Sitting of 16 June 1959

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  TRADE AND COMMERCE

    Hire Purchase (Advertisements)
    Miss Burtonasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that confusion exists among traders as to the requirements of the Advertisements (Hire Purchase) Act, 1957, and, in particular, whether an advertisement which otherwise falls within the scope of the Act is removed from it by inclusion of the word "from", in front of an indication of the amount or fraction of the deposit or in front of an indication of the amount of any instalment payable; and if he will introduce amending legislation to clarify this matter.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. John Rodgers): I am advised that the phraseology mentioned would not remove an advertisement from the scope of the Act.
    Miss Burton: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that for once I am delighted with the reply which he has given? Could he see that it is given a certain amount of publicity? Is it within the province of the Board of Trade to let the Press have a copy of the advertisement which I sent to him, because certain "wide boys" in the advertising profession have been trying to get away with it?
    Mr. Rodgers: I thank the hon. Lady for her kind remarks, in the first place, and, in the second place, I should like to look into the suggestion which she has made.
    Miss Burtonasked the President of the Board of Trade, of the nine cases
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    found by his Department to involve possible breach of the Advertisements (Hire Purchase) Act, 1957, how many were due to ignorance and how many to other causes; what these causes were; and what action he has decided to take in the matter.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Investigations showed that in six of the cases there was no deliberate intention to break the law. In the other three cases there was a prima facie assumption that a deliberate breach of the law had been committed, but rightly or wrongly, they were not at the time considered significant enough to warrant prosecution.
    Miss Burton: This is most extraordinary. Does the Parliamentary Secretary recall that last week my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) asked whether the Board of Trade was now accepting a plea of ignorance as a defence for wrongdoing? Why is the Board of Trade never prepared to help the shopper? Since the President of the Board of Trade told me last week that he had not yet decided what action he would take, does it mean that since then he has decided to take no action in these three cases?
    Mr. Rodgers: If the hon. Lady studies my Answer, she will find that I have not said that we do not propose to take any action.
    Mr. Beswickasked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he has taken to collect information as to the observance or otherwise of the provisions of the Advertisements (Hire Purchase) Act; and what further action he proposes to take in cases where the provisions of that Act have not been observed.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Until they were disbanded in October, 1958, the Board of Trade's 27 hire purchase control inspectors watched for breaches of the Act and advised traders. A special study was made of a wide sample of advertisements and complaints from traders have been investigated, in some cases by visits by the Board's officers. The Board is considering prosecution in a few cases where in its view the circumstances justify it.
    Mr. Beswick: Do I gather from what the hon. Gentleman says that this team of investigators has been abandoned?

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    Is he not perfectly aware, as all hon. Members on this side are aware, that this Act, which he helped to put on the Statute Book, is being neglected by many people? Does he think that that is good enough? Should not the Act be enforced?
    Mr. Rodgers: We certainly agree that the Act should be enforced and, as I informed the House on 14th May, we at the Board of Trade are anxious that it should be observed. However, it is not the Board's duty to be the sole prosecutor under that Act.

    Derelict Sites, Scotland (Clearance Schemes)
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the President of the Board of Trade how many schemes for the clearance of derelict sites in Scotland have been approved by his Department under the Distribution of Industry Act, 1945, during each of the

    SCHEMES FOR THE CLEARANCE OF DERELICT
    SITES IN SCOTLAND APPROVED BY THE BOARD OF TRADE UNDER
    SECTION 5 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDUSTRY ACT, 1945, SINCE 1ST
    JANUARY, 1949

    Location

    Year in which Approved

    Work Commenced

    Work Completed

    Annual Cost*

    Total Cost

    1949

    1950

    1951

    1952

    £

    £

    £

    £

    £

    1. Galston, Ayrshire

    1949

    April, 1950

    September, 1951

    —

    10,170

    1,947

    1,347

    13,464

    2. Airdrie, Lanarkshire

    1949

    December, 1949

    May, 1950

    900

    2,250

    653

    —

    3,803

    3. Larkhall, Lanarkshire

    1949

    June, 1949

    August, 1950

    1,035

    914

    219

    —

    2,168

    4. Motherwell, Lanarkshire.

    1949

    January, 1950

    May, 1950

    —

    7,292

    —

    —

    7,292

    5. Braidhurst, Motherwell, Lanarkshire.

    1949

    April, 1949

    May, 1950

    15,425

    5,427

    —

    —

    20,852

    6. Wishawhill, Motherwell, Lanarkshire.

    1949

    April, 1949

    January 1950

    2,595

    1,758

    —

    —

    4,353

    7. Stonehouse, Lanarkshire.

    1949

    January, 1950

    December, 1950

    —

    5,013

    —

    1,675

    6,688

    8. Barrhead, Renfrewshire

    1949

    August, 1949

    April, 1950

    1,157

    1,256

    1,423

    —

    3,836

    9. Coatbridge, Lanarkshire.

    1959

    Work has not begun

    Total

    21,112

    34,080

    4,242

    3,022

    62,456

    * Some retrospective payments were made
    after completion of the work.

    Toys (Standards)
    Mr. Jannerasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is now able to make a statement in view of his examination of the recommendations which are contained in the report, "Danger at Play", prepared by the Portsmouth
    last 10 years; where they are located; and what was the annual cost of each and the progress made with each such clearance.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Eight schemes were approved in 1949 and one this year. With permission, I will circulate the detailed information about these in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Hughes: Is not that a remarkably small number? Is it not another instance of failure on the part of the Government to utilise the statutory powers which were provided by the Labour Government in 1945?
    Mr. Rodgers: The hon. and learned Member is well aware of the measures which were introduced to restrain Government expenditure in 1949, but for this year 25 further schemes in Scotland are under consideration.
    Following is the information:
    Junior Chamber of Commerce, concerning the manufacture of unsafe toys.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The British Standards Institution has written to the Portsmouth Junior Chamber of Commerce about the recommendations involving standards. My right hon. Friend is waiting to

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    hear the outcome of these discussions and he hopes also to hear the views of the Council of the British Toy Manufacturers Association on the report. The recommendations about the use of air-guns, bows and arrows, and fireworks, and the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of certain inflammable toys are matters for the Home Secretary.
    Mr. Janner: Would the hon. Member be good enough to expedite this further inquiry as far as possible, because the Portsmouth people took three years to go into the matter and came to the conclusion that the majority of the accidents with children were due to these unsafe toys? Would the hon. Member help in that respect and try to press the matter forward?
    Mr. Rodgers: I will certainly do all that I can to press it forward. The Council of the British Toy Manufacturers Association is discussing this matter on 18th June.

    Exports of Machinery
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will specify the restrictions now in force on the export of machinery, particularly agricultural machinery, from Great Britain to India, Egypt and other Mediterranean countries.
    The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. J. K. Vaughan-Morgan): There are no restrictions on exports of agricultural machinery. If the hon. and learned Member will let me know what other types of machinery interest him, I will tell him what export restrictions are in force.
    Mr. Hughes: Since when have these restrictions been removed? Is the Minister not aware of the correspondence which I had with him on behalf of Messrs. Garvie and Sons, agricultural implement makers in Aberdeen, who are frustrated in fulfilling contracts with Egypt, thus depriving this country of much-needed foreign currency?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The last agricultural machines to be freed from licence were tractors for China in June, 1957. I am indeed aware that I have had correspondence with the hon. and learned Member, but I do not think that he has quite understood the purport of it all.
    Mr. Hughes: Were not Messrs. Garvie and Sons prevented from exporting agricultural machinery to Egypt?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I think that the hon. and learned Member is confusing the issue with that of export credit guarantees.

    Export Trade (Aberdeen)
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the number, nature and value in money for each of the last 10 years of exports from Aberdeen to the United States and to the Scandinavian countries, and his plans to increase that export trade.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Exports from the City of Aberdeen to individual countries are not separately specified in the official statistics. The services of the Board of Trade and of our commercial representatives abroad are available to give advice and help to all inhabitants of the United Kingdom, including those of Aberdeen. These services are mainly free.
    Mr. Hughes: Why are these figures not kept separately? Is the Minister aware of the delegation from Scandinavian countries which came to this country recently with a view to increasing trade between those countries and the north-east of Scotland? Will he tell the House, and indeed tell me, what steps he has taken by means of this delegation or otherwise to provide much-needed foreign trade for the north-east of Scotland?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It would clearly be an appalling task, which I think would not be worth the expense, to secure an analysis by local authorities of particular exports to particular areas. A great deal is being done by the Government to promote exports to the U.S.A. and Scandinavia. I would draw attention to the success which we have had in exporting to America.

    Consumer Protection (Committee)
    Miss Burtonasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is now in a position to state the composition of the Committee appointed to consider the whole question of consumer protection.
    Mr. Willeyasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will now make a further statement on the Committee on Consumer Protection.
    Mrs. McLaughlinasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the composition of the Committee appointed to consider consumer protection has yet been decided; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: No, Sir. After consultation with the Chairman of the Committee, invitations have been sent to a number of people to serve on the Committee, and my right hon. Friend hopes to announce the membership of it shortly.
    Miss Burton: Can the Parliamentary Secretary help us a little further? Can he give any idea to those on this side of the House, because we seem to be particularly interested in the matter, when it will be useful to table further Questions?
    Mr. Rodgers: I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House are equally interested in the subject of consumer protection. When we have the acceptances I will let the hon. Lady know.
    Mrs. McLaughlin: Will my hon Friend tell us what the terms of reference of this Committee are likely to be? A great deal of interest has been generated on this subject in the country and many people are anxious that the terms of reference should be as wide as possible.
    Mr. Rodgers: The terms are wide. They were announced to the House by my right hon. Friend in answer to a previous Question and I will show them to my hon. Friend later, if I may.
    Mr. Willey: Can the Parliamentary Secretary assure the House that, in addition to full consultation with the various trade organisations and associations interested, there will in any cast, be adequate consumer representation on this Committee?
    Mr. Rodgers: The aim is to include on the Committee people with special knowledge and experience of shopping and all shopping matters. It is for the Committee itself to say from which organisations it will take evidence when it meets.
    Mr. Willey: We are concerned about the membership of the Committee. Will he assure the House that there will be adequate representation of people with expert knowledge about this? In the membership of the Committee, will there be adequate consumer representation?
    Mr. Rodgers: We have not consulted these bodies about the actual membership, but we have carefully considered that point.

    Film Industry (Quota System)
    Mr. Swinglerasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware of the anxiety in the film industry about the future of the quota system; what proposals he has to meet the situation; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: I am sorry to learn that there is anxiety in the film industry on this topic. The quota provisions of the present legislation expire on 30th September, 1960, and fresh legislation will be introduced in due course to extend the quota arrangements.
    Mr. SwinglerAre the people in the Board of Trade Film Division aware that it takes at least fifteen months, and sometimes two years, to plan a film production and that the British film industry is based to some extent on the quota system? Therefore, is it not possible for the President of the Board of Trade to make some statement about this subject? In view of the uncertainty about what might happen after September, 1960, and the harmful effect which this uncertainty may have on the British film industry in the next twelve months, cannot some assurance be given, or have we to wait until the next Session or possibly the next Parliament?
    Mr. Rodgers: My Answer gave that assurance. As soon as the present arrangement expires, it will be renewed.
    Mr. Rankin: Is not the hon. Gant le-man failing to understand the situation? Should not talks be started now? Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether consultations are taking place now or whether he proposes to enter into such consultations with the film industry?
    Mr. Rodgers: Consultations with the industry have already taken place and the advice of the Cinematograph Films Council was received some time ago, in

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    time to enable a Bill to have been introduced; but, alas, Parliamentary time did not permit it to date.

    Portugal
    Mr. Nabarroasked the President of the Board of Trade, in connection with the Anglo-Portuguese Trade Fair which has recently been opened in Lisbon, what specific plans the Government have for making it possible for the Portuguese to increase their exports to the United Kingdom, and so be in a position to purchase a larger quantity of British good; and, in particular, what steps he will take to restore the trade in port wine to its pre-war volume.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: There are virtually no quota restrictions on imports of any Portuguese products and the duty on port wine was reduced as recently as last year's Budget. No further action by the Government seems to be called for.
    Mr. Nabarro: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that the ability of Portuguese importers to buy British goods, which presumably was the purpose of the Trade Fair in Lisbon, is directly related to Portugal's ability to earn sterling? As the sale of port wine in this country represents practically the only ability which Portugal has to earn that sterling, would it not be appropriate to adjust the duty on this heavy wine to bring it more into line with the seemingly preferential treatment given to lighter wines?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The latter part of that supplementary question is for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As regards the first part, we do not necessarily seek to take a too bilateral approach to these matters. They can pay for goods with other convertible currencies.

    Migration Statistics
    Mr. Ernest Daviesasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is yet able to announce arrangements to include in figures of immigration and emigration movement by air as well as by sea.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: No, Sir. I regret that arrangements are not yet sufficiently settled to be announced. While I regret
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    the delay, we must ensure that the collection of the migration statistics is performed without unnecessary form-filling for travellers. This has inevitably taken some time.
    Mr. Davies: While agreeing with the latter part of the Parliamentary Secretary's reply, can he not explain further why it is so difficult to work out a system whereby these statistics can be compiled? Is he not aware that at present the statistics on immigration and emigration published by the Board of Trade are very much deficient and out of line with those issued by Commonwealth and Colonial Powers? Cannot some action be taken to speed up a decision? It is two or three years since action was promised.
    Mr. Rodgers: I hope that we shall be able to make an announcement in the near future, but several other Departments have to be consulted.

    Firm (Trading Activities)
    Mr. Hamiltonasked the President of the Board of Trade how many letters he has received concerning the trading activities of the firm about which the hon. Member for Fife, West has sent him further particulars; and whether he will make an interim statement on the progress of his investigations.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Thirteen letters, including three forwarded by the hon. Member, concerning this company and its associated companies have been received. A compulsory winding up order in respect of the company was made on 1st June, and it is the duty of the Official Receiver to investigate the company's affairs and report the result to the court. There may, as a result of the investigation, be scope for criminal charges to be brought.
    Mr. Hamilton: Whilst thanking the hon. Gentleman for that reply so far as it goes, does he not agree that the facts revealed by the three cases which I have sent him—I have others which I will send to him—indicate a scandalous state of affairs? Will he take every step to ensure that the managing director who escaped to Italy with the boodle is brought back to justice?
    Mr. Rodgers: I have every sympathy with the hon. Gentleman in this matter,

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    but I do not think it would be wise for me to comment further on the legal aspect at the moment. However, it would be advisable for hon. Members to recommend to their constituents that, before investing hundreds of pounds, they should consult a solicitor.
    Mr. Nabarro: On a point of order. Can we be told what "escaped with the boodle" means? Is this not an un-Parliamentary expression?
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) ought to ask the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. Hamilton) what it means.

    Fabrics (Dye-fastness)
    Mrs. Mannasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that certain fabrics which are passed for flammability rating of safety under the recent regulations are not guaranteed for dye-fastness, and that all other fabrics which show a highly flammable rating are to have no marking at all; and what steps he proposes to rectify this state of affairs.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: My information is that the application of neither a flame proofing nor a flame resistant finish to dyed fabrics has any effect upon the dye-fastness to washing of those fabrics. The powers of the Board of Trade under the Fabrics (Misdescription) Act do not extend to the matters mentioned by the hon. Lady. My right hon. Friend therefore has no further steps in mind at present.
    Mrs. Mann: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that. I have in my possession a protest regarding an order for 2,500 yards of fabric flame-proofed but not guaranteed in regard to dye? It is concerning a firm which he knows very well. I will send the letter to him later. The hon. Gentleman does not appear to have answered the other part of my Question. Is he aware that the Government Research Laboratory has all the tests? It knows which garments or materials are causing most deaths and accidents in the home, and there is not a warning label on any of these fabrics.
    Mr. Rodgers: I have every sympathy with the hon. Lady's interest in this subject. That is why we have laid down these standards of flammability or flame-resistance. The Fabrics (Misdescription)
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    Act, 1913, under which the recent Regulations were made, does not empower the Board of Trade to lay down standards. Therefore, we are not able to take action on the question of dyeing.
    Mrs. McLaughlin: Is the Parliamentary Secretary satisfied that publicity on the question of the flammability standards of safety has been sufficient to ensure that manufacturers are aware of this standard and, indeed, that they are encouraged to use it?
    Mr. Rodgers: We held a Press conference when the standards were laid down, but perhaps there are other steps we can take; I should like to look into it.
    Mrs. Mann: Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I shall take an early opportunity to raise this on the Adjournment.

    Free Gifts and Coupons
    Mrs. Mannasked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware of the widespread dissatisfaction concerning free gift schemes and temporary coupon reductions now operating over an increasing amount of commodities; and if he will take steps to end this practice.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The practice of offering free gifts and temporary coupon reductions is a particular form of advertising the object of which is to increase sales. I am aware that differing views are held about the desirability of the practice. The Board of Trade has no powers to prevent the practice, and I see no reason to seek them.
    Mrs. Mann: Is not this practice paid for by all of us? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is great dissatisfaction when bachelors and spinsters of 40 years of age and over are offered little dollies when buying soap? Is he further aware that the practice of giving coupons to grocers for the money equivalent carries no guarantee that the money equivalent will be passed on to the consumer?
    Mr. Rodgers: There is no evidence that this form of advertisement or selling is a charge on the consumer any more than is any other form. Indeed, on the question of value for money, the publication "Which?", published by an independent body, reported on 7th April this

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    year that the cutlery offered by the manufacturers of, for instance, Quaker Oats and Kellogg's was very good value for money.

    Packaged Goods
    Mrs. Mannasked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he will take to stop weight and contents fluctuation in household commodities sold in tubes, boxes, tins, and cellophane wrappers and packets, including food, fruit, toothpaste, chemists' sundries, etc.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Changes in the quantity which manufacturers put into these containers could be prevented only by requiring the goods to be sold in certain specified quantities. Under existing law, some foodstuffs must already be sold in this way, and my right hon. Friend is considering, in connection with the proposed Weights and Measures Bill, how far such requirements and their extension to other goods are desirable.
    Mrs. Mann: I am very glad that it is being considered, but we shall probably get the results of the consideration long after the next General Election but one. In the meantime, is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that a false impression is created about the stability of the cost of living when, in fact, having regard to the value of the goods we are buying, there is no stability at all?
    Mr. Rodgers: I think that the hon. Lady's reference to the Cost of Living Index is another question.
    Mr. Jay: How soon is this Weights and Measures Bill, which was promised for the last Session but one, to be introduced into the House?
    Mr. Rodgers: I cannot say when it will be introduced into the House, but it is now in course of preparation.

    Scottish Industry
    Mr. Rossasked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to prevent the closure of Scottish branch factories and the transfer of the work to England, and to prevent the closure of Scottish firms bought over by south-based companies; and if he will take further powers to prevent actions so damaging to Scottish industry.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The closure of branch factories or transfer of work must
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    depend on the commercial judgment of the management of the firm concerned, but where the Board of Trade has prior notice of intended closure, possible alternatives would be explored with the firm.
    Mr. Ross: Surely the Minister should be aware that such centralisation of industry in areas already amply industrialised constitutes a hindrance to the Government's development policy. Is he aware that there is strong feeling in Ayrshire that the Government's failure or impotence to deal with this problem will create a much more serious employment problem in the future? It is bad enough now.
    Mr. Rodgers: We have no information now at the Board of Trade that English firms have bought up Scottish firms with the deliberate intention of closing them down or moving them into England.
    Mr. Woodburn: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that it has happened in the past and that there is grave apprehension that it is happening now? Would he not agree to appoint someone to intercede, perhaps, with the firms to see whether some arrangement could be made by which they could stay in Scotland—not to close factories in Scotland or take them south of the Border where the industrial areas are already overcrowded?
    Mr. Rodgers: The advice of the Controller for Scotland is always available to firms. However, we must leave the management of industry, on both sides of the Border, to the commercial judgment of the firms.
    Mr. Woodburn: If the country devotes large sums of capital to housing, has not the nation a stake in the matter as well as the firms? If the two can combine to make a profitable organisation, should not that be done?
    Mr. Rodgers: We agree that the State has an interest in the matter. That is why we are taking the steps we have taken to try to steer more industries to Scotland.
    Mr. Osborne: Will my hon. Friend consider an appeal to those Scotsmen who have come South and made great fortunes to take some of their industrial

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    enterprises back into Scotland and to use the money made in England to help industry there?
    Mr. Rodgers: I think that that suggestion will be read by Scotsmen with interest.
    Mr. Jay: Will the Parliamentary Secretary consult the Prime Minister about this? Even though the commercial prospects of a firm cannot be ignored, surely it is the duty of the Board of Trade to exert a certain amount of pressure on a firm, where other things are equal, or nearly equal, to maintain production and employment in Scotland and other such areas.
    Mr. Rodgers: I agree with that suggestion, but, as I said in my original Answer, where we have prior notice of intended closure, possible alternatives are explored by the Board of Trade with the firm's representatives.

    Factory Sites, Douglas
    Mr. Patrick Maitlandasked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects to receive from the Lanark County Council a list of approved factory sites at Douglas; and when officers of his Department first made a tour of inspection in the company of county council officials.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: I cannot say how long the council will require to consider this matter. The inspection was on 9th March.
    Mr. Maitland: Is it not a scandal that this matter has been delayed so long? Will my hon. Friend use the good offices of his Department and invoke those of the Secretary of State for Scotland to hurry the matter up? Is it not a fact that the county council is dragging its feet?
    Mr. Rodgers: I do not think it is for me to comment on whether or not the Lanarkshire County Council is dragging its feet, but I understand that it has given an assurance that if an industrialist wanted a site at Douglas the fact that the development plan was under consideration would not act as a hindrance. Similarly, we at the Board of Trade would be very happy to grant an I.D.C.

    Television Programmes
    Mr. Simmonsasked the President of the Board of Trade what consultation takes place between his Department and the authorities concerned before television programmes dealing with trading and industrial conditions in the British Commonwealth and Colonies are transmitted over the British Broadcasting Corporation and Independent Television network.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The Board of Trade is consulted from time to time about matters affecting British trade overseas and gives information or advice on particular programmes when asked.
    Mr. Simmons: Is the Minister of State aware that a broadcast on I.T.V. on 1st June last about Hong Kong, which was shown from 10.30 to 10.45 that evening, was a most dishonest broadcast? There was no advertising. It was peak-hour viewing and there were no breaks for advertising. It was just like a propaganda talk by the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce. What has he to say about that?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I am afraid that I could not reply in regard to any particular programme. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put down a Question.

    Industrial and Commercial Amalgamations
    Mr. Osborneasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will move to appoint a Select Committee to investigate the economic consequences of the growing movement towards greater industrial and commercial amalgamations, to advise how far these are restricting consumers' freedom, to inquire what effect they are having on prices and distribution, and to make recommendations.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: No, Sir. I am not satisfied that the growing movement towards industrial and commercial amalgamations is against the interests of consumers or the economy as a whole. The Board of Trade can, however, ask the Monopolies Commission to report on any industry where at least one-third of the supply of goods is in the hands of one firm.
    Mr. Osborne: Does my hon. Friend think that the capitalist system can work

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    efficiently—or even be justified—unless there is adequate competition? Does he think that it is good for the nation that there should be one jam manufacturer, one brewer and one distributor of furniture? Is it not time that some competition was restored to our economy?
    Mr. Rodgers: I am a great believer in competition, but I think that the picture drawn by my hon. Friend is a travesty of the facts. There is no such thing as one brewer or one furniture firm in the country. The freedom to buy, to sell and to combine assets is essential to the healthy development of a competitive society in which the most efficient should prosper.
    Mr. Jay: Is not the Parliamentary Secretary paying quite insufficient attention to the very important question asked of him by his hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne)? Since his hon. Friend is clearly right in saying that competition is diminishing over a whole number of industries—as anyone knows who reads the financial Press—is there not fairly strong ground for more public supervision in the interests of the consumer?
    Mr. Rodgers: I do not accept a word of what the right hon. Gentleman says. Because the number of firms diminishes it does not mean that the competition is any less intense.
    Mr. Nabarro: Would my hon. Friend not agree that many of these amalgamations have taken place as a direct result of an affinity of interest, as for example between a jam manufacturer referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) and a mineral water manufacturer? Why should they not amalgamate and reduce prices to the consumer as a result of the amalgamation?
    Mr. Rodgers: To my mind, anything which provides an incentive to efficiency is in the best interests of consumers, workers and the country as a whole.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that these amalgamations to which reference has been made take effect in order to avoid the consequences of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act? The policy of that Act is to produce more competition, and these amalgamations are intended to
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    avoid it. How does the hon. Gentleman propose to deal with the amalgamations which are defeating the purpose of the Act?
    Mr. Rodgers: I do not accept the inferences of the hon. and learned Gentleman's strictures, that these amalgamations take place in order to avoid the provisions of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act.
    Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: It is notorious. Everybody knows it.
    Mr. Rodgers: They take place because they add to greater efficiency, leading to lower operating costs and, we hope, lower prices.
    Mr. Jay: Is not the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) for once right in thinking that this affinity of interest between producers is steadily reducing the range of choice which consumers have?
    Mr. Rodgers: They still have a wide choice in every field.
    Mr. Shinwell: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that many of us on these benches favour and encourage amalgamations for the simple reason that it would be easier for the State to take these industries over?
    Mr. Rodgers: I am aware of the views of the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends, but they do not commend themselves to this side of the House.

    British Trade Centre, Moscow
    Mr. Formanasked the President of the Board of Trade what progress has been made in setting up a British Trade Centre in Moscow.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: In the course of my right hon. Friend's recent talks in Moscow with the Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade he suggested that a British Trade Centre should be established in Moscow to facilitate contacts between British business men and the Soviet trading organisations. Although the Soviet Government felt unable to accept this suggestion, I am glad of this opportunity to welcome their support for the alternative proposal of strengthening the commercial staff of the Embassy to which a Commercial Counsellor will be appointed with such other staff as may be required.
    Mr. Forman: While thanking the Minister for his answer, in view of the fact that a trade centre is so important to the industrialists of this country, may I ask whether he will press on with setting up a permanent trade centre?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Of course, that matter does not rest with us, but we are glad to have the Soviet Government's support in the strengthening for which we have asked.

    Exports to U.S.S.R.
    Mr. Frank Allaunasked the President of the Board of Trade why ordinary type telephone cable is on the embargo list for sale to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; and if he will now press for its removal so that British export orders may be secured.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Ordinary type telephone cable is not subject to embargo.
    Mr. Allaun: How was it that the Minister recently told the House that the matter was under discussion by the Paris Committee and, indeed, that we were informed, and he did not deny it, that the British were in favour of the embargo and the French were against it?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: That inquiry did not relate to ordinary type telephone cable, which is what this Question is about.

    Industrial Development, Sunderland
    Mr. Willeyasked the President of the Board of Trade what new factories or factory extensions have been authorised in Sunderland this year.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Three, of an aggregate area of 34,000 square feet.
    Mr. Willey: Can the Parliamentary Secretary say how many people are likely to be employed as a result of these welcome authorisations, and, in view of our persistent high level of unemployment, can he now redouble his efforts to get a factory set up in Sunderland as soon as possible?
    Mr. Rodgers: I appreciate that there is high unemployment in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I have not got the exact figures relating to the
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    number of new jobs which will be provided by these extensions. However, there has been a recent application to house a local firm which wishes to expand, and this matter is now under consideration. If it goes ahead as planned, it could produce another 170 jobs.
    Mr. Willeyasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will make a statement on the proposals of the Sunderland Corporation to clear and prepare sites for industrial development.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The corporation has so far applied in respect of one site of 10 acres for a grant under Section 5 of the Distribution of Industry Act, 1945, towards the cost of providing new sewers and roads on land it had already cleared of slum dwellings. But, as was made clear in the circular issued to local authorities by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government on 12th March and as the Corporation has been informed, work of this sort is not eligible for grant.
    Mr. Willey: Does the Parliamentary Secretary realise that this is a most disappointing reply? Everybody concedes that what we need in Sunderland is a new industry. We have to have a site prepared to attract new industry. Will he enter into immediate consultation with the corporation to see that we get a site effectively cleared?
    Mr. Rodgers: I will certainly look into the matter.
    Mr. Jay: Why is the application not eligible for grant? Is it because it does not come under the terms of the Act, or that the Government have decided not to meet this sort of application?
    Mr. Rodgers: I have not got the details of this particular application.

    Machinery Imports
    Mr. Holtasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give the total value of machinery imported into the United Kingdom for the year 1958; what percentage was eligible for consideration under the arrangements for duty-free entry of machinery; and what percentage was actually allowed into the United Kingdom duty free.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The total value of machinery and parts imported into the United Kingdom in 1958 was £166 million. I regret that it is impossible to estimate the percentage which was eligible for consideration under the arrangements for duty-free entry. However, the value of machinery in respect of which duty-free licences were issued in 1958 was £26·4 million.
    Mr. Holt: Does this not mean that a large amount of machinery was imported into this country on which the purchaser had to pay a tariff? If the Government are serious about reducing the cost of living and the cost of manufacturing, why do they allow this tariff to continue?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: If an application for a reduction in the rate of duty on a definable class of machinery is put forward, it will be considered in the usual way.

    Distribution of Industry (Middleton)
    Sir J. Barlowasked the President of the Board of Trade whether Middleton, Lancashire, is included in the list of places for which financial assistance is currently available under the 1958 Distribution of Industry (Industrial Finance) Act.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Yes, Sir. It was added in March at the same time as Oldham, Rochdale and other places in the same district. I am arranging that in a revised issue of the pamphlet "Industry on the Move" Middleton is specifically mentioned as part of the Oldham area and in the same way that Littleborough will be listed as part of the Rochdale area.
    Sir J. Barlow: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, in view of this omission to include the name of Middleton in the past, may I ask whether he will do all he can to bring it to the attention of suitable manufacturers in the future?
    Mr. Rodgers: Certainly, Sir.

    Tourist Trade
    Mr. M. Nobleasked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to encourage visitors to come to the United Kingdom, particularly from the dollar area.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The Board of Trade has increased the maximum of the annual grant to the British Travel and Holidays Association this year by £250,000. A large part of the additional funds will be devoted to expanding the Association's publicity campaign in North America. There has been a substantial increase in the number of inquiries from potential visitors at the Association's new premises in Fifth Avenue, New York, and the Association is shortly to open an office in Vancouver.
    Mr. Noble: While thanking my hon. Friend for that information, which I think is most satisfactory, may I ask whether he studied the article in the Express this morning about visitors from the United States? Does he agree with the estimate given in that article of the increase in the number of United States visitors to this country, and can he help in particular the hotels in the country districts to deal with this great influx of visitors if and when they come?
    Mr. Rodgers: I have not seen the article to which my hon. Friend referred, but the number of visitors to these shores has increased already. Up to April there was a 7 per cent. increase compared with the same period last year, and United States visitors during the same period have shown a 15 per cent. increase. This is valuable to Scotland, since it is reckoned that about one-third of the people who come to this country visit Scotland.
    Mr. Woodburn: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that in Scotland it is considered that many more visitors could be attracted if some encouragement were given to the use of the work of the Films for Scotland Committee, which is suffering badly from the fact that it must rely on its own commercial sales and receives no financial assistance in producing films for this purpose?
    Mr. Rodgers: I will look into the point raised by the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Lipton: Is it intended to encourage or discourage visitors from the dollar area, in view of what Dr. Billy Graham claims to have seen in Hyde Park?
    Mr. Rodgers: I think the Americans can assess the value of Dr. Billy Graham as well as we can.

    Census of Distribution
    Mr. Atkinsasked the President of the Board of Trade when the full report of the census of distribution for 1957 will be available; and when the next census of distribution will be taken.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Some results of the census have been published in the Board of Trade Journal and, if printing facilities allow, more will be published in the coining weeks. The full report on the census is expected to be published in August. Looking to the future, my right hon. Friend is now considering the appointment of a committee to advise on the taking of a census for 1961 as was recommended by the Committee on the Censuses of Production and Distribution.
    Mr. Atkins: Is my hon. Friend aware that the decision to take a further census will be generally welcomed? In view of the necessity for industry to keep up to date not only with production but with distribution methods, can my hon. Friend say whether it is possible in future to make the results of these censuses available rather more quickly than in the past?
    Mr. Rodgers: We shall certainly do all we can to expedite the publication of the final results.

    Dutch Bulbs
    Mr. Gresham Cookeasked the President of the Board of Trade what report he has received from the Anglo-Dutch Trade Council with regard to the limitations imposed by this country on the import of Dutch bulbs; and if he will request that organisation to submit to him a report on the extent to which Anglo-Dutch trade could be increased by the abolition of these restrictions.
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I do not propose to ask the Anglo-Dutch Trade Council for a report. My right hon. Friend will, of course, be ready to consider any comments which the Council may wish to submit, although they will be well aware of our intention to remove import restrictions as soon as circumstances permit.
    Mr. Gresham Cooke: In view of the staggeringly good export figures for this last month and the good trade returns generally, has not the time come to bring about liberalisation in a small matter
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    like bulbs? Could not the Anglo-Dutch Trade Council help in that way?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: We have gone a long way towards liberalisation, as my hon. Friend knows full well, but there are many claims for early liberalisation.
    Mr. Snow: Has not there been a rather long and sorry history about this trade with Holland? Is it not a fact that the balance of trade is extremely favourable towards us, and is not there a shortage of these bulbs in this country? Is it not also a fact that our home production would not be seriously affected, if at all, if these limitations were removed?
    Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I am well aware of the hon. Gentleman's views on this matter, but I must repeat that there are other articles which have an equal claim to priority in liberalisation. As to the question about Anglo-Dutch trade, it is true that our exports to that country fell last year, but our imports rose substantially.

    Highland Counties
    Sir D. Robertsonasked the President of the Board of Trade why Government policy for the establishment of new industry in the six counties of Northern Ireland differs so much from their policy in the seven Highland counties; if he is aware that 130 new factories, employing 37,000 people, have been created in Northern Ireland, while, excluding Dounreay, only 14 new factories have been opened in the Highland counties, employing less than 900 people; and what plans Her Majesty's Government have for reducing this disparity.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Both the Highlands of Scotland and Northern Ireland are areas to which a great effort is being made to attract new industries. The conditions, however, vary so greatly between the two areas that I do not believe any useful comparison can be drawn between the two.
    Sir D. Robertson: Does that answer mean that the President of the Board of Trade is not able to face the realities of this question? In Northern Ireland, not only in Belfast but in twenty other towns and villages, modern large factories have been established and have taken up a large number of workers. Does not the hon. Gentleman know that we are the

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    most depopulated area in the United Kingdom, but that when industry becomes available, as it has done at Dounreay, we raised 1,000 regular workers within weeks? The same could be done again.
    Mr. Rodgers: I am well aware of the problems of the Highlands and Islands. Nevertheless, the conditions in that part of the United Kingdom and in Northern Ireland vary. One must take account of the present numbers. There are 6,000 unemployed in the Highlands, with 1,400 in Stornoway alone and 40,000 in Ulster, many of whom are concentrated round the Belfast area.
    Mr. T. Fraser: The Parliamentary Secretary refers to statistics, but is he aware that the seven crofter counties in the North of Scotland represent one-sixth of the land area of Great Britain? It is true that they have only one two-hundredth part of the population of Great Britain, but this is because depopulation has been running in the last 200 years. Does not the Parliamentary Secretary realise that unless there is some continuing employment in the shape of industrial employment the depopulation will soon reach the point of no return?
    Mr. Rodgers: Steps are being taken to try to attract suitable industries to that part of the United Kingdom.
    Mrs. McLaughlin: Is my hon. Friend aware that in Northern Ireland the population is increasing and not decreasing? Whatever has been done in the past, we still require more, and will he keep that in mind?
    Mr. Rodgers: Certainly, we recognise that Northern Ireland requires more industries in spite of improvements in recent months.

    Weights and Measures (Consumer Needs)
    Mr. Greenasked the President of the Board of Trade what progress has been made with inquiries into consumer habits and needs being conducted by the Central Office of Information in connection with weights and measures legislation.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The interviews, which numbered about 1,800, have been completed. The classification and tabulation of the information obtained
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    are now beginning and my right hon. Friend hopes to receive the results by the end of July.
    Mr. Green: I am glad to know that steps are being taken to carry the matter forward, but are parallel efforts being made to carry along with this research those concerned in the wholesale and retail side of the articles which would be affected if amending legislation is introduced?
    Mr. Rodgers: Conversations have been going on over many months now with representatives of manufacturing bodies and wholesaling organisations.

    Industrial Design
    Mr. Greenasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the achievements of the Council of Industrial Design in helping to win a reputation in overseas markets for British design and what plans he has for its future.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Yes, Sir. The Council of Industrial Design has done much valuable work in this field, and the Design Centre and Design Index are widely known both here and abroad by those looking for the best examples of current British design. In addition, the Council has organised exhibitions of well-designed consumer goods at many overseas fairs and has stimulated displays in department stores in a number of important cities overseas. The Department is discussing with the Council ways in which its work may be continued and, perhaps, extended.
    Mr. Green: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he realise that, after reflection, I should prefer to have the words "helping to sustain a reputation" rather than "helping to win a reputation" in the Question? Secondly, will my hon. Friend pay particular attention to those small firms from which, in the past and today, so much new forward-looking design has come?
    Mr. Rodgers: I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am glad to have his suggested correction of the words "to win a reputation", because I know that he wishes to pay a tribute to the high standard of design among the broad mass of manufacturers in this country. The Council does all it can to bring to the

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    attention of small manufacturers the services it has to offer in order to improve the general standard of design in this country.

    Retail Garages (Oil Companies)
    Mr. Sorensenasked the President of the Board of Trade what representations he has received from retail garages about their inability to obtain from the makers oil-mixing machines and other articles except through the agencies of oil companies; and whether he will refer this matter to the Monopolies Commission.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: The only representation which the Board of Trade has received is that which the hon. Member has just sent to my right hon. Friend. I will look into the matter and write to the hon. Member.
    Mr. Sorensen: If the information implicit in my Question is correct, does the Minister approve of that arrangement which imposes very great hardship on retail garages?
    Mr. Rodgers: I would rather not anticipate what reply I may give to the hon. Gentleman.

    Hovercraft
    Mr. Beswickasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement about the future development programme of the SRN1 aircraft.
    Mr. J. Rodgers: Responsibility for the development of the Hovercraft, of which the SRN1 is an experimental prototype, rests with a company in which the National Research Development Corporation holds the majority interest. The Corporation provides finance at its own discretion, subject only to Board of Trade approval where required under the Act. A very satisfactory beginning has been made, and I understand that development work is continuing. The Hovercraft is a vehicle for sea or land transport rather than an aircraft.
    Mr. Beswick: As the craft operates in the air, I should have thought that it was an aircraft. Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that all of us in the House welcome the initial success of this project and we hope that it will eventuate in a major British contribution to transport? However, does he
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    not agree that, although the National Research Development Corporation deserves every credit for its initial recognition of the invention, it seems a little odd that the Board of Trade—especially the President of the Board of Trade—should have this special responsibility for the machine? If further sums of money are to be required, ought not the Ministry of Supply to come into it?
    Mr. Rodgers: The hon. Gentleman addressed a Question to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply only yesterday on this matter. We at the Board of Trade feel that we should now let the inventor, the Corporation and the special company they have formed get on with the job and see how well they do.
    Mr. Jay: Is this not another case where private enterprise seems to work best with capital supplied by the State?
    Mr. Rodgers: I think that it shows the admirable way in which the State can help private enterprise.

  NATIONAL FINANCE

    Inter-Parliamentary Union (Grant)
    Sir L. Plummerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what are his plans for increasing the Treasury grant to the United Kingdom Branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
    The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Derick Heathcoat Amory): I have no such plans.
    Sir L. PlummerRecently, the British branch of the I.P.U. sent delegates to the Warsaw Conference and, when the delegates were there, they were told that they would have their tourist fare refunded, not the full fare. Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the reason is that the I.P.U. is hard up? Why should the prestige of the House of Commons suffer in this way? Cannot the Treasury afford enough money to see that our delegates abroad are treated responsibly and reasonably?
    Mr. AmoryI have had no representations made to me by the British Branch of the I.P.U. on this subject.
    Mr. ShinwellIs the Chancellor aware that when the British delegation on behalf of the United Kingdom Branch of the I.P.U. went to Nice for the preliminary conference before Warsaw, the Russian delegation and nearly all the other delegations stayed at the very best hotels whereas the members of the British delegation had to put up with second or third rate places because the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not provide the money? Indeed, we were put personally to very great expense ourselves.
    Mr. Amory: I am very sorry to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has said, but again I would say that I have had no representations on the subject of the grant from the British Branch of the I.P.U.

    Distribution of Industry
    Mr. MacCollasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what applications have been received, and what financial assistance has been made available, under the Distribution of Industry (Industrial Finance) Act, 1958, in order to secure a larger and a more balanced demand for labour in Widnes.
    Mr. Amory: So far, only one firm and eligible application has been received for assistance under this Act for an undertaking in Widnes. This is at present under consideration.
    Mr. MacColl: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in spite of seasonal changes, adult unemployment has been increasing in Widnes and, on top of that, a factory has just been closed displacing 100 workers? Does he appreciate that it is urgently necessary that other industry should be brought in, and will he hasten his arrangements for finalising this proposal?
    Mr. Amory: My experience is that the Advisory Committee does consider these claims with the minimum delay. I should like to say that we are always ready to receive applications and will do everything to see that they are considered as carefully and as urgently as possible, but in many cases detailed investigations have to be made.

    Protective Clothing (Fishermen)
    Mr. G. Jegerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware of
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    the resentment felt by deep-sea fishermen at the Purchase Tax charged on their protective clothing; and what reply he sent to the request of the Transport and General Workers' Union that this tax be removed.
    Mr. Amory: The union was informed on 6th March that I would bear its representations in mind. But in framing my Budget I did not feel able to single out fishermen's clothing for exceptional exemption from the 5 per cent. rate of Purchase Tax.
    Mr. Jeger: Does the right hon. Gentleman sometimes feel ashamed when he thinks of the days when he was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and paid tribute to the bravery of our deep-sea fishermen, whereas he now exacts tribute from those same fishermen at the rate of 5 per cent. on their boots and oilskins? In view of the fact that the total amount he derives from this taxation must be very small from this small body of industrial workers, will he think again about it and abolish the 5 per cent. tax?
    Mr. Amory: No, I cannot say that I feel any shame when I think back to the days to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.

    Post-war Credits
    Mrs. Slaterasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will review the regulations for the payment of post-war credits to include those people who are permanently unemployable due to illness but who have not applied for National Assistance.
    Mr. Amory: I shall keep the hon. Lady's suggestion in mind when the time comes to consider a further release of post-war credits.
    Mrs. Slater: Does the Chancellor realise that there are very many people such as the paralysed and the arthritic, who suffer very long periods of sickness and, because of this, are unemployable? Because these people do not, if they can help it, wish to apply for National Assistance, are they not penalised because they may not draw their post-war credits, which would do them a very good turn at the present time?
    Mr. Amory: Yes, I entirely agree with what the hon. Lady has said, but she will remember that I explained that, in starting this new administrative venture, I felt it absolutely necessary, to start with at any rate, to confine ourselves to to certain readily and precisely defined categories. I said that when they had been dealt with I should then consider whether we could move on to other categories of people who might be suffering just as great hardship.
    Mr. Remnant: Does my right hon. Friend appreciate that there are personnel in the same category as those described in the Question who are debarred from drawing post-war credits purely because they were classified under National Insurance as self-employed as opposed to being fully employed? Will he bear them in mind?
    Mr. Amory: I am not sure that I understand how my hon. Friend's Question could be related to a disability to receive payment of post-war credits in this National Assistance category, but if he would care to get in touch with me I will certainly consider anything he has to say.

    Inland Revenue Staff
    Lieut.-Commander Maydonasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what are the reasons for the increase in Inland Revenue staff by 767 between 1st April, 1958, and 1st April, 1959.
    Mr. Amory: The reason was an increase in the work of local offices of H.M. Inspectors of Taxes due mainly to the increase in the number of taxpayers.
    Lieut.-Commander Maydon: Is this likely to be a permanent increase, or is it a figure which is liable to fluctuate from year to year?
    Mr. Amory: I think that the tendency is for the numbers to increase in accordance with the increasing prosperity in the country generally which we are at present experiencing.
    Mr. H. Wilson: But are we not always hearing propaganda from Conservative Central Office to the effect that the Government have taken millions upon millions out of tax? Will the Chancellor say how the numbers now paying Income Tax compare with the numbers in 1951?
    Mr. Amory: What the right hon. Gentleman should take note of is the fact that under this Government the total amount paid in taxation has been enormously reduced in contrast with the record of the Labour Administration.
    Mr. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that the total amount paid in taxation under this Government is running at between £1,500 million and £2,000 million more than in 1951? Will he answer my question? Does not his first answer conflict entirely with the claims of Tory propaganda that the Government are taking large numbers of people out of the taxation schedules?
    Mr. Amory: I leave Tory propaganda with confidence to the judgment of the electorate.

    Private Industry (Loans and Grants)
    Mr. Harold Daviesasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state the amount of public money given in loans, grants or subsidies to private industry each year since 1951.
    Mr. Amory: It is not possible to produce figures for the whole period without a disproportionate expenditure of time and labour. But the current year's Estimates provide that private industry (excluding agriculture) is to receive from the Exchequer financial assistance in all forms of about £20 million or well under 3 per cent. of what it pays annually to the Exchequer in the form of taxes. There is no reason to suppose that the percentage was much larger in the earlier years.
    Mr. Davies: Is the Chancellor aware that some of us are amazed that those figures are not available? The taxpayer has been paying over the years, and we ought to know what we are paying out. Will he not agree that there is a new phase in big business now when big business is finding that it cannot enter upon colossal undertakings and those concerned in big business seem to tramp about like Buddhist monks with their begging bowls, going regularly to the Treasury? We can have none of the profits, but we bear all the losses. Is not this in itself a case for public ownership?
    Mr. Amory: I think I shall have to spend the evening reading what the hon. Gentleman has said.
    Mr. Davies: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall give the Minister an opportunity of reading what I have to say on the Adjournment.

    Messrs. S. G. Brown, Ltd.
    Mr. Leeasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon what criteria Her Majesty's Government base decisions to sell firms such as Messrs. S. G. Brown, Limited, which are owned by Government Departments.
    Mr. Amory: There are very few such cases, but where a decision is called for, the Government take into account a wide range of circumstances, principally how the national interest might be affected, but also normal commercial considerations and the reasons for which the company was originally acquired.
    Mr. Lee: Will not the Chancellor agree that this company was taken over by the Government for £55,570? It now has assets worth £1,250,000, and it has produced one of the finest gyroscopes in the world. Does he not realise that it is a going proposition, making profits, and that the thousand men there, led by their shop stewards, have played a terrific part in bringing the company up from a derelict undertaking into one of the finest we have in the area? Why does he insist now that the results of public money and public enterprise, assisted by the trade unions, which have shown an outstanding success, should be handed back to private enterprise?
    Mr. Amory: The facts that the hon. Member has given do not justify the company, however successful, necessarily being retained in public ownership.
    Mr. Gresham Cooke: Should not the policy of Her Majesty's Government be to denationalise companies which, like this, were taken over in the war, since many people believe that such companies could make a greater contribution to the export trade if they were freed from Government control and nationalisation?
    Mr. Amory: I agree exactly with what my hon. Friend has said.
    Mr. Farey-Jones: On a point of order. As this factory is in the Division represented by the hon. Member for Watford,
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    may I stress the urgency and importance that the disappearance of such a fantastic group of highly trained technicians is a matter of major public interest?
    Mr. H. Wilson: Since it is clear that this firm has been worked up from a very small firm into a highly successful firm under public ownership, why does the Chancellor express agreement with his hon. Friend's suggestion? Will he say whether he feels that it is right that an asset of the State which is important to our exports and to State services and is highly profitable to the State should be handed over? Does he think that it would be better run by the take-over bid merchants than it has been run in the past few years?
    Mr. Amory: I certainly do not think that because a firm is expanding or well managed that justifies it remaining in public ownership.
    Mr. Gaitskell: What conceivable justification can the right hon. Gentleman offer for this decision? Why does he say that the firm should be sold back to private enterprise? Is he saying that when a firm becomes profitable under public enterprise the benefits must be handed over to private enterprise?
    Mr. Amory: No. What I am saying is that to justify a firm remaining in public ownership the onus of proof must be that it is required in the national interest and that the firm will prosper under public ownership but would not prosper under private enterprise. The right hon. Gentleman is putting the onus of proof the other way round.
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. John Dugdale.
    Mr. Farey-Jones: On a point of order. In view of the importance of this matter in my Division, I beg to give notice that I shall raise it on the Adjournment.
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. John Dugdale.
    Mr. Dugdale: Is the Chancellor aware that the reason for this firm being taken over was—[HON. MEMBERS: "Sit down."]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the House will keep order. Mr. Dugdale.
    Mr. Dugdale: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the two reasons for the firm being taken over—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: The House will not let me hear what is being said by making all this noise.
    Mr. Braine
    Mr. Speaker: Is the hon. Member for Essex, South-East rising to a point of order?
    Mr. Braine: Yes, Mr. Speaker. May I have your guidance? Is it not customary that when an hon. Member who has a particular interest in a certain matter says that he wishes to raise it on the Adjournment at an early opportunity that disposes of the matter?
    Mr. Speaker: It does not work as mechanically as that. During the time of my predecessor in the Chair I very well remember that a right hon. Gentleman gave notice to raise a certain matter on the Adjournment because his own side was being heckled rather badly. Mr. Speaker Clifton Brown made a statement in the House saying that he would not in that case accept such a notice. In this case I had actually called the right hon. Member for West Bromwich before the point of order was raised.
    Mr. Dugdale: Is the Chancellor aware that there were two reasons for this firm being taken over? First, if was run very inefficiently under private enterprise, and, secondly, in that industry there was a virtual monopoly of production of these instruments. Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether that monopoly will be continued? Is that one of the reasons for restoring it to private enterprise?
    Mr. Amory: In answer to the right hon. Gentleman, I am advised that the production capacity of this firm is no longer vital to the Admiralty, as it was in the war.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. It is clear that we cannot come to a conclusion on this matter today, judging by the interest shown on both sides of the House. In view of the interest shown on both sides of the House, this might be a proper subject for debate, but we cannot discuss
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    it at Question Time. It is now twenty-four minutes to four, and we have a very important debate in front of us.
    Mr. H. Wilson: In view of the desire of the House to have a debate, whether on the Adjournment or in some other way, will the Chancellor, in anticipation of the debate, publish a White Paper giving all the facts and figures of production, exports and profits and all the assets under both private and public enterprise, and his proposals for the future and the terms he expects to get under this deal?
    Mr. Amory: I do not think that would be an appropriate course. If and when a debate takes place, I shall be very glad to make available to the House the fullest information I can.
    Mr. Jay: Is the Chancellor—
    Mr. Farey-Jones: Further to the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine). This is a very important matter to my Division. May I know whether my suggestion to discuss the matter on the Adjournment is accepted?
    Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to apply for an Adjournment, he should table his request in the usual way and I will consider it with the others.
    Several Hon. Members
    Mr. Speaker: I must insist that we get on with the Business of the House. Mr. Hector Hughes.
    Mr. Beswick: Further to the point of order—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Hector Hughes.

