurances given twice in this House. We had an assurance from the Secretary of State for Air six weeks ago, and another today that there are no acts taken by His Majesty's Government, which require the cover given by the retrospective provision of these words, with which alone at this moment the Committee is concerned.
    If the hon. Member for Islington, East, will allow me, I would say that he was barking up the wrong tree when he introduced the Korean war into this matter. I believe that defence is a legitimate purpose for using Defence Regulations. Indeed, I might be tempted to suggest that other purposes were infinitely less legitimate, but when we are assured that there is not one single act taken by a Minister of the Crown for which the provision of these words is required to give a legal cover, it is making nonsense of the legislative process of this House to provide a cover of indemnity for acts which we are solemnly assured have never taken place at all.
    It is a harsh thing to say, but I think that the Solicitor-General did even worse than the Secretary of State for Air. He said that the object of these words was to remove a doubt as to what pre-existing legislation means. To leave it like that was a little bit unworthy of him. If there are no acts with which pre-existing legislation is concerned, what does it matter if there is an academic doubt suitable for discussion over senior commonroom tables? It is no purpose of the legislature to indemnify academic doubts existing in the past. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to do that, he might try retrospectively to amend the Statute on Treason, and he would have a great deal of fun over that.
    4.45 p.m.
    If there are no acts taken in the prosecution of the Korean war or for the purposes of defence needing to be covered by this provision, which we are solemnly asked to believe is an academic provision, it seems to me that it is not morally right

    61
    for a Committee of the House of Commons to give its assent to it. Surely it is our duty only to assent to Ministerial legislative proposals where practical need for them is made out by a Minister of the Crown. When these proposals are commended by a Minister of the Crown on the unique ground that there is no need for them whatever, it seems to me to be the duty of this Committee to reject them.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: After the discussion which we have had I hope the Government will agree to accept this Amendment, because during the time we have been discussing it no one has suggested a single reason for these words being in the Bill. We have been assured time and time again that nothing has been done which is outside the purview of existing Acts. My point in regard to this form of legislation—I am sure the Minister of Labour will consider seriously the point that I am making—is that in order to use it the Minister must put his hand on his heart and say, "The act which I am now operating is necessary for the purposes laid down in the Act." Whether that act is intra vires or ultra vires depends on the purposes outlined. Here the position and the intention is to include a new purpose.
    If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had come to this House and said, "We are extremely sorry, but in the sudden emergency with which we are faced, certain acts have taken place," that would be a matter which we should have to consider. It is an important thing that if one is asking for an indemnity, it should be in the form of an indemnity, and that is what we should be prepared to consider. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman has come to this Committee and has told us that there are no acts of which he knows which are ultra vires. Then he says, "Of course, if we had done certain things they would have been ultra vires." Do not let us be in any doubt about this—the Opposition are prepared to help the Government in regard to future acts. If we omit the words,
    "and always to have included",
    there remain the words
    "deemed to include",
    which means that from the date of the passage of this Bill full powers are given, and everything that the Government want is given.
    62
    Hon. Members may put to us the query, if that is the position what is the harm in leaving the words in? If this Committee is going to leave in a Bill words with retrospective effect without any cause being made out for them at all, we are abdicating our position, and I know very well that if right hon. Gentlemen opposite were on these benches they would not tolerate that form of legislative procedure. In all the 16 years that I have had the honour to be in the House I have never known any party in opposition—indeed, on many occasions I am glad to think Government supporters have joined in refusing it—allowing retrospective legislation unless a case is made out. The essence of the approach of the Government today is that there is no case for it. Therefore I ask the right hon. Gentleman, in the interests of the position of this House as a legislative body, to reconsider the position of the Government.
    I do not want to traverse the ground which my hon. Friends have covered so well, but I want to make the following point. The framework of this Measure is based on the words "deemed to include"; that is, we are adding to the old purposes some new purposes and saying that the old purposes shall from this date be deemed to include the new ones. That makes it perfectly clear, on any construction which I have ever heard, that up to this time they do not include the new purposes.
    Therefore, to suggest that this can be slipped in, that we can salve our consciences with the ideas that we are merely passing declaratory legislation, is not only wrong, but is clearly manifestly wrong, from the very basis of the Measure we are discussing. In fact we are not only doing something which is useless, we are proclaiming ourselves to be fools and idiots by doing it. To put it shortly, either give us a reason for this, tell us some acts of which the Government are afraid, or else accept this Amendment. Unless that is done, I must advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide the Committee on this point.
    The Solicitor-General: I should like to reply shortly to the debate. I am sure it is entirely my own fault, but hon. Members opposite have attached too much importance to one part of my argument and have almost overlooked the other part of

    63
    it. I instanced the requisitioning of ships and the denying of supplies to potential enemies as being two things which we thought on balance were outside the purview of existing legislation. I said that we had not, in fact, requisitioned ships, but I added that we might want to do so at any time and therefore we have to be certain that we had the power to do so should the occasion arise.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman allow me to interrupt? We cannot be at cross purposes in that. If I may say so, I know him and his attainments too well. He has these powers from this Measure by the words "deemed to include" and they operate from the time the Act is passed. We are quite prepared to give him the powers for the future, but we want to know why it is that he requires these powers in the past.
    The Solicitor-General: The right hon. and learned Gentleman interrupted me when I was just about to give the reason, good or bad, which I had given already in the course of my arguments because hon. Gentlemen opposite, I think, have not appreciated the importance that we attach to it. In my earlier remarks I said that the reason which actuates us is that we are frightened that if we do not make this provision retrospective a number of doubts may arise on various matters as to which at the moment there is no doubt. May I indicate why? The 1945 and 1947 Acts are undoubtedly primarily directed towards economic rehabilitation—if I may use that as a broad expression.
    But we have always thought that, with the exception of those two matters—the requisitioning of ships and the denying of supplies to potential enemies which, of course, may arise hereafter—we could say that defence was one of the services essential to the community. Therefore we have always thought that the Acts as they existed, broadly speaking, covered the requirements of defence.
    The reason why we make these provisions retrospective is because, there being on the Statute Book two statutes primarily directed to economic questions, if we now in 1951 proceed to extend them in terms to defence matters, doubts may arise and may seriously perplex persons who have administered the previous Acts as to whether defence questions were ever within the purview of those Acts. That may be a fear which is justified or not, but it certainly actuates us. That was the reason I gave when I first addressed the Committee on this subject.
    Whether hon. Members opposite agree with the reason or not I hope they will agree that the case has been made. Having listened to the arguments adduced, I would not be disposed to advise my hon. Friends to accept this Amendment.
    Mr. Marlowe Mr. Marlowe (Hove) rose—
    Mr. R. J. Taylor Mr. R. J. Taylor rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
    Question put, "That the Question be now put."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 225; Noes, 197.

    Division No. 65.]

    AYES

    [4.58 p.m.

    Acland, Sir Richard

    Brown, George (Belper)

    Davies, A. Edward (Stoke, N.)

    Adams, H. R.

    Brown, Thomas (Ince)

    de Freitas, G.

    Albu, A. H.

    Burton, Miss E.

    Deer, G.

    Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)

    Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)

    Delargy, H. J.

    Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

    Callaghan, L. J.

    Diamond, J.

    Ayles, W. H.

    Carmichael, J.

    Dodos, N. N.

    Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.

    Castle, Mrs. B. A.

    Donnelly, D.

    Bartley, P.

    Champion, A. J.

    Driberg, T. E. N.

    Benn, Wedgwood

    Clunie, J

    Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W Bromwich)

    Benson, G.

    Cocks, F. S.

    Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

    Beswick, F.

    Coldrick, W

    Edelman, M.

    Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

    Collick, P.

    Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

    Bevin, Rt. Hon. E. (Woolwich, E.)

    Cook, T. F.

    Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

    Blenkinsop, A.

    Cooper, John (Deptford)

    Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

    Blyton, W. R.

    Corbet, Mrs. Freda (Peckham)

    Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

    Booth, A.

    Cove, W. G.

    Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

    Bottomley, A. G.

    Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

    Ewart, R.

    Bowden, H. W.

    Crosland, C. A. R.

    Fernyhough, E.

    Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton)

    Crossman, R. H. S.

    Field, Capt. W. J.

    Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

    Cullen, Mrs. A.

    Finch, H. J.

    Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

    Daines, P.

    Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

    Brooks, T. J. (Normanton)

    Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

    Follick, M.

    Brought, Dr. A. D. D.

    Darling, George (Hillsborough)

    Foot, M. M.

    Forman, J. C.

    Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)

    Ross, William (Kilmarnock)

    Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

    Lindgren, G. S.

    Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

    Freeman, Peter (Newport)

    Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.

    Silverman, Julius (Erdington)

    Ganley, Mrs. C. S.

    Logan, D. G.

    Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

    Gibson, C. W.

    Longden, Fred (Small Heath)

    Simmons, C. J.

    Gilzean, A.

    McAllister, G.

    Slater, J

    Glanville, James (Consett)

    MacColl, J. E.

    Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

    Gooch, E. G.

    McGhee, H. G.

    Snow, J. W.

    Gordon-Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

    McInnes, J.

    Soskice, Rt. Hon Sir Frank

    Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)

    Mack, J. D.

    Sparks, J. A.

    Grenfell, D. R.

    McKay, John (Wallsend)

    Steele, T

    Grey, C. F.

    McLeavy, F

    Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

    Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

    MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

    Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

    Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

    Mainwaring, W. H.

    Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

    Gunter, R. J.

    Mann, Mrs. Jean

    Stross, Dr. Barnett

    Hale, Joseph (Rochdale)

    Manuel, A. C.

    Sylvester, G. O.

    Hall, John (Gateshead, W.)

    Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

    Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

    Hamilton, W. W.

    Mathers, Rt. Hon. G.

    Taylor, Robert (Morpeth)

    Hannan, W.

    Messer, F.

    Thomas, David (Aberdare)

    Hardman, D. R.

    Middleton, Mrs. L.

    Thomas, George (Cardiff)

    Hardy, E. A.

    Mikardo, Ian

    Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

    Hargreaves, A

    Mitchison, G. R.

    Thorneycroft, Harry (Clayton)

    Harrison, J.

    Moeran, E. W.

    Thurtle, Ernest

    Hastings, S.

    Monslow, W.

    Tomlinson, Rt. Hon. G.

    Hayman, F. H.

    Moody, A. S.

    Ungoed-Thomas, A. L.

    Hewitson, Capt. M.

    Morgan, Dr. H. B.

    Vernon, W. F.

    Holman, P.

    Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

    Viant, S. P.

    Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)

    Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, S.)

    Wallace, H. W.

    Houghton, D.

    Mort, D. L.

    Webb, Rt. Hon. M. (Bradford, C.)

    Hubbard, T.

    Moyle, A.

    Wells, Percy (Faversham)

    Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

    Murray, J. D.

    West, D. G.

    Hughes, Moelwyn (Islington, N.)

    Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

    Wheatley, Rt. Hon. J. (Edinb'gh, E.)

    Hynd, H. (Accrington)

    Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

    White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

    Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

    Oliver, G. H.

    White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

    Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

    Paget, R. T.

    Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.

    Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

    Paling, Rt. Hon. Wilfred (Dearne V'lly)

    Wigg, G.

    Janner, B.

    Pannell, T. C.

    Wilkins, W. A.

    Jay, D. P. T.

    Pargiter, G. A.

    Willey, Frederick (Sunderland)

    Jeger, George (Goole)

    Parker, J.

    Willey, Octavius (Cleveland)

    Jenkins, R. H.

    Paton, J.

    Williams, David (Neath)

    Johnson, James (Rugby)

    Pearson, A.

    Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)

    Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

    Peart, T. F.

    Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

    Jones, David (Hartlepool)

    Poole, C.

    Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'lly)

    Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S)

    Popplewell, E.

    Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

    Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

    Porter, G.

    Winterbottom, Ian (Nottingham, C.)

    Jones, William Elwyn (Conway)

    Pursey, Cmdr. H.

    Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

    Keenan, W.

    Rankin, J.

    Wise, F. J.

    Kenyon, C.

    Rees, Mrs. D.

    Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

    Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

    Reid, Thomas (Swindon)

    Wyatt, W. L.

    Kinley, J.

    Reid, William (Camlachie)

    Yates, V. F.

    Kirkwood, Rt. Hon. D.

    Rhodes, H.

    Lee, Frederick (Newton)

    Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvonshire)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

    Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

    Mr. Royle and

    Mr. Kenneth Robinson.

    NOES

    Aitken, W. T.

    Bullock, Capt. M.

    Dugdale, Maj. Sir Thomas (Richmond)

    Alport, C. J. M.

    Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

    Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

    Amory, Heathcoat (Tiverton)

    Burden, Squadron Leader F. A.

    Duthie, W. S.

    Arbuthnot, John

    Butcher, H. W.

    Eccles, D. M.

    Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)

    Butler, Rt. Hn. R. A. (Saffron Walden)

    Eden, Rt. Hon. A.

    Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

    Carr, Robert (Mitcham)

    Erroll, F. J.

    Baldwin, A. E.

    Channon, H.

    Fisher, Nigel

    Banks, Col. C.

    Churchill, Rt. Hon. W. S.

    Fort, R.

    Baxter, A. B.

    Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

    Foster, John

    Beamish, Major Tufton

    Colegate, A.

    Fraser, Sir I. (Morecambe & Lonsdale)

    Bell, R. M.

    Conant, Maj. R. J. E.

    Fyfe, Rt. Hon. Sir David Maxwell

    Bennett, Sir Peter (Edgbaston)

    Corbett, Lt.-Col. Uvedale (Ludlow)

    Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

    Bennett, William (Woodside)

    Craddock, G. B. (Spelthorne)

    Gammans, L. D.

    Bevins, J. R. (Liverpool, Toxteth)

    Cranborne, Viscount

    Garner-Evans, E. H. (Denbigh)

    Birch, Nigel

    Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.

    Gates, Maj. E. E.

    Bishop, F. P.

    Crouch, R. F.

    Gridley, Sir Arnold

    Black, C. W.

    Crowder, Capt. John (Finchley)

    Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

    Blackburn, A. R.

    Cundiff, F. W.

    Grimston, Robert (Westbury)

    Bossom, A. C.

    Davidson, Viscountess

    Harden, J. R. E.

    Bowen, E. R.

    Davies, Rt. Hn. Clement (Montgomery)

    Hare, Hon. J. H. (Woodbridge)

    Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.

    Davies, Nigel (Epping)

    Harvey, Air Codre. A. V. (Macclesfield)

    Boyle, Sir Edward

    de Chair, Somerset

    Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

    Braine, B. R.

    De la Bère, R.

    Heald, Lionel

    Braithwaite, Lt.-Cmdr. Gurney

    Deedes, W. F.

    Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.

    Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W.

    Dodds-Parker, A. D.

    Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

    Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)

    Donner, P. W.

    Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)

    Browne, Jack (Govan)

    Drayson, G. B.

    Hinchingbrook, Viscount

    Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.

    Drewe, C

    Hollis, M. C.

    66

    67

    Hornsby-Smith, Miss P.

    Maude, Angus (Ealing, S.)

    Snadden, W. McN.

    Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence

    Maudling R.

    Soames, Capt. C.

    Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N,.)

    Mellor, Sir John

    Spearman, A. C. M.

    Hudson, Rt. Hon. Robert (Southport)

    Molson, A. H. E.

    Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)

    Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)

    Morrison, John (Salisbury)

    Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)

    Hurd, A. R.

    Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)

    Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

    Hutchinson, Geoffrey (Ilford, N.)

    Nabarro, G.

    Storey, S.

    Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh W.)

    Nicholls, Harmar

    Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

    Hutchison, Colonel James

    Nicholson, G.

    Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

    Jones, A. (Hall Green)

    Nield, Basil (Chester)

    Studholme, H. G.

    Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.

    Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P.

    Summers, G. S.

    Kerr, H. W. (Cambridge)

    Nugent, G. R. H.

    Taylor, Charles (Eastbourne)

    Lancaster, Col. C. G.

    Nutting, Anthony

    Thompson, Kenneth Pugh (Walton)

    Lennox-Boyd, A. T.

    Odey, G. W.

    Thorneycroft, Peter (Monmouth)

    Linstead, H. N.

    O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

    Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

    Llewellyn, D.

    Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

    Touche, G. C.

    Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (King's Norton)

    Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

    Turner, H. F. L.

    Lloyd, Maj. Guy (Renfrew, E.)

    Orr-Ewing, Ian L. (Weston-super-Mare)

    Turton, R. H.

    Longden, Gilbert (Herts, S.W.)

    Osborne, C.

    Vane, W. M. F.

    Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

    Peake, Rt. Hon. O.

    Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

    Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

    Perkins, W. R. D.

    Walker-Smith, D. C.

    Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

    Peto, Brig. C. H. M.

    Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.

    Pickthorn, K.

    Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

    McAddon, S. J.

    Powell, J. Enoch

    Watkinson, H.

    McCallum, Major D.

    Prescott, S.

    Watt, Sir George Harvie

    McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.

    Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)

    Webbe, Sir Harold

    Macdonald, Sir Peter (I. of Wight)

    Profumo, J. D.

    Wheatley, Major M. J. (Poole)

    Mackeson, Brig. H. R.

    Raikes, H. V.

    White, Baker (Canterbury)

    McKibbin, A.

    Redmayne, M.

    Williams, Charles (Torquay)

    McKie, J. H. (Galloway)

    Remnant, Hon. P.

    Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

    MacLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)

    Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

    Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)

    MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

    Roper, Sir Harold

    Wills, G.

    Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

    Ropner, Col. L.

    Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

    Macpherson, Major Niall (Dumfries)

    Russell, R. S.

    Wood, Hon. R.

    Manningham-Butler, R. E.

    Savory, Prof. D. L.

    York, C.

    Marlowe, A. A. H.

    Scott, Donald

    Marples, A. E.

    Smiles, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)

    Smith, E. Martin (Grantham)

    Mr. Digby and Mr. Edward Heath.

    Marshall, Sidney (Sutton)

    Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)

    Question put accordingly, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 225; Noes, 196.

    Division No. 66.]

    AYES

    [5.8 p.m.

    Acland, Sir Richard

    Cooper, John (Deptford)

    Ganley, Mrs. C. S.

    Adams, H. R.

    Corbet, Mrs. Freda (Peckham)

    Gibson, C. W.

    Albu, A. H.

    Cove, W. G.

    Gilzean, A.

    Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)

    Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

    Glanville, James (Consett)

    Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

    Crosland, C. A. R.

    Gooch, E. G.

    Ayles, W. H.

    Crossman, R. H. S.

    Gordon-Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

    Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.

    Cullen, Mrs. A.

    Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)

    Bartley, P.

    Daines, P.

    Grey, C. F.

    Benn, Wedgwood

    Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

    Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

    Benson, G.

    Darling, George (Hillsborough)

    Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

    Beswick, F.

    Davies, A. Edward (Stoke, N.)

    Griffiths, R. J.

    Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

    de Freitas, G.

    Hale, Joseph (Rochdale)

    Bevin, Rt. Hon. E. (Woolwich, E.)

    Deer, G.

    Hall, John (Gateshead, W.)

    Blenkinsop, A.

    Delargy, H. J.

    Hamilton, W. W.

    Blyton, W. R.

    Diamond, J.

    Hannan, W.

    Booth, A.

    Dodds, N. N.

    Hardman, D. R.

    Bottomley, A. G.

    Donnelly, D.

    Hardy, E. A.

    Bowden, H. W.

    Driberg, T. E. N.

    Hargreaves, A

    Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton)

    Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)

    Harrison, J.

    Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

    Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

    Hastings, S.

    Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

    Edelman, M.

    Hayman, F. H.

    Brooks, T. J. (Normanton)

    Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

    Hewitson, Capt. M.

    Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

    Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

    Holman, P.

    Brown, George (Belper)

    Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

    Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)

    Brown, Thomas (Ince)

    Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

    Houghton, D.

    Burton, Miss E.

    Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

    Hubbard, T.

    Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)

    Ewart, R.

    Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

    Callaghan, L. J.

    Fernyhough, E.

    Hughes, Moelwyn (Islington, N.)

    Carmichael, J.

    Field, Capt. W. J.

    Hynd, H. (Accrington)

    Castle, Mrs. B. A.

    Finch, H. J.

    Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

    Champion, A. J.

    Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

    Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

    Clunie, J.

    Follick, M.

    Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

    Cocks, F. S.

    Foot, M. M.

    Janner, B.

    Coldrick, W.

    Forman, J. C.

    Jay, D. P. T.

    Collick, P.

    Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

    Jeger, George (Goole)

    Cook, T. F.

    Freeman, Peter (Newport)

    Jenkins, R. H.

    Johnson, James (Rugby)

    Mort, D. L.

    Stross, Dr. Barnett

    Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

    Moyle, A.

    Sylvester, G. O.

    Jones, David (Hartlepool)

    Murray, J. D.

    Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

    Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

    Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

    Taylor, Robert (Morpeth)

    Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

    Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

    Thomas, David (Aberdare)

    Jones, William Elwyn (Conway)

    Oliver, G. H.

    Thomas, George (Cardiff)

    Keenan, W.

    Paget, R. T.

    Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

    Kenyon, C.

    Paling, Rt. Hon. Wilfred (Dearne V'lly)

    Thorneycroft, Harry (Clayton)

    Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

    Pannell, T. C.

    Thurtle, Ernest

    Kinley, J.

    Pargiter, G. A.

    Tomlinson, Rt. Hon. G.

    Kirkwood, Rt. Hon. D.

    Parker, J.

    Turner-Samuels, M.

    Lee, Frederick (Newton)

    Paton, J.

    Vernon, W. F.

    Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

    Pearson, A.

    Viant, S. P.

    Lewis, Arthur (West Ham. N.)

    Peart, T. F.

    Wallace, H. W.

    Lindgren, G. S.

    Poole, C.

    Webb, Rt. Hon. M. (Bradford, C.)

    Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.

    Popplewell, E.

    Wells, Percy (Faversham)

    Logan, D. G.

    Porter, G.

    West, D. G.

    Longden, Fred (Small Heath)

    Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

    Wheatley, Rt. Hon. J. (Edinb'gh, E.)

    McAllister, G.

    Pursey, Cmdr. H.

    White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

    MacColl, J. E.

    Rankin, J.

    White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

    McGhee, H. G.

    Rees, Mrs. D.

    Whiteley, Rt. Hon W.

    McInnes, J.

    Reid, Thomas (Swindon)

    Wigg, G.

    McKay, John (Wallsend)

    Reid, William (Camlachie)

    Wilkins, W. A.

    McLeavy, F.

    Rhodes, H.

    Willey, Frederick (Sunderland)

    MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

    Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvonshire)

    Willey, Octavius (Cleveland)

    Mainwaring, W. H.

    Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

    Williams, David (Neath)

    Mann, Mrs. Jean

    Ross, William (Kilmarnock)

    Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)

    Manuel, A. C.

    Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

    Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

    Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

    Silverman, Julius (Erdington)

    Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'lly)

    Mathers, Rt. Hon. G.

    Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

    Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

    Messer, F.

    Simmons, C. J.

    Winterbottom, Ian (Nottingham, C.)

    Middleton, Mrs. L.

    Slater, J.

    Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

    Mikardo, Ian

    Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

    Wise, F. J.

    Mitchison, G. R.

    Snow, J. W.

    Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

    Moeran, E. W.

    Soskice, Rt. Hon Sir Frank

    Wyatt, W. L.

    Monslow, W.

    Sparks, J. A.

    Yates, V. F.

    Moody, A. S.

    Steele, T.

    Morgan, Dr. H. B.

    Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

    Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

    Mr. Royle and

    Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, S.)

    Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

    Mr. Kenneth Robinson.

    NOES

    Aitken, W. T.

    Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.

    Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

    Alport, C. J. M.

    Crouch, R. F.

    Hollis, M. C.

    Amory, Heathcoat (Tiverton)

    Crowder, Capt. John (Finchley)

    Hornsby-Smith, Miss P.

    Arbuthnot, John

    Cundiff, F. W.

    Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence

    Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)

    Davidson, Viscountess

    Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

    Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

    Davies, Rt. Hn. Clement (Montgomery)

    Hurd, A. R.

    Baldwin, A. E.

    Davies, Nigel (Epping)

    Hutchinson, Geoffrey (Ilford, N.)

    Banks, Col. C.

    de Chair, Somerset

    Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh W.)

    Baxter, A. B.

    De la Bère, R.

    Hutchison, Colonel James

    Beamish, Major Tufton

    Deedes, W. F.

    Jones, A. (Hall Green)

    Bell, R. M.

    Digby, S. W.

    Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.

    Bennett, Sir Peter (Edgbaston)

    Dodds-Parker, A. D.

    Kerr, H. W. (Cambridge)

    Bennett, William (Woodside)

    Donner, P. W.

    Lancaster, Col. C. G.

    Bevins, J. R. (Liverpool, Toxteth)

    Drayson, G. B.

    Lennox-Boyd, A. T.

    Birch, Nigel

    Drewe, C.

    Linstead, H. N.

    Bishop, F. P.

    Dugdale, Maj. Sir Thomas (Richmond)

    Llewellyn, D.

    Black, C. W.

    Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

    Lloyd, Maj. Guy (Renfrew, E.)

    Bossom, A. C.

    Duthie, W. S.

    Longden, Gilbert (Herts, S.W.)

    Bowen, E. R.

    Eccles, D. M.

    Low, A. R. W.

    Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.

    Eden, Rt. Hon. A.

    Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

    Boyle, Sir Edward

    Erroll, F. J.

    Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

    Braine, B. R.

    Fisher, Nigel

    Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

    Braithwaite, Lt.-Cmdr. Gurney

    Fort, R.

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.

    Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W.

    Foster, John

    McAdden, S. J.

    Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)

    Fraser, Sir I. (Morecambe & Lonsdale)

    McCallum, Major D.

    Browne, Jack (Govan)

    Fyfe, Rt. Hon. Sir David Maxwell

    McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.

    Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.

    Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

    Macdonald, Sir Peter (I. of Wight)

    Bullock, Capt. M.

    Gammans, L. D.

    Mackeson, Brig. H. R.

    Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

    Garner-Evans, E. H. (Denbigh)

    McKibbin, A.

    Burden, Squadron Leader F. A.

    Gates, Maj. E. E.

    McKie, J. H. (Galloway)

    Butcher, H. W.

    Gridley, Sir Arnold

    Maclay, Hon. John

    Butler, Rt. Hn. R. A. (Saffron Walden)

    Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

    MacLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)

    Carr, Robert (Mitcham)

    Grimston, Robert (Westbury)

    MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

    Channon, H.

    Harden, J. R. E.

    Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

    Churchill, Rt. Hon. W. S.

    Hare, Hon. J. H. (Woodbridge)

    Macpherson, Major Niall (Dumfries)

    Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

    Harvey, Air Codre. A. V. (Macclesfield)

    Manningham-Buller, R. E.

    Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

    Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

    Marlowe, A. A. H.

    Colegate, A.

    Heald, Lionel

    Marples, A. E.

    Conant, Maj. R. J. E.

    Heath, Edward

    Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)

    Corbett, Lt.-Col. Uvedale (Ludlow)

    Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.

    Marshall, Sidney (Sutton)

    Craddock, G. B. (Spelthorne)

    Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

    Maude, Angus (Ealing, S.)

    Cranborne, Viscount

    Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)

    Maudling, R.

    70

    71

    Mellor, Sir John

    Profumo, J. D.

    Thompson, Kenneth Pugh (Walton)

    Molson, A. H. E.

    Raikes, H. V.

    Thorneycroft, Peter (Monmouth)

    Morrison, John (Salisbury)

    Redmayne, M.

    Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

    Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)

    Remnant, Hon. P.

    Touche, G. C.

    Nabarro, G.

    Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

    Turner, H. F. L.

    Nicholls, Harmar

    Roper, Sir Harold

    Turton, R. H.

    Nicholson, G.

    Ropner, Col. L.

    Vane, W. M. F.

    Nield, Basil (Chester)

    Russell, R. S.

    Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

    Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P.

    Savory, Prof. D. L.

    Walker-Smith, D. C.

    Nugent, G. R. H.

    Scott, Donald

    Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

    Nutting, Anthony

    Smiles, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter

    Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

    Odey, G. W.

    Smith, E. Martin (Grantham)

    Watkinson, H.

    O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

    Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)

    Watt, Sir George Harvie

    Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

    Snadden, W. McN.

    Webbe, Sir Harold

    Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

    Soames, Capt. C.

    White, Baker (Canterbury)

    Orr-Ewing, Ian L. (Weston-super-Mare)

    Spearman, A. C. M.

    Williams, Charles (Torquay)

    Osborne, C.

    Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)

    Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

    Peake, Rt. Hon. O.

    Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)

    Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)

    Perkins, W. R. D.

    Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

    Wills, G.

    Peto, Brig. C. H. M.

    Storey, S.

    Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

    Pickthorn, K.

    Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

    Wood, Hon. R.

    Powell, J. Enoch

    Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

    York, C.

    Prescott, S.

    Summers, G. S.

    Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)

    Taylor, Charles (Eastbourne)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Mr. Studholme and Major Wheatley.

    Question put, and agreed to.

    5.15 p.m.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I beg to move, in page 2, line 13, at the end, to add:
    (3) Nothing in the said Act or in this section shall be held to authorise the making of any order under Regulation fifty-eight A of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939.
    This Amendment would make it impossible to reintroduce the direction of labour by Statutory Instrument. My object is not to discuss the merits of direction of labour on this Amendment, even if you were to allow me to do so, Sir Charles; it is to discuss the method by which direction of labour should be introduced, whether, as under this Bill it should be introduced by Statutory Instrument, or whether a different method should be adopted. I want to make it clear that I am not going into the merits of the question.
    Before asking for elucidation of the view of the Government, I wish to put the attitude of my hon. Friends and myself on this matter. First, we say that the direction of labour in any permanent enactment would never be countenanced by those on this side of the Committee. Second, we say that the direction of labour in peace-time in any form could not be agreed to, unless it were shown to be quite indispensable for re-armament. Third, we say that, even if it were shown to be indispensable, it should be introduced by statute, so that the justification would be made clear in the Second Reading debate and Amendments would be able to be introduced in Committee. That being our basic view, it follows that we think that Regulation 58A could be dispensed with and that no orders should
    72
    be made under it in peace-time, even for defence purposes, and this our Amendment provides.
    The difficulty in which we are arises from the contradictory statements that have been made by members of the Government. Prima facie the fact that orders may be made for these new purposes makes it more likely that the Regulation will be used. Therefore, we have to examine rather carefully what the Government have said. I begin with a statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 23rd October, 1950:
    "I could not honestly and conscientiously say that within the next 12 months it is quite out of the question that we should need to make orders under this regulation."
    He was referring to Regulation 58A, the one dealing with the direction of labour He continued:
    "The reason for it, of course, would be in connection with the defence programme."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd October, 1950; Vol. 478, c. 2588.]
    Mr. Bevan: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman mind reading the last part of that quotation again? He seemed to me to put something in parenthesis, as if it were a comment.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I am sorry. I was explaining that these words, which were actually those used by the Chancellor, referred to Regulation 58A. As the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, I did not intend to add any colour to the Chancellor's remarks.
    I cannot give the exact words of the next statement for a reason that will be obvious to the Committee. The essence of the next Government statement was

    73
    that any provision which conflicted with the freedom of the individual, such as the direction of labour, should be left out of any permanent Bill placing these powers on a permanent basis; and that if such a provision was needed, owing to difficult circumstances, the Government would come to Parliament "with an express Bill." I ask the Committee to note the words "with an express Bill," because that is very like the position which I have already declared to the Committee to be that upon which my hon. and right hon. Friends stand. That is the effect of what Lord Jowitt, the Lord Chancellor, said in another place on 2nd November, which was a few days later.
    That, naturally, aroused considerable hopes that the two sides of the House might be coming together on this point. But then, five days after, there was a debate in this House in which the matter was taken up—including the statement which was made by the Lord Chancellor—by the Minister of Local Government and Planning, who set himself the task of making the matter pellucidly clear. After reading a column of what the right hon. Gentleman said, I cannot say that the clarity became any more pellucid to me, but at all events we have the advantage of his gloss upon the Lord Chancellor's statement.
    It is interesting to see how he put it, in view of what I have already summarised as being what was said in another place, because the right hon. Gentleman began by saying that both the Lord Chancellor, to whom I have referred, and he himself, were speaking with the full authority of the Cabinet. He again said:
    "the Bill we shall introduce"—
    that is, the permanent Bill—
    "will not contain any provision for the direction of labour. We do not have it in mind to introduce a Bill providing for the direction of labour."
    He then went on to say that if there occurred some misadventure or crisis the Government would have to consider it again. Then he repeated:
    "But we have no intention of introducing, in this Bill or in any other Bill, a provision providing for the direction of labour."
    The right hon. Gentleman then went on to make a fundamental mistake, because he said:
    "A few months ago we dispensed with them,"—
    74
    that is, the orders under the Regulation—
    "to the great chagrin of the Opposition, who were looking forward to a debate which was, unfortunately for them, disposed of by the fact that a few days before my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour dispensed with those powers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1950; Vol. 480, c. 889.]
    That was a mistake because, of course, the then Minister of Labour had not dispensed with the powers. Regulation 58A was still in operation. What he had dispensed with were the orders which he had made under the Regulation, and the Minister of Local Government and Planning was under a complete misapprehension in stating to the House that the powers had been dispensed with.
    That brings up the story to a point which the right hon. Gentleman sitting opposite and I remember, because I am sure it will be the only occasion in my life in respect of which the right hon. Gentleman will ever say that, after a speech of mine, his first intention and necessity was to reduce the temperature of the House. The right hon. Gentleman has the occasion in mind. He said, in the course of letting the mercury run down in the tube, that he would deal, if I might put it in this way, with both employers and employed, and he said that the measures that would be taken by the Government would deal equitably with both.
    May I again make clear the reason why, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, I am doing this? I am not arguing that point; I fully appreciate that there might well be circumstances in which that was a necessary policy for the Government. During the war we saw the necessity for concentration as well as for the direction of labour. I am not arguing whether the time is ripe or when the time would be ripe—that would not be relevant. But I do say—and I hope the right hon. Gentleman may think it—that to deal equitably with any aspect of this problem it should be done by legislation and not by regulation, as can be done under this Bill.
    The Secretary of State for Air, who dealt with this matter on the Second Reading of the Bill, did not seem to have had the advantage of the opinion of the Solicitor-General, which the Committee has had this afternoon, because the Secretary of State for Air said flatly:
    "all I can say is that they"—

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    meaning the Government—
    "have powers under the Regulations to do so"—
    that is, to bring in direction of labour—
    "in any circumstances and spheres that they think necessary."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st February, 1951; Vol. 484, c. 1378.]
    Of course, the whole purpose of this Bill is to give the Government power for the purposes and in the sphere of dealing with defence matters.
    5.30 p.m.
    We feel that a problem of this perplexity, which has an effect on personal liberty, ought to be dealt with by statute. I have given the first reason. If a Bill is introduced the Minister has to justify the need for the Bill by a speech on principle on Second Reading. Our support of this Bill, which I reiterated a short time ago, shows we should be prepared to consider, on the merits and according to the circumstances of the time, whether or not there was a need. But if hon. Members in all quarters of the House required a Bill for compulsory military service, so that they could deal with the aspects of the problem which the needs of their constituents underline, I cannot see why they should not require the same method of dealing with it when it is a question of directing to jobs people who remain civilians, but whose efforts are so important to the country.
    I would put it on two grounds. First, the requirement for a reasoned justification to us, wherever we may sit, on Second Reading. Second, that we ought to have the opportunity of introducing Amendments to deal with special cases. It is only when we come to the House on Committee stage and hear somebody who has special knowledge of one section of industry, or some occupation, that we begin to appreciate the special problems. I consider, therefore, that amendment is essential in a matter of this kind. The alternative is making orders which can be prayed against, but cannot be amended, and that is wholly inadequate to the subject matter.
    I apologise to the Committee for dealing with the matter at some length, but hon. Members will appreciate that it was necessary for me to take that line about Government statements so that the right hon. Gentleman would be able to see the
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    difficulties which are in our minds and could attempt to clarify them for us.
    Mr. Bevan: I am obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for having stated the position with such clarity. At the same time, he said that it is not necessary—although I think it would be in order—to discuss the merits of the direction of labour. I hope that what I shall have to say will make it unnecessary for us to go into that question to any great degree.
    The right hon. and learned Gentleman quoted a number of my colleagues on this subject. As he said, it is possible to put a different tangent of interpretation upon various statements which have been made, because the whole position is not so clear as it might be. Indeed, I think the Amendment itself shows that there is a certain lack of clarity in the position; because it would be assumed from the Amendment that the power to direct labour arises from an order made under the Regulation. That is not the case. The power derives directly from the Regulation itself, and not from an order made under it. I quote here from the first paragraph of Regulation 58A:
    "The Minister of Labour and National Service (hereinafter in this Regulation referred to as 'the Minister') or any National Service Officer may direct any person in Great Britain to perform such services in the United Kingdom or in any British ship not being a Dominion ship as may be specified by or described in the direction.…"
    So we are not here dealing with powers taken by the Minister under an order. We are here dealing with powers conferred upon the Minister by regulation, and that, I think, is the reason for the slight confusion which has arisen among those responsible for the Amendment.
    Sir Herbert Williams: May I put this point? During the war a great many documents were issued entitled "directions" but they were, nevertheless, Statutory Rules and Orders.
    Mr. Bevan: The only point I am making, to clear our minds about it, is that the power is there and can be exercised by the Minister by means of directions; either by himself or by an officer acting on his behalf. Therefore, it is not necessary to have an order to bring those powers into existence. I merely make that point to get the technicalities right. I agree with the right hon. and learned