DIVISION No. 133 (CORRECTION)
Mr. Hector Hughes: On a point of order. May I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to column 67 of yesterday's HANSARD, where I am recorded as having voted in Division No. 133. That is incorrect. I did not vote as stated.
Mr. Speaker: That correction will be made.

BILLS PRESENTED
  EXPORT GUARANTEES
  Bill to increase the amount of the liabilities which may be undertaken by the Board of Trade in respect of guarantees under sections one and two of the Export Guarantees Act, 1949, presented by Sir David Eccles; supported by Mr. Vaughan-Morgan and Mr. Erroll; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 123.]
  NATIONAL ASSISTANCE
  Bill to empower the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance to make orders increasing any of the amounts specified in paragraph 3 or 5 of the Second Schedule to the National Assistance Act, 1948, and making certain consequential provision, presented by Mr. Boyd-Carpenter; supported by Mr. R. A. Butler, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Iain Macleod, the Attorney-General, Miss Pitt, and Mr. Vane; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 122.]

HOLA DETENTION CAMP
3.38 p.m.
Sir Frank Soskice: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the circumstances in which eleven men in Hola Detention Camp met their deaths as a result of the use of unlawful violence and regrets the failure of Her Majesty's Government to take immediate steps to set up a public inquiry to ascertain where the responsibility should be placed.
The Government will not be in the least surprised that in this debate we seek to probe further the circumstances of the Hola massacres. They have, I believe, shocked and dismayed civilised opinion all over the world. The Opposition Motion and the Government Amendment raise the crisp issue of whether there is still matter for inquiry to ascertain where responsibility for this dreadful happening lies. By "responsibility" I do not mean simply the responsibility of the Camp Commandant, Sullivan, or Coutts, his assistant. They are, after all, almost the humblest agents in this catastrophe. They can be left to make what defence they can to the disciplinary charges that have been brought against them, and I say no more about them.
Nor am I concerned to criticise the decision of the Attorney-General of Kenya not to institute criminal proceedings. I do not say that had I been in his position, I would have reached necessarily the same conclusions that he reached, but I respect his decision as sincerely given and I recognise that it was a very difficult decision. What we are concerned with in this debate is the responsibility of the Kenya Administration and the attitude of the Secretary of State himself to what has occurred.
Fortunately, as to most of the facts, though not all, we do not have to make any conjecture. They have been precisely ascertained and stated in the remarkable and penetrating analysis of the mass of conflicting evidence made by Mr. Goudie, the Resident Magistrate, who conducted the inquest into the events of 3rd March.
Hola, a camp in the Northern Coast Province, so we learn from the depositions taken before the magistrate, contained, apart from the prison quarters for convicted prisoners, an open camp

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and a closed camp. In the open camp were the detainees who were prepared to co-operate with the authorities. In the closed camp were some 85 of the so-called hard core Mau Mau detainees. They were the irreconcilables, the men known to be inveterate in their hatred, apparently impossible to win over by any process of rehabilitation. Many had, no doubt, committed the most horrible crimes. It is right to point out that only some of them had been brought to trial on any charge. The rest were merely detained on suspicion.
In a previous debate, we were told by the Government spokesman that of the eleven who lost their lives, only four had been brought to trial on any charge. I say nothing in their defence except that, evil as they may have been, that was no reason whatever for clubbing them to death. The worse the example they may have set, the more careful should we be to avoid following it.
It was men of that type who were to be made to work. An irrigation scheme was under way on the Tana River and an irrigation trench was to be dug out at a spot something like one mile from the camp. The men were to be made to go to this place of work and there, by force if necessary, to be made to work. Precisely what happened on the way to the place of work and at the place of work was left somewhat uncertain by the conflicting evidence given before the magistrate.
An independent European witness and an independent African witness, both of whom the magistrate described as reliable, deposed to seeing warders raining down blows on the detainees while they sat on the ground and, apparently, were offering no resistance. Others, including the Camp Commandant himself, asserted that the detainees tried a break-away, that they set up organised resistance, that they raised the well-known Mau Mau howl, that they formed a human pyramid and that in a kind of frenzy they hurled themselves together and had to be separated.
So far as concerns the matters in issue in this debate, it does not matter which is the true version of those two. What does matter is what is left completely beyond doubt and that is that in a short time on that morning, the place was turned into a charnel house. Ten detainees were clubbed to death
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and an eleventh died later from his injuries. Twenty-two others were admitted to the camp hospital suffering from more or less severe injuries. The medical evidence puts beyond any doubt that the deaths were all caused by violence. In other words, not very far short of half the irreconcilables involved were in a short time killed or injured. One moment's reflection would have shown that this was exactly what was likely to happen as the result of an attempt by force to make these men work.
The depositions before the magistrate make it perfectly plain how the project to force them to work originated. The Camp Commandant, Mr. Sullivan, took up his duties at Hola Camp on 20th January, 1959. In the previous November, Mr. Lewis, Commissioner of Prisons in Kenya, had visited Hola and been unfavourably impressed by the laxity of discipline that he saw there and on his return to Nairobi he discussed the situation with the Minister for Defence and the Minister for African Affairs. Before Mr. Sullivan went to Hola, Mr. Lewis gave him a short verbal briefing, impressing upon him that discipline must be enforced and that the non-co-operative detainees must be put to work.
The next thing was that on 7th February, Mr. Cowan, Senior Superintendent of Prisons in Nairobi, was sent down to Hola to draw up with Mr. Sullivan a plan to get the non-co-operative detainees to the irrigation site and make them work. He gave Mr. Sullivan the outlines—I emphasise "the outlines"—not the details, of the plan. The magistrate found that his plan, as the magistrate put it, had defects, ambiguities and omissions. There was misunderstanding between Cowan and Sullivan as to some aspects of the plan, but Sullivan clearly understood from Mr. Cowan that in the event of a refusal to work, the detainees were to be manhandled to the site and made to work.
On returning to Nairobi, Cowan prepared a written report. It was dated 11th February, 1959, and he addressed it to Mr. Lewis, the Commissioner of Prisons. In it, he set out in detail the plan which, he maintained, he had given in outline to Sullivan. This has become almost famous—or, rather, I should say, notorious—as the Cowan Plan. This written plan, which is an annex to the Government White Paper entitled

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"Documents relating to the deaths of eleven Mau Mau detainees at Hola Camp in Kenya", contained a paragraph which I desire to read. It states:
"It is assumed that the party would obey this order"—
that is, the order to work—
"but should they refuse they would be manhandled to the site of work and forced to carry out the task."
The magistrate carefully considered what the meaning of that phrase was and how it would be understood. This is what he said about it:
"Any reasonable person would construe those words alone as a carte blanche to use whatever force might prove necessary to ensure the performance of the task whether the detainees affected proved merely reluctant or completely obdurate."
With this paragraph in it, the Cowan Plan was, according to Mr. Lewis, forwarded on a file to the Minister for Internal Security and Defence and it was in due course returned by the Minister having been approved by him.
On 17th February a signal was sent to Sullivan telling him to wait for further orders before taking action, and I infer—I may be mistaken—that the reason for that signal was that the authorities wanted to be quite sure that before Sullivan went ahead the Minister's approval had been obtained. On 25th February, presumably after the Minister's approval had been obtained, a further signal was sent to Sullivan, this time telling him to proceed. On 3rd March he did so. He had first briefed his warders that, in the event of the detainees creating trouble, batons might be used, blows being aimed at the legs of the detainees.
The magistrate says that it was proved before him that before Sullivan did so he asked for a copy of the Cowan Plan when it had been committed into writing. He also made another request; he asked for the assistance of a senior officer with power of summary punishment for the implementation of the plan. The learned magistrate points out that Sullivan never got either of these things and that both of his requests were completely ignored. Having no copy of the Cowan Plan, of which, as I have said, he had only been given the outline verbally, it is not surprising that, as the magistrate finds, Sullivan in some
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respects departed from the detail of the plan.
Apparently, Cowan had envisaged that the number of hard-core detainees involved would be 66. Actually the number was 85. Cowan intended that they should be taken to the irrigation trench in four batches, but, in fact, they were all marched there together. Cowan contemplated that they should be put to work which did not involve the use of tools, but, not surprisingly, no such work was available, and the House may think that digging a trench without tools is in any case a cumbersome process. Whether it would have made much difference if the plan had been carried out as envisaged is, I think, open to very much doubt. Possibly the death roll might have been somewhat lower.
But who is to blame for the fact that the detailed plan was departed from by Sullivan if not those in the Prison Administration in Nairobi, who knowing, as they must have known, that he had only been given a plan verbally in outline, ignored his request that he should be supplied with a written copy and given the assistance of a senior officer in the administration?
Quite apart from the muddle and misunderstanding, the fact remains that the Prison Administration in Nairobi prepared, and the Minister approved, a plan the cardinal feature of which was, as the magistrate described it, that carte blanche was given to use whatever force was necessary to make these men work. Let alone the manner of its execution, the plan as detailed in writing was, I say, lunatic.
It is not a case of being wise after the event. What on earth did they expect to happen? Here were embittered, desperate, hard-core detainees who obviously would disobey any orders to work. Cowan in his written plan, in the paragraph which I have quoted, had said that it was assumed that detainees would obey orders. The magistrate expressly rejects this assumption. He says, if I may quote his words:
"I find that the assumption that the order to work would be obeyed was completely unjustified in the circumstances operating at the time the plan was formulated in view of the large-scale previous refusals and since the plan itself was a plan to compel refusing detainees to work."
The camp personnel to be used to enforce obedience were Askari warders

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armed with what I believe was the regulation short baton, assisted, if necessary, by riot squad warders, as they were called, armed with shields and with longer batons. That they had had such training as, in the circumstances, was possible in discipline and self-restraint, I have no doubt. But it is relevant, nevertheless, to quote, again, if I may, in his own words, what the magistrate describes as the background to the incident of 3rd March. His words are:
"The Mau Mau detainees in the Hola Closed Camp … were the inner core of the hard core of Mau Man, hostile to, and contemptuous of, any form of authority, whose incorrigible attitude may be judged by the fact that they preferred to 'rot' in the Closed Camp rather than merely to ask to be almost automatically permitted to go to the Open Camp and work for money and be granted irrigated plots. I myself found them both at Hola—
which the learned magistrate visited—
"and in Court sullen, suspicious and quite obviously fanatical … These men were potentially dangerous in the highest degree and would certainly he ready to take immediate advantage of the slightest sign of weakness in camp staff and exploit it to the full. The warders and camp staff as a whole could hardly have had a more difficult, more unpleasant or more provoking task to perform than to look after these detainees."
Could anything more hazardous be conceived than to undertake by force to manhandle these men to the trench and there by force, to make them work? A moment's reflection would surely have shown that there was extreme danger that violence might break out—whether from the side of the warders or the detainees does not for this purpose matter. It did break out. It became impossible to control. The magistrate finds that the detainees offered resistance and made attempts at mass escape, and, on the other hand, that wholly excessive force was used by the warders. He says:
"I find myself driven to the irresistible conclusion that there was a very considerable amount of beating of detainees by warders with batons solely for the purpose of compelling them to work or punishing them for refusing to work … It would have been something like a miracle if detainees were not beaten if they refused to work or were difficult."
Later he says that there was beating to prevent an attempt to escape, personal attack by the detainees and outbreaks of violence on their part. He says that there was a still greater degree of beating to compel the detainees to work, or punish them for not working. He adds:
"I find the former type of beating was justified"—
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that is to say, beating in order to repress violence on the part of the detainees. Then, with regard to beating to make them work, he says:
"The latter was entirely unjustified and illegal."
What was almost certain to happen did happen with exasperated warders pitted against fanatical men, in the intense heat, with instructions to strike with their batons if these men caused trouble. A melee started. It developed into a shambles, and from a shambles into a massacre. It would indeed, as the magistrate says, have been little short of a miracle had it been otherwise.
Not only was this a hazardous plan. It was, so far at any rate as I can discover, wholly illegal from beginning to end. So far as I have been able to find, there is no provision in the Kenya code which authorises the use of force to compel detainees to work. Still less is there any provision in the Kenya code of legislation which authorises the use of armed force for this purpose.
The Crown, before the learned magistrate, was represented by counsel who presented to the magistrate an elaborate argument, but he was quite unable to point to any such provision authorising the use of force, let alone armed force, and it is clear from the magistrate's findings that counsel's argument carried no conviction at all to his mind.
The Kenya Prison Code lays down clearly what are the authorised sanctions and punishments—and, I add, the only authorised sanctions and punishments—which may be inflicted on detainees who refuse to obey orders to work, or indeed any other orders. They are the usual punishments known in most civilised systems of prison administration. They do not include the indiscriminate use of force to make them work, much less, again I repeat, the use of armed force.
The very same prison administration at Nairobi which hatched up the Cowan Plan had not so long before, on 10th September, 1957, sent out a directive entitled, "Directive for Use of Force in Detention Camps." It made what I have just said perfectly clear. Hon. Members may judge whether I am right or not, because the directive is fully set out as an annex to the Government's White Paper. It was designed for the Manyani

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Camp and other camps in which violent and mutinous detainees were held.
It begins by setting out in full Section 18 of the Prisons Ordinance in Kenya which makes it quite clear that weapons were never to be used against detainees except in three specified cases set out in the Ordinance, and then only subject to stringent restrictions, those three cases being attempted escape, combined outbreak by detainees, or the use of violence by detainees against prison officers. Only in those cases could weapons be used against them, and then, as I have said, subject to very stringent restrictions as to warning, and so on.
The directive then goes on to set out Chapter 11 of the Prisons Standing Orders, headed "Use of Weapons or Force against Prisoners," and that Order contains as its paragraph 5:
"Except in self-defence or in defence of another person a prison officer must never strike a prisoner, but in order to overcome violence or resistance to escort he may use force but no more than is absolutely necessary."
That is to say, never must he strike; and force must not be used except in the case of violence used by a prisoner or violent refusal to submit to escort. Only then can force be used, and then only the minimum that is necessary to secure compliance and to repress violence.
Further, the directive says:
"Officers in Charge of Detention Camps must appreciate that we are now dealing with the worst type of detainees."
It was a kind of vade mecum impressing on officers in charge of detention camps how and when to be firm with irreconcilable detainees. And yet, although that is its purpose and its nature, there is not one word in it to sanction the use of force, let alone armed force, to make detainees work. A copy of it was sent to the Minister of Defence. The very same prison administration which formulated and sent out the directive engendered the Cowan Plan. The Minister, who received a copy of the directive, approved the Cowan Plan, a plan, as the coroner found, giving carte blanche for the use of such force as was necessary to compel those fanatical men to work. The prison administration, having said what was illegal, themselves formulated a plan which transgressed their own ruling. The
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Minister who had had a copy of the directive approved a plan which conflicted with it.
I say this was an illegal plan. It was an unlawful plan to use indiscriminate and indeed armed force, force with the use of weapons, against detainees to compel them to go to the site of work and, when they got to the site of work, to go through the motions of doing work on the site. Batons were, of course, used, as they were bound to be used.
Did Cowan or the Minister think for a moment that they would not be used? Or did they give the matter no thought? Cowan himself obviously was fully aware of what was permitted. In his evidence before the magistrate he in terms said:
"In the event of persistent refusal to work we were entitled to order 12 strokes with a light"—
note the word "light"—
"cane for persistent refusal of an order."
He was perfectly right. That is the regulation punishment provided for by Section 88 of the Prison Code. Hon. Members may say that perhaps a light cane was not a sufficiently strong incentive to make irreconcilable Mau Mau detainees obey an order to work. I would reply to that that clubbing them to death is a much worse way still of trying to make them work.
Cowan was asked by the magistrate what he meant by the words in his plan which I have cited, the words
"forced to carry out the task."
I quoted them when I read out the paragraph, and this is what he said in reply:
"I meant that their arms would be worked—put through the motions for the task and compelled to carry out the task."
Those were his words. I can only say that I suppose he meant that seriously, but I am bound to say that I find it very difficult to believe. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, warders holding the arms and hands of fanatical detainees and compelling them hour after hour to go through the motion of scraping earth out of a trench—remember, no tools were to be used—with their bare hands, I suppose?
Sullivan briefed his warders, as I said, to the effect that batons could be used if the detainees caused "trouble", and the learned magistrate, in paragraph 12

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of his judgment, which is in the Government's White Paper, in terms finds:
"the orders given by Mr. Sullivan regarding the use of force …"
namely, the orders to which I have just referred—
"appear to have gone no further than the orders in the Plan itself that the detainees would if necessary 'be manhandled to the site and forced to carry out the task'."
Force, violent and excessive, was used to make these men work, and this was armed force and wholly unlawful.
Did not Cowan, Lewis and the Minister realise that there was a danger that this might happen? Did they really suppose that the warders would lay aside their batons and use the palms of their hands and give the detainees, I suppose, gentle affectionate prods?
It adds up to this—that eleven men were done to death as a result of a lawless and insane plan engendered in the Prison Department by Cowan and Lewis, approved by the Minister and hopelessly bungled in execution owing to their muddle and mismanagement. It is, as far as I can conceive, with these men that the blame for this tragedy really lies, far more than with Sullivan, or Coutts, who was Sullivan's assistant. But if so, it is just on these men, in our view, that the blame should be pinned. In our view, Ministers and high officials should not be allowed to go scot-free while their subordinates, the Camp Commandant and his assistant are left to undergo punishment.
I put it to the House that the Cowan Plan was not only thoroughly illegal. It was a disgraceful, ill-thought-out and hazardous enterprise, the hazard at stake being men's lives. It has brought great discredit on the Kenya prison authorities, the Kenya Government and British administration in general in overseas territories. It has left a slur which can be removed only by a thorough and searching examination to expose the negligence or the callousness or both of those higher-ups who conceived the plan and the Minister who approved it, and also, I would add, by the prompt removal of these people from any position of authority. It is this inquiry which we think the Secretary of State should himself have immediately undertaken of his own motion, without waiting to be goaded by the Opposition.
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So much for that aspect of the plan. But there are two, at least, other serious aspects of the matter under consideration. In the first place, immediately after the incident, three men, Mr. Campbell, the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons, Mr. Small, of the Ministry of Defence, and Mr. Garland, of the Ministry of African Affairs, went to Hola as a kind of preliminary commission of inquiry. On the afternoon of 4th March, that is to say, the day after the catastrophe, a report was drafted. That report was signed by Campbell. Among other statements in it appears a statement, which I will quote from the report which is not an annex to the Government White Paper but Exhibit "S" to the depositions taken before the learned magistrate. This is the sentence in the report under Mr. Campbell's signature:
"Because of the gap of three hours between the last scuffle"
I ask hon. Members to note the word "scuffle"—
"and the first death, it was the opinion of all with whom we spoke that the compelling exercise was in no way connected with the cause of death."
I think it is right to say, and I believe and hope that I do not misrepresent the learned magistrate's language, that he was at the very least, to put it at the very lowest, extremely suspicious about Mr. Campbell's personal integrity in including that statement in the report. As I understand the learned magistrate's language, he finds it difficult to believe that Mr. Campbell, when making that statement, was being honest.
Of another part of the report, the magistrate says in terms, and this language, after all, is strong:
"The report deliberately"—
note the word "deliberately"—
"minimised what at the least Mr. Campbell knew to have been baton incidents into 'scuffles' and 'minor scuffles'"
This is very serious indeed when said of the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons in Nairobi.
I note that in the disciplinary charges framed—I do not know, but rather assume by the prison administration in Nairobi—against Sullivan and Coutts the charge is made, against each, that they gave on 4th March misleading information to Campbell, when, as I have said, he went to Hola, about what had happened. I would point out, as I have already said,

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that it is against Campbell himself, the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons, that the magistrate's suspicions are directed. I would say that if what the magistrate seems to suspect is well-founded, Campbell should be the accused, not the accuser.
The second serious matter is this. Apparently, at some time during that morning of 3rd March, a water cart appeared on the scene at Hola and the detainees and others drank water from it. In the late afternoon of 4th March, the next day, a meeting of Ministers was held at Government House in Nairobi at which Campbell, Small and Garland, to whom I have previously referred, were all present. As the outcome of that meeting there was a Press hand-out, which appeared in the papers on the following day, which contained this passage:
"The deaths occurred after they had drunk water from a water cart which was used by all members of the working party and by their guards."
I maintain that this is a grossly misleading announcement. It clearly implies, and I apprehend was everywhere understood to mean—[HON. MEMBERS: "Intended."]—I use the word "implies"; as to intention, I will quote a bit more from the magistrate's findings. It clearly implies, and I think everywhere was understood to mean, that it was the drinking of the water which caused the deaths.
Before the magistrate, Campbell, when giving his evidence, actually tried to make something of the point that the handout used the word "after" instead of "because"; that is to say, it said
"… after they had drunk water …"
instead of "because they had drunk water." The magistrate, and I think everybody would have no hesitation whatever in agreeing with him, dismissed this as merely playing with words and said that the inference was perfectly obvious.
The magistrate, for reasons which he sets out in his judgment, thought that it was relevant and necessary to consider whether this hand-out was "deliberately misleading". Having considered it, he says that on the evidence he was
"unable to make a specific finding …"
as to the circumstances in which the hand-out was published. In
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other words, as I understand his language, he was leaving it "not proven" either way whether or not this was a purposely misleading announcement. Surely it is a most serious situation that there should be any uncertainty at all whether a hand-out after a meeting of Ministers attended by officials may have been deliberately misleading.
The complacency and indifference of the Secretary of State is really staggering about this. Doubts are left in the mind of the magistrate as to whether there may have been dishonest covering up—at least so I read his judgment—by highly-placed officials and by Ministers. Are we to understand that nothing is to be done to resolve these doubts? Is not the Secretary of State very culpable himself in not having taken, and apparently not intending to take, any step to probe this uncertainty, if for no other purpose than to do justice to those whose reputations may be thought to be impugned, and, if I may say so, justice also to the British administration whom they represent?
For a long time now, we on this side of the House have felt gravely disturbed as to what is going on, and has been going on, in the detention camps in Kenya. We have just had the Jacks Report on Manyani which, although it is true it discounts the allegations contained in an affidavit made by one, Shuter, nevertheless recognises that cases of brutality have occurred.
On 24th February this year, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) moved in this House for an inquiry into the administration of the detention camps in Kenya. The Under-Secretary, in replying to that debate, chided my right hon. Friend for moving what was, in effect, a Motion of censure on the policy of the Kenya Government. I wonder whether he would have chided my right hon. Friend if he had known what we now know as having been revealed in the magistrates' court. There is some irony in the fact that that debate took place on the day before the prison administration in Nairobi sent the signal to Sullivan telling him to put the Cowan Plan into operation.
This plan has reawakened and intensified all our suspicions. What is the attitude of mind behind all this on the

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part of the prison administration in Nairobi which can think up, and on the part of the Minister can approve, such a plan, the obviously predictable consequences of which would be that many men would be sent to their deaths? Were its risks taken into account? How carefully was it considered; or is the explanation that it was not considered at all? Was it callousness or ineptitude, or was it both? Why were not at least precautions taken to make completely sure that it was fully understood, and carried out exactly as intended? Why were Sullivan's requests for assistance and for a written copy of the plan ignored? Was there a deliberate attempt to play the affair down, to cover it up, and to mislead the public into thinking that the drinking of water was the cause of the deaths? If so, on whose part was it? We think that the Secretary of State should have caused these matters to be publicly investigated. The names of Cowan, Lewis, the Minister of Defence, and Campbell, figure prominently and frequently in the magistrate's report, often in a very unfavourable light. I say again that a public inquiry is due in fairness to those men; it is even more due to outraged world opinion.
I would ask the Secretary of State to give a direct answer to certain questions. Does he now condemn the Cowan Plan or does he support it? Does he agree that, whether hazardous or not, it was in any case entirely unlawful? I would ask him this: did he or his Department have any advance notice that it was intended to be put into operation? This was not merely a routine incident in the administration of this detention camp; it was a major operation. In the Cowan Plan it is referred to as a "trial of strength".
Did the Secretary of State know of it before it was carried into effect? If the answer to that question is, Yes, I would wish to know what steps, if any, did the Secretary of State or his Department take to stop this plan being implemented? If the answer is, No, and the fact is that the first that the Secretary of State heard of it was after the massacre took place, did he immediately make it clear to the Kenya Government and to the Minister of Defence, in particular, that he utterly
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repudiated it, condemned it, and condemned them? Does the Secretary of State agree now that the Minister who approved it, in particular, and all those who were parties to its formulation should not be allowed to retain any office of responsibility? In a matter of this gravity we should see, and we are entitled to see, the communications which passed on this matter between the Secretary of State and the Kenya Government.
I must say to the Secretary of State that his own credit is involved in this matter. By their Amendment to the Opposition Motion, he and his colleagues have made it clear that they decline any such inquiry as we have asked for. Instead, there are to be disciplinary proceedings against Sullivan and Coutts and an inquiry into the future—and I emphasise the word "future"—administration of the remaining detention camps. Two scapegoats are to be offered up as a sacrifice. I suppose that, in due course, we shall be served up with a catalogue of pious intentions for the future.
In between the area of the disciplinary proceedings and the inquiry which is to be conducted by the Government of Kenya, there is an area of investigation which is apparently to be sealed off by a hedge of impenetrability. It is just in that area that we think an investigation as to ultimate responsibility should take place. In it stand Ministers of the Kenya Government, their advisers, and the prison administration. It is from that investigation and what it would reveal that the Secretary of State apparently shrinks.
I would remind the Secretary of State that, holding the high office that he does, he is responsible for the good name of British administration in the Colonies and that the events at Hola have done more than any other single happening to injure that good name. It is a disaster which has taken place in a province of government for which he is under a direct and personal responsibility. He has no right whatsoever to shelter those persons who brought about that disaster. If there is a suspicion that a boy with a white skin has been cuffed by a police officer, we hold a full-scale inquiry. We should do no less when eleven men with

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black skins are clubbed to death in the custody of the Kenya Government.
We have asked for an investigation finally and accurately to ascertain and attribute the blame for this happening to those on whom it should rest in the Kenya Administration. By his refusal the Secretary of State has made it clear that he has no conception of the real gravity of what has taken place. The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to realise that it has violently distorted and wrenched the fabric of confidence and good will which it is essential to build up if the emergent peoples of Africa are to be permanently won over to concepts of multi-racial nationhood.
It has made immeasurably more difficult the task of conciliating African opinion to the belief that the black and white races must live and work together instead of apart. Besides, I say this: wherever we sit in this House, whatever our political opinions and beliefs may be, this is utterly abhorrent to the conscience of each and every one of us. It is abhorrent that by the negligence, or worse, of officers in a British or, indeed, any administration, these monstrous events should have been allowed to take place.
To seek to consign it to oblivion by a show of disciplinary proceedings against almost the humblest, and in many senses the least blameworthy, of those in the hierarchy, is, I say, dis-honourable and insulting to civilised opinion. The Secretary of State has, I think, by his attitude shown that, as many have long believed, he has not the stature necessary to enable him to face the challenge of a changing—I really mean this seriously if the right hon. Gentleman will give me his attention—and an evolving Africa. If Ministerial responsibility means anything, the right hon. Gentleman has very much indeed for which to answer.
This tragedy has happened in a department of Government with which the right hon. Gentleman has been entrusted. It should never have happened at all. Now that it has happened, the steps it is apparently proposed to take are pitifully and contemptibly inadequate. I invite the House, by voting for this Motion, to censure the Secretary of State and his
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colleagues who are collectively responsible with him.
4.38 p.m.
The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
"deeply regrets the recent death of eleven men in Hola Detention Camp and fully supports Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Kenya in the steps both remedial and disciplinary that are being take to prevent a recurrence of such a tragic event".
I share the depth of feeling which hon. Members on both sides of the House feel for the tragic and shocking deaths of eleven detainees at Hola. It is a terrible thing to have happened under British rule. I can understand also the feelings of frustration that followed from the fact that it has not been possible to bring a criminal charge against anyone concerned. This is a matter of the utmost gravity, and it is particularly tragic because it has come at a time when the political atmosphere in the Colony is decidedly brighter. However, just as the deaths of the eleven Mau Mau men cannot be isolated from the circumstances in which they died, so those circumstances, in turn, must be seen against a background of the Mau Mau problem, and in particular against the Kenya Government's rehabilitation policy to deal with that problem. It is not enough just to give a bare recital of the facts, for we are dealing with a subject of magnitude and complexity, and one of which few people in this country have any real knowledge and experience. To understand Kenya's rehabilitation policy it is necessary also to understand the problem which it was designed to solve. I must, therefore, ask the House to listen to me for quite a long time.
The roots of this rehabilitation policy go right back to the secret spread and growth of Mau Mau, which presented a security problem for some years before the formal declaration of the emergency. In fact, it was in early 1950, before this Government took office, that the Kikuyu secret society first came to prominent notice.
Mau Mau is a conspiracy based on the total perversion of the human spirit by means of the power of the oath and by witchcraft and intimidation, all of which combined to place its followers mentally almost in another world, in which the

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pursuit of their twisted aims was the only important thing. To achieve this end, extensive organisations were set up of a type I think hitherto unknown. Every location in Nairobi, for instance, for long the Mau Mau seed bed, had its Mau Mau committee and its "court" which dealt with the vilest forms of murder and of torture. Armed gangsters, the counterpart to the forest terrorists, were the instruments of what passed as Mau Mau justice, and so well did they do their work that the African population of all tribes was reduced to abject terror. There has been horrifying evidence of the workings of the Mau Mau court, and the bodies of men and women killed by the terrorists could be found practically every day. Evidence to convict their murderers, some of whom were known to the police, was unobtainable.
In the early days of the emergency courageous Africans came forward to give evidence against Mau Mau in open court. Many of them were murdered as a result. Often witnesses giving evidence when a trial was adjourned could not be found the following morning. Their bodies would be discovered months later in improvised graves or floating in the rivers. We do not know the extent of these murders, but when the turn of the tide of Kikuyu opinion came, many hundreds of bodies were dug up, the vast majority being Kikuyu who had tried to do their duty as good citizens.
I do not think I need dwell on the bestiality of Mau Mau. Everyone knows, or should know, of the Lari massacre and everyone is acquainted with the horrible ritual of the graduated oathing ceremonies and activities. Originally the oaths differed little from the normal Kikuyu oath used in tribal ceremonies, but as the terrorists grew more brutalised, their moral degradation was reflected in the characteristics of the Mau Mau oath. This developed sexual and sadistic aberrations which, in the higher form of the oath, included murder and cannibalism. All this ritual played its part in building up the Mau Mau mind, and the activities to which they were driving themselves tied them more and more to it.
All this came very much to light in the Report of the Parliamentary Delegation to Kenya in July, 1954, led by
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the late Walter Elliott and by the right hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Bottomley), with its confidential annexe. The Report dealt particularly with the demoralising effect of these frightful oaths and it recommended that an inquiry into the psychology of Mau Mau should be undertaken. As a result, the Carothers inquiry took place.
What is clear from both these Reports is that the taking of the oaths had such a tremendous effect on the Kikuyu mind as to turn quite intelligent young Africans into entirely different human beings, into sub-human creatures, without hope and with death as their only deliverance. Yet, in the great majority of cases, these people were not irrevocably lost to decent society. They had a way back through voluntary confession, the only effective way by which Mau Mau adherents could cast off the power of the oath, and through the process of rehabilitation. These mutational phenomena defy rational explanation, but the release of 78,000 former Mau Mau detainees is a fact, and some of these men have voluntarily devoted themselves to the task of assisting in the capture and rehabilitation of their former fellows with the same single-mindedness which characterised their former gangster activities.
I think it necessary to recite these facts, and I am not doing so in order to cause emotional feeling against the intractable detainees at Hola. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Most certainly not. There is, however, a tendency now to forget just how vast and difficult was the problem posed by the huge numbers of indoctrinated Mau Mau. This forgetfulness is largely because the rehabilitation policy has been so singularly successful.
The 1954 Report made it clear that decisive action was needed to deal with the grave situation in Nairobi where terrorism was rampant and where there was, in fact, dual rule by Government and by Mau Mau. It came on 24th April, 1954, when "Operation Anvil" was launched, as hon. Members will remember, against the terrorist organisation. By the end of the operation some 35,000 members of the Kikuyu, the Embu and the Meru tribes had had to be detained and sent to specially prepared camps.

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The operation undoubtedly largely achieved its purpose of disrupting the Mau Mau organisation, and with the removal of this focus of infection there was accelerated progress in the Reserves in building up resistance to Mau Mau and in the fight against militant Mau Mau. Their vast numbers, however, and the fact that they ranged in graduation from the most fanatical to the least infected meant that the Kenya Government had to consider urgently how to deal with these people inside the camps. "Operation Anvil" was undoubtedly the turning point in the struggle against Mau Mau, but though it dealt with the threat in Nairobi it transferred the danger to the camps.
At the beginning of 1954, therefore, while they were planning "Operation Anvil," the Kenya authorities were faced with the double problem set by Mau Mau—first, how deep it had gone, and, secondly, how widely it had spread. It was clearly going to be necessary to hold behind bars thousands of Mau Mau sympathisers, and among them would be many people over whose minds the doctrines of the society had obtained a complete hold. How would the Government of Kenya, how could they, deal with a problem of this kind?
There was essentially one main choice before them. As their overriding principle of policy they might have adopted the slogan of safety first. They could have decided that, come what may, no risks of any kind should be taken, that all efforts should be directed to seeing that there was no chance whatever of improper coercion and no cause for complaint, and that on no occasion and in no way should the Government attempt to impose their will on Mau Mau and challenge their spiritual supremacy in the camps. The efforts of the Government of Kenya would then have been confined solely to the minimum needed to restrain the personal liberty of the detainees. In that way we should probably have avoided any irregular incidents.
Nevertheless, to adopt such a policy, in my view and the view of my colleagues, would have been a disaster. It would have been an abdication of our duty to do all that was humanly possible to draw these men back into normal life. It would also have had even more serious consequences. To leave the power of
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Mau Mau unbroken and unchallenged in the camps could have led only to its deeper and wider spread among those men and women inside who were less deeply infected.
As hon. Members who have followed this know, the ringleaders were determined to use their time in detention or prison to reinforce and to deepen their hold on the others and to continue their indoctrination. Ultimately, therefore, a policy of this kind would have been shortsighted even in relation to the needs of security in the camps themselves. If we had allowed this to happen, tens of thousands of detainees would have provided an ever-increasing potential threat. Such a policy would have meant that today, five years later, we might have been faced with as many as 20,000 or 30,000 completely incorrigible detainees on our hands and with no prospect whatever of being able to release them in safety.
The Kenya Government, therefore, with our full approval and backing throughout, rightly chose the second policy—and this is the answer to the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice), because it was a policy which was fully recognised as carrying certain definite risks. They decided to embark on a positive programme of rehabilitation in co-operation with the churches and other voluntary helpers. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I think that if some hon. Members do not want to hear the whole story, most hon. Members do, and most people outside want to hear it, too.
Mr. A. G. Bottomley Mr. A. G. Bottomley (Rochester and Chatham) rose—
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I cannot give way at this stage. I am ready to answer questions, but I must develop this argument, which is an essential part of the background to the problem which we are considering.
The Kenya authorities, with our full support, decided to embark on a positive programme of rehabilitation, in co-operation with the churches and other voluntary helpers. Their top priority was that every detainee should be subjected to special efforts of rehabilitation designed to fit him for release and freedom as rapidly as possible.
This meant that the authorities had to launch a spiritual and psychological

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crusade—this is an absolutely inescapable part of the developing story of rehabilitation—challenging the authority of Mau Mau in the camps. Such a challenge was bound on occasions to provoke on the part of fanatics attempts at resistance which might sometimes lead to actual physical violence. It also involved the danger that incidents would occur as a result of misjudgment by the authorities of the depth of brutality and the savage nature of the detainees. It also involved the danger that there might be a departure by individual officers and men from the strict policy laid down by the Government for successful rehabilitation. We faced up to that danger and that problem, too.
Later I will show the steps which have been taken, with immense care, to follow up any charges of this kind of offence. This policy involved all these dangers. All the same, there is not the slightest doubt that we were absolutely right to follow this course, despite the dangers, and, as I hope to prove in a minute or two, in respect of the vast number of people released our policy has been justified by its results.
Right from the very start when plans for rehabilitation were first drawn up in January, 1954, it was foreseen that constructive work would be an essential part of the cleansing process. It was already clear that the atmosphere was noticeably better at camps where work was properly organised than in those places where work could not be so easily provided. At the beginning, however, the authorities concentrated all their energies on sorting out detainees by the degree to which they were attached to Mau Mau, segregating them, and encouraging those less affected, by confession and other well-known steps, to move towards freedom.
The first stage took a considerable time and was complicated by the fact that after "Operation Anvil" very many further detentions had to be made from Kikuyu repatriated from the Rift Valley farms and also from Tanganyika and Uganda. But in September, 1955, when the sorting out was more or less complete and the second stage of concentrating on the easier detainees was under way, there were still 48,000 detainees and about 15,000 Mau Mau convicts—63,000 altogether—although a further 15,000 had been released, mostly in that year.
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As rehabilitation became established and the less infected Mau Mau moved to release, those who rejected rehabilitation and remained implacably recalcitrant collected at the other end of the process. Then came the second phase It opened with the construction of several special detention camps in which rehabilitation remained continually on offer to the recalcitrant. They were also required to do such work as the officer in charge of each camp was satisfied would assist in bringing the emergency to an end. Experience has shown, time after time, that unless hard core detainees can be got to start working, their rehabilitation is impossible. Once they have started working, there is a psychological break-through and astonishing results are then achieved.
Mr. Sydney Silverman: Who told the right hon Gentleman that? Stalin?
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: A staff with five years' experience of high responsibility and with a sense of pride in their achievements.
Therefore, to start working was the first essential, but other things also had to be done. The men were still grouped together in different camps and there seemed little chance that they would ever be fit again to re-enter society as free men. I remember on the various visits I made to Kenya and in the many discussions with the Governor and other devoted officials trying to accustom myself to face the possibility that thousands of people might have to be detained for the rest of their lives because they would be unacceptable to their fellow citizens back in Kikuyuland. There then followed a period when we had the riot in Manyani and the troubles at Mageta Island and at Saiyusi which will be remembered by hon. Members who have followed these matters closely.
As I said, the number of detainees and Mau Mau convicts at the start of this period was 63,000. By the end of 1956 the number had been reduced to something over 30,000 detainees and 7,780 convicts. In other words, in this second phase a further 25,000 people had been released. At this point it seemed certain that the remaining 13,000 men and women who were classed as

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"Z", that is, who were not responding to rehabilitation, would have to be held indefinitely. Previous methods had made no progress with them.
It was at this stage that a new technique—dilution—seemed to offer a way forward. Under this method the policy of using Kikuyu warders and loyalist staff to work on the detainees was started, and the number of co-operating detainees working alongside them was increased. Small batches of recalcitrants were moved to camps mainly in the Mwea area, subjected to vigorous discipline, required instantly to obey orders and mixed with co-operating detainees in a proportion of about one to seven. I think I ought to explain a little more precisely the application of this new technique in what came to be known as "filter camps" through which detainees were passed before they reached camps in their home districts.
The procedure began at the very first moment when an intake of hard core detainees arrived in the camps. At that point the aim was to throw them psychologically off balance and dissociate them in every possible way from previous camps and the atmosphere there; to secure immediate compliance with camp discipline and to mix them from the start with detainees who were already co-operating. These Kikuyu detainees themselves were then best able to persuade the new arrivals to see the light and to adapt themselves to the new atmosphere by accepting rehabilitation.
To achieve the minimum psychological effect, the detainees on arrival were ordered at once to remove all physical symbols of their Mau Mau past, such as beards and amulets, and to change their clothes. It was essential that instant discipline should be preserved and to secure this involved the use of such force as was necessary, but no more, for this purpose. Directives were given making clear that the detainees were not to be beaten. All those who were concerned were fully aware of these directives. This dilution procedure was followed with those who had been detained at Manyani, Mageta and Saiyusi.
It was clear that the greatest challenge to the Mau Mau mind must come right at the beginning, when the recalcitrants first arrived, and it was easier then to
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secure control over them and reject at once those who remained mutinous. The system depended on diluting the recalcitrants with co-operative detainees and working them in small batches under adequate European supervision. The opening of this third phase, the dilution policy—this is another answer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman—brought new dangers. [HON. MEMBERS: "We have not had an answer yet."] Hon. Members will hear plenty later on. What I am saying is for serious people who are following this seriously, and I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks this is an important matter.
The beginning of this third phase brought new dangers. The policy of making every attempt to convert Mau Mau was being applied with a new urgency and thoroughness. At the same time the detainees were far more intractable than those who had previously passed through the camps. Then the use of Kikuyu warders and especially of other Kikuyu detainees, who might themselves have been deeply involved in the brutality of Mau Mau, meant a special risk. As a result it was more than ever essential to have the closest European supervision.
This extra difficult nature of the detainees was soon demonstrated by several very serious incidents which occurred particularly at the beginning of the new technique. In a number of these instances detainees used violence as when the Commandant of the Athi River Camp was stabbed in a riot caused by recalcitrants about to go to the Mwea Camp, or at Manyani when, as hon. Members will remember, two warders were killed.
Where, as at Athi River, or Gathigiriri or at Aguthi, there were grounds for thinking that warders or others had used illegal force, the Attorney-General of Kenya did not hesitate to prosecute—as at Athi River, where officers were tried for unlawfully caning detainees to make them work. These officers were acquitted on the grounds that the force used was necessary to quell the disturbance and was not to make them work. Of these incidents, it was clear that in nearly every case the trouble arose from lack of adequate European supervision of Africans, that no one breach was in any way sanctioned by the authority of the Kenya Government; and that they arose partly from the risk of using Kikuyu

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upon Kikuyu detainees and from the nature and general recalcitrance of these detainees.
I have the feeling that the very startling success of this policy and the technique used has itself obscured just how great were these risks. I am sure that they were apparent to those right hon. and hon. Members who visited Mwea and other camps at this period. A number of visits were paid. In 1954 the Parliamentary Delegation had reported, among other things, that, overcrowding and lack of staff apart, the Prisons Department had discharged its duties well, that the treatment of the prisoners was good, and that in its rehabilitation centres and camps highly constructive work was being attempted.
Then in 1956 Mr. Heaton, an experienced prisons officer and a member of my advisory committee on the treatment of offenders, visited prisons and detention camps in Kenya and advised on matters connected with their administration, at the invitation of the Kenya Government. As hon. Members who have followed this matter for years will recall, his report was published, and it showed that although they were having to deal with a crushing problem the morale and discipline of the prison staff were good. The inmates were well fed, well clothed and well housed. He was particularly impressed by the absence of any form of rough handling of the inmates by the staff, despite the fact that many of the Kikuyu staff had suffered grievously at the hands of Mau Mau.
Early in 1957 a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation visited Kenya and its report included the following words:
"From our own careful observations and inquiries we are satisfied that the Government of Kenya and its officers have done, and are still doing, everything possible to make malpractices impossible, and where they occur to detect them and bring the offender to justice. It would be ungenerous and unrealistic not to recognise this and to say that in both the Administration and the fields of law and order Kenya is fortunate in having the services of men of the highest integrity and good will."
Later in 1957 the Kenya Government welcomed a visit on behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In accordance with normal practice its report was not published, but it made
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public the following expression of its views:
"We think it our duty to state our considered opinion that all has been and is being done to respect the international principles accepted in the custody of detainees and convicts within the rules embodied in the Emergency Regulations."
From time to time—[HON. MEMBERS: "What about Hola Camp?"]—many charges have been made in this House which I have always answered. Whether charges have been made in this House or outside—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I must ask hon. Members to be patient a little longer. Whether charges have been made in this House or outside about the administration of the prisons or detention camps, the Kenya Government and I have arranged for the most meticulous examination of them. That was true in the case of Miss Fletcher and of Mr. Shuter, and I am content to rely on what must be the reaction of fair-minded people to the result of these inquiries. The same care is being taken with other charges without regard to the quality of people who may be making them.
Mr. James Callaghan: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way to me. As he is giving us a history of the last four years, is he also, for the first time, going to disclose to us the reason for Colonel Young's resignation, when he was loaned by the City of London to become Commissioner of Police out there, and also the reason for the resignation of other senior police officers?
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The whole history of Colonel Young's resignation was gone into a number of times in this House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—and I made many statements about it. I am concerned now with charges of the brutal treatment of detainees, and I have been asked to answer those charges which have been made to me.
Mr. Callaghan Mr. Callaghan rose—
Hon. Members: Sit down.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): Order. If the right hon. Gentleman does not give way, hon. Members must resume their seats.
Mr. Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am obliged to the right

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hon. Gentleman for giving way, but he has shown rank discourtesy. I tried to intervene when my name was mentioned before and the right hon. Gentleman refused to give way, but when my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) rose, the Secretary of State immediately gave way. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Parliamentary Delegation's Report and the views of Colonel Young were identical, and that if he mentions the Parliamentary Delegation's Report he ought at the same time to mention Colonel Young's resignation?
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If it is indeed true, the tribute I have just read from the Parliamentary Delegation to the administration of prisons in Kenya would be endorsed by Colonel Young.
Mr. Callaghan: Publish the report. The right hon. Gentleman dare not.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: As I have said, the same care has been taken over the other charges I mentioned made by Miss Fletcher and Mr. Shuter without regard to the quality of the sources from which they come. The results of the rehabilitation have been spectacular. At the beginning of the third phase we had 13,000 people who seemed to have no chance of redemption. Now that number has been reduced to about 1,000 and 98 per cent. of all those who have passed through detention and imprisonment as a result of Mau Mau, have been able to regain their freedom.
This third phase alone has brought the release of nearly 37,000, nearly all from the Mwea camps. With a great sense of responsibility over the last five years, these figures seemed to me at any time in the first four of those five years impossible to achieve. The techniques of the policy have been evolved and adapted time after time to meet the needs of a new and worse class of fanatic, at the expense of much trial and error and devoted efforts of the officers concerned—dedicated men and women—and by their helpers from the churches and other voluntary bodies. What else could we have done in the circumstances than what we did? I believe reasonable people will feel that on the facts the policy was right and that the techniques evolved were fully justified.
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It now remains for me to explain how these techniques and this policy were to be applied at Hola Camp, and to that I now turn. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am on the whole grateful to the House for having listened to this long but essential preliminary and I believe that people outside who are very anxious for our good name and want also to know of the record of achievement, will be glad to hear the story I have told. The Hola detention area on the Tana River is divided into three parts—the settlement, the open camp and the closed camp. As to the first, the settlement, an irrigation settlement is being created so that those people whose liberty would present an unacceptable menace to their own people might yet enjoy the greatest possible freedom together with their families. So far 800 acres have been brought under cultivation and 189 families are settled in their own houses on plots which by next year will be held on lease. Those families include detainees who have progressed nearly far enough in rehabilitation to return to their own districts and others whom their own people have rejected, at any rate for the time being. More than a third of the sixty or more families in the settlement at Hola who are due to move towards release this summer have, in fact, asked to stay on at Hola on a voluntary basis.
That is the first of the three parts of the Hola scheme and, as time goes on, it will be the most important. The second part is the so-called open camp, which is really another form of village. The 411 people there will steadily move, first towards the irrigated plots and then, pray God, to release. For the most part, these men have come from the closed camp which is the third part of the scheme. Before they can leave that camp and go to the open village they must show themselves ready in some degree to co-operate with the authorities, for instance by being prepared to talk with them and to do work. They also have to give certain limited undertakings. The authorities are always ready to see the closed camp detainees who volunteer to go to the village, as five did recently during the hunger strike.
Although Hola has been painted by some people as a kind of Belsen I

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would refer hon. Members to what the Observer said a few weeks ago:
"Hola is not just another barbed wire concentration camp crowded with rebellious prisoners. For 590 men, many of whom fought for years with Mau Mau in the forest, it is a prison without bars. And there is nothing to prevent 133 who are confined within the barbed wire of the 70-yard square 'closed camp' from attaining the same measure of freedom overnight."
In February of this year there were 208 detainees.
Mrs. Barbara Castle Mrs. Barbara Castle (Blackburn) rose—
Hon. Members: Give way.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: In February of this year there were 208 detainees in the closed camp. About half of those were working and segregated in one compound. In a second compound were the regaining 98. Thirty-two of these men were certified to be unfit to work and the remaining 66, who had always been thought Likely to give trouble, had refused to work. Discipline had deteriorated and there was a strong risk that these recalcitrants would reinfect others and put back their chances of regaining freedom. A contingent of detainees was due to arrive from Takwa. They had never worked, except for their own personal requirement, so the number of recalcitrants who refused to work would rapidly increase unless something were done. Those in the closed camp at Hola were hard core men, some of them certainly with records of violence of a most repellent kind. This does not in the slightest degree extenuate what afterwards happened, but it shows the dangers which had to be expected when the Takwa detainees arrived.
This naturally caused great anxiety to the Commissioner of Prisons. This was the picture. The Government were approaching the final phase in their massive scheme of rehabilitation. Already they had restored to society tens of thousands of people who had in varying degrees presented a threat to that society. In so doing, they had far exceeded their own earlier expectations, but they were now coming up against the most difficult part of their task.
The Governor of Kenya and I on behalf of Her Majesty's Government throughout had been guided by two principles. The first was that irreconcil-
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ables cannot be allowed to return to Kikuyuland, and, secondly, that no one should be assumed to be for all time irreconcilable. We might at this point have said, "We have reached the most difficult of the lot. We cannot do any more. They are irreconcilable. Let them stay in detention". What a temptation, to wash one's hands of it and to assume that one could not do the impossible and to leave these people to rot away in their own recalcitrance. But that had never been the policy of the Government of Kenya, nor of Her Majesty's Government, and it is not so now.
Apart from leaving these men in perhaps perpetual detention, it was clear that if nothing was done the situation would worsen with the arrivals from Takwa and would put at risk those detainees in the open camp who had begun to move along the road to rehabilitation. This was because the Takwa men had never done any work except camp chores since they were in detention and after their arrival the task of getting the Hola men to work would become much more difficult.
There were thus at Hola certain circumstances differing from those present in other camps which would necessitate some adaptation of the policy I have outlined. These circumstances were that there was a large number of exceptionally bad detainees who were all refusing to work. Secondly, it was very important to get them to work before the recalcitrant detainees arrived from Takwa for the reasons I have just explained. Thirdly, there were fewer co-operating detainees so the dilution could not be achieved to the same extent as before. In view of all these circumstances the Commissioner sent one of his senior officers to Hola to draw up a plan to deal with the situation. Mr. Cowan was sent to Hola.
Many harsh things have been said about Mr. Cowan, but in the most difficult period of rehabilitation and the most successful, he had played a prominent and honourable part in running the actual camps in Mwea. While he was Staff Officer in charge of the Mwea camps, 37,000 people, nearly all of whom went through those camps, found their way back to freedom, and for this he has been rightly honoured. The plan,

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as it has been called, was partly a report on the situation at Hola on 7th and 8th February. It was partly proposals to deal with that situation. It was partly also a consideration of the long-term problem of detainees at Hola.
It is important that the House should be fully seized of the essential features of the proposals on which it was intended that the Camp Commandant should work. After its details had been worked out in discussions with him, it was committed to writing in the form of a report to the Commissioner of Prisons with the object, in part, of securing approval of the responsible people for its being carried out. A copy of these proposals, which of course, were not intended as a formal directive, should have been sent to Mr. Sullivan. The first essential in the proposals was that no operation should be started until the compounds were completed so that the maximum segregation would be obtained before the arrival of the draft from Takwa.
The second essential point was that the sixty-six difficult people with those willing to work should be separated beforehand into four compounds. This is, in essence, based on the dilution principle, although Mr. Cowan knew that this could not be fully used here since there were not enough co-operating detainees. Next, all those prepared to work would be ordered out of the Camp to an approved site some distance from it. It was possible that some of the recalcitrants would have been persuaded to go to work by the co-operating people, thus restricting the numbers left in the compounds. This would leave within the Camp four small separate groups each of people refusing to work.
It was then intended to proceed as follows. Three of the groups would be locked up, each in its own compound and the passages between the four compounds would be manned by a special platoon. Then the operation would be concentrated on the remaining group carefully guarded by another special platoon. This group would then be ordered to work on the approved site outside the Camp. This was the moment at which the authorities would challenge the Mau Mau mind, and so the most likely point at which resistance or trouble would
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occur. If they carried out this order and went to the site quietly, a similar procedure would have been followed with each of the groups in turn until all were working on the site among the original batch of co-operative detainees.
As Mr. Cowan's report shows, if the first group refused to carry out the order they were to be taken to the site. This method, which might involve what is commonly know as "manhandling," is intended to secure obedience to an order without any physical injury to the man concerned, without the use of weapons of any kind, including batons, and in such a way as to be of a compelling and not of a punitive character. It has always been recognised that to secure discipline force in this sense may be necessary to secure obedience to an order. Unless it was recognised that this might be necessary, the whole plan, as others for work and rehabilitation, would have been ineffective. The final important point is that if there were any difficulty with the first group, no attempt would be made to take out the other three groups on that day.
The proposals were the adaptation of a proved and successful technique to the circumstances of Hola and were based on three important conceptions. The first was that what was realised from past experience would be the most difficult and dangerous part of the operation—the moment of maximum danger—namely, ordering the men out to work, would take place within the compounds of the Camp. This would ensure that at this dangerous time there would be fully adequate European supervision and a strong warder force to deal with the situation.
The second vital conception was that fewer than twenty men should be taken to the work site in the first instance. The third conception was that only if this group started work satisfactorily should another group be taken out and only if that went well would a third group be taken out. In the event, as the House knows, none of these requirements was fulfilled. The main proposals were not, in effect, carried out. If they had been, this tragedy would not have happened. The departure in these three ways from the proposals converted it from a comparatively minor operation, as the magistrate said, into a major one of great magnitude.

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As the House knows, a disciplinary inquiry is now taking place into the conduct of the Commandant, Mr. Sullivan, and his Deputy, Mr. Coutts. This is turning, in part, on the understanding that Mr. Sullivan had formed of some of the essential features of the proposals, and I cannot at this stage, in fairness to Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Coutts, or to anyone else, say any more now.
Mr. Callaghan: What does that mean?
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Exactly what I said.
The right hon. Gentleman has concentrated, and I am not in the least surprised, on the sentence:
"… manhandled to the site and forced to carry out the task."
I have thought it right to stress the essential features of the proposals—of features of which I have now reminded the House. It is clear from Mr. Cowan's letter that force was only to be used in certain events, and it was, of course, hoped that a display of strength in the compounds would lead to obedience and avoid the need for using any force at all. It was not, therefore, part and parcel of the proposals that force would be used, but it was recognised that in the event of disobedience it would have to be.
But, Mr. Speaker, I must tell the House frankly that I am completely satisfied that by the use of this phrase Mr. Cowan did not seek the approval of his superiors to beating the detainees to make them work. I am also completely satisfied that those who approved this proposal never intended to sanction, and never sanctioned, that.
Mr. James Johnson Mr. James Johnson (Rugby) rose—
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am not normally reluctant to give way, but I cannot do so now.
As I have said, they had themselves issued directives which made it clear that beating detainees was not allowed. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, who will speak later in the debate, will reply in detail to the right hon. Gentleman's observations as to the use of force and his comments on the findings of the magistrate.
I now turn to certain events which followed the tragedy, to which the right hon. Gentleman also referred. In this connection, I must deal with the visit of
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Mr. Campbell and his colleagues to Hola and with the Press statement that was issued in Nairobi. The second of the disciplinary charges against Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Coutts reads, as the House knows:
"That you … gave misleading information concerning the events which had occurred at Hola on the morning of 3rd March, 1959, to the then Acting Deputy Commissioner of Prisons … and to the Under-Secretary of Defence."
While this disciplinary inquiry is proceeding, I cannot, in fairness to Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Coutts, or Mr. Campbell and his colleagues, or any one else who may be concerned, say more than this. [Interruption.] It is not my fault that the debate is taking place today. I am delighted with the opportunity of telling the whole story, but it might well have been better had there been a slight delay until the disciplinary proceedings were completed.
The report by Mr. Campbell and his two colleagues gave a misleading picture, but the House should remember certain things. There is no telephone to Hola. When the Governor heard by wireless signal that there had been ten deaths at Hola, it was decided to send three officers from Nairobi as quickly as possible to see what had happened. It was thought that there might have been a mutiny and that warder reinforcements or medical supplies might be needed.
The Campbell visit was not in fact a Commission of Inquiry. In the three hours that they were there it cannot be said that they carried out a thorough investigation. The story that they were told in that short time appeared to them to be corroborated by the C.I.D. and by the doctor.
Mr. John Stonehouse: No, it was not.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: On their return, the Governor held a meeting over which he presided to consider what immediate action could be taken and whether it was possible to issue a statement that evening. At the meeting Mr. Campbell and the other two officers were closely questioned, and the views of those at the meeting were formed more on the answers to these questions than on Mr. Campbell's typed notes.
A Press statement was then issued. It was certainly a very unfortunate one,

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and it should not have been issued in that form, and not at any rate without attention being drawn to the fact that no cause of death could be suggested until after the autopsies had been completed. Had it been the intention of the Kenya Government to cover up anything, or deliberately give a false impression, which needless to say it was not, it had set about it in the most extraordinary way. It was done in a way which was bound to lead to the early discovery of the truth. But, of course, there was no such intention.
Dr. Rogoff had already arrived before the Campbell party for the autopsy. Dr. Craig, Provincial Medical Officer, Coast Province, was on his way to Hola to examine the injured. Mr. O'Dwyer of the C.I.D. had already arrived and a report on the deaths had already been made to the magistrate so that an inquest could be held. This was scarcely the way to set the stage if an operation to mislead was in the minds of the Government of Kenya.
Mr. Stonehouse Mr. Stonehouse rose—
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: As is indeed only too true, things went tragically wrong at Hola. As the Amendment says, disciplinary and remedial measures are being taken. As the House knows and, as I have said a number of times, a disciplinary inquiry is now being held. This will involve to a very great extent the question who was responsible for the operation as actually carried out.
Some Opposition Members in the House and outside have criticised the composition of the disciplinary committee. I think this is unfair to the Government of Kenya who were bound by colonial regulations to constitute the inquiry in this way.
Whenever magistrates or officers in Kenya have carried out inquiries they have not hesitated to draw attention to facts, however unpalatable, even when those facts have not figured in the original charges into which they are inquiring. In fairness to the two officers now before the disciplinary inquiry, or to any one else who might be involved, I cannot say anything more about that inquiry today. But I can assure the House that neither I nor the Governor, nor any Minister or officer in Kenya,
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would ever wish to shelter behind men who have the difficult task of carrying out operations on the ground. If any further action is necessary it will be taken.
As to the debate of 24th February to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred, most of the charges were based on Mr. Shuter's allegations which have been virtually disproved. Had there been an investigation after 24th February into Hola, it would have shown nothing. The inquiring magistrate questioned 50 closed camp detainees and eight others, and all the evidence was that no beating of any kind had taken place at Hola before 3rd March.
There are the remedial measures, and we attach the greatest importance to each one of them. The inquest magistrate criticised, in the Hola case, what he called the
"… complete absence of direction with regard to the amount of force that might be used."
The magistrate was, of course, only referring to Mr. Cowan's letter.
It is clear that not only the Prisons Ordinance and Standing Orders, but also three separate directives from the Commissioner of Prisons and Ministry of African Affairs, laid down that "beating force" was not to be used to secure compliance with lawful orders. The Governor has, however, given instructions for a fresh directive to be prepared and issued explaining clearly and in simple language the rules for the use of force governing the conduct of prisons and other staff. When I receive copies of this I will place them in the Library.
Secondly, the magistrate found that scurvy was present at Hola on 3rd March. I want to say something about this. The method of issuing ascorbic acid tablets which were part of the diet prescribed with the approval of the Director of Medical Services had been used in all other camps. Only one case of scurvy in Kenya detention camps, and that as long ago as 1954 had been detected. They were issued with their rations, and at Hola the rations were eaten in the detainees' own huts. An attempt made later, after the disaster, to cause them to eat elsewhere, where they could be supervised, led to a hunger strike.

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A batch of detainees who were suffering from swollen limbs and were flown to Nairobi shortly before 3rd March were found not to have scurvy. Two cases were, however, found on careful inspection at Hola after the incident. All detainees were immediately given a saturation dose of ascorbic acid and thoroughly examined for the deficiency. None was found to be suffering from it, and none is so suffering today. The Governor has given instructions to ensure that in future whenever the tablets are issued they are eaten by detainees and convicts, and that if the tablets are refused clear arrangements are made to ensure that they are included in their food; if necessary ground up with it. Medical officers in charge of such camps and prisons are being warned in their examinations to bear in mind particularly the possibility of scurvy.
Thirdly, there is a criticism which we certainly accept, in that Mr. Sullivan was never sent a written copy of the proposals made in Mr. Cowan's report to the Commissioner after they had been approved by higher authority. The Governor is giving instructions that in future all proposals for the introduction of any important operation of this kind must be committed to writing, and that copies of the document should be given to the senior officer in charge of any operation to which the instruction relates before that operation is carried out.
Fourthly, the Fairn Inquiry is to advise the Governor on how far present methods of rehabilitation can and should be adapted to fit the needs of the last few hundred detainees and Mau Mau convicts. Pending this advice—and this is one of the things they will advise—no detainee who is not prepared to work will be ordered to do so.
This problem is very much a part of their general inquiry into the future administration of the camps to which the Kenya Government and Her Majesty's Government attach great importance. The inquiry is composed of men with special experience of prisons administration, of conditions in Africa, and of the Kikuyu mind, and their recommendations are bound to be of great value in dealing with the remaining problem. I should say, however, that orders requiring work were not being given at the time of the Hola tragedy
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in any other camp. The only other camps which did not then contain co-operating detainees who were willing to work were Manyani and Athi River, and at neither of these camps was there suitable work for the detainees to do.
It will also be of interest to the House to know that representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are now in Kenya—they have just arrived—to visit the detention camps for the second time. Over the years the Kenya Government have reduced the number of detainees from about 80,000 to under 1,000, and one of the most tragic aspects of the problem, namely, the number of women, has now been reduced to a figure of 17. These, in the light of the fears and anxieties of the people of Britain and the Government and people of Kenya, are remarkable figures.
The Government and the social workers in Kenya are now on the last lap of their major scheme of rehabilitation. We all recognise that the nearer they get to the end of the problem the more complex and difficult that problem is. I am sure that the House will be of one mind in thinking that the horror and distress that we all feel at what happened at Hola must not be allowed to cloud our judgment in this House, or to deflect the Kenya Government from their attempts to restore to society even the most hardened of these Mau Mau adherents.
Mr. J. Grimond Mr. J. Grimond (Orkney and Shetland) rose—
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am sure that none of us could contemplate a situation whereby these men were left to rot away without any positive attempt to rehabilitate them. The process must continue, and further planning and experiment must go ahead. Past experience, including past mistakes, must go on being taken fully into account. Having come to the most difficult problem of all, the Kenya Government recognise the clear need for bringing to bear on the future problem the experience and wisdom of outside authorities.
I know the House will share our hope that the Kenya Government will be able to move forward to a situation where even the few hundred desperate men who remain can be reclaimed, if necessary one by one, thus bringing to an end the threat which they themselves, by their frame of

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mind, represent to all the people of the Colony. Their release is largely in their own hands—in their desire and ability to prove their willingness to return to society as peaceful and law-abiding people, acceptable to their own people.
I have kept the House a very long time, but these are grave—[HON. MEMBERS: "Whitewash."]—and anxious matters touching the traditions and the honour of British Colonial rule.
Mr. Grimond: The Colonial Secretary has been speaking for a very long time, but what he has failed to tell us much about is what happened when ten men were killed in the Hola Camp. If he could say a little more about how that incident arose and why it was not possible to bring proceedings against anyone, we should be greatly indebted to him.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If, having read the coroner's report and having listened to my speech, the hon. Gentleman has not discovered that, his powers of comprehension must be limited.
I hope that a message can go out from the House to the Governor of Kenya and all who are supporting him in this task of recognition of the success they have achieved, sympathy for the sometimes intractable problems with which they are faced, support for their firm determination to ensure that proved abuse is punished and necessary action taken to prevent any repetition of such a disaster, and hope that in time this great reclamation project will come to a successful conclusion.
5.37 p.m.
Mr. George Thomas: This debate will be followed, not only in this House and in Kenya, but in the whole of Africa. In February and March of this year, the United Kingdom Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association sent, as a delegation to Kenya, the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) and myself. Before we left the country, the camps and the prisons of Kenya were very much in the news. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) had Motions and Questions on the Order Paper which dis-
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turbed the House and, I believe, the country.
It was natural that when we were in Kenya we should want to visit the detention centres to see for ourselves as far as possible the conditions in those camps. No difficulties were placed in our way. The Kenya Government made arrangements for us to visit Aguthi Camp and Hola Camp and Kamathi Prison. It is the detention camps about which I wish to speak today, because I believe that I am the only hon. Member on this side of the House who has visited the Hola Camp. I was there whilst the inquest was being held at Mombasa, when the tension was still very real.
We went there within two weeks of the debate in this House, so that we did not go to the camps without knowing what had been said on both sides of the House. Hon. Members who are interested in colonial affairs will know that when we left Kenya I went out of my way to ensure that no ill-feeling should be created by any words I uttered. I went the extra mile, if possible, to ensure that I saw what was worth seeing and praising. I am very glad that I praised the dedicated service which I found there. I have told the Secretary of State the other things which I saw, as he and the hon. Gentlemen opposite well know. In view of the refusal of the Secretary of State to hold a public inquiry into events at Hola, I believe that I have an obligation to the House and to the country to give the details of what we saw in other places.
No one with any knowledge of Kenya will under-estimate the foul nature of Mau Mau or its psychological effect upon the community as a whole. Therefore, it is no mean task which is given to the Askaris and the prison staff in the detention centres. It is about the worst task that any African could be asked to undertake. They are spat upon. They are despised. They are regarded by inmates of the camps of betrayers of their own race. That is why it is all the more important to have a European staff able to take a detached attitude in their approach to the problem of the detainees.
I do not detract from the outstanding record of the number of people who have been rehabilitated and are walking about free as the air in Kenya today.

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However, when that has been said and recognised, we must realise that in charge of these camps are people who were emotionally and physically involved in the fight against Mau Mau. For instance, at Aguthi Camp the officer in charge is an honourable man, I have no doubt, but he spent the first twenty minutes with me quivering with emotion as he described the atrocities which these people had committed. Yet he was in charge of the camp. It was at Aguthi that I inspected the punishment book. The hon. Gentleman opposite also inspected the punishment book, and he knows that in that punishment book at that camp there is recorded a punishment of twelve strokes of the cane to a man for the offence, as written in the book, of writing to a Member of Parliament. [An HON. MEMBER: "Shameful."] I saw it with my own eyes.
Mr. Norman Dodds: The Secretary of State should rise and tell us why it is in the punishment book.
Mr. Thomas: I want to develop this argument, because I have deliberately kept silent on this matter. I have put up with criticism from some of my hon. Friends, and the Secretary of State ought to know that I have done my best to ensure that nothing from my lips would make the situation worse. The House now has a right to know everything. I asked—the hon. Gentleman opposite was there and heard me—to whom the man had written. We were told that he had written to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn. I have pursued this matter because it was from Aguthi that a letter came to my hon. Friend. That led to Questions in the House which started the ball rolling about the African who was put to death there. A member of the staff is serving two years' imprisonment as a result of my hon. Friend pursuing the matter in the House. If it has happened in an isolated instance at that camp that a man has had twelve strokes of the cane for writing to my hon. Friend, it is justification for our wondering what has happened without us ever finding out in these camps in Kenya.
The Secretary of State has written to me saying:
"You will remember mentioning to me, when you came to see me with Paul Williams
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after your visit to Kenya, that you understood those responsible for smuggling out the letters of complaint from Aguthi Camp about the death of Kabugi had been severely punished. I thought I ought to let you know that the Governor assures me no one has been punished for smuggling out these letters. Indeed, their authorship has not been established."
I was told at the camp that people were asked to volunteer if they had sent these letters. I was also told, in the hearing of the hon. Gentleman opposite, that they knew the letters came from Kenya, but they could not prove who sent them. My comment was, "Do you expect them to volunteer when they get twelve strokes of the cane for admitting it?" I believe that the Governor is far wide of the mark about this.
The Observer was very kind about Hola; but it seems to me that it is a camp from the edge of the world. We flew over mountains and desert to reach it. It is a camp in furnace heat. The temperature there rises to 145 degrees. It was 105 degrees on the day the hon. Gentleman and I were there. It is almost a punishment to endure the heat, and that applies to staff and detainees. I readily pay tribute to the patience of people called upon to discharge such a difficult task as guarding detainees under such conditions.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) described the sections of the camp. All that was left out was the fact that there is the transit camp there as well and that there are native police unarmed in the open camp. They are on good terms with the detainees. The trouble has been only with the hard core.
To my mind, the marvel is that this sort of tragedy has not happened sooner. The tension of hatred and the strain of the climate have made it more, not less, of a probability. All this should have been known—I believe that it was known—to the Governor, the Prison Commissioners and the Colonial Secretary.
I believe that there is a tremendous obligation on the Government of Kenya, responsible as it is for the welfare of these camps where the rights of human being are surely attached even to detainees, who cannot be approached by the normal public to see if justice is being done and who are completely, utterly and absolutely at the mercy of the guards in the camps. There is a mighty

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responsibility upon the Kenya Government to ensure that the staff has adequate facilities and that the Askaris have facilities for relief from their work. The plain truth is that tension could have been reduced.
The first communiqué issued from Government House after the Council of Ministers has disturbed me. I gathered from the Secretary of State that the Governor was present at that Council. I am sure that when Mr. Campbell and the Commission were at Hola they would have had all that little coterie—I do not use the word unkindly—of officers and Europeans there telling them everything. Is there anyone in the House who believes that Mr. Campbell and the others did not know what had happened the day before? It would be the only thing that they would talk about. Of course it is true that they left after three hours knowing the full story. They go back to Government House to a meeting of Ministers, and there is a full-scale conference. Does any hon. Member believe that that full-scale conference of Ministers and heads of departments was not aware that there were disturbing and alarming features about the deaths of these eleven people at Hola? They deliberately issued a communiqué—which I read the next morning, because I was in Nairobi—which led us all to believe that there was poisoned water in the camp, or water that poisoned detainees who were recalcitrant but not those who co-operated.
To my mind, that is one of the most serious aspects of the case. I can understand the outbreak of violence. I cannot understand the attempt to cover it up—
Mr. Patrick Wall: I am sure that the whole House will agree that if the hon. Member's allegation is true, it is a very serious matter, but how does he fit in the fact that there was at Hola an officer of the C.I.D. and a doctor about to carry out a post mortem at the time when Mr. Campbell was there? Surely, had he fabricated the story, it would have been blown sky high within forty-eight hours.
Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman does himself less than justice. The truth is that the C.I.D. officer, and no one else except the Council of Ministers, vetted
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the statement that went out. Is it correct that it was thought easier to placate public opinion by referring to the water cart rather than to the fact that there had been an outburst of violence at the Camp?
Mr. Leslie Hale: And will my hon. Friend bear in mind—in answer to the point just put by the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall)—that the medical officer who conducted the post mortem said that putrefaction had already set in, in a tropical climate, and made it clear that if they had only been able to keep it quiet for a few more hours that putrefaction would have removed all evidence of violence to those bodies?
Mr. Thomas: The House can draw its own conclusions. I only say that there is a second feature to which an answer will be expected, and we have not yet had that explanation. The Secretary of State spent four-fifths of his time this afternoon giving us a history of Mau Mau in Kenya that everyone knew. The House was waiting to hear the story of Hola.
The plain truth is that there was a decision at the highest possible level that force should be used, if necessary, to get these men to work. Undoubtedly it is true that the wrong men stand in the dock. I believe that by the debate here in February the green light was given for a tough policy in the Council in Kenya. I believe—and I can give here only my own deductions—that once it was found that the Colonial Secretary would stand at the Dispatch Box and, with that sense of loyalty that reveals itself from time to time, defend whatever happened there, the all-clear was given. The signal went the next day, "We are all right so far as Westminster is concerned—get on with the plan"—
Sir Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: I am sure that the hon. Member has a great sense of fairness and would like to know that the point he has raised has troubled me very considerably. I therefore took the trouble to try to find out the exact timing. I am entirely satisfied—and I hope to satisfy the House, if I am lucky enough to catch Mr. Speaker's eye—that the time was entirely fortuitous and that the decision was taken before the debate in this House.
Mr. Thomas: I should be glad to get an answer on the time factor from the Government Front Bench.
These men, the Mau Mau hard core, are not normal men. Nobody in charge of them pretends that they are normal men. The hon. Member for Sunderland, South knows that when we visited the Camp we were told time and again, "Look at their eyes". That was the phrase. That is where we were supposed to see the signs of insanity. They are not normal, yet these are the people of whom it was suggested that force could make them co-operate. They needed a psycho-analyst, not this sort of stupid approach.
I believe that we have damaged ourselves unnecessarily; that the path that will make Africans realise how eager we are to treat them as equals and to co-operate with them in the multi-racial society in Kenya is made all the harder by this refusal to hold a public inquiry into the death of eleven Africans in this way.
When we visited Aguthi Camp, both the hon. Member for Sunderland, South and I were disturbed by the number of people whom we saw on crutches. I subsequently raised that subject in many places; with the Governor and the Attorney-General there, and with the Minister here. All this I did in private. I had an answer, dated 12th May, from the Attorney-General, who says:
"When I saw you and Williams"—
I do not think that that is meant to be disrespectful to the hon. Member:
"on 26th March, you were disturbed at the allegation, made in that morning's newspaper report of the Hola Inquest, that orders had been issued that batons, if used, should be used about the legs. This made you recall that at Aguthi both you and Williams had remarked on the number of detainees on crutches at the Camp, and you felt there might be some connection between the disability of these detainees and a possibility that, if and when force is used on detainees, it is habitually applied to the legs.
I decided, following our conversation, to enquire into the cases of detainees at Aguthi on crutches, and the causes of their disability, and accordingly a Senior Administrative Officer from the Ministry of Defence went to Aguthi in April.
He there found that there were nine detainees on crutches"—
When one sees nine of them together it looks a lot:
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"He saw and questioned each man separately, ensuring that there was no opportunity for collaboration between them by arranging that after a detainee had been questioned he was not allowed to return to his fellows until they too had been separately questioned. From their replies the following information was gathered."
Of the first detainee questioned, the letter says:
"Never convicted. Damaged a hip when he accidently fell from a tree whilst cutting firewood as a member of a working party at Shimba Hills Detention Camp."
The remainder of those mentioned in the letter are stated to be all former Mau Mau convicts who have been converted into detainees. It is said of the first of them that he was wounded in the leg by security forces in 1953, and the next two were wounded in the leg in similar circumstances in 1956. The next was shot by the police in 1954—when the troubles were about—and the next was shot in the leg in 1955. Of the next, it is reported that he damaged his leg whilst in employment in Nanyuki—before he was arrested. The next damaged his leg in an accident, and the last one is reported to have said that he was beaten up, and an inquiry is under way into that circumstance.
I have read that letter because I am grateful to the Attorney-General for taking so seriously the allegations and remarks I made to him when I was out there. I have also read it in order that the House may know that I had my eyes open, and that I am now of the serious opinion that a public inquiry into the events of last February and March at the Hola Camp would be in the interests both of this House and of our good name, and in the interests of our future relationships in Africa itself. Every word in this debate will be followed from the tip of Africa in the south right to the north, and I hope that the people there will feel that this House is resolved, above all, to ensure that for coloured people as for white the most stringent inquiries are made and every possible guarantee of fair treatment assured.
6.0 p.m.
Sir Hendrie Oakshott: In many ways this is a difficult debate in which to participate at this moment. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) spoke of two men being "in the dock" and the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) spoke about "scapegoats".

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There are in fact disciplinary charges hanging over the heads of two officers of the service, and although I do not suggest that technically this matter is sub judice, it seems to me that things said in this debate today might easily affect the outcome of the hearing of those charges. Indeed, it may not have escaped the notice of the House that in Nairobi it has been decided that no debate shall take place in the Legislative Council there on this matter until the result of these hearings is known. From my information I would say that there is every bit as much anxiety and just as great a sense of urgency in Kenya as there is in this country about this matter.
In addition, there is the Commission of Inquiry to which my right hon. Friend referred, reinforced by the International Red Cross which is to look into the conditions at the Camps generally.
So we have a situation today where there are things happening outside the result of which we cannot know and which might significantly affect the views we may hold, and also where the things that we may say here might affect inquiries and hearings which are going on in Kenya. It is for that reason that I find that this is not an easy debate. I do not find it easy for the purpose of this debate to put on one side these charges which these officers are now facing.
However that may be, may I say first that there is no excuse for some of the things disclosed in the White Paper? They certainly should not be, and are not being, covered up. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West suggested that there had been a cover-up or deception—a point on which my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) intervened. Yet it would surely be foolish to try to work a trick like that particularly when the preparations for the inquest were already started. The matter is not being covered up.
That these things happen is utterly repugnant to us and contrary to the principles for which we stand. But having said that, I want to add that this House owes a great debt to the general body of colonial servants. We recognise their devotion to duty and their positive achievements, not only for the Colonial Territories generally but also in particu-
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lar in Kenya in their work of rehabilitation after this tragedy of Mau Mau. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West said that everybody knows all about the history of this matter. I am afraid that I differ from him. I do not think they do, and I also believe that some who do may have forgotten a lot of it.
In considering this tragic episode, one ought to try to look at the picture as a whole and not just at one dirty dark corner of it. My right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary referred to the oath-taking ceremony. It is true that in the Kikuyu tribe there is this very solemn tribal ritual the consequences of which to the man who fails in this test and to his family and possessions are so devastating and serious that the ritual is hardly ever resorted to.
This tribal ritual was distorted by these evil people for their own ends and we know what it led to—to bestiality almost beyond belief. It would not be a bad idea to refresh our memories of the details of some of the more advanced stages of the Mau Mau oath and to remember what they led to. My right hon. Friend referred to the Lari massacre. I met one of the senior survivors a few years ago in Kenya and it is worth remembering that in this bestial thing the attacks were directed every bit as much, if not more, against their own tribesmen as against Europeans. There is, however, one well-known case of an Englishman who lived among the Kikuyu with his wife and family. He brought up his children among them and ministered to the health, education and welfare of the tribe. Yet the people whom he befriended most, when they became infected with this disease, hacked him and his wife to pieces.
There is something much more horrifying about this than the type of fanaticism which went on at the time of the Indian Mutiny. It is a positive disease of the mind and the spirit. These people became completely possessed and in some cases they are incurable. Happily, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, the cases which are incurable are comparatively few in relation to the total. The results have exceeded our hopes. I can remember being told in Kenya about three years ago that at the best we would probably be left with about 10,000 people who were utterly irreclaimable.

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What has happened? Out of tens of thousands three or four years ago there are only hundreds now.
I have not had the advantage of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) and the hon. Member for Cardiff, West in going to Hola or the Athi River, but three years ago I spent a day visiting Kamiti. It was not, perhaps, at its worst then from the point of view of overcrowding, but it was still extremely difficult. One could not be other than deeply impressed by the devotion of the people who were working there and their achievements—how they provided useful work for the men and women in that camp and provided schools, hospitals and even maternity clinics.
I watched one of the screening tribunals at work. It was composed of all sorts of people. There was an English lady well known in the district, a retired colonial servant, two other colonial servants, a young woman who was the daughter of a missionary and who later married a friend of mine, and a priest from an Italian mission. It is wrong of the Opposition to scoff at the spiritual side of what was done by these screening tribunals. I have watched them at work and seen their patience and their efforts to cleanse the people who came before them. The result was that thousands of people who came before them were ultimately got back to their natural tribal and village life. It was a great achievement when we think of the contamination and the poison to which they were subjected.
There are still these irredeemable ones, and Mr. Goudie acknowledges this in the White Paper. Some of them were at Hola. The right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) quoted from part of the White Paper and I will quote again how Mr. Goudie described these people:
"the inner core of the hard core of Mau Mau."
He spoke of their "incorrigible attitude". They were
"sullen, suspicious and quite obviously entirely fanatical."
They were
"potentially dangerous in the highest degree."
Those were the people with whom the officers had to deal. I would not attempt
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to defend or excuse some of the things which happened, but I would ask the House to remember what a massive transformation has been brought about by the remarkable efforts of the public servants in these places and by the rehabilitation methods which have been employed. At one time there were 77,000 people in detention infected with this disease, and today there are about 700. The rest are back in their proper natural environment.
In the light of these achievements, what happened at Hola is all the more than regrettable. Clearly mistakes were made, and I confess that from some of the things one has read in the White Paper it seems to me that the direction from headquarters was not what it ought to have been and that it ought to be remedied, and I understand from what my right hon. Friend has said that steps are being taken to this end.
It is our duty, I suppose, to probe and to criticise, but in doing so we might ask ourselves how any one of us might have behaved if we had been confronted with the sort of situation which happened at Hola. It should not have happened, but there it was. I have seen, like the hon. Member for Cardiff, West, these irreconcilables at unpleasantly close quarters and I know how savage and ferocious they are. I should not like to have had the task which faced Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Coutts.
The tragedy does not lie in the policy. The policy of getting people to work as a first step towards rehabilitation has been proved again and again. That is not where the tragedy lies. The tragedy lies in the fact that things were done which were no part of the policy and which I do not attempt to condone. But in fairness to all those who are working and have worked so hard in Kenya for the redemption of these people, I have tried to look at the picture as a whole. In the general policy of rehabilitation I have complete confidence in view of the results. As for the future, I feel that we should wait for the outcome of the hearing of the disciplinary charges and also for the findings of this Commission of general inquiry. Things will become much clearer, and then will be the time for a full-scale debate.
Meanwhile, I support without reserve the policy of my right hon. Friend and

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of the Government of Kenya, who have been so successful in reclaiming tens of thousands of people from a disease which many of us feared was incurable.
6.12 p.m.
Mrs. Barbara Castle: If any speech could justify this Motion of censure this afternoon, it is the speech which we heard from the Colonial Secretary, because it was an absolutely classic piece of covering-up. I shall come in a moment to his historical thesis and his reference to the wider detention policy followed by the Kenya Government. I would only point out that when the Government claim credit for the large number of detainees released, thousands of those detainees ought not to have been detained at all in the first place. I intend to give some evidence to that effect shortly.
The simple issue before us this afternoon is this. Is this House going to ensure that in its name justice is done to black and white alike in Kenya? I would say to the hon. Member for Bebington (Sir H. Oakshott) that one cannot establish the foundation for the future prevention of abuses without first establishing the responsibility for the past abuses. We have talked a lot about rehabilitation for crimes committed and the importance of confession in that process. If there is to be any rehabilitation by the Kenya Government, a start must be made with some confessions at the very top. Instead of that, we have had the process of evasion.
I want to point out that if we accept the Amendment moved by the Government we shall be saying categorically and specifically that we, as a House of Commons, believe that it is right that Sullivan and Coutts should be charged, and they alone, with the offences mentioned in the White Paper. It is typical of the Colonial Secretary that he should say that he is sorry that he cannot go into all the details of who was responsible, and that he is not prepared to follow the closely-reasoned argument of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) because the matter is sub judice and because it is the subject of a disciplinary inquiry.
But one of the things on which hon. Members opposite will be voting later is
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this: do they believe that it is right and in the interests of Sullivan and Coutts themselves—and they have as much right to justice as anybody else—that they should be inquired into and adjudicated upon by a disciplinary court consisting of Kenya civil servants who will have to judge whether Sullivan and Coutts acted contrary to the instructions given to them by the Kenya Government? This means that, if this disciplinary court of Kenya civil servants finds Sullivan and Coutts innocent, it will at the same time be finding its own employers guilty, because there is no doubt that illegal force has been used. This has been established by the coroner. The question is whether these things were done contrary to the wish of the Kenya Government or not, and Sullivan's plea must be that he was merely carrying out his instructions. Therefore, the very foundations of the Government's Amendment this afternoon are contrary to natural justice and intolerably unfair to two of the prison officers, to whom the Government are so pleased to pay tributes from time to time.
We on this side stand for justice for all men, regardless of their colour, their office, or their position. All along, we have been actuated not by colour prejudice, malice against the settlers or anything of that kind, but by a passionate belief that, if there is one thing we must hand on to the Africans in Kenya, it is a profound respect for British justice. That is what we are fighting for today, whoever may be involved.
Because the Government have committed Sullivan and Coutts to an unfair trial—a disciplinary trial, but still a trial—it is for the House to judge, on the evidence in the White Paper, between Sullivan and Coutts and their superiors. I ask hon. Members to read these charges, to examine their consciences when they vote and to weigh the difference between the charges given in the Appendix to the White Paper and the statements in the coroner's report. One of the charges is that Sullivan acted contrary to instructions. We say that that is not true. The inquest proceedings reveal quite clearly, when one reads the details, that the Commissioner of Prisons, Mr. Lewis, was fully aware of the differences between Sullivan's plan and Cowan's plan. He was cross-examined on this point in the court

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proceedings, and he said he admitted that a plan involving the putting to work of 85 men instead of 26 was—here I quote his actual words—
"in effect, a different plan".
Moreover, Sullivan was at pains to write time and again to the Commissioner of Prisons asking for help and expressing anxiety. Sullivan was the reluctant instrument of this policy which he could see leading to disaster. It is significant that the only document missing in the exhibits printed in respect of the inquest proceedings is the written report which Sullivan sent on 13th February to Lewis, the basis on which his instructions came to him.
I thought that was a very remarkable omission from the evidence. I put down a Question in the House to ask if the full text of Sullivan's report of 13th February could be placed in the Library. The document has just arrived today in time for the debate. I am not surprised that it was not included, for it reveals a state of affairs which, in my view, directly puts the responsibility, to begin with, on the Commissioner of Prisons, Mr. Lewis, himself. Sullivan wrote on 13th February pointing out how the situation in the camp had deteriorated. Why had it deteriorated? Because of widespread sickness among the co-operative detainees who were to be mixed with the unco-operative ones.
Sullivan pointed out that, instead of 75 available, he had only 26 because of the large numbers reporting sick, some with swollen limbs, which the medical officer was actually investigating. Those swollen limbs were the sign of the scurvy which was later found by the coroner to have been widespread in the camp. Mr. Lewis, the Commissioner of Prisons, did not consider this sign of widespread sickness among co-operative detainees worthy even of comment from him, let alone investigation. Yet we are told about how anxious the prison administration in Kenya is to have tip-top conditions in all the detention camps.
Furthermore, Sullivan says in his Report of 13th February that he had approached the scheme manager, Mr. Filgate, who was given an outline of the orders suggested by Mr. Cowan on his recent visit. Here I quote from Mr. Sullivan:
"He"—
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that is, Mr. Filgate—
"has asked to be dissociated entirely from any such undertaking".
This was another warning to Prison Commissioner Lewis that the plan was undesirable and, in the circumstances, inappropriate. Sullivan goes on to say that Filgate
"has stated that he can only accept labour suitably equipped with tools to undertake and complete a given task".
That was written to the Commissioner of Prisons on 13th February, yet he knew that it was an integral part of Cowan's plan that tools were not to be used. There was no comment from the Commissioner except a signal to delay the implementation of the plan.
On 26th February, a few days later, another signal was sent to Sullivan, without any of his requests having been met, telling him to go ahead—a signal, incidentally, which ignored the plea in this written document requesting that
"The Senior Superintendent of Prisons with appropriate powers of summary punishment may be present when policy outlined is implemented".
This was clear example showing that it was Sullivan who had doubts. It was Sullivan who appealed time and time again to the Commissioner of Prisons, but he was compelled to go ahead.
The second charge is that Sullivan "failed adequately to supervise" conditions in the camp. The coroner places on record quite clearly that the Cowan Plan was silent on the amount of European supervision needed and again, in the inquest proceedings, the Commissioner was cross-examined on this. He was asked whether he was aware of how many European officers were to be there. He said he did not know, or he had not even bothered to find out. Such were the standards of supervision of the Commissioner of Prisons.
The third charge is that Sullivan gave misleading information to the authorities. To bring that charge against Sullivan and not to bring it against Campbell, in the light of the coroner's report, is quite intolerable. It is a misuse of the process of justice. The coroner makes it quite clear that Campbell's report, when he was sent down to investigate the deaths on the preliminary investigation, was thoroughly misleading.

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The matter does not stop at Campbell. We have been told time and again in the House, as we have been told this afternoon, how anxious the Governor and all his Administration are to stop these abuses, to nip them in the bud and deal with them ruthlessly. I ask the House to pass judgment on this fact: when Campbell went down, because he had been sent a signal saying that detainees were dying in a detention camp, he just saw a few men in the little inner circle. He did not ask the see a single body or to see one of the injured men who were being rushed into hospital in dozens. He went back to Nairobi and a meeting was held in Government House, at which, among others present, there was the Attorney-General and the Commissioner of Prisons.
There is some argument about whether Campbell's written report was before that meeting or not. That is irrelevant. If the Governor cared he could have asked. If the Attorney-General was fit to hold his job, and he was told that men were dying in Hola Detention Camp, he should have said to Campbell, "Did you see the bodies? Did you see any signs of violence?" Nobody asked that question. Nobody cared. I am not prepared to leave in the hands of the Attorney-General of Kenya or of the Governor the protection of justice in this British Colony.
Responsibility goes still higher. It lies at the door of the Colonial Secretary, his Under-Secretary of State, and the whole Government Front Bench. For months, we on this side have been raising cases which, we were told, were isolated. Time and again we have asked for independent inquiries. As recently as 24th February, the Under-Secretary of State himself, speaking on behalf of the Colonial Secretary, said in this House:
"Our contention is that the organisation of the prison service is right and is what it should be and that the safeguards against abuse are effective."
He told us that the Kenya Government was perfectly capable of keeping its own house in order, adding that it
"is doing so."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, 24th February, 1959; Vol. 600, c. 1070.]
That was on 24th February, at a time when, if the Colonial Secretary and the Under-Secretary were fit for the office they hold, they should have been well
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aware of the Cowan Plan which was at that time in process not only of being approved but of being implemented in Kenya.
The Colonial Secretary bases his main case on the argument that force was not part of the Cowan Plan. Here again, he must answer the statement of the coroner in which, after quoting the vital words in the Cowan Plan about manhandling to the site and forcing detainees to carry out the tasks, he said:
"… Any reasonable person would construe those words alone as carte blanche to use whatever force might prove necessary to ensure the performance of the task …"
This is the answer by the coroner to the Colonial Secretary's claim, and the right hon. Gentleman did not begin to deal with that accusation this afternoon.
We say again that the Colonial Secretary should have listened to our repeated pleas in the House for an independent inquiry into the conduct of the camps. The behaviour of the Government of Kenya over the issue of the Press statement alone in regard to the Hola affair proves that they are unfit to be the judges in their own case. We have asked for independent inquiries. If our request had been granted, and if the Colonial Secretary had done his job, the eleven men of Hola would have been alive today.
What was the basis of the Motion we tabled on 24th February? It was not done out of the blue. It was based on another specific case arising at Aguthi Works Camp, where Kabugi son of Njuma died after beating. Two other detainees there were so badly beaten that they were taken to hospital, where, according to the evidence given in the proceedings, they were incapable of speech for several days. When we raised this particular case in the House, the Colonial Secretary told us that a warder, Githu, was to be charged with causing actual bodily harm. It is ironic when one realises that the title of the warder, Githu, was "rehabilitation assistant."
At the time we had our debate, the full text of the proceedings had not been placed in the Library of the House of Commons. The text has since been placed there and some of us have had the opportunity of studying it. In some respects, this case is even worse than the Hola case. It establishes, first and foremost, that the routine covering up which

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we have had in every case of abuse had taken place in this incident. I first heard of this death in a letter sent to me on 15th September by the men in the camp. Incidentally, I was interested in the comment of my hon. Friend for Cardiff, West about what happened to the men who dared to write to me: I took the matter up, because they said, "A man has been beaten to death, and here is his name". Four days after they wrote to me in desperation, saying, "For heaven's sake take action because soon we all die".
The inquest on that man's death took place. I challenge every hon. Member to read the report of the inquest. There was the usual covering up by the acting officer in charge of the camp, Mr. Simeon Oakley, who told the coroner that the man concerned merely carried two buckets of soil and then
"complained that his legs were not working properly. He was told to stop work"
and was taken to the dispensary where he died.
"I saw no abrasions nor injuries on him and he never complained of any,"
said Mr. Oakley. Yet the evidence in the trial of the warder Githu established that Mr. Oakley was lying and that this man was forced to run round in a circle in the heat, carrying buckets of soil upon his head, until he collapsed. What has happened to Mr. Oakley? Has any action been taken against him? Is he still in his job?
Mr. G. Thomas: He may get the M.B.E.
Mrs. Castle: Have any charges been brought against him in the light of the inquest? If the Kenya Government cared, and if the Colonial Secretary cared, we should have had a full report on the Floor of the House on this matter. Moreover, the coroner at the inquest on the dead man said that inquiries had been made by the district commissioner and the medical officer, as a result of which he was prepared to close the case on the ground that death was due to natural causes. That inquest was on 19th September. The C.I.D. was not called in. There was no real supervision. The district commissioner covered up, as others had covered up before.
A month later, the Colonial Secretary wrote to me saying that there was no
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evidence of violence having taken place in the camp. He may have been an involuntary liar, but our accusation against the Colonial Secretary is: what action did he take when he found out that he had been told lies? It was not until an anonymous letter was sent to the Colonial Secretary in November that he, knowing Parliamentary interest had been aroused in this case, proceeded to order further investigations. The Governor of Kenya did not do so. Copies of letters that I get are often marked, "Copies sent to the Minister of Defence", "… to the Governor", and a whole list of other people. Nobody cares and nobody inquires.
When the Colonial Secretary asked the Governor for a report, so incompetent was the Kenya Government that they could not even send him a correct reading of the coroner's report. The reply that was sent to him was to the effect that the man had died of pulmonary infection, whereas it is written in the coroner's report quite plainly that he died of pulmonary infarction. Either the Kenya Government were grossly incompetent or they were deliberately covering up.
The revelations about the Kenya Government's treatment of detainees in this case should horrify this House, because it is clear that this "rehabilitation assistant", acting on official instructions, was trying to extract confessions from Mau Mau detainees by torture. Here is an example of what is admitted to be official rehabilitation policy taken from the judgment in the case. Mau Mau detainees arriving at this camp for the purpose of rehabilitation
"were taken to a roundabout around which they were compelled to run for some time. From there they were taken to a football field where they had to carry buckets of soil on their heads until they confessed their Mau Mau activities. They were not permitted to enter into the Camp until they confessed …"
That is rehabilitation. Kabugi did not confess. When he collapsed and it was asked why he had not been immediately taken to hospital, the accused pleaded in extenuation that the detainees were not allowed to be taken to hospital until they had confessed. This is the rehabilitation policy which we are asked to accept.
It is clear from the findings of the magistrate in this case that he does not

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dismiss all Mau Mau detainees as intractable hard core. In fact, the one person he establishes as having continually lied was the European officer, Mr. Duffy, whereas he said that he was very impressed by the testimony of the Africans. Lord Malvern, are you listening there above? Here we have a case in which men were forced to run round in the heat with buckets of soil on their heads until they collapsed. In this case, the accused went beyond his orders and beat the men as well until one died and three had to be taken to hospital.
Here again, the question arises: What has happened to Mr. Duffy? The magistrate said quite clearly:
"It may well be true that a charge could have been brought against more than the accused."
What is more, he makes this accusation against the Kenya authorities' administration:
"Furthermore, the accused's superior officer, a person of little or no experience for his position, says that when taking over the camp he was given no written instructions but merely told to use his discretion and get the detainees through as quickly as possible. This officer saw part of the assaults and as a result the accused may not have fully realised the enormity of his acts. And this is all the more so—and I find it difficult to understand—as the people who gave the accused this position of authority and power must have been aware of a previous conviction for assault."
Those words alone should fill any reasonable Colonial Secretary with horror and alarm.
But what has been done in this case? On 28th April, I asked what disciplinary action was being taken. The Colonial Secretary had no answer. On 12th May I asked whether the Attorney-General was going to bring any more charges in this case in which a European officer was clearly involved. I was told that the right hon. Gentleman was still considering the transcripts. It should not be for us on this side of the House constantly to have to take up these cases and be smeared for doing so.
This is not an isolated case. I could quote dozens of others. I could quote the case of the murder of Machiri, son of Githuma, in 1957. This is another case where Mau Mau detainees were transferred to a detention camp for the purposes of "rehabilitation". Let me
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quote the horrible treatment which was meted out to Machiri. He was
"taken to hut No. 18, where, by means of a rope tied to his wrists, he was strung up to and suspended from a crossbeam forming part of the structure of the hut so that his feet were two or three feet above the floor. While so suspended he was severely beaten about the body and legs with strips of rubber cut from old motor car tyres. After some of this punishment, he was taken down and shortly afterwards was strung up again and again beaten as before. During the course of the beating he cried out in pain, urinated and voided his bowels. There was also evidence that Machiri was struck while on the ground."
He died later of what was described as cerebral haemorrhage. Nobody was charged with murder because it was decided by the authorities that Machiri might have hit his head against a door while being taken back to camp.
Mr. Speaker: Will the hon. Lady help rue by saying whether she is talking now about the Hola Camp or some other camp? The debate is directed to the Hola Camp.
Mr. Denis Howell: What about the speech of the Colonial Secretary?
Mrs. Castle: I am talking about the Amendment and the direct responsibility of the Colonial Secretary
"to prevent a recurrence of such a tragic event"
Mr. Charles Pannell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Amendment uses the words:
"deeply regrets the recent deaths of eleven men in Hola Detention Camp and fully supports Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Kenya in the steps both remedial and disciplinary that are being taken to prevent a recurrence of such a tragic event".
We cannot consider this matter except against the background of the history. In making his case, the Colonial Secretary deployed nearly half an hour on the things that led up to Hola and with which my hon. Friend is now dealing. Your Deputy was in the Chair at the time, Mr. Speaker. It caused a great deal of resentment on this side that the Colonial Secretary took so much time and was so tardy in coming to Hola. My hon. Friend has taken not nearly as much time in dealing with the events leading up to it.
Mr. Speaker: I am not concerned with the time that the hon. Lady is taking. I do not think she has spoken too long.