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    Gentleman that the real point here is whether the House of Commons considers it is desirable that power over the individual, the liberty of the subject, should be taken by the Government by an instrument that can only be prayed against; or whether such powers should be exercised in peace-time at all. That is the issue.
    I take the view that, except in very exceptional circumstances indeed, it is not desirable, in peace-time, to direct labour. I also take the view that if it is desirable to do it, it ought to be done by a Bill; and that we ought not, it seems to me, to give to the Executive such extraordinary powers over personal liberty except by statute, in which they can be properly defined and in which the House can put whatever safeguards it considers necessary. I would, therefore, like to put on record this statement: no further use will be made of the powers given by Regulation 58 A either (a) to direct men or women to perform specified services or (b) to require them to remain in specified employment unless and until an immediate attack on this country is anticipated. If, for any other reason, such powers are deemed to be necessary, legislation to obtain them will be introduced.
    I am afraid, however, that that does not entirely dispose of the Amendment. I believe—I hope I am correct in saying this—that the Opposition have moved the Amendment on this point only. But there are powers under Regulation 58A that we shall need. For instance, in addition to the power to direct labour it gives power to make orders to require workers to register themselves, or the employers to register particulars about their employees. It also gives power to make essential work orders; and to require employers to keep necessary records and to give information; and for inspectors to enter premises and inspect with a view to securing compliance with directions given under the Regulation. In our opinion those powers may be absolutely essential if we are to carry out the re-armament programme. They are not powers which constrain the liberty of the subject, but they are powers which I might find it necessary to use. I am advised that if the Amendment were carried all these powers would be killed, and I am quite sure it is not the desire of the Opposition to do that.
    Mr. Bowles: My right hon. Friend refers to the retention of powers relating to essential work orders, and, earlier, in his prepared statement, he said that he had no desire to retain people in industry. Would he make that a little clearer?
    Mr. Bevan: Yes, certainly. It may still be necessary to identify a certain industry as essential and then to direct the employer that he should take on no more workers there. That does not interfere with the liberty of the individual. It does not say to the employer, "You shall work here or you shall work there" or, to the employee, "You shall work here or you shall work there." It is merely power to concentrate production for the purposes necessary for defence. It is also power to secure that the defence programme itself does not eat too substantially into the necessity for exports.
    So, we have these two purposes which, I suggest, are dominant purposes. The first is to maintain the export drive in order that an unfavourable balance of trade may not jeopardise our position, and the second is to carry out the re-armament programme. Suppose that we have said to an industry, "You are necessary for the export drive." As hon. Members know, industries produce for the home market as well as for the export market. Suppose, in the allocation of raw materials or in the right to employ larger numbers of workers, something was done on the ground that the industry was producing for the export trade, and then we had cause to suspect that what was being given for the extension or for the maintenance of export trade was, in fact, used for production for the home market. In that case we must have powers to inspect to find out whether the purposes were not being violated by the employer.
    That, again, is not a power over the liberty of the subject. It is a power to secure that we get the necessary information and that the necessary disciplines are applied to keep industry moving in the direction which it is nationally desirable that it should move. There are various powers, all contained in Regulation 58A, which it may be necessary to use. I am sure, from what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said, that the Amendment moved by the Opposition does not desire,

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    as it were, to decapitate the powers, but only to secure from me an undertaking of the nature I have already given. That being the case, I hope that the Opposition will be satisfied with the statement and will withdraw the Amendment.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The announcement which the right hon. Gentleman has just made is, as he is very well aware, one of very great importance. It justifies the efforts against direction of labour in time of peace which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) has made over a number of years. The right hon. Gentleman, after some four years of effort against him and his predecessors, has largely met the points which were urged in vain in this House when there were 400 Members on the benches opposite.
    I appreciate the technical and mechanical difficulties which the right hon. Gentleman would be in if he were to accept this Amendment. I do not know what my right hon. and learned Friend will do, but, if the Amendment is to be withdrawn without any further assurance, we shall be left in the unsatisfactory position that Regulation 58A will still be there in full effect, and that it would always be possible for a successor of the right hon. Gentleman to make an order under it. I am not casting any aspersions upon any right hon. Gentleman who may occupy the office which the Minister now holds, but where we are concerned, as we are here, with the liberty of the subject, it is not a wholly satisfactory position.
    I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider this suggestion. Why is it not possible for him to accept the Amendment and then to introduce—I imagine that it would have to be by statute—the necessary provisions which he wishes to save from Regulation 58A? That would then give the House an opportunity, now long overdue, to review a good many of the subsidiary provisions of Regulation 58A. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, these provisions are a good many years old. The time has come when many of them could be reconsidered. An opportunity for that would be given if the right hon. Gentleman could do something on those lines.
    5.45 p.m.
    Mr. Bevan: If the hon. Gentleman reads my announcement, which he cannot do now, he will see that I said:
    "unless and until an immediate attack on this country is anticipated."
    We are living in unusual times. I have not given an undertaking that in no circumstances whatever will these powers be used. Let us take the case of an unexpected air attack. We might have to act at once. Therefore, I could not give the undertaking in such precise terms as the hon. Member indicated. I think that it would be most unusual to refuse to accept an undertaking from a spokesman of the Government made in such precise and particular terms. Indeed, I cannot imagine the House of Commons allowing the Government to take these powers except in circumstances that would justify them after such an undertaking being given.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In the disastrous circumstances which the right hon. Gentleman has envisaged, clearly it would be necessary for a great deal of emergency legislation to be put through, as the right hon. Gentleman will recall that it was put through in the first days of September, 1939. Speaking for myself, I cannot see why it should be impossible to put through, if it be necessary, direction of labour at a time when other emergency legislation would have to be put through. I cannot see what the difficulty is.
    Mr. Bevan: I cannot imagine in such circumstances any Minister waiting even for the House of Commons. He would act first, and these would be the powers under which he would act. Then he would have to justify his action by the circumstances of the time. It is not good enough to say that in face of action of that sort, he could come to the House of Commons for emergency powers. The House would expect him to take emergency action and justify it afterwards.
    Mr. H. Strauss: I know that the right hon. Gentleman will not think that I am for a moment questioning his bona fides if I give reasons why I should prefer something in the legislation rather than a mere undertaking, but I agree with him, in part, in what he has said about the technical objections to our Amendment as it stands. The two points I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman are these:

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    first, I think it is always difficult critically to examine the form of an undertaking which is read to the Committee, as the right hon. Gentleman very usefully read it. Nevertheless, my first impression was that it was generally satisfactory. If he would allow me to make one criticism, which I assure him is not frivolous, I am sorry that he used the word "anticipated" when I think he meant "expected." I think he will find that his undertaking would be better if he said "expected" instead of "anticipated" in the place where it occurs. There is a difference between the two. I say that to the right hon. Gentleman with the less hesitation, because I know that he has himself some appreciation of the accurate use of language.
    But the whole of the undertaking he has given would be capable of being placed in this Measure. I do not think that anything drafted by amateur draftsmen would be wholly satisfactory to the right hon. Gentleman, but I am certain that his own draftsmen could draft the undertaking he has given in satisfactory form and incorporate it in this Measure. The second point is that, apart from the emergency in which he might, for the reasons he has given, want to retain even the power of direction of labour, all the other powers he mentioned as those which he might wish to retain arise, I think, under paragraph (4) of the Regulation.
    I think that either of two methods of drafting could give more satisfaction than the undertaking in the Minister's speech has given. He could set out in the Measure either those things which he wishes to retain or those things which he is quite content to abandon. Therefore, while in no way quarrelling with the general tone and purpose of his speech, as I understood it, I would ask him to consider whether his undertaking could not be incorporated in this Measure which we now have before us, because, if so, I think he will agree—and on the basis of his past speeches he certainly ought to agree—that it would be much more satisfactory to hon. Members in all parts of the Committee who have some concern with a possible invasion of human liberties.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I do not want to stop any of my hon. Friends who have any particular points on which they want to ask the right hon. Gentleman, but I
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    am sure that he will appreciate my feeling that I ought to rise now to signify a course which seems to be right to me. Whether or not I ask now, Sir Charles, for leave to withdraw the Amendment, you will understand that that is what I intend to do. In intimating that to the Committee, may I say that the right hon. Gentleman has expressed quite clearly—and, of course, he was speaking with all the responsibility of his position—the view that he does not like, and does not intend to have, the direction of labour in time of peace, and he has also indicated what he means by "time of peace" with sufficient clarity for my purpose and approach. Further, he has acceded to the principle that, if direction of labour is introduced, it should be introduced by statute.
    I feel that it is most important that, when the two great parties, through their spokesmen, come to an agreement on an important point, it ought to be accepted, and that I ought to say that here is a point of agreement which we should ask everyone to support. Therefore, I felt that it would be right at an early stage to intimate to you, Sir Charles, that I shall, at the proper moment, formally ask for leave to withdraw the Amendment on the undertaking and explanation which have been given by the right hon. Gentleman. But, of course, I am anxious not to stand between my hon. Friends behind me and any specific questions which they may desire to ask. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention.
    Mr. Watkinson: There is one point which I should like to put to the Minister. I think that this afternoon, we may have done something of great value to industry. It is quite obvious that the only way of getting over our difficulties in the next few years—and there is no difference between the two sides of the Committee on this question—is by achieving a greater degree of productivity.
    The point which I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman—not having had the benefit of reading and carefully considering the statement which he has made—is whether it will be made quite clear to those who work in industry that any threat of the direction of labour is now removed from them—unless, of course, a Measure for that purpose is introduced in the House—except and until we are

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    actually on the threshold of a fighting war. The particular point about which I am concerned is this. Let us suppose that there is an intensification of the cold war, and we have other adventures like Korea elsewhere in the world. Would that be taken to be the anticipated threat—"anticipated" was the word the Minister used—that might cause any Minister to bring in an order under Regulation 58A, or will it only be the direct threat of hostilities against this country itself? It is a small point, but it is essential that industry as a whole should have its mind clear on these things, because if they can feel that, in going to do this job, they are acting of their own free will and not under any direction from a Minister, we shall get very much better production results.
    Mr. Marlowe: The only point which I wish to bring to the notice of the Committee concerns the value of dealing with matters of this kind by legislation. For a long period, we have been seeking the withdrawal of Regulation 58A, and, in effect, that has now been achieved, because the Minister says that, except in particular circumstances, he will not exercise his powers of direction of labour which exist in that Regulation. This is a power which we have been endeavouring for a long time to abolish, and we have used every method of doing so, including the use of the Prayer. When we get legislation which comes before us on the Floor of the House, the effect is achieved. I hope that hon. Members will remember this very valuable lesson, and will also remember that it is better to legislate by means of a Bill than by decree.
    Mr. Bevan: I really must ask the hon. and learned Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe) not to make the suggestion that Regulation 58A has been withdrawn.
    Mr. Marlowe: I did not say that. I said that it no longer contained the power for the direction of labour.
    Mr. Bevan: It is much more. I must not run the risk, later, of exposing myself to an attack of bad faith. All that I have said, and I repeat the language, is this:
    "No further use will be made of the powers given by Regulation 58A either (a) to
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    direct men or women to perform specified services, or (b), to require them to remain in specified employment unless and until an immediate attack on this country is expected."
    Mr. H. Strauss: Thank you very much.
    Mr. Bevan:
    "If for any other reason such powers are deemed to be necessary, legislation to obtain them will be introduced."
    All the other powers of Regulation 58A remain. I said that it may be necessary to use all or some of them, but they will not be powers directly relating to the liberty of the subject in the way that the direction of labour does. I do want to assure the Committee that the language is precise. I could not do what the hon. and learned Member for Norwich, South (Mr. H. Strauss) suggested, because it would still be necessary, even if I were to take out the powers from this Bill, to put them back again.
    In these circumstances, I think the assurance I have given is more useful than the Amendment would be. It is always difficult to try to put into a Bill all kinds of concrete circumstances that might make it necessary to do this. For example, an attack on this country might be made by means of directed missiles or anything else. We should find the greatest difficulty in defining the circumstances in which it might be necessary to act, and I think it is better to leave it in this way, in view of the unprecedented circumstances in which we are placed.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
    6.0 p.m.
    Lieut.-Commander Braithwaite: There is one matter which I desire to raise with the right hon. Gentleman. We have now disposed of the question of the direction of labour, but there is another aspect of the powers contained in this Clause to which an oblique reference was made during the debate both by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) and the Minister of Labour himself. Could the right hon. Gentleman say a word to us on the powers dealing with the concentration of industry to which he referred in his speech a few moments ago? We had considerable experience during the

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    recent war of the operation of this procedure. The right hon. Gentleman told us that it may be necessary to use these powers for a variety of reasons. Dispersal is sometimes necessary, and concentration may be necessary for reasons of production and strategy.
    The most likely case is where there is such a shortage of a raw material affecting an industry that it is necessary to have some sort of central organisation or pool from which various factories concerned in that particular form of production would have to draw. In the event of our having to re-concentrate certain sections of industry, I should like to know whether, broadly speaking, he would be prepared to follow the procedure adopted in the recent war by which a scheme of concentration was prepared within industry itself and submitted to the Minister for his blessing or approval or any criticism.
    That would mean, of course, the right hon. Gentleman retaining the right and power to say, "This scheme is no good and I propose to proceed along different lines as advised by officials at the Ministry who have experience of these matters." But I think he will agree that, broadly speaking, during the recent war schemes of concentration which were put up from within industries and largely administered by committees of persons from within those industries, worked satisfactorily. That is the kind of line we ought to follow should it become necessary again. I think that this might be a suitable opportunity for the right hon. Gentleman to say a word to the Committee on that subject.
    Mr. Niall Macpherson: I should like to refer to the effect on another aspect of our life of powers conferred by this Clause to take possession of land and chattels and to use land in any way that is desired. I am certain we all recall that during the war the grim necessity existed to take over premises or land at very short notice indeed. Great hardships were imposed upon many owners or occupiers of land and buildings and those people incurred great losses.
    Regulation 51 confers power to take possession of any land and to make such use of it as a competent authority thinks to be expedient, and no period of notice is specified at all. Regulation 52 enables any land to be used for Army, Air Force
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    or Naval purposes and again no period of notice is specified. Regulation 53 enables chattels to be requisitioned, including ships, whether they are in this country or outside this country, if they belong to British owners. Regulation 54 gives power to permit nuisances, and in that case there is a period of notice.
    It seems to me that there is an essential difference between giving these powers for defence purposes and giving them for civil purposes. We all appreciate that where defence purposes are concerned there may be circumstances in which great urgency will arise, but I should have thought it possible so to draft the Bill as to give the Minister power by declaration to re-enter into certain powers which he himself had abrogated, as it were. The Minister has said that he will not use certain powers under Regulation 50A except in certain circumstances. I hope he will give the same kind of assurance on the period of notice and the circumstances in which he will take over land and chattels.
    The Deputy-Chairman (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew): The hon. Member is now discussing an Amendment I did not select.
    Mr. Macpherson: I think I am entitled to refer to the powers that are conferred by this Clause. I do not desire to refer to any particular remedy. In point of fact, the remedy I have suggested was not the remedy suggested in the Amendment—not precisely at any rate.
    The Deputy-Chairman: It does not make any difference whether it was in the Amendment or not. It is not in the Clause and therefore it is out of order.
    Mr. Macpherson: May I make reference to the effect of this Clause as far as the regulations to which I am referring are concerned? I was dealing with the degree of notice required by these regulations and I trust that is in order. I was about to say that, for example, under the Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) (Scotland) Act, 1947, periods of notice were laid down for what was considered urgent procedure. A period of notice was provided which enabled representations to be made within 14 days of publication in local newspapers. There was no public inquiry but there was power for a Minister to consider any representations made against the notice.

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    Under the powers given in this Bill no notice is required. Therefore, there can be no possibility at all of protesting against any action that the Minister or those whom he authorises may take. This is a very important point. We all recognise that in the case of imminent danger urgent powers would be required. But in the period of cold war or the sort of twilight in which we exist at the present time, it seems that so far as these regulations are concerned powers might be modified, at any rate in such a way as to limit the possibility of applying them in full until certain most serious circumstances arise. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will say how it is intended to apply these powers.
    Mr. Bevan: I think the hon. Member has misunderstood the purpose of the Clause. It does not confer any new power whatsoever. It only widens or re-defines the purpose for which existing powers can be used. If the hon. Member will look at the Clause—and I do not want to resurrect the previous discussion—he will find it merely makes it quite clear in this Bill that the powers that exist already can be used for the purposes defined in the Clause.
    It would be quite impossible to give notice of requisitioning for defence purposes. It might be possible in certain circumstances, but it is very difficult indeed to define circumstances in which notice must be given, or circumstances in which it need not be given, because emergency action is necessary. Indeed, it is very much in the national interest that action should be taken without notice quite often, because notice to do something for military purposes is not only notice to the owners of the property but it might be notice to the enemy of what our intentions were.
    Therefore, it may very often be necessary to consummate the act simultaneously with the notice being given. I think it would be quite improper here to modify the conditions in which requisitioning could take place. That would apply to ships as well as to land and property. It certainly would be undesirable, for example, to give long notice to the owner of a vessel that that vessel was to be subject to requisitioning. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Member will not press the point.
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    With regard to the concentration of industry, these powers are conferred upon the President of the Board of Trade—not upon the Minister of Labour—under Regulation 55, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will take the view that where concentration is necessary the higher the degree of the voluntary element in that concentration the better. I should not imagine that he would be at all loth to consider any schemes put up in order to bring about that concentration with the least disturbance to private interests. But, as will be recognised, I can give no undertaking at all of a precise nature at the moment. We do not know how this is going to alight on any particular industry, because not only are there the additional requirements for rearmament but there is, of course, a shortage of raw materials in certain cases which would very much complicate the matter. But I agree that where we do have concentration it is far better to have it by a scheme satisfactory to all concerned.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 2.—(STOPPING UP OF HIGHWAYS FOR DEFENCE PURPOSES.)
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I beg to move in page 2, line 17, after "diversion," to insert
    "for a period of not more than eighteen months."
    This Amendment raises less contentious and smaller issues than those raised by the previous Amendments, but it has a certain importance in those parts of the country in which it may well be that the Government will exercise powers given by this Bill for the stopping up of highways for defence purposes. As I understand the Clause, two methods for stopping up a highway are provided. There is the first method dealt with in the first five subsections, which is, I understand, intended to apply where the stopping up will be temporary. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary said so on the Second Reading, and when one compares the words used with the reference to permanent stopping up in the second part, it is obvious that some contrast is intended. The second method in the second part of the Clause deals with permanent stopping up.

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    The effect of my Amendment would be to ensure that the temporary procedure should only be used when it was, in fact, going to be a temporary stopping up. Temporary powers should not be allowed to have a long-term effect. The Amendment seeks, therefore, to restrict to a period of 18 months the stopping up which may be effected by the first procedure. I do not think that imposes any unfair burden on the Defence Departments. If they desire to stop up a highway for a longer period, they can use the procedure set out in subsection (5) and the following subsections, and make it permanent; if they want to do so for more than 18 months they would be forced to use that procedure. It seems to me that the advantage of forcing them to use that procedure is that it provides far greater protection for the interests adversely affected than it is possible to provide where it is only a temporary urgent stopping up which is needed.
    6.15 p.m.
    The effect, therefore, as I understand, if the Amendment is accepted, is that under the first procedure a highway may be stopped up for 18 months. If at the end of 18 months it is desired to continue the stopping up, then the second half of the Clause must be called in aid and the procedure therein set out may be used. I am not entirely tied to 18 months; I think it is a fair compromise, but I should be open to any argument that the Solicitor-General might have as to whether that was an appropriate period. What seems to be important is that there should be some definite period laid down for the purpose of the temporary procedure.
    The Solicitor-General: I do not think the hon. Member has given sufficient weight to subsection (4), and I hope that when I direct his attention to it rather more particularly he may agree that his Amendment is not necessary. The position is as he stated it. That is to say, the first four subsections provide for a method of stopping up highways temporarily, and then the succeeding subsections provide for permanent stopping up. Under the first four subsections the result will be that a road can be stopped up only for the period indicated in subsection (4).
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    Subsection (4) provides:
    "The power to make orders under subsection (1) of this section"—
    that is to say, to make orders temporarily stopping up highways—
    "shall cease to be exercisable on the expiry of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945."
    That means December, 1951. The original 1945 Act expired in December last year, and then there was the Motion to which we have had reference this afternoon to extend it for a further year up to 10th December, 1951.
    Then the proviso goes on to say:
    "Provided that any such order in force immediately before the expiry of that Act"—
    that is to say, in force immediately before December, 1951—
    "shall, unless previously revoked, continue in force for a further period of two years."
    That is to say, the maximum period for which it could possibly continue in force, unless the 1945 Act is further extended, is up to December, 1953.
    Supposing this Bill becomes law quite soon, and supposing, for example, the Minister of Transport stopped up a highway under subsection (1) in June of this year, the hon. Gentleman's Amendment would mean that the stopping up would continue until December, 1952.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Could.
    The Solicitor-General: It could continue until December, 1952. So that really there is only one year's difference between the position as it would be if this Amendment were accepted and the position as it is under the Bill as drawn. I feel that there is no need to abbreviate the comparatively short period as it is at the moment, as the hon. Gentleman would seek to abbreviate it. Not only is that the case, but the advice that I have received is that in a great many cases in which highways are temporarily stopped up it would be very difficult to determine within a period of 18 months after they are stopped up whether it was desirable to convert the temporary stopping up into a permanent stopping up.
    In a great many circumstances which one can envisage, the situation would not be clear enough at the end of 18 months to enable a firm decision to be taken whether the highway should be permanently stopped up under the succeeding provisions of the Clause. Indeed, it would

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    occasion a good deal of inconvenience, unnecessary expense and administrative action. I hope the hon. Gentleman will agree that there is not a sufficient case for abbreviating the period as he desires. It is true, as he has just intimated by his interjection, that the Supplies and Services Act can be continued, but it has to be continued as a result of discussion in this House. It can be continued only if a Motion is put down and carried under the terms of Section 8 of the Act of 1945. It is only after the House has decided that it is to remain in force for an extra year that the period specified in subsection (4) of the Clause can be prolonged.
    Inasmuch as the hon. Member's Amendment does no more than abbreviate the maximum time from December, 1953 to December, 1952—and it is the maximum time in both cases—with the result that it would often be very difficult by December, 1952, to take a decision whether the necessary steps should be followed permanently to stop up the highway, I urge upon the Committee that no useful purpose could be served by accepting the Amendment, and my advice is that it should not be accepted.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument sounded very convincing until one considered that it was based upon one hypothesis, and that a demonstrably false hypothesis—that the Supplies and Services Act would not in any circumstances be extended beyond 10th December of this year. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman comes to that Box in order to give that assurance on behalf of His Majesty's Government, well and good; but in the present state of the world no hon. Member believes that that will be the case. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows perfectly well that from time to time power has been taken to continue these statutes in force, Not only that, but that power has been taken by, to my mind, the singularly objectionable procedure of continuing them in force by Motion.
    Let me relate that to this issue. Suppose, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman admits is possible, the Acts are continued in force beyond 10th December of the present year and suppose, as he suggested, that is done by Motion. On that Motion it will be quite impossible as indeed was the case last October, to amend the powers at all. The House
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    will be presented with the whole thing and will be told, "Take it or leave it," as was the case on 23rd October last year. At that stage it will be impossible to impose any time limit at all upon the period during which the supposedly temporary power to stop up a highway can be exercised.
    I must confess that what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, particularly by implication, made me feel that my Amendment is rather more necessary than had appeared to be the case, because his comparison between the time in the Clause and my argument is a wholly artificial comparison. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows perfectly well that in the unlikely event of this Government continuing in power until 10th December, 1951, there is every intention either of providing the permanent statute promised in the King's Speech or of continuing the present statutes in force. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that.
    Once that is accepted, the whole of his argument—that there will be only a very limited period up to December, 1953, during which the temporary stopping up can be carried on—is quite clearly false. I am not at all happy about the attitude disclosed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I think it indicates at least the possibility that this temporary procedure—intended to be temporary, with all the lack of safeguards for the interests concerned which are perhaps acceptable in a temporary Measure but are wholly inacceptable in a permanent one—may in point of fact be continued for so long a period as to impose quite considerable injustice upon those affected.
    There is no point in my detaining the Committee with examples, but hon. Members are aware that closing up a means of access, for example to traders' establishments, or the closing of a road to a garage or public house, can effect very serious loss. There is very little protection if the temporary procedure is followed; there is very little cover for those people and very little chance for them to make representations. Although, as I said, this is a relatively small point, I am bound to say that the line taken by the right hon. and learned Gentleman is very disquieting and the possibility of some injustice being done in a limited number of cases is a real one.
    Amendment negatived.
    Mr. Pickthorn: I beg to move, in page 4, line 13, at the end to insert:
    (9) Any person who has any estate or interest in land which is injuriously affected by any order made under this section shall be entitled to recover from the Minister of Transport compensation for the injury to that estate or interest; and any question whether compensation is payable under this subsection or as to the amount of any compensation so payable shall, in default of agreement, be determined by the Lands Tribunal.
    I move this Amendment without any elaboration or even very much by way of illustration or illumination because my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing), who is primarily interested in it is unfortunately detained elsewhere. I think the purpose of the Amendment is quite plain upon the face of it; and equally that upon the face of it, hon. Members in all parties would wish that where the State has in the general interest to destroy or diminish somebody's legitimate right in something, the person so damaged should have the prospect of equitable compensation.
    I think it will be in the recollection of hon. Members who have been interested in the Bill that on Second Reading the Secretary of State for Air said—I will not overcall it; I do not say he gave anything we would endeavour to use as an assurance—at least, he admitted that there was substance in the suggestion now embodied in this Amendment, and gave an assurance that the matter should be looked into. I hope that at least the matter is now fully understood on the Treasury Bench, and I venture even to hope that it may be admitted that there is something in the Amendment which was desired by my hon. Friend and which in his absence I am afraid I move rather inadequately, but I hope I have made the quite simple point plain enough.
    The Solicitor-General: As it stands, the Clause incorporates by reference certain provisions for compensation. Compensation is payable in the first place to persons whose land is acquired for the purpose of providing an alternative route. It is payable also to statutory undertakers who may be required to move their pipes and other apparatus to the alternative route provided. That is done by incorporating Defence Regulation 51 and Section 49 (3) of the Town and Country Planning Act. That is so far as the former category of compensation is concerned. The latter category of compensation is similarly—
    Mr. Pickthorn: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman remind us which is the former and which is the latter?
    The Solicitor-General: The former category are persons whose land is acquired for the purpose of providing an alternative route.
    Mr. Pickthorn: They get compensation?
    The Solicitor-General: They get compensation under the regulations, and the way that is done as a matter of machinery is that Defence Regulation 51 is applied by subsection (3) of the Clause. In the case of permanent stopping up of highways it is done by incorporating subsection (3) of Section 49 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. That is the first category of compensation; compensation in the second category is brought about by incorporating in subsection (3) Defence Regulation 50 and, in the case of a permanent stopping up, by incorporating Section 49 (6) of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. That is done by subsection (6) of this Clause.
    But to go further and to do what the hon. Member proposes would be to introduce a wholly novel precedent in these stopping up codes. What he would seek to do—and I infer that by reference to the language which he uses, namely, by reference to his inclusion of "injuriously affected" land—is to incorporate the compensation provisions of Section 68 of the Land Clauses Act, 1845.
    6.30 p.m.
    That, as hon. Members know, is the general provision which contains compensation provisions and which is made applicable in a number of statutes in the case where land is acquired, but in the codes which deal with stopping up of highways there is absolutely no provision for compensation such as the hon. Gentleman desires. I refer to the Highway Act, 1835, which is the main existing code, and to Section 49 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, which is the new code by which the Highway Act was partly replaced; and I also refer to the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act, 1945. None of these three codes, all of which deal with stopping up of highways, contains any such provision for compensation as the hon. Gentleman desires.

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    Not only that, but the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act, deals with the case which is almost exactly analogous to the case with which this present Bill deals; that is, dealing with the case where a highway has been temporarily stopped up under emergency powers and is permanently stopped up. That is very similar to the sort of case which is dealt with by Clause 2 of the present Bill, and not even in that Act of 1945 is there any compensation provided for as the hon. Gentleman desires in this Clause.
    Not only is that an objection to the proposal which he makes, but if one were to accept the Amendment as he has drafted it in very few cases would it result—if, indeed, in any case—in compensation being paid at all, because the words "injuriously affected" in Section 68 of the 1845 Act have been construed in a number of judicial decisions as being limited to providing compensation for an actual infringement—I am speaking in general terms—of some easement or other right incidental to the ownership of land.
    A very typical case is that where works which are done on adjoining land, under the provisions of the Act, consist of the erection of a larger building and where the effect of the erection of that building is to block ancient lights rights, and the owner of adjoining land claims compensation. That is a typical case, and it has been said in general that compensation is only payable under Section 68 of the 1845 Act where one can say that some right inherent in the land has been interfered with as a result of the works done on adjoining land. Therefore, if one applies that interpretation of Section 68 to this kind of case it will, I think, be perfectly clear that in almost any case one can conceive there will be no compensation payable under that provision. Inconvenience, loss of business, and that sort of thing is not a subject of compensation under Section 68.
    Mr. Pickthorn: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman allow me? I am trying to follow him. I apologise to the Committee for interrupting. This is not really my baby, and I do not understand as fully as I hope I do in general when I have begotten the creature. Is the Solicitor-General telling us that the effect of the words "injuriously affected" would
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    be to limit compensation wholly within the purview of Section 68 of the 1845 Act?
    The Solicitor-General: I think it would do so. The crucial words upon which the whole subsection hinges are those words, as the hon. Gentleman will, I think, agree:
    "Any person who has any estate or interest in land which is"—
    and here come the crucial words—
    "injuriously affected…"
    It is those words which have been interpreted.
    Therefore, I hope the Committee will agree with me that the Amendment should not be accepted on these two grounds. The first, which is not, perhaps, a conclusive one, but one which, in this context, should have some weight, is that in none of the codes which deal with stopping up land is there any such provision for compensation being paid. There is different provision, and there is provision, indeed, in this particular Clause, for certain types of compensation. That is the first ground, though not a conclusive one, and hon. Gentlemen opposite say we should start a new precedent; but one should not start a new precedent in this context unless there were some reason for singling it out from other similar circumstances.
    The second, which is the more cogent, is that, as the Clause is drafted—and it is not only a matter of drafting because it is omitting a whole system of law, as it were—it could very rarely actually result in compensation being paid.
    Mr. McCorquodale: May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman about a concrete case? I think my hon. Friend, when discussing this on Second Reading, had in mind small garages, small teashops, and the like, that had been started upon the highway; and if the highway were shut, of course the whole business, and a man's whole savings put into the business, would be completely lost. Cannot he get compensation in a case of that sort?
    The Solicitor-General: I think that in a case like that no compensation would be payable under Section 68. That is not a case in which a right inherent in the land is interfered with. It is a case in which one may say that a man suffers considerable inconvenience—loss of business,

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    and so on; but that is not the kind of loss which has been held to be within the purview of Section 68.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: There is just one point to which, I feel, the Solicitor-General has not devoted quite enough attention, if he will forgive my saying so. Under the old code, in stopping up a highway, after the formalities had been gone through before the justices, and the plan had been made out, and so on, there was a right of appeal to quarter sessions, as he will remember, and the issue of fact which on rare but well-known occasions was left to the jury at quarter sessions was, first, whether the new highway was nearer and more commodious to the public, and second, whether the appellant was aggrieved.
    The Solicitor-General will remember that the judicial definition of "aggrieved" was whether the appellant had suffered some special loss which the general public had not incurred; and, although he is strictly correct in saying that did not provide for compensation, it did give the person who was affected the opportunity of making out his case, to try to prevent the alteration so that he would not sustain the damage, even if he could not be compensated for it.
    What worries us is the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) and elaborated in a particular example by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom (Mr. McCorquodale), that we may have someone who has a business and who not only loses his business but is, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right, excluded where a public access to the land is cut off. There would be, at any rate, an arguable case—I imagine how strongly the right hon. and learned Solicitor-General would argue it—for saying that his estate, his interest in the land, was injuriously affected. We were limiting the compensation to that amount. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate that we were being very reasonable in the matter. We were asking for a very limited compensation.
    He would be a rash man who, in a case of legislation by reference, would say that he had followed every possible consequence of the references made to so many Acts of Parliament as are made in this case. I cannot find that the person who
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    is affected in the way described has even an efficacious right of protest. In these circumstances we felt it was right that he should get this very limited compensation for which my hon. Friend asks. I think it is most regrettable that nothing had been done to secure that he can even state his case.
    If the right hon. and learned Gentleman can relieve my mind on that point, so much the better, but on a reading of the Clause, I certainly cannot find any opportunity for the person affected, even to make a protest. I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman can help me on that point. I am sure it is important to all of us who are considering a part of the community who will be very badly treated; they will lose not only their business which they may have built up, but also access to the position in which they live and carry on their being. I should, therefore, be grateful if the Solicitor-General could help us on that point.
    The Solicitor-General: For the case of permanent stopping up, not temporary stopping up, there are a number of provisions embodied in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, in Section 49, and also in the Sixth Schedule. Paragraph 4 of the Sixth Schedule provides for inquiries, and so on, and the Minister is required to give notice of his intention. It says:
    "If before the expiration of the said period of three months an objection is received by the Minister of Transport from any local authority or undertakers on whom a notice is required to be served under this Schedule, or from any other person appearing to him to be affected by the order, and the objection is not withdrawn, the Minister shall cause a local inquiry to be held."
    In certain circumstances he is not bound to do so. There is, therefore, certainly in the case of permanent stopping up, effective provision in the 1947 Act for the voicing of grievances, which can be said to be the counterpart to the provision for appeal in the 1835 Act.
    There is not that provision in the case of temporary stopping up. Of course, temporary stopping up is envisaged, generally speaking, in not necessarily an emergency, but in a near emergency. In that case there is less provision, but there is at any rate some provision for the voicing of a grievance to be found in