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I wanted, for my own guidance, to know exactly what direction the debate had taken. If the general question of all the camps has been opened, the hon. Lady is, of course, in order. I am sure that she would not like to go off at a tangent that was not strictly in order.
Mrs. Castle: My point is that the Hola incident would not have occurred had proper action been taken against previous cases of abuse.
In this case, the accused was given a sentence of merely 12 months' imprisonment—that is all. One of the reasons given by the magistrate in extenuation of the crimes of the accused, also called a "rehabilitation officer", was the following:
"… even in his case he was not perhaps an entirely free agent and I certainly have the strongest suspicion that what he ordered was ordered and clone with at least the tacit approval of his superior officer."
Sir Godfrey Nicholson: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Castle: No. I am sorry, but I want to finish as quickly as I can and give other hon. Members a chance. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is the hon. Lady quoting?"] I beg pardon. I am quoting from the official judgment in the case, which, as a result of my request, was placed in the Library of the House of Commons. I have quoted the words of the magistrate.
On 1st August, 1957, I put down a Question about this case to the Colonial Secretary. I did not then have the judgment before me—it takes time for these things to come through—but I made the point to the right hon. Gentleman that other people were involved and that if this incident could take place under the rehabilitation programme of a detention camp, at the very least the supervision of the camp was unsatisfactory.
I put that point to the Colonial Secretary. This was his reply to me on 1st August, 1957:
"The hon. Lady ought to see this in perspective. As the sentences suggest, these were only very minor cases of assault. The hon. Lady knows enough about the conditions and the type of men who are detained not to regard this as very, very serious. She asked about the disciplinary inquiry. The inquiry under the Solicitor-General has now been completed and the report is being prepared for submission to the Governor-in-Council-of-Ministers. The Governor will let me know his
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intentions after he has considered the report The report is made to the Governor-in-Council, and I do not propose to publish it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st August, 1957; Vol. 574, c. 1498.]
More covering up. That has been the whole trouble all along the line ever since Colonel Young resigned and his report was deliberately suppressed. There has been recurrence after recurrence.
When these incidents, particularly Hola and the recent cases to which I have referred, began to appear in the Press, I received correspondence from a prominent former Kenya police officer. He was, in fact, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. Duncan MacPherson, who was placed by Colonel Young in charge of the C.I.D. in Kenya in a desperate attempt to get some of these abuses cleared up.
When Colonel Young resigned, Mr. MacPherson carried on for another two years until, in despair, disgust and disillusion, he decided that he could no longer waste his time working in Kenya. I want to give the House three brief quotations which, coming from such a source, make it imperative for the Government here to give us an independent inquiry into the matter.
First, Mr. MacPherson wrote me this letter, which is the answer to the long story given by the Colonial Secretary about how many detainees had been released:
"I know that hundreds of them"—
that is, the detainees—
"were just listed and detained on the whims of various clerks with no authority whatsoever and who acted on their likes and dislikes. All seemed to be well, provided a 10 per cent. quota was returned for detention. I could most certainly blast that one wide open … because nearly every time any person gave me evidence of misconduct on the part of the Home Guards, etc., they were whisked away on a detention order."
Quotation No. 2:
"I would say that the conditions I found existing in some camps in Kenya were worse, far worse, than anything I experienced in my four and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese. I was horrified. I could never satisfy myself as to why violence was being used, although it appeared that unless a prisoner admitted Mau Mau he was subjected to it until he did."
Quotation No. 3:
"What shocked me about the camps I saw was the general conditions, the method of interrogation and the appalling number of

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deaths that I investigated in these camps which were as a result of violence. I had little or no difficulty in establishing that factor, but like the Secretary of State I had the greatest difficulty in establishing the facts. I thought that I could have had much more co-operation or even an appreciation of what I was trying to do. I thought that the spirit was lacking and I cannot recollect any occasion when I enjoyed what I was entitled to. …
"I know that a senior police officer still in Kenya and more senior now actually saw prisoners being ill treated and instead of arresting those responsible merely went back to his office and told the D.O. I know that in that same camp next I had to investigate the deaths by violence of several unfortunate inmates.
"I know that I was told by the Commissioner of Police"—
and he is still in office—
"to stop investigations into such things. I know I refused and that was the main reason I left Kenya a disgusted man. I hated the whole idea of the policy of arrested men being allowed to escape prosecution if they gave information about someone else. I hated the abuse of the Judges' Rules. I hated the arrest of females and their camp being guarded by males and the horrible tables that I had to investigate as a result.
"I was so disgusted with the detention of people in posts, etc., that I wrote officially to say that it was a disgrace to the Union Jack that flew above them and asked that it be removed. I was accused of impeding the progress of the emergency and replied that anything done to uphold the proud traditions of British justice would always get my complete support.
"It was my firm view that the beatings were administered in order to extract confessions. I would most certainly have no hesitation in stating that persons were detained unlawfully and without proper investigation and add that they were also convicted."
Perhaps the Colonial Secretary will try to smear that man. Perhaps he will try to hide again. We have had a long chain of conspiracy to cover up. Whether or not the Colonial Secretary has been a party to it, at least he has been a complacent bystander, and it is time he resigned.
6.50 p.m.
Mr. Paul Williams: I hope that the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) gave rather more notice to the Colonial Secretary of what she was going to say—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why should she?"]—than the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) gave to me about the things he was going to say—
Mr. E. Fernyhough: Why should he?
Mr. Williams: —about things in which I was involved. If he had done, I should have had my diary with me to check some of the things he was saying.
Mr. Fernyhough: Does the hon. Member doubt them?
Mr. Williams: There were at least two things he said which, to put it mildly, were slightly misleading. The first one was that a man at Aguthi had had punishment administered to him of 12 strokes of the cane for having written to a Member of Parliament. In practice, this is perfectly natural punishment, when a crime of this nature—and it is known to be a crime—is carried out. It is perfectly reasonable, and it is perfectly normal, and it is perfectly open to a prisoner to write to a Member of Parliament provided he seeks permission, but if he breaks the regulations it is perfectly reasonable that he should be punished.
Mr. G. Thomas: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting to the House that when detainees have serious allegations, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) has described, about ill-treatment of other prisoners they have to submit those first of all to the officers in charge of the camp before they can get them out? Does the hon. Gentleman blame them for smuggling them out to get them to this House?
Mr. Ronald Bell: Before answering that, will my hon. Friend bear in mind that in this country under the prison regulations no letter, whether addressed to a Member of Parliament or not, is allowed to be sent if it criticises the police or the prison authorities?
Mr. Williams: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well what the regulations are, and he was really misleading the House to some slight degree. If he will check with his diary he will see. He said he saw a Press hand-out about the Hola incident, when we were in Nairobi, but the Hola incident occurred the day before we boarded a ship from the Seychelles and the hand-out was issued to the Press the actual day we left the Seychelles.
Mr. Thomas: It was the inquest I spoke about.
Mr. Williams: I am sorry if I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman.
There is one point on the question of emotional involvement I should like to go into, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I leave it till later.
Everybody must acknowledge that this terrible incident at Hola is a tragedy of immense proportions, but surely, having said that, we must also acknowledge, if we have any reason in us at all, that both the Government in the United Kingdom and the Government in Kenya, and the Governor and Ministers in Kenya, appreciate this situation in the same light, for there can be no possible reason for their looking upon it in any other way at all.
I will for a few moments detain the House by talking briefly about the policy itself, secondly about the plan, and then about the place, Hola.
I do not think anyone can really disagree with the appreciation which the Colonial Secretary made earlier today of the background to this whole problem. It is unreasonable, except against the background of internal criticism in this House, to try to discard the background altogether, for the background is an essential ingredient of the state of affairs in Kenya today.
Earlier in the years of the emergency there was an obvious choice, as the Colonial Secretary himself said, which was open both to the Kenya Government and to the Government of this country, the choice between rehabilitation on the one side, and leaving the detainees to rot on the other. It was a fairly simple choice, and being the sort of people, on both sides of the House, that we are, the decision was taken that rehabilitation was the way in which these unfortunate souls should be treated. The result is that 77,000 souls detained, perhaps sometimes on less than fair grounds—I will not go any further than to say "perhaps"—77,000 souls, a not inconsiderable figure, have been returned to their clans and accepted back by those against whom they committed crimes; not accepted back into European communities, not accepted back into Asian communities, but accepted back into their own families, their own clans, by the people against whom they had committed the most bestial atrocities. This is surely a good
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record, which stands to the credit of the Kenya Government, however some people may wish to besmirch it.
How has this been achieved? The Colonial Secretary was fair with the House on this point as well. He said it started with the gradual conversion of a few, then moved on to the phase of dilution, which is surely an essential ingredient of any policy of conversion either of the hard core or of those less oathed, and less committed. So there was dilution for conversion, education back into a better way of life. Finally, in the business of conversion there was the use of work in the task of rehabilitation, and the one—dilution—without the other—work—would be valueless. The two together have enabled those lost souls to be reclaimed. So I myself pay tribute to the faith which was placed behind this policy and to the success with which it has been carried out.
Now for the plan itself, the so-called Cowan Plan. I have never really looked upon this plan as being a sort of major change of policy, as implied in the coroner's report and as implied in many of the speeches which we have heard or seen reported in the country and which we have heard made here today.
The object of the plan is perfectly straightforwardly put in the White Paper. Paragraph 5 (h) on page 28 is worth reading:
"a second Special Platoon should proceed to the first compound selected and surround the small group of detainees leaving open to them only the door of access to the cat walk".
Surely, those words "small group of detainees" constitute the linchpin of this part of the Cowan Plan. If, then, a small group is to be selected, the next question which arises is, how do we dilute? It appears from what has been said in the debate today that there was a shortage of "co-operatives" in the Camp. If it was so, then the group selected should have been smaller, may be five of six or eight, with the necessary proportion of co-operatives to leaven the group altogether.
In considering the plan itself, I would also refer to manhandling, which is mentioned in paragraph 5 (j), which says:
"it is assumed that the party would obey this order but should they refuse they would be manhandled to the site of work and forced to carry out the task".

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It is in this House very easy to misunderstand or misconstrue the meaning of these words, but I should have thought that anyone with any experience of Kenya at all would have read those words against the background of the Prison Regulations, which quite specifically lay down the conditions under which force may be used.
Mr. Hale: Will the hon. Member forgive me for interrupting him on this, since it is most important for both sides of the House? How do we force men to dig an 8-ft. wide irrigation trench? After all, there is no question about the meaning of the words. They mean they have got to be forced to do it. How is it possible to force them to do it?
Mr. Williams: Surely, the hon. Member would know that the work involved in a place like Hola is not only concerned with the digging of trenches. It could also be concerned with other matters, such as carrying wood. When one talks of digging the trench itself, I should have thought it perfectly simple for the warders to assist in the digging in this sort of way.
The House should take particular note of one further point mentioned by the coroner in relation to manhandling, and given special attention by The Times in an editorial on 11th June, in the words:
"Not a single detainee suggested that there had been a single blow struck by warders or any other form of ill treatment prior to March 3 … despite specific questioning on this point."
I agree that it is going back to a period before the incident, but it has been shown under "specific questioning" on the point that there has been no inclination to use force in any unreasonable way.
Surely, this puts the prison authorities in a slightly different light from that which some hon. Members seem to wish to create. As to the plan, I would draw the attention of the House to a phrase of some importance used in connection with this question of the use of force in paragraph 6 of Annex II to the White Paper which, speaking of the plan in general, says:
"This does not imply a brutal and harsh régime but a high standard of personal example and insistence always on immediate obedience."
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The plan did not intend the unreasonable use of force. What may well have happened is that the plan was not carried out properly.
The House must see this matter against the background of operations in other camps over the years. There has been nothing dramatically different about this plan. It is a plan which has been operated in some degree in other camps. The essentially new ingredient in this case was the fact that one was dealing with the worst, the lowest of the hard core and the most intractable and difficult. There was all the greater need, therefore, for dealing with small groups as laid down in the plan.
Mr. R. T. Paget: Surely the whole basis of a rehabilitation scheme, which I have seen working elsewhere, is that it is a scheme of persuasion, not of force. Here we have force introduced. The man to whom it is explained is Sullivan, and Sullivan understands it in what I should have thought the only sense that it could be understood—that the only way in which one forces men to dig a ditch is to beat them if they do not dig.
Mr. Williams: I should have thought that the hon. and learned Member would have heard what I said about the background to this matter being the prison regulations in Kenya, which are quite specific on the use of force. These officers must be assumed to be responsible people and aware of the prison regulations and willing to abide by them. That surely is the background of our discussion.
As to Hola itself, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West said that his first impression was one of remoteness, for the camp is 200 miles north of Mombasa, 325 miles by road from Nairobi and quite a time, and quite a hot journey, by air. The first impression of arriving over Hola by air is one of the immense amount of work going on in the irrigation scheme, which is part of a much larger development.
My right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary said that cultivation at the moment extends to an area of over 400 acres, but I understand that it is to cover eventually between 50,000 and 100,000 acres. Therefore, Hola is part of a plan of development and not an

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isolated, allegedly Belsen type of camp. It is nothing of the sort. My impression of the site and of the irrigation development led me to compare it with what one has seen in Israel. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West mentioned the climate at Hola, which indeed is a bit warm.
Mr. G. Thomas: That is a masterly understatement.
Mr. Williams: The officer in charge of the irrigation scheme, to whom we spoke, said it was no great disturbance to him to have to live there and that he was willing to work there and enjoyed himself. That, surely, shows that the climate is not so insufferable even to Europeans as some hon. Members would like the House to believe.
There is a prison as well as a camp for detainees. We are not talking today about the prison itself. The settlers in the village have shown that it is possible to proceed from the worst stage through the pipeline towards freedom. There are the open camps and the detainees who enter the pipeline; and, finally, there is the closed camp and the hard core. What I found most inspiring about the camps and the hard core was the fact that the Kenya Government had not given up hope of reclaiming even the hard core, the degraded and debased souls whom one would think were almost beyond hope. The work of reclamation and rehabilitation is pressed on. Tribute needs to be paid to this work and the intentions of the Government of Kenya and the United Kingdom Government in trying to carry it through.
As for the 3rd March, it is clear from the Cowan Plan that the intention was that a party of fewer than 20 should go out and start to work. In fact, 66 unco-operatives were affected and obviously, as a result, there was a breakdown. It seems to me that there are three crucial points about the day itself. The first is that the party was too big. Secondly, it was not diluted. Thirdly, I imagine that the ratio of prison staff to detainees was not sufficiently high. I am not sure that I agreed with my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary when he said that if the men involved had been told of the operation in the camp the trouble would not have been so great. I think that if the numbers had been smaller the problem would not have been great
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even if they had not been told until they were out on the road.
The question should be asked whether charges should have been brought against those involved at the camp itself. Legal opinion is quite distinct on this in saying, "No". One can ask whether political considerations should outweigh the firm advice that was given by the Attorney-General of Kenya. There is a danger in overlaying a political decision on top of legal advice of this nature. It is right that charges which could not possibly be sustained should not have been brought forward. Indeed, if they had been brought forward more harm would have been done than by not taking legal action at all.
It has been right to set up a disciplinary inquiry, though this makes considerable difficulty for this debate. I should have preferred to have the debate held over until we had received the report from the disciplinary inquiry. We should then have been much more free to speak and draw definite conclusions than we can possibly be at the moment. The danger of this debate is that by drawing conclusions we may affect the people involved in the inquiry.
I should like to ask the Colonial Secretary two or three questions. Is my right hon. Friend satisfied and is the Government of Kenya satisfied that the length of posting of prison staff to Hola is about the right length of time, or is there a danger that because of the climate the tensions will mount and tempers will fray? If there is any such danger, the length of posting to Hola should be reviewed immediately.
Secondly—and here I join with the hon. Member for Cardiff, West—is there sufficient inspection from outside? One of the lasting impressions I had of another camp was of the frequent visits made by Roman Catholic priests to see the camp and the prisoners. One gets the feeling that perhaps in a place like Hola, which is rather remote, outside visits are not easy to arrange and not easy for people to attend. Nevertheless, I think that proper facilities might be made available for magistrates, Ministers of the Government, and ministers of religion to visit the camp, which is in fact isolated and insulated from the normal currents of outside life.

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Questions have been put from the other side of the House concerning the so-called "operation cover-up." I fail to understand how anyone can think that the Press statement was in fact an attempt to cover up. [HON. MEMBERS: "Then what was it?"] When the C.I.D. were on the spot, when doctors were arriving and when an inquest was to take place, what possible chance could there have been to cover up? That is the biggest flight of fancy ever put forward in this House to sustain an ordinary case.
Therefore, I draw certain conclusions: first, that this was a terrible catastrophe which has shocked and disturbed all of us on both sides of this House; secondly, that there is an obvious difficulty in bringing charges; thirdly, that the policy itself is right; fourthly, that even the plan itself was right if it had been carried out; fifthly, I believe that there is need to await the findings of the disciplinary inquiry before we can carry this matter very much further.
I make one final plea. I feel that when the hon. Member for Cardiff, West and I were in Kenya we managed to create, perhaps by chance, the impression that there was a bipartisan approach to affairs in Africa in some degree. Between us I think that we were able to show that the major interests of the two parties overlapped, and that there was a coincidence of view in a large measure on colonial affairs. It may be that because of recent moves in Kenya that theme was being sustained. I hope and pray that any divisions there may be, either of opinion or of votes, in this House will not retard that impression that we can help Africa by a large measure of agreement in the House.
7.13 p.m.
Mr. James Johnson: I give way to no one in paying tribute to the fine work that is being done in Kenya by the people in the rehabilitation service. But I have never heard so much twaddle as we have had during the last hour or so from the benches opposite. Hon. Members opposite want to make us believe that these camps are almost welfare homes. We know that there were 67,000 detainees at one time half of which should never have been inside, for they were picked up in collective swoops. The hard core is now down to 1,000.
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Why has the Colonial Secretary spent 80 per cent. of his time giving a potted history for the past six or seven years. It has been a waste of time. I wish that he had addressed himself to the charge levelled at him by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) in opening the debate. That is the subject of the debate today. I wish that the Colonial Secretary had addressed himself to the massacre of 11 Africans at Hola and not to past history way back to 1950.
If the Colonial Secretary wants to go back to past history, I was there in 1954, and if he wants to quote Colonel Young, the Police Commissioner, he had better be careful, because he knows as well as I do that Colonel Young left long before his two years' job was up, and also why he could not stay his full time in Kenya.
The other twaddle that I have listened to is this idea that we can have hard core detainees and that they can be taken to a ditch and asked to work, when at the same time hon. Members opposite are saying that these people are physically and mentally twisted or warped by five, six or seven years in a Mau Mau gang. They expect them to work in a co-operative fashion, without using force. It is nonsense to say that it is possible to take people to a ditch with no tools and expect them to work there. What do hon. Members opposite think they are saying to hon. Members on this side of the House when they know quite well that these people have been forced to work, that there have been beatings and that eleven people have lost their lives?
I do not want to say very much about Sullivan or Coutts. Sullivan is being blamed for working a plan about which he knew nothing. When he asked the "higher-ups" to tell him he was never given the details, and hence when this poor man did this awful job with the detainees he was blamed.
I was in Nairobi only a few weeks ago talking to people above the level of Mr. Sullivan. What appals me as a Member of this House when I spoke to such people in Kenya is that I found there was not the shock or revulsion felt that there is in this country about the Cowan Plan and its working—no, it is the mechanics that are wrong. The plan

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was quite, good—merely badly applied. What shocks me is this attitude of mind; almost the emphasis which is being placed on an incident like this. It is said that it is Sullivan who is stupid; Sullivan who does not do his job; not that he has been placed in an impossible position. It is said that Sullivan, instead of having 85 should have had five squads of 17.
When hon. Members opposite are talking about people in the United Kingdom who are in a similar position physically and mentally and thus needing special care, they do not talk about them as people who should be forced to go and dig ditches but rather that they should be put in mental institutions and properly cared for. When 250 hard core Mau Man are left in the physical and mental state they are in, the party opposite say that they are anti-social and cannot go back to their own villages in Kikuyuland. The obvious course is surely not to attempt to make them work and, when they will not work, to beat them, but to put them in special institutions for people in that condition, as we do in the United Kingdom.
I want to say this about Mr. Goudie. He has penned for us a very courageous document. I also want to say to the Minister that Mr. Goudie is, of course, an arm of the executive. He is a member of the Kenya Government Service and, therefore, whether we like it or not, he is disciplined, if only self-disciplined, in his findings. If he comes over here, I hope that he will not be kept incommunicado but will be able to come to the House, perhaps under the auspices of C.P.A., to meet Members of this House and talk to us about what he himself knows and what he has actually seen, being the coroner in this case.
The more I study the White Paper the more I think it is a typical example of Kenya politics. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) was, I think, correct when she used the term "operation cover-up". All along the line one sees this cover-up. I would ask the Minister whether he is satisfied that the Minister of Security, Mr. Cusack, had his finger on the pulse of his Department. He is the man, amongst all others—not people like Mr. Sullivan at the bottom end of the scale—who should be asked questions by the Colonial Secretary. Here is Mr. Sullivan
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asking for help, asking for advice which he does not get; and Mr. Cusack should know, as, of course, the Commissioner of Prisons knows, what is happening in Hola.
If we ask for the Minister of Security to resign because of Hola, as we would do in the United Kingdom—for example, when the Minister of Agriculture here resigned because of Crichel Down—what shall we be told? We shall be told that he is resigning. I understand that he is finishing his service. This is most convenient, because the Governor of Kenya knew when this stink blew up some weeks ago that the Minister in charge was leaving his Department. I only hope that his successor will clear up some of the mess that will be left behind. He is by no means the same type as the Finance Minister. He has never stuck his chin out as Mr. Vasey has done to get his way. So I come to this point, that while it is his responsibility as the Minister, things have been camouflaged. To my mind, he would never have done these things or allowed them to be done off his own bat. Therefore, I want to ask this question: is the Colonial Secretary satisfied that the Ministers in Council behind Mr. Cusack are fully apprised of events in these camps? Have these Ministers paid visits? Can he please give us an account of the visits paid by the Ministers?
The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have asked for Members of the Legislative Council to go to the camps, Mr. Mboya on one side and Europeans on the other. But they have never gone. When I was there some weeks ago I begged Mr. Johnston, the Minister of African Affairs, to allow an all-party team to go; if afraid of an African Member going alone speaking Kikuyu, why not let an Asian, European and African team go to Hola and other camps? This was asked many weeks ago; we were told that this would be considered, but nothing has happened.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, I am sure that if changes that have been asked for in this House from these benches had been granted these things would have been cleared up and we would not be facing this inquest upon the awful business at Hola. I also say this to the Minister, that Hola is a god-forsaken place, with

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temperatures well over 120 degrees. I submit that the officials stay there too long. It has often been a jibe—I believe a rather unkind one—that in Kenya some of the settlers at 5,000 feet, 6,000 feet or 7,000 feet sometimes behave as they would not behave at sea level, at Mombasa. I am convinced that there are officials at Hola who are not quite as happy, mentally and physically, as they should be. Therefore, I suggest more frequent leaves, better conditions of housing and amenities for the European staff who have the difficult and awkward job of looking after the hard core detainees.
I would also like to know whether the Hola case was discussed by the Council of Ministers. Did the Minister of Security put this before his colleagues and discuss it? If what I am told is the case, it was not brought before the Council of Ministers, and I find that most disturbing. I hope the Minister will answer some of the following questions. I am told that the first inkling of events in Nairobi was the notice in the Press about bad water. If the Colonial Secretary had his finger on the pulse of the Colony, as he should have, he also would be able to keep in touch with these things. I submit that what has happened in Hola has been done without the knowledge of the Nairobi Ministers or the Secretary of State for the Colonies. They did not know what was happening, and they should have known, because it is their job.
My next question is about the Cowan Plan. Was that plan put up by Mr. Cusack to his colleagues? If I can have the attention of the Colonial Secretary for one moment, I want to ask a question which I hope he will answer. Did the Minister know of the Cowan Plan? Was it put to him, was it vetted by him and sent back to Kenya to be sent down the line by the Minister of Security? If so, he himself bears quite a large share of the responsibility for that outrageous plan being foisted upon a commandant like Mr. Sullivan. It was unworkable and most unfair to tell subordinates that they had to get hard core detainees to work in this way. We all know that this could not be done without force. When I was there some weeks ago I met no one in the Colony who thought it was sensible to make the plan work. The
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hard core people will not co-operate and in the final analysis, if they will not do so, how can they be made to do the job? There is only one answer, which is that they were beaten. So I ask the Minister this question: did he accept the Cowan Plan, did he underline it, did he support it and did he tell the Kenya Minister to go ahead in this way?
I am convinced that some of the lower officials have been pressurised and have not told all that they could have told at the hearing. I am talking now of what Mr. Goudie said. He said the lying was quite abominable. One is shocked and shaken by the way in which people have behaved in the Colony. It is an appalling chapter. I said some weeks ago that this was the biggest blot upon our colonial history that I have known. I listened to the speech of the Minister. He used plenty of whitewash but did not attempt to answer the opening case put from this side of the House. He must do this some time because our good name is affected in Africa, the Middle East and all over Asia. The right hon. Gentleman may sit there and appear to be complacent, but I am sure he has a conscience and must think of the wider implications of the Hola massacre.
If the right hon. Gentleman looks at this affair as I look at it, and attempts to find out the facts of the case, he will see in the distance a nebulous spider's web. I defy any hon. Member of this House to go out there and find out what is happening behind the scenes. There is only one way to do so and that is for the Government to appoint an independent commission of inquiry. I would like an all-party commission, like the one to which I had the honour to belong in 1954. Perhaps we were too independent then. Perhaps we said too much. Even the hon. Gentleman the Member for Colchester (Mr. Alport) told the Europeans in Kenya that it was time the White Highlands were opened for Africans to farm. But this present Government does not think it the right thing to do to send an all-party team from this House.
The only way to clear this Government, the only way to clear the Kenya Government of any suspicion of backing out or backing down on these charges, is to have an independent commission of inquiry go out there and investigate the matter. There is no other way in which

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this House, this Government and the Minister can clear this nation of the charges that are flying about at the moment.
7.28 p.m.
Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker: I shall not take up much of the time of the House because, unlike many hon. Members on both sides, it is a long time since I was in Kenya and I have not had the opportunity of following as closely as they have the events of the past few years. Like all hon. Members, however, I feel deeply disturbed about this occurrence—this "shocking and tragic occurrence" as it is described in Cmnd. 778. I do not want to say anything this evening that will in any way seek to excuse this disaster, but I want to try to bring out one or two background points which, perhaps, have not been made sufficiently clear, although, after what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks, I think that this has now been put in better perspective.
I want, briefly, to illustrate, from my own past experience in Africa, how one's best intentions can lead, by relatively minor misunderstandings and mistakes, to disaster. I do not think it is right to say very much at this point about the case mentioned on page 31 of the White Paper. Two individuals are being charged in a case which is sub judice. I have sympathy with them, but perhaps I ought not to express my view of the matter now. I am sure that the aim of every hon. Member is, first, to find out exactly what happened. It may be that the inquiry will add something more to the admirable summary by Mr. Goudie in the White Paper, but, far more important, we must ensure that such a disaster does not happen again, if it is humanly possible to avoid it.
Just before the war I had an experience to which the three points mentioned in paragraph 12 of the White Paper could be applied. The summary says:
"… there were defects, ambiguities and omissions in the Cowan Plan, the Plan was not executed as it had been intended and there was a grave lack of European supervision. …"
I will not take up the time of the House by giving details of my experience, but I was responsible for keeping a frontier district clear of armed incursions from Abyssinia by means of police
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patrols, and on one occasion a patrol went out and took certain actions which exceeded my instructions about the use of force, and death occurred. It was only one death, but it was still a death. The reasons were the same as those given in the summary. By instructions were insufficiently precise, although I had always believed in them. The circumstances changed and the situation became more difficult to cope with than the patrol had expected. Thirdly, there was a lack of senior rather than of European supervision.
Although at Hola and in Kenya the circumstances are such that European supervision is required, throughout Africa there are now many people who have been trained and are just as capable as most of us to take charge on occasions such as this, always provided that there is a sufficient number of them. From my researches it seems to me that the individual in charge at the moment of this disaster was a sergeant-major. Although I have a high regard for sergeant-majors, it would seem that one was insufficient in the circumstances—and I believe there was only one.
I have no detailed knowledge of Mau Mau, but I do not think the White Paper brings out sufficiently the effect of the Mau Mau hard core upon the Askaris and warders. On page 5 the examining magistrate says:
"The killings, atrocities, and mutilations committed by Mau Mau is an historical fact of which I take judicial notice."
Very few of us in the United Kingdom recall in any detail the obscenities and bestialities of Mau Mau which were shown up in the confidential White Paper issued by the Government in 1954. In the ten years during which I had the privilege and pleasure of serving in Africa I never met any individual, let alone any group, who could have sunk to such depths, and it is beyond my comprehension how this could have happened. It has always seemed to me that this was a matter for priests and psychiatrists rather than politicians. I believe that this is one of the aspects of the rehabilitation programme which has been successful.
I am not arguing that this hard core of detainees consisted of bad men who needed special punishment, but I would stress that the background against which the Askaris and local warder staff were

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carrying out their duties was one in which they would necessarily be very much on edge, although the examining magistrate accepts that, prior to 3rd March, 1959, not a single blow had been struck by warders, nor had there been any form of ill-treatment.
We therefore come to 3rd March, by which date tension was clearly great. Then, owing to misunderstandings and mistakes, the circumstances of which are still not clear, the small plan became a large one. On page 8, dealing with the implementation of the plan, the White Paper says:
"The operation from being a comparatively minor one was therefore immediately converted into a major one of great magnitude."
This was because the party was taken out altogether instead of group by group. There was insufficient supervision. From then on it is difficult to see what happened first, although I have read the documents several times. The magistrate accepts that force was used to prevent an attempt to escape, and he maintains that it was used legally, and greater force was used illegally to make the men work, but which came first is not clear to me. In the ensuing inquiry it may perhaps be made clear.
But there is no argument that an excess of illegal force was used and that it resulted in disaster. Given adequate supervision and smaller groups of detainees, together with less tension in the background, the disaster would not have occurred.
Mr. J. Johnson: Does the hon. Member honestly think that if the party had consisted only of twenty detainees and those twenty had not wished to dig a ditch they would not have been forced to do so by beating?
Mr. Dodds-Parker: I am not supporting the illegal use of force, but if the point had been put to a group of twenty detainees in the compound, at the start, the situation would not have got out of hand as it did when they were all taken out of camp together, without adequate supervision. According to the documents there were at least four Europeans in the camp when the party was taken out. If the proposal had been put to a small group of detainees any refusal could have been dealt with, and in such
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circumstances I do not believe that the situation would have got out of hand.
But we are more interested in the question of how we are to prevent this happening again. I am certain that the authorities in Kenya, with the support of my right hon. Friend, will ensure that all future orders are clear, precise and detailed, and that any future action will be carried out according to the scale of supervision available at the time.
I would like to say a brief word about the position of my right hon. Friend. We are now passing through a very difficult period, when responsibility is passing—[Laughter.] This is a serious argument. For thirty years or more, commencing before the war, we have been going through a process of transferring power from this country to territories overseas. Today, in theory, the Secretary of State is 100 per cent. responsible, constitutionally, whereas tomorrow, when a territory is independent, he will have no responsibility. In practice it is not as clear-cut as that. Much power has already been transferred. In certain territories the date of full independence is already known. In spite of that, however, my right hon. Friend still has a residual and ultimate responsibility.
Very often local representatives in these territories resent what they regard as undue interference from this country. This is all part of the intensely complicated task of the Secretary of State. I have had a few years of experience in these matters, and I have come to the conclusion that many elected representatives overseas are capable of shouldering these burdens. They are men of all races, with a great knowledge of these problems and great humanity, and they are doing their utmost to see that local difficulties are ironed out. Nevertheless, I have considerable sympathy with my right hon. Friend in view of the difficult period in which he holds his high office and in which this somewhat anomalous situation exists.
I wish to stress the point about the success of the policy of rehabilitation which my right hon. Friend brought out in full detail in the first part of his speech. Even if tens of thousands, or half of these people were wrongly arrested, there must be 30,000 or 40,000 individuals who have returned to a full life after this extraordinary experience

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of Mau Mau, and who are, we believe, now living a normal life in Kenya. We hope that they are playing a part in the development of that great country.
I hope that from this debate we shall obtain some constructive suggestions. Suggestions have been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House which I am sure will be most carefully considered by my right hon. Friend. I hope that we shall not use this occasion to voice negative criticisms of a disaster which we all deplore, but, by more frequent changes in staff and by closer interest and co-operation, ensure that so far as is humanly possible such a thing will be prevented from happening again.
7.41 p.m.
Mr. Leslie Hale: We all hope that Kenya is looking forward to a much more suitable future. None of us has any particular desire to recriminate too much about the past, but I think that in the circumstances some of the indiscriminate praise voiced by hon. Members opposite has been a little unfortunate. The right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary pleaded, "Not guilty," and reserved his defence. I do not blame him. Had I been advising him, that is what I should have advised him to do, but I should have advised him to do it in 60 seconds and not in 60 minutes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) paid a deserved tribute to the colonial civil servant to which I subscribe most heartily, the colonial civil servant who is doing a magnificent job and is hampered greatly in his efforts by the primitive religious taboos of the African people and by the primitive politics of the wealthy Europeans—and he will tell you so. My hon. Friend is a sincere man, and was 99 per cent. sincere today. In a moment I will tell him of the one point on which I quarrel with him. At this moment, when we are talking about the magnificent efforts to save the souls of 70,000 people who have been in detention camps, untried, for years—in a desperate situation, I grant, in a situation in which 26 Europeans lost their lives and 2,000 Africans were hanged—I say to my hon. Friend, for whom I have the deepest respect and affection, and speaking as one who has doubts about most things, that I wonder whether
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he does believe that these people are the sons of God, these gentle, humble, uneducated Africans.
I know only one of them, who was not at Hola but at Gakuro. I met him in Paris, at the United Nations Organisation, and I entertained him at my house. I regard him as one of the noblest and most decent men I have ever met. If I saw fifteen affidavits by employees of the Kenya Government saying that he was subversive, I say frankly that I should not believe them; although I know that conditions can arise which break many good men—and there have been such conditions.
The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker) concluded by saying something which I think—because of the respect I have for him—he would feel after further contemplation was slightly dishonest. He said that prisoners have said that there were no beatings-up before 3rd March. Are these men habitual liars or not? The whole of the debate from the other side has been conducted on the basis that we cannot trust a word a prisoner says. The whole of the appeal from the other side has been to reject every statement made by a detainee because he is what is called "hard-core Mau Mau"—untried, un-convicted, but hard-core Mau Mau. That is just what Hitler said about the Jews whom he threw into the gas chambers without trial.
We really cannot say that we only believe these men when they say something which it is very much to their advantage to say. Has the hon. Member read the details of the inquest? Let me remind him that African witness after African witness did not say, "I am not going to say anything". What they said was, "Mr. Coroner, sir, Mr. Goudie, sir, if I tell the truth, are you going to send me back to the same prison to be looked after by these same warders?" They said, "Mr. Coroner, sir, I am afraid to tell the truth if I am going to be sent back under the same guard". And, "Mr. Coroner, sir, would not you let me have the benefit of legal representation at least, because this is a matter which involves my future and my safety?"
Man after man said that. I make no criticism of the coroner. Indeed, I would say—because I think it is fair

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that it should be put in its proper perspective—that he was a Resident Magistrate with the power of a coroner and virtually holding an inquest. I know that this House does not like legal points, but I think this is important. There is a considerable school of thought which thinks that coroners should say as little as possible. There is considerable authority for the view that coroners should never commit a man for trial unless the circumstances overwhelmingly warrant it. I do not quarrel with anything that Mr Goudie did; but I quarrel with the gross misrepresentation of what Mr. Goudie really said which is contained by implication in the White Paper and in speeches made today.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) made a speech which was very pleasant to listen to by the school of "Eric, or Little by Little". Has he read the evidence of Mr. Ezekiel at the inquest? Whom does he believe? I put it to him as one who would not wish to suggest that he was deliberately misleading those who listened to his speech. But hon. Members will remember that, apart from the "Little Lord Fauntleroy" part of putting everything gently, there was one point at which the hon. Member's voice rose with emotion. He said, "I do not believe, and cannot believe, that these people deliberately planned to conceal these murders".
Does he really believe that? Does he think that three experienced investigators, sent to investigate on the direct orders of the Governor of Kenya, who were told, "Come back at once with a report", and that Press announcements were awaiting on their report, went to Kenya and saw the people in hospital—incidentally, we are not even told, on the evidence I have seen, that they saw those people, but one would assume that they did if they wanted to get at the truth. Almost every one of those people was extensively bruised. According to the coroner's evidence, most of them were bruised on the right arm, bruised on the right leg, bruised on the left arm, bruised on the left leg—nearly all of them. There was overwhelming evidence of systematic beating. Some of them were bruised on the head and chest, but possibly that was not intended. There
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were men with lines of bruises along their backs, as if those bruises had been applied quite systematically.
If the investigators did not find that out, did they look at the eleven corpses with fractured skulls, with haemorrhage of the eyes, with areas of bruising six inches by two inches on the forehead, all of which the coroner found as a fact and all of which the pathologist found and detailed—broken legs, broken patellas, fractured skulls, and so on? Did the hon. Member have these facts in mind when he said that he thought these people had honestly come to the conclusion that eleven people died from drinking some water that only arrived on the scene two hours after they died, according to most of the evidence, and was brought there as a blind? Can anyone believe that? The importance of this point is to know what we can believe that comes out of Kenya.
The evidence of the Press agent at the inquest, the official Press publicity officer, was that he received a telegram saying that five men had died in the Hola Camp. Notice the figure. They were all dead by then, all eleven of them. It was given out in parts. He said, "I at once regarded this as so serious …" I want to know what he knew. I wonder whether, as publicity officer, he had been told that a special exercise was planned for that day at the Hola Camp; that it was planned from Nairobi there is no question. He said, "I regarded this as so important that before I issued a word I went to see the Governor personally. And I saw the Governor, and the Governor said 'Don't say anything'"—quite properly, I do not dispute that—"'until we have got the facts.'"
Three people were sent to get the facts. At 4 p.m. the next day they had the meeting, when three Ministers approved the publication of a statement that these men died after drinking water. Even the Colonial Secretary has said frankly that he could hardly argue in the British Parliament that the reference to drinking water was not intended to suggest that it had something to do with their deaths—men with fractured skulls, fractured patellas and with bruises on their right legs and arms and bruising all over their bodies, and with internal haemorrhage, and so on.

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Does the hon. Member for Sunderland, South still say that he thinks all this happened by chance? If he does, he has forgotten that Mr. Coutts had already admitted that some of his evidence was false. Mr. Coutts was instructed, apparently by his superior, to convey the impression about the water and to keep on mentioning water, and this was done quite well. This was not the sort of casual excuse chucked out by a man under pressure. People were sent to analyse the water. Samples were taken. There was always the chance that the water might be found to be bad. It is fair to say that the pathologist was honest about it and said that the water was in perfectly good condition.
The hon. Member says that happened all by chance or misfortune. Some other things happened by chance on that day, and it is well to remember, first of all, when we say that there had not been much beating up before 4th March, that this place only opened on 6th February, and by 13th February we come to Mr. Cowan, and Mr. Cowan was producing his plan. He went to explain it to Mr. Sullivan. It may be a perfectly fair point for Mr. Sullivan to say that he never got the document and that he asked for it. He is perfectly entitled to say, "I would not put the plan into force until I got the document."
There is the agent, Mr. Filgate, who was there, and the moment he heard about it, Mr. Filgate said, "I will not operate the Cowan Plan." Then he was sent back to Nairobi. Why did not anyone ask Mr. Filgate what he meant by that? Why has Mr. Filgate been heard of only because of a Question from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle)?
I suggest to the hon. Member for Ban-bury that priests and psychiatrists are not the sort of people to force people to work at digging a trench 8 ft. wide in a tropical land under a tropical sun, when some of those people are aged and 53 of them are seriously ill. Do not let us forget that, because these reports are hardly likely to state the case. On 15th February, Mr. Sullivan was talking about aged detainees and their sufferings and their being asthmatic, and the number unfit for work. These are the men, most of them, who are to be forced out to work. There are other strange things
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about this. Were it not for the stark tragedy of it and the harm it has done to Kenya, and to the Government and to this House, it would make a fascinating "whodunit".
Such strange things happened. There was the bugle. At 7.10 a.m. Mr. Coutts is told that the men are to be marched out, and Mr. Sullivan arrives with the riot squad. I do not know what things were like when my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West was there, but he seems to have been told some extraordinary things. I do not think he was told about Mr. Filgate. Why should the riot squad be there at 7.10 a.m. when this was the first time the party was taken out under discipline—and that discipline comes from Nairobi and is to be put into operation notwithstanding Mr. Filgate's protest? They had gone only 100 yards, according to Mr. Coutts, when he heard a wail. He said it was a coo-ee or a Mau Mau cry, and at the same moment—he used the word "simultaneously"—the bugler sounded the alarm, and the bugler was on the other side of the camp. No doubt it was a regrettable coincidence, no pre-arrangement at all.
Why were those people sitting in cars and watching from the high road at that spot to see what was going to happen at 7.10 in the morning? One of them was a police officer and another was a qualified medical man. How did it come about that by chance at this spot, selected for its extreme loneliness, spectators were arranged on the road at that hour of the morning in the precise position from which they could watch what happened? Of course, there has been an explanation by the police officer, who said he wanted a witness and went to the camp to find one. He was told they were at this spot, and rushed out and found them there.
I apologise for reverting to something I said before, but when I talked about the African witnesses I ought to have completed the story, part-creditable and part-discreditable. There again, the coroner behaved with great propriety. He made it quite clear that he did not like this situation, and if people refused to testify at an inquest he was prepared to accept their rejection, but it was clear that they wanted to testify if he could protect them from retaliatory action. He adjourned the court while Nairobi was rung up and asked, "Would you

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be prepared to find counsel for these people," and the answer was, "Well, they can have counsel at their own expense." Detainees in the Hola Camp were to put their hands in their pockets and fee counsel. Were they willing to promise that these prisoners would not go back to that camp? Surely that could have been promised. It would only have meant a transfer and, if they did not want to transfer the prisoners, they could have transferred the officers. That was refused. The People's Convention Party sent an advocate and some of the prisoners did testify. Another thing which the Attorney-General has to face is that it is no use saying we are concerned with justice for these men if we reserve the right to say that we disbelieve anything they say in any circumstances. That is the whole basis of the Manyani Camp report.
I want to refer the hon. Member for Sunderland, South to the evidence of Mr. Ezekiel, because I wonder whether he has really read it. He said he had, but probably he has misled himself, because I do not think that he would say what he did say if he had read the evidence. In saying that, I am perhaps being over-courteous. Johannes Ezekiel was one of the really independent witnesses. Let us face it—I have the greatest respect for prison warders in Britain, but it is quite clear that any judge, if he were faced with a conflict of evidence between prisoners and warders, would say, "There is, of course, a certain interest on both sides to misrepresent the state of affairs." He would deplore the fact that there was no really independent witness on whom he could rely.
But in this case there was Mr. Ezekiel, field assistant to the Ministry of Works, in charge of the irrigation scheme at Hola. He had been there for one and a half years and was quite experienced. He had a man called Anthony John Peters with him. I am not quite sure who was the senior. [HON. MEMBERS: "Peters."] Peters was the senior. Ezekiel says that he was there to take charge of the work and he had to tell the detainees what they had to do, and he did so. He did not have any trouble then. Everything was quite normal, indeed so normal that Mr. Peters went off to some other job for a few moments,
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and he answered a call of nature in the bush. It does not sound as if at that moment a terrible situation had developed. It was while he was answering the call of nature, which would not take him very long, that he heard sounds of a disturbance. He heard the alarm bugle—a good bugle, as this site is half a mile from the camp.
Not long afterwards, he said, he saw two men being dragged along the ground face downwards and four warders were pulling each man. They were about 50 feet away from him. Those of us who watch television and understand American know that in such conflicts one does not detail four of the best men to pull one man along the ground. If there is a fight going on, there is a lot more that they have to do than that. They have to be busy looking after themselves. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West saw it, but Mr. Coutts said they made an effort to escape by advancing past the men with the batons, the Askaris, but they never got near the perimeter of riflemen. These asthmatical and elderly Africans, surrounded by riflemen and with enough Askaris for four men to drag a man face downwards along the ground, it seems, would not have much possibility of escaping.
Mr. G. Thomas: From the references my hon. Friend has made to me, it seems that he did not hear aright all I was saying. I condemned conditions at Hola Camp and fully supported the demand for the inquiry. I cannot understand the references my hon. Friend has made.
Mr. Hale: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I did not think I misrepresented him, but I was worried about this attitude to God's children, hard-core detainees, men who have not been tried nor able to answer and say, "I am not guilty, I am not Mau Mau, I dislike them ". I have a profound respect for my hon. Friend, and I should not like to misrepresent a word he says. I have known him for a great number of years and have a great affection for him, but this is vital. It is what Franco could have said about our friends in Spain; in fact, he did say it, and these chaps are entitled to be heard. The hearing is important.

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Mr. Ezekiel came back from the call of nature and this is what he saw. He said he was only 50 ft. away from the men who were pulling a man face downwards along the ground, so he did not have difficulty in seeing that. He said the emergency warders marched towards the group of men, who were sitting down. He got up and saw no threatening gestures, but they seemed to be gesticulating in an argument or protest. Shortly after this, he saw the Askaris hitting down, and concluded they were hitting people on the ground. He heard cries and saw that the whole of the emergency warders were hitting people who were sitting down. The people on the ground were trying to protect themselves by putting up their hands, but the beating went on. It went on for about 10 minutes. It went on continuously, not a few blows and then a pause and then more blows. The Askaris appeared to be putting their full weight into the blows. He did not see any of the detainees fighting back or trying to hit the Askaris. The European officer, Mr. Sullivan, was just behind the warder.
This was a completely independent, Christian eye-witness employed by the Kenya Government at the Ministry of Works, who stood there and saw everything that happened, until he was sick and could not stand any more. He turned away and said he could not stand more, but would go home. He did not want to get mixed up in this, and Mr. Peters took him home. He said the European officer, Mr. Sullivan, was behind the warders and then he did not feel well and did not wish to be involved and was taken home. He said, "When I left the beating was still going on". These men were sitting on the ground being beaten with what are described as long batons—I do not know what they are—provided for the purpose. Mr. Peters said, "I got the impression that I got there at the end, but at a guess more warders than detainees were involved in the beating and all the detainees being beaten were sitting down. The impression I got was that they refused to work and the warders waded into them".
Those are the two really independent witnesses. That is the story. It is the story told to the House, and it is not challenged. The story is not challenged at all. The Colonial Secretary said, "I must not talk about these things at this
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moment from the official box. After all, these men are now dead and buried and there is no urgency." But there are still the twenty-two men with broken limbs and bruised bodies, some of them in hospital. The hon. Member for Sunder-land, South said they honestly thought it was the water, which came two hours later.
This leaves us with two or three observations yet to be made. The first is this. Time after time we have produced witnesses of impeccable respectability, some of whom went to work in these prisons in a desire to serve. They were Quakers, decent people, who did not go out there for money, but to serve humanity. They came back so shocked and disgusted that they could not stand it. Time after time they have made their statements, and hon. Members on this side of the House have said that this was the truth. We have been told, "Oh, no, we have consulted …"—the same sort of people who arranged the water story. "We have consulted these distinguished officers of the Kenya Government, men who could not be suspected for a moment of any animus." It used to be Lord Malvern who had no animus against the Africans.
It is right that we should say to the Kenya Government that we know the Governor is a very nice fellow but we never thought him a very strong Governor. It is right that we should say to the Kenya Government that we have not believed a great deal of the stuff that has been said about what has gone on for fifty years in the history of brutality in the prisons. It can be substantiated word for word in the books we read from early days about what was happening, and about the trials which were held. It is right to say that there are some of us who still want to see all-racial co-operation in Africa and who deplore the possibility of the Europeans being driven out. I agree completely with the hon. Member for Banbury that the colonial civil servant is the salt of the earth, who has made a great contribution to racial understanding. It is right that we should say, as I was told once in Donegal by an Irishman, "It was not the British police, it was not the British soldier, it was not the British politician—ignorant though he was—it was the settler who came out

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here for money and never shared our faith, who did not know our ideals and did not understand us, who dragged us and forced us into rebellion." I would be surprised if anyone who has read Irish history does not know that.
I dislike attacking settlers. I know that there are many fine settlers among them, and many of them I would be proud to know. I know that in a small economic society of this kind economic power can dominate the whole thing, and that is why I make my final remark. At this moment, while hon. Members opposite, and some of them quite sincerely, are appealing for more understanding, at a time when we are talking about the work that can be done, at a time when we are saying how difficult these burdens are—and these settlers are a small, if wealthy, community when compared with the magnitude of the population—at a time when no health, educational or economic improvements are being made, the Kenya Government have decided to abolish estate and death duties in Kenya.
Perhaps it may be somewhat irrelevant, though it seems to me to be a test of sincerity of purpose, but it comes a bit under sharp practice to accept subsidies from this overtaxed country and to abolish death duties so as better to create an even richer and more powerful community to dominate the Africans. That is a very retrograde step. But I believe that there are a lot of decent people out there. I think the time has come when we ought to say that we have borne a good deal. In Parliament we have been the scapegoats for many of these terrible blunders. We have seen ourselves criticised throughout the world. I bear no personal malice towards the Colonial Secretary, but his slap-happy attitude to some of these catastrophes has not helped.
We have got to say, as Donald Soper had the courage to say some years ago, that if 4,000 settler families are going to hold up nationhood and the development of a race, and are going to do it deliberately, and are going to do it by chicane, subterfuge and concealing facts, they will have to go. If they are prepared to work and co-operate and do the good work they can do, I think this House would still wish to encourage them.
8.13 p.m.
Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: Like all hon. Members I deeply deplore this tragedy at Hola Camp, and all the more so perhaps because I am an ex-colonial administrator.
There are one or two points I should like to deal with. The first point was raised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) in a supplementary question on 4th June when he spoke about scurvy and the anti-scurvy pills available to the detainees. It was right for the Kenya Government to make these pills available, but it seems that there was some fault in seeing whether the detainees took them. To me this is quite understandable. When I was in New Guinea during the war the troops were supposed to take atabrin pills, but the soldiers distrusted them and thought that the pills would damage their health. Eventually the pills had to be taken under the supervision of an officer. If that can happen with well trained troops, how very easy it is for primitive Mau Mau people to refuse to take the pills. Can my hon. Friend tell me whether in future these pills are to be taken under the supervision of a European or head warder, or whether there is a chance of putting them into the food of the detainees and whether this will prove successful.
The hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) last week cast some doubt on whether the members of the tribunal would faithfully investigate the charges made. I think he was extremely wrong, and I should like to probe into the matter a little further. The chairman, Mr. Conroy, has been a barrister since 1935. He served in the Army for six years. He was Crown counsel in Northern Rhodesia; later senior labour officer in Gibraltar, and is now the Solicitor-General in Kenya. The next member, Mr. Luyt, was educated at two different universities. He served in Northern Rhodesia. He was a colonel during the war and was decorated for bravery. He later became Labour Commissioner in Kenya. The third member has been in the Colonial Service for twenty years, all of it in Kenya, where he was an African courts officer and was later connected with local government.
Does the hon. Gentleman really think that these men, who are our fellow countrymen, will not investigate the charges most thoroughly? If he does,

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the hon. Gentleman knows very little about the quality of our colonial servants or about Colonial Government affairs.
Mr. Stonehouse: I am very grateful for the opportunity of putting something straight. I am sorry the hon. Gentleman appears to have misunderstood what I said last week. I have no intention of casting any reflection on the character of the individuals concerned, but of course they have an impossible task. The wrong people are in the dock and the allegations and accusations that have been made about the administration of Hola and other detention camps must be considered in context. It is quite wrong of the authorities to appoint a small inquiry committee of this kind to investigate the actions of two individuals whereas the whole administration of the camp should be examined.
Mr. Clark Hutchison: The hon Gentleman said:
"Is the Under-Secretary aware that the composition of this tribunal gives no cause for faith that there will be a full investigation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th June, 1959; Vol. 606, c. 350.]
The composition of a committee means the members of it, and I have every faith in their ability.
Mr. Stonehouse: The composition is also the internal administration inquiry which will not be a public inquiry, which is what we have constantly asked for from this side of the House.
Mr. Clark Hutchison: I will leave the House and the public to decide.
Several hon. Members on the other side have mentioned the attempt to cover up what happened at the camp. I have studied the evidence, and it seems to me that one cannot logically come to that conclusion. I agree that when the three-man inquiry led by Mr. Campbell went to investigate and reported that the detainees had died from drinking water, it seems that they had not made a very full inquiry. There was some negligence, but there is no question of trying to cover up because the Government doctor, Dr. Roghoff, was on the job and so were the C.I.D. Members of two separate departments were there, and if there was any attempt to cover up this was a most curious way of doing it. It was bound to be known.
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I know from my own experience in colonial affairs that very weird and awkward situations occur. One gets negligence, but we really ought to be sensible and not advance ideas that people are trying to hide things. The Kenya Government have never failed to examine any matter that was brought to their notice. The problem now is this. We have rehabilitated some 77,000 men and we are left with the hard core of about 1,000 or fewer. How are we going to tackle this problem and get these people to become normal decent citizens again? If we do not do that, they will simply rot in the camps.
Here I want to make two small suggestions. Is it possible for these men to be separated into very small groups, to a much greater extent than heretofore, so that they can be worked on individually? Secondly, can we take the risk of putting some of them into groups or families who have already been rehabilitated so that they may be influenced for good?
My next point is more general. In the Colonies today a great many people are going out as experts on this and that and they have got various powers. They are paid quite well. But in all this the administrative officer is losing his status, and I should like to see that process reversed. I am certain that if the district officer or administrative officer had more power and authority and were able to co-ordinate matters much more than is possible today, this tragedy would not have occurred. When I was in Palestine I had a prison in my sub-area, and I suspected that one of the warders was beating up the prisoners. I used to go in there at odd times of the day and even at midnight. I never caught him out, but the point is that I had the power of supervision. Is that happening in Kenya? If not, will my right hon. Friend see that it does happen and that the powers, duties and status of administrative officers are restored to what they were twenty years ago?
8.23 p.m.
Mr. Roderic Bowen: I was deeply disturbed by the speech of the Colonial Secretary in moving the Amendment this afternoon, and I propose to tell the House why. If one analyses the terms of the Amendment one finds that they are in the same

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spirit as the speech made by the Colonial Secretary. In that Amendment the House is asked to say that it
"deeply regrets the recent deaths of eleven men …"
There is no doubt that all Members of the House agree with that sentiment. But in this Amendment and from the beginning to the end of the Colonial Secretary's speech there is not one single expression of regret at the circumstances in which these men met their deaths.
It is right and proper to express one's regret at their deaths, although somewhat hypocritical to do so unless one faces the fact that the circumstances in which they died are a source of horror and shame to everyone in this House. The Colonial Secretary said nothing which indicated an admission that on 3rd March, the day when these men died, they had been illegally beaten. I want to know whether there is any dispute that on the morning of 3rd March illegal violence of a brutal character was inflicted upon these 11 men and some 20 others.
If one reads the evidence and the White Paper there cannot be a shadow of doubt about it. Indeed, no one has suggested that there is. Yet the Colonial Secretary deliberately refrained—that is the only interpretation we can put upon it—from expressing his sorrow and regret that these crimes of violence were committed in the name of British supervision of the people in these camps in Kenya.
I wished to refer in particular to the evidence of Mr. Peters and Mr. Ezekiel as to what precisely happened on 3rd March. Many of the speeches have wandered far from the happenings which led to the deaths of these 11 men. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) referred to the evidence of Mr. Peters and Mr. Ezekiel, and I do not propose to cover that ground, but for one small exception. The important point is that the Resident Magistrate who carried out the inquiry went out of his way to refer to these two men as honest, sincere and reliable witnesses whose evidence was substantially true. He did not use epithets of that kind about any other witness who gave evidence before him.
The account which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West read of
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the evidence which those two independent eye-witnesses gave of what happened is an account of 11 men being brutally battered while lying on the ground and offering no resistance. Let me read one line of Mr. Peters' evidence:
"Whilst I looked it was continuous beating on persons all of whom were sitting down, apparently to make them work and not to put down any form of disturbance that I saw."
Another piece of evidence to which my hon. Friend did not refer is the evidence of Mr. Ezekiel:
"Apart from words I saw nothing happen to start the beating."
There is a vague suggestion that one warder was injured. He was never identified and the suggestion was never substantiated. Surely, it is very remarkable that in an incident of this kind where 11 men are killed and 22 men are seriously injured not one member of the warders' staff, so far as is known, received the slightest injury.
The next point which exercises my mind is that this incident having happened, the Resident Magistrate holds the inquest. What assistance does he get from the prison authorities at Hola Camp in making his inquiries into what happened on 3rd March? This is what he has got to say, on page 15 of the White Paper—and I am dealing with the prison staff:
"I have had the misfortune in this Inquiry not to be able to feel that a single witness of the Hola Prison Staff, warders, or the detainees, was making any real attempt to tell me the plain unvarnished truth."
That is to say, it was a deliberate attempt by all the members of the prison staff, without exception, to conceal the truth from the Resident Magistrate holding the inquest. Quite apart from the fact that it hampered the Resident Magistrate in his inquiries, it is a very sad reflection on the prison staff when an incident occurs involving the deaths of 11 people and he finds it impossible to get the truth from any one of the staff who give evidence before him.
Clearly there was a great deal which it was thought necessary to hide and which the prison staff were prepared to hide and, indeed, did hide. Apart from the actual beatings which led to these men's deaths, the events leading up to 3rd March and subsequent to that date are highly unsatisfactory.