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    subsection (2). It is not nearly as effective as in the other case, but it is there, and the Committee may agree it is not inappropriate to the kind of circumstances envisaged with a temporary stopping up where, generally speaking, there is very often contemplated a rapid and perhaps near emergency. There the Minister has to give 21 days notice; it has to be published in the newspapers, and so on.
    I agree that it does not go to the length of ensuring that there must be an effective hearing, but it does give an opportunity to those who are aggrieved, even in the case of a temporary stopping up, to make such representations as they think fit. I therefore do not think it would be right to say that in the modern system there is no counterpart to the 1835 appeal procedure. In a permanent stopping up there is a very effective counterpart. Even in temporary stopping up it cannot be said that the person affected must be wholly voiceless.
    6.45 p.m.
    Mr. Marlowe: The Solicitor-General has taken a rather legalistic view of this Amendment. He has limited his reply to those cases of stopping up and of injurious affection as it might be defined in the 1835 Act. I do not believe that was really what my hon. Friends who drafted this Amendment had in mind. I think they were taking a much wider view and thinking of the man with a small business who might have his business impaired, or even have to close down because of some action taken by way of requisition, or something affecting the property. If I understood him aright, I think he said that in the case of gas and water undertakings, and so on, some compensation was payable, or some relief was available to them. Of course, it does not come as any surprise to us to find that the only people who benefit in this way are nationalised undertakings—
    The Solicitor-General The Solicitor-General indicated dissent.
    Mr. Marlowe: Did I misunderstand the right hon. and learned Gentleman?
    The Solicitor-General: Certainly I did not say that. I carefully indicated that there were two categories of persons entitled to compensation. The first were persons whose land was required for the
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    purpose of providing an alternative route, so the prejudicial observations of the hon. and learned Gentleman were founded on a complete misconception.
    Mr. Marlowe: If I was wrong I withdraw my remarks, but I certainly understood the right hon. and learned Gentleman to say that there were wider opportunities for compensation in the case of nationalised industries than there were for the individual. I thought that was what the right hon. and learned Gentleman was saying. As I say, that does not surprise anybody on this side of the Committee. I do not think, however, that this is such a narrow issue. What we should have in mind more is what will happen to the unfortunate man who, as a result of some action taken under this Clause, finds himself perhaps deprived of the whole of his livelihood.
    I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman could, without taking too much of a lawyer's view about it, and without resorting so much to the actual term "injuriously affected," look at this in a wider way and consider what happens to the man whose business is affected. Perhaps the words "injuriously affected" appearing in the Amendment have misled the right hon. and learned Gentleman into thinking that my hon. Friends were thinking only in those terms. I feel that that is not the case, and I hope the Solicitor-General will look at this again.
    Mr. James Hudson: The course of this discussion has made me think of that fictional character who always heard the sound of his horse's hoofs on the road as it trotted "cloppity-cloppity" as a recital of the words, "property, property." In this debate it has sounded to me where compensation for property is concerned, as though the party opposite are very much like that fictional character and turn all things to the account of property. Yet there are many people who may be injuriously affected by the stopping up of roads whose interests are not the interests of property at all, but whose interests do not seem to have been thought of by hon. Gentlemen opposite.
    During the Second Reading debate I referred to the stopping up of a road adjacent to a railway station. It may be a stoppage affecting 100 yards of the road, but it may compel those who have to go

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    to the station for their train in the morning to walk an extra two miles. It may compel a man going to work in the locality to travel a very long distance round. In referring to people who own shops on roads that are to be interfered with under these provisions, hon. Gentlemen opposite should have remembered also the women shoppers who are affected, who may be compelled to travel very long distances because of the stopping up of only 100 yards of road.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: The hon. Gentleman will also no doubt have in mind the most tragic case of those who would have to go an extra two or three miles to the nearest licensed premises for refreshment.
    Mr. Hudson: I can well understand hon. Members opposite remembering that. The general interests of the public, quite apart from property owners, are interfered with very gravely by the provisions of the Bill. I do not see why, when compensation is not particularly provided for for the people whose walking is so much extended by what may take place under the Bill, the special class of property owners ought to be singled out for claims for compensation, as hon. Members opposite have been trying to secure. I am opposed to the Amendment because I think that the property owner in this matter should be on precisely the same basis as any other section of the community.
    Mr. Pickthorn: I hope that it is in order, Major Milner, now, rather than on the Motion "That the Clause stand part of the Bill"—I shall not bother the Committee then—as the Law Officer called in aid in resisting this Amendment, subsection (2), to ask him how he proposes to place a copy of his notice at both ends of a highway, because it seems to me that unless he makes some new invention or has that proposal redrafted, we are going to have the traffic tied in knots in a quite new sense.
    Mr. Derek Walker-Smith: It seemed to me that the reply of the Solicitor-General to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) in regard to procedure for objection was not wholly satisfactory, and, indeed, I got the impression that he was not himself satisfied.
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    It is, of course, quite true as he said in regard to orders for a permanent stopping up that they attract the provisions of the Sixth Schedule to the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, which is beginning to be a well-tried procedure; but when we are concerned with temporary orders, the provisions of subsection (2) have almost graver shortcomings than those to which my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) has just drawn attention.
    As the right hon. and learned Gentleman realises, that is a provision only for advertisement or notification. There is no duty placed by that subsection on an authority to take notice of any protests made or to consider them in any way. It is not unsual that that should be so, because, of course, that is the ordinary position under the Defence Regulations. It is the ordinary position in regard to requisitioning powers that there is no machinery for taking into account objections. That is all right where the powers are exercised solely in conditions of real emergency. The trouble with these temporary powers is that they become progressively extended and still the machinery of objection is limited, or, indeed, virtually non-existent. I do not think that to draw attention to the powers of advertising under subsection (2) is really to meet the very forceful and cogent point put by my right hon. and learned Friend.
    The other observation which I wish to make is this—and I must apologise to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I was not here for the whole of his first speech on this Amendment. In regard to the question of compensation, I think that I am right in saying that broadly speaking this falls into the same category as all the requisitioning powers under the Defence Regulations in that no provision is made for compensation for injurious affection at all—injurious affection by way of severance, for example, where part of a property is requisitioned and the remaining part which is not requisitioned may suffer severe damage by reasons of the severance.
    In all the years that the Compensation Defence Act, 1939, has been in force, there has been no provision made for compensation for injurious affection in these cases. That is, of course, a wider problem than the one with which we are concerned in this Bill. I hope that the

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    right hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to make use of this Clause and the desirability of giving compensation for injurious affection to remind him that there is no compensation for injurious affection in the much wider range of cases arising out of Defence Regulation 51 and the Compensation Defence Act, 1939.
    May I ask him, as these powers are now being continued so much longer than was anticipated at the time, to have regard to that question, and to advise his colleagues that, if powers of requisitioning are to continue almost indefinitely, there should be a general right to compensation for injurious affection arising from severance, as there is under the well-established procedure of the actual compulsory acquisition of land.
    Amendment negatived.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I beg to move, in page 5, line 9, to leave out from "and," to the end of the line, and to insert:
    "any such power as aforesaid."
    It is quite true that this Amendment, in one sense, paves the way for a subsequent Amendment, but I ask the Committee to believe that it is a point of substance in itself, even if the next Amendment is not accepted. The effect will be to ensure that temporary as well as permanent orders for stopping up or diverting highways should be made by Statutory Instrument. Even if we were to fail, and the Instrument was not made subject to Parliamentary procedure which is so much in our minds at the moment, we believe that orders of this kind should be officially published and attract the provisions of the Statutory Instruments Act, which was so carefully drawn in order to achieve that purpose. I do not think that I need say any more, because the Committee are familiar with this point.
    The Solicitor-General: The proposal is that the stopping up of highways temporarily should involve publication of the stopping up order as a Statutory Instrument. It seems to me that that is a perfectly intelligible and sound provision when we are considering permanent stopping up, but when we are considering temporary stopping up very little advantage is gained by anybody by the formal printing and publication of the temporary
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    stopping up order as a Statutory Instrument.
    As the right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) said, in a sense this Amendment paves the way for a subsequent Amendment, and no doubt the Committee may desire to discuss rather more fully the later Amendment, dealing with annulments. If one deals with this Amendment in isolation, and asks oneself if any useful purpose is to be served by placing an obligation upon the Minister to print in the form of a statutory rule and order a temporary stopping up, it seems to me extremely doubtful.
    7.0 p.m.
    The major provision is that at the site of the place where the stopping up is to take place a copy of the notice has to be posted. Those affected will see it and be cognisant of the fact that the highway is stopped up by going to the place and seeing the notice there posted. I cannot see what satisfaction it would give by the notice being subsequently reprinted and included in one of the statutory notices and orders. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that if we look at this Amendment in isolation there is very little to commend it. Indeed, I had that impression from his speech, because he did not seem to be pressing the matter very strongly or with his usual vigour.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: The right hon. and learned Gentleman must not draw too strenuous a conclusion from the placid intonation which occasionally creeps into my voice. I put it to him that no one desires this procedure to be unnecessarily used or used to too great an extent. The people affected in the locality will, of course, have their own problems and, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has had to concede, very little opportunity to make their local and personal views felt in the case of a temporary stopping up—they can make a protest, but that is the end of the matter.
    What could happen if this Amendment were accepted is that if there was a tendency for these powers to be used in far more cases than the House expected, the House would be able to see the results from publication. I noted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not say that the Amendment would be a great

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    deal of trouble or expense to anyone. I cannot see why he should worry or feel that it will impose any burden on the Ministry of Transport. Why cannot he let us have our little publication in these circumstances? He has not let us have anything else today. Surely the publication of an order is not too much to get out of several hours' discussion.
    Lieut.-Commander Braithwaite: There is one aspect of this matter I should like to submit to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I think it is a point of substance. We are here discussing whether temporary stopping up can be brought into line with permanent stopping up with regard to publication of the instrument. I suggest that the word "temporary" in this connection is something of a misnomer. A great many highways, and particularly footpaths and rights of way, which were closed as a result of the war have not yet been released, some as near as Hampstead Heath.
    While the right hon. and learned Gentleman may well say that this is only a temporary affair and ask why, in these circumstances, we should publish a notice about something that is happening in such a transitory manner, am I not right in thinking that the word "temporary" means not only such time as the Act may function, with renewal year by year, but for two years beyond that? When we remember that, is it not the case that the adjective "temporary," while it may be the correct term legalistically, does not, in fact, describe the situation? It means that we are not discussing a period of months but years.
    Is there not something to be said, therefore, for the Amendment my right hon. and learned Friend has moved persuasively, if not in an inflammatory manner? I am surprised that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should expect thunder and lightning on every occasion that someone rises from this side of the Committee, although that may be coming later—I do not know. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman not be good enough to have another look at this between now and Report? It seems a very small thing to ask, although it may be of great convenience to the public.
    The Solicitor-General: I have listened to the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Would he be content
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    to withdraw the Amendment on the understanding that we think over the argument that has been put? The difficulty that presents itself is that I cannot see what advantage would be gained, except for what the hon. and gallant Member for Bristol, North-West (Lieut.-Commander Braithwaite) has just said, that "temporary" is probably a misnomer. I am not sure what advantage would be obtained by printing the order in the form of a Statutory Instrument, but if the right hon. and learned Gentleman will withdraw the Amendment we shall consider the argument used, without, of course, any commitment.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: On the undertaking that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will consider this, and because I know that consideration from him means that the matter will be thoroughly canvassed with those concerned, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I beg to move, in page 5, line 11, at the end, to add:
    "which shall be subject to annulment by resolution of either House of Parliament."
    This Amendment secures that the orders made under this Clause shall be subject to some degree of Parliamentary control. I do not know whether it is your wish, Major Milner, that the Amendment which follows and raises the same issue shall also be discussed. I refer to the Amendment, in page 5, line 11, at the end, to add:
    "which shall be subject to annulment by resolution of either House of Parliament. Provided always that if on any day permitted for that purpose by subsection (1) of section five of the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946, a motion to annul such a statutory instrument appears on the Order Paper of either House but the said motion is not moved by reason of the adjournment of the said House, such day shall be deemed not to be a sitting day for the purposes of sections five and seven of the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946."
    Perhaps you would give some indication of the effect of this Amendment on the second Amendment.
    The Chairman: The second Amendment raises two issues. Therefore, it would be desirable to have them discussed separately. In the event of the first Amendment being passed by the Committee I propose to call only the proviso of the second Amendment, which concerns the conditions under which prayers

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    of annulment can be made. In the event of the first Amendment not being accepted the second Amendment will fall.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Do I understand that in the event of the present Amendment not being accepted the second Amendment will fall?
    The Chairman: Yes, that is so.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am obliged. This Amendment is perfectly simple.
    Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: In view of what my hon. Friend has said, that in the event of this Amendment not being accepted there will be no debate on the second Amendment, will it be possible to debate the value of the negative procedure on this Amendment?
    Mr. E. Fletcher: I understand that you have ruled, Major Milner, that the most convenient course for the Committee is to discuss the first of these two Amendments and then, if the first Amendment is carried, you propose to call the second so that we might have a debate on the proviso, but that if the first Amendment is not carried the latter part of the last Amendment will fall with it. It seems to me that that would be the most satisfactory course for the Committee to adopt.
    The Chairman: I am obliged to the hon. Member who has repeated precisely what I said. It is desirable to pass the first Amendment, if the Committee thinks fit, which establishes the principle, and then the conditions under which annulment shall take place will be decided on the second.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The effect of the Amendment I have moved is, of course, to subject those orders, which under the Clause, will be in the form of Statutory Instruments, to that degree of Parliamentary control, which is permitted by the negative procedure. After what has been said on previous Amendments I do not think it need be argued that some of these orders—and we are here concerned, as I understand it, only with orders affecting the permanent stopping up of highways—will be of very great importance not only to a number of people but to the district directly concerned. They will be at least as important to those districts as, for example, the question of whether the cinemas in such districts should be
    108
    open on Sundays. The Committee will recall in the case of that particular form of local activity, not only is there Parliamentary control but it is not merely by the negative procedure but by the affirmative procedure. It has been laid down that before that matter can be dealt with an affirmative Resolution of both Houses is required.
    What we are asking for in this Amendment is less than that. The case for some degree of Parliamentary control is strong; otherwise, constituents seriously affected by these matters will come to hon. Members, and they will have to say to them that their objections are hopeless. It would be much better if there were some means of discussing these matters in the House. The method asked for is the lowest form, a form which, in recent weeks, if I may coin a phrase, has been somewhat devalued, but at any rate, some form of Parliamentary control is allowed.
    The procedure laid down in the Clause does not take us very far. It provides that Statutory Instruments shall be listed as such. I do not know whether it means that they will be reviewed by the Select Committee, but it means that they will appear on the list, and all hon. Members can do about it, if they disapprove, is, if they are very fortunate at the Table, to put Questions to Ministers. They cannot take any other really effective Parliamentary action. If these were not Statutory Instruments, at all, but treated as administrative measures of so trivial a nature as to be of no concern to hon. Members, it would be arguable that they should be dealt with by Parliamentary Questions only. But it is conceded by the Government, in the form in which they have introduced the Bill, that these are matters of such importance as to be exercisable in the form of Statutory Instruments.
    That being accepted, it is surely not impossible that those Statutory Instruments should be subject to the same degree of Parliamentary control as the greater number of Statutory Instruments and be subject to the negative procedure. Hon. Members on the other side of the Committee may say, "It is no use providing for the negative procedure, because the Patronage Secretary has decided that Prayers against these orders shall not be allowed at any rate up to two o'clock in the morning." If that is what they say, the argument really recoils upon them,

    109
    because they will then be arguing that there is very little difference between the procedure laid down in the Bill and the procedure proposed in the Amendment.
    I do not take that view. I believe that the Government will see reason. The control of delegated legislation is a matter on which not only the House, but the country feels extremely strongly, and that feeling cannot be thwarted with impunity. What we are asking for here is the lowest form of Parliamentary control. It may be we are asking for too little, but that is no objection from the point of view of the Government. It is our view that these orders are at least as important as the vast majority of the orders which are laid in the normal way on the Table of the House and subject to negative Resolution. It is in the belief that they are at least as important that I beg to move this Amendment.
    7.15 p.m.
    The Solicitor-General: I hope the Committee will not accept this Amendment. What we are discussing is the stopping up of a highway. A purely local matter of that sort cannot be an appropriate subject for discussion in the House by way of Prayer under the negative Resolution procedure.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: To what extent is it more local than the Sunday opening of cinemas?
    The Solicitor-General: Obviously, quite different considerations arise. The opening of Sunday cinemas raises much broader issues, on which people have very different views, and they are quite different from the executive action which is entailed in the closing of a particular road. Whether that road is to be closed or not must depend on purely local consideration of which hon. Members, unless they get some evidence deployed before them, are, of necessity, almost wholly unaware. It would be a sheer waste of time to ask the House to consider such a local question by way of the negative Resolution procedure.
    Not only that but it would involve the House taking on the opposite to what was expressed in a somewhat similar context. If we look at Section 49 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, which expresses the wishes of the House in matters of that sort, there is no provision for the annulment of orders by negative Resolu-
    110
    tion by either House of Parliament, but what is there and what is equally reproduced in this Clause is a much more appropriate procedure for a local inquiry. When we are dealing with local matters of this sort, we desire to ascertain what are the wishes and feelings of the local inhabitants who will be immediately affected by a closing order. Provision is made in the 1947 Act, and equally in this Bill, for ascertaining the wishes of these persons.
    In a discussion on an earlier Amendment I called the attention of the Committee to paragraph 4 of the Sixth Schedule of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, which is made applicable to closing orders. Under it the Minister has to publish the fact that he proposes to make an order; he has to take into account any objections; and there is provision for the holding of a local inquiry. That is an appropriate procedure for ascertaining what are the objections in the case of any proposal to stop up any particular highway, but what advantage there is to be gained for anybody in the House, with its large membership of hon. Members who, only by the merest chance, have any knowledge of the local conditions of a particular highway, is very difficult to see.
    The hon. Member who represents the constituency in which the highway is situated may know something about it, but why other hon. Members should know about it I do not know. It would be very difficult for them to be informed unless some procedure is involved which has the effect of deploying the evidence before the local inquiry. That these purely local proceedings should form the subject of discussion by way of a Prayer in the House would be quite purposeless, and I hope the Committee will agree that this Amendment should not be accepted.
    Sir H. Williams: I was very disappointed with the Solicitor-General's speech. He is always impressive as the Minister in charge of Measures of this kind, but I think he must have been affected by what the Prime Minister said in his broadcast the other day about the battle of Waterloo, and a time when normally nobody travelled more than about three miles from their homes. To say, as the Solictor-General has just done, that the stopping up of a highway is a matter of purely local interest is surely

    111
    nonsense. We see many motor cars parked in Mr. Speaker's courtyard and they travel very long distances, and the gentlemen to whom they are allocated, at the public expense, sometimes use them for that purpose.
    The other day when I was speaking on my Ten Minute Bill I used an argument for the purpose of extending this principle of annulment. I drew attention to the extraordinary anomalies in this matter of highways. We had a debate on highways the other day, and I then learned to my amazement that when we want to re-open a highway, the order proposing to do it is subject to annulment. I do not know whether the Solicitor-General has been adequately briefed on this point and whether he knows that we close highways under one Act of Parliament, under which we can have no Prayers, and re-open them under another, under which we can pray against the re-opening. I never heard of anything more stupid than that.
    For the Solicitor-General to say that the stopping up of a highway is not a matter of general public interest indicates that the Solicitor-General's solicitor did not brief him very well on this point, and I hope that the Solicitor-General will look into the point more carefully. I believe that he is a member of the Temple. If the traffic authorities want to make a one-way street near the Temple which, according to the Solicitor-General, is only a matter of very local interest, it means, as I believe the Solicitor-General will discover, that it would require an order which would be prayable in this House.
    I know that the Commissioner of Police sometimes does it illegally. Not far from where I live a notice was put up for about eight months saying, "No entry this way," and it had no legal validity whatever. A couple of months after I asked a Question about it in the House, the notice was taken away, without anyone saying anything. The Solicitor-General ought to study this aspect of the law a little, from the red books which will be found in the Aye Lobby, the "Revised Statutes." I assure him that the highway laws are in great confusion on this matter of the right to pray.
    112
    On this matter of the stopping up of a highway being only of local interest in which only a few hon. Members are concerned, I think I might well refer to the Bills from local authorities which come before the House, on the Motion of yourself, Major Milner, as Chairman of Way and Means, petitioning Parliament for certain additions to their powers. We say the magic word "Object," and those Measures do not get a Second Reading on that day. If we say "Object" often enough, you put them down for a Second Reading at seven o'clock.
    I would remind the Solicitor-General that many of those Bills seek to amend the highway laws and that the major speeches are often made by a couple of local M.P.s. To suggest that where there is only a local interest we are not entitled to take up the cudgels for people in localities who think that they have been "steamrollered" by the administrative machine is not up to the usual standard of the Solicitor-General. I do not think that bureaucratic power should ever be without Parliamentary control. I agree that the affirmative procedure should only be used in very exceptional cases, but the right of annulment ought to be used in all cases where laws are made by the decree of bureaucrats.
    Mr. Nicholson: I speak as a member of the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. We examine a vast quantity of Statutory Instruments. We have not the right to examine all of them, and perhaps it is a pity that we have not. From my experience on that Committee I assure the Solicitor-General that we examine countless Statutory Instruments of particular local interest. Reference has been made to orders for stopping up roads and for making streets for one-way traffic. These and many others are subject to negative resolution. There are Instruments laying down regulations in regard to parks. I might say that quite a quarter, except that I do not want to give any figures—at any rate a large proportion—of the Statutory Instruments that we consider are concerned with purely local matters.
    I quite understand why the Solicitor-General is opposing the Amendment. He does not want to get himself into deeper water in these matters. I suppose, the state of parties being what it is, that the Amendment will be defeated in the

    113
    Division Lobbies. This situation forces me to say on this Amendment what I intended to say on the next Amendment. I feel that the Committee ought to give serious attention to the principles involved, concerning the opportunities for review and annulment offered to hon. Members in relation to Statutory Instruments. The Select Committee of the House ought certainly to consider whether it is not possible to set up machinery by which hon. Members should have the power—
    The Chairman: That point does not arise on the Amendment.
    Mr. H. Strauss: I did not think that my hon. Friend would get so far.
    Mr. Nicholson: I may say that I quite agree with your Ruling, Major Milner.
    Mr. Walker-Smith: The Solicitor-General's defence against the Amendment consisted partly in the suggestion that as this concerns a local matter, the House should not deal with it. That point has been more than adequately covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams). The other point of defence was that the procedure given by paragraph 4 of the Sixth Schedule of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, was a better procedure than that of annulment by negative Resolution, and that there was, therefore, no need for any further safeguard.
    What the Solicitor-General appears to have overlooked in this case, though he expressly drew attention to it during the debate on the previous Amendment, is that by the terms of the Clause the procedure of inquiry by which local feeling can be ascertained, as provided in that Sixth Schedule, would apply only to permanent orders made under subsection (6). That, of course, would provide no safeguard in respect of temporary orders made under the Clause.
    It seems to me likely that nearly all the orders made under the Clause will be temporary, especially if there is no safeguard for the citizen in regard to the temporary order. What will happen in practice no doubt is that the orders will be made as temporary orders and then, under subsection (5), it will be decided that they shall be converted into permanent orders. At that stage only, the Solicitor-General's safeguard of inquiry comes into operation,
    114
    but at that inquiry it will be said that in these cases the highway has already been stopped up for a long time as a temporary measure and there has been no great inconvenience, and, therefore, the order will duly be confirmed, despite the machinery for a local inquiry. That is not good enough. It was a little disingenuous for the Solicitor-General to produce this argument and not to remind the Committee again that it would have effect only in the case of permanent orders. If the great majority of them are to be temporary orders, to be converted later into permanent orders, it seems that there will be no redress and no safeguard for the citizen.
    7.30 p.m.
    If the machinery of inquiry could be made to work effectively there would be something to be said for the view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that that might in some cases, though not in all, be the preferable method. But if the choice is between having an illusory safeguard only in the exceptional cases, which is the remedy of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in reliance on the Sixth Schedule or, on the other hand, the real safeguard of the possibility of annulment by negative Resolution, it is right that the Committee should not leave the citizen without any remedy or protection but should incorporate the remedy proposed in the Amendment.
    Mr. Pickthorn: I have been out of the Chamber for only five minutes since three o'clock—it was during a small part of this debate—and, therefore, I apologise if perhaps I am repeating what has been said, or perhaps doing an injustice to the Solicitor-General. But it did seem to me that his speech—I would not venture to estimate whether it was up to his usual logical and legal level—was not really quite up to his usual level of candour. He spoke as if this were wholly a matter of local interest. But that, surely, is less than half of the question.
    The fact that matters of local interest are often subject to Prayer procedure—all that I will not go into—has been sufficiently proved and I do not think will be any longer contested, but the point which I think is new—I apologise if it is not—is this one, that the matter here is of the balance of interest between a local inconvenience, which everybody must

    115
    admit to be there, in the shutting up of a highway, and the presumed national interest, for the purposes of defence mainly, which we must all presume that His Majesty's Government can judge better than persons in the locality, and so on.
    That is the point, surely, and to say that this is unsuitable for Parliamentary consideration by Prayer because it is local is really, in the strictest sense, nonsense. The reason for asking for the safeguard is that, suppose there should be a bad Government, suppose there should be invasion or near invasion, at a moment when the country has few or no resources, poor currency, and many Ministers who are not trusted, and so forth—some, perhaps, who were conscientious objectors or pacifists until the day before yesterday—some such situation is not beyond conceiving—in such a situation the question is: Can the Ministers be trusted, without any possibility of appeal to Parliament, when they say that there must be local inconvenience because the central need for defence demands it? Can we be sure that they will always judge that balance correctly?
    It must be plain that no Opposition, and certainly no supporters of the Government, would possibly use this in a factious way in such circumstances. When, with any colourability, the Treasury Bench can say, "We know more than you. We assure you that for the defence of the nation it is necessary to cut off half a mile of the highway outside Little Puddlecombe," that is the last kind of thing upon which Oppositions or dissidents can afford to be tiresome. It is quite true that we have seen an Opposition tiresome about matters of defence, and up against defence to the last moment and beyond it and get away with it through the inscrutable interventions of Providence, but it is not the kind of thing likely to happen very often.
    All we are asking is that where the Government is going to decide that for central purposes these local inconveniences must be inflicted, there Opposition shall be entitled, at its peril, to say, "That ought to be looked at again," and to compel the Minister to spend half an hour, or it may be less than half an hour, on defending it. That is what is being asked, and if there is a good case against
    116
    that, then I suggest with confidence to the Committee that it has not been put by the Solicitor-General. The whole of his attention was on the question of locality, but the whole point is the proportion between the inconvenience to the locality and the central considerations.
    Mr. Marlowe: I am appalled at the defence put forward by the Solicitor-General in opposing the Amendment. I suppose that one should not be appalled, because it was a characteristic misunderstanding of the functions of the House, one which has permeated the whole of the party opposite. The principle is that when there is a grievance an hon. Member should be entitled to bring it to the House. That is a fundamental right of all of us who sit in the House. What the Solicitor-General is saying is that, although there may be a case, it is just a little local affair and the hon. Member ought to be precluded from bringing it to Westminster. Every one of us has a duty and a right, and always has had, to bring local grievances to the House and air them before this public tribunal. That is one of the main functions for which we are here, and I was surprised that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should have taken the line he did.
    I do not accept the hypothesis that these are necessarily entirely local matters. If the main road to the great port of Southampton were stopped up, would the right hon. and learned Gentleman say that that was purely a local matter? That would be a matter of great urgent national interest, and it would certainly be a case to be brought to the attention of the House by the local hon. Member or anybody else. Even accepting the view which he put forward that this is limited entirely to local matters, every hon. Member has a right to bring local matters to the House. The whole strength of the House arises from the agglomeration of our knowledge of local matters. That makes this place what it is. In taking the attitude he has taken, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is doing great damage to democracy.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I hope that the Solicitor-General will reconsider his position on this matter. I cannot understand why he treats so lightly in itself the withdrawal of rights from people. As the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. J. Hudson), pointed out, that is a commencement in the matter. What may

    117
    affect these people in the localities, according to the Solicitor-General's own statement and as elaborated by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith), will, in probably the majority of cases, occur without any further right accruing to the people affected than seeing a notice of what is to happen. The fortunate people, according to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, are those who will have the right to appear at a local inquiry, but, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has argued so often in other places, the Minister need not pay any attention whatever to the balance of opinion or the views expressed at that local inquiry. So that right is not of very great advantage.
    I cannot help thinking that the views expressed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman go deeper than that. I took my part, in the days when there were not party divisions, in discussions about the future of town and country planning and the form that the machinery might take. I would emphasise that what was said so often against anything but the representation of town and country planning by a Minister who would be answerable in the House was that in the case of planning—highways fall into the same category—local problems arouse the keennest passion and feeling.
    I can quite understand that just as some question of planning boils up into an issue which overflows any local bounds and becomes a national issue, so the fact that a community—it might easily be, as in the other example I gave, an historic community—is suddenly cut off, or the path they have used for centuries is suddenly changed, will arouse an issue which is well deserving of the attention of the House.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) put the other aspect of it which, in my view, really decides the case. What will be the arguments put against the local view? It is that it is necessary for the defence interests of the country. There is no other place that is suitable to discuss that issue except the House of Commons, and that is an unanswerable point. I was trying to get the ring of the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman when he was dealing in depreciatory sentences with the Prayer procedure. You will remember, Major Milner, how the right
    118
    hon. and learned Gentleman said, "If you had this procedure, if you were allowed to put down a Prayer to annul, only the local Member would have some slight knowledge, and nobody else in the House of Commons would know anything about it." I asked myself where I had heard that before. Curiously enough, in his book "Law and Orders," Dr. C. K. Allen used it as an argument for the insufficiency of the procedure of annulment by negative Resolution.
    That seemed to me a most extraordinary position for the Solicitor-General, who is trying to prevent even the procedure which Dr. Allen spent so many pages in saying was insufficient, by saying that the House of Commons and local Members are incapable and unable to secure that a debate will take place which will justify the attention of the House. If that is the view of the right hon. and learned Gentleman after six years in this House, he has been unfortunate because, believe me, some of the most interesting and valuable debates, and some of the most interesting expositions of the personalities of the House in the period I have been here, have been made when hon. Members have been concerned with a local matter which has touched them and, of course, their constituents very deeply.
    Therefore I suggest here that when we, first of all, had taken away the old procedure that I mentioned on an earlier Amendment, by which anyone aggrieved by the stopping up of a highway could have the issues tried by a jury at Quarter Sessions, because it was too cumbrous—the next in degree, the local inquiry, will now only apply to a small number of cases and, with regard to the majority of cases, the people affected will have no remedy.
    7.45 p.m.
    The right hon. and learned Gentleman has advanced many propositions in the House of Commons, but I did not imagine that he would ever argue at the opposite Box so blatantly for injury without remedy—the one thing which English law has refused to tolerate in the centuries of its existence. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not prepared to meet us on this point, I have no alternative but to advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide on the Amendment.
    Question put, "That those words be there added."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 173; Noes, 201.

    Division No. 67.]

    AYES

    [7.48 p.m.

    Aitken, W. T.

    Garner-Evans, E. H. (Denbigh)

    Odey, G. W.

    Amory, Heathcoat (Tiverton)

    Gates, Maj. E. E.

    O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh

    Arbuthnot, John

    Gridley, Sir Arnold

    Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

    Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

    Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

    Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

    Baldwin, A. E.

    Harden, J. R. E.

    Orr-Ewing, Ian L. (Weston-super-Mare)

    Banks, Col. C.

    Harvey, Air Codre. A. V. (Maclesfield)

    Osborne, C.

    Beamish, Major Tufton

    Hay, John

    Perkins, W. R. D.

    Bell, R. M.

    Head, Brig. A. H.

    Peto, Brig. C. H. M.

    Bennett, Sir Peter (Edgbaston)

    Heald, Lionel

    Pickthorn, K.

    Bennett, William (Woodside)

    Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.

    Powell, J. Enoch

    Bevins, J. R. (Liverpool, Toxteth)

    Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

    Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)

    Bishop, F. P.

    Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)

    Profumo, J. D.

    Black, C. W.

    Hornsby-Smith, Miss P.

    Raikes, H. V.

    Boothby, R.

    Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence

    Redmayne, M.

    Bossom, A. C.

    Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

    Remnant, Hon. P.

    Bowen, E. R.

    Howard, Greville (St. Ives)

    Roberts, Major Peter (Heeley)

    Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.

    Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

    Roper, Sir Harold

    Boyle, Sir Edward

    Hulbert, Wing Cmdr. N. J.

    Ropner, Col. L.

    Bracken, Rt. Hon. B.

    Hurd, A. R.

    Russell, R. S.

    Braine, B. R.

    Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)

    Shepherd, William

    Braithwaite, Lt.-Cmdr. Gurney

    Hutchison, Colonel James

    Smith, E. Martin (Grantham)

    Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W.

    Jones, A. (Hall Green)

    Snadden, W. McN.

    Browne, Jack (Govan)

    Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.

    Soames, Capt. C.

    Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.

    Kerr, H. W. (Cambridge)

    Spearman, A. C. M.

    Butcher, H. W.

    Lambert, Hon. G.

    Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)

    Butler, Rt. Hn. R. A. (Saffron Walden)

    Lennox-Boyd, A. T.

    Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard (N. Fylde)

    Carr, Robert (Mitcham)

    Lindsay, Martin

    Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)

    Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

    Linstead, H. N.

    Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

    Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

    Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.

    Storey, S.

    Clyde, J. L.

    Longden, Gilbert (Herts, S.W.

    Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

    Colegate, A

    Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

    Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

    Conant, Maj. R. J. E.

    Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

    Summers, G. S.

    Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert (Ilford, S.)

    McAdden, S. J.

    Taylor, Charles (Eastbourne)

    Corbett, Lt.-Col. Uvedale (Ludlow)

    McCallum, Major D.

    Thomas, J. P. L. (Hereford)

    Craddock, G. B. (Spelthorne)

    Mackeson, Brig. H. R.

    Thompson, Kenneth Pugh (Walton)

    Cranborne, Viscount

    Maclay, Hon. John

    Thorneycroft, Peter (Monmouth)

    Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.

    MacLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)

    Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

    Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

    MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

    Thorp, Brig. R. A. F.

    Crouch, R. F.

    Macmillan, Rt. Hon Harold (Bromley)

    Touche, G. C.

    Cundiff, F. W.

    Macpherson, Major Niall (Dumfries)

    Turner, H. F. L.

    Davidson, Viscountess

    Manningham-Buller, R. E.

    Turton, R. H.

    Davies, Nigel (Epping)

    Marlowe, A. A. H.

    Walker-Smith, D. C.

    de Chair, Somerset

    Marples, A. E.

    Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

    Deedes, W. F.

    Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)

    Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

    Digby, S. W.

    Marshall, Sidney (Sutton)

    Watkinson, H.

    Dodds-Parker, A. D.

    Maude, John (Exeter)

    Watt, Sir George Harvie

    Donner, P. W.

    Maudling R.

    Webbe, Sir Harold

    Drayson, G. B.

    Mellor, Sir John

    White, Baker (Canterbury)

    Drewe, C.

    Molson, A. H. E.

    Williams, Charles (Torquay)

    Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

    Morrison, John (Salisbury)

    Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

    Eden, Rt. Hon. A.

    Morrison, Rt. Hon. W. S. (Cirencester)

    Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)

    Erroll, F. J.

    Mott-Radclyffe, C. E.

    Wills, G.

    Fisher, Nigel

    Nabarro, G.

    Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

    Fort, R.

    Nicholls, Harmar

    Wood, Hon. R.

    Foster, John

    Nicholson, G.

    York, C.

    Fraser, Sir I. (Morecambe & Lonsdale)

    Nield, Basil (Chester)

    Fyfe, Rt. Hon. Sir David Maxwell

    Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P.

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

    Nugent, G. R. H.

    Mr. Studholme and

    Gammans, L. D.

    Nutting, Anthony

    Major Wheatley

    NOES

    Acland, Sir Richard

    Bottomley, A. G.

    Collick, P.

    Adams, H. R.

    Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton)

    Cook, T. F.

    Albu, A. H.

    Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

    Cooper, Geoffrey (Middlesbrough, W.)

    Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

    Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

    Cove, W. G.

    Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)

    Brooks, T. J. (Normanton)

    Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

    Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

    Brown, Thomas (Ince)

    Crosland, C. A. R.

    Awbery, S. S.

    Burke, W. A.

    Crossman, R. H. S.

    Ayles, W. H.

    Burton, Miss E.

    Cullen, Mrs. A.

    Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.

    Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)

    Daines, P.

    Bartley, P.

    Callaghan, L. J.

    Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

    Benn, Wedgwood

    Carmichael, J.

    Darling, George (Hillsborough)

    Beswick, F.

    Castle, Mrs. B. A.

    Davies, A. Edward (Stoke, N.)

    Bing, G. H. C.

    Champion, A. J.

    Davies, Harold (Leek)

    Blenkinsop, A.

    Clunie, J.

    de Freitas, G.

    Blyton, W. R.

    Cocks, F. S.

    Deer, G.

    Boardman, H.

    Coldrick, W.

    Delargy, H. J.

    Diamond, J.

    Keenan, W.

    Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvonshire)

    Dodds, N. N.

    Kenyon, C.

    Ross, William (Kilmarnock)

    Driberg, T. E. N.

    Kinley, J.

    Royle, C.

    Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

    Lee, Frederick (Newton)

    Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

    Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

    Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

    Simmons, C. J.

    Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

    Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)

    Slater, J.

    Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

    Lindgren, G. S.

    Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

    Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

    Logan, D. G.

    Snow, J. W.

    Ewart, R.

    Longden, Fred (Small Heath)

    Soskice, Rt. Hon Sir Frank

    Fernyhough, E.

    McAllister, G.

    Sparks, J. A.

    Field, Capt. W. J.

    MacColl, J. E.

    Steele, T.

    Finch, H. J.

    McGhee, H. G.

    Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

    Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

    McInnes, J.

    Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

    Follick, M.

    McKay, John (Wallsend)

    Stross, Dr. Barnett

    Foot, M. M.

    MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

    Summerskill, Rt. Hon. Edith

    Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

    Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)

    Sylvester, G. O.

    Freeman, John (Watford)

    Mann, Mrs. Jean

    Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

    Ganley, Mrs. C. S.

    Manuel, A. C.

    Taylor, Robert (Morpeth)

    Gibson, C. W.

    Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

    Thomas, David (Aberdare)

    Gilzean, A.

    Mathers, Ht. Hon. G.

    Thomas, George (Cardiff)

    Glanville, James (Consett)

    Middleton, Mrs. L.

    Thomas, I. R. (Rhondda, W.)

    Gooch, E. G.

    Mikardo, Ian

    Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

    Gordon-Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

    Mitchison, G. R.

    Thorneycroft, Harry (Clayton)

    Grey, C. F.

    Moody, A. S.

    Thurtle, Ernest

    Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

    Morley, R.

    Tomlinson, Rt. Hon. G.

    Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

    Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

    Ungoed-Thomas, A. L.

    Gunter, R. J.

    Mort, D. L.

    Viant, S. P.

    Hale, Joseph (Rochdale)

    Moyle, A.

    Wallace, H. W.

    Hall, John (Gateshead, W.)

    Murray, J. D.

    Webb, Rt. Hon. M. (Bradford, C.)

    Hamilton, W. W.

    Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

    Wells, Percy (Faversham)

    Hannan, W.

    Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

    West, D. G.

    Hardy, E. A.

    O'Brien, T.

    Wheatley, Rt. Hon. J. (Edinb'gh, E.)

    Hargreaves, A

    Oldfield, W. H.

    White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

    Harrison, J.

    Oliver, G. H.

    White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

    Hastings, S.

    Paling, Rt. Hon. Wilfred (Dearne V'lly)

    Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.

    Hayman, F. H.

    Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

    Wigg, G.

    Holman, P.

    Pannell, T. C.

    Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

    Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)

    Pargiter, G. A.

    Wilkins, W. A.

    Houghton, D.

    Parker, J.

    Willey, Frederick (Sunderland)

    Hubbard, T

    Paton, J.

    Williams, David (Neath)

    Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

    Pearson, A.

    Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

    Hynd, H. (Accrington)

    Peart, T. F.

    Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'lly)

    Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

    Poole, C.

    Winterbottom, Ian (Nottingham, C.)

    Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

    Popplewell, E.

    Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

    Janner, B.

    Porter, G.

    Wise, F. J.

    Jay, D. P. T.

    Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

    Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

    Jenkins, R. H.

    Pursey, Cmdr. H.

    Wyatt, W. L.

    Johnson, James (Rugby)

    Rankin, J.

    Yates, V. F.

    Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

    Rees, Mrs. D.

    Jones, David (Hartlepool)

    Reid, Thomas (Swindon)

    Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

    Rhodes, H.

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Jones, William Elwyn (Conway)

    Richards, R.

    Mr. Bowden and Mr. Kenneth

    Robinson.

    Question put, and agreed to.

    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 4.—(EXTENSION OF ACT TO COLONIES AND OTHER TERRITORIES.)
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I beg to move, in page 5, line 25, at the end, to add:
    (2) Any Order in Council made under this section shall be laid before Parliament and shall cease to have effect on the expiration of a period of forty days from the date on which it is made unless at some time before the expiration of that period it has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament, but without prejudice to anything previously done thereunder or to the making of a new Order.
    In reckoning any such period of forty days no account shall be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days.
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    Under Clause 4 power is taken not only to apply this Measure to a number of territories outside the United Kingdom, but to adapt and to modify it in the process. The Amendment provides that when that is done, a measure of Parliamentary control shall be exercised. I do not think that any hon. Member would dispute that the application of the Measure, possibly adopted and modified, to an entire territory to which it does not at present apply, is obviously a matter of first class importance. That being so, the question arises, first, whether it is not right to provide that there shall be some control by the House of Commons and, secondly, to decide, if that be so, what particular measure of control shall be exercised.
    The Amendment proposes that the affirmative procedure should be adopted,

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    the particular form of this affirmative procedure being the one under which the Government have the full power to make an order but that the order itself lapses unless approved by affirmative Resolution during 40 sitting days. That form of the affirmative procedure is proposed in order to deal with the situation which might arise in some emergency when the House of Commons was not sitting. There is nothing in the Amendment to prevent the Government acting promptly and applying the Measure to the colonial territory concerned. All that is required is that during the 40 sitting days of the House the required affirmative Resolution shall be put through. This suggestion embodies a fair compromise between the possible demands of an emergency situation and the necessity for maintaining some control by the House.
    It is a matter calling for a good deal of research to discover what are the territories to which, under the Clause, this Measure can be applied. It is a case not only of legislation by reference, but of legislation by reference twice over. The territories are those referred to in Section 5 (4) of the 1945 Act, but on referring to that subsection one is merely referred back to the 1939 Act. It is, therefore, a matter calling for a certain amount of research, but as I understand it—the Solicitor-General will correct me if I am wrong—the territories we are considering in this matter are, first, the Colonial Empire and, secondly, any territories effectively occupied by His Majesty under some other form of authority.
    We in the House of Commons owe a very definite duty to the Colonial Empire. We are responsible for what His Majesty's Government do in that Empire, and if we pass the Clause as it stands we are handing over to the Government very substantial power to legislate for the Colonial Empire without any control whatever by the House. It seems to me that to do that would really be to abdicate the duties which we owe to our fellow subjects under the Crown in the Colonial Empire, and that it would be entirely wrong for us to do so.
    8.0 p.m.
    On the Second Reading, the Secretary of State for Air, during a speech which I do not suppose he will recall as one
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    of his happier forensic efforts, said that the reason why no provision for Parliamentary control was made in this Measure was that no similar provision was made in the 1939 Act. To that I would say two things. I have never taken the view, although it seems to have adherents on the Government Front Bench, that everything done in 1939 was so obviously right as to be sacrosanct. Nor should one ignore that in 1939 we were faced with a situation of actual war on a great scale when, quite obviously, not only was the attention of this House very properly focussed on rather different matters, but equally under the ordinary understandings of our constitutional system much less regard was paid to the necessities for preserving Parliamentary control.
    We are not at this moment in that situation, and for that reason it does not seem to me that the precedent of 1939, on which the Secretary of State for Air relied, really has any validity today. In any event, this Committee is perfectly free now to decide this matter and I would remind hon. Members that if we decided in the sense of preserving the Clause as it stands we would be providing a very strong precedent for future Governments who seek to legislate for the Colonial Empire without any control by this House. We would be doing so with our eyes open and in a time of what is at any rate technically peace.
    I cannot see how hon. Members opposite, who are often so ardent in their desire to protect colonial peoples from alleged oppression, can possibly reconcile that attitude with apparently being prepared to allow a Measure of this sort—a Measure for the control of those peoples by emergency powers—to be applied by His Majesty's Ministers without the House of Commons having any direct control over it at all. It seems to me that if they are prepared to swallow that a rather curious light is thrown on their protestations of concern for the welfare of the peoples of the Colonial Empire.
    It is a matter of principle that this House should not give this great power to the Government without keeping some control for itself. For it is a very great power to be able to apply a complete statute and to be able to amend and modify it in the process of applying it to

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    complete territories. Even the Solicitor-General cannot say that it would not be worth debating it because hon. Members would not know enough about it; on either side of the Committee there are hon. Members with direct knowledge of the Colonial Empire.
    The Amendment seems to me to put forward an issue of not inconsiderable importance in principle. If accepted it can involve no embarrassment to His Majesty's Government and no diminution of their power to act speedily and effectively in an emergency. All it will do is to retain ultimate control over their actions in the House of Commons.
    Sir P. Spens: It is of course a matter of history that, for years, statutes of this country have been applied to the Colonial Empire by Orders in Council, and I believe that the power of doing so and to make exceptions, adaptations and modifications is of very long standing. But it does result in this, that while we discuss and debate the wording of the Bills which come in front of us the Executive alone here and in the colony or territory concerned decide what form the statute shall take as applied to that territory, and the power to modify and make exceptions and adapt has resided often in very substantial differences between the Measure as passed in Parliament here and the Measure as it is put into force in the Colony or Territory.
    It is only necessary to take one general Act of any sort, for instance the Companies Act, and compare its wording as passed by Parliament here with the form it takes in various parts of the Colonies to realise that in fact every time we give this power to the Executive we are giving very wide power to modify and alter the form of legislation approved in this country. It is something which is of long standing but something which, I suggest, is of great constitutional importance and something which this House ought to consider.
    If this Bill is to be applied with modifications and alterations to any territory surely the Government ought to come back to this House and justify the alterations, exceptions and modifications to us and explain to us why, after we have approved a Bill in a certain form in this House, it should go in a different form to some part of the Empire. I cannot believe that hon. Members realise what
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    has been going on in this way during the last 30 or 40 years. Quite frankly, I had no idea of it until it became my duty to construe Acts applicable to India which had been given a local effect in this way. One imagined one would find the same Sections and Acts, but suddenly one found alterations in the wording. I suppose it was often justified on some local ground, but time after time one took the view that some draftsmen, either in this country or elsewhere, thought they could draft parts of a Section or proviso rather better than this House had approved it.
    I believe this is a serious constitutional matter and this House ought to insist that whenever any Act of Parliament of importance is applied by Order in Council to parts of the Empire, unless it is practically verbatim the same, it ought to come back to this House in order that the differences should be explained and approved by this House. For that reason I support the Amendment.
    The Solicitor-General: In framing the Clause in this way we were simply following precedent and very strong precedent. One hon. Member said that when reference was made to the Emergency Powers Act, 1939, that after all was an Act passed in contemplation of the imminent outbreak of war. That is perfectly true, but it is nevertheless true that the circumstances were not in any material sense different in this case and the form of wording was incorporated in that Act which was passed by a Conservative Government. The provision was also made in that Act that the particular enactment should be applied to the Colonies with or without modification, which meets the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens).
    Sir P. Spens: I think the Order in Council procedure goes back to before the First World War, but it has been so used that substantial adaptations and modifications have been made, and I venture to think that this House would not approve of them. That should be reconsidered and this House ought to obtain control over such procedure.
    The Solicitor-General: The hon. and learned Gentleman is now arguing right in the face of the current of established precedents. He has just referred to precedents earlier than 1939, and I should

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    like to remind the Committee of one or two of them. I have just reminded the Committee of the fact that, in regard to the 1939 Act, it can be said that there was the prospect of an imminent outbreak of war, but, if one goes back further—and I have carried out some researches in this matter—one finds precedent after precedent providing for modifications to enactments applying to this country and without any provision for Parliamentary control such as is sought to be imported into the Bill by this Amendment.
    I think I ought to remind the Committee of some of these precedents. For example, the Visiting Forces Act, 1933, contains such a precedent, and, in Sections 5 and 6, it is provided that the Act can be applied to the Colonies with or without modifications. Equally, if one takes another example of about that time, the Whaling Industry (Regulation) Act, 1934, provides a similar precedent, showing that, in the mind of the Government of that day, there was a very consistent view on this matter. Here, again, if hon. Members will look at Section 13 of the Act, they will find:
    (1) His Majesty may by Order in Council direct that the provisions of this Act shall extend, with such exceptions, adaptations or modifications, if any, as may be specified in the Order, to the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, Newfoundland or any colony.
    There is another precedent in the Geneva Convention Act, 1937, which again contains a similar provision. I think these precedents are sufficient to establish that it must have been the very consistent policy of pre-war Governments, and Conservative Governments in particular, to adopt this particular form for what we are now doing. It cannot really be said that they were temporarily driven from the path of rectitude by the prospect of the outbreak of war in 1939, because again, and for the fourth time which I have discovered, they followed the exact precedent which we have incorporated in our Bill.
    But it does not stop there. It would be extremely difficult now to depart from these precedents. In 1945, the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act adopted the same form and made applicable Section 4 of the Emergency Powers Act, 1939, again making applicable precisely the same machinery as we are adopting now, and, again, that
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    procedure was used in 1947 for the Supplies and Services (Extended Purposes) Act of that year.
    That current of authority does indicate a settled policy extending over a great many years as to what is the right way of treating this matter. The hon. and learned Gentleman who last addressed the Committee said that we were now, for the first time, departing from that. The mere fact that a practice is settled does not necessarily mean that it should always remain, and, in this particular instance, it would be extremely difficult to do that. If hon. Members will look at Clause 4, they will see that
    His Majesty may by Order in Council provide for extending any of the provisions of this Act, with such exceptions, adaptations and modifications, if any, as may be specified in the Order, to any of the countries or territories to which any provisions of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, extend by virtue of subsection (4) of section five of that Act, and any such Order may be varied or revoked by a subsequent Order.
    The effect of adopting the Amendment would be this, and I would illustrate the point by reference to a particular Defence Regulation which I select at random. I select Defence Regulation 55, which reads, and I read only the material words:
    "(1) A competent authority, so far as appears to that authority to be necessary for any of the purposes specified in subsection (1) section one of the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, may by order provide—"
    certain things. If we adopted this change in the new context in which it is sought to be proposed, the result would be this. What the Bill does in the case of an ordinary Defence Regulation, such as No. 55 to which I have referred, is to include the purposes specified in the 1945 Act as well as the purposes specified in the present Bill.
    8.15 p.m.
    If we adopted this proposal to make adaptation to the Colonies subject to the affirmative Resolution, the result would be that, when we were looking at Defence Regulations and considering them as not incorporating certain purposes, we should not have to have an affirmative Resolution if it was desired to apply it to the Colonies, but, when we were considering Defence Regulations in this new form, and incorporating new purposes which this Bill introduces into it, we should have to have an affirmative Resolution before

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    applying it to the Colonies. I think everybody would agree that that would be hopelessly illogical and quite absurd.
    If this is a wrong procedure—and here I would address my remarks particularly to the hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens)—and if we are to make this change it really is a most difficult time at which to make it. It is a most inopportune moment, having regard to the way in which previous Acts have used the precedent. On some future occasion, perhaps, we might reconsider the whole position, but I really do urge the Committee to accept the view that to do this now and make this violent break with tradition, with the result that we shall introduce into the Measure some really absurd inconsistencies, in that we shall have to have an affirmative Resolution in the one case and not in another, really cannot serve any useful purpose.
    I hope the Committee will agree that it would be producing a very undesirable result to make this change now, though at some future time perhaps we might consider it. I do not wish to be taken as assenting to the view that the process should be changed, but, whether it should be changed or not, this is a most difficult stage in the evolution of this legislation at which to do it.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell us what is the position in regard to Newfoundland?
    The Solicitor-General: I suppose I shall have to look back into the—
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I do not want to make any mystery about it. The 1945 Act refers us back to the 1939 Act, which contains a reference to Newfoundland. Clearly, however, we ought not to legislate for Newfoundland. Obviously, I am not making a party point, and I shall try to catch your eye, Sir Charles, in a moment or two. In the meantime, I want to know if the Government have considered this, because we should not legislate for a part of the Dominion of Canada.
    The Solicitor-General: As to what is the precise constitution, and what are the results of constitutional changes, in Newfoundland, I should want to look into more fully, but I have no doubt that the provisions of the Statute of Westminster
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    would be applicable, and that that, probably, would provide the answer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's question. I assume that the Statute of Westminster would apply, and would exclude the territory from the category of territories dealt with in the Act.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman appreciates the point that we do not want even to purport to be legislating for parts of the Dominions, but this legislation by reference and going from one Act to another is difficult to follow. I do not want to make any difficulties for the Government on this point, but perhaps—
    The Solicitor-General: I am much obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for raising the point. Obviously, it is a point which we should look into. In 1939, to which reference has been made, the status of Newfoundland was different from what it is today. I am obliged to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for drawing attention to this matter.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for undertaking to look into it, because it is worthy of consideration for we should not appear even in curia to legislate—
    The Solicitor-General: If I may be allowed to intervene, I believe the position to be that the 1950 Act contained the necessary provisions which would exclude Newfoundland from the ambit of Section 4 of the 1939 Act as made applicable in this Bill.
    Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I am sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman will confirm that that is the position, because I think it is important that we should clear up the point. I am rather worried by the aspect of this matter raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens). I think the House ought to try to approach it irrespective of party and irrespective of our views on other matters on which we have divided today. The right hon. and learned Gentleman gave us an argument on what the precedents are and made a very strong argument, if that were enough. But I always remember, when I was arguing a case in another place in

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    its judicial capacity before Lord Macmillan, among others, that Lord Macmillan said to me, "You have shown us what the law is but what I am interested in is why that is the law."
    I think we all agree that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has shown us what the precedents are, but I do not think he has quite satisfied us as to why these precedents are still effective today. If one puts into a statute the right to apply one of our Acts to a Colony, then I cannot see why that should be left to the Executive without any Parliamentary control, and I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman has really answered that point. He has given us an argument with regard to this special subject matter with which I shall deal in a moment, but surely it is our job in this House, so long as we keep the right to consider and criticise administration in the Colonies, to see that if our Acts are applied the method by which they are applied can be considered by us.
    I am not speaking in any provocative or party spirit at the moment, but I should have thought it was an aspect of dealing with our Colonies which many hon. Gentlemen opposite would have felt was one of great importance and interest to them. It seems an extraordinary way for the central Parliamentary machine to do its work to say that this Act may be applied to overseas territories, including the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and Colonies and Mandated Territories and the like, and it can be applied with any alterations which the Executive choose to make, and we do not care about it again, we do not want to see it again. We do not care how it is applied or with what methods or modifications it is applied. I think my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South, has done the Committee a great service in raising this point.
    With regard to the particular subject matter I confess I do not see the great difficulty which the right hon. and learned Gentleman raises. The way it would
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    work out would be that before the Order in Council applying this Act or a regulation to any Colony gave that Colony or the Executive of that Colony the right to use it for defence purposes, as opposed to other purposes already in being, there would have to be the confirmative approval of this House. I do not see any particular illogicality in having to have the confirmative approval of this House before these powers are used for the purposes which are set out in the Act.
    The right hon. and learned Gentleman has said that that is going to cause administrative difficulty. I think he has over-stressed the difficulty. The time has come for us to review this as a procedure. It is an extraordinary inversion of the ordinary accepted things that the party for whom I speak should be asking for a fresh approach to the application of imperial legislation to the Colonies and the party for whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman replies should say, "Ah, but remember these precedents. Do not budge from the procedure which was applied in 1939 and again applied in 1945. I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman and hon. Members opposite, if I may make so bold, to approach it from the point of view of the merits of the problem and of the duties of the House of Commons.
    I shall not advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide against the matter, therefore, I make this appeal without the usual House of Commons in terrorem background. I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to consider this problem. I hope that as I have not even asked it as a condition, he will consider it all the more and that we can look at it again from the aspect of colonial administration.
    Amendment negatived.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Bill reported without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

  PURCHASE TAX (No. 3) ORDER
  Motion made and Question proposed,
  That the Purchase Tax (No. 3) Order, 1951 (S.I., 1951, No. 397), dated 9th March, 1951, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th March, be approved.—[Mr. Kenneth Robinson.]
  8.29 p.m.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I hope we are going to have some explanation of this matter even though the Financial Secretary to the Treasury in whose name I think it is, has only just arrived. If there is one thing that is more difficult to understand than the Order itself it is the explanatory note which does succeed in making the not inconsiderable confusion of the Order itself worse confounded. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can give some explanation of what is the effect of this Order. The explanatory note merely refers to the groups of certain categories of article, and that in itself without reference to the Purchase Tax Schedules, does not take one very far.
  The other matter on which I must confess I am in considerable doubt is why this Order is produced at all at this time. At Question Time the Financial Secretary and his right hon. Friend spend most of their time indicating with a becoming affectation of sorrow that they were unable to anticipate their Budget statement. They thereby remind us of the fact that we are within a week of the Budget. Can we be told what necessitates this Order being brought forward now, only seven days before the Budget? I am aware that Purchase Tax variations can be effected either through the Finance Bill procedure or by Statutory Instrument, but when we are so close to the Budget it would seem that some extraordinary degree of urgency must arise to justify the use of Statutory Instrument procedure now.
  That there is such urgency is made the more curious when one recalls that the day before the House rose for the Easter Recess this Order was on the Order Paper, but that His Majesty's Government indicated their lack of belief in its urgency by the Leader of the House moving the Adjournment of the House immediately before this Order was due to be taken. It was apparently, therefore, not urgent before the House rose for the Recess. We are seven days from the
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  Budget, and therefore we are surely entitled to know what peculiar urgency makes it so urgent now that we cannot wait a week, when by the very action of the Government 10 days ago we were made to wait a further 10 days.
  8.32 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Douglas Jay): I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me an opportunity to say a word about this Order. He asked first what urgency induced us to bring it forward at this moment so close to the Budget. I think he knows that a number of minor Purchase Tax changes are made by order throughout the year right up to the time of the Budget, and this order was actually made on 9th March—about four weeks ago. The only reason why it was not taken in debate before the Recess was because of the somewhat unusual events in debate of those few days. Had it not been for the various occurrences of that week, no doubt we should not be discussing this Order within seven days of the Budget.
  This is really a clarifying Order which makes no material difference to Purchase Tax law. What it does is to remove the doubt about the application of Group 12 of the Eighth Schedule of the 1948 Finance Act, and it excludes from charge under that group what are defined as
  "interval timers incorporating an alarum mechanism."
  The Order arises from an opinion given by independent counsel. Under the arrangement reached in 1949 with the Federation of British Industries and other industrial bodies, by which matters of interpretation were to be submitted to counsel, there was submitted the question whether a certain type of interval timer was chargeable under Group 12. The view of counsel was that the wording of Group 12 excluded appliances which did not either supply heat or transfer heat.
  The relevant words of the group were:
  "Cooking, heating, refrigerating and other appliances and apparatus, whether mechanically operated or not, being appliances and apparatus of a kind used for domestic purposes, except mechanical lighters."
  Looking at this as a matter of plain English, I cannot see that the words
  "Cooking, heating, refrigerating and other appliances and apparatus"
  can mean anything except cooking, heating and refrigerating appliances and also

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  appliances other than for cooking, heating and refrigerating. That is my view as a matter of language. That, of course, was what the wording had been taken to mean both by the Customs and by industry since the 1948 Act was passed.
  Since the reference to counsel had been made as an agreed procedure, however, we felt bound to introduce this clarifying Order which, by the words in Section 1 (2), "appliances and apparatus," etc., makes it perfectly plain beyond, I hope, any conceivable doubt in the minds of lawyers or anybody else that the Group means what it has always been taken to mean. No new tax or increased tax is imposed on any goods by the alteration in the wording but the doubt about interpretation is removed.
  Secondly, the Order excludes from tax the interval timer. An interval timer, as I am sure you will be aware, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, is not quite the same thing as a clock. An interval timer records the passage of predetermined intervals of time but does not record the time of day. It can be used to measure the length of an industrial process or the time to boil an egg or the time taken by an hon. Member in making a speech in this House. At the end of the period a chime or other sound indicates that the period had ended.
  We propose the exemption of these timers partly because they are generally used in industry and also because the distinction between the domestic and the industrial type is rather vague. When such a timer is also a clock or watch, as in the case of an alarm clock or a stop watch, it will, of course, remain chargeable to tax under Group 17 of the Schedule. With that explanation I hope that the House will agree that we have taken the right course in exempting these appliances and at the same time removing doubts about the scope of the rest of the group.
  8.38 p.m.
  Sir John Mellor: I have some doubt as to whether this is merely a clarifying Order, as the Parliamentary Secretary said, because if I remember correctly under the Finance Act of 1948 the affirmative Resolution is required only where an Order extends or increases the incidence of Purchase Tax. In all other cases the negative procedure
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  is permissible, and one notices that the Government never adopt the affirmative procedure if they can possibly adopt the negative procedure. I am afraid I am being suspicious about this, for I believe the Order has the effect of increasing Purchase Tax on some articles and is not limited to clarification.
  In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), the Parliamentary Secretary said it is quite common, in making minor changes in Purchase Tax right up to the moment before the Budget, to deal with those things by Order. But when I have asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer questions on minor matters relating to Purchase Tax I have received the stock answer, "I regret I cannot anticipate my Budget statement." Again, I am afraid I am suspicious. I believe that the real reason why this matter is not reserved for the Finance Bill is that the Government do not want to put anything at all about Purchase Tax in the Finance Bill in order that they may avoid having a debate on the subject. We have had experience of that in the past. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary would like to reconsider his answer on that point and to give a little clearer answer to the House.
  Resolved:
  That the Purchase Tax (No. 3) Order, 1951 (S.I., 1951, No. 397), dated 9th March, 1951, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th March, be approved.

  UTILITY APPAREL
  8.39 p.m.
  Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison: I beg to move,
  That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Order, dated 9th February 1951, entitled the Utility Apparel (Maximum Prices and Charges) Order, 1951 (S.I., 1951, No. 216), a copy of which was laid before this House on 12th February, be annulled.
  I think it would be for the convenience of the House, which we are most intent on considering, if, together with this Order, we considered Statutory Instrument No. 250 entitled Utility Apparel (Women's and Maids' Underwear and Nightwear), about which there is a Motion in my name on the Order Paper for the annulment of the Order.

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  This is neither a flippant nor a frivolous Motion. An earlier attempt was made by me and by my hon. Friends to have this same Motion considered, but it was, in fact, defeated by the House being adjourned, and today is the last day upon which a Prayer is available to us on this first Order. Meantime, trade negotiations by the President of the Board of Trade have been broken off because, as I understand it, this system of using the Parliamentary, constitutional method of examining the problems the House is charged with examining has not met with the approval of the right hon. Gentleman. He pretends that it is difficult to negotiate with industry while there is a chance of arrangements that he has made being annulled by a Prayer of this kind.
  I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary how many orders have, in fact, been annulled, and, indeed, in how many cases where we have used this same and only method open to us to discuss the details of these orders has he not found our representations helpful, and incorporated them in adjusted or amended orders. If the right hon. Gentleman believed that by his action he was influencing trade and industry improperly to try to influence me and my hon. Friends to desist from these Prayers, he has been wrong, and if he thought that I and my hon. Friends would be deflected from carrying out our duty towards the public and to our constituents he was, again, equally wrong.
  I should like to say, at the outset, that I have no intention of asking that this Order be annulled in its entirety. On balance, the situation would, in fact, be worse—it might be chaotic—if, suddenly, this Order were to be annulled, but I do want to emphasise to the hon. Gentleman and to his right hon. Friend that this method we have at our disposal is the only method open to us of being able to consider the details of what his action means. Maybe, the system is wrong. It is not for me, at this point to discuss that. Maybe, there ought to be some amendment of our Parliamentary procedure which would allow us to discuss Amendments to Orders, but so long as this method is the only one open to us I for one propose to continue to pursue it.
  The right hon. Gentleman, in thinking he might deflect us from our duty has
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  done very two very serious things. He has attempted—and I am not sure that the Leader of the House, in moving the Adjournment the other night, was not aiding and conniving at it—to thwart the decisions of Parliament, because the parent Act, the Goods and Services (Price Control) Act, 1941, was approved by the House only subject to the power of hon. Members to be able to pray, and to use this system of discussion on Orders which came up under the Act. I wonder, indeed, if the action of preventing Prayer does not merge on the illegal. The second thing he has done—
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew): I think that that is going far beyond this Order.
  Colonel Hutchison: I shall, therefore, come back to the Order—the two Orders, in fact—and to the matters of their detail. Order No. 250, which came into operation on 26th February, had the effect of increasing manufacturers' prices on all this range of underwear which we are considering. Concurrently with this Order No. 250, which increased manufacturers' permitted prices, Order No. 216 was brought into operation. These Orders, if I may say so, are in tandem. Order No. 216 governed the permitted margins that could be added to these goods, and, indeed, to a wider range of goods—the permitted margins that could be added by the distributors, that is to say, the wholesalers and the retailers. In addition, Order No. 216 refers to what are known as "Related Schedules." These Schedules have turned out to be the nigger in the woodpile the whole way through, because the Related Schedules applicable to a variety of goods, though not all the goods covered by Order No. 216, lay down selling prices.
  Taken together, Orders Nos. 216 and 250 fix the price at which these goods can be sold in the shops. It is clearly obvious that if a parent Order like Order No. 216 is brought out, allowing the margins which can be added to the manufacturers' prices in order to arrive at the selling price, and, at the same time, the Government say, "You must not add the permitted margin to the manufacturer's price until you have seen the selling price which is permitted for your goods under the Related Schedule," that obviously holds up the whole flow and system until the Related Schedule makes its appearance. So,

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  although the trade knew quite well what their final prices would be by taking the manufacturer's permitted price and adding the permitted margin under Order No. 216, they were not allowed to do that; they had to wait until the Related Schedule, namely, No. 4L, made its appearance.
  Perhaps the easiest way to show the sort of nonsense that has arisen would be to take a simple case out of these two Orders. I ask hon. Members to look at Order No. 250 and to take the first example, which can be found on page 2. There, the price for cotton slips of a quality of cloth designated X3130 in its smallest size can be sold, as from 26th February, at a maximum price of 60s. 9d. per doz. Under Order No. 216, in relation to those identical goods the wholesaler has to refer to the Related Schedule 4K. Turning to the Related Schedule 4K and hunting for the same article, we find that the same cotton slips made of a quality of fabric X3130 in the smallest size can be sold by the wholesaler at only 60s. 4d. per dozen.
  So the fantastic situation has arisen in which the wholesaler has to pay to the manufacturer 5d. more per dozen than the price at which he is allowed to sell. That, clearly, holds up the whole flow of goods. The goods disappear from the shelves and are not available to the public; the flow of these articles dries up; they are not available for sale, and the unfortunate housewife, hunting for one of these garments, discovers that, for example, finding utility nightwear has become a nightmare.
  What is the explanation for this nonsensical state of affairs? The explanation is that throughout the Government have assumed that there are considerable quantities of unsold stocks of these garments all the way through the pipeline. They think that it is wrong for a distributor to sell goods at a new and increased price if he has bought them at the old and reduced price. I do not want to detain the House on this particular aspect of the matter, although there is a great deal to be said as to the incorrectness of that theory. I will content myself by pointing out that the stocks do not exist; they are not there, and the whole of this assumption that the goods will be available for sale for a certain period of time
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  because they are in the pipeline is wrong because the system is not working. So great is the demand for these articles, that no sooner do they come in than they are sold, and no sooner do the slips come in than they slip out.
  I make two suggestions for the cure of this state of affairs. Either these Related Schedules should come out at the same time as the parent Order, or very close to it, or at least the distributor should be allowed to add to the manufacturer's price the permitted margin which is allowed in the parent Order. It is a simple matter to make the calculation. The public have their protection, and, at any rate, until the Related Schedule comes out, they should be allowed to make use of that system.
  I want to examine each of these suggestions. It is quite obvious that closer timing between the parent order and the Related Schedule is essential. It has, in fact, been recognised by the Board of Trade themselves, because in certain negotiations which took place on articles of this kind, they promised that the trade would not be asked to wait longer than two weeks for the Related Schedule beyond the date on which the parent order came out. In the case which I quoted, the Related Schedule was delayed for between four and five weeks. For that period the whole thing has not functioned.
  What of the suggestion that the distributor might be allowed to add the permitted margin to the manufacturer's permitted price? That is, clearly, a system which has been found to work by the Board of Trade because, whereas formally almost the whole gamut of utility goods was controlled by the dual price system, it has been abandoned in all except six groups, of which the group which I am discussing is one. If it can be abandoned and found to work with other similar articles, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should extend it. I know part of the reason why this confusion exists. The Board of Trade have found it, as they say, administratively difficult to keep pace with the needs of trade. I can understand that, but that is no argument for making the public suffer when the cure is as simple as the one which I have indicated. Until the administrative machine can catch up with its duties and responsibility, they must adopt a

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  system of allowing the permitted margin to be added to the manufacturer's price.
  One other criticism of the Order which I have to make is this. It falls from more important lips than mine, because it was criticised by the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. Both the two Orders to which I have put down a Motion tonight came under their fire because of the delay in making out the parent Order, and on top of that delay we now have nearly five weeks' delay in bringing out the Related Schedule which allows the Order to work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give some assurance that this is not to continue.
  I have taken perhaps a little time to travel over rather technical and complicated matters, and I find myself in somewhat unusual company among the hon. Members who have supported me. I hope that my fellow-travellers will be persuaded that what is happening now is causing injury to the consumer. I am not primarily interested in the trade in this matter but in the consumers, who are largely inarticulate and can only look to us to raise a voice on their behalf. It is they whom the right hon. Gentleman is trying to stifle at the present time.
  8.55 p.m.
  Sir Joho Mellor: I beg to second the Motion.
  I wish to deal only with the last point mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Scotstoun (Colonel Hutchison), and that is the observations of the Select Committee upon the delay in publication of the Order. The Select Committee obviously took a rather serious view, in making their Report to the House, of the delay in the publication of Order No. 216. The Report says:
  "Your Committee…are of the opinion that the special attention of the House should be drawn to them"—
  that is, four Orders, including No. 216 and No. 250—
  "on the ground that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in their publication."
  In the case of Order No. 216, it was made on 9th February and not published until 23rd February, a delay of 14 days. The Select Committee must have taken a very serious view of a delay of 14 days, because in the case of the other orders the delay is only seven days. Therefore, we ought to have some better explanation
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  as to the delay in publication of Order No. 216.
  The Statutory Instruments Act, 1946, provided for the prompt publication of Orders. Section 2 (1) provides that:
  "Immediately after the making of any statutory instrument, it shall be sent to the King's printer of Acts of Parliament and…copies thereof shall as soon as possible be printed and sold by the King's printer of Acts of Parliament."
  If Members will turn to the Report of the Select Committee which they have no doubt obtained and have fresh in their minds and look at Appendix A, which is the Memorandum by the Board of Trade laid before the Select Committee at their request, they will find in the second paragraph that:
  "The time allowed between signature and publication is normally agreed with His Majesty's Stationery Office on the basis of a standard scale showing the times within which publication can normally be arranged."
  The Board of Trade speak of a standard scale of times, but the Act says that an order shall be published as soon as possible and not according to some standard scale. In my submission there has been a clear breach, certainly in regard to No. 216, of the provisions of the Act. Later, in paragraph 6 of the same Memorandum, we find this:
  "Each of the three Orders under consideration was sent for printing on the morning of the day after it was made."
  Why was it not sent upon the same day? The Act says that it shall be sent immediately to the King's printer after it has been made. Why was there a delay of one day in sending the Order for printing? My hon. and gallant Friend referred to the fact that at least one of the related Schedules was not published until many weeks after the publication of the Order. If the Parliamentary Secretary will look at paragraph 3 of the same Memorandum, he will find in the last sentence that:
  "The Order itself could, no doubt, have been published earlier, but it is submitted that no purpose is served by publishing an Order in advance of any Related Schedule which it brings into operation."
  We are now told that the Related Schedule was published many weeks after the Order. The whole thing seems to be entirely nonsensical. This is a serious matter. It is quite clear that the intention of Parliament as laid down in the Act of 1946 was that there should be a rapid publication of orders immediately after