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I come now to the Cowan Plan. This was not a haphazard arrangement. It was something decided upon at a very high level. We have not yet been told, and I hope that we shall be, whether the Colonial Secretary approved of the plan at any time before 3rd March. What is of much more practical importance is the question whether he approves of it now. I gather that its implementation is at present suspended. Are we to be told tonight whether, after a few months have passed, the plan is to be implemented again? With every respect to the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, I agree with his view that the whole concept of the Plan itself was illegal.
When I refer to the illegality of the Plan, I refer in particular to that part which reads:
"It is assumed that the party would obey this order… but should they refuse they would be manhandled to the site of work and forced to carry out the task."
The words are
"forced to carry out the task".
Does the Colonial Secretary stand by that now? Is it his intention that any future plan should embody a provision of that kind?
Quite apart from the impropriety of the Plan, what happened? When Mr. Sullivan took the action he did on 3rd March, he, no doubt, thought he was implementing the Cowan Plan. After all, according to the magistrate, although Mr. Sullivan had not had a copy of the Plan, Mr. Cowan had explained it to Mr. Sullivan. It is quite clear, of course, that the plan which Mr. Sullivan put into operation, which resulted in the death of the 11 men, was in many respects a departure from the Cowan Plan. It may well be that it was the departure from that plan which resulted in the severity of the results. What is quite clear is that what Mr. Sullivan did, although in many respects it departed from the Cowan Plan, did not depart from the Cowan Plan in respect of the use of violence if the men refused to work. To my mind, that is the gravamen of the matter.
If there is any doubt about this, there can be no doubt whatever that Mr. Sullivan interpreted he had been told by Mr. Cowan about the Cowan Plan as
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meaning that he should use violence if the detainees refused to work. What actually happened, as described by Mr. Peters and Mr. Ezekiel, was, according to Mr. Sullivan, in this respect in accordance with the Cowan Plan. He thought that what he was doing was in line with what Mr. Cowan had told him he should do in the given circumstances.
It is interesting to consider the reaction of the Resident Magistrate on this. In paragraph 12 of the White Paper, the words of the magistrate are:
"The situation created by this lack of supervision was seriously aggravated by the orders given by Mr. Sullivan"—
that is, the orders relating to using violence upon people who refused to work—
"regarding the use of force which, however,"—
these are the important words—
"appear to have gone no further than the orders in the Plan itself."
Thus, in the view of the magistrate, all that Mr. Sullivan was doing in this vital respect was to act in accordance with the Cowan Plan. He said that Mr. Sullivan's orders appeared
"to have gone no further than the orders in the Plan itself, that detainees would if necessary 'be manhandled to the site and forced to carry out the task'."
All I would say is that Mr. Sullivan thought that what he had been told of the plan had entitled him to do what was, in fact, done on the morning of 3rd March. The Resident Magistrate considered that that was the interpretation he was entitled to put upon it.
I gather from the Colonial Secretary that it is now suggested that that part of the Cowan Plan should not be interpreted in that way. It is somewhat remarkable that the Resident Magistrate who held the inquiry and Mr. Sullivan who was the man to implement the plan placed upon it the interpretation which, in my submission, follows the only natural and proper meaning one can attach to those words.
I hope that we shall be told whether the Government agree or not with the Resident Magistrate's description of the Cowan Plan. Speaking not of the implementation of it by Mr. Sullivan but of the plan itself, the magistrate said:
"I would say that in my opinion there were defects, ambiguities and omissions in the Cowan Plan, the Plan was not executed as it had been intended, and there was a grave lack of

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European supervision of the African warders in the main charged with the execution of the Plan."
He draws attention, in another part of his comments, to the fact that there was no reference in the plan whatever to the part which European supervision would play in its implementation.
I come now to what happened after 3rd March. I shall not explore all those matters because they have been referred to in detail by a number of speakers, but it seems to me that what happened in relation to the Press hand-out and the Campbell Commission, as it has been called, is capable of only two interpretations. Either there was a deliberate and dishonest attempt to conceal what happened on 3rd March, or a report was published in a way which was grossly negligent. The most charitable interpretation is the latter. There is material which requires—I do not put it any higher—closer investigation into the question whether it had a far more sinister significance than that.
All that has happened as a result of this plan coming into existence, of the action Mr. Sullivan took, of the tragedy of 3rd March and of the events which followed it is an internal disciplinary inquiry relating to two persons who, although they have a measure of responsibility in this matter, were certainly low down the scale in the events which led up to these happenings.
I have no doubt that the Attorney-General, in coming to the conclusion that he would not institute criminal proceedings, acted in complete good faith, but, having read the evidence of Mr. Peters and Mr. Ezekial, I would not be fair to myself if I did not say that I find it difficult to see why there was not material on which criminal proceedings could and should have been brought against a number of people. However, that is now history. The facts revealed in the evidence given before the Resident Magistrate were a source of deep shame to me when I read them. They reminded me of my experiences in relation to the Ravensbruck trials.
I hope that we shall get from the Government tonight a clear statement that they deeply regret that these illegal violences took place and, not that they deeply regret the deaths, but that they
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recognise that illegal violence of a brutal character preceded and caused the deaths of these men. The steps so far taken by the Government to ensure that a tragedy of this kind does not occur in these camps again have, in my view, proved inadequate. No one likes the task of chasing heads, but in my submission nothing like the assiduous inquiries at a high level which the circumstances demand into the events which led to the coming into being of the Cowan Plan, of it being implemented by Mr. Sullivan in the way in which it was implemented, in the action of the warders on 3rd March and of the strange and incongruous evidence which came into existence in relation to the Campbell Commission have been made.
If the good name of Britain in the administration of Kenya is to be re-established, it will be done only if the Government are prepared to have, even at this late stage, the fullest inquiry at the highest level into all aspects of this tragic happening in Kenya.
8.45 p.m.
Mr. John Hobson: In the few minutes that remain before the principal speeches are made, I should like to say a word or two about this matter, which has obviously moved the House deeply. It is plain from the attention with which the speeches from both sides have been listened to that all Members of the House feel deeply on this matter.
When I first read the accounts in the papers of the inquest, one felt pity and anger at the story then being revealed. When I read the White Paper with all the details, during the next night I suffered nightmares. No one who reads this story can consider it as being anything other than a nightmare story.
With that approach, and with the moral indignation which the fact of these men being beaten to death must arouse, goes the feeling that, if it were possible, the people who were responsible for bringing about those deaths should be prosecuted. I accept, of course, the finding of the Resident Magistrate that the deaths were brought about substantially by illegal application of violence, thought there had no doubt, in addition, been some application of violence which might have been justified.

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I also consider it essential, as has been said frequently during the debate, for our standing in Africa and for the feelings that there should be for British justice, that British justice should be seen to apply equally to the weak and to the strong, to the fanatic and to the patriot, to the detained and to the free, and even to the hard inner core of Mau Mau.
Perhaps I have been trusting, but I have always hoped—and I think it is the fact—that the Kenya Government and this Government and all those who have been responsible for the administration of law and justice in this country and in Kenya have had those high standards before them. One can think back to the occasion when a Captain Griffiths was prosecuted for maltreating Mau Mau prisoners who had been taken in open and active rebellion, a case in which the white officer was finally convicted and sentenced to a period of five years' imprisonment for the way in which he had maltreated Mau Mau rebels.
I re-emphasise, though, that however much moral indignation one may feel, whatever necessity, interest or pressure there may be that a prosecution should be brought, it is equally a principle of British justice that no one should be prosecuted merely for the sake of vindicating the law and without there being available proper evidence against him upon which he could be prosecuted. Charges ought not wrongly to be brought merely to satisfy a public feeling of indignation if the evidence is not available.
Upon that basis, three principal questions have now to be asked. First, why cannot charges be brought? Why have they not been brought? Secondly, have all proper steps been taken to obtain the evidence upon which charges might have been brought? Thirdly, is a public inquiry, as suggested by the Opposition Motion, desirable or necessary, or would it achieve any good at this stage?
Dealing with those three aspects, probably the principal reason why no proper charges can be brought against those who administered the violence to the deceased detainees is the fact that the survivors were quite unwilling to co-operate. It is true that the evidence of Mr. Peters and Mr. Ezekiel shows plainly that there was unlawful beating.
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However, it is also equally plain that that evidence does not identify by one iota anyone who was administering such illegal force.
In paragraph 5 of Part II of the White Paper, setting out the decision of the Attorney-General of Kenya, it is stated:
"The detainees had refused to co-operate in the C.I.D. investigation or to identify warder staff or even to identify the bodies of the dead detainees (which had, therefore, to be identified by fingerprints). Some were eventually persuaded to testify at the inquest but their evidence was dismissed by the Magistrate as valueless."
Therefore, one has this unhappy situation, that no one of the surviving detainees, 34 co-operative ones and 74 unco-operative ones, was willing to assist. There was no question of appearing before the magistrate, or of saying, "I will give evidence, but I will be sent somewhere else." Investigations were going on and efforts were being made by the Government to discover who was responsible, yet these detainees were not prepared to give the slightest assistance in identifying the persons who had actually administered the violence to their deceased colleagues.
The hon Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) pointed out how in the conditions in which these people live tensions arise and feelings of hatred may spring up between the warders and the people who are in their charge. It is in those circumstances that one can see very well those feelings can come about. That this outburst of violence was an outburst which should not, according to the instructions given by Mr. Sullivan, perhaps, ever have taken place is, of course, a matter which is sub judice, and the instructions which Mr. Sullivan gave to his staff we cannot and ought not at this stage to discuss.
I come to the next point, which is whether the Government of Kenya take proper steps to see that they should obtain the evidence upon which charges could be brought. I do not say anything, as time is pressing, about the Campbell investigation, except to make this comment. While it is obviously an incident which it is almost impossible to explain, it certainly did not contribute in any sense or degree to the deaths, and it is that with which the House ought principally to be concerned.

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What steps did the Kenya Government take? They sent Dr. Rogoff, the police pathologist, there. Whatever the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) may say about a cover-up plan and the bodies decomposing at an early stage, Dr. Rogoff did at any rate arrive at a sufficiently early stage to conduct a complete post-mortem.
Mr. Hale: I was really quoting Dr. Rogoff. Dr. Rogoff in all his reports said that decomposition had proceeded to such an extent that it was extremely difficult to attribute the cause of death, but when one finds fractured skulls, fractured limbs, and so on, one can assume it.
Mr. Hobson: Yes, but I do not understand the hon. Gentleman saying that Dr. Rogoff could have been got there any earlier, or that anybody took any steps to delay his arrival. He was on the scene at the earliest possible moment; he was there the next day, 4th March. The C.I.D. were there on 4th March, and in addition to that there followed the Goudie inquiry.
I regret to hear the suggestion of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) that the Goudie inquiry was just another piece of Kenya politics and that it was a part of the operation to cover up. I should have thought, whatever else hon. Members may have thought about the Goudie inquiry, that it could have been said that Mr. Goudie had discharged his very difficult and onerous task with great skill, with great personality, with great persistence, without the slightest attempt to cover up anything at all, that that is evidence on which we can rely, and that he conducted his inquiry in an open, able and comprehensive manner.
What is regrettable is that there comes out of that inquiry the picture that Mr. Goudie finds, and which the Attorney-General of Kenya has also supported, that there is not sufficient evidence upon which charges should he made in the circumstances. I do not understand the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) to have suggested that the decision of the Attorney-General was wrong. I do not understand him to have said that on the evidence we now have, charges ought to have been brought and have been suppressed.
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We are left, therefore, only with this position. Could an inquiry bring about more information than is at present available? I cannot see how it could. We know who was responsible for issuing the order. We know that the order never reached the person who was supposed to execute it. We have the whole story before us. What good an inquiry could do at this stage in bringing further evidence I cannot see. It is, therefore, for these reasons that I propose to vote in favour of the Government on this occasion and to oppose the Opposition Motion.
8.57 p.m.
Mr. James Callaghan: Since my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) opened the debate this afternoon with as massive an indictment as I have heard, we have seen even some ruffling of the mirror-like complacency of the Colonial Secretary. Certainly, if his complacency has not been ruffled, that of hon. Members on both sides of the House has been disturbed when we have heard from hon. Member after non. Member an account of what took place.
I start, because there is such a wide field to cover, by picking up what I regard as one of the minor complaints, namely, whether there was a cover-up or an attempt to cover up, or whether Mr. Campbell, when he went down to Hola Camp so quickly the morning after and returned, did his job at the Camp properly. Mr. Campbell knew when he went to the Camp that there was a prospect that force might have been used. He knew it because he had discussed with Mr. Sullivan, the Camp Commandant, on 6th January, before Mr. Sullivan took up his new post, a prospect of implementing a new plan similar to that known as the Cowan Plan. He was, therefore, well aware that it might be necessary to use force to compel people to work, but we are told that he did not even ask whether that had been so. He assumed that the story he was told by a small group of officers whom he met, that the deaths all occurred after some of these people had drunk water, was a reliable story. In his haste, he went back to the Governor's conference, presided over by the Governor, and told the story. This shows either a desire to cover up, a

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state of panic such as is almost inconceivable, or sheer and gross incompetence.
I should like to quote from one or two things that appear in the coroner's inquest. The Press relations officer came to the meeting rather late. I do not think that he was kept out. He arrived late. What did he have to say? Referring to the Governor's conference he says, in his evidence before the magistrate:
"There was a good deal of discussion"—
at the Governor's conference before the Press release—
"as to whether violence was the cause of the deaths of these men and in answer to questions the three officers who had been there gave it as their opinion that their deaths had not been caused by violence."—
Important in deciding the terms of the Press announcement.
The three officers mentioned that there had been scuffles. The impression given was that they had not been serious. If there was not a desire to cover up, or inconceivable panic or gross incompetence, why did not they at this long discussion at the Governor's conference ask Sullivan? They could have done so quite simply before they put out a Press statement. Some may say that it would have delayed the statement. They had already decided to delay the statement twenty-four hours in order to assemble the facts. There was this discussion at the Governor's conference whether there had been violence, and it did not occur to anyone to ask the man who had been most closely associated with the events of the previous morning. They could have got on to him by wireless straight away. If we look at the magistrate's evidence, on page 81, Mr. Campbell says:
"I did speak to Mr. Sullivan on wireless late on afternoon of 3rd March, 1959, 4–4.30 p.m. He told me there were four dead bodies. Mr. Sullivan made it very clear that he did not want to speak over wireless."
It seems to me quite clear that the only fair deduction that can be drawn from this is that if they had wanted to ask Sullivan his views as to whether there had been violence they could have communicated with him unless the wireless had been out of order. If they could not do that, they might have flown down very quickly—they could have set off at six in the morning and be back
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in Nairobi shortly after mid-day. They could have communicated with him if this doubt was present in their minds. I repeat the words of the Press officer:
"There was a good deal of discussion as to whether violence was the cause of the deaths. …"
Rather than go to anyone, and Mr. Campbell having failed to make the inquiries in the morning, although he knew what the plan involved, they decided to put out a statement saying that the deaths had taken place after drinking water.
Then we had the argument at the magistrate's inquiry whether "after" meant "because" or not. If that is the level of the approach, it is not surprising that ordinary people who are not concerned to cover up should be very suspicious about what took place at this Press conference.
I come to another point which has been raised several times today. The impression seems to have got around, or hon. Members opposite have been trying to create it, that all would have been well if the Cowan Plan had been adhered to; but in fact it was not, either through the instruction not being sent to Mr. Sullivan—and this was the only criticism that the Colonial Secretary accepted throughout the whole of his hour-long speech, that instructions had not been sent to Mr. Sullivan—or the instructions did not reach him, or alternatively, he had misinterpreted discussions which he had had previously with Cowan and on an earlier occasion with Campbell, and Lewis, the Commissioner of Prisons.
Mr. Cowan's credit is called into question here. I refer again to the evidence given at the magistrate's inquiry. This is what Mr. Cowan said about his own plan on page 102:
"If batons were used to make them work it would be in accordance with the literal construction of the wording of the plan but it would he contrary to Prison Standing Orders."
Mr. Cowan clearly contemplated that the plan he himself had made would violate the law of the land as it stood, but nevertheless, if it were carried out, it would be in accordance with his directive. Can the Colonial Secretary begin to understand why we say that it is not only the tiny fish who are involved here and that there are some

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bigger people whose credit is involved in this inquiry?
The magistrate, in construing the Cowan Plan, said in his findings:
"I find that on the plain wording of this subsection"—
that is the subsection of the written plan as conceived by Cowan, not the way in which it was executed—
"that the words 'manhandled … and forced to carry out the task' any reasonable person would construe those words alone as a carte blanche to use whatever force might prove necessary to ensure the performance of the task."
In other words, the plan itself, as the coroner interpreted it, so far as I can see on a literal reading of the words, was illegal. No matter what happened at the time of its execution, the plan itself was illegal. That, at any rate, is my conclusion about it.
I am sure we shall hear from the Attorney-General a skilfully constructed argument showing why it might possibly be legal in certain circumstances, but this is exactly the kind of thing where there is ambiguity. The magistrate takes one view, that it gave carte blanche for the use of force. The Government, no doubt, will take another point of view. This is exactly the kind of point that a public inquiry, had the Colonial Secretary set one up, could have resolved, but he failed to do it.
Another reason why we believe that more people are involved in this and their actions should be investigated is the other finding of the magistrate on page 17 of the White Paper, where he said:
"… in my opinion there were defects, ambiguities and omissions in the Cowan Plan …"
As the result of the execution of that plan, in which there were defects, ambiguities and omissions, eleven men have lost their lives, and the only people whose conduct is being inquired into are the two men who executed the orders they were given—the Camp Commandant and his deputy. None of the people who authorised the plan, none of the people who looked at it to see whether it had any defects, none of the people who should have examined it to see what were its omissions or ambiguities—none of them is to have his actions inquired into, not one.
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It is for this reason that the Opposition feels—and far wider circles than the Opposition feel—that the Government have neglected their duty and have let down Britain by failing to take all the action that would have been necessary and should have been taken in these circumstances. I was astonished to hear the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) giving us the example of the Israelis. I agree that they have done wonderful work in rehabilitation, but he sent my mind chasing back to what happened at the height of the Arab-Israeli War in 1956, when forty-three Arab peasants were wantonly murdered in the heat of the campaign at Kafr Kassim.
When the facts became known in Israel, the Prime Minister set up a commission of inquiry. As a result of the findings of that commission several officers and men in the Israeli Army were tried on a charge of murder. Last week the presiding judge sentenced the officer in command of the battalion concerned to seventeen years' imprisonment, another officer and a corporal to fifteen years each and five privates to seven years each. He said that both the religious and the civil laws of Israel emphasised the sanctity of human life and that this principle was binding also on the Army.
What the Government have done is to take disciplinary action—at least it is proposed to take disciplinary action—the highest punishment under which can be dismissal from the Service, against the two minor figures in this chain of events. I hold the view very strongly, echoing what my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) has said, that if the Government had not resisted our demands for an inquiry on 24th February these eleven men would be alive today. I will tell the Colonial Secretary why I believe this to be true.
It so happens that Mr. Cowan visited the prison camp on 7th February to prepare and discuss his plan. He submitted seven copies of it to the Government on 11th February. On 12th February the question of a debate on a Motion standing in the name of 200 Members, calling for an inquiry into the administration of the prison camps in Kenya, was raised in this House. On 12th February, too, our own Prime

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Minister intimated that in his view this would be a very proper subject for a Supply Day. That was very soon made known in Kenya, and three days afterwards the plan which had been discussed and committed to paper, and was being examined, produced a signal to Mr. Sullivan, contained in the magistrate's documents, saying:
"Suspend operations until further notice."
I believe that that suspension was ordered because there was a possibility of an inquiry into the conditions in the camps in Kenya.
I am reinforced in that view, because on 24th February we had a debate in which we pressed for this inquiry, to which the Under-Secretary replied for the Government. He said:
"I submit that our system is sound, and in practice is proving that it is reliable … an inquiry could only shake public confidence in the Government of Kenya, and weaken the morale of the prison service. We cannot advise the House to accept the Motion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th February, 1959; Vol. 600, c. 1074.]
The Government and their supporters voted down the Motion for an inquiry on that night. The next day a signal went from Nairobi to Mr. Sullivan: "Proceed with your plan," and on 3rd March the men were dead. If the Government had then accepted our demand for an inquiry I very much doubt whether the Cowan Plan would ever have been implemented. Hon. Members opposite trooped into the Lobbies on that occasion and cheerfully voted down our Motion for an inquiry, which referred to the institution of
"an independent inquiry into the conditions and administration of prisons and detention camps …"
They voted that down on 24th February, and they will troop cheerfully into the Lobby again tonight behind the Colonial Secretary to vote for the inquiry which he is now setting up. Eleven men had to be killed before the Government agreed to set up an inquiry.
Do not they understand why we get so angry about this situation? We have been pressing from time to time for this inquiry, and every time we have been rebuffed. The Colonial Secretary has rebuffed all our pressure, and his rebuffs have had their effect at least upon some of us. We felt that he could not possibly rise at that Dispatch Box time after time and say, broadly, that what
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we were saying was a tissue of lies and that we had been deceived, unless he knew what he was saying. But if we had thought about it we would have known we were right. He has never dared to publish the letter which Colonel Young wrote to him on his resignation. I challenge him to do it tonight. He has never dared to publish the report that Colonel Young wrote before he resigned. He said that these matters were all taken up in the House. Indeed, they were taken up in the House, but we had the same sort of evasive replies then as we have been getting ever since.
This attitude has been coupled with smears against all my right hon. and hon. Friends who dared to raise these matters. The Colonial Secretary is not alone in this. Other hon. Members opposite do it. There is a whole row on the Government Front Bench who do it. I have several cuttings here, with phrases such as, "Britain always wrong", "We would have given in", and which say that we are "always smearing the country", and "denigrating our own people." Whenever there is political trouble in the Colonies there is always a Socialist politician behind it! This is the sort of thing that they will go on saying. And then they have the hyprocrisy to call for a bipartisan policy in colonial matters. If there can be a bipartisan policy certain principles have to be established. One is that reasons of State should not triumph over law and justice in the Colonies, and another is that the major obstacle to a bipartisan policy should remove himself from the scene.
Hon. Members opposite know this. That is why they have used such words today as "tragedy" and "disgust", and it is why the hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. John Hobson) said that it was a nightmare to him. They have known as well as we have that these things have been going on. They have known it in their hearts. There have been a sufficient number of cases to demonstrate that what we have been saying is not all lies and smears of the Administration.
Why have they defended this situation for so long? They are not inhumane men. It is because they believe that reasons of State demand that the truth should not be told. If that were not so there would be no hesitation in publishing the report of Colonel Young. It is

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because the Colonial Secretary has known that these things have been going on and because every hon. Member who has taken an interest in them knows that this series of incidents occurred, that hon. Members opposite have had to defend themselves by denying the truth of the matter. They believe that reasons of State are more important. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] Yes, The object of rehabilitation and of making sure that Kenya gets back on its feet politically is more important to them than doing justice to these men, miserable men though they be. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] If that is nonsense I do not know why hon. Members have been denying for so long that this series of events took place.
When they advance these reasons and use them to justify to themselves the fact that no action has been taken, and when the Government of Kenya use this argument to justify suppressing police reports about inhumane action and about atrocities—reports which compelled worthy and decent police officers to resign in disgust—they are putting themselves upon the same basis as any totalitarian State. To them the end justifies the means. The political welfare of Kenya justifies injustice to the men in the detention camps. That is their argument.
Hon. Members opposite who have been silently conniving at what has been taking place over these years are no better than any totalitarian. It comes to them as it comes to a Communist or—if it appeals to the Colonial Secretary more—to a Fascist. [Interruption.] Oh, yes—he is proud of it. His defence of General Franco was one of the classics of pre-war days. Surely he is not going to turn on his old friends now? [Interruption.] Hon. Members opposite can shout me down but they will not shout down the mute witness of those eleven men.
What is our duty in these circumstances, where reasons of State conflict with the administration of justice? I submit that the Commonwealth, as we know it, is changing rapidly. In matters of defence it is much more loosely knit together than ever it was before. In matters of trade the Common Market is beginning to supersede it and make approaches to the individual countries of
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the Commonwealth. Loyalty to the Throne is not the thing that binds us together. Is it Parliamentary institutions? It is not even that. If there is one thing which the Commonwealth can offer the world, and which the world looks to it to offer, it is fair, humane, civilised conduct. It is tolerance; it is justice; it is the belief that wherever British institutions prevail there will be fair play as between man and man.
That is the way in which the Commonwealth will maintain its influence in the second half of the twentieth century. That is why the Conservatives were wrong over Suez, Cyprus and Nyasaland. They are mistaking power for influence and trying to use it in the wrong way.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) has given me a quotation which I should like to read to the House. H. N. Brailsford once wrote that
"the civilisation of a country is not judged (on first-class issues) on great matters involving war and peace but on how we behave on second-class issues; how we behave to those who cannot hit back; how we consider the status of women; the fate of the deprived children or even the care of pit ponies."
If he were alive today I am sure that he would have added, "how we look upon people with coloured skins in a far-away gaol."
The Colonial Secretary thinks that I have run out, but there is something more that I want to say. I want to touch upon the question of Ministerial responsibility. Whatever the constitutional position may be the Minister is the only person to whom we can look in this House and hold accountable for what happens under his administration. It is Parliament's duty to set strict standards of good government and hold responsible to the House those Ministers charged with responsibility. There was a Minister who had considerable difficulties about some administrative actions taken on his behalf, about which he knew nothing. This is what Sir Thomas Dugdale—as he then was—said on 20th July, 1954:
"… it would be deplorable if there were any departure from the recognised constitutional position. I, as Minister, must accept full responsibility to Parliament for any mistakes and inefficiency of officials in my Department, just as, when officials bring off any successes on my behalf, I take full credit for them."
The Colonial Secretary has made no attempt to answer the questions put to

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him by my right hon. Friend. He has not told us whether he approved the plan, or whether he had any knowledge of it. He has not said whether he upholds the officials who are responsible for what was undoubtedly an illegal plan. He has answered none of these questions. I leave him with what Sir Thomas Dug-dale said in similar circumstances:
"I have, as Minister responsible during this period, tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister, who is submitting it to the Queen."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th July, 1954; Vol. 530, c. 1194.]
I would point out to the Colonial Secretary that in doing that Sir Thomas Dug-dale not only enshrined the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility but maintained his own self-respect—and kept the respect of the House.
9.24 p.m.
The Attorney-General (Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller): That we should have a debate on the tragic—I use that word deliberately—events at Hola on 3rd March is right and proper, and, indeed, I would say inevitable. But to make these events the subject of a censure Motion is quite a different thing, and I shall seek to show that no valid grounds exist either for censuring Her Majesty's Government or the Government of Kenya.
May I start by making one thing clear beyond all shadow of doubt? We regard the deaths of eleven Mau Mau detainees as a very serious matter indeed. Let there be no doubt about that. The inquiring magistrate found that there had been
"a certain amount of beating with batons to prevent attempted escape, personal attack, or outbreaks of violence."
He found that
"there was a greater degree of beating to compel detainees to work or punish them for not working."
He held that the use of batons to prevent attempts to escape was justified, but that beating to compel detainees to work, or to punish them for not working, was "entirely unjustified and illegal." The Government and the Kenya Government entirely accept the magistrate's conclusions, let there be no misunderstanding about that—[Interruption.] I am going on to cover the whole field if hon. Members will allow me to do so.
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It is clear from the magistrate's report that he reached the conclusion that the use of batons on the road on the way to the work site was justified and that he also reached the conclusion, on the evidence that he heard, which is recorded and to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, and which, no doubt, the magistrate considered very carefully indeed, that some of the use of batons at the work site was justified though the greater degree of beating was entirely unjustified and illegal.
In the light of those facts and those conclusions, four questions have to be considered and all the questions which have been raised in this debate, I believe, come under one or other of these four heads. The first is, why has there been no prosecution in respect of acts which the magistrate found and which we accept were illegal? The second is, if no criminal prosecutions are possible is appropriate action being taken against those—and all those—who may be in any degree blameworthy for the use of illegal force? The third is, why did these events ever happen? The fourth is, are sufficient steps being taken to prevent any repetition of the use of illegal force?
It is to those four questions that I am going to address myself and which I hope to answer. I must admit that after the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) had spoken and said that he was not concerned to criticise the decision of the Attorney-General for Kenya about prosecutions, I thought it might not be necessary for me to deal with the first question, but the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) asked whether justice is to be done to black and white alike in Kenya? She went on to say that she was not prepared to leave in the hands of the Attorney-General or of the Governor of Kenya the preservation of justice.
Murder is a foul and terrible crime and the colour of a murdered person's skin does not reduce its gravity. It is a terrible thing that as a result of the events of 3rd March eleven detainees met their death. It would seem, I am certain, that some, if not all, of them did so as a result of illegal blows, but as some of the violence used by the warders was justified it was not and is not possible to establish whether any particular

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injury was the result of any particular blow. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I ask the House to listen to me on this because one cannot institute prosecutions on mere suspicion. It really is not right to do so.
Hon. Members can read for themselves in the coroner's report that it is not possible to establish that any particular injury was the result of an illegal blow, that any particular death was due to illegal force, or that any particular person struck an illegal blow. That is the finding of this magistrate whose conduct of this inquiry has been praised on all sides.
Mr. Hale: In prosecuting Dr. Adams, did the right hon. and learned Gentleman have to establish which poison was administered at which hour, and on which day, and in what circumstances? Or is it the rule of English law that the jury can draw an inference of killing from the circumstances of the evidence?
The Attorney-General: That intervention seems to be entirely irrelevant to this debate. The judge ruled that there was a prima facie case.
Mrs. Castle Mrs. Castle rose—
The Attorney-General: I have a lot to say in answer to these matters, and I want to answer as many of the points put to me as I can. If the hon. Lady and other hon. Members will allow me to finish this part of my speech, perhaps some of the questions will not prove to be necessary. I should like to be allowed to make my own speech, and if I have not answered the hon. Lady before I get to the next part of my speech, I will give way.
If the inquiry magistrate had formed the opinion that the commission of an offence by some person or persons had been disclosed, it would have been his duty to issue a summons or warrant for his or their arrest—a little different perhaps from some of our procedure. He refused to put the criminal law in motion for the reasons that he gave.
As he said, he came to the conclusion that the evidence before him did not disclose the commission of an offence by any known person, or persons, and that the evidence did not prove beyond reasonable doubt an offence by a person or persons unknown, though he later
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quite clearly said that assaults of varying degrees must have been committed in the course of unlawful beatings, but it was impossible to say on whom, or by whom, specific assaults were committed.
Reference has been made to the evidence of Mr. Ezekiel and Mr. Peters. It is significant that, although they saw something of what happened, they were unable to identify anyone as participating in the striking of the blows. I do not suppose that anyone who has read the report and the record of the evidence at the inquiry could fail to reach the conclusion that there was a most thorough investigation of the events of the 3rd March by the magistrate, following on a C.I.D. investigation. The report shows not only the competence and independence of the magistrate, but also that there was no reluctance on his part to criticise where he felt criticism was due.
One must bear that in mind in assessing his conclusion that in this case the criminal law could not be invoked. The Attorney-General of Kenya also considered the question and reached the same conclusion. Responsibility for that conclusion rests with him and with him alone. It may not weigh with many hon. Members, but, after the Attorney-General of Kenya had reached his decision, I, too, considered the question. I read through this volume of evidence more than once, and in my opinion the Attorney-General of Kenya came to the right conclusion. I reached that conclusion with the greatest possible reluctance, as I am sure did the Attorney-General of Kenya and the inquiry magistrate.
Because of what happened at Hola on 3rd March, 11 men died and 23 were admitted to hospital. That men were unlawfully beaten, and some more severely beaten, is clear beyond doubt, and I regard it as very sad indeed that no criminal prosecution can properly be brought in respect of that use of illegal force.
Mrs. Castle Mrs. Castle rose—
The Attorney-General: I have not finished this part of my speech yet. It is tempting to say "Start criminal proceedings. Prove what happened at Hola, and let those concerned establish their innocence." That is not our system. Nor

365
is it the system in force in Kenya. Here, as is widely known, the burden of proof rests on the prosecution. It is only in very special circumstances that it rests on the defence. To justify the institution of a prosecution mere suspicion is not enough. There must be evidence tending to show beyond reasonable doubt not only that the particular crime has been committed—for instance, that a man has been the victim of an illegal assault—but also that those charged had perpetrated the offence or aided and abetted in its commission. To warrant a charge of conspiracy to use illegal force it would be necessary to establish a common agreement to use illegal force, and there really is no evidence of that. I can deal with that point in detail if I have time, but if hon. Members will look at the evidence again they will see that there is no evidence which would justify that conclusion.
Mr. Paget: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman say, in view of Mr. Sullivan's evidence, that he instructed the Askaris to use illegal force, that that did not make a common purpose between Mr. Sullivan and the servants?
The Attorney-General: The hon. and learned Gentleman ought to pay full attention to the evidence. I do not accept the facts as he put them, and I say again, having considered the evidence with the greatest care, that I can see no evidence that would justify preferment of a charge of conspiracy.
May I continue, because I should like to remind the House of the final paragraph of the answer made on behalf of the Attorney-General for Kenya on this question. He said:
"While the public interest clearly requires that any person or persons who can be proved to have been criminally implicated in such a shocking and tragic occurrence should be brought to justice, it requires no less that no person should, in this or in any other case, be placed in jeopardy on a criminal charge …"—
Mr. S. Silverman: Release them all
The Attorney-General:
—"unless there is available sufficient evidence which, if believed, would establish his guilt. In this case the Attorney-General decided that the available evidence was insufficient for this purpose, and he accordingly decided that no prosecution should be instituted."
That, I think, puts it extremely well and I will conclude this part of my
366
speech by saying that just as it would be utterly wrong to refrain from prosecuting or to stop a prosecution as a result of political pressure or to suit political convenience, so equally would it be wrong to institute proceedings on insufficient evidence on account of political pressure or convenience.
Perhaps I should add this. What happened at Hola was investigated, as it had to be, under the Law of Kenya. There is no ground for supposing that that investigation was less than thorough There is no ground for supposing that any further inquiry would now elicit more evidence. But if fresh evidence does come to light bearing on these matters, I have no doubt at all that the Attorney-General of Kenya would review his decision. As it is, I invite the House to accept that his decision was right and to consider the matter on that basis.
That decision, right as I think it was is no ground for a censure Motion on the Government of Kenya or on Her Majesty's Government by those who think it was wrong, for decisions on these matters are the individual responsibilities of Attorneys-General and not of Governments.
Mrs. Castle: Is it not a fact that the coroner said, "I find that blame attaches for these deaths. It is no part of my duty to apportion blame. That is a question of policy which is a matter for the Attorney-General"? Is it not also true that since the coroner's inquest there have been no further police investigations, no further evidence taken on oath and no identity parades held, and that therefore the Attorney-General failed to take up the point handed to him by the coroner?
The Attorney-General: No, I cannot agree with that. As the hon. Lady will see in the first part of the Report at paragraph 2, it is his duty to deal with the commission of any offence if he thinks one has been committed.
Mrs. Castle: Read page 17.
The Attorney-General: I now come to the second question that I posed namely, on the basis that no criminal prosecution is possible, is appropriate action being taken against those who may in any way have been in any degree blameworthy for the use of illegal

367
force? In this connection the House has to consider whether Her Majesty's Government or the Kenya Administration are open to censure in respect of action taken or not taken after 3rd March. Faced with the Attorney-General's decision not to prosecute, surely it was the duty of the Government of Kenya to consider, and to institute where it appeared justified, disciplinary proceedings. As the House knows, they have been instituted against Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Coutts, the two Europeans in charge of the warders at the site, and they are at the moment facing the charges set out in Part III of the White Paper.
This question has been ventilated today: Should disciplinary proceedings have been instituted against others—against Mr. Cowan and his superior, the Commissioner of Prisons? Should steps have been taken in relation to the Minister of Defence and the Minister of African Affairs, who approved the proposals? Should disciplinary proceedings have been started in respect of the report which Mr. Campbell wrote after his visit to Hola—the report which was severely criticised by the magistrate? Those are the questions which I now want to examine, if the House will permit me.
There was not one word in Mr. Cowan's evidence before the magistrate, nor was there in Mr. Sullivan's, to show that at Hola, in their conversations there, they planned the use of illegal force—that is to say, that they intended to secure that the detainees, if they refused to work, would be beaten, and beaten until they worked. Mr. Cowan's letter of 11th February shows that what he called in that letter his plan of action was approved by the then District Officer, Mr. Hopf. Mr. Hopf did not give evidence at the inquest. He was not stationed at Hola on 3rd March and he was not, therefore, directly concerned with the events of that day. But he has made a statement to the police as to his recollection of the conversation he had with Mr. Cowan about Mr. Cowan's proposals. He says that Mr. Cowan told him that the detainees were to be got out in small numbers, and Mr. Cowan told him that he, Mr. Cowan, had given instructions that there was to be no unlawful beating. There is, thus, no evidence at all that the plan of action
368
discussed at Hola involved beating the detainees until they worked.
Mr. Hale: There is evidence of three witnesses who heard Mr. Sullivan say, in Swahili, "Beat them if necessary, but not too much". That is all recorded at the inquest. I ask the Attorney-General to recall the judgment in the case of R. v. Bentley, where "Let them have it, Chris" was a matter for hanging, whereas "Let them have it" in Swahili is, apparently, no evidence at all.
The Attorney-General: The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) has already addressed the House. I am fully aware of all the evidence. I have read it with care.
Mr. S. Silverman: I understood the Attorney-General to refer to a document which, so far as I know, is not before us and not in the White Paper at all. He has referred to a document in which somebody made a statement to the police in Kenya and he is relying upon it. Is he not, therefore, bound to lay that statement before the House?
Mr. Speaker: I did not hear the Attorney-General quote from any document.
The Attorney-General: I want to get on to what is, I think, the real point. [Interruption.] I am not trying to evade anything. The real point here, surely, turns on the use of certain language in Mr. Cowan's letter. This is the point with which I wish to deal. We can argue about what the evidence is. I have formed a view on it. The hon. Member for Oldham, West may have his own views.
The only matter on which it might be suggested that a charge could be preferred against Mr. Cowan relates to his use, in his letter of 11th February, of the words
"manhandled to the site of work and forced to carry out the task."
I ask the House to listen, without interruption, to what I want to put before it in this respect. This is just one sentence, an important one, in a fairly long letter reporting on the situation at Hola and putting forward short-term and long-term proposals. Reading the letter, I do not think that anyone can fail to be struck by the importance attached in it to dividing the recalcitrant

369
detainees into small groups and dealing with them piecemeal. That, unfortunately, was not done. The first nine sub-paragraphs of paragraph 5 of the letter deal with that and the steps to be taken while the detainees were in the compound. While they were still inside in small groups, and so more easily controllable, they were to be ordered out to work. Unfortunately, this was not done.
Paragraph (j) deals shortly with what should be done if the detainees refused to obey the order to go outside and work. They were to be manhandled My right hon. Friend dealt with that. In certain circumstances, manhandling is legitimate. The main criticism is directed to the words
"forced to carry out the task".
The proposals contained in the letter were seen by his superior, the Commissioner of Prisons, by the Minister of Defence and by the Minister of African Affairs. It would hardly be right to place Mr. Cowan alone on disciplinary charges in relation to proposals put before his superiors and approved by them. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]
On page 7 of the White Paper, the magistrate expresses the view, to which hon. Members have referred, that
"any reasonable person would construe those words alone as carte blanche to use whatever force might prove necessary to ensure the performance of the task".
I must admit that those words could be so understood. The magistrate said that that was the meaning any reasonable person would give if he construed those words alone. The important fact here is that they were not construed alone by those who read them.
Those words were construed by the Commissioner of Prisons, who knew of the Prison Ordinance and the Prison Regulations. Mr. Cowan knew them and Mr. Sullivan knew them. So did the Minister of Defence and the Minister of African Affairs. The clearest direction is given in those documents against beating. My right hon. Friend told the House also of the directives which were issued.
What is important in this respect is not so much how the words
"forced to carry out the task"
370
could be understood but how they were understood. It is significant that the magistrate, although he expressed a view as to how any reasonable person would construe them, did not reach the conclusion that Mr. Cowan, by the use of these words, deliberately proposed to his superior that carte blanche should be given to use whatever force was necessary to make the men work. Nor did he say that they were so understood by the Commissioner who gave evidence before him. Indeed, it would be extraordinary to find Mr. Cowan proposing in writing to his superiors the use of force, which was clearly illegal, and even more extraordinary that his superiors, the Commissioner and the two Ministers, all civil servants—the hon. Member for Oldham, West paid a tribute to the colonial civil service—should have approved of his proposals if they understood that.
If that is what Mr. Cowan meant by those words and if that is what those who received the letter understood by those words, there would be ground for supposing that they were parties to a conspiracy to procure the use of illegal force, but there is not, in my view, a shred of evidence that Mr. Cowan meant the words to have that meaning. There is not a shred of evidence to make those who read them read them in that way. The evidence is all the other way. Mr. Cowan's evidence at the inquest and the statements made by the Commissioner and the Ministers, which I have seen, are entirely to the contrary. It is true that Mr. Sullivan—
Mr. Callaghan Mr. Callaghan rose—
The Attorney-General: It is true that Mr. Sullivan never saw the letter before 3rd March, so that this sentence can have no effect on the events of that day. He is charged with departing from the plan outlined to him on a very important point, but there is not a shred of evidence that the plan outlined to him by Mr. Cowan involved the illegal use of force—beating to make the men work. I cannot help but think that the view—
Mr. Stonehouse Mr. Stonehouse rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should not remain standing while the Minister is on his feet.
The Attorney-General: I have read all the evidence and the magistrate has expressed his conclusions upon it.
It is perhaps to be expected that one's view of the letter is affected by what happened on 3rd March. I wonder how many hon. Members if they had read the letter between 11th February and 3rd March, would have said that it meant and proposed that detainees should be beaten until they worked. I doubt whether many of us would. It can be said that someone should be forced to take some action. It means that he must be made to do something that he is opposed to doing. It does not mean that one intends to beat him until he does the act. It is on this slender basis, the interpretation of these few words, that this indictment depends.
Mr. Callaghan: This is an important point. The Attorney-General is considering the whole matter on the basis whether a charge of conspiracy should be laid against Mr. Cowan. That is not our case at all. We say—and this is the point to which we should like the Attorney-General to address himself—that if a plan has such defects, omissions, and inadequacies, to use the magistrate's own words, that it leads to the death of eleven men, should no action be taken against the author of that plan except to give him a medal?
The Attorney-General: That is one of the points that I want to answer. It is a perfectly pertinent point, but I want to make my own speech, and the hon. Gentleman has taken up part of my time. I am dealing with the disciplinary charges at the moment. In my submission, if there were anything of the sort alleged, all those concerned—the Ministers, the Commissioner and Mr. Cowan—would be deserving of the highest condemnation. But I come to the conclusion that there is not the slightest ground for saying that on the evidence before the magistrate or on anything else.
I want to say a word or two about the Campbell incident, to which a great deal of importance has been attached. The questions that arise are these, and I can summarise them quite shortly. Why was that report so wrong? Was it due to the short time that those people were at Hola? Was it due to their having been given misleading information by those at Hola?—and one of the charges against
372
Mr. Sullivan is of doing that. Was it done in good or bad faith? I cannot answer any of those questions while the investigation of the charge against Mr. Sullivan is going on, but, as my right hon. Friend has said, if it was written in bad faith in an endeavour to cover up and to conceal, it was the height of stupidity, because it was bound to be found out when the investigation started. I can, however, say this, and I have the Governor's authority for saying it. If after the conclusion of the proceedings against Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Coutts, if on consideration of all the facts then available, there appear grounds justifying the preferment of further disciplinary charges against anyone, they will certainly be instituted.
Therefore, one comes to this. If one applies the test of what the Government ought to have done after 3rd March, in my submission neither Government is open to criticism. The facts have been investigated in accordance with the due course of law.
The right hon. and learned Member for Newport made the point that a tribunal was set up when a white boy was cuffed. He suggested that there had been no inquiry after the deaths of eleven black men. That remark was not worthy of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. It was an inaccurate statement. The one reason for the inquiry in the Waters' case was that there had been no judicial investigation. The House will remember that when the decision was made to appoint the tribunal, there were many voices on the Opposition side who raised the question of the policemen who would be affected by its determinations and who would be deprived of the ordinary rights of law. Where the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point falls down completely is that the difference here is that there has been a proper judicial investigation under the law in Kenya by a magistrate, to whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman paid tribute, whose report is a lengthy and carefully-constructed document. In those circumstances, there is no need for, and no useful purpose would be served by, any further inquiry as to the facts.
The question now is the question of responsibility. In that connection, I have said that if any fresh evidence comes out which would warrant the institution of

373
criminal proceedings, the Attorney-General of Kenya would, I am sure, consider the matter again. If any grounds come forward after the conclusion of the present disciplinary proceedings—the charge of misleading against Mr. Sullivan must be determined first before any charges of misleading are preferred against anyone else—further steps will be taken.
In those circumstances, I submit that, although it was right to have an inquiry into this matter, this Motion of censure is wholly unfounded. I ask the House to carry the Amendment and by doing so to show its confidence, not only in the two Governments and in my right hon.
Friend, but in the policy which we have pursued with so much success.
Mr. Stonehouse Mr. Stonehouse rose—
Mr. Herbert W. Bowden rose in his place, and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
Question put accordingly, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question:—
The House divided: Ayes 255, Noes 314.

Division No. 137.]

AYES

[9.59 p.m.

Abse, Leo

Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

Jones, David (The Hartlepools)

Ainsley, J. W.

Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

Jones, Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)

Albu, A. H.

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

Fernyhough, E.

Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

Finch, H. J. (Bedwellty)

Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

Awbery, S. S.

Fitch, A. E. (Wigan)

Kenyon, C.

Bacon, Miss Alice

Fletcher, Eric

Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

Baird, J.

Foot, D. M.

King, Dr. H. M.

Balfour, A.

Forman, J. C.

Lawson, G. M.

Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Ledger, R. J.

Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)

George, Lady Megan Lloyd(Car'then)

Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

Benson, Sir George

Gibson, C. W.

Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

Beswick, Frank

Gooch, E. G.

Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)

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

Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

Lewis, Arthur

Blackburn, F.

Greenwood, Anthony

Lindgren, G. S.

Bonham Carter, Mark

Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

Lipton, Marcus

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

Grey, C. F.

Logan, D. G.

Bowen, E. R. (Cardigan)

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

Bowles, F. G.

Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

McAlister, Mrs. Mary

Boyd, T. C.

Griffiths, William (Exchange)

McCann, J.

Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

Grimond, J.

MacColl, J. E.

Brockway, A. F.

Hale, Leslie

MacDermot, Niall

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)

Mclnnes, J.

Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

Hamilton, w. W.

McKay, John (Wallsend)

Brown, Thomas (Ince)

Hannan, W.

McLeavy, Frank

Burton, Miss F. E.

Hastings, S.

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

Hayman, P. H.

MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

Healey, Denis

Mahon, Simon

Callaghan, L. J.

Herbison, Miss M.

Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

Carmichael, J.

Hewitson, Capt. M.

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

Castle, Mrs. B. A.

Hilton, A. V.

Mann, Mrs. Jean

Champion, A. J.

Hobson, C. R. (Keighley)

Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

Chapman, W. D.

Holman, P.

Mason, Roy

Chetwynd, G. R.

Holmes, Horace

Mayhew, C. P.

Cliffe, Michael

Holt, A. F.

Mellish, R. J.

Clunie, J.

Houghton, Douglas

Mendelson, J. J.

Coldrick, W.

Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)

Messer, Sir F.

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Howell, Denis (All Saints)

Mikardo, Ian

Cronin, J. D.

Hoy, J. H.

Mitchison, G. R.

Crossman, R. H. S.

Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)

Monslow, W.

Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

Moody, A. S.

Darling, George (Hillsborough)

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Mort, D. L.

Davies,Rt.Hon.Clement(Montgomery)

Hunter, A. E.

Moss, R.

Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Moyle, A.

Davies, Harold (Leek)

Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

Davies, S. O (Merthyr)

Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

Deer, G.

Irving, Sydney (Dartford)

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)

de Freitas, Geoffrey

Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

O'Brien, Sir Thomas

Diamond, John

Janner, B.

Oliver, G. H.

Dodds, N. N.

Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

Oram, A. E.

Donnelly, D. L.

Jeger, George (Goole)

Orbach, M.

Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)

Jeger, Mrs. Lena(Holbn & St.Pncs,S.)

Oswald. T.

Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)

Owen, W. J.

Edelman, M.

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Padley, W. E.

Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

Paget, R. T.

Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech(Wakefield)

Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

Viant, S. P.

Palmer, A. M. F.

Short, E. W.

Wade, D. W.

Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)

Silverman, Julius (Aston)

Warbey, W. N.

Pargiter, G. A.

Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

Watkins, T. E.

Parker, J.

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Weitzman, D.

Parkin, B. T.

Skeffington, A. M.

Wells, Percy (Faversham)

Paton, John

Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)

Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

Pentland, N.

Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

Wheeldon, W. E.

Plummer, Sir Leslie

Snow, J. W.

White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

Popplewell, E.

Sorensen, R. W.

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

Prentice, R. E.

Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank

Wigg, George

Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

Sparks, J. A.

Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

Spriggs, Leslie

Wilkins, W. A.

Probert, A. R.

Stonehouse, John

Willey, Frederick

Proctor, W. T.

Stones, W. (Consett)

Williams, David (Neath)

Pursey, Cmdr. H.

Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Ab'tillery)

Rankin, John

Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)

Redhead, E. C.

Stross,Dr.Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent,C.)

Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)

Reeves, J.

Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.

Williams, W. T. (Barons Court)

Reid, William

Swingler, S. T.

Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)

Reynolds, G. W.

Sylvester, C. O.

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

Rhodes, H.

Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

Winterbottom, Richard

Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

Thomas, George (Cardiff)

Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

Woof, R. E.

Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

Yates, V. (Ladywood)

Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

Thornton, E.

Zilliacus, K.

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Tomney, F.

Ross, William

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Royle, C.

Usborne, H. C.

Mr. Bowden and Mr. Pearson

NOES

Agnew, Sir Peter

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Sir Winston

Graham, Sir Fergus

Aitken, W. T.

Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)

Grant, Rt. Hon. W. (Woodside)

Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)

Cole, Norman

Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R.(Nantwich)

Alport, C. J. M.

Conant, Maj. Sir Roger

Green, A.

Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

Cooke, Robert

Gresham Cooke, R.

Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)

Cooper, A. E.

Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

Anstruther-Gray, Major Sir William

Cooper-Key, E. M.

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

Arbuthnot, John

Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.

Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.

Armstrong C. W.

Corfield, F. V.

Gurden, Harold

Ashton, Sir Hubert

Courtney, Cdr. Anthony

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Astor, Hon. J. J.

Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

Hare, Rt. Hon. J. H.

Atkins, H. E.

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

Harris, Reader (Heston)

Baldwin, Sir Archer

Crowder, Petre (Rulsllp—Northwood)

Harrison, A. B. C. (Maldon)

Balniel, Lord

Cunningham, Knox

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

Banks, Col. C.

Currie, G. B. H.

Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)

Barber, Anthony

Dance, J. C. G.

Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

Barlow, Sir John

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

Harvie-Watt, Sir George

Barter, John

Deedes, W. F.

Hay, John

Batsford, Brian

de Ferranti, Basil

Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

Baxter, Sir Beverley

Digby, Simon Wingfield

Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel

Beamish, Col. Turton

Dodds-Parker, A. D.

Henderson, John (Cathcart)

Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.

Henderson-Stewart, Sir James

Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

Doughty, C. J. A.

Hesketh, R. F.

Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)

Drayson, G. B.

Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.

Bennett, Dr. Reginald

du Cann, E. D. L.

Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)

Bevins, J. R. (Toxeth)

Duncan, Sir James

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Bidgood, J. C.

Duthie, Sir William

Hill, John (S. Norfolk)

Biggs-Davison, J. A.

Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David

Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Bingham, R. M.

Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)

Hirst, Geoffrey

Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel

Elliot,R.W.(Ne'castle upon Tyne,N.)

Hobson, John (Warwick & Leam'gt'n)

Bishop, F. P.

Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn

Holland-Martin, C. J.

Black, Sir Cyril

Errington, Sir Eric

Hope, Lord John

Body, R. F.

Erroll, F. J.

Hornby, R. P.

Bossom, Sir Alfred

Farey-Jones, F. W.

Horobin, Sir Ian

Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.

Fell, A.

Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

Boyle, Sir Edward

Finlay, Graeme

Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

Braine, B. R.

Fisher, Nigel

Howard, John (Test)

Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)

Forrest, G.

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

Brewis, John

Foster, John

Hughes-Young, M. H. C.

Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

Hulbert, Sir Norman

Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry

Freeth, Denzil

Hurd, Sir Anthony

Brooman-White, R. C.

Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.

Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)

Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)

Gammans, Lady

Hutchison, Michael Clark (E'b'gh, S.)

Bryan, P.

Garner-Evans, E. H.

Hyde, Montgomery

Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

George, J. C. (Pollok)

Hylton-Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Harry

Burden, F. F. A.

Gibson-Watt, D.

Iremonger, T. L.

Butcher, Sir Herbert

Glover, D.

Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

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

Glyn, Col. Richard H.

Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

Campbell, Sir David

Godber, J. B.

Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

Carr, Robert

Goodhart, Philip

Jennings, Sir Roland (Hallam)

Cary, Sir Robert

Gough, C. F. H.

Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)

Channon, H. P. G.

Gower, H. R.

Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

376

377

Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Spearman, Sir Alexander

Jones, Rt. Hon. Aubrey (Hall Green)

Nairn, D. L. S.

Speir, F. M.

Joseph, Sir Keith

Heave, Alrey

Spence, H. R. (Aberdeen, W.)

Kaberry, D.

Nicholls, Harmar

Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard

Kerby, Capt. H. B.

Nicholson, Sir Godfrey (Farnham)

Stevens, Geoffrey

Kerr, Sir Hamilton

Nicolson, N.(B'n'm'th, E. & Chr'ch)

Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)

Kimball, M.

Noble, Comdr. Rt. Hon. Sir Alan

Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)

Lagden, G. W.

Noble, Michael (Argyll)

Stoddart-Scott, Col, Sir Malcolm

Lambton, Viscount

Nugent, Richard

Storey, S.

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Oakshott, Sir Hendrie

Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

Langford-Holt, J. A.

O'Neill, Hn. Phelim(Co. Antrim, N.)

Studholme, Sir Henry

Leather, E. H. C.

Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. D.

Summers, Sir Spencer

Leavey, J. A.

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)

Leburn, W. G.

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

Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

Osborne, C.

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Page, R. C.

Teeling, W.

Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)

Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)

Temple, John M.

Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)

Partridge, E.

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Llewellyn, D. T.

Peel, W. J.

Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

Lloyd, Rt. Hon. G. (Sutton Coldfield)

Peyton, J. W. W.

Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)

Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth

Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)

Longden, Gilbert

Pike, Miss Mervyn

Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. P.

Loveys, Walter H.

Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin

Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

Pitman, I. J.

Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)

Lucas, P. B. (Brentford & Chiswick)

Pitt, Miss E. M.

Tilney, John (Wavertree)

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Pott, H. P.

Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.

McAdden, S. J.

Powell, J. Enoch

Tweedsmuir, Lady

Macdonald, Sir Peter

Price, David (Eastleigh)

Vane, W. M. F.

McLaughlin, Mrs. P.

Price, Henry (Lewisham, S.)

Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho

Viokers, Miss Joan

Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Lancaster)

Profumo, J. D.

Vosper, Fit. Hon. D. F.

McLean, Neil (Inverness)

Ramsden, J. E.

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

MacLeod, John (Ross & Cromarty)

Rawlinson, Peter

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)

McMaster, Stanley

Redmayne, M.

Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek

Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold(Bromley)

Rees-Davies, W. R.

Wall, Patrick

Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)

Remnant, Hon. P.

Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)

Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)

Renton, D. L. M.

Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)

Maddan, Martin

Ridsdale, J. E.

Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold

Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)

Rippon, A. G. F.

Webbe, Sir H.

Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.

Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)

Webster, David

Markham, Major Sir Frank

Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)

Whitelaw, W. S. I.

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Robson Brown, Sir William

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

Marples, Rt. Hon. A. E.

Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

Marshall, Douglas

Roper, Sir Harold

Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

Maudling, Rt. Hon. R.

Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Mawby, R. L.

Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.

Wolridge-Gordon, Patrick

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

Wood, Hon. R.

Medlicott, Sir Frank

Sharpies, R. C.

Woollam, John Victor

Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.

Shepherd, William

Yates, William (The Wrekin)

Molson, Rt. Hon. Hugh

Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)

Moore, Sir Thomas

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)

Mr. Heath and Mr. Legh.

Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher

Question, put, That the proposed words be there added:—
The House divided: Ayes 314, Noes 255.

Division No. 138.]

AYES

[10.12 p.m.

Agnew, Sir Peter

Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)

Cary, Sir Robert

Aitken, W. T.

Bidgood, J. C.

Channon, H. P. C.

Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)

Biggs-Davison, J. A.

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Sir Winston

Alport, C. J. M.

Bingham, R. M.

Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)

Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel

Cole, Norman

Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat(Tiverton)

Bishop, F. P.

Conant, Maj. Sir Roger

Anstruther-Grey, Major Sir William

Black, Sir Cyril

Cooke, Robert

Arbuthnot, John

Body, R. F.

Cooper, A. E.

Armstrong, C. W.

Bossom, Sir Alfred

Cooper-Key, E. M.

Ashton, Sir Hubert

Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.

Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.

Astor, Hon. J. J.

Boyle, Sir Edward

Corfield, F. V.

Atkins, H. E.

Brains, B. R.

Courtney, Cdr. Anthony

Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)

Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

Baldwin, Sir Archer

Brewis, John

Crosthwalte-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Balniel, Lord

Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.

Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

Barber, Anthony

Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry

Crowder, Petre(Ruislip—Northwood)

Barlow, Sir John

Brooman-White, R. C.

Cunningham, Knox

Barter, John

Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)

Currie, G. B. H.

Batsford, Brian

Bryan, P.

Dance, J. C. G.

Baxter, Sir Beverley

Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

Beamish, Col. Tufton

Burden, F. F. A.

Deedes, W. F.

Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

Butcher, Sir Herbert

de Ferranti, Basil

Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

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

Digby, Simon Wingfield

Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)

Campbell, Sir David

Dodds-Parker, A. D.

Bennett, Dr. Reginald

Carr, Robert

Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.

Doughty, C. J. A.

Jennings, Sir Roland (Hallam)

Pott, H. P.

Drayson, G. B.

Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)

Powell, J. Enoch

du Cann, E. D. L.

Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

Price, David (Eastleigh)

Duncan, Sir James

Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)

Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)

Duthie, Sir William

Jones, Rt. Hon. Aubrey (Hall Green)

Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho

Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David

Joseph, Sir Keith

Profumo, J. D.

Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)

Kaberry, D.

Ramsden, J. E.

Elliott,R.W.(Ne'castle upon Tyne,N.)

Kerby, Capt. H. B.

Rawlinson, Peter

Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn

Kerr, Sir Hamilton

Redmayne, M.

Errington, Sir Eric

Kimball, M.

Rees-Davies, W. R.

Erroll, F. J.

Lagden, G. W.

Remnant, Hon. P.

Farey-Jones, F. W.

Lambton, Viscount

Renton, D. L. M.

Fell, A.

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Ridsdale, J. E.

Finlay, Graeme

Langford-Holt, J. A.

Rippon, A. G. F.

Fisher, Nigel

Leather, E. H. C.

Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)

Forrest, G.

Leavey, J. A.

Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)

Foster, John

Leburn, W. G.

Robson Brown, Sir William

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

Freeth, Denzil

Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Roper, Sir Harold

Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.

Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)

Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard

Gammans, Lady

Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)

Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.

Garner-Evans, E. H.

Llewellyn, D. T.

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

George, J. C. (Pollok)

Lloyd, Rt. Hon. G. (Sutton Coldfield)

Sharples, R. C.

Gibson-Watt, D.

Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

Shepherd, William

Glover, D.

Longden, Gilbert

Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)

Glyn, Col. Richard H.

Loveys, Walter H.

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

Godber, J. B.

Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)

Goodhart, Philip

Lucas, P. B. (Brentford & Chiswick)

Soames, Rt. Hon. Christopher

Gough, C. F. H.

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Spearman, Sir Alexander

Cower, H. R.

McAdden, S. J.

Speir, R. M.

Graham, Sir Fergus

Macdonald, Sir Peter

Spence, H. R. (Aberdeen, W.)

Grant, Rt. Hon. W. (Woodside)

McLaughlin, Mrs. P.

Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard

Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Stevens, Geoffrey

Green, A.

Maclean, Sir Fitzroy (Lancaster)

Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)

Gresham Cooke, R.

McLean, Neil (Inverness)

Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)

Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

MacLeod, John (Ross & Cromarty)

Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

McMaster, Stanley

Storey, S.

Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.

Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold(Bromley)

Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

Gurden, Harold

Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)

Studholme, Sir Henry

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)

Summers, Sir Spencer

Hare, Rt. Hon. J. H.

Maddan, Martin

Simmer, W. D. M. (Orpington)

Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)

Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

Harris, Reader (Heston)

Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

Harrison, A. B. C. (Maldon)

Markham, Major Sir Frank

Teeling, W.

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Temple, John M.

Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)

Marples, Rt. Hon. A. E.

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Marshall, Douglas

Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

Maudling, Rt. Hon. R.

Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)

Harvie-Watt, Sir George

Mawby, R. L.

Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)

Hay, John

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. P.

Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

Medlicott, Sir Frank

Thornton-Kemsley, Sir cotin

Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel

Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.

Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)

Henderson, John (Cathcart)

Molson, Rt. Hon. Hugh

Tilney, John (Wavertree)

Henderson-Stewart, Sir James

Moore, Sir Thomas

Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.

Hesketh, R. F.

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

Tweedsmuir, Lady

Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.

Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

Vane, W. M. F.

Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Nairn, D. L. S.

Vickers, Miss Joan

Hill, John (S. Norfolk)

Neave, Airey

Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.

Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Nicholls, Hamar

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

Hirst, Geoffrey

Nicholson, Sir Godfrey (Farnham)

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)

Hobson, John(Warwick & Leam'gt'n)

Nicolson, N.(B'n'm'th, E. & Chr'ch)

Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek

Holland-Martin, C. J.

Noble, Comdr. Rt. Hon. Sir Alan

Wall, Patrick

Hope, Lord John

Noble, Michael (Argyll)

Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester)

Hornby, R. P.

Nugent, Richard

Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)

Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.

Oakshott, Sir Hendrie

Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold

Horobin, Sir Ian

O'Neill, Hn. Phelim(Co. Antrim, N.)

Webbe, Sir H.

Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

Ormsby-Core, Rt. Hon. W. D.

Webster, David

Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Whitelaw, W. S. I.

Howard, John (Test)

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

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

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

Osborne, C.

Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

Hughes-Young, M. H. C.

Page, R. G.

Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

Hulbert, Sir Norman

Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Hurd, Sir Anthony

Partridge, E.

Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)

Peel, W. J.

Wood, Hon. R.

Hutchison, Michael Clark (E'b'gh, S.)

Peyton, J. W. W.

Woollam, John Victor

Hyde, Montgomery

Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth

Yates, William (The Wrekin)

Hylton-Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Harry

Pike, Miss Mervyn

Iremonger, T. L.

Pilkington, Capt. R. A

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

Pitman, I. J.

Mr. Heath and Mr. Legh.

Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

Pitt, Miss E. M

Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

380

381

NOES

Abse, Leo

Hastings, S.

Oswald, T.

Ainsley, J. W.

Hayman, P. H.

Owen, W. J.

Albu, A. H.

Healey, Denis

Padley, W. E.

Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

Herbison, Miss M.

Paget, R. T.

Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

Hewitson, Capt. M.

Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

Awbery, S. S.

Hilton, A. V.

Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

Bacon, Miss Alice

Hobson, C. R. (Keighley)

Palmer, A. M. F.

Baird, J.

Holman, P.

Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)

Balfour, A.

Holmes, Horace

Pargiter, G. A.

Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

Holt, A. F.

Parker, J.

Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)

Houghton, Douglas

Parkin, B. T.

Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)

Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)

Paton, John

Benson, Sir George

Howell, Denis (All Saints)

Pentland, N.

Beswick, Frank

Hoy, J. H.

Plummer, Sir Leslie

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

Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)

Popplewell, E.

Blackburn, F.

Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

Prentice, R. E.

Bonham Carter, Mark

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

Hunter, A. E.

Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

Bowen, E R. (Cardigan)

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Probert, A. R.

Bowles, F. G.

Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

Proctor, W. T.

Boyd, T. C.

Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

Pursey, Cmdr. H.

Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

Irving, Sydney (Dartford)

Rankin, John

Brockway, A. F.

Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

Redhead, E. G.

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Janner, B.

Reeves, J.

Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

Reid, William

Brown, Thomas (Ince)

Jeger, George (Goole)

Reynolds, G. W.

Burton, Miss F. E.

Jeger, Mrs. Lena(Holbn & St.Pncs. S.)

Rhodes, H.

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)

Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

Callaghan, L. J.

Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Carmichael, J.

Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech(Wakefield)

Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

Castle, Mrs. B. A.

Jones, David (The Hartlepools)

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Champion, A. J.

Jones, Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)

Ross, William

Chapman, W. D.

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Royle, C.

Chetwynd, G. R.

Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

Cliffe, Michael

Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

Short, E. W.

Clunie, J.

Kenyon, C.

Silverman, Julius (Aston)

Coldrick, W.

Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

King, Dr. H. M.

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Cronin, J, D.

Lawson, G. M.

Skeffington, A.M.

Crossman, R. H. S,

Ledger, R. J.

Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke. N.)

Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

Darling, George (Hillsborough)

Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

Snow, J. W.

Davies, Rt.Hn.Clement(Montgomery)

Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

Sorensen, R. W.

Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)

Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank

Davies, Harold (Leek)

Lewis, Arthur

Sparks, J. A.

Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

Lindgren, G. S.

Spriggs, Leslie

Deer, G.

Lipton, Marcus

Stonehouse, John

de Freitas, Geoffrey

Logan, D. G.

Stones, W. (Consett)

Diamond, John

Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

Dodds, N. N.

McAlister, Mrs. Mary

Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

Donnelly, D. L.

McCann, J.

Stross, Dr. Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent, C.)

Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)

MacColl, J. E.

Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.

Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

MacDermot, Niall

Swingler, S. T.

Edelman, M.

Mcinnes, J.

Sylvester, G. O.

Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

McKay, John (Wallsend)

Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

McLeavy, Frank

Thomas, George (Cardiff)

Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

Mahon, Simon

Thornton, E.

Fernyhough, E.

Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

Tomney, F.

Finch, H. J. (Bedwellty)

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

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

Fitch, A. E. (Wigan)

Mann, Mrs. Jean

Usborne, H. C.

Fletcher, Eric

Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

Viant, S. P.

Foot, D. M.

Mason, Roy

Wade, D. W.

Forman, J. C.

Mayhew, C. P.

Warbey, W. N.

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Mellish, R. J.

Watkins, T. E.

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Mendelson, J. J.

Weitzman, D.

George, Lady Megan Lloyd(Car'then)

Messer, Sir F.

Wells, Percy (Faversham)

Gibson, C. W.

Mikardo, Ian

Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

Gooch, E. G.

Mitchison, G. R.

Wheeldon, W. E.

Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

Monslow, W.

White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

Greenwood, Anthony

Moody, A. S.

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)

Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

Mort, D. L.

Wigg, George

Grey, C. F.

Moss, R.

Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Moyle, A.

Wilkins, W. A.

Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

Willey, Frederick

Griffiths, William (Exchange)

Neal-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

Williams, David (Neath)

Grimond, J.

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)

Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Ab'tillery)

Hale, Leslie

O'Brian, Sir Thomas

Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)

Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)

Oliver, G. H.

Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)

Hamilton, W. W.

Oram, A. E.

Williams, W. T. (Barons Court)

Hannan, W.

Orbach, M.

Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)

382

383

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

Woof, R. E.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Winterbottom, Richard

Yates, V. (Ladywood)

Mr. Bowden and Mr. Pearson.

Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

Zilliacus, K.

Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.
Resolved,

That this House deeply regrets the recent deaths of eleven men in Hola Detention
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Camp and fully supports Her Majesty's Government and the Government of Kenya in the steps both remedial and disciplinary that are being taken to prevent a recurrence of such a tragic event.

ROADS (TRAFFIC SIGNS)
10.22 p.m.
Mr. Ernest Davies: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Traffic Signs (Amendment) Regulations, 1959 (S.I., 1959, No. 761), dated 21st April, 1959, a copy of which was laid before this House on 28th April, be annulled.
I move this Motion in order to explore the Government's intentions and to ask the Minister some questions about the application of the Regulations. I do not consider it good that this House should pass any new Regulations which create fresh offences without an opportunity to discuss the Regulations and to hear some explanation from the responsible Government Department. It is particularly necessary in this case because the Regulations are very confused and difficult to comprehend, and because of the multiplicity of markings which appear on the road surface. We are to have white lines of various lengths both dotted and continuous.
As I understand them, the Regulations provide for at least five principal types of continuous dots and dashes and solid white lines to appear on the roads. The dashes are to mark lanes. Long dashes show that there is a hazard ahead and are to act as a warning to the motorist. Long dashes on the near side with a continuous line on the far side mean that a motorist can neither park nor pass another vehicle. Two solid lines mean that motorists can neither cross them nor park in that spot. They are meant to warn the motorist of dangers ahead and that he must take the necessary action. Long dashes on the nearside and a solid line on the far side mean that he may cross the dotted line but he must not park. If the lines are reversed it means that he can pass but he must not cross over the solid line.
The motorist will be confused by some of these new markings because provision is made that the existing marks on the carriageway—and there are a large number—may remain in use for the next three years. That is how I read the Regulations, but perhaps the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will confirm it. Not until May, 1962, may they be removed.
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Any new Regulations must be acceptable to motorists and reasonable. They must be capable of being enforced and be in force. The motorists must appreciate that the authorities can enforce the Regulations if an offence is committed and that he must obey the instructions which are indicated. The acceptance of the Regulations by motorists depends, in my opinion, on the extent to which the new markings are made. If they are used with discrimination and in the right place, the motorist will willingly accept them and the driver will know that the hazard against which he has been warned by means of such a line is a real one and that it would be dangerous for him to disregard the warning.
I wish to ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to ensure that markings on the carriageway are used sparingly rather than lavishly. I think that the hon. Gentleman will accept that it is better that there should be too few rather than too many. Then they will be obeyed and the motorist will know that they are wisely employed. Their purpose is to prevent overtaking by crossing the white line, and they are warranted to prevent overtaking on hill crests where the drivers of opposing streams of traffic have got good visibility of each other, where the sight line is bad for opposing traffic. They can be employed on sharp curves where obviously it is dangerous to overtake, on narrow roads, and in other cases. In every case there should be a real hazard, one which a good driver would avoid in any case. I am somewhat hesitant about accepting permissible breaking of the Regulations in certain cases, such as those when a person can go over the continuous line to board or alight from a vehicle or in cases of loading and unloading.
Paragraph (4, a) of Regulation 21 says:
"Nothing in sub-paragraph (a) of the last preceding paragraph shall apply—
(a) so as to prevent a vehicle stopping on any length of road so long as may be necessary—

(i) to enable a person to board or alight from the vehicle,

(ii) to enable goods to be loaded on to or unloaded from the vehicle,"

If the lines were rightly marked it would be highly undesirable to permit loading

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and unloading or boarding or alighting from vehicles where the continuous solid lines—dual in most cases—are on the highway. If the Regulation provides that there shall be no parking there, there should also be no loading, unloading, boarding or alighting from a vehicle. Paragraph (5) says it is permissible for vehicles to turn across the double line in order to enter a side turning. It seems to defeat the purpose of the white lines if they are to be on intersections and it is to be permissible to turn right. I should have thought double white lines should not be painted on the carriageway at such intersections.
I ask the Joint Under-Secretary to what extent the Department exercises discipline over the use of road signs and markings. To what extent is he able to, and to what extent will he, take measures to ensure that there is uniformity in the use of these road markings I have suggested as desirable? What system is employed by highway authorities and others concerned who are responsible? It is essential that standards should be laid down so that the new Regulations shall be as effectively employed as possible.
It is equally important that there should be uniformity in their enforcement. Occasions have arisen in which motoring offences have been created and some authorities with small police forces have taken advantage of them to enforce Regulations vigorously in order to collect revenue by fines. I am not suggesting that that would be done in this case, but if these markings were employed lavishly and the motorist did not obey them it would enable penalties to be imposed and the motorist might consider that he was being unfairly treated.
On this question of enforcement, I have seen in the Press some reference to the use of cameras and other means of ensuring that the lines are not crossed. I think that where such methods are resorted to, the motorist should be fully informed so that he feels that he is not being treated unjustly.
Are these white lines to be "reflectorised" at night? Are there to be "cat's eyes" employed, and, if so, where there are double lines, will there be two lines of "cat's eyes"? Reference is
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made to that matter in the Regulations, but they relate only to a single line, and it seems to me that if there is only one line of "cat's eyes" and there are two white lines, the motorist would be committing an offence if he were to cross the "cat's eyes" without knowing that there were double white lines. If these Regulations are to be enforced, these lines should be visible at night, and obviously reflectorising, or the use of "cat's eyes," is essential.
If the Parliamentary Secretary is able to explain these points, I think the House will be happy to accept these Regulations because, as I say, I have moved this Motion purely for exploratory purposes. A new offence is being created, and the motorist is entitled to have a little more explanation than can be gleaned from the Regulations.
10.37 p.m.
Mr. George Jeger: In seconding the Motion, may I add one or two questions to those posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies)? As a motorist who uses the Great North Road, I have often been petrified, even before the Regulations came into force, by the way pedal cyclists use the middle of the road with impunity, putting a great deal of fear and terror into the hearts of motorists who overtake them.
Pedal cyclists cause far more danger than do ordinary motorists, or even pedestrians. If they are allowed to ignore these white lines which restrict the movements of motorists, they will be causing more accidents in the future than they have done in the past. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to give some thought to this matter, and to tell us how many accidents have been caused in the past through pedal cyclists disregarding warning signs and crossing the road or riding in the middle of the road.
The existing markings are to continue until 12th May, 1962. I have asked questions about this point before, and the Parliamentary Secretary will recollect that on one occasion I drew attention to the fact that I had counted on one stretch of about five miles on the A.1 road ten different types of markings. If a variety of different markings is to continue until 1962 and there are to be

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penalties imposed in respect only of those specified in the Regulations, the poor motorist will suffer a great deal of confusion.
Will the Minister explain whether he is wedded to 1962 for the retention of the existing markings or whether some arrangement can be made with the local authorities to have them blacked out or to have warning signs placed in such a way as to allow the motorist to differentiate between the unofficial markings which are to exist for the next three years and the official ones for the contravention of which the motorist may be fined?
On the question of warnings, I should like to get an assurance from the Minister that these Regulations are not going to be operated strictly to start with and that prosecutions are not going to be embarked upon with great glee by the authorities in the various areas in which the markings are placed. A few days ago I asked the Minister a Question about the number of prosecutions which have already taken place since 12th May when the Regulations came into force. The right hon. Gentleman was unable to give me the figures. I had hoped that the answer was going to be "None" because the publicity given to these new Regulations has not up to now been very great.
I am quite sure that many motorists are perpetually parking their cars or stopping their cars in places forbidden by the new Regulations. I saw this happen on several occasions only last weekend. I hope, therefore, that a reasonable time will be given to motorists in which to realise what the Regulations mean, to have warnings given to them and during which they will not be prosecuted straight away.
I should also like to know if the services of the road patrolmen of the R.A.C. and the A.A. have been enlisted so that they may give necessary warnings and advice to motorists whom they see breaking the Regulations, possibly inadvertently. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will give a little thought to these questions and help to clear the minds of those of us who are anxious to limit the number of accidents on the road, to welcome any Regulations that will cause these accidents to diminish and to bring
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safer driving a little nearer than it has been for many years.
10.43 p.m.
Mr. John Peyton: The hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) and the hon. Member for Goole (Mr. G. Jeger) have moved and seconded this Motion with great reasonableness and restraint. One rather feels that their enthusiasm for the matter tonight is more than it was on a previous occasion when the Motion was on the Order Paper, because then, I believe, neither of the hon. Gentlemen who have supported it tonight thought it worth while to be present to give voice in its favour. Nevertheless, here we are tonight with the opportunity of considering these Regulations.
I want to make only a very few observations. First of all, and this will lead me to my principal point, I feel that the observations made by the hon. Member for Goole are really groundless in that his anxiety about the very rigorous enforcement of the Regulations is a very unreal one.
The point which I wish to put to my hon. Friend and to the House is that in these times we suffer from a plethora of Regulations which are not enforced at all. We have bigger, better and more beautiful signs all over our roadsides. We have speed-limit signs scattered all over the place, some for thirty miles an hour and some for forty miles an hour, but are adequate steps taken to enforce them? We have the experience of seeing streets made into one-way streets to free traffic and the net result is that one gets parking on both sides and passage through the street is more difficult than before.
What I am concerned about is that we should have some undertaking that when these Regulations are approved they will be efficiently enforced. I am bound to say that motorists who now find themselves in breach of a regulation and who are summoned and charged with that breach are desperately and devastatingly unlucky. Most motorists today are in a position of flouting regulations only too often, and I think it is a great disservice to the law and the community that regulations should be made, should have the consent and approval of this House, and should then be flouted as a matter of habit by a

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large number of people simply because other people do so and get away with it.
If we are to have these Regulations, they must be enforced, and I believe the Government would be wrong to ask the House to approve them unless they have a clear and definite intention that the Regulations shall be rigorously enforced. Let it at all times be made clear that no one makes regulations for fun. These things are made to preserve safety and convenience on the roads, and that is something of vital interest to all citizens.
Reference has been made to the question of inadequate publicity. I believe that one of the reasons why these Regulations do not get adequate publicity is because there is a feeling that there is no willingness on the part of the authorities as a whole to see that they are observed and that those who flout them are duly charged in the normal course of law and face the liability for penalties which have been duly laid down by this House. I hope my hon. Friend will give that point his due and careful attention.
10.48 p.m.
Mr. Gresham Cooke: I do not take quite the same view as hon. Members opposite who moved this Prayer, though I appreciate the reasons behind their so doing. As a sailing man, I am always greatly impressed by the meticulous nature of the rules of the sea which are laid down to avoid collisions at sea. Nearly every possible circumstance is provided for in those rules. I should like to see the same kind of rules for avoiding collisions on land. If we had the same discipline on the roads as we have at sea, whereby people are prosecuted for disobeying the rules, we should reduce the accidents and avoid a great many collisions. Therefore, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) in what he said about the importance of seeing that these Regulations are enforced.
Mr. Jeger: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should have the same number of cars on land as there are ships at sea?
Mr. Gresham Cooke: If the hon. Gentleman goes up the Thames Estuary he will see that the shipping there is
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almost as crowded as the cars in Oxford Street. But my point is that I think these Regulations are a step in the right direction. I like a good many aspects of them because they lay down various ways of separating traffic. I have in mind particular examples, RM25 and RM26, showing on the road the words "Left turn," "Right turn," "Ahead," and so on. We have seen examples of this in Oxford Street and other parts of London, where people are learning to get their cars into the right lane when making a turn, and avoiding getting confused with traffic coming in the other direction. Indeed, the whole Regulations are to the good. When it is fully understood, the double white line will be very helpful.
I have one point which I hope my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary can answer tonight. I have not yet had much experience of using the double white line, although in the Whitsun holiday I motored up the Great North Road and came across examples of it. It seems to me that difficulty can arise where a stream of traffic is going along at a fairly fast pace as happens on the Great North Road, and on the Portsmouth Road, where there are double white lines also. When the dotted line is on the left, one can overtake if the road is clear, but one quickly meets a completely double white line and cannot get back to one's own lane in the time afforded in the gap between the dotted white line and the double white line.
Where a stream of traffic flows along a road like the Great North Road, the distances between the two sets of lines going in either direction are rather short and do not always enable the traffic to have enough space to get back into its own lane. This may be inherent in the layout of our roads, or it may be that the length of the double white lines is not long enough.
Perhaps my hon. Friend will answer this point and say what steps he is taking to overcome these difficulties. Subject to that, I welcome the Regulations, as I think that they will be helpful to motorists to avoid collisions.
10.52 p.m.
Mr. Eric Johnson: I too, welcome the Regulations. I first came across the system of

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the double white lines in Belgium and two years ago, in a Question, I drew it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister. The matter was then being considered. I am glad, therefore, to see that the double white lines are being adopted here.
In Belgium, however, although I met them for the first time, I understood easily what was required of me. In this country, I find it much more difficult. There seem to be many more lines, signs and complications. Possibly this is because we are in a stage of transition from one system to the other. I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will assure us that it will be tidied up before long.
I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) about making sure that hazards really are hazards. Often, possibly owing to an oversight by people working on or building roads, one finds "Road work ahead" or "Traffic lights ahead" signs displayed longer than is necessary. On one occasion, I saw a "Traffic lights ahead" sign, but I had to go about twenty miles before I reached the next lights. The "Hazard ahead" signs can be misleading and sometimes it is difficult to discover what the hazard is.
One point of criticism that I would make of the system as adopted in this country is on the lines of the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) concerning the length of the separate lines. If one follows a slow-moving line of heavy goods vehicles, it is virtually impossible sometimes to get past one of them, especially if they are travelling nose to tail, before one comes upon another length of road where crossing the line is forbidden. Serious consideration might well be given to making those stretches of line longer and, perhaps, in some cases, eliminating them where they are not strictly necessary.
I wonder, too, a little about the value of this sort of pictorial designs, these large boards we see on the sides of the roads telling us what to do and presenting pictures of hazards, lines, and so on. I refer again to my experience in Belgium. I understood the signs there very much more easily. One was looking only for lines, not also for pictures
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on the side of the road, to discover what one ought to do.
I hope very much it will be found possible to simplify the system we have at present and to meet some of the criticisms which have been made tonight. I hope that my hon. Friend can tell us that in the meanwhile he will go a little bit more easy with the paint brush.
I stress the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton), which I think is of very great importance, that we should keep these Regulations down to as few as possible, but that when they are made they should be enforced and enforced rigorously, because signs on the road and lines on the road, if ignored, as they tend to be if there are too many of them, do not make for safety but are positive death traps.
10.56 p.m.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Richard Nugent): I welcome the Prayer which has been moved tonight, which gives us an opportunity to discuss these Regulations. These Regulations are making a very interesting innovation by introducing a system of mandatory road markings and for the first time in this country introducing a system of mandatory laning of the roads in certain places. This appeals to me very much, as, indeed, it does to my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke), because lane discipline is really basic to safe, smooth road movement.
This is only a very limited measure of lane discipline, but I am quite certain that as time goes by—and I hope not very much time—we shall be obliged to mark out the streets in our towns, and probably most of the roads outside, to guide drivers to move in lanes and that probably we shall have to strengthen the law to encourage people to stay in their lanes and not weave about. It is the lack of lane discipline which undoubtedly leads to very many accidents today, collisions in overtaking and so on. I believe that the basic thought here is right in helping to get safer traffic movement.
Of course, the worst of these accidents, collisions when overtaking, happen at blind corners and at blind rises—usually on overtaking, but not

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always. It is surprising the number of drivers who quite light-heartedly will go round a blind bend, or, even more so, who will go over a blind rise in the middle of the road, apparently without realising at all the extreme danger they are in. I have often watched them with my heart in my mouth. I am glad to say they usually escape, but occasionally, of course, there is a car coming the opposite way and then, because of the shortness of visibility, it is inevitable that not only will there be an accident but a very bad accident, because it will be a head on collision.
These Regulations make it an offence to cross the centre of the road when approaching a blind corner or an uphill rise when marked out with double white lines as prescribed in these Regulations. As the Regulations do no more than forbid a driver from very probably giving a shorter life for both himself and an approaching car driver they have been generally accepted as being the reverse of restrictive of human life; indeed, as something which will be rather liberalising in their effect, because they will prolong the lives of people who might otherwise have had them brought suddenly to an end. I have appreciated the sense in which the House has welcomed the Regulations tonight—that the thought behind them is good and instructive, even though there are certain anxieties about how they might be enforced.
The hon. Member for Goole (Mr. G. Jeger) was anxious particularly that there should be some leniency at the start. I cannot say, of course, what the police will do. They have a great measure of independence. I would suspect that they would probably tend as a rule to give warnings to start with in most cases, but they must use their judgment. I am absolutely certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. E. Johnson) are right that now we have made these Regulations mandatory and it will be an offence to cross the line motorists will rely on these lines where there is a blind rise or a blind corner. At present, if I go over a blind rise I usually expect someone to be coming the other way and I am ready to go into the ditch, but once these lines are on the road I shall go over a rise with some confidence that
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no one will be crossing the line. I agree that, in the interest of road safety, now we have decided to do this it is most important that the police should be strict as soon as they are satisfied that motorists generally understand the Regulations and make it clear that drivers who offend will be prosecuted.
Mr. G. Jeger: I thoroughly agree. My only thought was that there had not been adequate publicity up to now. As soon as we are satisfied that adequate publicity about the meaning of the lines has been effected, the Regulations should certainly be enforced strictly.
Mr. Nugent: I thank the hon. Member. I felt certain that that was his general feeling.
The Press, both national and local, has been very good to us in publicising these Regulations. I hope that it will continue to do so. The more they are publicised the better. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley did not like the pictures that we put out. I thought that they were rather a help. Punch made a few jokes at our expense. Occasionally the line in the picture was going the opposite way to the bend on the road. But I think that most people understood our meaning and that on the whole the pictures have been helpful. We intend that they should continue to be put up about the country because we think that they will help people to understand how this arrangement works.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley that this form of marking has been used on the Continent, in Belgium and France, and in America for some years and has been found to give good results. Therefore, we introduce it here with confidence. It has the special merit that the mandatory rule to keep within the double white line applies only on the approach side to a bend or rise where visiblity is blocked, so that on the departure side the driver is released from the mandatory effect and can use his own judgment in the ordinary way.
As hon. Members have said, it is basic that any rule made for the motorist should seem to him sensible so that we can have his co-operation, and we have had very good co-operation from the motoring organisations. I have no doubt that they will be of great help throughout

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the country in advising their members on the significance of the Regulations.
We have had two years of experiment with this marking now—time passes quickly—on the Dover road and the Portsmouth road. I am inclined to think that most people have a fair idea of what it means now and that as it is carried out in the rest of the country people will take to it fairly quickly. We also, during that time, have been learning our part in this. It is a most complicated technical operation to site these lines correctly. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham made the point of the necessity to keep interval of sufficient length between two sets of lines. That is one of many considerations, but the actual siting of the lines depends not only on the vertical and horizontal alignment of the road but on the average speed of the vehicles on the road. The length of the lines must be varied according to those average speeds.
We have learnt those lessons now. We have learnt the technique of putting down these white lines. Not only is it a difficult technique, but it involves some hazards on a busy road, with surveyors standing in the middle of the road crouching down to get the eye-level of a driver in order to get the correct alignment, and holding up instruments and trying to avoid the traffic at the same time. However, I think that we have now obtained the correct criteria, and we have demonstrated them to our divisional road engineers and to county surveyors. At present, between 500 and 600 miles of trunk roads have been dealt with, under the direct supervision of our divisional road engineers and in consultation with the police.
We are about to send to county councils a directive setting out detailed particulars of the criteria and methods employed, so that the county surveyors will be able to apply them to the classified roads in their counties. There are about 66,000 miles of classified roads, so this is a big task, and I expect that it will take county authorities several years to complete it.
The hon. Member for Enfield, East asked what control we were keeping. County surveyors will be asked to submit their proposals to the divisional road engineers before carrying them out on the roads, so that the divisional road
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engineers can assure themselves that there is uniformity in the positioning of these lines. As they have a mandatory power it is essential that there should be uniformity throughout the country, and that the Minister, through his officials, should ensure that there is.
As I said last week, in answer to a Question put by the hon. Member for Enfield, East, our instructions are quite definite: "When in doubt, do not put them down." On many winding roads we could so easily have nothing but a continuous double white line, and in such circumstances nobody would take any notice of it. The advice given by the hon. Member for Enfield, East to be sparing is advice that we gladly accept, and we have sent out that advice to the country as a whole.
The hon. Member for Goole asked whether the double white lines were being laid down together with the existing signs on the surface of the road. I know that he had the unfortunate experience of having both the old and the new signs together on roads in his neighbourhood, but I hope that that will not happen again. The procedure is that on a road where a double white line is put down the existing lines must be burnt off the road so that there is nothing left but the double white line. The three-year rule which has been mentioned refers to the solid white line which has been used up to now as what we call a hazard line, on bends and winding lanes. It has been used as a guiding line to help drivers and to give them an indication that they are on a dangerous road, but it has had no mandatory force.
We now propose to remove that solid line and replace it where appropriate with a broken line of long white dashes at short intervals. In three years' time all the solid lines now appearing on many of our lanes and roads should be removed, so that the only places where solid white lines will appear will be in the context of the double white lines, where it is mandatory. Because there is a lot of that work to be done we are allowing the county authorities three years in which to do it. When that is done it will bring the United Kingdom in line with our international obligation under the European Agreement on Road Markings of 1957.
The hon. Member for Enfield, East asked about cat's eyes. We are in a

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difficulty there. It is impossible to get perfection. It is true that we could have two rows of "cat's eyes" on an uphill or blind rise, with a double white line, but on a bend with a double white line it would not be practicable to put a double row of cat's eyes to show motorists in the dark that there is a double white line, because the cat's eyes do not show up sufficiently on bends. The two lines run into each other and so do not give the motorist a clear warning. We decided that, for simplicity, the best plan was in all cases to put a single line of "cat's eyes" down between the solid line and dotted line and then in no case would there be two lines of "cat's eyes". That means that at night the motorist has the extra responsibility of spotting the double white line in the light of his headlamps. The fact is that at night the practical necessity for a double white line is less than in the daytime because the headlights of on-coming cars act as a warning. But on the advice of the police it was decided that the Regulations should be effective for 24 hours rather than only in the daytime. It is a matter of balancing the considerations, and I think we have the right balance. But we must see how things work out in practice.
The hon. Member for Enfield, East asked what uniformity of enforcement there would be. I cannot answer that. We have asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to ensure that these Regulations are rigourously enforced. But outside the Metropolitan area it is a matter primarily for chief constables and standing joint committees. I feel sure that they will carry out their duties reasonably and effectively. The hon. Member referred to the practice which it is intended to introduce in my own county of Surrey where cameras are to be used. It is up to the police to decide what to do. One county will act in one manner and another county in another, in exactly the same way as different fines are imposed in different magistrates' courts. I hope that one day there will be a little more uniformity, but that is how it is at present.
The hon. Member for Enfield, East was concerned about the exceptions in the Regulations. We felt it necessary
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to allow exceptions for loading and unloading and at bus stops. I do not think that the point about cycles raised by the hon. Member for Goole is as serious as he thought. It applies only to the parking of a cycle. There is an exception in paragraph 4 (c). A cycle may be parked at the side of the road. That is as far as the exception goes. The presence of a cycle would not make any serious difference to the traffic. At some points there will be bus stops. At present we do not know how many. There will also be occasions when vans have to stop near houses. We consider that at this stage it would be too strict to make rigid regulations that there should be no stopping at all before we know how this will work out.
It must be recognised that normally when regulations are made about loading or unloading in a town or street a public inquiry is held and objectors have a chance to express their views. In this case there is no such procedure and therefore we felt it right, at any rate in the first place, to make exceptions of this kind where practical difficulties might arise and then see how matters work out. Regarding bus stops, I have asked the divisional road engineers to report on cases where there are bus stops where double white lines have been put down and to see whether it is possible to move the stops. If that proves to be impossible without serious inconvenience to passengers, I have asked that the possibilities of a bus bay should be investigated so that the obvious danger which would arise may be avoided.
With regard to paragraph 5, which deals with turning to enter a side turning, there are some stretches of road where the double white line will be put down and there is a blind bend and a side turning. Clearly, there must be an exception made if vehicles are to be allowed to turn right into the side turning. I agree that it is not perfection to have anybody crossing the line but these practical situations do arise and this seems to be the best way of dealing with them.
I can think of a stretch of road on the Portsmouth road between Milford and Haslemere where there is a turning right to Thursley. There is a blind bend rising up to the brow of a hill and then the roads dips down again.