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  they are made. That certainly has not been fulfilled in the case of the Orders under discussion, and I hope we shall have an explanation from the Parliamentary Secretary which is a great deal better than that made to the Select Committee.
  9.2 p.m.
  Mr. Snow: If I were to address myself at any length on this particular Prayer it would be to rebut some of the controversial remarks made by the hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison) in the first part of his speech. Firstly, no doubt I would be ruled out of order, and, secondly, I have no wish to stir up acrimony tonight, because if rumour has it aright, peace and common sense may break out at any moment. I shall be delighted to associate myself with the hon. and gallant Member and be a crypto-prayer with him, and I shall listen with interest to the Minister's reply.
  9.3 p.m.
  Sir Herbert Williams: I am in some difficulty tonight, because my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Scotstoun (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison) has moved that Statutory Instrument No. 216 be annulled. Tonight is the last night on which we can pray about this Instrument. I presume hon. Members have got a copy of it. I have one in my hand. I see that in the Third Schedule there appears the words:
  "Gaberdine raincoats—Related Schedule No. 16B."
  No doubt most hon. Members think we are discussing that. As a matter of fact, we are not. We cannot discuss it.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think that that Schedule has been revoked by Order No. 296, and we are only discussing Statutory Instrument No. 216 without the Third Schedule.
  Sir H. Williams: I am delighted, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you have drawn the attention of the House to the fact that at the moment we are discussing something which, in part, no longer exists. That is most unsatisfactory from the constitutional point of view. On a Committee stage of a Bill we have the Bill in front of us. We go through it Clause by Clause. Every now and then the Motion is put that Clause so and so stand part,
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  and we are entitled to assume that the Clause is somewhere there. We put down Amendments to leave out words and to insert words. On this occasion I do not think that hon. Members or those who devised this have the foggiest idea what is in the Order and what is left out.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It can all be discussed except the Third Schedule.
  Sir H. Williams: The whole story about Order No. 216 is very strange. The first Order was made on 9th February and the Order which takes part of it away—I presume we can discuss the fact that part of it has been removed from our purview tonight—was made on 22nd February so, quite obviously, the Board of Trade underwent a very rapid change of mind.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I think the other two Orders, Nos. 296 and 413, have not been prayed against.
  Sir H. Williams: One of the objections which I have to the Order we are praying against is the fact that the Board of Trade showed no stability of mind. That is a legitimate point. We are entitled to examine not merely the Order, but what I call "the political morals" of those who made the Order. This Order was signed on 9th February, but 13 days later it was altered. Therefore, what is being prayed against is the whole Order. I do not know what information you have, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, about part of this Order having been removed by a subsequent Order.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It was presented to the House, and the Third Schedule has been taken out of it.
  Sir H. Williams: I am not quite clear—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] This is the first time that the point has ever been raised, and I therefore think that it is a point of substance. I know that hon. Gentlemen opposite are not interested in good law-making, but I am, and that is the point which I wish to raise. On 9th February, an Order was made regulating certain prices. That came into operation on 26th February, but four days later an Order is made which takes it out of operation. It removes not the whole of the Schedule but the part of it, which was removed by Order No. 296. The interesting thing is that Order 413 removes the whole of the Third Schedule and not

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  only the part of it which had been removed before.
  I am making a protest against the most incompetent draftsmanship of the Board of Trade. Nobody in this House can understand this Order without having all these documents in his possession—all of them. They relate to gabardine raincoats, women's domestic overalls and aprons, knitted apparel, nylon hose, women's—
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is all in the Third Schedule, on page 9.
  Sir H. Williams: No, Sir. If they are in the First Schedule they are in order, but some are in the Third Schedule and this—
  Mr. Peter Roberts: On a point of order. I would like to get this matter quite clear. Surely we are praying that the Third Schedule should be annulled—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—although the Third Schedule, by a subsequent Order, has been removed. Surely we are correct in saying why we agree that the Third Schedule should be removed, because in fact it has been removed. Surely we are in order in saying that it should be removed and not in order in saying that it should be retained.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Both would be out of order. Perhaps I could explain what has happened. S.I. No. 216 was amended by S.I. No. 296. S.I. No. 296 was revoked by S.I. No. 413. S.I. No 216 stands, except for the Third Schedule, which has been replaced by the Third Schedule in S.I. No. 413.
  Sir H. Williams: We are all deeply grateful to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but looking at the Third Schedule, I do not find the related schedule No. 4L. That is still in. Therefore, I think I can at least read out its title—"Women's and maids' underwear and nightwear and other knitted apparel." [Laughter.] Quite seriously, at this moment I am quite satisfied that no hon. or right hon. Member, except possibly the Parliamentary Secretary, is really aware of what remains in the document which is now under discussion.
  My purpose in taking part in the debate is not that I necessarily oppose or support anything in Statutory Instrument No. 216, but that I think the time
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  has come when this delegated legislation ought to be handled better. If we go into a shop, whether it sells food or underwear, we find a great mass of these documents stuck on the walls to help the shop assistants to comply with the law. Every now and then people are prosecuted because someone sells one of these articles at a price different from that in the Schedule, and the prosecution is directed not only against the shop assistant who made the mistake—in 99 cases out of 100 it is a mistake—but also against the employer, whether a person or a firm.
  We ought to take a little more trouble. I have here 100 pages of documents all of which are concerned in this matter. Some of the pages are full of lists, numbers, initials and prices. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite treat this as a great joke. Some of them represent the employees in the distributive trade. Some of them profess to represent the Co-ops., who are large traders; but they are not always respectable. My local Co-op. was fined £33 today for selling coal under weight. That interpolation was definitely out of order, but I have been slightly provoked by hon. Gentlemen opposite.
  The Board of Trade ought to behave better in this matter. In respect of some orders they behave quite well because they incorporate the Schedule in the Order. As a whole, the Ministry of Food are much better than the Board of Trade, because they never publish an order which has a related Schedule attached to it, but always publish a complete document. I cannot understand why one Department of the Board of Trade—I am certain that it is one Department—adopts the practice of having related Schedules while other Departments publish complete documents.
  I make a most serious appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary that the Board of Trade should mend its habits so that when we go to the Vote Office and ask for an Order we shall be supplied with not only the Order itself but all the pertinent documents attached thereto. Parliament and the people are not being treated fairly so long as we have these great masses of documents through which we have to search to find what the original Order sought to do and what changes have been made by the amending Order.
  9.14 p.m.
  Mr. Osborne: I have to disclose an interest in the trade. If we find it so difficult to understand these great masses of regulations for which we are responsible, how much more difficult it must be for the men engaged in industry to carry them out. I plead with the Parliamentary Secretary, who has experience in the textile industry, for a much greater simplication of the regulation of economic affairs. Men in the industry who ought to be responsible for increasing the efficiency of their plants and seeing that cheaper and better goods are produced have to spend their time trying to understand regulations which we ourselves find it difficult to follow.
  Furthermore, if the policy represented largely by hon. Members opposite is carried to its extreme, and trade is controlled by S.I. this and S.I. the other, trade will soon be so confused that men will lose heart and will not give their best to industry. I think the Parliamentary Secretary will agree that today in the textile industry which is affected especially by S.I. 250, far too much time is spent by men at the top in committees trying to unravel the difficult and complicated regulations, instead of in their factories making the goods that the people of this country require.
  Apart from the political aspect, I plead with the hon. Gentleman from the practical point of view that he should do his utmost in his Department to simplify these orders so that they can be easily correlated, and to see that we have far fewer of them than we have at the present time.
  9.16 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Rhodes): May I say at once how much I appreciate the way in which this Prayer has been brought forward tonight. The hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison) usually makes a constructive contribution and, during the time that I have been at the Board of Trade, when a matter of importance has been raised, he has usually indicated the line he intended to follow. Hon. Members are entitled to know the ins and outs of these different orders, and I should like to take the opportunity to try to explain what is probably one of the most difficult and intricate series of orders that have been prayed against up to now.
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  To begin at the end, may I say to the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) that while I appreciate the gist of his remarks, they were really out of order because Order No. 216 is a distributors' Order and not a manufacturers' Order. The other is a manufacturers' Order, but it is not a cloth Order, and the hon. Member was trying to refer to the manufacturer of cloth. The remarks of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) were constructive until the last part of his speech.
  I shall try to explain the sequence of these Orders. S.I., 1951, No. 216 introduced three amended schedules, 3H, 4K and 6L. The numbers should be ignored because they are related to the type of garment manufactured, whereas the letter relates to an amendment. The Order also continued in force three Related Schedules, 1K, 16B and 17. The reason for that is, first, if hon. Members will look at 3H and 4K—[Interruption.] If the hon. Members who have raised this Prayer are interested enough to look at them so that I can make a serious explanation, I shall be glad. Those two schedules related to a previous manufacturers' Order.
  On a previous occasion, the hon. Member for Croydon, East, raised the question of the laying of related schedules at the same time as an order was laid. Those Related Schedules were laid at the same time as the particular Order was laid. They are laid in triplicate, and in both Houses. One copy goes back to the Board of Trade, receipted from each House.
  Sir H. Williams: What I raised the other night was that I went to the Library to try to get the Related Schedules involved, but could not find them in the usual volume of printed and bound statutory orders. The Vote Office did not have any, although we learnt that some had been sent there. The Related Schedules which are laid are the ones which are put in the box in the Library—that is, the official laying. The ordinary volume which hon. Members consult did not up to that time contain the Related Schedules. I am glad to say that tonight I have had no difficulty in obtaining the schedules to the orders we are discussing. Therefore, I did some good the other night.
  Mr. Rhodes: The hon. Member should not have had any difficulty on that other night either. Perhaps I may say where the Board of Trade responsibility begins and ends, which may save a lot of argument on future occasions. When an Order is laid, three copies are laid in both Houses. One copy is sent back to the Board of Trade, receipted. On the date of publication, the Board of Trade assistant solicitor, in his capacity as liaison officer to the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments, sends 15 copies to that Committee. Once these two first steps have been taken, the job of the Board is done, and the question of how the orders are distributed or put out in the Library is a matter for the administration in the House.
  Sir H. Williams: The job of laying—that is, sending a copy to the Library or to the Votes and Proceedings Office, I am not quite certain which—is the job of the Board of Trade, but the provision of adequate copies in the Vote Office is the job of the Stationery Office; and they, and not the Board of Trade, are the people who failed.
  Mr. Rhodes: I am glad that the hon. Member has given me the opportunity of correcting him. The job of sending the copies to the Library is not the job of the Board of Trade, but of the administration of the House. The job of the Board of Trade is to see that the Vote Office receives three copies—
  Sir H. Williams: No.
  Mr. Rhodes: —yes—three copies of the order and of the attendant related schedules; and after the 15 copies have been sent to the Select Committee, the job of the Board of Trade has finished. The hon. Member is perfectly correct in that afterwards the Stationery Office and the Vote Office between them decide how many copies they want. While the hon. Member, quite rightly, told the House that on the night in question he was not able to get a copy from the Vote Office, it was not because they were not there but because the regular servant of the House who looks after the Vote Office was away on leave. In fact, the copies were there and could have been produced at a moment's notice by the person who knew about them. I wanted the opportunity of saying that, because I did not want that particular servant to have any blame in the matter.
  Sir H. Williams: On that occasion the Home Secretary went out and brought back four copies, but they were four copies of the order which had been superseded and the official was on duty and supplied him with the four wrong ones, but not the four right ones.
  Mr. Rhodes: That is not accurate in this sense that the four copies were of a previous Order, U.F.5 and those were brought back, but if the servant of the House in the Vote Office had known where the others were and could have laid his hand on them, copies of U.F.6 would have come out also. I think we can leave that as satisfactorily explained.
  Captain Crookshank: It is a muddle.
  Mr. Rhodes: No, it is not a muddle. There was a statement made which was not true and I have explained why it was not true. I think I am quite entitled to do that.
  To come to the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir J. Mellor) in regard to the delay in publication, I also must turn to the Third Report of the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. The explanation is quite adequate. It may be a matter of opinion as to whether there should be more time allowed or not, but they were in the hands of the printers and if the hon. Baronet will look at Appendix B, on page 5, and see the remarks made by the Board of Trade in reply, he will see that it says:
  "It should be noted that the Order and Schedules were published on the 23rd February, whereas the date of operation was 26th February."
  That does not appear to be long, but these were in respect of prices going up and there was no danger of the retailers concerned being subject to proceedings if they went wrong. If it had been a case of prices going down, I should say that a minimum of three weeks would be required to allow retailers to keep within the law by marking down the stuff they had in their shops. That is the explanation. I cannot be more explicit than that. It does refer specifically to No. 216 and to No. 250, and I cannot give a better explanation as to why there was delay in that case. We do try to keep them as up-to-date as possible.

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  Turning to the point raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun, who was concerned with the delay between publication of orders increasing manufacturers' prices and publication of such orders, as that under discussion, which introduced new related schedules to allow distributors to get their permitted margins on manufacturers' prices, I can assure hon. Members that we do our utmost to keep them up-to-date.
  Related Schedules Nos. 3H and 4K, which came out with Statutory Instrument No. 216, were in relation to a previous maximum prices order. The Related Schedule could not come out without the Order; they are both part and parcel one of the other. Leaving the No. 6L, which was a reduction, and taking 1K, 16B and No. 17—[Interruption.] Be patient; I was patient with the hon. Member the other night. He has asked for an explanation, and, if he wants a proper and serious explanation, let him please take it seriously. As we carried on, it was necessary to bring 3H and 4K up to date by bringing in an amending Order No. 413, which came into force on 29th March, and which brought in 3J and 4L in place of 3H and 4K. I take it that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is now quite clear on that.
  Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison: Except for the delay in doing it.
  Mr. Rhodes: Of course, and I regret as much as the hon. and gallant Gentleman the necessity for the delay, and I will come to the reasons for it in a moment.
  The first amending order referred to by the hon. Member for Croydon, East, was No. 296, which brought into force two amended Related Schedules—16C and 17A, and that was for the same purpose—to bring the prices up to date, so that there would be no more confusion about them. Sometimes, when delay has been likely to last for several weeks, I understand that it has been the practice in the past to revoke a Related Schedule of that description and allow the maximum prices as defined in the Order itself to take effect until the revised Related Schedule was ready.
  The hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun is very well versed in these matters, and he will appreciate that, if
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  he looks through Order No. 216 and examines the Third Schedule, he will find a number of descriptions there which are just brief statements, not to be compared with the large number of descriptions preceding them in the Second Schedule. The reason for that is that it is purely for enforcement purposes that the Related Schedules are put in there at all, and if it was possible to do it without the Related Schedules we would do so, because an enormous amount of work is involved.
  Anyone looking through the Related Schedules would see how difficult it is carrying through each item and relating a specific price to a specific item in the Related Schedule. It is a big job and one that calls for a tremendous knowledge of calculation and slide rule. It is for enforcement purposes, and the intention of the Related Schedule is that the maximum prices or long stop prices can be defined, because hon. Gentlemen opposite know quite well that it is easy to evade the law in the case of an Order where there is only a margin.
  It is easy for people who intend to do such a thing to do it. In the experience of the Board of Trade the largest number of prosecutions have been in relation to items in the Third Schedule and it is necessary to have a maximum price related to the margins as defined in the order. I understand we have reduced the items from 16 to six, which is a considerable reduction and if we can we shall reduce them further in the light of the experience of our legal department. I hope that the explanation I have given is quite clear.
  9.36 p.m.
  Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: In spite of the hon. Gentleman's lengthy explanation, the fact still remains that the order was not published until 13 days after it had been made. To put it quite shortly, the reason given was the long time it took to print the Schedule. Is there any object served in making an order before it can be published? If there is no point to be served by that, I suggest the Schedule should be sent to the printer in this case at least eight days before it is desired to make the order, because the result of making the order a good many days before it can be published is that the House is deprived of that number of days out of the 40 days necessary for a negative Resolution.

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  It is not only the trade that is concerned but the right of Private Members. I stress the words "Private Members," because I regret that in the last few weeks Prayers have been considered from the point of view of the two Front Benches. It is the right of Private Members of the Opposition especially to pray against these orders, and if that right is to be preserved it is essential that orders should be available to Members as soon as the praying time begins. May I have an answer on that point?
  9.38 p.m.
  Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison: The Parliamentary Secretary has shown a spirit of accommodation and reasonableness which prompts me to hope that some of the suggestions made will fall upon fruitful ground. I will not detain the House for more than a moment to comment on what the hon. Gentleman said. He said that it has been found from experience that the articles contained in the Third Schedule were easily sold by people who evaded responsibility, who evaded tax and who used wrong prices, and so on.
  I find it very difficult to believe that there is much illicit trading, if I may call it that, in gabardine raincoats whereas, at the same time, it has not been found necessary to subject raincoats, being garments made from cotton cloth, to this complicated system. When one gets things as close together as that I am sure that, with the good will of the hon. Gentleman to examine whether these categories cannot be shortened further, he will find a way out of the dilemma experienced by the trade at present. Perhaps he will also consider the question whether, if he is delayed in bringing out these permitted schedules, he will allow the permitted margin to play upon the manufacturing prices until the Related Schedule comes up.
  As I said at the outset, I had no intention of asking the House to divide on the matter and the accommodation I have had from the hon. Gentleman fortifies me in that. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman wish to move the next Motion to amend Statutory Instrument No. 250?
  Colonel Hutchison: No, Sir.
  Mr. Speaker: That Motion therefore falls.
  9.40 p.m.
  Mr. Erroll: I beg to move,
  That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Order, dated 5th March, 1951, entitled the Utility Apparel (Industrial Overalls and Merchant Navy Uniforms) (Manufacture and Supply) Order, 1951 (S.I., 1951, No. 376), a copy of which was laid before this House on 6th March, be annulled.
  This Order deals with the permitted price increases in two categories of articles, namely industrial overalls and Merchant Navy uniforms. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Watkinson), who will be seconding this Motion, will deal more particularly with the question of Merchant Navy uniforms and I shall, therefore, confine myself to industrial overalls. The Order itself gives an indication of the very wide variety of articles which are included in this Order. It includes such articles as women's wrap-over overalls with short or long sleeves, women's industrial hats, men's overall long coats, full-length type, men's bib and brace overalls, and a whole host of others, including probably the most common and popular of all—the men's boiler suit.
  The rise in prices of articles such as these is a very serious matter for industry. Industrial overalls are largely obtained by either of two methods. Either the workpeople themselves must buy them in the shops and take such care of them as they can, replacing them as and when necessary; alternatively, many firms have now adopted the practice of providing these overalls for their employees either through their general welfare services or on a reduced cost basis which ensures that every worker receives new overalls either every week or every fortnight.
  Whichever method is adopted for clothing industrial workers with overalls, the additional cost represents an important factor in industrial costs. Either the extra cost must be found out of the wages of the individual worker, in which case it is an important factor in raising the cost of living, or when the firms provide the overalls the increased price will represent a small but nevertheless important addition to the overhead charges which such firms must bear.

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  I dare say it will be submitted by the Parliamentary Secretary that these permitted price increases are necessitated by factors outside the control not only of his Department but of the Government as a whole. The facts, however, are entirely different because in this case we have in the manufacture of industrial overalls a raw material which is very much under the control of the Board of Trade and the Raw Cotton Commission—
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Rhodes): Mr. Speaker, may I ask if it is in order to refer to the Raw Cotton Commission?
  Mr. Speaker: I am afraid I was not listening, but we must confine ourselves to the Order.
  Mr. Erroll: Naturally, Mr. Speaker. I have every intention of confining myself to the Order, and if the Parliamentary Secretary had not been quite so hasty I am sure he would have had an opportunity of hearing how I was proposing to relate the purchase of raw cotton to this Order. An important element in the cost of the production of industrial overalls is the cost of the raw cotton which goes into their manufacture. Apart from an incidental wage increase for textile workers, one of the main reasons for the permitted increase in prices is the increase in price of the raw cotton supplied to the spinners to make the yarn from which is woven the material for these industrial overalls. The Raw Cotton Commission—
  Mr. Speaker: That can be stated as a fact as one of the causes, but I do not think it ought to be argued at length.
  Mr. Erroll: The increase in the price of yarn, which is a material factor in this Order, has been brought about through purchases of yarn from countries other than the United States of America and the matter is very much within the control of the Board of Trade who, had they pursued a different policy in conjunction with the Commission, would have been able to obtain supplies of the right sort of cotton at materially lower prices. In this way it might have been possible to avoid the necessity for this Order.
  I should be glad to receive some explanation on this subject from the Parliamentary Secretary and, if possible, to
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  be given an assurance that the buying policy of his buying colleagues will be so altered as to secure the cheapest possible supplies of raw cotton for these most essential articles. I cannot accept, and I am sure my hon. Friends will not be able to accept, the argument that such price increases are inevitable or are the result of the war in Korea.
  Mr. Jack Jones: Would the hon. Gentleman tell us how he expects to get cheap cotton from Egypt when the Leader of the Opposition wishes to persuade this House to reject the payment of debts to Egypt?
  Mr. Erroll: I am most grateful for that intervention because the main burden of my complaint is that the emphasis of buying has been on buying cotton from any source other than the cheapest, namely, America, and that in buying from countries like Peru we are having to pay higher prices.
  There is general agreement that the Order has been badly worked out. Some price increases have been too great; others have not been great enough. It is an Order which has been worked out by those who did not know their business. The Industrial Overall Manufacturers' Association state that the prices are known by the Board of Trade officials themselves to be wrong, but that it has been said by them that nevertheless such prices have to be adopted and that no alteration can be accepted. Another of my hon. Friends will develop this point more fully, and I shall conclude by suggesting that the Order should be withdrawn so that a better Order can be substituted.
  9.48 p.m.
  Mr. Watkinson: I beg to second the Motion.
  I want to deal briefly with the second half of the Order which makes material increases in the cost of Merchant Navy uniforms. I have no doubt that in his reply the Parliamentary Secretary will say that these prices are the result of long negotiations with the trade and that they express the trade wishes in this matter. I am not greatly concerned with that point, however, as I wish to base my arguments on the narrow point of the consumers' interest—and in this case the consumers are the officers and men of the Merchant Navy who have to buy these uniforms out of somewhat depleted funds.

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  I think I am in a good position to speak from their point of view, if I may say so, as I served with the Merchant Navy in the war and I know that they often have to endure straitened circumstances.
  As an example of this Order, a patrol jacket (officers' pattern), X3110/2, has increased in price from 15s. 3d. to 17s. 4d. The Parliamentary Secretary will correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is the second increase within something like six months. It is clearly the right of any hon. Member to put down a Prayer against an Order of this kind solely with the purpose of obtaining from the Government an explanation of why these price increases have to be requested in fairly rapid succession. That is the small point I wanted to make. I should like a clear explanation from the Parliamentary Secretary why these increases, running through vastly long Schedules, and practically every kind of uniform used in the Merchant Navy, have had to be made, and why in each case they are of a quite substantial nature, amounting to 2s. or 3s. per garment. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will indicate that, at any rate, this recent increase is the last that there is going to be for some time.
  9.51 p.m.
  Mr. Molson: I am obliged to support this Prayer that this Order be annulled so that I may raise some criticisms and complaints about its nature. The Parliamentary Secretary will not be surprised when I say that I do not join with my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Watkinson) in complaining about the increases in the prices which are contained in this Statutory Instrument. I had occasion to approach him on behalf of a small and enterprising firm in my constituency who wrote to me early in this year to complain that the Board of Trade had not increased the prices which they might charge for the industrial overalls which they were producing, in spite of the fact that there had been very substantial increases made by the same Board of Trade in the prices of their raw material.
  I therefore addressed myself to the Parliamentary Secretary and asked that there should be an increase in these prices, and he was good enough to see me and to give me an assurance that, very shortly, an order would be forthcoming, and I expressed the gratitude which I
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  felt. I hope, therefore, that he will not think me ungrateful, or that it is unreasonable on my part, if I join with those who are making the protests against this Order, because I do not think that it is a very good Order now that it has been made.
  First, let me join in what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne), in regard to a previous Statutory Instrument tonight, in expressing regret that it should be necessary for these orders to be so complicated and so difficult to understand. It happened that I had occasion on 2nd March to go into close proximity to this factory. I called, just after this Order had been published, to discuss the matter, and at that time the manager of the factory said that it would take him and his staff several days to work out exactly what these increases implied. Subsequently, I had a letter from him, and he had by then had time to go into these various increases.
  What I wish to put to the Parliamentary Secretary is that the increases which have been authorised by the Board of Trade are not in harmony with one another, that in a number of these cases the increases in the prices are more than are justifiable, that in the case of comparable articles the percentage increase in the prices has been extremely various, and that the increase in price which has been authorised for these garments bears no relationship to the increase in price of the cloth which has been used as their raw material.
  To make this as simple as possible I should like to give a number of different percentage increases and to contrast them. The concern in my constituency took a number of cloths, 30 in number, and worked out the old price of the garments and the new price of the garments. I have worked out the percentage increases, which were as follows: 30 per cent., 18 per cent., 28 per cent., 17 per cent., 16 per cent., rather less than 30 per cent. rather more than 38 per cent., 18 per cent. and 18 per cent. It is very difficult to imagine that increases which represent so varied a percentage increase can really be justifiable.
  In the case of the first of these categories the increase in the cost of the cloth per garment was 3s. 6d. and the increase in the price of the garment was 6s. 5d. In the next case there was an

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  increase in the price of the cloth of 4s. 4d., but the increase in the price of the garment was only 4s. 3d. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary: What can be the possible justification for an increase in the price of the manufactured article being less than the increase in the price of the raw material in one category, whereas in a similar but different category the increase in the price of the cloth was only 3s. 6d. yet it was deemed right to increase the cost of the garment by 6s. 5d.? In a subsequent case the effect of the increase in the price has been to alter the relative prices of two entirely different garments, in spite of the fact that the increase in the price of one was less than that of the other.
  I do not propose to attempt to go further into all these detailed calculations. It would not be reasonable to expect the Parliamentary Secretary to follow each one of them. I have a constituent who is giving employment to a large number of other constituents, and it is his obligation to try to keep his concern going and to observe the maximum prices laid down by the Board of Trade. He has commented about all these increases; some of them he considers to be too great and some of them he considers to be too small. I find that the percentage increases broadly justify the criticisms he has made. Would the Parliamentary Secretary explain to the House how these figures have been arrived at? Anyone who chooses to examine the Statutory Instrument will find that there is a long Schedule with a number of code figures and a number of prices attached thereto.
  I understand that these alterations in prices are made by the Board of Trade after consultation with the trade concerned, or, rather, that that was the case until the President of the Board of Trade decided to resort to direct action and to go on strike. Apparently this Statutory Instrument was supposed to have been arrived at in consultation with the association of the industry concerned. A constituent writes to me:
  "I rang the Overall Manufacturers' Association and was told that these prices were known to be wrong, but that we must use them for our trading meantime. I then rang the Board of Trade, who did not know that the prices were wrong, who told me they would look into the matter, but that the prices would have to stand at the present time."
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  We are obliged to observe these prices so long as this Statutory Instrument is in operation. I have quoted some facts and figures and I am perfectly willing to send the letter and the schedule to the Parliamentary Secretary in order that these calculations may be checked and corrected.
  It is obviously impossible for the industry as a whole to continue to work satisfactorily unless the increase in the price of the manufactured article which they produce is correctly related to the increase in the price of the materials which they consume. Therefore, I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider again this Order which has been issued. I thank him for recognising the need for an increase in prices, but I would ask him to consider whether the Statutory Instrument which he has produced does, in fact, bring about the necessary increase in the prices which are laid down in the Schedules.
  10.2 p.m.
  Mr. Fort: My hon. Friend the Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson) has asked some very pertinent questions about the prices included in the schedules in this Order. I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary about some of the specifications which have been included, with special reference to overlookers' overalls which are important protective clothing to many in my constituency.
  In the weaving industry the overlookers gait up, tune and generally keep the looms in good running order. The work which they have to do makes a heavy call upon the overalls which they wear. Furthermore, owing to the nature of the work, they wish by tradition to work in overalls which have short sleeves. I would, on behalf of my constituents, like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary, in the first place, to make quite sure that the utility specification from which these overalls are or were made, which is in the 3111 class of cloth, still covers the materials to be used for making overlookers' overalls.
  The next point on which I should like to have his assurance, and so would the overlookers in the weaving mills of Lancashire, is that overalls made with short sleeves, which is the type they require, are also covered by this order. There is a large number of measurements given in the Table of Maximum Measurements on page 20 of the Order for the different

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  dimensions of the overalls, but there is no mention at all of overalls being included with sleeves cut short just below the elbow. Unless such overalls are included in the Order they will not count as utility apparel, and the unhappy overlookers will be faced with having to pay Purchase Tax on the overalls they will be having to buy.
  The last point to which I wish to draw attention in this somewhat unsatisfactory Order is on page 26. If Members turn to that page they will find a diagram entitled Style 3. Members will see a peculiar looking garment which, as far as I can understand, will form a sort of breastplate for the wearer. Perhaps if, as a result of this debate, this Order is withdrawn we can have something rather more specific in future, something rather clearer on how this garment is attached to the wearer's body. At present it looks like a piece of antique armour.
  10.7 p.m.
  Mr. Rhodes: It rather sounds as if the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Fort) has been attending some dressmaking classes. His complaints do not need answering by me because they should be addressed to the British Standards Institution, which is the authority for setting out specifications to which manufacturers work and on which manufacturers are represented. We will have a look at the question of the type of garments for overlookers. I do not think that is included in the Schedule, but if it is, so much the better. I promise to look at it and let the hon. Member know what the answer is.
  The hon. Member for The High Peak (Mr. Molson) referred to the question of prices. This was the subject of negotiation. The prices were agreed. This is an interim Order, and we are aware of some of the shortcomings which we shall remedy as soon as we possibly can after the costing investigation now taking place in the industry. The hon. Member says that manufacturers are complaining very bitterly because they do not understand the Order. Perhaps it is its very simplicity that confuses him. All he need do is to read the price opposite the appropriate specification and he has the answer. He does not need to go back to any previous orders, but merely to look at the appropriate specification number of the cloth from which the garment is to be
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  made and that is the figure at which it may be sold. It is quite simple.
  Prices naturally vary. Quite a few of these cloths are grouped with one price for several cloths, which is the reason the increases in garment prices do not follow exactly the increase in the price of each cloth. I think that is understandable.
  Mr. Molson: I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary about two points. He says that these increases in prices have been agreed, but with what organisations? I have read out a sentence from a letter from one of my constituents saying that he rang the Overall Manufacturers' Association, and was told that these prices were known to be wrong. As the Parliamentary Secretary says that this is an interim Order and is to be corrected later, that is confirmation of what was written to me.
  Mr. Rhodes: That may be. The Order was negotiated, and both sides agreed that some part of it might be wrong. There is no difficulty about it at all, although there are disparities, owing to the fact that the making-up industry, where there is a great demand, wanted to get many types of garment out to the public as quickly as possible. The hon. Gentleman knows that these prices were raised on account of the increases in the prices of cloth. I cannot follow the argument of the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll) in the wide course that he took. I am not going to discuss the origins of this particular type of cloth because this is not a cloth Order but a garment Order. If I attempted to follow him I should be out of order. I hope that the mover and seconder will now be prepared to withdraw their Motion.
  Miss Irene Ward: Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, can he give us some explanation about Merchant Navy uniforms, which are very important to my part of the world?
  Mr. Joynson-Hicks: The Parliamentary Secretary mentioned that the Order was the result of negotiation, but on the other hand that it is only temporary. Can he give us any indication when he expects to produce the permanent Order, and the cost to the industry of making the necessary adjustments?
  Mr. Rhodes: I should have thought it was obvious. It is not a matter of cost

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  but something which helps the industry. With regard to the first part of the question, I cannot say, but I will find out, and I will let the hon. Gentleman know when another Order is likely to come forward.
  Mr. David Eccles: It appears to be one of the consequences of putting three different prices against this cloth that the quality goes down. It takes some time to negotiate these prices, and in the meantime the price of the raw material has gone up. I should like to have an assurance that the policy of the Department is not to lower quality in goods like this in order to keep the price down a few pence.
  Mr. Rhodes: I said before that the disparity in prices, to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention, was in particular groups of cloth. As to quality, I am as keen as the hon. Member is that quality shall be maintained. It may be for the quantity that is required, other specifications may have to be introduced. I do not know, but that is something we shall have to find out in the course of time according to the cloth which is going through. Hon. Members will realise that most of the cloth going into this type of garment is similar to that used for the Services.
  Mr. Erroll: I must say that the Parliamentary Secretary's reply has been most unsatisfactory. He has refused to discuss individual cases of increases which have made this Order necessary, and he frankly admitted that a good deal of the Order is wrong. I suppose he thinks it is better to issue wrong Orders than none. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the assurance which he gave that this is only an interim Order, and is shortly to be replaced by a proper one. Again his reply was unsatisfactory because he was unable to say when the final Order would be introduced. However, I accept his assurance that he is going to introduce a proper Order to take the place of this temporary and most unsatisfactory one, and in view of that I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Miss Irene Ward: Before my hon. Friend withdraws his Motion could the Parliamentary Secretary say something about the Merchant Navy?
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  [Interruption.] It may not interest hon. Members opposite, but it is a matter of interest to the people of Tyneside. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is the hon. Lady interested in the Merchant Navy?"] I certainly am.
  Mr. Rhodes: The same principle that was enunciated about the other garments applies to the Merchant Navy.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

  FRUIT AND VEGETABLE PRICES
  Motion made and, Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Popplewell.]
  10.18 p.m.
  Miss Barton: I wish to raise the question of the distribution of costs of home grown fruits and vegetables. Some eight weeks ago I was able in the House to raise the question of the increase in the price of these commodities at weekends. That was satisfactory in the sense that the following weekend the vans which were selling vegetables in my constituency carried a large poster stating "No price increases today." On that Saturday we had a public meeting in Coventry, at which there were present many consumers, retailers and wholesalers. The decision of that meeting was that prices certainly went up at the weekends, and it was not the slightest use the retailers telling the housewives that they did not. One of the most interesting arguments put forward was when a retailer told us that prices did not go up at the weekends but went down on Mondays. We thought that that was the best reason that we had been given.
  Tonight I am going to deal with a much more difficult problem, that of distribution. I am tackling it for a reason with which I think the House will agree. It is because of the difference in price between that received by the grower or producer, and the price which all of us as consumers have to pay in the shops. I want to ask with a big question mark, is such a difference really necessary? It is a difficult problem because the system is complex and the produce varies. I appreciate that, unless comparisons really are valid, objection will always be taken to them, but the House will appreciate the difficulty, because the only way to make

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  one's comparisons completely valid would be to turn into a cabbage and go from the patch where the cabbages grow right through to the shop as the same cabbage. Short of doing that, we cannot say that it is exactly the same.
  But that is not possible, and, therefore, tonight I am trying to be completely non-party—it is not a party matter—and I am assuming that everyone in the House would wish to reduce the price to the consumer while giving a fair margin of profit to the producer, the wholesaler and the retailer. I want to find out tonight if the wide difference which I have mentioned does exist and, if so, whether we can direct public attention to it.
  Three weeks ago I went to Covent Garden early in the morning. I realise that Covent Garden is peculiar to this city, but I wanted to find how the system works there. I should like to say "thank you" to the porters, the salesmen and the wholesalers who were good enough to take me round. If the House is already aware of this information I apologise for giving it again, but it is necessary to do so. In Covent Garden the wholesalers sell on commission which varies from 5 to 10 per cent. Most of the wholesalers would say that it varies from 7½ to 10 per cent., but in some cases it is as low as 5 per cent. if a wholesaler wants to keep a grower who has sent him good produce and is not prepared to allow a larger commission to be deducted.
  There is the Covent Garden Tenants' Association, which has certain recognised charges. These are 10 per cent. commission with the wholesaler's own empties and 7½ per cent. commission with the grower's own empties. The merchants decide each morning what they will charge. In other words, they have to get the feel of the market. If they charge too much their goods will hang fire, and if they charge too little their goods will go very quickly and the grower will protest because higher prices have not been gained. It is true to say that the wholesalers of Covent Garden have to maintain a market level of prices.
  In passing, it is interesting to note that at Covent Garden there is a system of porterage which is not common to wholesale markets elsewhere. A merchant in Covent Garden cannot just take on a porter from anywhere. He must apply to the union, which is the Transport and
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  General Workers' Union, and if he can show that the wages of his porters are above a certain amount—I could not discover the amount—he is allowed to take on an additional porter, who is given a badge by the Association.
  As I thought the House would be interested, I tried to discover the average earnings of a porter in Covent Garden. I am chary about giving the information, because those who get less rush in and say they do not get anything near the amount, while I suppose those who get more are prepared to leave the matter alone. However, I found from the inquiries I was able to make that the average earnings of a porter in Covent Garden today are about £10 per week, but I would qualify that by saying that some get less and some more.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: Engineers get £7.
  Miss Burton: The figure of £10 includes a retaining fee which has to be paid by the merchants to all their porters.
  To come to the question of the wholesaler, obviously the wholesaler anywhere has overheads. He has his rent in the market, which in London is quite considerable, he has a staff of clerks and he has the retainers to his porters. The grower sending his produce to London pays all the market charges. He pays carriage or transport, he has to pay commission, he has to pay tolls. In Covent Garden tolls are levied on every package according to its contents; the only exceptions are grower-producers selling their own stuff in the market. And, of course, he has to pay porterage.
  As far as London is concerned, the retailer comes to Covent Garden, he has to employ a badged porter and he has to pay the porterage charges for taking the stuff out of the market. Everybody I saw in Covent Garden seemed quite prepared to agree that when prices went up in the market they went up in the shops. What I am not convinced about, and what I am quite sure the housewife is not convinced about, is that when prices go down in the market they also go down in the shops.
  It was on Tuesday, 13th March, that I went to Covent Garden, and on that date the price of cabbages and of all root vegetables there was under 1d. a lb., not in one place but right through the

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  market. I do my own shopping and I have never been able to get cabbage at anywhere near 1d. per lb. On my way home on that day I called in at one or two of the small shops near me. As I have said, I cannot say they were the same cabbages, but most housewives know what cabbages look like, and they looked like the same type. That same type of cabbage was 4d. a lb., that is, a difference in price of 300 per cent.
  Before I went in to the shops I took this up with the merchants in the Garden and they advanced the following reason to me. The wholesalers said, "The housewife who wants to buy 2 lb. of cabbage will not buy more than that if we put the price down, so it is not worth putting it down." I have two remarks to make on that. First, I think it would be a good idea to give her a chance; secondly, if she only wants 2 lb. of cabbage, I do not see the slightest reason why she should have to pay three times as much for what she wants.
  It is no use raising matters unless one can bring a certain amount of definite factual information. I have here the prices of certain vegetables for the week ending 27th January. That date was not chosen because it bolsters up my case, which is either a good or a bad one; they merely happen to be the figures obtaining in London for that week. The vegetables are cabbages, carrots, turnips, lettuces and potatoes. Of those only potatoes were price controlled. To be as fair as possible I have taken the lowest price for comparison, with the exception of carrots, and I have the price paid to the grower, the price wholesale in Covent Garden, and the price retailed in the shops. The prices are per cwt. unless stated otherwise.
  Cabbages: Kent, 4s. per cwt. was the average price the grower received; 6s. a cwt. was the price at which the wholesaler sold them at the market; the average price in the London shops was 28s. per cwt. That is a difference of 700 per cent. between what the grower received and the price in the shops. Carrots—Bedfordshire, Hunts., and Cambridge: Taking the lowest price of carrots produced such an incredible result that I thought it must be wrong, and so I favoured the other side, as it were, by taking the highest
  168
  price. Carrots, 6s. 6d. to the grower, 10s. in the Market here, 28s. in the London shops. That is a difference of 425 per cent. Turnips: Essex, 6s. to the growers, no quotation for the wholesaler, 28s. in the shops. That is 475 per cent. Lettuces per dozen, from Bedfordshire, Hunts., and Cambridge were 2s. to the grower, 3s. in the market and 8s. in the shops; that is 400 per cent. Potatoes, Grade A 4, King Edward type, Lincolnshire, were 9s. 1½d. to the producer, 11s. 11½d. in the market, and 15s. 4d. in the shops; a difference of 75 per cent.
  I think the House will be interested to note that the difference in the price of controlled produce is 75 per cent. In the free market, where obviously I know we are subject to availability of supply, to variety of quality and demand, the difference ranges from 400 per cent. to 700 per cent. I am back to what I said at the beginning; is such a difference really necessary?
  I want to go to my native city of Coventry. In the last matter I raised, about the high prices of fruit and vegetables at the week-ends, the wholesalers rushed into the fray and nobody had mentioned them, but on this matter they said they would give me their co-operation. They gave me some prices for Coventry for the week ending 19th January, for vegetables such as spring cabbage, carrots, turnips and sprouts. I wanted, if possible, to be able to compare these with the retail prices, but could not get retail prices for the shops. However I have the retail prices for the industrial Midlands, of which Coventry is a part. I should like to make that clear; and I think the comparison is good enough.
  For spring cabbage the wholesaler on the average received 5s. per 40 lb., but the selling price in the industrial Midlands was 13s. 4d.: that is a difference of more than 150 per cent. The price of carrots was 11s. 7d. per cwt. received by the wholesaler and the price in the shops was 28s.; again a difference of 150 per cent. These wholesalers' figures come from the Coventry and District Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Merchants' Association.
  Mr. Nabarro: Where did these carrots come from? Were they from Worcestershire, or Bedfordshire or Cambridge?
  Miss Burton: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's interest in Worcestershire, but I am afraid I do not know where these came from. I am trying, in this instance, to compare the actual difference in prices that the wholesalers received and the consumers had to pay. That is the point I am on in this matter. For sprouts, the wholesaler received 5s. 10½d. per 20 lb., and these were sold in the shops at 13s. 4d.; a difference of 125 per cent. These figures represent profit apparently far in excess of that put forward by the Retail Federation. If they are not wholly profit and if some large amount is swallowed up in expenses, I want to know how much is expenses and how much is profit.
  Obviously, there would be no point in raising this unless I had suggestions to offer. I have three to put forward to the Parliamentary Secretary. It appears that there are two systems of distribution used in this country—commission by consignment, which is the system used at Covent Garden; and the other is that of net return to the grower or producer. Now that of the net return to the grower or producer is open to abuse, because a great many producers are quite content if they get the net return for which they asked and they do not look at the deductions above the line which the wholesaler has made. I should like to ask the Minister and the trade that where a net return system is used they should check the deductions made under it. I should also like to ask the Minister and the trade to note whether all the upward and downward trends in prices in the markets are reflected in the shops.
  Thirdly, can anything be done about the weights and measures position, because, as the House knows, the Weights and Measures Acts do not apply to wholesalers' sales and we get a wide variation in packing and contents. Several of the Coventry retailers have written to me and quoted various examples. One says in 56 lb. of carrots he had 5 lb. of soil and another that in 112 lb. of potatoes he had 7 lb. One got a 40 lb. box of apples in which the apples weighed 35½ lb. I should like to ask what comeback a retailer has. Very little in the small market, because we all know that if any of them complain they get a raw deal, and I have been asked by retailers on no condition to mention their names, because of that position.
  170
  If the Parliamentary Secretary is going to say that a high degree of wastage is inevitable in this, obviously I accept it, but if that wastage is so high that it allows up to 700 per cent. between the money received by the grower and the money we pay in the shops, then obviously the system has to be changed. There is no doubt about that. If the wastage does not cover the 700 per cent., then I think we have to try to find out where that money goes. According to my figures nobody gets it, but one thing is certain, somebody must.
  Mr. Crouch: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but may I ask her what is the amount of carriage being charged on these vegetables, and does she take that into account?
  Miss Burton: I have taken everything into account. There is this difference of 700 per cent. between the two extremes and I think it is too great. I am trying to find out where it goes. I think the House would agree it is too much. Every housewife, of every party and none knows that she pays an iniquitous price for vegetables in the shops. They should be brought down.
  10.38 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Mr. Frederick Willey): I am sure we are obliged to the hon. Lady for raising this question, and we should congratulate her in getting up so early and going to Covent Garden Market. I think we have to recognise two things: first, that distribution of fruit and vegetables is haphazard and that it is extraordinarily difficult. It is affected by the weather, which is always an uncertain element.
  Take the grower who, thanks to good weather, grows his lettuces early. The weather may change and he may not get the price he expected. The loss may not rest with him; it may also rest with the retailer. There may be a change in the weather while lettuces are being transferred to the retailer, resulting in no sale at all for salads. That sort of thing makes it a chancy and difficult trade.
  Again, there is the question of quality. My hon. Friend mentioned cabbages, and said that one has to be sure they are the same cabbages. That is true. There are tremendous variations in the quality of fruit and vegetables. Perhaps I should

  171
  add that our figures for cabbages do not accord with hers. Ours show an average of 3d. which compares favourably with the previously controlled price of 4½d., and generally speaking, vegetable prices compare favourably with previously controlled prices.
  We are dealing with highly perishable commodities and there is a substantial element of waste; that is perhaps not unavoidably as great as it is now—but it is there all the same. There is an element of risk, and this is, as I have said, a very speculative and chancy business. But allowing for all that, and probably because of these factors, we have to do something to improve marketing arrangements for fresh fruit and vegetables. If we deal with the three parts of the chain of distribution, I think the growers have got to be more enterprising. I do not think it has been emphasised sufficiently tonight that the growers are, perhaps, more prejudiced than anyone in the chain of distribution.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: While the hon. Gentleman is saying that, may I ask whether, as an aid to making them more enterprising, he will get them non-returnable containers and an increase in the supply of all packaging materials?
  Mr. Willey: We are doing all we can to aid growers, but I do not think that sufficient use is being made of the facilities available. The growers' co-operatives certainly have made some progress, but we have got to do better than we are doing. Apart from apples, we compare unfavourably with the Continental growers in most cases. If we have unsaleable produce reaching the market, and consequent waste, then the cost resulting will eventually be borne by the consumer. We should concert together to see that unsaleable produce does not go into the distribution chain. Moreover, the wholesale markets must be improved. Anyone going to Covent Garden Market is immediately impressed with the fact that the facilities for marketing are inadequate, and so we have perishable commodities held up by the physical difficulties of dealing with produce.
  The wholesale markets, apart from Covent Garden, are too small, and Covent Garden was originally designed
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  many, many years ago for local marketing. Now it is a national market but it has not, because of the greatly changed circumstances, the facilities or the appliances for dealing with modern traffic problems with the speed demanded for perishable commodities. It is out-of-date and ill-equipped. I think we have to concentrate, not so much on the profits which may be being made but rather on the unnecessary handling of the produce. These commodities are mainly dealt with on a commission basis. The fault lies not so much in the measure of profit taken by the wholesaler as in the number of people handling the goods in the wholesale stage.
  As I am trying to deal with everyone concerned, I will refer for a moment to the retailers. Their margin does seem to have increased over recent years; and one cannot help but feel that there is perhaps a tendency—and this is understandable—in dealing with highly perishable commodities—to look for a high profit on a limited turnover rather than for them to go out for a progressive price policy—in other words, to go out for a greater turnover and be content with a lesser price.
  Mr. Vane: Would the hon. Gentleman deal with the point of the retailer who has two shops, one in the main street, and a humbler one just round the corner, showing great difference in prices?
  Mr. Willey: Yes, but we should recognise that if we are to have competitive retailing, we should not be alarmed when we find that there are price differences. We want differences in retail prices. However, apart from that, if one looks at the retail field of fresh fruit and vegetable distribution, one does feel that there is a tendency to be content with a limited turnover rather than deliberately to increase the turnover which would help the growers in times of abundance.
  What we want, therefore, is a simplification of our present arrangements, a pruning of the expenses of marketing and a better marketing intelligence. As my hon. Friend has suggested, one of the difficulties today in this trade is having reliable marketing intelligence. The very fact that we have not got adequate wholesale marketing facilities means that it is extraordinarily difficult to know what is

  173
  happening about price changes. We should also set out to do what we can to bring the grower nearer the point of retail sale. In short, we should do what we can to provide a more efficient and speedy way of handling these highly perishable goods and so avoid waste in the process of distribution.
  We are not thinking about this for the first time. It is a very difficult problem. We had the Linlithgow Committee Report in 1923, and we have had considerable research made over the last few years. The Government are giving their active and earnest attention and consideration to these problems, and my right hon. Friend has previously given the assurance that there will be discussion with all the sections of the trade affected before there is any question of implementing decisions on what is an extraordinarily complex and difficult problem.
  Mr. Baker White: Does not the Parliamentary Secretary agree that there is one factor in this problem to which no one has yet found a solution, and that is the day-to-day change in consumer demand, the lady who wants a cabbage on Monday, a lettuce on Tuesday and neither a cabbage nor a lettuce on Wednesday, with the result that retailers and the market are always taking a risk in being left with large quantities of unsaleable produce?
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'Clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at Twelve Minutes to Eleven o'clock.

  WESTMINSTER HALL (LIGHTING)
  WESTMINSTER HALL (LIGHTING)
MINISTRY OF WORKS
  Public Buildings, Scotland (Decoration)
  Public Buildings, Scotland (Decoration)
  Housebuilding Costs
  Housebuilding Costs
  Requisitioned Buildings, Scotland
  Requisitioned Buildings, Scotland
  BOTTLED GAS PLANTS (EXPLOSIONS)
  BOTTLED GAS PLANTS (EXPLOSIONS)
SCOTLAND
  Sheep Worrying
  Sheep Worrying
  Rent Restriction Acts
  Rent Restriction Acts
  Crofter Counties
  Crofter Counties
BRITISH ARMY
  Class Z Reserve
  Class Z Reserve
  Troops, Korea
  Troops, Korea
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Economic Survey (Publication)
  Economic Survey (Publication)
  Widows' and Spinsters' Allowance (Age Limit)
  Widows' and Spinsters' Allowance (Age Limit)
  Schedule A Assessment
  Schedule A Assessment
  Greyhound and Speedway Racing (Tax)
  Greyhound and Speedway Racing (Tax)
GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS
  Post Office Staff (Decisions)
  Post Office Staff (Decisions)
  Industrial Staff (Holiday)
  Industrial Staff (Holiday)
PLANNING
  Buildings, Clapham
  Buildings, Clapham
  Amenities (Tree Felling)
  Amenities (Tree Felling)
  Hotels (Advertisements)
  Hotels (Advertisements)
HOUSING
  Gloucestershire
  Gloucestershire
  Aged Persons (Accommodation)
  Aged Persons (Accommodation)
TRADE AND COMMERCE
  Yarn Exports
  Yarn Exports
  Bulk Buying
  Bulk Buying
  AGRICULTURE (WORKERS)
  AGRICULTURE (WORKERS)
  POST OFFICE (RETIRED PENSIONERS)
  POST OFFICE (RETIRED PENSIONERS)
  WATER AND SEWERAGE SCHEMES
  WATER AND SEWERAGE SCHEMES
  RATING AND VALUATION ACT (APICULTURE)
  RATING AND VALUATION ACT (APICULTURE)
FUEL AND POWER
  Anthracite (Rural Areas)
  Anthracite (Rural Areas)
  Shanghai (Oil Supply)
  Shanghai (Oil Supply)
  Public Offices (Heating)
  Public Offices (Heating)
  ROYAL NAVY (BOILERS, GOSPORT)
  ROYAL NAVY (BOILERS, GOSPORT)
HONG KONG
  Fishing Fleet
  Fishing Fleet
  Trade Facilities
  Trade Facilities
Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
The Duke of Northumberland—Took the Oath.
ROYAL ALBERT HALL BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a; and committed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
2.36 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, after discussion through the usual channels, it has been decided to ask your Lordships to sit to-morrow until 7 p.m. If, by that time, the Committee stage of the Forestry Bill has not been concluded, it is proposed to finish it, if possible, on Thursday after-noon. The only business at present on the Order Paper for Thursday afternoon is a Question by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, That Question will be taken after the Committee stage of the Forestry Bill.

LONDON TRAFFIC PROBLEMS
2.37 p.m.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they have considered the recommendations in the Report of the London
2
Traffic Advisory Committee, and what action they propose to take upon them; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have for some time wished to raise in your Lordships' House this important problem of London traffic congestion. I felt it wise, however, to wait until we received the Ministry of Transport's Report, which has recently come out. I should at once like to say that I think this is an excellent Report which deserves high praise. The whole strength of its excellence lies in the balance which has been attained between the recommendations for further restrictions and traffic control on the one hand, and further measures for improvement of roads and parking facilities on the other. Road improvements which are recommended represent, I feel, a very modest expenditure. I hope that noble Lords opposite will not be shocked when I say that—indeed, I should like to repeat that I consider it a very modest expenditure. My only regret is that the Committee did not boldly recommend that these schemes should be completed within five years in-stead of just suggesting that they should be started within that time. As your Lordships are well aware, there have been similar Reports in the last twenty-five years. The habit in the past has generally been to adopt the simpler measures, which have usually entailed restrictions, while shelving any positive recommendations for road improvements and other schemes. For the sake of economy, the easy way out has been taken.
I wish to state emphatically that I consider that London presents a unique

3
problem which cannot in any way be treated together with or mixed up with other road problems in the country. I am amazed and happy to note that the Committee have been able to recommend that it will need an expenditure of only £20,000,000 to cover the urgent road improvement schemes in inner and outer London. In addition, it is estimated that only £5,000,000 will be required to build the necessary off-street car parks which would make such a major contribution to the relief of traffic congestion. The last major road improvement in inner London was the construction of Kingsway in 1905. That was a period when motor cars were looked upon only as novelties. If one looks at the 1951 Estimates, it seems strange that while the Government are willing to spend another £23,000,000 this year on providing London with a good airport—and may I say that I feel that that is quite right, too?—at the same time they are unwilling to spend a similar sum in adapting London streets to the requirements of our modern age. How often has it been said that it takes longer to drive from Piccadilly Circus to Heath Row than it does to fly from Heath Row to Paris? And that is not altogether untrue. Moreover there is no road into London which is worthy of the great city itself. The Government must know that there are many other instances, which I could mention, in which money has been frittered away on wild cat schemes, not only at home, but abroad. I feel that London is worthy of the practical application of the injunction that charity must start at home.
This problem has been further aggravated by the enormous expenditure by the Government on offices within the London area. Not only have they been using men, concrete and steel which are required for making roads, but the mere fact of bringing more working people into inner London is, in itself, going to intensify the congestion. Each year millions of pounds are wasted owing to traffic delays, and unless strong action is taken the time may well come when lack of efficient internal communications in London will detract a great deal from the importance of London as a centre of world commerce. It is vital, therefore, not to destroy the balance of this Report, and I hope that the Government will make up their minds quickly to tackle this problem. Before
4
commenting on certain aspects of the Report, I should like to pay tribute to the work of the Committee, and, in particular, to Mr. Samuels, the Chairman, and Mr. Wright, the Secretary. The Committee's recommendations are, on the whole, excellent, and one can only hope that this Report will not suffer the fate of so many others. The Committee have rightly realised that the end has come to restrictions; they really cannot be further increased. They can never solve this problem. What we want broadly is the putting into action of new ideas, and not more restriction based on old regulations.
For a moment I wish to turn to the question of parking, which is the key to the short-term improvement of London traffic congestion in many areas. It is common knowledge that the car park and garage facilities in central London are entirely inadequate. It is useless to place further restrictions on street parking unless they are preceded by the provision of off-street parking accommodation. The whole policy in the last twenty-five years has been the old one of putting the cart before the horse. I should like to support the recommendation of the Report that local authorities should in certain cases receive financial aid from central funds towards the cost of providing additional parking accommodation. It always seems odd to me that the Minister has been in a position to make to local authorities grants for main roads through the boroughs, but has never been able to make grants for car parks. Therefore, the only way left to local authorities has been to make their roads into car parks.
I should like in particular to examine the working of the yellow band areas. No one will disagree that the yellow band no-waiting areas in central London have in many places been a great success and are entirely necessary. However, I would submit that the application of that ban in many places is absolutely crazy. For example, it is almost impossible to drive through Soho in the middle of the day because of cars parked on both sides of the narrow roads. Again, while Albermarle Street, a one-way street which can take four lines of traffic, has a yellow band on both sides, within 200 yards, about where Charles Street comes into Berkeley Square, where the roadway narrows there is parking on both sides of the street, and that is a place where

5
obstruction daily causes congestion. I shall return to the Ministry's part in these regulations later in my speech, but here I should like to ask the noble Lord the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry to consider the immediate review of all yellow band areas in order to make this restriction more flexible to local conditions and to provide streets for unilateral parking. Bad application of the ban aggravates the situation, whilst there are hundreds of examples in London where a revisal is needed.
At this point I should like to express my strong disapproval of the suggestion for the introduction of parking meters in the London area. Not only do I view with horror the sheer ugliness of parking meters in a street such as St. James's Street, but the motorist already has a big enough financial burden to bear and the police already have more than they can cope with. There are many places where improvements could be made in the operation of traffic lights, in particular in filtering traffic to the left. I should also like to suggest an idea which has been a great success in many capital cities of the Continent: that is, in the dead periods, when traffic is very little, that the "Stop" and "Go" signs should be replaced by an amber flashing light to warn motorists coining from either direction to slow down, though they do not actually have to stop. A particular example where this would be a great success is Oxford Street at night.
I come now to the question of traffic and other directional signs. These are at best often misleading and at worst they are non-existent. I think this is the right moment to pay tribute to the Royal Automobile Club and to the Automobile Association, whose great work in sign-posting London alone makes it possible for anybody to find his way about. They have produced a comprehensive plan and have put up temporary signs until the Minister can make up his mind about a permanent scheme. I gather that the Minister has set up a Working Party, and in that connection, and in view of the expected influx of visitors from overseas this year, I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, when that Working Party is going to report. And when are we going to see the first permanent signs put up? Here I should like to suggest to many local authorities that the lime has come for
6
them to make a review of all their street plans, as in many places in London no street names are shown and it is impossible to find one's way about. I should like to support most strongly the recommendations about the restriction of horse-drawn traffic in central London and the provision of subways for pedestrians. So much for the recommendations. They are all good ones. I can only hope they will be given a fair chance.
Before I turn finally to the examination of the administration of London traffic, I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I introduce a personal point. I am particularly happy to-day to be able to raise this subject in your Lordships' House, as I feel that I am to some extent carrying on the work started by my father forty-five years ago. Not only did he wish to improve transport facilities in the country as a whole, but he took a particular interest in the subject of alleviating traffic congestion in London. I feel that I am on safe ground in claiming that there is scarcely one suggestion in this Report which was not suggested by him, either in this House or elsewhere, over twenty-five years ago. His great slogan was, "The longer you wait, the more it will cost." I think that that is the case to-day as it was twenty-five years ago. Though I am aware that many of the schemes at this time would be financially impossible, I would ask the noble Lord if he could look up my father's scheme for overhead roads which is lying on some shelf somewhere in his Ministry and which would undoubtedly go a long way towards providing a solution to this problem.
On the other hand, I am depressed, because it is clear that my father was unable to impress his generation with the necessity of taking action. This may have been because his generation was not altogether prepared to accept the motor car as part of modern life, and looked upon it only as a noisy luxury. However, I would suggest another reason—namely, that the present London highway authority, as vested in the Ministry of Trans-port, is not organised, and has not the power, to take the necessary bold far-seeing action. There is at the moment, so far as London is concerned, too great a division of responsibility. Generally speaking, there are few improvements that can be initiated by the Minister. I am sorry for the Minister, who does not seem

7
to have any control over the vital point of where the initiative rests. He can only suggest ideas to local authorities or approve their recommendations. As a result, it seems impossible to obtain any comprehensive scheme for signposting or lighting in the City of London. For example, if the Minister feels that he has these necessary powers, why was it necessary to introduce the yellow band scheme under the Defence Regulations? Since 1946, 532 such orders have been issued. I am sure that the average person would be horrified if he knew that every time he parked his car in a yellow band area he was laying himself open to the maximum penalty of a £100 fine and/or three months' imprisonment. Again, why did it take two years and five months, from May, 1947, for the original 120 feet side street parking restriction to be reduced to forty feet? Surely, this is a question of local conditions. Why, again, has it to be left to private motoring organisations to think out a scheme for signposting in London?
Finally, I should like to know what objection the Ministry of Transport raised when the scheme for the ring road for London was abandoned last year. This road, which was included in the Abercrombie plan for London, was surveyed by the Ministry of Transport at some cost in time and money. It was envisaged that it would relieve central London of 30 per cent, of its traffic. However, when the Ministry of Town and Country Planning were asked to keep this road open for ten years, because it was not anticipated that the building of the road could take place for ten years, they refused. I know that the Minister of Town and Country Planning has a much louder voice, but it was perhaps a pity that he shouted the Minister of Transport down on this occasion.
One can see from these examples that there is something wrong with the administration. If the present administration is incapable of dealing with comparatively minor improvements, such as waiting restrictions and signposts, how can it be expected to execute efficiently the major schemes envisaged in this Report? Perhaps it is not altogether surprising, in view of the fact that since the war the Ministry of Transport, in addition to their normal duties, have had to take on the administration of the railways and
8
road transport. The scope of that task makes the problem of London's traffic a minor one. I would strongly urge on the Government that they should consider the appointment of an overall coordinator of London's traffic. Up to now, there have been too many fingers in the pie. What is needed is one strong man, with a strong body of advisers, to take on the overall responsibility of solving this great problem. I do not suggest for a moment that he should be outside the responsibility of the Minister, but such a man could co-ordinate the efforts of all the local authorities; he could see that repair work is done efficiently, instead of a road being dug up one day for the laying of pipes. and the next day for electricity purposes, and so on. My father used to say that the only use of roads was to lay pipes, but I feel that we must move on from that.
This is an extraordinary problem, and I feel that the Minister should review the powers which are needed to solve it. I believe that everybody will agree that we have here a good Report. The Government claim to be a body of planners. Here is a plan. Let us now see some action. Although I do not deny for a moment that in the past all Parties have neglected this problem, I would say that the solution of London's traffic problem would be a finer memorial to Socialist rule than all their nationalisation projects. We must face the fact that the time has come—in fact, has long passed—when it is necessary to alter London's roads to fit the internal combustion engine. I can only hope that the Government will accept this Report as a whole and put it swiftly into action. I hope that I shall not hear the Minister say that they cannot afford these improvements. Here is a problem which has been crying out for solution for a very long time. Therefore, I urge the Government not to be afraid of spending money in solving a problem which affects our national prestige, our internal efficiency and, above all, our vital communications in the defence of this Island. I beg to move for Papers.
2.52 p.m.
LORD WALERAN: My Lords, in rising to speak on the Motion before your Lordships to-day I must, as is usual in these cases, declare a special interest, in that I am a member of the London and

9
Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, whose Report on congestion in London we are now considering. That Committee, as I am sure many of your Lordships are aware, was set up under the London Traffic Act, 1924, which was subsequently amended by Section 56 (1) and the Twelfth Schedule of the London Passenger Transport Act, 1933, and by virtue of the Transport Act, 1947. The function of this Committee is to advise and assist the Minister of Transport in his duties in the regulating of London traffic. The Minister is not bound by the advice that he receives from the Committee, but it so happens that there are few occasions when he takes the opposite view. Nor is he bound to consult the Committee; but again, there are few occasions when he does not do so. The Committee consists of some forty members. I do not propose to give your Lordships the whole list, but by way of illustration I would mention that there are six from the London County Council; one from the Corporation and City of London; one from the Council and City of Westminster; six from the councils representing the remaining metropolitan boroughs; five appointed by the Minister of Labour, after consultation with such bodies representative of those interests as he may think fit, to represent the interests of labour engaged in the transport industry within the London traffic area; one appointed by the Minister, after consultation with the interests of the mechanically propelled vehicle users—that is myself: one appointed by the Minister representing users of horse-drawn vehicles; one representing taxicab interests; and there are other members from the Home Counties and county councils.
I do not propose to go through the Report in detail, but I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that it is a unanimous Report. As a member of the Committee, I must pay tribute to the excellent work done by the subcommittee. After the main Committee had received this Report they went through it in detail, and came to the recommendations. They were unanimous in their views. There are no politics about this Report, and I am confident that opinion on all sides of your Lordships' House will endorse it. During the course of the debate it may be suggested that all interests have not been consulted,
10
but I would draw your Lordships' attention to the list of bodies who came and gave their views before the sub-committee. You will find that list at Appendix I, on page 44 of the Report. I suggest that taking this list, together with the experience of the members of the Committee and the organisations which they represent, it would have been impossible to get a wider view of interests considered.
The Committee had very much in mind the difficulties of the times in which we live, and the fact that we have to keep down capital expenditure, so far as we can, always provided that any plan put forward must achieve its aim—that of preventing the growing congestion in London from strangling the very life of our City. I suggest that the estimated costs have been kept well down in this respect, and that the cost of the suggested improvements is small compared with that of some projects which, in my humble opinion, deal with less vital problems than the growing congestion in London. I would draw your Lordships' attention to paragraph 24 of the Report at page 14, and with your Lordships' permission I will quote it. It says:
"It was with very great concern and some misgiving that we learned of the decision to abandon the project of the 'A' ring road. This high speed road, about eleven miles in length, confined to motor vehicles and circling the central area at a radius of roughly two miles, would have afforded considerable relief to traffic circulation, would have been cheaper to construct than to carry out piecemeal the several improvements necessary within the circle, and would have had a potential value as a means of reducing the heavy toll of road casualties in London"
The Committee are most disturbed that this plan, even as a long-term plan, has been completely abandoned.
I feel, too, that I should mention the London County Council Draft Development Plan, which only last month the Committee had an opportunity of examining. The Committee have noted the proposed improvements in that part of the plan called the inner circular road. Although the Committee agree with those improvements, they have grave misgivings as to their adequacy; and they fear that the pattern which the plan proposes (and which is largely a loosely connected series of existing streets, as well as improvements to certain road junctions in inner London) will have the effect of

11
drawing into central London more traffic which the 'A' ring road would have taken out. The Committee feel—and I am sure your Lordships will agree—that there must be a very large measure of liaison, co-ordination and co-operation between the Minister of Town and Country Planning and the Minister of Trans-port in this matter, as well as, of course, with the London County Council. In conclusion, I recommend the adoption of this Report as a whole. It is a balanced Report; there is no humbug in it. I think it fairly states the responsibilities of, and the sacrifices which have to be made by, all sections of the community, if we are to relieve traffic congestion and keep the life of this great City of London going.
3.7 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sure that every Member of this House will be grateful to the noble Lord who has raised this question and for the speech of the noble Lord who followed him, as well as for the interesting and stimulating Report of the sub-committee of the London and Home Counties Advisory Committee. Most of us will agree that there is a problem in London, although I feel that in this respect there is a danger of exaggeration. We have all been victims of traffic hold-ups. I was a victim of a very annoying hold-up yesterday morning in Putney High Street. Traffic was proceeding very slowly, and we came to a stand-still several times. In due course, how-ever, we got going, and I found that the total time we had been held up was under two minutes. When one has been held up in this way and looks up the actual time, one frequently finds that the hold-up has lasted only a matter of seconds. I often ask myself: What is the hurry? What are we going to do with these extra seconds which we gain by speeding-up London traffic?
I would draw the attention of noble Lords to Table C on page 49 of this Report, where the worst cases of traffic hold-ups are given. The worst is St. Giles' Circus where the average stopped time per journey is ninety-nine seconds; and other instances are given in the Table down to that of New Oxford Street-Shaftesbury Avenue, forty seconds. What are we going to do with all these seconds which we might save as a result of vast
12
improvements in road transport? Noble Lords may have views as to what they could do with the time, but until we are satisfied that the time saved will be put to valuable use 1 wonder whether we are not seriously exaggerating the problem? I am not saying that there is not a problem, but I do say that there is a great danger of exaggeration.
There is one other thing I should like to say by way of preliminary, and that is that nobody seems to have worked out scientifically what is the cost of these delays to the community and what it will cost to remedy them. While I cannot pretend that I have worked it out myself, my impression—which, I would submit, is as good as that of anybody else—is that probably the cost of the remedies that are suggested would far exceed the cost to the community of these delays.
EARL HOWE: May I ask whether the noble Lord has read page 12 of this Report?
LORD SILKIN: Certainly: I have read every word of it.
EARL HOWE: That is good.
LORD SILKIN: I have read, for instance, the County of London Plan, in which Professor Abercrombie puts forward a vast scheme of road improvements on the basis of information he has obtained from one firm as to the alleged cost of delays to that firm. So far as I know, those costs have not been checked; and equally, so far as I know, it is the only firm that has submitted active information as to what the delays involve. Furthermore, it is very easy indeed to embark on schemes which eventually become abortive. I remember that when I first went on the London County Council, in 1925, there was an elaborate scheme going forward for the widening of Cable Street, in the East End of London—a road which was used for dock traffic. That scheme had been proceeding for many-years, and the Council had been buying property from time to time for the purpose of rewidening; and parts of Cable Street were widened. Eventually, after the scheme had been in operation for some twenty-five years, it was decided that Cable Street was not the best road to widen at all, but that a parallel street, St. George's Street, ought to be widened. I instance that merely as an example of abortive expenditure which can take place

13
through piecemeal street widening such as is suggested in this Report
There is one other point which I should like to put to your Lordships. We do not appear to take into account the fact that, by improving road transport, we do not merely facilitate the travelling of vehicles at higher speeds: we actually attract more vehicles. There are a great many car owners who do not now come into London, because of the difficulty of transport, but who would come in if facilities were provided for them; we should considerably increase our difficulties by improving road transport. I think we ought to take into account what would be the effect (so far, we have not done so in any of these Reports) of widening various thoroughfares in the centre of London, and thereby attracting more traffic to those places—traffic which it is not necessary in the public interest to attract.
It has always seemed to me that we have approached this problem from the wrong angle. I do not think the real objective should necessarily be to enable vehicles to travel more speedily through the streets of London. If we really want to solve this problem we should see how we can ensure that the traffic which has to use London streets is employed in the most efficient manner. Large numbers of unnecessary journeys are made in London, owing to the chaotic way in which London has grown up. For instance, vast numbers of people travel daily to and from their work, making journeys of perhaps three-quarters of an hour to an hour each way. All these people have to use transport of one kind or another, public or private. I feel that we ought to direct our efforts more closely to the problem, to ensure that people are enabled to live nearer their work. In this way we should save a vast amount of transport which is used every day to convey these people. A large part of the congestion in London is caused by this need to convey people daily to and from their work. If only a portion of the expense envisaged in street widening, and on the "A" ring road and so on, were employed in better planning of London, we should prevent not only a great amount of traffic in London but also a great deal of fatigue—which after all has to be taken into account in estimating the efficiency of the people of London.
Let me give one example which has been referred to in the County of London
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plan. It was there suggested that Pimlico should be redeveloped as a residential area for people working in the West End of London. Most of the houses in Pimlico are coming to the end of their useful lives, and in the process of development it would be possible to house a great many more people in that area than are at present living there. If these people could be housed in Pimlico it would enable people working in the West End of London to live fairly close to their work, instead of having to go home to distant suburbs, as most of them do; and it would do away with a very great amount of traffic. That is merely one example of ways in which transport could be saved by sensible replanning of London. There are many ways in which this could be done. The East End of London is another case in point. There is scope for large-scale redevelopment of the East End of London—which I am happy to say, is beginning—which could house enormous numbers of people working in the City of London. Here again, instead of having to travel very long distances, employing transport for that purpose, they would be readily accessible to their work, and so a great deal of traffic would be saved.
Another way in which we might save transport would be by reconsideration of the location of the central markets. In the County of London plan it was suggested that there was a case for removing Covent Garden Market, Spitalfields, Billingsgate, and so on. I will not presume to judge whether that step would be wise or not, but at any rate it is worthy of serious consideration. It might well be more efficient from the point of view of the industries; whilst from the point of view of transport and traffic the location of these markets on the outskirts of London would save a great deal of traffic in the centre—not, of course all of it, but there is a good deal of cross-traffic going on in connection with these markets. This problem has faced us for many years past. I feel that that proposal is at any rate worthy of serious examination. It is not a new idea, and it is one which I suggest the Ministry of Transport might seriously consider, in an effort to see whether transport cannot be saved in that direction.
Then again there are proposals for thinning out the population of London. I think most of your Lordships will agree