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A double white line has been put down there but clearly one must allow a break to allow traffic to turn right. I dare say that one day our traffic engineers will find some means of making this measure absolute so that people who want to turn right will have to continue on the road and, perhaps, fly over something somewhere else. But at present we felt it was necessary to make these exceptions to meet practical circumstances. I think they are reasonable, but we shall certainly watch them carefully to see how they work out and if modification is needed later we shall bring further Regulations before the House.
I think this has been well and carefully worked out and that we have got it in a form where it will work satisfactorily. I much appreciate the spirit in which the House has received it. I believe it will help to make the roads safer and improve the traffic flow.
Mr. Ernest Davies: The Prayer having served its purpose of eliciting some information. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

POST OFFICE TELEPHONE FACTORIES
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]
11.17 p.m.
Mr. Roy Jenkins: The subject I wish to raise tonight is that of the future of the Post Office telephone factories. These factories are owned and operated by the Post Office and deal with telephone, and to a lesser extent telegraph, equipment. They do not provide the bulk of such equipment which is provided by private factories.
There are eight of the factories, three in Birmingham, three in London, one in South Wales and one in Edinburgh. Together they employ between 3,000 and 4,000 people. The biggest centre is in Birmingham, where one of the three factories is very small and the larger of the other two is on the edge of my constituency and employs a fair number of my constituents. Most of the facts I want to give relate to the two larger Birmingham factories.
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To some extent, the position of these factories has been a problem for some years past. I raised the matter previously in an Adjournment debate in December, 1953. There was then some falling off in the work available and a fear of redundancy among those employed in the factories. That arose at that time because the effect of a policy recommendation by the Select Committee on Estimates in 1950, saying that there should be a return to the pre-war position in which by far the greater part of new work should be sent to outside contractors, was just coming into operation. The immediate fears at that time did not prove as serious as at one time seemed likely.
After 1953 there was an improvement in the position, which lasted for several years. Now, however, there has been a further deterioration. This is indicated by a number of events which have occurred. For instance, when I spoke in 1953 the number of skilled engineers employed in these two Birmingham factories had declined from 150 to 110. Since then the decline has gone on. In February it was down to 90, and there is a further reduction taking place now. The effects are being dealt with in redundancy negotiations between the A.E.U. and the management. I do not want in any way to get involved in those negotiations by raising this matter in this House. What I am concerned to discuss is not how the problem of redundancy is being dealt with—that is a matter for negotiation on the spot—but why redundancy has arisen and the policy which may lead to it arising to an increasing extent in future.
We have had this increasing rundown, and there is every sign of it going on in future. I am informed that since 1953, when we last discussed the matter, a very large amount of plant at these factories, amounting, I am told, to almost two-thirds of the plant which existed, has been disposed of by sale or otherwise. In 1953 75 per cent. of the work in the factories was repair work and 25 per cent. was on new construction. I have been told that the balance since then has been tilted much further away from new construction work and that the factories are allowed only to do a very small amount of work on prototypes and no large-scale new work of any sort, while even repair work to an increasing extent

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is on types of equipment now becoming obsolete and not on newer types of equipment. By definition, the repair work shows signs of decline.
The question is, what is the future of the Post Office factories? I hope the Assistant Postmaster-General—to whom I am grateful for coming here to answer this debate—will be able to give a fair answer on how the Government see the future of these factories. Is there a future at all, or do the Government unfortunately regard a position possibly arising in which they will not be needed? The difficulty at the moment is that these factories are an island of contraction in a prosperous and expanding industry, a rather depressing position in which to be.
I should have thought there was a rôle for the factories. I do not think anyone would suggest for a moment that there is a whole body of new work which could be done in them. Obviously there are contracts and longstanding arrangements with outside suppliers, but there is a good deal to be said for a certain amount of new work being done by these factories, which to some extent would provide a useful check on the efficiency of the private contractors. The evidence before the Select Committee in 1950 indicated that the Post Office factories, if allowed to compete on equal terms, were financially competitive. If they are not allowed to compete on equal terms obviously there can be no question of their being financially competitive, but there is no indication that when they are allowed to compete on equal terms they are not competitive. They are a rather depressing island of contraction in an expanding industry. Probably some reorganisation is necessary, and I know the trade unions are anxious to co-operate, but it is much more difficult to co-operate and to carry our reorganisation effectively and with good will in a framework which is totally contracting than in an expanding framework. Management is doing a good job in difficult and depressing circumstances.
I hope the Assistant Postmaster-General can give a clear picture of the future of the factories. I hope it will be a reasonably encouraging picture. Even if it is not, it would be better to know what it is, so that those employed in the factories may know to what they can look forward, than to be in the uncertainty which has persisted for a number
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of years and which inevitably has a bad effect on the workers.
11.25 p.m.
The Rev. Llywelyn Williams: I wish to say a few words about the Post Office telephone factory in Cwmcarn, which is in my constituency. It was visited by the Minister some time ago, and his visit was much appreciated. I am not aware that there is any redundancy in that factory, so that my words are more in the nature of an exhortation to the Minister to ensure that no tendency towards such a situation shall develop.
I say this because, as the Minister knows, Cwmcarn and the Abertillery constituency generally is in a Development Area. We have suffered during the last two years from rather serious unemployment, usually in the region of 5 per cent. and over, so that this factory, which means so much to the people in the constituency, should be kept working at full capacity. This factory has a good reputation for employing disabled workers who obviously cannot work in the heavy mining industry which is the predominant industry in that valley, and that is a very helpful factor in the economic set-up in that part of the country.
A large proportion of the personnel employed in the factory are girls and, as we have nothing but collieries in the western valley of Monmouthshire, it is important that we have some facilities for the employment of girls in areas near to their homes.
I wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) for introducing this subject, thereby given me the opportunity to appeal to the Minister, when he deals with the larger situation in Birmingham, not to forget this wonderfully valuable factory, the only one of its kind in Wales.
11.28 p.m.
The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Kenneth Thompson): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) for giving me an opportunity to say a few words about Post Office factories which are a somewhat unspectacular but vital part of the widely diversified Post Office empire. I should like to assure him on

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a number of points that he put before the House.
First, I will take the House briefly over the history of the Post Office factories. Their function originally was to repair and renovate telephone and communications equipment of various kinds belonging, to the Post Office so that they could be put back into use again. It has always been the policy of the Post Office that the factories should limit themselves to that kind of work, subject to this qualification that, having at their disposal certain skills and equipment, they should make themselves ready to provide the telephone system with certain kinds of specialist equipment.
That was the function which the Department served until the outbreak of war. When the war came we had to change that for many reasons. The Post Office was able to provide facilities for the manufacture of a wider variety of articles in large quantities.
At one time during the war and immediately afterwards we reached the stage where about half our effort was in the production of new goods and half in repair work of one kind and another. Nevertheless, it was always the policy of the Post Office that we should return to our proper function of repair and renovation of Post Office equipment. The process of turning from wartime conditions to what we were doing before the war has been a long one and has been carried out with a great deal of thought for the wellbeing of those affected by what could be a considerable change in their work and working conditions and in the rewards which they take home for their work. Therefore, we have taken a long time over the process in order to avoid abrupt hardship to those concerned.
That process is now more or less complete, and I should imagine that it is not unreasonable to suppose that the amount of new work now being done in Post Office factories is about what it will continue to be subject always, of course, to the changing demands of the service as a whole. It would be wrong to commit the Department for many years ahead by a statement of what is likely to happen until we know what the conditions will be, because they might change from time to time. That is the position today.
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The conditions to which the hon. Member for Stechford referred are conditions of uncertainty and, to some extent, disquiet. He said that the low morale in the Birmingham factories is the product of this constant change which has been going on for a number of years accentuated now by an even more important change in Post Office factory processes.
We can only justify repairing and reusing Post Office equipment provided that we can repair it at a price which is economic in comparison with the cost of new equipment. Therefore, we have to set about improving the processes so that they are able to give us an end product which is both efficient in use and competitive in cost.
We have now a flow line method of repair in some of the factories for some of the processes, and we are endeavouring to extend this modern method of handling repairs of often very complicated apparatus so that we may always be able to produce a finished article at a price which is competitive.
The hon. Member for Abertillery (The Rev. LI. Williams) mentioned the factory at Cwmcarn in his constituency. There we have an example of these modern flow line processes of repair being carried out very successfully with the willing and valuable co-operation of the staff and their representatives. I am happy to say that the results have justified all that we hoped for from this change of method. As I say, this is made necessary for economic reasons, but also because of the increasing complexity of modern telecommunications equipment.
The hon. Member for Stechford mentioned that it might be right for the Post Office to enter into large-scale production of some of the equipment needed for the modern telephone and telecommunications industry. The growth and development of new equipment, which is increasingly complicated and of an increasingly technical nature, has challenged the manufacturing industry outside the Post Office to adopt modern production methods. These have involved the industry in the investment of very large sums of money and in very complicated and highly intricate machinery for the cheap production in large quantities of standard parts of equipment.

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It would not be right, and I am sure the House endorses the view as it has accepted the view in the past, that the Post Office should divert its factories from the hitherto accepted purpose and engage in a vast investment of this kind in a field which is at present capable of producing these things at prices which are highly competitive and which is able to satisfy a very large export demand in a highly competitive market. There is at present excess capacity in the manufacturing industry, and it would be wrong for the Post Office to seek to extend its activities along the lines which the hon. Gentleman has suggested.
As against these changes, which have involved us to some extent in reducing the numbers of people engaged in the factories and have, as a consequence of the development of the modern flow-line techniques, involved us in employing less of the highly-skilled labour to which he referred, we have the increase in the size of the telephone system, which has almost doubled in the last ten years. That means that there are more items coming forward capable of being repaired and re-used.
It is our view that the Post Office factories at about their present size, turning out about their present amount of competitively repaired goods, will be a continuing feature of Post Office life. That means that those who are engaged in this work in the Post Office factories have an assurance that we will be continuing with the Post Office repair processes in the Post Office factories. I have no reason to doubt—though one cannot be sure of this—that as the system continues to grow, as we add into it more important and complicated repair work, for Telex equipment and so on, the work will continue
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to be varied and will probably tend to grow rather than reduce over the next five or six years.
I am aware, as are the factory management, that it must have been a trying time for those engaged in the factories to see these changes taking place about them, and to see some of the skills which have been employed hitherto no longer needed, and colleagues alongside them placed on other work or asked to retire when they reached retirement age. I hope that what I have said tonight will give an assurance to those engaged in the factories that while we must always be ready to make ourselves competitive and to step in and take advantage of changes and new methods and developing ideas, the Post Office will continue to use its factories for the purpose for which they were established—the repair and maintenance of our equipment—and will do its best to see that whatever changes are necessary are brought into effect with the least possible disruption of the lives of those who work in the factories and without inflicting on them any hardship that is avoidable.
I would pay tribute to the way in which the staffs and their representatives have been willing to sit round the table with us and discuss changes which have had this kind of effect, for it cannot have been altogether welcome to them to try to find the best way of meeting the conditions with which they were called on to deal, and which they have been so successful in bringing into effect with the least possible discomfort to those concerned.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes to Twelve o'clock.

TRADE AND COMMERCE
  New York World Trade Fair
  New York World Trade Fair
  Western Germany (Exports)
  Western Germany (Exports)
  Glove Industry
  Glove Industry
  U.S.S.R. (Timber Exports)
  U.S.S.R. (Timber Exports)
  Factories (Foreign Manufacturers)
  Factories (Foreign Manufacturers)
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Distribution of Industry Act, 1958
  Distribution of Industry Act, 1958
  Government Research (Private Firms)
  Government Research (Private Firms)
  Private Concerns and Research Councils (Assistance)
  Private Concerns and Research Councils (Assistance)
  Railway Superannuitants
  Railway Superannuitants
  Production and Consumption
  Production and Consumption
  Rubens Painting
  Rubens Painting
  New Industry, Northern Ireland
  New Industry, Northern Ireland
  Post-war Credits
  Post-war Credits
  Société d'Investissements Mobiliers
  Société d'Investissements Mobiliers
HOUSING
  Staffordshire (Teachers' Houses)
  Staffordshire (Teachers' Houses)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
  Peterlee Development Corporation (Members)
  Peterlee Development Corporation (Members)
  Drinking Water, Wales (Radioactivity Tests)
  Drinking Water, Wales (Radioactivity Tests)
  Pritchard Committee (Report)
  Pritchard Committee (Report)
  Essex
  Essex
  Basildon (Garages)
  Basildon (Garages)
MALAYA
  Mr. D. C. Hill
  Mr. D. C. Hill
SOMALILAND
  Elementary Education
  Elementary Education
ZANZIBAR
  Franchise (Women)
  Franchise (Women)
BRITISH HONDURAS
  Director of Medical Services
  Director of Medical Services
COLONIAL SERVICE
  Officers (Probation)
  Officers (Probation)
TANGANYIKA
  Education
  Education
MINISTRY OF WORKS
  Bricks (Supply)
  Bricks (Supply)
SCOTLAND
  Nurses (X-ray Examinations)
  Nurses (X-ray Examinations)
  Messrs. MacBrayne, Ltd. (Accounts)
  Messrs. MacBrayne, Ltd. (Accounts)
  Rabbits
  Rabbits
  National Galleries (Orders)
  National Galleries (Orders)
  Licensing Laws
  Licensing Laws
HOME DEPARTMENT
  Criminal Offences (Penalties)
  Criminal Offences (Penalties)
BRITISH ARMY
  Round Tower, Portsmouth
  Round Tower, Portsmouth
  Spurn Point, Yorkshire
  Spurn Point, Yorkshire
MINISTRY OF HEALTH
  Prescriptions Charge
  Prescriptions Charge
  Maternity Services, Swindon
  Maternity Services, Swindon
ROYAL NAVY
  Rifles and Ammunition
  Rifles and Ammunition
  Service Voters
  Service Voters
EMPLOYMENT
  Shotts Employment Exchange
  Shotts Employment Exchange
ROYAL AIR FORCE
  Dalcross, Lossiemouth and Kinloss Airports
  Dalcross, Lossiemouth and Kinloss Airports
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
  Constitutional Changes
  Constitutional Changes
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Bulls (Attacks)
  Bulls (Attacks)

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

BRADFORD CORPORATION BILL
2.35 p.m.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

JOSEPH ROWNTREE MEMORIAL TRUST BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House I beg to move the Motions standing in his name upon the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Morton of Henryton be added to the Select Committee on the House of Lords Offices.—(Earl Bathurst.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Lord Morton of Henryton be added to the Select Committee on the Procedure of the House.—(Earl Bathurst.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SPECIAL ORDERS COMMITTEE
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Lord Morton of Henryton be added to the Select Committee on Special Orders.—(Earl Bathurst.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WAGES COUNCILS BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate the enactments relating to Wages Councils, and to move that the Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read la; and to be printed.

OCCUPIERS' LIABILITY (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
2.40 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OE STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD FORBES): My Lords, this is a short Bill effecting a much-needed reform in a difficult branch of the law. It is what I think may be described as "lawyers' law" and, as such, it is extremely frightening to a layman like myself. Since I am not a lawyer myself your Lordships will forgive me if I set out, I hope quite simply (in both senses of the word), the position in broad terms.
The Bill gives effect to the First Report of the Law Reform Committee for Scotland, and before going on to describe its provisions I should like to pay a tribute to the work of this Committee, appointed by the Lord Advocate, which has as its Chairman the Honourable Lord Walker and includes eminent members of both branches of the legal profession in Scotland. The Committee has produced several Reports, of which one has already been given statutory effect by the Interest on Damages (Scotland) Act, 1958, and we are very grateful for the work which it is doing in examining various branches of the law of Scotland where difficulties have arisen. In this case the Scottish Committee had the benefit of studying a Report already published by the English Law Reform Committee on the corresponding branch of the law of England and Wales. That Report was later given effect by the Occupiers' Liability Act, 1957.
The Bill before your Lordships deals with two related but distinct matters. The first is the standard of care which is

1157
owed by an occupier to persons entering his premises, to secure that they do not come to any injury as a result of the state of the premises or of anything done on them for which the occupier is in law responsible as occupier. This is dealt with in Clauses 1 and 2. It may help if I go briefly into the history of this matter. Under the law of England and Wales as it stood for many years before the passing of the 1957 Act, the standard of care required of an occupier towards a person entering his premises depended on whether that person was an "invitee", a "licensee" or a "trespasser". The standard of care was, of course, highest towards invitees and lowest towards trespassers. As time went on these three categories became more and more rigidly defined, with the result that a considerable measure of artificiality was introduced into the law regarding the obligations of an occupier towards his visitors. For example, of two persons entering a house for a dinner party one might be an invitee having been invited to discuss mutual business with his host, and the other a licensee, he being there purely for social reasons. Now each of those on entering the house would be entitled to a different standard of care from his host, depending on the object with which the host had invited them and the category into which accordingly they fell.
The law of Scotland originally did not have regard to these categories, but held that the question whether an occupier had been neglectful in regard to the safety of persons entering his premises depended on the circumstances of the particular case. However, in 1929 a decision of your Lordships' House reversing one of the Court of Session, superimposed on Scots law as it then stood the doctrine of the categories.
It was recognised on both sides of the Border that this doctrine gave rise to anomalies, and the English Law Reform Committee recommended that the categories of invitee and licensee should be abolished, but did not propose to alter the position of the trespasser. These recommendations were given effect by the English Act of 1957 which I have already mentioned.
Now the Scottish Committee went further. They unanimously recommended that the categories of invitee and licensee should be abolished; and,
1158
furthermore, a majority of them recommended that the category of trespasser should be abolished. A minority—two out of the twelve members—were of the opinion that the category of trespasser should not be abolished, and a further three considered that it should not be abolished if actions of reparation against occupiers were left open to trial by jury. The question of trial by jury in civil actions is at present being considered by a Committee under the chairmanship of the honourable Lord Strachan which has not yet reported.
This different approach by the two Committees is no doubt related to the long-standing distinction between Scots and English law in regard to trespassers. In Scots law a trespasser is not necessarily committing a civil wrong, as is the case in England when one man enters on another's land without permission. It will be seen, therefore, that in Scotland the lower standard of care due by an occupier to a trespasser, as compared with that due to an invitee or a licensee, does not arise from the consideration that the trespasser is committing a wrong against the occupier. In the words of Lord President Clyde
"one of the main reasons—if not the only reason—why, in the normal case, a trespasser is beyond the scope of any duty owed to him by the proprietor, is that the latter has no reason to suppose that people are invading his property behind his back."
My Lords, after careful consideration Her Majesty's Government thought it right to give effect to the majority recommendation of the Law Reform Committee, irrespective of any decision which may eventually be reached as to trial by jury in civil cases.
I turn now to deal in slightly more detail with the provisions of Clauses 1 and 2. Clause 1 provides for the super-session, by the statutory provisions of Clause 2, of the existing Common Law rules determining the standard of care owed by an occupier to persons coming on the premises. The effect of this is to abolish the doctrine of the categories as well as the separate sets of rules determining the precise degree of care required to be shown for the safety of each of the different categories of visitor. In substitution for these rules, which have become increasingly involved and difficult to apply with any certainty, Clause 2 (to which I shall come in a moment) enacts a broad general rule applicable

1159
to each visitor in accordance with the circumstances attending his particular case. Here I should like to point out that the Common Law rules for determining on whom the duty of care as occupier rests are unchanged. In addition, the provisions apply to movable structures such as vessels or aircraft and to property on those vessels or aircraft.
Clause 2 provides that the care which an occupier is required to show towards a person entering on his premises shall be such care as is reasonable in all the circumstances of the case. Provision is made for exceptions from the general standard of care in cases where the occupier has modified, by agreement or otherwise, his obligations toward his visitor; secondly, where the occupier owes a higher standard of care imposed by law on particular classes of person—for example, occupiers of factories; and, thirdly, where the visitor has willingly accepted risks.
Your Lordships may feel that some comment is required not only on what the clause says, but on what it does not say. It does not set out the considerations to which regard has to be paid in determining whether the occupier has shown reasonable care, and in this respect it contrasts to some extent with the English Act of 1957. By framing the clause in this way, effect is given to the recommendation of the Scottish Committee that
"detailed elaborate codification of this branch of the law of Scotland should not be attempted, but liability should be made to depend upon the broad general principle of culpa, that is, breach of the duty to take reasonable care in the circumstances of the particular case".
This broad general principle is well established in Scots law, and to elaborate it by providing a series of statutory signposts designed to indicate what constitutes "reasonable care" might well have dangers with no compensating advantages.
I now come to the second subject with which the Bill deals, in Clause 3. The clause provides that where a landlord is responsible for the maintenance or repair of let premises he must show towards persons on the premises the like care in respect of dangers arising from his failure to carry out that responsibility as an occupier is required to show towards his visitors. The effect of this is
1160
to restore the law to what it was before the decision in the case of Cameron v. Young in 1908, which overthrew the former rule of Scots law that the measure of a lessor's liability to third persons coming upon the premises was to be found in the ordinary law of neglect and decided that third parties such as the family of the tenant or his visitors, not being parties to the lease, had no remedy against the lessor for injuries sustained through the defective condition of the subjects let. Clause 4 provides for the application of the Act to the Crown. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this Bill is designed to improve the law of Scotland and that your Lordships will give it an unopposed Second Reading. My Lords I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Forbes.)
2.51 p.m.
LORD GREENHILL: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, I have the comfort of knowing that I am not a lawyer and therefore can indulge, presumably, in the mistakes to which a layman is entitled. But I have done my homework, in that I have read the Bill; I have read both the Scottish and English Committees' Reports and, perhaps more important, I have read—with very great interest—the speeches made on the Second Reading of the English Act in 1957. I was very much impressed not only by the admirable statement by the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, but even more by the summing-up which he gave after hearing speeches by my noble friend Lord Milner of Leeds and by my late noble and learned friend Lord Jowitt.
My own interest in this Bill arises mainly from the fact that I wanted to understand its effects upon local government bodies, for they, as your Lordships know, are large owners of land and large occupiers of land. Because of their interest in such matters as public parks, houses, shops and other buildings they are constantly under the danger of having actions brought against them for neglect of their duty, both as occupiers and as landlords of properties. I am bound to say that in reading this account I have been very favourably impressed by, apparently, the consistency of opinion shown on the problems concerned in these Reports.

1161
The Scottish Committee's Report goes into this matter very fully and brings out the principle of which those of us in Scotland are most proud and that is a return to the concept of blameworthiness—or culpa, which I think is the legal expression—particularly in regard to trespassers. The injustice suffered by the Scottish legal profession as a result of the decision of the House of Lords overturning a decision in 1929 is now being remedied and the decision in the Court of Session in what I think is known as the Dumbreck case is now being accepted throughout Scottish law and in English law, too.
I should like to refer in some little detail to that particular case, because when my noble friend Lord Milner of Leeds spoke, on this matter in the debate in 1957, on the Second Reading of the English Act, he referred to what he thought was an omission at that time from the Bill then being considered, in that there was apparently little remedy suggested for injury suffered by child trespassers, as distinct from adult trespassers. The case then, as I am told, was like this. The Law Reform Committee for Scotland recalled that the classification of persons entering upon land was an import from England and dated from relatively modern times. It was in 1929, in the case of Dumbreck v. Addle & Son Limited, 1929, Scottish Cases (House of Lords), No. 51, that the House of Lords laid it down that the duty of occupiers in Scotland was to be regulated by this classification; and, as the noble Lord has mentioned, that classification into categories is the invitee, the licensee and the trespasser.
In Dumbreck v. Addie & Son Limited the Court of Session held (Lord Blackburn dissenting) in favour of the father of a four-year-old boy who had been killed by being crushed in the terminal wheel of a haulage system belonging to a colliery company which was set in motion from time to time for the purpose of depositing ashes contained in hutches on to a king. The colliery officials tried unsuccessfully to keep children out of the field. They knew that children habitually used the field as a playground. The boy's father had warned his son not to go into the field. On the occasion of the accident the colliery servants set the cable in motion without trying to find
1162
out whether anyone was in the neighbourhood.
In deciding in favour of the pursuer the Court was following the law of Scotland as it was understood and as it had only recently been reiterated in the case of Shillinglaw v. J. G. and R. Turner. In that case Lord Clyde had said:
"Most of those duties (whereof the breach constitutes negligence) arise simply out of the relation into which the complexities of social life bring the defender with the pursuer. Those relations are infinitely various"—
"infinitely various" is, I think, a very fine expression—
"and in Scotland we have been slow and unwilling to classify and categorise them."
The Court felt that the crux of the case was whether, in view of the dangerous character of the wheel when set in motion, and the circumstances in which the boy was present when it was set in motion, the colliery company owed any duty to him to prevent an accident. It was held that the wheel was dangerous, though not obviously so, when at rest, and that the colliery officials, knowing that trespassers were in the habit of being around the wheel, had a duty to take steps to avoid an accident. The House of Lords, however, on appeal, held that since the child was a trespasser no such duty was owed to him, and that there was no reckless disregard of his safety equivalent to wilful harm.
That case, my Lords, shows, I think the recognition by the Scottish Judges of the fact that a different attitude has to be adopted in the case of children too young to read notices—too disobedient, if you like, to take notice of what grownups tell them about the danger of the places in which they find themselves. And, as one would expect, the Scottish Court recognised that fact. It is not my province, or indeed my duty, to refer to the 1957 Act, but one would like to think that a similar kind of attitude was adopted in that Act.
The other point which occurs to me, is this. It is true, as the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, said, that the Scottish Law Reform Committee, by a majority, decided to abolish the category of trespasser; and the reason for that, as is well known, is that "trespass" in Scotland is not a civil wrong as it is in England. Therefore, it is treated somewhat differently in Scotland. But, speaking as a layman I would say that the

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mere fact that, even in Scotland, the Scottish Law Reform Committee were unable to come to a unanimous decision upon these points suggests an element of uncertainty; and if there is one thing that one likes to believe the law stands for it is certainty in its findings. If it does so, it commands greater obedience than would be the case if there were not certainty.
My Lords, having rambled on in this way, and again emphasising that I speak purely as a layman, I am bound to say that it seems to me that we have made an advance in promoting this piece of legislation. One hopes that the effect of this will be that, where injury is suffered, those injured will receive reparation, and that those who neglect their duty in that respect will be made to pay for their lack of care. The only question which now occurs to me is what the effect is going to be in the immediate future, until such time as the law becomes crystallised under this new Act: whether there will be an increase of litigation by people who want to test the effects of the new Act, or whether we shall now be satisfied that the law is clear enough not to arouse any kind of doubt about its operation. I have much pleasure in supporting this Bill.
3.1 p.m.
LORD REID: My Lords, this is, I think, a Bill of considerable importance, because not only does it affect the duty of all occupiers of land, but it affects the rights of all who enter upon other people's land for any reason at all—and that includes every one of us. Perhaps for a few minutes I might explain why, in my view, the Bill is necessary. In Scotland, the tendency has always been to take a broad view of questions of this kind—injury to people owing to the fault of others—and to look at the whole circumstances of the case; and then, having done that, to ask the apparently simple question: was the occupier at fault? To put it a little more definitely, the question is: did the occupier fail to do something which a reasonable man in his shoes would have done for the protection of his visitors? Did he fail to get rid of some danger which it would have been reasonable for him to remove; or did he fail to give the incomer
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some notice or assistance so that he might avoid dangers which were irremovable?
On a general issue of that kind there is the disadvantage, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, has referred, that different minds may reach different conclusions on the same facts; and the law, very properly, always endeavours to reach as much certainty as the case permits, for this very simple reason: that it is very much in the public interest that those who advise people who may have claims, or who may resist claims, should be able to forecast what will happen if the case is taken to court. I think the main reason for promoting certainty in the law is to enable advisers to give confident advice and therefore avoid litigation. In the search for certainty, the English law has, I think, pursued a somewhat different course from that pursued by Scottish law. There were laid down rules, or categories, to which the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, referred, with the most laudable intention of making the law certain. But experience has shown that, although you can do that when circumstances of various cases do not vary very widely, you do not achieve your object if you seek to do that where circumstances vary infinitely, as they do in cases of this character. The inevitable result was that the rules became too complicated, and it was perhaps more difficult to forecast what would happen under these complicated rules than to forecast what would happen if you asked a perfectly simple straightforward question.
I agree with my predecessors to this extent: that I think it is desirable that in a matter of this kind the law on the two sides of the Border should, in large measure, be the same: we should like to pursue the same path so far as possible. There always has been, however, considerable reluctance in Scotland in accepting the English point of view, and this has been shown in the Dumbreck case, in particular. In that case this House, sitting judicially, adopted the English point of view for Scotland; and however much Scotsmen may have disliked that decision, they have followed it. I cannot help thinking—I have said this before, and I say it again—that one of the reasons why we have to trouble this House, sitting in its legislative capacity,

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with Bills of this kind is that the practice of this House, sitting in its judicial capacity, is that it will not review past decisions. I cannot help thinking that the time is rapidly approaching when that practice ought to be modified. If it were modified, I cannot help thinking that a number of these difficult, old decisions could be removed without recourse to the procedure of Bill and Act of Parliament. However, that is by the way. As the practice of this House stands at the present, the only way of retracing our steps is to come to the House, sitting as a legislative body, and seek assent to a Bill to alter past decisions of this House sitting in its judicial capacity.
I must not give the impression that dissatisfaction with these decisions was confined to Scotland; it certainly was not: because strong Committees of lawyers were appointed in both countries to review the whole subject. In fact, the English Committee reported first, in a most elaborate Report, which, I think, gained general acceptance and was followed by the English Act. As has been pointed out, the recommendations of both Committees, apart from this one matter of trespassers, were almost identical. I might perhaps repeat the words in the Report of the Scottish Committee, where they characterised the existing law as consisting of "narrow, rigid arid ambiguous distinctions"—perhaps slightly picturesque language, but not a wholly unfair picture of the position which this Bill seeks to alter.
The English Act was passed two years ago, and at first sight one wondered why there should be this gap. However, I think the answer is plain, and I certainly do not complain of the delay. The drafting of this Bill is quite different. It is simpler and, I would say, preferable, though no doubt others may think differently. But I do not think that we have lost the time that has elapsed, because I believe that we have a better Bill than we might have had if the matter had been rushed. I do not pretend to foresee what the result will be of either this Bill or the English Act. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, is right in his hope—or his guess, it may be—that it will lead to greater certainty. I am not sure, but I certainly think that it is likely to lead to greater justice, because
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it seems to me that getting rid of existing distinctions will open the door to a more just solution, if not a more satisfactory solution, of the problems that are coming up before the courts. Indeed, I do not think it would be altogether wrong to characterise this Bill as a Bill to restore the Common Law of Scotland, rather than as a Bill to amend or abolish it. I think that, with this Bill, the Scottish Courts ought to be able to reach a wholly satisfactory result, apart from one point to which I will come in a moment.
The heart of the Bill is undoubtedly Clause 2, and in so far as it deals with people whom an occupier has invited or permitted to come on his land, or to whose presence he has acquiesced, I think there will be general agreement that it is proper than there should be put on the occupier a duty to do everything reasonable to protect the incoming person. I am not sure that Clause 2 is properly worded. It reads that the duty of the occupier shall be to take
"such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to secure that that person"—
that is, the visitor—
"will not suffer injury or damage by reason of any such danger."
"Secure" seems to me to be a rather strong word in the context, although I am bound to say that I have not yet been able to think of another word which seems to me wholly satisfactory. It may he that we may consider that and other points before Committee stage.
I also welcome Clause 3, which the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, has explained. It gets rid of a technical distinction. The Scottish case which established the distinction in Scotland has been referred to, but the earlier English case, which started the trouble, has not. I think that this is eminently a case where lawyers might have put right what were technical distinctions, but which have proved to be unfortunate, even fifty years ago. There really is no sense in the distinction that a landlord is liable to pay damages if his tenant sustains injury by reason of disrepair but is not liable if a tenant's wife sustains injury; and it is that kind of distinction that this Bill is intended to get rid of.
Now I come to the point about which I have a little more difficulty. If a landlord or occupier acquiesces in the presence of intruders—I will not use the

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word "trespassers", because that is perhaps more appropriate in England—then he ought to take some care about them; but what causes me a little difficulty is the case where he does his best to keep them off his land. They may be adults, or they may be children. Not only do people disregard notices, and climb over locked gates and break through fences, but children keep poking their way in wherever they can. If an occupier really does his best to keep them out, but fails, ought he to be subjected to a positive duty to take some measure of care for their safety or not? I do not object to the reversal in the Dumbreck case, because that was a case of negligence directly causing the accident. The real trouble arises if there is, say, a rotten tree or a decaying bridge likely to give way, and the occupier knows that intruders, be they adult or children, are in the habit of going that way. Should the occupier have an obligation to put these things right or not?
I do not hold any very strong views, and under the Bill it is left to the tribunal hearing the case to decide whether it would have been reasonable for the occupier, say, to lop the tree or to repair or fence off the bridge. Whether that is a good thing or not, I am bound to say I am rather doubtful. It is true that occupiers are probably protected by insurance, and it may be true that in a great many cases the court would say that in such a case the occupier had tried to keep people out and that it would not be fair to put this burden on him. I do not know whether or not that would be said; and I feel that this is rather a leap in the dark in this matter.
I should be much happier if I thought that these cases would be tried by a Judge and not by a jury. Your Lordships will no doubt be aware that in Scotland these personal accident cases are tried by jury. I have no objection to juries; but if in the original stages a Judge tries these cases, he will give his reasons, which can be examined by the Inner House of the Court of Session, or it may be in your Lordships' House, and some measure of uniformity in outlook will develop. But if a jury try these cases, they do not give reasons and nobody will know why they give their decisions; nor will there be any possibility
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of introducing some measure of uniformity into their decisions. Therefore, I should be much happier about this new departure if I felt that it was being conducted by Judges who would give their reasons and therefore that there would be some means of keeping track (if I may use the vulgarism) of the way the law is developing.
Subject to that point, my Lords, I entirely welcome the Bill. I believe that the people of Scotland will welcome it; I am sure that the legal profession in Scotland will. There are one or two other minor points of drafting which no doubt may be discussed on Amendments at the Committee stage, but I do not think that there is any other broad general point on which there is likely to be any division of opinion at all, and therefore, I wholly support the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill.
3.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I am well aware that I am not a great expert on Scottish law, but I wonder whether, with the greatest respect, I may disagree with the noble and learned Lord who has just sat down, because I have two points which have caused certain anxiety in Scotland, and which may result in misunderstandings. I feel that I should raise them in your Lordships' House this afternoon in the hope that they may be cleared up, either to-day or on Committee.
They concern Clause 3 of the Bill, under which a landlord who is under an obligation to maintain and repair is put under a liability for injuries resulting from defects in subjects for which he is responsible. I note that the Bill lays upon him responsibility to take such care as is reasonable in the circumstances. I have looked this point up in the books and discover that the basic precept of Scottish law in such a case is that the landlord must receive notice of the defect before he becomes liable, because culpa is the basis of the delict. None the less, I feel that there may be a case for putting in this clause that where this liability rests upon a landlord, there should also rest upon the tenant the responsibility of informing the landlord of any defects of which he knows.
As this Bill stands, and as common sense dictates, the first person that the injured man would choose to sue would

1169
be the landlord. He would be the person who would probably have the money to pay; and the Bill directly invites the man, if the landlord has the liability to maintain and repair, to sue him. If the landlord did not know of the defect, if it had not come to his notice and he had not had a chance of finding out about it, I do not see how the injured man could possibly succeed. He would then be left to sue the tenant, and the tenant would say: "But this is not my responsibility. The landlord has undertaken to maintain and to repair; the defect concerns him. Although it is true that I knew about it, I did not see fit to tell him, and I do not see that I have broken any duty." This may be where the misunderstanding lies. I have a feeling that it might be on such an occasion as that and on that argument that the tenant might also escape, in which case the injured man would have no recourse at all. If, therefore, we put in Clause 3 that where this particular form of tenancy arises the tenant should be under a duty to inform his landlord whenever he became aware of a defect which might become dangerous, then I think he would not be able to escape by the argument that I have just propounded; because if he knew about the defect he would have the duty to tell the landlord about it, and if he did not tell the landlord, he would have broken the duty.
I feel that it is a question of balance, because there are the three parties who are concerned. There is the landlord, who has perhaps a large estate or a great number of farms spread out over a large area and which he cannot personally supervise all the time. Suppose it were possible for the tenant to get out of liability by the argument I have mentioned, the inevitable result would be one of two things: either the courts would be bound to say, "True, the landlord did not know of it, but if he had been a good landlord he should have known of it"—in which case we should come very close to laying a strict liability on the landlord; or, alternatively, the injured man would not get any reparation. The tenant, being in the middle, of course, has his duty to perform as well. So I suggest that it might be a good thing if that duty were inserted in Clause 3.
1170
The other point is this. The clause mentions "repair and maintenance". A very common variety of farm leases in Scotland provides that the tenant should be put under an obligation to repair and to maintain, but that the landlord should be left with the obligation to renew and replace the landlord's fixtures. It is obvious that defects and injuries may result from the landlord's fixtures just as easily as from the parts of the subject which are the responsibility of the tenant. It is certainly not clear from the wording of Clause 3 whether "maintenance and repair" also includes "renewal and replacement". If it does not, I wonder whether this may not be a casus omissus in the Bill, in which case perhaps the old law, which exists up to now and which is embodied in Cameron v. Young and the other cases which have been referred to, may have to be used to fill the gap, and we shall be back in the position which, as has already been explained, is most unsatisfactory. If, however, Her Majesty's Government do intend that "maintenance and repair" shall include "renewal and replacement", why does not the clause say so?—because that is the way to make it perfectly clear.
Apart from that, I welcome the Bill and I welcome Clause 3. I am sure it is right that the dissatisfaction which has remained since the decision of Cameron v. Young should be cleared up. I also agree with the sentence in the report of the Law Reform Committee:
"There seems to be no valid reason why lessors who have created a source of danger by work carried out before transferring possession of the subjects (e.g., by installing a defective boiler) should not be held liable on ordinary principals of culpa for injury later caused by the danger on the premises to persons entering thereon."
I am sure, therefore, that this simplification is extremely welcome. Now that the stable companion of this Bill is running in England and Wales, I feel sure that Scotland should have the benefit of a similar Bill and that we should return to the simplicity and common sense which distinguished the Scottish law on this subject before it was complicated by decisions imported from South of the Border. I beg leave to support the Bill.
3.27 p.m.
LORD KEITH OF AVONHOLM: My Lords, like others who have preceded me, I rise to welcome this Bill. It comes into this House, as has been mentioned, almost exactly two years after the corresponding English Bill received the Royal Assent, and, as has also been mentioned, it is designed to remove some anomalies, if not injustices, in the present state of the law. It is perhaps fitting that I should refer to a short passage in the Report of the Scottish Law Reform Committee, in which they gave full credit to the Report and the labours of the English Law Reform Committee, upon which the English Bill followed. In paragraph 11, the Scottish Committee's Report says this:
"We refer to the full and scholarly survey set out in the English Report, and substantially adopt the statement and criticisms of the present law contained in that Report—subject, however, to the qualifications and explanations stated in the following paragraphs."
The statements in the following paragraphs do not detract in any way from the main principles upon which the English Committee proceeded, except in the matter of trespass, to which my noble and learned friend Lord Reid has referred. Perhaps I should say at this stage that I do not entirely share the apprehensions of my noble and learned friend in this matter.
One of the purposes of this Bill is, of course, to return to what was the old law in Scotland before it was affected by decisions of this House sitting in its judicial capacity. I have never been aware that under the old law there was any real difficulty found in dealing with the case of trespassers coming on to a person's property. The principles are fairly well ascertained and it is clear that to trespassers there cannot arise exactly the same measure of duty that may arise to other persons coming on to an occupier's property. The Bill itself provides that the care to be exercised is:
"such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to secure that that person will not suffer injury or damage by reason of any such danger."
Reasonable care to be exercised in the case of trespassers need not be—and I am satisfied will not be—the same care that is due to other people. The Scottish
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courts have always appreciated that position. They have been able adequately, I think, to deal with the matter, and I have every confidence that under the Bill, if it passes in its present form, the Scottish courts will be fully able to deal with that matter.
It is impossible to envisage all the possible circumstances which may arise in the case of trespassers. These matters will have to be dealt with as they come up, and it may be that some of them will come to this House for ultimate decision. But these are matters which, of course, we must leave to the application of this Bill if it becomes an Act, according to the terms and according to the construction and application that the court puts upon it.
There is one point which has been mentioned and which might call for some consideration. Three members of the Scottish Committee, as has been pointed out, thought that the law of trespass should be omitted from the Bill—or, at any rate, that it should not be abolished along with the other categories. They wished that question to go to a decision of a judge. I think it would be quite a simple matter—I am not prepared to say what must be done—to provide that a case of trespass should be treated as a special cause under Section 4 of the Evidence Act, 1866, which would enable the case to be decided by a judge instead of by a jury. But that is merely a small modification of the Bill as it stands. It would not affect the principle of the Bill; it would affect merely the question of the machinery by which the question of trespass should be tried by a judge rather than by a jury.
As I have said, this is no new principle in the law of Scotland. It is many years ago since the law of Scotland was altered by decisions of this House, and it is, as I happen to know well, the considered view of all legal writers in Scotland on this subject that the decisions cut across the old principles of the law of Scotland. I think that the position to-day is somewhat Gilbertian, because whereas English law was introduced into Scotland as a result of these decisions and thereafter fell to be applied in Scotland, to-day the English law enjoys what were really the old principles of the Scottish law. But Scotland to-day is still

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struggling with the rules and principles that were imposed upon it in the last thirty to fifty years. That position has prevailed now for two years, and I suppose it will prevail for some short time longer, but I hope it will ultimately disappear.
On that matter I would quote from the Report of the Committee where they say, in paragraph 1:
"… the difficulties and anomalies in the existing law regarding the matter remitted to us have resulted from the overlaying of the older law with restrictive categories of extraneous origin."
I am sure that everyone in Scotland will welcome the disappearance of these "characteristics of extraneous origin".
Perhaps I should refer in a brief word to what the noble Viscount said with regard to the two points arising under Clause 3. I agree with his clear and adequate statement of what I think is the legal position: that if the tenant does not inform the landlord of defects in the house that he is occupying as tenant, the landlord will not be liable to people coming on to the demised or other leased premises. I think that that is perfectly true. To that extent, of course, the landlord is exempt from liability. Whether the person coming on to the premises will have a remedy against the tenant for dangerous defects clearly known to the tenant, of which he fails to give notice to the landlord, is a question that may have to be decided, and I am not going to say in what way it will be decided. But it is perfectly possible that a person coming on to the premises in that case might have a claim against the tenant if the tenant was negligent or remiss in giving notice to the landlord of dangers on his premises. I say that only as a possibility. I am not going to commit myself to any precise statement of what the result might be.
With regard to the agricultural leases which were referred to, of course if the tenant is liable for the repair and maintenance, then the landlord is exempt from any liability arising out of failure to maintain or repair. In the case of renewals, there again, although I should have thought the question of renewals of landlord's fixtures was a matter that arose at the end of the lease rather than during it, if there is some liability on the tenant to renew and the failure to
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renew is causing some dangers on the let premises, then again maybe some measure of liability may fall upon the tenant. But these are all question which will have to be decided in relation to the precise facts and circumstances of the particular case. I do not anticipate that these points to which the noble Viscount has referred are likely often to arise, and if they do I am not at all satisfied that they will pot be capable of a perfectly equitable solution if they come to the courts.
The Bill which, as I say, has been awaited in Scotland now for some two years—I do not say with impatience, but perhaps with some wonderment at the delay, although my noble and learned freind Lord Reid has given some reason why there should have beep some delay in this case—will be welcomed in Scottish legal circles, and it will also, I think, be a benefit to the public. I am very pleased to support it.
3.38 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, as one who from his earliest years has been taught to admire and reverence the old Common Law of Scotland for its humanity if not to understand it, I naturally welcome any return to the old Scots Common Law such as is proposed in this Bill. But I admit that from the very first moment one question which rather disturbed me was the one brought forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, about this question of trespassers. The kind of case that I envisage is of a farmer who, having to fulfil his duty to make up the road to his farm, seizes the three days before the harvest to quarry out gravel from the corner of the turnip field to place upon the road and repair the surface. He has no reason to suspect that anybody will go near that turnip field. But unfortunately there is a difference between the people who are invitees and people who are trespassers, which is that the invitees presumably arrive sober even if they go home drunk, whereas the trespasser may often be drunk when he comes. I envisage the case of a neighbouring farm servant who, returning home at night well filled, thinks he would like to see how Dockenhill's turnips are doing. He walks across by moonlight, falls into the hole and breaks his leg. The farmer has taken no special precautions; he never thought a man would go across a turnip

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field; and here he is saddled with a claim for damages. One would like to know what would happen in a case like that.
There is another point which has occurred. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Avonholm, said that all these things could be decided by the courts; he would not give a decision on them either way. I think your Lordships are entitled to know precisely the effect of the laws that we are asked to enact, and I certainly think that on the Committee stage—or now, if the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, can give us the information—we should like a little clearer enlightenment on the points raised by my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross and other noble Lords.
3.41 p.m.
LORD FORBES: My Lords, a short time ago I really thought that the fog of law was rising, but since listening to my noble friend, Lord Saltoun, I rather think it is coming down again. I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, especially those who have supported the Bill. Some useful and constructive suggestions have been made, which I will certainly look into between now and the Committee stage.
The noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, took up the question of responsibility for maintenance or repair of let premises, dealt with in Clause 3, and he asks whether this includes responsibility for the renewal and replacement of fixed equipment. I think his question was ably answered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Avonholm, but there still seems to be some doubt on it, so perhaps your Lordships will allow me to go into the matter a little further. The case is this: in general, where fixed equipment forms part of the premises, such as the boilers or the plumbing in a building, the obligation of the landlord under a lease to maintain and repair the let premises must include an obligation to maintain and repair those fixtures, and if necessary to replace or renew them if they are so defective that the premises cannot otherwise be said to be in proper maintenance and repair. In such a case, therefore, the landlord has a duty to show care in respect of such
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necessary replacement or renewal. Section 5 of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1949, sets out the respective liabilities of landlord and tenant for fixed equipment on a farm. The landlord must put the equipment into good repair at the outset of the lease. The responsibility of maintaining it in good repair then passes to the tenant except where any item perishes from natural decay or fair wear and tear, in which case the landlord must replace it or renew it.
Take, as an example, the roof of a farmstead. If a few slates come off it is the tenant's responsibility. If the roof is in such bad repair that it requires renewal, then it is the landlord's responsibility to renew that roof. One question, how far Clause 3 of the Bill applies to the landlord of a farm, can be answered, I think, by saying that the landlord has to show care in respect of dangers arising from any failure on his part in carrying out his responsibility. He could not therefore be required to show care in respect of anything which under Section 5 of the 1949 Act is specifically stated to be the responsibility of the tenant. But the courts would probably hold that he is bound to show care in respect of his own responsibilities as defined by the section.
The other point which arises is whether the terms of Section 5 of the 1949 Act, in so far as it draws a distinction between repair and maintenance on the one hand and replacement or renewal on the other, cast doubt on the meaning of Clause 3 of the Bill. The answer to this is, No. Section 5 of the 1949 Act makes special provision for fixed agricultural equipment and does not affect the ordinary law as to what is included in a landlord's responsibility for the maintenance and repair of let premises.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord to ask him this question? He quoted the legal, statutory obligation, but, as he knows, Scotland is full of leases in which that obligation is varied very much by conventions. There are, for example, large properties where all the woodwork belongs to the tenant and not the proprietor. Does the legal obligation still hold when the convention is so different?
LORD FORBES: No, my Lords, in that case the lease would hold good. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, pointed out that there were serious difficulties in connection with the category of trespassers, especially in the case of children. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, pointed out that certainty in law is what we are all trying to achieve so as to avoid litigation as far as possible. That is one of the reasons why we have thought fit to abolish the categories. I think your Lordships will agree that it is quite unreasonable that one person on entering a shop to buy something should be classed as an invitee and another person who goes into a shop to ask the way should he classed as a licensee. In order to try to clear up these anomalies it has been thought better to abolish these categories altogether. I hope your Lordships will not expect me to go into the detailed legal argument on all the points raised. It may, however, be helpful to noble Lords if I take up some of the points and give the reasons why the Bill has been drafted as it is at present before your Lordships. This might help your Lordships to formulate ideas as to whether Amendments should be put down to the Bill on Committee stage.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, expressed some concern about the abolition of the category of trespassers, although I do not think his concern was felt quite so strongly by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Avonholm. I do not think that it is unreasonable to give to the courts, as the Bill proposes to do, the duty of deciding what kind of obligation an occupier owes to people on his premises in any particular case. Obviously the courts will have regard to the fact that an occupier cannot foresee and guard against all the dangers which might confront a person who comes on to premises, unauthorised and unexpected. Obviously they will not blame an occupier for not locking up an empty house which is in a dangerous condition if it is on a securely fenced plot of land; on the other hand, they might well decide that if the plot is not securely fenced and children are in the habit of playing on it the occupier ought to have taken measures to ensure that children could not get into the house.
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There are so many possible ways in which persons can be on premises without authority that the Government think it wrong in the context of Scottish law to say that in all cases the occupier owes a lower standard of responsibility to such persons than he does to others. I can well imagine that in the case of some types of property (for example, land on which there are electrified railway lines) the occupier really ought to take more care to safeguard unauthorised persons than an occupier of inherently less dangerous property ought to take to safeguard persons who are present at his request or invitation. Therefore we think that it is wrong to lay down by law different categories of persons and to prescribe the amount of care owed towards each of them by the occupier; we consider it far better that the courts should be free to make a firm decision in the light of the particular circumstances in each case. It may be that it goes against the grain to give rights to a trespasser, but we have to remember, as has already been pointed out, that "trespass" in Scotland is not of itself a civil wrong and it is therefore not right to make a distinction between the trespasser, as an ill-doer, and the law-abiding citizen.
Then the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, wanted to know whether all cases of trespass might be tried by judges and not left to juries. I think it is a little premature to make any remarks on that subject. At present, a Committee is studying the whole question of civil juries, and in the meantime we must assume that civil juries are capable of reaching a reasonable decision. In other words I do not think we can amend this Bill to take account of alleged deficiencies of civil juries when the whole question of civil juries in Scottish law is under consideration. If the Committee recommend that civil juries should continue, then we can have complete confidence in them; while if they do not recommend their continuance the Government will have to consider whether to abolish them by Act of Parliament.
In conclusion, may I say that the principle behind the whole Bill, which I submit is an entirely reasonable one, is that artificial rules about the standard of care owed to persons entering on

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property are at all costs to be avoided and that each case should be decided on its own merits. With this assurance, I hope that noble Lords who have taken part in this debate will be able to formulate their views before the Committee stage, and that your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

LEGITIMACY BILL
3.54 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just obtained a Second Reading for the Bill which has been under discussion opened his remarks by saying that it was entirely a legal Bill. In one sense that is true of the Bill for which I am seeking a Second Reading. But this Bill, I think, touches more profoundly the social problem, or one part of the social problem, and it is concerned with an area where humanity is often found, as the saying is, rather "in the raw". The object of the Bill is to make a number of worth-while amendments in the law relating to legitimacy. There are five of these, which I hope to explain to your Lordships in a little more detail in a few minutes' time. Before doing that, however, I should like to make a few observations of a rather general character.
In the first place, as your Lordships will appreciate, this is a Private Member's Bill and it is a non-Party Bill. On its introduction in another place it was backed by the members of the Opposition and by Government supporters. That the proposer happened to be a member of the Opposition, and that the Bill is being moved in your Lordships' House this afternoon from these Benches is purely a matter of accident, in the sense that it was the result of the ballot. Therefore, I should like to start by emphasising the fact that the Bill is a non-contentious measure, in the sense that there is no Party matter at issue this afternoon. On the other hand, it would be quite wrong to say that the Bill is an uncontroversial Bill. There was some opposition when the Bill was
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going through another place, particularly in respect of the first of its clauses, and this opposition was pressed to a Division. But, as only four Members of another place could be found to vote against the Second Reading, whilst forty-five were in favour, I think the result must be regarded as an overwhelming vote in favour of the Bill; and it is significant that in the subsequent stages of the Bill there was no further opposition in the sense of any Division taking place. I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will feel able this afternoon to give the Bill a Second Reading without a Division, regarding any problem which may come up in respect of one clause or another as a matter rather for Amendments than for all-out opposition.
There is one further observation which I ought perhaps to make before asking your Lordships to look at the Bill clause by clause, and that is in respect of the attitude of Her Majesty's Government. The noble and learned Viscount who is to take part at a later stage will, of course, explain that in much greater detail; but I should like to say on behalf of the sponsors of this Bill, that they had great help from Her Majesty's Solicitor General and from the Home Office during the passage of the Bill through the other House, and there can be no question that as a result the Bill was vastly improved and is in a distinctly better shape than that in which it was when originally introduced. I hope that this may be taken as significant of at least benevolent neutrality, if not even warmer support, by Her Majesty's Government when the time comes for their attitude to be made known.
I come now to Clause 1, which is much the most controversial of the four main provisions of the Bill. It may, I think, be quite shortly said to be designed to legitimate the child of any legalised union, whatever the status of the parents at the time of the child's birth. That is the important point. Of course, the controversy over this matter goes back a long way—it goes back at least to the passing of the Legitimacy Act, 1926. Your Lordships may remember that that Statute, with one very important exception, legitimates bastard children when the parents subsequently marry. That, I think, has

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been the general rule, at any rate, in civilised countries in Western Europe, and it was rather a peculiarity of the English Common Law—and in my view one of its less satisfactory rules—that it refused to follow Continental opinion on this particular matter.
I believe that the first attempt to effect a change in the law by Parliamentary interposition occurred as long ago as the 13th century, when the Church was behind it and wished to secure a uniform system in regard to this particular matter; however, your Lordships' House at that time, in a famous declaration, said it did not wish to change the laws of England; and as a result of that declaration legitimation per subsequens matrimonium was not introduced into this country until the Act of 1926 was passed.
That Act, or the Bill as it originally stood, would have effected the change which it is proposed to make today, but when it came from another place to your Lordships' House it was amended so as to limit its provisions to cases where the parents were unmarried when the child was born—and this, of course, is the important exception to which I referred a moment ago. I believe it was the then Lord Archbishop of Canterbury who persuaded your Lordships that it would be a dangerous innovation to carry the proposed alteration in the law to the extent of legitimating those bastard children who were actually born in wedlock; and as a result of his advocacy the Bill was amended in that way. When it got back to the other place there was a great deal of opposition to that Amendment, and it is interesting that among its influential opponents were no fewer than four Members who afterwards became Prime Ministers—Ramsay MacDonald, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee.
The House was advised, however, that, in the legislative situation as it then stood, if they wanted the Bill they had better take it in its amended form, rather than try to get it back to its original form and then send it back to your Lordships' House. It was then getting towards the end of the Session and, as so often happens in a case of this kind, they were content to have half a loaf rather than no bread. It was in that
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quite familiar situation that the Amendment was accepted and the Legitimacy Act of 1926 was passed in the form in which we have it on the Statute Book to-day. I think it is fair to say that there has never been full acceptance of that situation, and there has been continuous agitation, or, at any rate, continuous pressure to get accepted the fuller measure which is brought before your Lordships this afternoon.
At the same time it would be wrong to suggest that there has not been substantial support for the views put forward by the then Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. I believe and hope that his successor, who I am particularly glad to see is to take part in this discussion, does not quite accept the views then expressed; but no doubt we shall hear from him exactly how far he is able to go in support of the Bill. It is right to observe that the recent Royal Commission on Divorce were divided on this subject. A majority of them, I believe, were against any alteration in the law in the sense of this particular clause in this Bill, though in other respects they advocated important changes in regard to legitimacy matters; and one, at any rate, of those is provided for in a later clause in this Bill.
The view of the majority of the Royal Commission, however, was emphatically not the view of the majority in another place when this Bill was considered there. I believe it was felt overwhelmingly that the essential element in the controversy is the interest of the child. However unreasonable it may be, there is still undoubtedly a stigma on persons suffering from illegitimacy of birth. It has always been a puzzle to me how strong this stigma is. So many men and women of great distinction have been illegitimate, starting from William the Conqueror, about whom every schoolboy knows, and going down to great men, like Prime Ministers and others. Nevertheless, the stigma is there; and it would be absurd to overlook the fact that it is a very serious stigma and something which is regarded as totally disgraceful on large numbers of people and which to-day has the effect of causing great suffering among many of our citizens.