15
that London is too thickly populated. In the various plans which have been put forward, it has been proposed that London should be depopulated, to the extent possibly of 1,500,000 people, by the provision of new towns, or by the expansion of existing old towns. The proposals are not only that populations should be rehoused in these new towns or existing towns, but that industry also should go out from London to these places. The process has been begun—so far successfully; but of course it is very slow. On the other hand, looking ahead ten, fifteen or twenty years, there is no doubt that the effect of the dispersal of London will be substantially to reduce the population of London, and thereby to relieve London traffic. That again is a factor which we ought to take into account before embarking upon these costly schemes.
The last matter to which I want to draw attention is the possibility of a complete change in the character of London traffic. Just as the noble Lord who introduced the debate referred to his father, who accused us, or our predecessors, of lack of imagination in not visualising the future of motor traffic, so I say that we might be guilty of lack of imagination in not appreciating the possibilities of the helicopter, or some other form of transport, for the purpose of the carriage of goods. It would be a most wasteful thing to spend hundreds of millions of pounds —for that is what would be involved—
EARL HOWE: Twenty million pounds.
LORD SILKIN: —if we found that the combined effects of these various matters to which I have drawn attention would be to reduce the need for traffic on the roads themselves. I mention all these things, not in order to destroy this Report or the case that has been so fairly put up by the noble Lord who moved the Motion, but as reasons for careful, and I submit, scientific, consideration by the Ministry of Transport before they act.
I should like to mention the "A" ring road, since the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, referred to it. I cannot imagine that he was referring to me when he spoke of a "loud voice," because I do not possess one. But I must claim some responsibility for the decision about the "A" ring road. I think it was a wise decision, because the value to the
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community of the "A" ring road would not have been felt, even had the road been commenced at the earliest possible moment—which in any case was something like twenty years—for some fifty years. It would have taken fifty years to complete that "A" ring road. It seemed to me that any scheme which required fifty years for its completion (I will not enlarge on the reasons for that period, but there were solid reasons for coming to the conclusion that the "A" ring road could not be completed in less time than that) was not one which I thought it was in the interests of the community to embark upon without a much clearer conception of what conditions might be like at the end of the period. Moreover, the cost was enormous, and I am not at all satisfied that the cost of the "A" ring road, with all the interference with transport that it would involve in the meantime, would be justified at the present time.
Incidentally, while the consideration was going on, it was never suggested that development should be held up or that the area should not be sterilised for ten years. The point made was that it was wrong to sterilise an area for a longer period, until it was certain that the "A" ring road would be built within that period. The danger to London would have been that this sterilisation might have taken place for fifteen or twenty years without our being certain, either that the road was ever going to be built, or that it was going to be built on exactly the line along which it was proposed to sterilise. It seemed to me that it was quite wrong to attempt to hold up all development in the City of London for as long a period as that. The case that I want to put to your Lordships is that there is need for much more scientific investigation of the problem. What is involved for the people of London in this delay? I know it is annoying to the motorist, and I imagine that many noble Lords in this House are keen motorists who feel frustrated in trying to get from one point in London to another; but what is the social and economic cost to the people of London of the delay in traffic? What would it cost to remedy it? Can we visualise what will be the ultimate effect on traffic conditions of the various matters to which I have referred—the redevelopment of London, the dispersal,

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the possible alternative means of transport, and so on? Is there not some alternative to these very costly road schemes which have hitherto been visualised as the ony means of dealing with traffic conditions?
I know that the question of car parks was referred to. I fully agree that something ought to be done about providing facilities for car parks. In that connection I would mention that most people, especially people who use their cars daily in London, are reluctant to pay a charge every time they have to park them. A person who has to park his car two or three times a day and has to pay perhaps Is. a time finds that it mounts up in the course of a week. People are not willing to pay that price for parking their cars. That is the reason why so many of the car parks at present provided on bombed sites, and so on, are not being used to the uttermost.
LORD WALERAN: They are full. Most of the outside car parks are full. If the noble Lord tries to go into the one by Savile Row police station, he will find nine times out of ten during the day a "Full up" sign. It is the same with all of them.
LORD SILKIN: The noble Lord can no doubt direct me to one car park that is full. I can direct him to a great many that are not full.
EARL HOWE: To a Government car park?
LORD SILKIN: I was not referring to those. I hope that the Ministry will give serious consideration to the whole of this question, and particularly to ways of relieving and reducing the amount of traffic, as well as ways of providing increased facilities for it.
3.30 p.m.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: My Lords, I am sure that everyone will agree that the approach the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has adumbrated to us—that we should plan better in the future—may, in fact, alleviate an even worse condition in the future, but it will not relieve the very serious situation that is with us to-day and which will be aggravated when there are more cars than at present on the streets of London. This is a point which the London County Council might indeed consider, for they have been one
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of the worst offenders in allowing all the theatres to congregate in one part of London, which introduces a quite needless traffic jam at critical peak times in the evenings. In a debate like this, at any rate in another place, there is always a host of speakers all approaching the subject from various interesting angles, because traffic affects us all. One need not be the owner of a motor car to suffer the inconvenience of a traffic jam. The users of the motor bus, tube, taxi-cab and private car all suffer, and having regard to the inconvenience caused, the small amount of irritability which is displayed shows that the ordinary Londoner, I think without exception, is the most good-tempered and long-suffering man in the world. The conditions obtaining in London would not be allowed to occur anywhere else in the world.
I must congratulate the writers of this Report, who have gone into the subject very thoroughly and have introduced, quite early in the Report, a most interesting collection of recommendations, to one or two of which I want to draw your attention. The first is:
"The possibilities of arcading should be considered as a means of providing additional road space."
That is a very old and a very good plan to provide an extra road. A small part of a building is taken off and it provides for the shopkeeper a space on the pavement where people can walk about out of the rain and look at the shops. That is the recommendation, but what is being done about it? Nothing will ever be done about it unless somebody pushes those concerned into doing something. When a new building is to be erected, are you going to insist upon there being an arcade? Unless there is some legal power to insist on this new development being introduced in a new building, we are not going to get anywhere at all. Let us take Recommendation (6):
"There is a need for more up-to-date factual information on the cost of traffic delays."
That would be interesting. We are all conscious of the fact that in that regard there must be a tremendous loss of money to the community. Curiously enough, there was an investigation on a very similar subject about two years ago— namely, into the cost to the country of road accidents. I think the figure arrived at was about £50,000,000. It would be interesting to assess what these delays are

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costing us, because that cost has to be related to the capital value of the im-provements which are put into being.
Turning over the page to Recommendation (25), one finds:
"A substantial reduction of indiscriminate parking in the streets is essential. To bring this about, more off-street car parks and parking facilities in new buildings must be provided."
I think that is right. As an ordinary, law-abiding citizen, whenever I see a bombed space car park I go into it. But it is not always so good as it might be. If you go to a cinema and put your car in a car park and when you come out find a barrier in front of it and that it is there for the night, it is not funny. The particular car park I refer to was run by the Marylebone Borough Council, and when I complained about it they said, "We are not going to provide for people at night." If car parks of that kind are not going to be used at such times, more cars will be parked on the road at night. I consider that is a very scurvy trick.
Recommendation (28) says:
"The best solution in some districts may be to construct car parks under squares ";
and Recommendation (29) follows with the proposal to build a car park beneath Cavendish Square, and urges that that should be pursued with vigour. Why only Cavendish Square? I should have thought a car park beneath Berkeley Square was just as desirable. In that connection, it is interesting to note that before the war I, together with some other people, contemplated putting underneath Berkeley Square, a very big garage which would not only accommodate traffic but would be a type of bomb shelter. It sounded quite a good proposition. It did not show an enormous profit, but nevertheless it was a very desirable type of thing. We went to the authorities about it, but what did we get? To put it vulgarly, we got nothing else but a "raspberry." They would not move and they would not give us consent or do anything. Yet now, a few years later, we have this recommendation put forward by a sound Committee in the Report that we have here to-day. I do not think enough stress is placed upon the way streets are cluttered up by parking on both sides. If the police would summon people for parking on both sides, instead of extending the yellow sign. then many streets would carry two lines
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of traffic which at present carry only one. The usual method is for there to be parking on the East side on the odd days of the month and on the West on the even days. That is the sort of thing that has been done abroad. It is done in Paris, and I cannot see why it should not be done here.
I think some blame for traffic congestion should be attributed to the motorist. Somebody in America was once asked what was the shortest time that he could think of. The answer was, "The time between the lights going green and the man behind blowing a horn." That shows how motorists hurry you off when the light goes green. In this country one meets some of the most lazy exhibitions of acceleration ever to be seen, and when you are about tenth in the line, instinctively you know that you are going to miss the light because people in front get off so very gingerly. We have a new Assistant Commissioner of Police in Mr. H. Dalton. As your Lordships know, Assistant Commissioner Tripp did great work for many years. But everything he did was always right, and he would not brook criticism of any sort. I think that some alteration in the timing of lights in the Metropolis might be looked into. There is something to be said for the American system, in which motorists all start and stop together right along the row. In streets which have cross-traffic there are often delays caused through timing. That problem might be investigated. Another question I would ask is whether the police could not alter the timing of the road signals according to the traffic of the day. What is needed in the morning is not what is needed in the middle of the day. nor is it what is needed in the evening. These things should be "schemed out" and arranged, and constables could be stationed to change the timing of this particular apparatus.
There is one point about Recommendation (52) which appeals to me very much. If I am going to be asked to go underneath a road instead of crossing it, I do not want, at my age, to walk down a lot of stairs and then up a lot of stairs. I assure your Lordships that my feelings are shared by thousands. But if you install an escalator you will get everybody to go that way. It will not cost very much. Otherwise, people will wait, and try to push their way across the road.

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An escalator would be used by everybody. I do not know whether any of your Lordships saw the excellent model of Hyde Park Corner which was exhibited in Westminster Hall. It was a remarkable model. I am not clear whether that was invented and designed by this Committee—
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRE-TARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH): No, it was done by the main Committee.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: Everybody ought to see that. I believe it has been sent to the London County Council now but will be back at the Ministry quite shortly. People should see it and be able to criticise it. I should like to have a debate upon the subject somewhere—not necessarily in your Lordships' House—because this sort of thing is going through without the ordinary man in the street criticising it enough. I have the strongest criticisms to make of that particular alteration, affecting, as it does, millions of people. It is first-class on the north side, but on the south side of Hyde Park Corner there will be, and will continue to be, as at present, most frightful congestion.
And now just a word on the parking situation. Everyone who knows anything about traffic in London—or, at any rate, about traffic in the West End of London—knows that the congestion in the vicinity of parks between 5.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. is frightful. This is largely owing to the fact that in many instances the park gates allow only one stream of traffic to go out. There has been in operation for years the magnificent idea of closing a piece of road which is opposite the Albert Hall. So far as I can see, there is no justifiable reason for this, but I understand that it is supposed to have the effect of adding to traffic circulation. The idea that closing a road adds to traffic circulation is a glorious one! This closure has been enforced now for about ten years. I have been given to understand that, at last, two lines of traffic are to be allowed to go out of Alexandra Gate at the same time. The policeman did not seem to know about this, but if it is true it is the most revolutionary idea which has been put into practice for a long time. I notice that some rebuilding is going on at Prince's Gate. That gate will still be
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for only one line of outgoing traffic, however, and instead of the new structure being of iron it will be of concrete. There are to be three pillars. The work has been in progress for about three months and it is not finished yet. That is typical of the sort of thing that happens in this connection. I am not looking at the representative of the Ministry of Transport in your Lordships' House because I feel that he is guilty; I know that he is not. It is largely the fault of the Ministry of Supply. All these different Government offices come into these problems. There are so many of them involved that nothing is ever done.
This is a sad reflection on the present generation. Our grandfathers, at whose top hats and whiskers we now laugh, were able to make roads in every direction where traffic called for them. The present generation are unable to make a pathway in any direction, although traffic is abundant and in many cases is completely stopping up our thoroughfares. If one goes to some of the great cities abroad one finds a different state of affairs. Take New York, for instance: the authorities there have accomplished great things. Their roads, which are constructed on a grid system, are better than ours. They have been laid out on a carefully ordered plan. Of course, the amount of capital which they have used in order to try to free their city from congestion is remarkable. But, as the mover of the Motion to-day said, the only road improvement which has been seen in London in our time was the construction of Kingsway in 1905. I must say that in this matter there is very little of which we can be proud.
3.43 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, this problem of traffic congestion affects every great city in the world to-day. Lord Brabazon spoke of London presenting the worst example of traffic congestion to be found anywhere on earth. I am sorry to say that I must differ from him on that point. Several great cities which I know, and which he also knows, are a great deal worse in this respect. He mentioned with great admiration the tremendous work which has been done in New York, and I can bear that out. The construction of Riverside Drive and numerous overhead roads there has been a tremendous feat. And yet New York is being strangled by traffic congestion.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: Could not the noble Lord keep his secret; otherwise nothing will be done?
LORD STRABOLGI: I am coming to that in a moment. Actually, the great city of New York is so congested that there is a movement out, and a very serious movement out, of industry and population. It has passed its peak—that is the opinion of the best-informed New Yorkers—simply because the congestion has become too great for efficiency. Other noble Lords and myself are aware how this problem affects other great cities in the world. Rome affords an extreme example of traffic congestion. Paris, in spite of her wide and magnificent streets, is as bad as London. The only cities that I know which have been built in the motor age are Los Angeles—which the noble Lord knows also—and Canberra. There may be others, but those two are the most modern cities which have been constructed since the motor car came into general use. Los Angeles is nothing but a vast ribbon development along two or three main highways. There traffic can move for a distance of about forty miles from end to end of those highways. People I know have to allow an hour for getting down town to their business offices by car. So there is a problem created by a widely-spread and well-roaded city, which is so vast in area that the time taken in getting from home to business is as great as the time taken over shorter distances in London.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I thought —if he will allow me to say so—was making rather light of this problem. Whether he has some twinges of conscience, because of his former notable activities in the London County Council or in the Government, I do not know. But I am afraid that he has not had the same dreadful experiences which some of your Lordships have had. Does he know what happened in London recently, on the opening night of the musical comedy called Kiss Me Kate? Is he aware that before the first performance of this play opened at the Coliseum, streets stretching to Hyde Park Corner, including all of Piccadilly, were filled with traffic which had been brought to a complete standstill? The police could do nothing; there was a complete jam. Does the noble Lord know that a couple of months ago, in Oxford Street, a bad collision
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occurred, in which a motor bus was overturned and two cars were involved, and that, as a consequence, the whole of the roadway was blocked and a state of complete congestion was created in Oxford Street and far beyond for miles in every direction before the wreckage could be cleared away? The effects of this congestion were felt all round West London, as far as Tottenham Court Road, right down Park Lane, and almost as far as the Fulham Road. When anything goes wrong with London traffic to-day during a peak hour there is chaos and disaster— disaster because of the loss of time and loss of efficiency which are caused.
I suggest that we have to tackle this matter in a much more vigorous manner even than that suggested in this Report which has been praised by so many speakers to-day, including the noble Lord who opened the debate. Incidentally, I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating Lord Montagu of Beaulieu on his very able marshalling of the facts and arguments. As I say, I think we have to go a great deal further than has so far been suggested—a good deal further than even Lord Brabazon of Tara has suggested. It is true, as the Report declares, that unless very drastic action is taken London will eventually be brought to a standstill. What will happen in May or June, when we have the Festival of Britain going full-bore, I really do not know. The situation will be extremely serious. I hope your Lordships will find it possible to get here somehow in order to perform your Parliamentary duties, but you will certainly meet with considerable difficulties, for you will be in the centre of the stream.
A NOBLE LORD: Better have a General Election!
LORD STRABOLGI: I do not propose to give an exhaustive list of remedies. I think the suggestions, in paragraph 78 and onwards, about underground garages must be tackled immediately. I entirely agree with Lord Brabazon of Tara on this matter. I see no reason why Cavendish Square should be the only one to be treated in this way. I consider that Grosvenor Square is probably of equal importance, while Hanover Square is also most important. There should be constructed without loss of time under these Squares these underground parks, a combination of air raid shelters and under-

25
ground garages. In spite of the rather pessimistic views expressed in the Report, I think that these parks could be made to pay for themselves. Why should not facilities for supplying petrol and for servicing cars be included in the arrangements, and a small charge be made for cars being kept in safety? I have had my own car stolen three times since the end of the Second World War—once out of a parking place, and twice from out-side my own office. I should be glad to pay a small fee for the privilege of putting my car in a place of real safety.
Similarly, why cannot the proposal to put underground car parks below Royal Parks be put into practice without delay? What is holding up that project? It might have been put in hand years ago. That seems to me to offer one of the best solutions of the parking problem— a problem which, in its turn, causes congestion. As the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, has said, if we allow a street like Wardour Street to have cars parked on both sides, that makes it a single line street; and it is an important artery of traffic in that part of London.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: The noble Lord does not seem to realise that Royal Parks are sacred land. For some unearthly reason nothing is allowed to go under them. We tried to put tubes under them. We proposed to put roads under them. Until you can change the attitude of the Commissioner of Works, there is no hope at all of doing anything there.
LORD STRABOLGI: Sacred or not, the Royal Parks used to be closed to taxicabs until the late George Lansbury became Minister of Works, and by a stroke of the pen allowed taxicabs to go through Hyde Park. And that has relieved traffic congestion to a considerable extent. Hyde Park was not too sacred to have the famous Exhibition there a hundred years ago. And it is not too sacred to have the famous open-air speaking forum inside the Marble Arch. It is time we did away with such inhibitions and prohibitions, and outworn fetishes. Otherwise, the situation will become worse and worse. May I reinforce what was said by the noble Lord. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, in his interesting opening speech, about the name signs on streets? How many of your Lordships have
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shared my experience of being completely lost in the outer suburbs, especially in South London, where one hardly ever sees a street name of any kind? The situation is perfectly appalling, compared even with Paris and certainly with New York, Washington and other American cities, which have plain name signs at all street corners. I do not know who is responsible—I imagine the London County Council.
LORD SILKIN: The metropolitan boroughs.
LORD STRABOLGI: Then cannot something be done to bring pressure to bear there? The cost would not be great, but the saving in time and on temper would be enormous.
I should like now to make a suggestion. I know it is controversial, but nevertheless I am going to stick out my head. I think the Committee has brushed aside far too lightly the proposal to prohibit certain types of vehicles in inner London —I refer to paragraph 54 of the Report. This is an old suggestion. I do not think we can go on tolerating people who live in the outskirts of London bringing their private cars, carrying only one or two people, into central London every morning, parking them anywhere they like, and then travelling back in the evening. Thousands of them do this, and I think that is one of the main causes of traffic congestion in London. It is a problem which will have to be tackled one day. Of course what I suggest would be unpopular, but the Government have to do unpopular things sometimes, and we are bound to hit some vested interest. I see no reason why we should not prohibit motor cars from outside from entering inner London on five days a week between, say, nine in the morning and six at night. We could make exemptions for people who live in the inner area, for doctors and for a limited number of people with essential business.
Unpopular and difficult as the administration might be, I think this proposal should be re-examined. I cannot agree with the light-hearted or easy way in which the Committee dismiss this solution as impracticable. We should remember that the difficulty of getting new motor cars to-day is still acute. Most people have to wait a long time for a new motor car. If the home market becomes easy

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again, the number of cars will largely increase, because it seems to be the general trend for private cars to increase all the time, and if they are all to be allowed to come into London I do not see how we can solve this problem on a permanent basis. People coming to inner London would have to leave their cars outside the ring, or boundary, and use public vehicles or other means of transport. That would mean more motor buses and hackney carriages, and there are improvements going on all the time to the Underground railways, which, too, would have to provide better facilities. I think this matter will have to be tackled, in spite of its unpopularity and the alleged difficulty of administration. I agree with several noble Lords who have said that this problem affects the prestige and reputation of the greatest city in the world. It should be tackled with the greatest possible urgency. I have great faith in my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth and his chief, the Minister of Transport. But unfortunately they are not the only people concerned. There are too many competing authorities, and too many different Departments have to be brought in. Would it not be possible for the Minister of Transport to be made into a kind of traffic dictator? Why not? Why not have even a separate Traffic Ministry, with wide powers over all matters referred to in this Report? We can no longer afford to tinker with this great problem.
3.58 p.m.
EARL HOWE: My Lords, for once at any rate I find myself in a great measure of agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. I am certain that what we shall have to come to is some form of traffic dictator, somebody who will be able to talk to the Minister of Local Government and Planning, who will be able to talk to the London County Council, and who will even, on occasion, be able to talk severely to the Minister of Transport. Here we have another Report, produced by experts after the most careful scientific investigation that it was possible for them to carry out. Once again I would ask: What is going to happen to this Report? I have already sent the noble Lord who is going to reply notice of one or two questions. I want him to tell us what are the chances of anything being done. On the back of this Report noble Lords will see a list of Government publications in
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connection with the various Committees that have studied these problems. What has been done to carry out the recommendations of all these Committees? Anything or nothing? It is the same story as the question of traffic accidents. Committee after Committee sit and make recommendations; then absolutely nothing is done. And it seems as if nothing ever will be done.
This afternoon your Lordships have heard a speech from the former Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lord Silkin—a remarkable speech, I thought. He seemed to consider this Report an exaggeration. He wanted to know what we were doing with the seconds that we hoped to save. In the Report there is a table showing how many vehicles pass Hyde Park Corner in twenty-four hours. If the noble Lord would multiply the number of seconds lost by the number of vehicles passing Hyde Park Corner, he will realise what is happening to some of the seconds. But it is not only at Hyde Park Corner that this is happening; they go on to bottlenecks somewhere else. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, who is responsible for London's passenger transport, could supply Lord Silkin with enlightening figures on the seconds that are being lost. The noble Lord said that he had read the Report paragraph by paragraph. He missed one paragraph, apparently, because on page 12 he will see the figures given. I will enlighten the noble Lord by reading them. The Report says:
"The County of London Plan, 1943, contained a statement (page 48) that in New York the estimated cost of delays to traffic totalled £70,000,000 a year …"
It goes on to say:
"… that if a similar estimate were made for London, it would probably be found to be of the same order. The Plan also refers to another estimate of the cost of delays within a three miles radius of Charing Cross as being over £11,000,000 a year."
If the noble Lord had read this document. I am sure he would have been aware of that estimate of cost.
It seems to me that there was a striking contrast between the magnificent speech of the mover of this Motion, and the remarkable speech of the late Minister of Town and Country Planning. On the one hand, we have, if he will allow me to say so, a young man with his eye on the future, anxious to be constructive. On the

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other hand, we have a noble Lord, one who was charged with great responsibility as the Minister of Town and Country Planning, explaining to us that he has turned down one of the principal recommendations for London traffic that has been advocated by most of the experts for years, and saying that we ought not to go in for further expenditure to improve London's traffic conditions because we might be able to have a helicopter or two in a few years' time. When you think of the crowds going home from Charing Cross in the evening, to suggest that they might travel by helicopter in a few years' time seems to me to be ridiculous. One further thing the noble Lord said, to which I should like to refer, was that we might develop Pimlico as against the suburbs. I am sure that that is a grand idea, but does the noble Lord suppose that everybody who lives in the suburbs wants to live in Pimlico? If not, how will he make them do it? Of course, nothing is impossible to our Socialist planners.
Reference has been made to the Festival of Britain? What will happen? I hope the noble Lord who is to reply has a rough idea. I am sure that he must have, but I am told on good authority that the police have no idea how the traffic is going to be managed. It is obvious that if the Festival of Britain is to be the success that we all hope it will be, there will be an enormous influx to London—the people will be coming up for the spree in Battersea Park, and attractions like that. This will inevitably complicate the traffic situation in London—in fact, traffic will obviously come to a complete stop. As to the visitors from overseas, who are coming to see the Capital of one of the greatest countries in the world, they will see the most incredible traffic conditions. There are all sorts of ideas we can get from cities overseas that never seem to be tried out here.
In order to test the sincerity of the Government as to whether they are in earnest in this matter, I should like to refer to one or two recommendations in this Report, and to ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, what he feels are the chances of their being implemented. Item (2) under the Summary of Recommendations says:
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"Certain improvement schemes should be put in hand at the earliest possible moment as a first contribution to the betterment of road communications in London."
How is the Minister going to deal with that recommendation? Is he going to press ahead with it? Item (3), under the same heading, recommends:
"The general introduction of double-shift and week-end working when road repairs are undertaken on the most important traffic routes in Inner London."
What is going to be done in order to try and carry out that recommendation? It would be most helpful if we could manage to speed up the road repairs; we all know how long they take. Why cannot they be undertaken at week-ends, and in some cases at night? That is done abroad. Why cannot it be done here? Then it is proposed, in recommendation (10), that.
"The restrictions on horse-drawn vehicles and other slow-moving traffic should be extended."
I am sure that most of us will agree with that. But why did the Committee stop short of the cruising taxi? There are few vehicles in the crowded central area of London which cause more difficulty than the cruising taxi. I am sure that the noble Lord, as an experienced driver, mast have come across this problem. It is not an easy one with which to deal. The trouble is that the cruising taxi driver is looking for a fare on the pavement, and is not studying traffic conditions as priority number one. I suggest that it is not much use banning horse-drawn vehicles and other slow-moving traffic if you do not at the same time deal with the cruising taxi.
Recommendation (22) says:
"All drivers should keep to the nearside of the road whenever practicable and, if travelling slowly, should give way to faster moving traffic."
Then there is a recommendation about traffic discipline, and that sort of thing. An appalling amount of congestion is caused at times by traffic not keeping to its proper lanes. This problem is tackled abroad, and it is one respect in which Paris traffic, notably, and American traffic in New York, is so much superior to our own. The traffic there does keep to its own lanes. I cannot help thinking that some improvement could be effected in that respect. Then there is the question of cars that cut across the line of traffic, and draw up against the line of

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traffic or, alternatively, make right-hand turns in traffic. I suggest that those are matters which could easily be dealt with by regulation. It does not seem to me to be very difficult to prevent people from pulling up in traffic facing the wrong way. One is not allowed to do that in any other city of which I know in the whole of Europe; one has to go round the block to pull up. Why cannot we have the same sort of system here? That really would facilitate matters. Recommendation (24) says:
"A permanent site for the north London coach station is a pressing need which requires that immediate action should be taken by the Minister of Transport."
Will the noble Lord tell us whether the Minister is taking immediate action? That recommendation is contained in this Report and. if the Government are in earnest, perhaps the noble Lord can tell us what is being done about the north London coach station.
Recommendation (29) says:
"The proposal to build a car park beneath Cavendish Square should be pursued with vigour."
Is the Minister going to pursue that scheme with vigour? One would like to know. As other noble Lords have said, I hope he will not stop at Cavendish Square. What are the Government going to do about recommendation No. 32? That says:
"Planning control should be exercised to ensure the provision of car parking space in any new block of offices or other commercial development that is likely to attract car users."
Some of us have been reading with great interest the suggestion in the Press that Carlton House Terrace may become an enormous new Government office. Will provision be made for the cars of the civil servants who will be employed there? What about that enormous new building going up just off Whitehall? Has any provision been made there for the cars of all the various civil servants? Something of that sort must be done, if we are to obtain any improvement, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said, an enormous number of cars are driven up every day from the suburbs to London, and are just left in the streets all day and driven away in the evening. If only Government offices could blaze a trail and make provision for the cars of their civil servants, it is quite certain that other large offices and
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stores would follow suit. Recommendation No. 41 says:
"An investigation should be made to see whether certain bombed sites now requisitioned by Government Departments or local authorities could be available for use as car parks."
Will the noble Lord tell us what is to be done about that matter, because I think that would do something to help?
Recommendation No. 54 says:
"Pedestrians should be encouraged to cross the road at specified points, and to use subways wherever they are provided…."
What about the subway at Whitehall? Traffic is continually held up there. We know what congestion there is at that spot, and it will be far worse while the Festival of Britain is open. That is a lovely subway, but the traffic has to be held up repeatedly, in order to allow the pedestrians to walk across the road. Why cannot they be asked to use that subway?
There are other important questions that I should like to ask the noble Lord. In cities abroad there are traffic tunnels. You find them in Paris, as other noble Lords know as well as I do. I forget how many years ago it was that I advocated in another place a traffic tunnel going down Berkeley Square and coming up on the south side of Piccadilly. But that is not the only place where a traffic tunnel would be of enormous benefit. There is the route from Lower Regent Street to Regent Street proper—I will call it Upper Regent Street to show what I mean—Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road. If you could have a tunnel or bridge at New Cross, just think of the saving which could be made in the way of traffic congestion. For instance, there might be a traffic tunnel from Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner. I know the arguments against that: first of all, that the pipes and electric cables run fairly close to the surface, and, secondly, that the tube railway runs under Piccadilly at a depth of about 90 feet. Surely there might be room between the tube railway and the electric cables for a traffic tunnel. If we could get something of the sort it would be an enormous help. Then again, it is stated in this Report that improvements could be carried out at Alexandra Gate. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, has already referred to that point. I can never understand why Alexandra Gate cannot be used for outgoing traffic, and

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Queen's Gate, I think it is—just past the Albert Memorial—for traffic coming in to the central area. In that way we should have a system of one-way traffic of a sort. It would mean a certain alteration of roadways, but the land is available and something might be done. Then there is the appalling congestion in Knightsbridge, caused by traffic coming out of Albert Gate. That Gate was closed recently for a time, and conditions were then better. Now it has been reopened, and conditions are as bad as ever. Some of the seconds to which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, referred are lost at Albert Gate; others at Hyde Park Corner, at the bottom of Park Lane, and so on.
Now with regard to the bus stopping places. Does the noble Lord not agree that it might be a good idea to make some regulation that buses must not pull out at these stopping places in order to pass one another, and that they should proceed in line? I am sure that that has been given a great deal of consideration, and I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, is not here to-day, because I should be interested to hear his views on this point. When such a large vehicle as a bus pulls out from behind another bus, because it is ready to start off before the first, it creates a most appalling block in the traffic, and a delay which travels back along the street. I should like to know whether something could be done there. Again, what is to happen to Kingsway tunnel when the tram tracks are removed? Is that going to be made available for traffic from the Embankment coming up into Kingsway?
I am afraid that I have raised a great many questions, and probably bored your Lordships with them, but all have a great bearing on London traffic. In short, what I plead for is this. I want an assurance from the Minister that this time we shall have something done. In the last few years £625,000,000 have been taken from the motoring world in taxation. We are spending over £11,000,000 on the Festival of Britain. Does it really make sense to say that we cannot afford £5,000,000—which is what the Committee ask for—in order to do something with London transport? If it is a question of more money being required for the Festival of Britain, it is forthcoming at once. Why should we not try to see
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whether we can gel the £5,000,000 asked for in this Report? It is asked for by some of the greatest experts who have ever considered the question of London traffic, including one of the most distinguished members of the Ministry of Transport. I am sure that he will be able to convey the need to the Minister. Therefore, I have the greatest pleasure in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, and I hope that when the Minister replies he will be able to tell us something really concrete for a change.
4.18 p.m.
LORD SANDHURST: My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships and to the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, for the fact that I was not able to be present to hear the opening speech. Unfortunately, like so many of your Lordships, I have to earn my existence, and that necessity kept me away. In any event, what I have to say will be very much like this Report—a re-hash of what has been said in this House time and time again, and what has appeared in innumerable Reports which are no doubt getting very dusty in Ministry pigeon-holes. It is an unfortunate fact, but a true one, that there is hardly anything in this Report which has not appeared in previous Reports, and I think we ought to give the greatest credit to the Committee who compiled this Report for having had the courage once again to spend their time and produce a Report bringing to light what has been said so often before. My only hope is that, as it has been brought to light again, some little part of it may stay in the light and produce some results.
It seems to me that the problem must be sub-divided into what can be started immediately and what can be done eventually but, for one reason or another, cannot be started at once. If it is to be dealt with in that way, it strikes me that the most important of those things that can be done now is the provision of the utmost possible moving road space on the existing road surface. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that at the present moment there is not one street in which at least one traffic lane is not taken up by stationary vehicles, and very few in which two lanes are not taken up. This Report and every other Report bring out the fact that we have not at the moment sufficient road space;

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yet we are taking up this enormous proportion of it with parked vehicles. How are we going to overcome this difficulty? The underground car park has already been mentioned this afternoon. My Lords, it was mentioned in this House certainly ten years ago, and much earlier than that—well before the last war. Several noble Lords said then that we ought to have air raid shelters and car parks combined. If the Conservative Government, which was in power at the time, had had the sense and the "guts" to provide them, consider what a difference it would have made. All those unsightly and inefficient air raid shelters that were built in the middle of streets, unpleasant for the people who had to use them, could have been avoided. The people would have been far more comfortable in underground car parks; and it would surely not have hurt if a few pieces of bomb came through the roof and hit some of the cars—far better that than that they should hit a human being.
The present building of new Government offices has also been mentioned. I have one question to ask. There is a fine large building labelled "Ministry of Local Government and Planning." being erected in Savile Row. I should like to know whether the Ministry have thought of pro-viding a car park for their own staff. I ask that question particularly because I raised the point in this House some years ago. I said that no Government office ought to be built that did not provide garage space for the staff of that office and for others using the building. I suggest now that the Ministry of Local Government and Planning should not henceforward pass any plan for an office or for a private building in London which does not include provision for an adequate car park or garage. But until such car parks can be built, how are we going. as a purely temporary measure, to free the existing thoroughfares which are used as car parks? I suggest that there are many cul-de-sacs where parking might be permitted; and there are many minor streets which cannot possibly be used for through traffic of more than a local nature, which might also be used. But great care must be taken in selecting those streets, to ensure that, because they run parallel with an existing main artery which is already congested, they are not misused by cunning drivers. In any
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event, no street should be allowed to be used for parking, or even for waiting, on both sides of the road on the same day. It is almost a sort of driving competition to make one's way through narrow streets in which cars are parked on both sides.
There are other means of keeping traffic moving though they may not be of the first importance. One is the proper siting of pedestrian crossings. A badly sited pedestrian crossing can create a great deal of congestion. It means that few people use it; and when they do use it the drivers of the traffic approaching it are generally not looking towards the pedestrian and not expecting him; and the result, if a pedestrian steps on to the crossing, is a tremendous jamming-on of brakes, which in itself causes congestion. There is another point concerning pedestrian crossings. They should not be provided at all unless the road leading to them has an adequate non-skid surface. That may-seem to your Lordships a minor point, but I am sure it is not. On a damp day on a wood block surface, traffic going downhill, or even on a level road with a maze of pedestrian crossings on it, is brought almost to a crawling pace because the drivers know that if someone steps off the pavement at a pedestrian crossing they cannot stop. That is a fact which any noble Lord can see for himself. I myself have suffered through this. The back of my own car shows the results of stopping at pedestrian crossings on a wood block road. Sometimes another car has stopped just behind me without necessarily touching my car; but behind it has been a bus which did not stop, and it has been a case of crash, bang—and I happened to receive the second bang.
There were two points mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, which I should like to emphasise. One is the prohibition of right-hand turning at crossings. Traffic cutting across busy crossings in this way holds up the traffic behind it; the drivers wait to go across the stream of traffic coming up behind and hold up that stream. It would save an immense amount of time if they were obliged to go around the block. There is one short passage in the Report with which I thoroughly agree and I gather the noble Earl, Lord Howe, also agrees. It says in paragraph 23:
"The practice of some drivers of cutting across from the nearside to the offside of the road should be discouraged."

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I say it should be absolutely forbidden. This is the only country in the world in which it is allowed. An Australian who was over here the other day asked me why on earth we permitted it, and he used those words: "You are the only country in the world that allow it." A bright and cheery Englishman who was standing beside me said: "That is exactly why we do it, We are not going to follow the rest of the world and do as they do, because they do it." That strikes me as a poor reason. We must get our traffic moving and there are little things such as that which can make just the difference between a hopeless traffic jam and traffic which may not move fast but at least will move.
I want to join issue with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who seemed to take this question rather lightly and to think that it is only a matter of motorists' time. I wonder what he means by the term "motorists." Does he mean the drivers of private cars? Because if he does, he means a very small percentage of those persons whom I take to be covered by the meaning of the word "motorists"— that is, those who travel in motor vehicles. Think of the delay and loss caused to businesses through the time spent in buses by employees going from one place to another. The value of time wasted alone must run into millions of pounds a year. If you also realise, as I am sure the noble Lord must do, that there is not one article in your household to-day that had not travelled by road before it reached you, and if you think what the wages of drivers are to-day, what the price of petrol is and what even half-a-minute's delay costs—and there are hundreds of such half minutes in the course of a day—you will appreciate that the delay on the roads, when all that is added up, is reflected in the cost of your food, your clothes and every single thing in your house. On top of that, it is reflected in the cost of everything we export. That is a vital point. We cannot afford to have to charge more for our goods than is absolutely necessary, either at home or in the export countries. Road delay is making us do it. Let us stop road delay.
4.33 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, we have had a most interesting debate. At the commencement of the
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remarks I want to make, I should like to associate myself with those noble Lords who have congratulated the mover of this Motion, the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, first for having raised this most important subject and, secondly, upon the skill and the charming way in which he executed his task. We have had many interesting speeches, but I must straight away comment upon what I think was a most interesting speech by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in that it was reactionary even beyond the Right Wing of the Tory Party. His theme was this: he does not really mind delays in time because he is suspicious that most people do not know how properly to use the time which may be saved through the speeding up of traffic. I wonder if he remembers what was said in the last Election: "The gentleman in Whitehall knows better what is good for you than you know yourself." This is the new version which we have heard to-day: "Bureaucracy, officialdom, knows best for the citizen what he should do with his time, and, if the State is not to decree what should be done with the time, then the man should not be allowed the time at all."
LORD SILKIN: I do not mind the noble Lord enjoying himself, but that is a complete distortion of what I said. By all means let him go on, but I hope he will read to-morrow what I said. He will find that it was not what he has said it is.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: I do not think I am being unfair in paraphrasing what the noble Lord has said. What confused me in the theme of the noble Lord's argument was this. If people do not know how to use their time, if the delay we experience to-day does not matter very much—anyhow he said that—why, later on in his speech, did the noble Lord say: "We must undertake great capital works in order to make the people who work in the West End live in Pimlico, so that they shall be near their work"? If the time lost to-day through traffic delays does not matter very much, why worry about all those great works in order to save time? The noble Lord rather confused me and, perhaps, other members of the House in the arguments which he presented in that way.
Then he said: "Do not improve your traffic conditions, because, in speeding up traffic, you attract more traffic on to the

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roads." He actually said that users of motor cars from outside London would undoubtedly come into London more if there was no congestion. The logical conclusion of the noble Lord's argument was that we must slow up traffic in order to drive traffic off the streets. To prolong the noble Lord's argument to a conclusion, the logical and final outcome would be to close all the streets. Finally, his idea that West End workers should live in a revived Pimlico seemed to me, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said, to neglect the factor—and, if I may say so without offence to the noble Lord, bureaucracy sometimes does neglect this factor—that the people will not always live like sheep, just where the Government or the local authority tell them to. The wicked people who work in the West End may prefer to live outside London or in some other area where there are some people who are so unsocial as to refuse to work in the West End.
I think that this problem of London traffic is acknowledged by all members of this House, except the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, to be one of urgency; and it is acknowledged, also, that the country is losing by delays. Contrawise, we shall gain industrial efficiency by speeding up traffic. As the noble Lord who moved the Motion said, it is no new problem. It has been periodically reported on since 1919. Successive Governments—I include all Governments and, therefore, to a little extent, I must plead guilty to sharing some part of the responsibility—have done too little, and any improvements that have been made have always been overtaken by the problem aggravating itself with the growth of traffic. Now we have this new Report with wide recommendations, and we all look for early action by the Government in many directions in which the Report makes recommendations. The Report makes clear that there is no single solution to this problem, but there is a combination of solutions ranging from major reconstruction works right down to easements and improvements which can be done with or without those major reconstruction works.
Here I must temper somewhat the optimism with which some noble Lords, including the noble Lord who moved this Motion, said that at the present time
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we could embark on large capital expenditure on major reconstruction works. The Report recommends £20,000,000— £10,000,000 for inner London and £10,000,000 for outer London. We are going through a severe period of very limited capital resources. The noble Lord quoted a most attractive argument, with which I agree, that the expenditure of £11,000,000 on the Festival of Britain and £27,000,000 on Government offices surely justifies spending £20,000,000 on what I call useful expenditure for inner and outer London. I would say that two extravagances, one ill-timed and the other of dubious value, do not justify a further degree of un-wisdom in a time of restriction. I should like to see major capital works undertaken—there is not one of us who would not. But as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said, the limiting factor is to be found not only in terms of money.
The noble Earl spoke of tunnelling, which would mean a great amount of labour, some skilled and some unskilled, and a large amount of materials. If we are to carry out a programme of factory construction for aircraft and munitions, and give the Service defence requirements first priority, while regretting all the more that the Festival of Britain has taken so much of our resources, I think it would be unwise for us to delude ourselves that we have them to spare for such works as the noble Lord said he would like to see carried out, and which, I repeat, I too should like to see carried out. I feel that it would be unwise to buoy up people's hopes at the present time. I suggest that we should seek short-term remedies, with a far greater degree of urgency than has been shown hitherto, and at the same time see that in our long-term planning of reconstruction of buildings and squares in London all the preparations are made so that those plans can be adapted to major reconstruction works as and when our capital resources, our labour and materials, become available.
I think that a very good feature of this Report is that it rejects the solution of the traffic problem of restriction. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, advocated a proposal of restriction in various parts of London relating to particular classes of motor car users—I think that puts his argument fairly. This is an ordinary

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problem of supply and demand. The demand for road space is greater than the supply. There is an economic theory of restricting demand by control and rationing as between various classes of user. That theory is exemplified in the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. In my view, it is all to the good that in this case the Report has rejected that solution, and that the Government have shown no signs of advocating it. This Report has rejected that solution which we have seen far too often in other directions in our economic life. I believe we ought to concentrate upon these immediate short-term proposals. I would take issue with the Report in regard to paragraph 7, where the Committee say that it should be possible to undertake many of these short-term proposals within five years. I cannot see why some of them should not be started tomorrow. They ought to have been started yesterday. Why should they not be started tomorrow? As other noble Lords have said, we are in the Festival of Britain year, and undoubtedly the Festival will not only take much money from the taxpayers, but will attract many visitors, with the result that traffic problems will be enormous.
My Lords, many useful suggestions have been made—one or two of which appear in the Report, and one or two of which do not—upon which I should like to touch. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, spoke about cruising taxis. I would speak for a moment about stationary taxis, and the location of certain taxi stands, which, it seems, were almost selected for the purpose of congesting traffic. I am all for taximen having an adequate number of places where they can park in order to await fares. But why at the bottom of Curzon Street, just where it narrows, should there be a place for two taxis? Towards midday, on any day that one cares to go, one will always find delay there. Why not put those taxis 100 or 150 yards away? Then, why should a bus marked with "L" plates, with three or four officials of the London Transport Executive, drive down Bond Street at the most crowded hour of the day? I know that the bus men have to learn the routes, and that they must learn to drive in the traffic. But why choose almost the narrowest street in full use in London at
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the most crowded hour of the day, as I saw happening the other day? Then what about the crawling bus? Could not that problem be tackled? One finds buses ahead of schedule crawling along our main roads.
Here may I strike a personal note? The other day I got in a bus at the top of Whitehall to come to your Lordships' House. I paid my 1½d., took my ticket, and sat down with another dozen people in the bus. After we had stood there for four minutes I said to the conductor, "Are we going soon?" He said "Oh, fairly soon," and proceeded to get out of the bus and walked round to have a conversation with the driver. So I went round to the front and said, "Are we going soon?" to which the driver replied, "Oh, fairly soon." I then got on another bus and came down to your Lordships' House. I took the precaution of keeping the 1½d. ticket, which I sent to the noble Lord. Lord Latham, recounting the circumstances. Lord Latham wrote back to me saying that the matter had been investigated—as noble Lords know, a bus ticket has a number, from which one can identify the route and the particular bus. He said that the bus was in front of schedule, that the crew should not have acted as they did, and that their attention had been drawn to their conduct. I will say that he was very generous, because he sent me a l½d. stamp back, and then a 2½d. stamp for my letter, a total of 4d. But his generosity was outdone by mine. I wrote back to him acknowledging his letter and pointing out that my total expenditure had been 6½d., and he had refunded me only 4d. On the other hand, I knew the financial condition of the London Transport Executive, and I said I would accept 4d. in full settlement.
My Lords, from crawling buses I want to come back for a moment to traffic lights. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, and other noble Lords said about traffic lights. Surely we could have a more intelligent use and location of these lights. I believe it must have irritated most of your Lordships to see, year after year, fully trained able young policemen, sitting in small boxes controlling traffic lights, on the Embankment and at Ludgate Circus, and at one or two other places. For years we have had a shortage of Metropolitan Police to deal with crime, and yet we have

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seen these men sitting up there. I cannot see why, for that purpose, we have not used war reserve police or men who are not fit and able. Furthermore, I cannot see why we have not long ago replaced some of these men with automatic traffic lights. I took the trouble to write to the Home Secretary when this debate was in prospect to ask for some information on this particular point. I learn that on the Embankment since May, 1939, there have been three police officers for a total of seventeen hours per diem engaged in manual operation of the traffic lights. Now that the Kingsway tunnel is to be put to a new use, I understand that that will cease. But I repeat, surely, having regard to the shortage of police to detect crime, it was unnecessary to use no fewer than 75,000 skilled, trained police hours—that is my calculation of what was entailed— in that particular task.
Take the case of the junction of Commercial Road and Whitechapel High Street. There 50,000 trained police hours have been used since 1942. But, the Home Secretary tells me, agreement has just been reached with the Ministry of Transport for permanent automatic signals to be installed. I cannot help wondering— nor, I am sure, can many of your Lordships—why agreement has only now been reached. Perhaps the noble Lord opposite will be able to tell us when he replies on behalf of His Majesty's Government. Surely, if agreement for setting up automatic traffic lights has been reached now, it might have been reached a month ago, six months ago, or even a year ago. Perhaps there is a good reason why it has not, and we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, just why this is the great psychological moment when, at last, we can save these police officers' being put on this traffic duty.
One more example—Ludgate Circus. For twenty-one years, for twenty-four hours a day, police officers have been manually operating traffic lights there. This means that over 185,000 trained police hours have been expended on that task. But, oh joy! according to the Home Secretary's letter, work has already started on automatic equipment. So far as I know, there has been no great and sudden development in the technique of automatic signals. If work has now started, I cannot help asking why it did
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not start last week; why not the week before; why not six months ago; or even a year ago? Perhaps the noble Lord will tell us that when he comes to reply. I cite these cases as examples of lack of urgency in dealing with the problem of which I spoke a few minutes ago.
I want now to say a word or two about parking. I would join issue with the Committee on this most difficult question of parking on the highway. The Committee say, in paragraph 67, that:
"the parking of vehicles in a public street is a privileged use of the highway…."
That may be so in theory, but so long as we lag behind so much in parking facilities, that idea can remain only a theory, because it is not practical to drive motor cars off the roads when there are no places where they can be parked. So long as supply lags so far behind demand, parking on the highway will have to continue. But with regard to this parking problem I believe that a common police area parking policy is needed; and that policy should be based on the liberal standards of some Metropolitan Police areas, not on the restrictive policy followed in certain others. I know one area in which a man can leave his car outside his house without any lights all night. There are other areas where, if any motorist leaves his car at night for a short time in a safe place without lights, he is liable to be summoned. I understand that whether a car may be left with-out lights is a matter within the discretion of the local police authority. I think there ought to be a standard laid down so that motorists will know whether they are, or whether they are not, breaking the law.
There is a little cul-de-sac just off Chesterfield Street, and a short time ago I was foolish enough to leave my car there. It is a well-lit place and, being a cul-de-sac, carries no traffic. Two police officers were waiting when I returned. I understand that they had been waiting for three hours in order to catch me and certain other people who had left cars there. It is interesting to note that two burglaries took place that night within half a mile of this place. So far as I know, the burglars were not detected; nevertheless the motorists were detected. I was transgressing the law. But somewhere else I may do just the same thing —I may, for instance, leave my car

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outside my house in the St. Marylebone area—without getting into trouble. It does not make sense to me, and I am sure it does not make sense to the public. I believe that motorists are entitled to have some common standard laid down by which they will know whether they do or do not break the law.
I should like next to take the question of parking in squares. Grosvenor Square affords an example of how many cars can be parked in one particular square. If any of your Lordships passes through Grosvenor Square he will see that the roadway is marked out in white triangles, so that those lovely stream-lined American motor cars can be safely parked there. That is a good idea. Why should it not be carried out in other squares? It is either a good idea—as I believe it is—or it is a bad idea. If it is a bad one, it ought not to be allowed. I took this matter up also with the Home Secretary and this is the statement which was made to me from his office:
"Grosvenor Square is an exceptional case. Its diplomatic traffic (including that of the U.S. Fighting Services) is heavy and continuous, and the obstruction caused has been the subject of discussion with the Embassy Authorities, though unfortunately as yet no really effective solution has been achieved."
Either the people responsible for leaving these motor cars are breaking the law, or they are not. Either it is a good scheme or it is not. If it is good let us extend it. If it is not, then it is a new principle that we should have parking by class of user. I always thought that all roads were intended for all users on an equal basis. I am delighted that we have our American friends here, and we must help them all we can. But I would ask the noble Lord opposite to tell me this: if I, or any other English owner of an English car, choose to park a car in Grosvenor Square in one of those places—quickly slipping it in when one of the Americans moves out for a moment—can I leave it day after day, night after night, with the same degree of immunity that these other cars now enjoy? I think it is a point which we might all like to have cleared up. Personally, I should like to see this parking scheme now in force at Grosvenor Square extended to other areas.
I should like to conclude by saying that if this debate has instilled into the Minister and into His Majesty's Government a greater sense of urgency than we
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have hitherto seen displayed in the tackling of these problems, then it will have been well worth while, and it will have helped greatly to enhance the value of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee's Report which we have been discussing to-day.
5.0 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, moved the Motion which stands in his name upon the Order Paper, he mentioned his father. I was one of those who was privileged to know his father, and I respected him as one of the greatest motoring pioneers this country has ever had. Therefore, it was with much interest and pleasure that I listened to his son making such an attractive speech, well thought out, factual and helpful. I congratulate him, and hope he will go on following in his father's footsteps, though my recollection of his father is that he was not perhaps so skilful a politician as his son seems to be.
My first task should be to acknowledge on behalf of His Majesty's Government the debt we owe to the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, and to the members of the sub-committee and their Chairman, Mr. Samuel, for what I consider to be one of the best Reports which has ever been published on this or on any allied subject. I do not intend to join in the argument between the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, upon whether time is saved or not, and upon what should be done with the time that is saved if we do away with traffic congestion. I thought that my noble friend, Lord Strabolgi, had the best solution, in getting on to "Kiss Me, Kate."
We have to acknowledge that the London traffic problem is the greatest problem of its kind in the world. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and with the Traffic Advisory Committee, that it is no good trying to solve this problem by restriction. As my noble friend, Lord Silkin, has said, if we cure to-day's problem, the problem will arise again, because time will establish a new set of conditions and will create for us another problem. It is only right that we should have these problems. I would be the last to advocate that people should not be allowed to come to London.

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It is the heart of England, the pride of every Britisher. I 'have never yet found a way of dragooning the British public. It is no good telling them that they must not go to some place, because if they want to go anywhere, they will find a way of going. It is up to those of us who are in authority to solve these problems as they come along. We also have to think of the social life and commerce of Greater London. Many people who look at this problem forget that what is amusement for one is the very bread and butter of another.
I want to take to task the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and other noble Lords, who, it seems to me, seize every opportunity of painting the most lurid picture of what traffic conditions are going to be when the Festival of Britain is open. What is their object? To keep people away from the Festival of Britain? To make it a failure? Is it their object to placard to the world that nobody will ever be able to get to London? How does the noble Earl know that these conditions are going to arise? Let us wait and see. I pin my faith on the ingenuity of the London police as against the lurid speculations of the noble Earl. I hope we shall have an end of this painting of dismal pictures. I hope that noble Lords will still be able to get to your Lordships' House, even though they have to fight their way through such dense masses of traffic as he seemed to expect.
The noble Earl, Lord Howe, asked what was being done, and then answered, "Nothing." I thought he might have allowed me to say that, if that was my intention. I am going to give him a great disappointment, because I propose to tell your Lordships exactly what is going to be done and how it is going to be done. As this Report was published only five weeks ago and I stand here this afternoon to give your Lordships this information, I should think that even to a man so accustomed to violent and fast speeds as the noble Earl, it would seem not a bad record.
EARL HOWE: As the noble Lord has mentioned me a few times, I should like to say, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, that there is a slight distortion of the facts. I did not say that nothing has been done. What I did was
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to put a number of more or less test questions to the noble Lord, and I asked him to tell us what was being done.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I gather that the noble Earl said that this Report was going to remain in the same pigeon-hole as many others.
EARL HOWE: No, I particularly said that I hoped it would not. To test the noble Lord's sincerity in the matter, I asked him to say what he was going to do about specific questions of which I had given him notice.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: The noble Lord's hopes were expressed in such a manner that I understood him to say that nothing was being done. I acknowledge the courtesy of the noble Earl in sending me notice of his questions. His courtesy is exceeded only by the number of questions he sent me to answer. If I do not answer them all, I know he will forgive me.
I think the best way of telling your Lordships what we propose to do is to say that there are certain of the recommendations which will require new regulations, and certain which can be dealt with administratively. We propose to deal with others in another way, and there are some—a few—which we are unable to accept. The recommendations which can be carried out only under new regulations arc Nos. (9), (10), (15), (16), (19) and (20). We accept these in principle and intend to discuss with the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee how best to bring about the introduction of the necessary regulations. I think your Lordships will agree that some of these will in the first instance have to be of an experimental character. Take No. (9), for example, which suggests the prohibition of loading and unloading in short lengths of certain main thoroughfares during specified hours. We cannot do that at once. We must try experiments in certain areas to see how it works, because commercial interests must be considered. Again, No. (10), which seeks to extend the restriction of horse-drawn and other slow traffic, must be tried out, because slow-moving traffic is one problem and horse-drawn traffic, which is really a dying problem, is another. We intend to discuss with the Traffic Advisory Committee how best to tackle that problem.
EARL HOWE: Including crawling taxis?
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Including all slow traffic. Recommendation No. (15) seeks to prohibit at certain times all forms of waiting for a distance of forty-five feet from the more important controlled intersections. We cannot issue a regulation to put that into operation overnight; we must experiment to see how far it fulfils its objective. No. (16) recommends the possibility of adding to the existing number of prohibited right hand turns. We accept that recommendation in principle, and, in consultation with the Committee, we shall try to implement it. No. (19) recommends the establishment of a system of unilateral waiting in certain additional streets. We accept that, and will consult with the Committee and other authorities as to how and where it can be done.
Recommendation (17) is one which has not been mentioned by any noble Lord this afternoon. That is probably the only recommendation which would call for legislation, and I should have thought that it was one of the most important in the Report. It relates to street trading. I consider that the growth of street trading in the West End of London has proved in some areas to be one of the largest contributing factors to congestion. This would involve an Amendment to Part IV of the London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1947, relating to street trading. We intend to discuss this matter with the London County Council and the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee, to see whether legislation should be considered to give further control over street trading to prevent street congestion. It may well be that the best solution is that which has been found in the City of London, where I understand there are only two street traders left. There every street trader is licensed, and in his lifetime he can renew his licence; but no fresh licences are issued. It is really a system of elimination by prohibition, and the streets of the City of London are now almost clear of street traders.
There are various recommendations which can be dealt with by administrative action. These are recommendations (1), (5), (21), (22). (23), (24), (49), (50), (53), (54), (55) and (56). Again, we accept all these in principle, and as soon as possible
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—we acknowledge frankly the urgency of some of these matters—we will take administrative action. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, mentioned the possibilities of arcading. That is a subject which has been before various Committees for a long time: it has been advocated by one Committee, turned down by another, advocated by a further Committee and again turned down. We believe there is something to be said for arcading when all the circumstances are right. But we at the Ministry of Transport have not very great powers in this matter. The only power that we possess is that, when a street widening scheme is put before us which involves grant aid, we can then exercise a little influence in that direction. However, I am coming in a moment to the powers of the Ministry in relation to a number of these recommendations. We are already dealing with some of those which I have enumerated as being amenable to administrative action. For example, there is recommendation (49), which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, in his speech. There have been two Working Parties, and they are already working out a scheme for permanent direction signs. This is a very complex problem, involving as it does the whole of the metropolitan boroughs, and it has taken a little longer than we wished. I hope, however, that the Report will be with us before the end of the year, and when the whole scheme is approved the first sign will be put up as soon as may be. I am afraid that I cannot say more on that matter.
We have been in discussion with the Home Office about recommendation (56), which deals with the question of additional traffic police. Chief constables all over the country have also been consulted. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is most sympathetic, and I am optimistic enough to hope that as the result of our joint consultations we shall get a substantial number of additional police. I think it is worth mentioning that, although we have discussed with the Home Office whether we can help solve this problem by having an increase in traffic police of a special constable nature, there are a number of difficulties which we have so far been unable to overcome. However, I think it will interest noble Lords to know, as regards the use of school wardens, that the adult school patrols have been increased in the last

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few months toy over 100 per cent.—from 500 to 1,050. That is a real contribution.
When I studied the Report I came to the conclusion that one of the most important parts, if not the most important, was that containing recommendations (25) to (42), which deals with the question of parking. This is a matter which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, and it has been under discussion for some considerable time. But we have never been able to get down to a practical scheme. I feel that we have to lift this out of theory into fact, and decide: Is it possible to build garages under the squares of London? Is it possible to build under the Royal Parks? My noble friend Lord Strabolgi says that it should be possible; the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, says that it is not. What is going to be the cost? The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, mentioned a figure of £300,000, and I have heard some fantastic figures. I have heard, also, that these parks could be built by private enterprise. What we intend to do—and my right honourable friend is going to do it immediately—is to set up a Working Party, composed of representatives of the appropriate Government Departments, local authorities, and the outside interests concerned, with the Standing Joint Committee of the A.A. and R.A.C., and various other like bodies. We shall get them to go into this question of parking and put up some practical cut-and-dried scheme, so that we may decide what we can do of a practical nature. It is no good going on talking about these things; we must do something about them. We feel that the best method is to get the experts together and say to them: What is the practical way of doing this? What is it going to cost? How is the money going to be raised? We can then examine the matter and see whether we can go ahead. It is no good talking about these underground car parks —which have been discussed to my knowledge for twenty-five years, and even in the days before the war nobody embarked upon one—without knowing the facts. I do not know whether such parks are possible. I do not know what will be met with when the engineering work is started, or what lies under the parks of London; we may find some very peculiar things. But that is what we propose to do, and we propose to do it straight away,
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so that they can report to us in the shortest possible time.
When I come to street improvements, which are dealt with in Recommendation (2), all the schemes which are set out on page 16 of the Report (apart from some very minor schemes, and with the important exception of St. Giles' Circus) will be included in the draft London development plan to be submitted to the Ministry of Local Government and Planning by the L.C.C. That is a Plan, as your Lordships know, which covers the period right up to 1960. The L.C.C. are the planning authority, and we shall have to await their recommendations before we can determine our attitude. I would not for one moment rule out the possibility that we might if we were so advised by the L.C.C, go ahead with some of the short-term schemes and some of the schemes which do not involve a heavy expenditure. But I should be foolish if I did not follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, and I feel that he was wise to say what he did. It is no use thinking there is a bottomless purse; it is no good being enthusiastic about tunnels under Regent Street, and all these fanciful ideas, when we have to meet in the next few years the burden of the expenditure of men, money and materials on defence. I thought that in the last debate I had blown sky-high this myth about the Road Fund, but the noble Earl, Lord Howe, sticks to it almost like a religious conviction.
EARL HOWE: I never mentioned it.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Yes you did. You said we took out of the Road Fund—
EARL HOWE: I said the Government had taken £625,000,000 from the motoring world in the last five years.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: It is the same thing in different language: "We have taken." Who has taken the money? The Exchequer have taken it for the benefit of the noble Earl in a number of ways other than in his career as a motorist. It is no use arguing the point. We shall do what we can, but I should be foolish if I misled any of your Lordships to think that we could embark upon a lot of expenditure on some of these schemes. As the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, rightly said, we must

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turn our attention to some of these shortterm schemes to relieve the problem, and not copy the foolish escapade of Atalanta and the golden apples.
EARL HOWE: Does that apply to schemes under subhead (b)?
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I said all the schemes on page 16—that is those under (a) and (b), and also the rest at the bottom of the page.
Recommendations (3) and (4) we cannot accept. They deal with double-shift and week-end working. Although at the present time such working is considerably used when road repairs are undertaken on the more important traffic routes, there are a number of factors which militate against their general introduction, and we cannot accept that there should be a grant from central funds. We hope that local authorities or the highway authorities will do what they can. We accept in principle recommendation (51), which says that traffic lanes should be marked with white lines at intersections. They are useful, and it is hoped that highway authorities will extend their use. But we do not accept the recommendation in favour of advance warning signs; one of our problems is to get rid of some of these signs. We are getting too many, and we cannot agree that these advance warning signs serve any useful purpose. This also applies to recommendation (48). While we are in favour of increasing the use of green arrow signals where circumstances permit, we are not in favour of putting up the extra warning signs.
Now may I come to recommendation (52)? I have to say frankly that we cannot accept the recommendation with regard to subway escalators. They might be useful to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, who finds it difficult to go up and down steps, but again me real trouble is expenditure; I myself do not think that the expenditure would be worth it. I hold the view that none of these things will be any good until we can find a way of enforcing their use, and can prohibit people from crossing the road by any other means. I should like to know how many times those of your Lordships who travel down the Kingston by-pass have ever seen a solitary person crossing one of those bridges. I have not. All that expenditure is wasted, and we cannot undertake the colossal expense of escalators under roads.
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There has been an interesting discussion upon recommendation (6)—the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and also the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, mentioned it. That recommendation calls for more up-to-date factual information on the causes of traffic delays. The Economics Committee of the Road Research Board have this matter in hand, and when they publish their figures I can only hope that the people of this country will pay more attention and more respect to them than they seem to have paid to like figures produced from various sources in the years gone by. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, mentioned the figures produced by Professor Jones, of Leeds University, on the cost of road accidents. They are quoted by people who think they prove their case and derided by others when it does not suit them. The trouble is that the basis of these figures can be challenged, and while this is the case, I do not think they will be of any great practical use. At least we have not found a way of convincing the public that they are of any great practical use, and perhaps the Economics Committee of the Road Research Board will succeed where everybody else has failed.
Recommendation (24), which calls for a permanent site for the north London Coach station, was brought to my attention by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. The noble Earl asked what we are doing about it. But it is none of our responsibility; it is the responsibility of private interests. We have no power to build coach stations, or to provide money for building coach stations. We will give all the help we can, and will continue to give it; but do not ask me what we are doing about it. Because the noble Earl reads the recommendation in the Report, it does not mean that it is necessarily correct. No doubt the Committee itself was suffering under the delusion that this station was a responsibility of the Ministry. But it is not.
EARL HOWE: Will the Government give permits for the work to be carried out by private firms?
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: That will be determined on the merits of any scheme which is put up. If the noble Earl is interested—I will not bore the House at the present time—I could tell a very interesting story. It is not His

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Majesty's Government who are responsible for the delay in building the coach station. Responsibility lies in a number of other directions.
Having dealt with the recommendations, perhaps I should add this. I want the House to bear with me, because there are a number of your Lordships, as well as people outside, who seem to think that my right honourable friend and his advisers in the Ministry of Transport have powers which they do not possess. Under the London Traffic Act, 1924, my right honourable friend the Minister has power to make regulations for controlling or regulating vehicular and other traffic within the London area. It appoints him as the dictator, which the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, so much desired. It is a statutory obligation upon my right honourable friend that before he makes any Order under that Act he has to consult the London and Home Counties Advisory Committee; and if the proposed Order lays any burden upon the police, he has also to consult my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Though there is no statutory obligation on my right honourable friend to advertise what he is going to do, he does, in fact, do so; and he listens to outside objections when there are any. The London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee is a statutory body, formed in 1924. My right honourable friend is not sure that the time has not arrived when its membership should be overhauled. If we are going to put these new and onerous duties, with the burden of implementing this Report, on a Committee, we want to be satisfied that all interests affected are represented. But this may need legislation—and, if that is so, I am not very hopeful that anything can be done. But, at any rate, my right honourable friend is going to review the composition of the Committee and will see whether it meets the requirements of modern times.
It should be borne in mind that the responsibility for the positive action called for by a number of these recommendations falls on the local highway authority. The powers of the Minister and the Ministry are really only persuasive. True, in so far as these recommendations fall into the categories of grant-aided schemes, we can add persuasion, on the principle that he who pays the greater part of the
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remuneration of the piper has a right to call some of the tune. The noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, rather surprised me, as did the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, in that they seemed to want to have all the control centralised in the hands of the "gentleman from Whitehall." The suggestion was that we have to consult and look to so many authorities and other people before carrying out these schemes that, in fact, the schemes are not carried out at all; and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu expressed great sympathy. Take, for instance, the question of directional sign posting. That is a matter for the metropolitan borough councils, subject to the approval of the signs by the Minister. But the Minister has no power to contribute any money at all. As the noble Lord, Lord Waleran, mentioned, the A.A. and the R.A.C. have undertaken the cost of putting up temporary signs, and we are grateful to them for having done so. But we have no power whatsoever to give local councils any grant towards the cost of putting up directional signs.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: I am not quite sure what is in the noble Lord's mind. The only thing I called for was a common police policy throughout the metropolis, so that the motorist may know where he stands.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I was not accusing the noble Lord in any way; I was only borrowing his phrase "The gentleman from Whitehall." I understood that what was required was a dictator.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: All I asked for was a co-ordinator. That is a very different thing from a dictator.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: The noble Lord wants a co-ordinator, but another noble Lord was more specific: he wanted a dictator. We cannot, of course, have a dictator, because we cannot take away the powers of the local authorities—and I feel certain that noble Lords opposite would have some-thing to say if we tried to do so. What I have said also applies to street nameplates which form the subject of Recommendation (50). All we can do is to issue circulars for guidance, and this we have done. It may be of interest to noble Lords if I say that there is a new street nameplate which has just been devised,

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the legibility and artistry of which will, I am sure, surprise noble Lords when it comes out. I hope your Lordships will not ask me when that is going to be. for I do not know. However, I hope it will not be long, for I agree that if you go into some of the suburbs of London and rely upon the street nameplates to guide you, you are very likely to get lost.
I do not think I have any other comment to make regarding the recommendations, but I emphasise this again: that while we can, after appropriate consultations, issue regulations, the enforcement of any regulation rests with the police. I pay a tribute to the work of the police: I should not like any word of mine construed as being critical of them. The fact remains, however, that, after we have once issued a regulation, we have no power to enforce it. That is entirely a matter for the police. I sometimes think, as I listen to the criticisms of some noble Lords, that they believe that the Ministry have a magic wand and can do anything and everything. But we cannot; our powers are very limited.
Lord Balfour of Ichrye asked me two specific questions. If the noble Lord will allow me to say so, I was interested in his speech. It was helpful—through it contained some of the usual back-handed political gibes. But those always amuse us, and I do not complain. He asked me whether he could park his car in Grosvenor Square alongside the Americans' cars.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: And for as long as the Americans.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I think that that is a case of American enterprise. The noble Lord had better try it and see whether he can park his car as he suggests, and perhaps he will find out. The only advice I can give is that anybody can put a vehicle on the highway if he does not obstruct it. The question, "What is 'obstruction' of a highway?" is a matter for the police to decide and to prove. If the police think that the cars parked in Grosvenor Square within the white triangles are not obstructing the highway, they will not object. If the noble Lord obstructs the highway he must take the consequences.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: In that case, will the noble Lord consider recommending to the appropriate
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Department that the successful experiment in Grosvenor Square should be copied elsewhere? At present, if you park your car in any other square in a similar manner to those parked in Grosvenor Square, you are liable to be summoned.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: The experiment may be extended if those responsible think it is appropriate to do so.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: May I say a word on behalf of the motorist? It is a fact that the parking places in London are at present, unhappily, inadequate. That is not the fault of the Government or of anybody else. It is a fact, however, that people have to park their cars at the roadside, in suitable or in unsuitable places. As things are administered at present, you can park your car in one street and it is all right, but if you park your car in another street you are immediately prosecuted. I do not think that a law administered in that way is conducive to respect for the law, nor is it likely to encourage a law-abiding community.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I was coming to that point. I was just dealing with this short point of Lord Balfour of Inchrye—his dissatisfaction with what he thought was rather a "favoured nation" clause in police regulations regarding American cars parked in Grosvenor Square. I gather that what the noble Marquess had in mind is the parking of cars without lights at night.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I did not mention lights.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: We issued a regulation which gave the police authority, within their discretion, to allow parking without lights in designated parking places. Everybody who parks a vehicle at night without lights on other than a parking place is breaking the law. Some get away with it, some do not.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The point I want to make is this. Like everybody else, I expect, I have had experience of this law. It is not a question whether it is the law; it is a question whether it is a good law. In fact, numbers of people who placed their cars under a street lamp, where it is just as light as in the day-time. have been warned or prosecuted, but the

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same thing does not happen in the next case. The ordinary citizen is at the moment suffering considerable difficulties from taxation, and to have to run down his batteries where it is unnecessary for him to do so is a great hardship to him. If the noble Lord agrees that this law is a bad law in modern times, it is the Government who should take the responsibility of doing something to amend it.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I would not agree that it is a bad law, because discretion has to be given to the police in this matter. They, in their experience, know where it is dangerous to park cars. We have now issued a regulation whereby, in consultation with the police, we will allow parking at night at certain places, without lights. We are only awaiting preparation of the signs. There will be under-hanging the "P" sign (which is the designation of a parking place) a sign marked "No Lights Required." That will be an authorised place to park at night without lights, and it will be illegal to park without lights anywhere else.
LORD SILKIN: Could not the noble Lord go a stage further? I must support the noble Marquess in his contention that if you are parking your car underneath a lamp, it is unreasonable to expect you to keep your lights on all night. Could not the police be given a certain amount of discretion?
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: It sounds easy, but suppose, as has happened in many cases lately, the lamps arc turned out: what happens? Your car is no longer underneath a lighted lamp. It is underneath a lamp-post with an unlighted lamp. I agree that this embraces the whole problem of parking, not only during the night but during the day, and we are tackling it as well as we possibly can.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I hope that I have a constructive suggestion to make. Instead of putting a notice where parking is permitted, would it not be better to put the notice where parking is not permitted? In the vast majority of the streets of London, it would be perfectly safe for the ordinary man to park his car, and nobody would suffer by it. On the other hand, there are a limited number of streets where it would not be
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safe. Therefore, it would be much cheaper to mark those which are not safe, rather than those which are.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I will undertake to discuss this matter, in the light of these observations, to see what can be done. I should like to reply to a number of these other points, but I am afraid that I have overstayed my welcome in taking up your Lordships' time. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, sent me quite a list of questions. I have answered the majority of them. Several noble Lords wanted to know why we have abandoned the "A" ring road. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, gave the answer. These things are never black or white. There is a difference of opinion. Some still do not agree with the abandonment but, on balance, it was thought wrong to sterilise all that property, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin said, for quite a long time, when we could not go ahead with the expenditure—he said for about fifteen years, but I think now he would alter his estimate to far longer.
LORD SILKIN: Yes.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: And the noble Lord was quite right when he said that the benefit of the ring road would not be felt for over fifty years. To sterilise all that property for that length of time was, we thought, a hardship; and, on balance, that is why the scheme was abandoned. Although noble Lords as motorists may disagree with this decision. I feel sure that noble Lords as property owners will have a different opinion. The noble Earl asked me about the Kingsway tunnel. He knows that it is very steep and narrow. What we are going to do with it is under consideration. I think I have answered roughly all the questions—
EARL HOWE: What about the bus stopping places?
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I was going to mention that point, and one or two others. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, must have been in error because most of the lights are traffic operated, and so designed as to take care of the volume of traffic passing through them. They are not static. There are very few static time-regulated traffic signals in London to-day. However, I will have all those points looked into.

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I think the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, made an excellent point about the siting of taxicab ranks. I am not going into the whole story of how bus stops are controlled, but I will have that matter taken up with the appropriate authorities. There have been so many useful suggestions made that I will undertake to have them all examined. I can assure noble Lords that on this occasion they are pushing at an open door. We are fully seized of the problem. The police and the Home Office are seized of it as well, and we hope that with the action which I propose to take under this Report your Lordships will never again be able to hurl at my head the accusation of "another Report languishing in another pigeon-hole."
5.47 p.m.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: My Lords, I feel that everyone will agree with me that this has been a most useful debate. It is rare that we can obtain from the other side such a favourable answer as we have had to-day. I can only hope that all the things which the noble Lord opposite says will be done really will be done. We are patient on this side; in fact, I think we are very patient. I am sure that the noble Lord will not find us lacking in sympathy if he wishes to bring in any new regula-
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tions on this subject. There is one point that I should like to mention again—that is, the question of appointing an overall supervisor of London traffic. I think noble Lords on all sides of the House agree that this would probably be an extremely good thing. I know perfectly well that the word "dictator" is the wrong word to use, because the powers that the Ministry of Transport could give to this man would not make him eligible for such a title. I believe, however, that there is a great lack of co-ordination among the local authorities, the Ministry of Transport and the police. I feel that if someone were charged with the responsibility of coordinating all those authorities, it would help to simplify the problem. I hope that the noble Lord will consider the point. I welcome the statement that the Minister will consider overhauling the Advisory Committee. I think perhaps when this is done we shall see very much better representation there. There is nothing more for me to say, except to hope earnestly that we shall see some action, and that the noble Lord will keep this House informed of any new regulations on the subject which he wishes to lay. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at ten minutes before six o'clock.