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The arguments which have been adduced against this change seem to me to be weak and, at best, of problematical value when put against this great concrete fact of the stigma of illegitimacy; and that, of course, it is the main purpose of this particular clause of the Bill to remove. Although it is impossible to tell how many actual cases this clause will deal with, the general illegitimacy rate is very high and is continuing to rise. I have obtained the figures for 1955, when the total stood as 32,000, and for 1957 when it had reached as many as 35,500—an increase of 3,500 in two years. I am, of course, giving round figures. Quite a substantial number of these illegitimate children must have been born in wedlock.
It is well known, of course, that divorces are hurried on, and humane judges do all in their power to diminish the oppressive effect of the law as it stands by pushing cases forward and pronouncing decrees before children are born in order to evade the rigour of this particular aspect of the law. But it is certainly an injustice that the removal of the stigma of illegitimacy should so often depend on what is really the accident of whether or not a legal process can be got through within a limited time. There may be, and undoubtedly is from time to time, the extraordinary situation where one child in a family may be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents because a divorce has taken place in time while an earlier child from exactly the same union may not be able to be legitimated because it was born long before the divorce went through. And at a later stage, of course, the parents having married, subsequent children are legitimate from the start.
I do not propose to reply in advance to the arguments which have been adduced in support of the law as it stands. As I understand them, and having read the debate in another place, I believe that they can be summarised under three heads. First, the present system discourages divorce. Secondly, that it is necessary to protect wives who might give way to the pestering of husbands who persuade them to petition for divorce because it would enable a child to be born legitimate—this is, of course, another rather more detailed aspect of the first point. Thirdly, that it is a
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general protection of public morality. It seems to me to be very doubtful whether these arguments do not work just as strongly the other way, but I shall leave it to those who propose to take part in this discussion to make those points, no doubt more clearly and intelligibly than they have been made elsewhere. That covers Clause 1 which, as I say, is the most controversial and perhaps the most important of the clauses in this Bill.
The second clause is designed to give legislative effect to a recommendation of the Royal Commission. There are cases where, for one reason or another, a marriage which on the face of it looks as if it were a perfectly good and binding one turns out to be void ab initio. Sometimes these reasons are of a very technical character. For instance, the church may be found not to have been properly brought within the ambit of the administrative precepts of the law in respect of this particular matter, with the result that a large number of marriages which have been solemnised there may be held to be void. That is just one example. Therefore, it is proposed in this type of case that the child born of a void marriage, provided there is no fraud on the part of the parents in that they knew perfectly well that what they were doing was to bring about a void marriage—provided there is no sort of weakness of that kind—shall be legitimated. That is Clause 2.
Clause 3 introduces an important and, I submit, long overdue improvement in the law, in that it enables the father to have some say in respect of his illegitimate child. One of the most extraordinary things of our law as it has gone down through the centuries is that the illegitimate child was regarded as in no sort of relationship to the father. It was described as filius nullius. The mother was disregarded altogether, so it was almost equally objectionable from the women's point of view as from the father's, though the mother had the legal rights which the father was not given. The proposal in Clause 3 is, in effect, to bring in the father of an illegitimate child by means of the Guardianship of Infants Act, 1886. There are three subsections in the clause which effect this, and it is particularly in respect of this matter that we are grateful for the assistance we have received from the Home Office.

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Then in Clause 4 another useful little reform in the law is effected, in that a woman who was single at the date of the birth of her illegitimate child will be enabled to make an application for an affiliation order notwithstanding that she may have become married in the meanwhile. At present, as the result of a rather technical decision in the High Court, if she has married before commencing her proceedings she loses her right. I am sure that your Lordships will feel that it is only just that the woman should continue to have her rights in these circumstances, notwithstanding the fact that she may subsequently have married; and Clause 4 provides to that effect.
Clause 5 is perhaps a little more controversial. It provides that affiliation proceedings, and other sorts of proceedings under a number of other Statutes in which the same matter is involved—the matter of a bastard child—shall be "domestic proceedings" within the meaning of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, which enables them to be tried by the magistrate out of open court. They will cease to be fully public in the way ordinary proceedings in a magistrates court are. I think most people would say that these domestic proceedings arrangements under the Magistrates' Courts Act, and under the earlier Act, have worked very well and have been a great advantage. It is true that some advantages are lost if legal proceedings are not held coram publico, but in this particular case it is felt that, on balance, the advantages are in favour of making these proceedings domestic proceedings and bringing them within this particular part of the Magistrates' Courts Act.
My Lords, I have attempted to give your Lordships a brief introduction to what is attempted to be carried through by the clauses in this Bill. I have great pleasure in commending it to your Lordships, and beg to move that it be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Chorley.)
4.14 p.m.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, before I say a word about illegitimate children I do not know whether I might be allowed to say a word about illegitimate news items. I received a letter from a correspondent
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asking to see me about this Bill. I replied that I was not prepared to see him and advised him to go to the Church of England Moral Welfare Council, and I added one or two observations that he might discuss when he got to the Moral Welfare Council. I was considerably surprised a little later to find my name on the news page of a daily newspaper, billed as being in favour of this Bill and prepared to defend it against the onslaughts of the Bishop of Exeter. I regard that as an illegitimate news item and I hope there will never be any Bill to legitimate that kind of thing.
May I begin by saying that I am not really so excited about this Bill as, apparently, my predecessor was. I am finding it is dangerous to come into this House for fear of what I may be told about what my predecessors have said, or even non-predecessors, such as Augustine of Hippo. I cannot regard this Bill as of supreme importance. I am not going to try to argue it, because, so far as I can see, any skilful person and any morally-moved person can make just as strong an argument in favour of the Bill as against it and the arguments are not really final. Therefore, all that I hope to do is just to express my own opinion on the matter without necessarily arguing it. I am sorry to have to say that I shall not be able to stay to hear the subsequent speeches as I have for some long time past been due in another place.
The purpose of the Bill is a very simple one and one that attracts our natural sympathy; it is to relieve some children, or perhaps I should say some more children, of the title and status of illegitimacy which they derived from the moral illegitimacy of their parents. They were born out of wedlock. Nothing can ever alter that fact. The fault of it is in no sense the fault of the children, but they are penalised by bearing the stigma of illegitimacy for what is not their fault. Is that to go on? The natural answer is to say "No". But two questions arise which excite the special concern of the Church. The first is this: their status can be altered only by some kind of fiction, a legal fiction, calling them or treating them as legitimate when in fact they were never legitimate. I regard it as always a dangerous thing to play

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about with truth and with facts. To legitimate these children is to deceive, or to attempt to deceive, society about the nature of their parenthood. I am myself satisfied that in this case the degree of deception involved is justified by the duty to serve the interests and wellbeing of these particular children.
But there is a second question: the status and integrity of marriage. The bonds of wedlock matter far more for the welfare of society as a whole than the particular status of illegitimate children given to them by law. Will this Bill weaken the standing of the marriage bond which is already under very severe strain? Will it deceive society by making people more inclined to think that illegitimacy and the birth of children out of wedlock does not matter and can easily be rectified by a legal process?
As your Lordships have been reminded, a majority of the members of the recent Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce thought that it would weaken the status of marriage, and were against the proposal now contained in this Bill; and, as you have heard, my beloved predecessor, Archbishop Davidson, took the same view. There are others whose judgment I respect who agree with them—and I mention the name of the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Exeter. He is very strongly of that opinion, as are other leading Churchmen; and, but for a very unfortunate accident, I do not doubt that he would have been here to-day to defend his point of view. They may well be right; I am not going to say that they are not; but, on the whole, I take the contrary view—and that also with a great deal of support from leading Churchmen.
There are, I think, two main arguments against the acceptance of Clause 1. The first is that it destroys the accepted principles which have governed marriage law in the past, both ecclesiastical and secular, thus. As you have been reminded, if two unmarried persons, by fornication, become the natural parents of a child, and are married before its birth, then, by the common law of England, the child from its birth is legitimate. The principle is that because the parents could have been legitimately married when the child was conceived, since there was no bar to their being
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married, therefore, by a legal fiction, it can be supposed that they were married, or were intending to be married, and the child can be regarded as being legitimate.
Secondly, the same legal fiction can be applied if the natural parents become married after the child is born. They could have been married before, although they were not; but they have ben married since, therefore the child can be made legitimate. That is the rule of the old Roman Civil Law and of the Canon Law of the Western Church. It did not become Statute Law in this country until 1926, when the Legitimacy Act was passed. Your Lordships will have observed that the legal fiction is the same: the parents could have been married; therefore the child shall be legitimated as if they had been married. But, my Lords, to the provision of this Bill that kind of legal fiction cannot be applied. These children are born in adultery, not in fornication. The parents could never have been married when the child was conceived, except by a process of bigamy. The law cannot pretend that the child could have been legitimate; and, therefore, it may be argued, the law must not make the child legitimate now.
My Lords, I see the moral force of this argument, but I myself doubt whether it should prevail over the contrary moral considerations. The old Canon Law came into existence when divorce and remarriage did not exist, so that the dilemma we have to consider did not come into view. Now divorce and remarriage do exist, whether rightly or wrongly, and that must be taken into account. A situation can arise now that could not have arisen in older days. The defenders of Canon Law on this point say that no hardship is caused by sticking to the principles of Canon Law, since the natural parents, now married by process of divorce, can adopt their own child. But, my Lords, that is surely a legal fiction, too, and is meant to deceive society by the assumption that the natural child is not the natural child of the parents, but an adopted child brought in from outside. Personally, I think it is more straightforward, and therefore morally preferable, to drop the legal fictions of any kind and to argue as follows. This child was born out of wedlock and in adultery. The adulterous parents have, by divorce, set

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themselves legally free to marry one another. They, the natural parents, are now legally married. Therefore, let the child have the status which by nature belongs to him, and of which he has been deprived by the ill-doing of his parents; and let it be called, naturally and legally, the child of its parents—that is, legitimate it.
There remains the other argument: that the power thus given to the adulterous parents to secure legitimacy for their child will weaken the marriage bond yet further in the general esteem. My Lords, that is guesswork. You can argue it either way and can be convinced either way. But when respect for the marriage bond has been so much weakened, as it has been, I cannot believe that this measure will really weaken it any more to any serious degree; or that adulterous partners will be seriously encouraged by this Bill to break up a marriage which would otherwise have held good, in order to be able to convey legitimacy to the child of their adulterous union. Indeed, my Lords, I think that, on the whole, if this clause be passed, it may help Churchmen and others in our by no means unsuccessful attempts to restore the waste places of married fidelity and integrity; for we shall not be using a legal argument to prevent the bringing of relief to an illegitimate child.
For this child there is no place of repentance left, because he was never guilty of any wrong action of his own; but we shall be more free and confident in saying to the parents concerned: "You have once—nay, twice—offended against God and the well-being of society; first by adultery, and then by divorce. Nothing can help you but repentance, and for you a place for repentance is left—indeed, to be entrusted again with the full and acknowledged responsibility for your own child, which you had denied it by your own misdeeds; to help the child, and the family, and you, to overcome past evil by present good." I think we should then be more free to speak in sincerity to the parents, and to teach them how to fulfil their responsibilities both to the illegitimate and, if it be so, to the legitimate children of their new union.
The parents—and that is the basis of it; the parents, not the child—have
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offended against the integrity of marriage. Now, by this Bill, what was theirs by nature can again become theirs by law—the full responsibility for the moral training of their own child. And in that responsibility is their place for both repentance and for hope. So, for my own part, I support the Bill, for the sake of the children concerned and, I think, in some cases, for the sake of the parents concerned as well. But, while that is my opinion, I am giving it only as my own opinion, and I shall not be disturbed, or lose my equanimity, whether this Bill passes or does not pass.
4.29 p.m.
LORD DENNING: Your Lordships are asked this afternoon to set your seal on a great change in the law of England—or, rather, on the last step in it—because for a thousand years the law of England was clear and distinct: a child born in lawful wedlock was legitimate; a child born out of wedlock was not legitimate. But the Roman Law was quite different. It said that a child born before marriage could be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of its parents and be rendered just as legitimate as one born during marriage. That Roman Law descended into the Continental systems but was never brought into this country.
In the year 1236, at the Parliament of Merton, your Lordships' House was asked whether it was willing that our law should be changed so that a child born before marriage should be just as legitimate as one born during marriage, and it is recorded that your Lordships, with one voice, said in Latin: "Nolumus leges Angliae mutare"—we are not willing to change the laws of England. And it was not until 1926 that the law was changed, whereby children born before marriage were legitimated by subsequent marriage.
What are the merits of the two rival views of law? The old English Common Law was clear, distinct and certain. You knew where you were. A child born during wedlock, even though conceived beforehand, was legitimate—a rule of great value when lands descended to the heir and it was desirable to know truly and distinctly who was heir at law. As Blackstone said of the child born before marriage, one could never be sure who

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was the father. That was the merit of the old English law. But it had this great demerit: that it was unjust and unfair to the child, because under old English law the bastard was the child of nobody. He had no relatives: he could not succeed to lands or property; he was an outcast. It was to remedy that injustice that in 1926 your Lordships' House brought in the law legitimating by subsequent marriage—but with this one exception: that a child born of adultery by one or other parent who was married was not legitimated. That view was supported by Lord Morton of Henryton's Commission by a majority of twelve to seven.
I venture to suggest that this exception, too, is unjust to the child, not only by reason of the stigma, to which the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, referred, but for other reasons. Let me give your Lordships actual cases that have occurred. Fifty years ago a man married his lawful wife. They had no children. After a few years he left her, lived with another woman and brought up three children; but his lawful wife would not divorce him. Eventually, after some forty years, his lawful wife died and he married the woman with whom he had been living and made a will leaving his property to be divided among his children. Note the word "children". The law held that that gift was ineffective: the man had no children of which the law took count. The three children were illegitimate, and the Judge held that they took nothing, because in the eyes of the law when "children" are referred to in a will, it is taken to mean only legitimate children. Although in this case it was quite obvious what the man intended, those three children took nothing.
After the war I often tried cases in which soldiers at the war had gone away after a week of marriage and came back, after four years of war, to find their wives living with another man and with two or three children. How glad one was to be able to grant a divorce to such a soldier! The wife would marry the man with whom she had been living and have other children. When that mother dies, leaving no will, all her property goes to the legitimate children born after the marriage and not to those born illegitimately during the war. If the
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grandmother dies leaving no will, in descent on intestacy the illegitimate children will not take anything. Apart from the question of stigma, these are practical instances of the way illegitimacy affects the child in point of property.
It is said that this difficulty can always be overcome by way of adoption. Can it or does it? Does every couple think of the possibility of adoption, or consider it necessary or go to the expense involved? Moreover, someone over 21 cannot be adopted. So in order to remedy an actual injustice, this amendment of the previous law is necessary. If there were anything in it which would encourage adultery, I would say differently; but when married people commit adultery they do not sit down to consider the possibility of having children, and even less to consider whether the children will be illegitimate or legitimate. They are carried away by their emotions, justifying themselves by the plea that love conquers everything, or at least excuses everything.
If the law were consistent, there would be something to be said for it. But children born as the result of adultery are legitimated every day. Every day the courts are ready to expedite a divorce decree in order that a child may be legitimated by subsequent marriage. In one case it has been held that when a divorce was declared absolute, one day, and a child was born on the same day, but an hour or two earlier, the child was nevertheless not born during the marriage and could be legitimated by subsequent marriage. So the present law is inconsistent and does not operate fairly.
In the present day, we have divorce and people can re-marry. When the union is made lawful by marriage, the fruit of that union, either before or since, should be rendered legitimate, too. The only argument one can find against it is the old Common Law argument: how can one be sure that the child born before marriage is really the child of those two parents? In the vast number of cases there is no difficulty. The parties themselves well know, and there is never any challenge to it. In the rare case where there is difficulty, the law comes to aid. There is a presumption that the child is the lawful child of the

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husband, and that presumption would no doubt prevail and solve this difficult case. So, on balance, I support the first clause of the Bill. It is the last but logical step of the change made in the law in 1926.
Having said that in support of the first clause, may I mention the others? I almost fail to understand the way Clause 2 will work. Perhaps I ought to explain that it deals with what lawyers call void marriages, as distinct from voidable marriages. I think the best way to explain the distinction to your Lordships is to give some example. This is an example of a voidable marriage. A couple are married and the husband may not he able to perform the sexual act completely. Nevertheless, by artificial insemination or in some other way, they have a child. In this case the marriage is voidable because of the incapacity of the husband to complete the sexual act: the wife can get a decree of nullity, because it is a voidable marriage. Nevertheless, by law the child is legitimate. There was an Act passed in 1949 for that very matter, so that it has now been cleared up.
This clause deals with what we lawyers call a void marriage, and the best instance I can give your Lordships of that is ordinary bigamy. A married man deceives a girl into thinking that he is unmarried and goes through a form of marriage with her. Well, of course, it is no marriage; it is void; it is a bigamy. But the girl did not know of it. They have a child. She can go to the court and get a decree of nullity, saying that it is a void marriage, a bigamous marriage. As I read this clause, it is going to be said that that child is a legitimate child. But they have never been married. I find it diffcult to see, in the case of what we lawyers call real void marriages—marriages that have never been, such as a bigamous marriage—how it can be said logically, or indeed at all, that that child is legitimate. I can understand the position with regard to voidable marriages; but when there has never been a marriage, I should like to hear the explanation of what is proposed. I know that Lord Morton of Henryton's Commission recommended that unanimously, but I should like to hear what the explanation of it is.
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Clause 3, I suggest, is incomplete. In law the father of an illegitimate child was not recognised at all; he could not apply for custody, or access, or anything of the kind. True it is a good thing that he should have the right to apply now. But there are many cases where the father of an illegitimate child does not take any notice of it; he takes no responsibility for payment and does not acknowledge the child at all. Under this clause, as it stands, he can still apply for custody. Even if the mother disputes that he is the father, he can ask for the matter to be determined by the court. Under the rules of adoption the father of an illegitimate child has no standing unless he has paid for the child, or been under an order to pay for it, when the paternity is established. I suggest that this clause would be much better if it were confined to those fathers who have paid for and recognised the paternity of the child, or to cases where an order had been made against them in regard to it, so as to bring it into line with the adoption law.
Clause 4 is excellent, but Clause 5 introduces yet another point of principle. Here we have cases which have come down hundreds of years in our courts, bastardy cases, where the woman or the man commits perjury. From the court of first instance, the magistrates, there is an appeal to quarter sessions, who hear the case all over again—they have not any domestic proceedings. What is suggested in this clause is that those proceedings are to be made akin to husband-and-wife cases. They are to be dealt with by three magistrates in semi-privacy; the names can be published and so forth, but the public cannot enter, nor can the evidence be recorded in the newspapers and so on. It is a fundamental principle of our English law that every subject of the Queen has the right of access to the Queen's courts, and it would be a very serious thing to whittle down that great principle unless your Lordships were quite clear about it.
This sort of case is not like a husbandand-wife case. So often the girl is attacked. Often it is said: "What other men have you been with?". It may be suggested that she has been with boys all round the village; and her honour is at stake. With the man, it may be the employer whose honour is at stake, the

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woman having put up a trumped-up case against him hoping to get money out of him for the child. Perjury is rampant in such cases as this. Lord Atkin, in this House in 1937, took exception to the idea that they were like domestic proceedings, and held that they should be like ordinary proceedings—a seduction case, a breach of promise action, or a charge of having carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of sixteen. The question of the publication of names is still there, even with domestic proceedings.
We must, I suggest, stand firm by the principle that the proceedings in our courts of justice must be in open court, because, as Bentham says,
"Publicity is the security of securities."
If the people are admitted, and the judge or magistrates have to do their work in the face of an open court, they are there on trial and it can be seen that they behave themselves properly. With secrecy and behind closed doors, what trouble may arise! I would ask your Lordships to think long before, in this Bill dealing with illegitimacy, you break in upon the principle of open courts. Subject to those qualifications on the points of principle in the Bill, I welcome it and support the Second Reading.
4.47 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I am not asking your Lordships to reject this Bill on Second Reading; indeed, I am looking forward to the Committee stage when we shall hear much valuable legal argument regarding the later clauses of the Bill. I was much impressed by the criticisms which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, has just made, and I look forward to their full ventilation and discussion. Of those later clauses I would say only that, on the face of them, it seems to me that the principle underlying Clause 3 might make the administration of the Children Acts somewhat more difficult than it is at present, since more consents will be necessary. To that extent, I regard that clause with some suspicion. I would add that since Clause 4 protects the unmarried mother, even when she is married, it has my strongest sympathy.
But I must voice most heartfelt opposition to Clause 1, and I shall beg your Lordships when we come to the Committee stage to totally reject that clause.
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In saying that, I hope I shall not be accused of insensitivity to the interests of illegitimate children. I am, and have been for some years, a member of the Children's Committee of a large and progressive local authority, many of whose children in its care are illegitimate, and I am perhaps as fitted as most of your Lordships to sympathise with them. Indeed, I would make the point of the pathetic position of the children whom this Bill will leave illegitimate. Imagine two little girls in an orphanage and one says to the other: "Aren't I lucky? My mother's husband is dead, so now my mother can get married and I will be legitimate." But the other girl says: "Oh, lucky you! My mother is dead, so I can never be legitimate." I do not know which of those two will excite your pity most. If I have learnt one thing from my children's work it is this: to value the institution of marriage and the normal married home. I believe that no one can engage in this work without feeling more and more keenly, with all our good will and all our efforts, the impossibility of compensating most of our children for what they have missed.
It is because this Bill seems to me to assail marital fidelity and the normal home life that I am opposed to it. After all, what are the legitimacy laws for? Why do we have them at all? I expect that in my lifetime we shall see those laws challenged in toto, and it seems to me that the proposals of this Bill make so great a breach in the whole principle of legitimacy that the remaining legitimacy law will have very little justification. You may say if you like that the legitimacy laws are harsh, unfeeling and cruel. They draw a distinction between different children who are equal in innocence. But it is the experience of mankind, since the earliest periods of history, that these laws are a necessary safeguard to protect and strengthen the observance of marriage vows. We are not boys here. We know that those marriage laws do need protection; that they need reinforcement, and that they are not so easy to observe. Above all, we know that the wife is in great need of protection from her husband's infidelities.
Now consider the position which a wife holds under our present legitimacy laws. She has an unfaithful husband, and she

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can say to him, if she will: "Go to the other woman if you will. Give to her the children which are my right to bear, if you must. But remember this: I, and I alone, can give you your children. These children that you beget in adultery will be the children of your concubine. They will not be yours, and they will not bear your name." How a man longs for children who will bear his name! The wife may say, "You will pay for them, but you will not have a father's right over them." Are we now to take away that stronghold of the legal wife's position? Is that a right and just thing to do in this age when marriage is so much assailed and so much more difficult than it ever was before?
I want your Lordships to consider another case, a case which I think will move you, and that is the case of the barren wife. I think there is no human being to whom we would give more sympathy than to her. There is a woman, who, above all, needs sympathy, support, fidelity and constancy from her husband. Thank God! by the laws that we have made in our own time she may be a little comforted by the possibility of adopting children she cannot bear naturally. Nevertheless, how much she should be considered! Now look at her husband. All normal, natural men want children. I often think of a line from George Bernard Shaw's play, Man and Superman, when the characters in the last act, I think it is, are discussing marriage, as is so usual in Bernard Shaw's plays, and one of them cries:
"Children! Ah! that clutch hurts and holds. Is there a father's heart as well as a mother's?"
There you have the father desiring children, and you are making it easy for him to have legitimate children which his wife cannot bear. He will come and say to the wretched woman: "Give me a divorce, not for your sake—it will do you no good—and not for my sake, but for the sake of the children which I have and which you could not bear me." Is not that a cruel position? Is that not a cruel clutch at her heart?
This is the clause which your Lordships will be considering in Committee and which has the support, alas! of the most reverend Primate. I gather that Her Majesty's Government are at least adopting a neutral, if not benevolent,
1198
attitude towards it. They are a Conservative Government. I do not know what they conserve, but I know that a Conservative Government has great influence in your Lordships' House. There are some people who say that your Lordships' House does nothing but register the will of Conservative Governments. If that is so, that has changed very much from the House which I have known for more than thirty years, because I know that this is a House with an independent judgment, and we can make up our minds for ourselves. I beg your Lordships to come to Committee stage and to act in accordance with your own thought-out views in this matter. I hope that your Lordships will not be less firm than your ancestors of the thirteenth century.
4.58 p.m.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me this afternoon if, for once, I speak from premises that are not my own. For my own part, I find it quite unthinkable that any child should be made to suffer because it happened to come into this world in circumstances which were not approved by the legitimacy laws for the time being in force in this country. I know from extensive experience in our juvenile courts that children do suffer from this, however much we may do to try to reduce the stigma of illegitimacy. They suffer often in ways which adults may find illogical and unreasonable, but, nevertheless, their sufferings are real. For my own part, I would think that it should be both our duty and our pleasure to welcome into this world every child who arrives here, to make it feel welcome irrespective of the method by which it came, and make it feel, so far as is humanly possible, proud and happy to make its own peculiar contribution to that world.
But this afternoon I wish to forget all this and to try to see this problem through the eyes of those who take a very different view from my own. As I understand it, the legitimacy laws of this country are intended to do two things: first, to maintain the integrity of the family and therewith to discourage the practice of adultery; and secondly, to take care of some practical problems concerned primarily with inheritance and kindred matters. The

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second is now largely looked after, in default of legitimacy, by the possibility of adoption, and I do not propose to say more about it.
As I understand it, the objection to this Bill, particularly to Clause I, is that it is likely to encourage adultery. I have thought a great deal about this, but I cannot think of a single case in which, merely because this Bill may have become law, a single person is likely to commit a single act of adultery who would not otherwise have done so. If we are realistic, we know that people do not refrain from adultery because a child may result and because that child will be prevented from ever being legitimated. At the very most, this Bill might affect the question whether, or more probably the question when, people who are going to commit adulterous acts take the risk of those acts resulting in the procreation of a child. But anyone who is prepared to take that risk will certainly not be deterred by the additional risk that, should such a child result, it will permanently be illegitimate.
Moreover, I have always understood that the sin, if there is one, is the sin of adultery, and I know of no religious teaching which permits the act of adultery but proscribes the procreation of a child by an adulterous union. I could understand, though I do not share, the horror that might be felt at the idea that any child conceived in an adulterous union might subsequently be legitimated or that any child conceived out of matrimony might subsequently be legitimated. But I cannot understand the attitude which permits a proportion of children conceived out of matrimony and indeed a proportion of children conceived in adulterous unions to be legitimated while denying that possibility to a number of others. After all, the proportion is itself completely arbitrary. The law takes account not of conception but of birth, and nature has her own whims. In these days a very considerable number of prematurely born children survive to maturity, and the position now is that of two children who are conceived in exactly the same circumstances in adulterous unions, one which is prematurely born may be precluded from ever being legitimated and
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the other which is born at full term may be subsequently made legitimate by the marriage of its parents. This seems to me to be a totally unjustifiable distinction.
I should like to say just a word about the argument for the protection of the wife. I imagine that most of us have known cases where a man uses the emotional blackmail of saying to his wife. "You must now divorce me because my mistress is going to have a child"; and it is also true that there have been occasions when two partners in an adulterous union have deliberately allowed a child to be conceived in order that that weapon may be used. For that we make no defence. But anyone who is prepared to use that weapon is very unlikely to want to sharpen it by the additional point that should that child be born it cannot ever become legitimate.
I submit, therefore, that this Bill is merely intended in Clause 1 to give to a small number of unfortunate children the same rights as have been enjoyed over some thirty years by other children whose conception was equally sinful but who are permitted to acquire legitimacy by the subsequent marriage of their parents. The numbers involved cannot be very large. I understand that something like 3,000 children a year are at present legitimated under the law as it stands to-day. I imagine that the number involved if this Bill becomes law would be something of the same order. The number is not very large, but to these few children the issue can be, and often is, enormously important.
5.8 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, we have heard speeches of great persuasiveness and sincerity and it is obvious, as indeed was admitted by the noble Lord who introduced this measure, that some of the clauses are acutely controversial. I take a diametrically opposite view of the merits of Clause 1, but I hope that nothing I shall say will make it possible for those who take different views of this difficult subject to doubt one another's sincerity.
The provision in the 1926 Act which Clause 1 seeks to abolish is based on the view that there is a real and important difference between promiscuous intercourse between unmarried people and adulterous intercourse where one of the

1201
persons at least is married. Let me say at once that I agree with noble Lords who have already spoken that this Bill does several quite independent things, and therefore it should undoubtedly receive a Second Reading this afternoon. But it may be convenient that those of us who take strong views of one or other of the clauses should make our opposition quite clear this afternoon. This essential difference between promiscuous intercourse of the unmarried from which a child is born and an adulterous union is not being debated this afternoon for the first time in this House. Since before the Committee stage it may be convenient for noble Lords in all quarters to look up the most material debates, I shall in the course of my remarks give their dates. The noble Lord who introduced the Bill this afternoon made, I think, one slip, of no great importance, when he talked about the Amendment introduced by the then Archbishop as though the debate in which he intervened was on the measure which is now on the Statute Book. I think he will find the Archbishop's speech in a debate on a precisely similar measure introduced rather earlier.
The three debates which noble Lords will find it convenient to look at, I think, are the debate on February 21, 1924, on the Second Reading of one of Lord Buckmaster's Bills. On that occasion the most reverend Primate, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, welcomed the Bill but gave notice that on the Committee stage he would introduce the Amendment which he considered essential, and which is in substance the provision of the law which Clause 1 of this Bill seeks to remove. The next debate to which I would refer was on March 6, 1924, on the Committee stage, when the Archbishop carried that Amendment on a Division by a majority of 54 to 18, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London voting with the majority. Subsequently, a new but substantially the same measure was introduced, and on July 17, 1924, on the Committee stage of that Bill, in the unavoidable absence of the Archbishop, Lord Cave, supported by the Bishop of Southwark, introduced into our law the provision now constituting the subsection which Clause 1 would do away with. In the crucial Division on July 17,
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1924, this provision of our law was carried by 77 votes to 38, and there voted with the majority the Bishops of London, Norwich, Rochester, Sheffield and Southwark.
So much for the opinion of the House in 1924. As other noble Lords have reminded the House this afternoon, we have received more recent advice, from the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, the topic being dealt with at pages 303 to 306 of their Report. Perhaps I might read an extract from the recommendations of the twelve who took the majority view, that the subsection which it is now sought to omit should not be omitted. I am reading from paragraphs 1179 and 1180. Paragraph 1179 says:
"The basic argument against the proposal that in all cases children should be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents is that it would result in a serious weakening in respect for marriage. It is no doubt possible to cite particular cases in which, when viewed in isolation, the present law may appear to work harshly against the children. But against the benefit which relief might afford to existing cases of hardship must be balanced the possible effects of removing the present impediment. Measures designed to relieve present hardship may result in future social evils which far outweigh any immediate and temporary benefit which they create."
Then, paragraph 1180 says this:
"It is untrue to say that the principle underlying the present law is that of penalising the child or its parents. So long as marriage is held to be the voluntary union for life of one man with one woman, that conception is wholly incompatible with the provision that one or other of the parties can, during the subsistence of the marriage, beget by some other person children who may later be legitimated. This, indeed, is the essence of the objection to the proposal. Legitimacy is the status held by a lawful child of the marriage. Any departure from that conception can only be made by ignoring the essential moral principle that man cannot, during the subsistence of his marriage, beget lawful children by another woman."
That is a more recent statement of the general principle which commended itself to a majority of this House in the debates to which I have referred.
I do not think that anybody this afternoon has done so, but I think it is material to refer to the law of Scotland. At the present moment, if we do not pass this Bill, the law of England and the law of Scotland are in substantial agreement on this point. The law of Scotland makes a similar exception to that made

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in the subsection which Clause 1 proposes to abolish, the difference being that the law of Scotland makes the material date when the parties must be unmarried the date of conception and not the date of birth. Nevertheless, there is at the present moment, subject to that slight difference, conformity between the law of England and the law of Scotland on this point. One most curious effect of what is now proposed is that not only is the view of the majority of the Royal Commission that the present law should be maintained overridden, but, likewise, so is the view of the minority, because the minority proposed that both the law of England and the law of Scotland should be modified by the deletion of the two exceptions which I have mentioned.
I remember the problem as it faced us at the time when the 1926 Statute was going through Parliament. I was a supporter of the measure. I was not actively in politics at that time, but I supported and approved of its principle. The reason was that it improved the position of illegitimate children without adversely affecting or harming other persons. It was quite clearly, in my view, in the interests of the children who were to be legitimated. I do not think that the same can be claimed to-day about this measure. Certainly, the interests of others can be adversely affected, as I shall seek to show your Lordships; and I take the further view—a view that nobody, either in another place or in this House this afternoon, has yet taken—namely, that it is by no means clear that the clause would always benefit the very children whom it is hoped to help.
In order to consider this matter, let me take two different cases to which slightly different considerations apply. If Clause 1 becomes the law of this country, these are the two cases that I wish to consider. The first is where the mother of the child concerned is an unmarried woman but the father is married; the second is the case where the mother of the illegitimate child is herself a married woman. Let me take those cases in order. The mother is unmarried but her adulterous union with a married man results in her bearing a child. The wife of the father is entitled to seek a divorce, but she is not bound to do so. I have very little doubt that the most reverend Primate
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and many of the Bench of Bishops would strongly urge that the Christian duty of the wife may well be to do everything in her power to maintain the marriage, and she may not be willing to seek the divorce to which the law of this country entitles her. Do we really want her to be subjected to the pressure of others saying, "Are you not being rather cruel to the children in not seeking a divorce?" I want to ask another question of the supporters of this measure. Do they think that the legitimacy of the child ought to depend on the wife's decision? The noble Baroness, whose speech very much interested me, indicated at the beginning of her speech that she would have preferred to adopt much more robust arguments, with which I might have been in a great deal more sympathy.
I will come later to the remedy for the evils that have been described, but let me pass, for a moment, to the other case I mentioned, where the mother is married but a third party—an adulterer—is the father of the child. The child will then be born the legitimate child of the subsisting marriage of the mother, but it will then be possible, if this Bill with Clause 1 becomes law, first of all to bastardise the child and then to legitimate it by the subsequent marriage. This seems to me so fantastic that I feared that if I told your Lordships this, I should be accused or suspected of having taken an erroneous view of the law or invented an example. I propose, therefore, to quote what a Law Lord said in the debate of 1924; and I may say that the validity of the point appears also in two speeches of previous Lord Chancellors—namely, Lord Finlay and Lord Cave. To show that I am not giving any imaginary example, let me read what was said by Lord Phillimore in the debate of February 21, 1924 [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 56, col. 260]:
"Let me show your Lordships, purely on practical grounds, the objection to the Bill as it stands in that respect. A child is the fruit of an adulterous union, the woman being married. The intrigue is not known. The parties go on and the husband dies in ignorance of the intrigue, and then the guilty couple marry. What is the position of a child procreated by the paramour and the adulterous wife? Is he then to be the legitimated child of his actual parents? Is he to be bastardised from being what he has always grown up in the belief that he was? He has always supposed that he was the son of the husband of his mother, he has lived with his brothers

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and sisters in that belief, and has enjoyed all the comforts of the family. Is he then to find that his real parents are going to say that he was their child, and therefore he is to be legitimated as their child, and necessarily bastardised as regards the position he has always been in before?"
The noble and learned Lord went on to suggest that those who had drafted that Bill had not thought out all the implications. I believe that that is still true. What did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster, say about the point? He said, as I understood my noble and learned friend, Lord Denning, to say in effect this afternoon, that such a procedure—first to bastardise and then to legitimate—was highly unlikely; but neither of the noble and learned Lords said it was impossible, and, in view of what was said by two previous Lord Chancellors, I shall be very much surprised if my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack this afternoon says that the evils to which I have drawn attention are wholly imaginary or impossible.
Now I come to what I know is uppermost in the minds of the very well-meaning supporters of this measure—they all have in mind the interests of the child. I think probably most of them have in mind (and I am certain that when the 1926 measure was going through Parliament most people then had in mind) a young child or a baby. Under the existing law it is normally a young child who will be benefited and legitimated: but not under this Bill. Under this Bill years and years may pass and no legitimation may be possible until the injured party to the marriage dies. The child may be an adult, perhaps even trading in his own name, the name in which he has grown up. Many people may have completely forgotten, if they ever knew, that the child was illegitimate. The natural parents then marry and it becomes the duty of the Registrar to alter the register and to change the name of that person. Is it seriously contended that that must be in the interests of that person? If it is really intended to pursue this measure further, I hope that those who are responsible for the Bill will consider the insertion of a clause giving the child, or somebody on behalf of the child, an opportunity of being heard in his objection to being legitimated in this way.
I believe that the intentions behind this first clause are wholly admirable but that
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the provision is, in fact, entirely muddleheaded. Those who have drafted it have been unable quite to make up their minds whether they think marriage of little importance or very important. It would seem to me that they underestimate the importance of marriage when they say that an adulterous union can produce a legitimate child just as easily as promiscuous intercourse between unmarried people. But, on the other hand, they seem to exaggerate the importance of marriage when, having done that, in my view, essentially wrong thing, they go on to suggest that the only people who are to benefit are some illegitimate children and not all.
I would suggest to the noble Baroness—and I felt, from the beginning of her speech, that this might be not entirely out of sympathy with her idea—that if we are thinking of the innocent child, and if the innocence of the child is sufficient reason for saying that it is legitimate, then, rather than benefit some illegitimate children, we ought to deal with all illegitimate children simply by abolishing illegitimacy. There is nothing legally impossible about that. I have myself had a shot at a one-clause Bill which would run somewhat as follows:
"As from the passing of this Act every person shall be deemed to be the legitimate child of its natural parents"
That does abolish illegitimacy, though no doubt we should have to go on with various subsections dealing with adoption and so on; but if we really mean to abolish illegitimacy, it can be done.
But this Bill does not do it. My noble and learned friend Lord Denning said that, quite apart from illegitimacy, there were various unfair legal consequences. Very well; there is nothing impossible about removing those legal consequences without going against the considered view of this House in the debates to which I have referred and the recommendation of the twelve members of the Royal Commission. I say. my Lords, that this clause is not only wrong in principle. I profoundly believe that in its working it would cause more misery than it cured, and I beg to give notice now that when this Bill goes into Committee I propose to move to omit Clause I in order that this House, when in Committee, shall come to a decision on this point; and I hope that when this

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point is reached we shall have the advice of the Bench of Bishops.
I come now to Clause 2. Clause 2, as my noble and learned friend Lord Denning pointed out, is in accordance with the unanimous advice of the Royal Commission. It has puzzled many lawyers, even before my noble and learned friend Lord Denning mentioned his doubts this afternoon. It was subjected to very vigorous criticism by the Solicitor-General in Committee in another place. But, nevertheless, it can be claimed that Clause 2 is in accordance with the advice of the Royal Commission.
Let me say what I believe could be, or would be, the effect of Clause 2 in its present form. Mr. X is married to Mrs. X and they have several children, but all the children are daughters. Mr. X then deceives a girl with whom he contracts a bigamous marriage and she gives birth to a son. That son, under this clause, will be legitimate and will be his eldest legitimate son. His lawful wife forgives him, the marriage continues and she bears him a son. Mr. X then succeeds to a Peerage and after a short time he dies. The next Peer will be, under this clause, the son of the bigamous marriage and not the son of the lawful marriage. That I believe to be the effect of Clause 2 as it now stands.
I would say to this House that Clause 1, whatever your Lordships may think of it, does not in any way affect the right of succession to this House, because Section 10 of the principal Act, the 1926 Act, to which Clause 1 is an amendment, makes it clear that succession to a title is not affected. But that is not so, of course, as regards Clause 2. I think the House will be very anxious to hear the explanation of Clause 2 by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and whether he thinks, supposing that it is partially right, that it will need some amendment.
The only other clause to which I wish to refer is Clause 5, and I would express my agreement with my noble and learned friend Lord Denning. It is a very long time ago when I was practising at the Bar, but I still remember very well two cases in which I was engaged on bastardy summonses. I remember appearing in one case for the mother
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and in another case for the man alleged to be the father. They made such an impression on my mind that I remember the cases in considerable detail even to-day. I agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Denning that in no class of case is it more likely that one or other party, and not impossibly both parties, will commit perjury. I believe that a hearing in open court lessens the chances of perjury. Among the most distinguished judges whose friendship I have enjoyed was the late Lord Atkin. My noble and learned friend Lord Denning has referred to a speech he made in this House on this point. I think that when we come to Clause 5 in Committee we shall certainly want to consider whether anything has happened to make what Lord Atkin then said less applicable.
My Lords, in conclusion I would say this: on Clause 2, which I think will have to be amended, and on Clause 5, I wish to hear argument, but as at present advised I think they both need amendment. But on Clause 1 I am absolutely convinced that it is not only wrong and contrary to principle but that if we enact it it will cause far more misery than it cures.
5.36 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am sure that all your Lordships will agree that we have had a most interesting discussion on this Bill, so clearly placed before your Lordships by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley. It is interesting, arid I think necessary, to have in mind that this Bill consists of five substantive clauses which deal with separate and unrelated matters, though underlying them all is the desire to do whatever is practicable to reduce the unfortunate effects of illegitimacy, a status which is conferred on a person through no fault of his own. One ought to have that in mind in one's approach to the Bill.
I have heard all the speeches, and I understand that no one desires to press that your Lordships should reject this Bill on Second Reading. So I think the most helpful thing I can do is to place before the House, as objectively as I can, the arguments on the most important points, because they raise very important aspects of our social life. Of course, the most important clause in the Bill, the one that has attracted most controversy,

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is Clause 1. That is the clause which seeks to remove the restriction at present contained in the Legitimacy Act, 1926, and to make it possible for a person to be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of his parents, in spite of the fact that both or either of them was married to a third person at the time the child was born.
Your Lordships have heard a great deal of the history of the law of marriage this afternoon, but it is an interesting fact, which has to be borne in mind, that the possibility of legitimation by a subsequent marriage was something unknown to the English Common Law. Although it has been the law of Scotland for centuries, both before and after the Reformation, it was introduced into the law of England only by the Act of 1926. We are, therefore, dealing with something that is still relatively new to those who have been brought up on the English Common. Law. That is, I agree, a reason for giving it consideration; but it is not a reason for rejecting it if we think there is a real benefit to the child.
As my noble friend Lord Conesford has pointed out, when the Bill of thirty-five years ago was before your Lordships' House there was strong feeling that it should not be possible for anyone to be legitimated if he was born as the result of an adulterous union. A provision to that effect was accepted by the House of Commons, as the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has pointed out, in face of the opposition of a substantial minority. That opposition came not only from the four famous names he mentioned as having occupied the office of Prime Minister—namely, Ramsay MacDonald, Neville Chamberlain, Sir Winston Churchill, and Lord Attlee—but also my noble friend Lord Swinton, who voted with that minority. So, my Lords, as far as the balance of opinion is concerned, this provision is not something that can be lightly dealt with if, thirty-odd years ago, it attracted such a remarkable concatenation of support as it then did in the House of Commons.
Several attempts have been made to deal with this matter; and, as my noble friend Lord Conesford said, it was against that background that it had to be considered afresh by the Royal commission on Marriage and Divorce. And in the circumstances it is perhaps
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not remarkable that they did not reach agreement. As your Lordships have heard, twelve members, including the Chairman, my noble and learned friend Lord Morton of Henryton, were opposed to any alteration in the law, while seven members, including my noble and learned friend Lord Keith of Avonholm, thought that the time had come for a change.
There is one point which I think it is important that your Lordships should consider, and that is the effect on the composition of your Lordships' House; and I ought to make clear my views on these various clauses before I deal with the general argument. I want first of all to make clear that in my view—and I gather that my noble friend Lord Conesford agrees with me—Clause 1 of the Bill will make no difference whatever to succession to dignities or titles of honour. The Legitimacy Act, 1926, which, as I have said, first introduced the possibility of legitimation by subsequent marriage, expressly provides that nothing in that Act is to affect the succession to any title or honour, or render any person capable of succeeding or transmitting a right to succeed, Exactly the same principles apply to Clause 1 of this Bill, which proceeds by way of amendment of Section 1 of the old Act.
Let us now consider the basic difference of opinion—and again I will try to state it fairly. The argument which commended itself to the majority of the Royal Commission—what they described as the basic argument against the proposal for a change in the law—was that the alteration now proposed by Clause I of this Bill would result in a serious weakening of respect for marriage, and that if the law were to be altered it could not fail to result in a blurring of moral values in the public mind. If, said my noble and learned friend Lord Morton of Henryton and those who thought like him, children born in adultery are subsequently to acquire the status of legitimate children, an essential distinction between lawful marriages and illicit unions disappears. It was said, too, that if the law is altered it will be a direct encouragement to the parents of the illegitimate child to put pressure on the other party to the marriage to agree to a divorce, so that the parents

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of the child may subsequently marry and make it legitimate. That was an argument which my noble friend Lord Iddesleigh developed this afternoon.
Those who take the other view say, first, that not only does the present law create hardship (and my noble and learned friend Lord Denning reminded your Lordships of the hardships involving property which might result) and lead to unhappy distinctions between one child and another in the same family, but, secondly, that it is illogical (and the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, developed that point this afternoon) and is no real deterrent to an adulterous union. It is no deterrent, so the argument goes on this side, because, in fact, as my noble and learned friend Lord Denning said—and I think the noble Baroness said the same—people do not stop to think, before they engage in adultery, what the status of any child may be. Then the fourth argument is that, in any event, such children can always be given legal status by the simple process of adoption.
My Lords, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, this is not in any sense a Party matter, or even a political matter. When this Bill was before another place the Government spokesman said that the question was pre-eminently one for the consciences of individual Members, and was a matter on which the Government would desire to be guided by the wishes of the House. My Lords, I still take that view, and I put that view to the House. I think it is right, on a matter of this kind. It is not an abdication of their function or a weakness on the part of the Government; it is right that, on measures of the kind I have described, they should be prepared to act on the view of the House. But, so far as your Lordships are concerned at this stage, the Bill was given a Second Reading in another place by a substantial majority, and that is a consideration which I think your Lordships would wish to bear in mind—and certainly have borne in mind in expressing the view that it should be given a Second Reading to-day.
Having said that, I should add that, in the view of the Government, Clause 1 of the Bill as it stands will work satisfactorily as a piece of legal machinery.
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Undoubtedly difficulties may arise as to the exact status of a child apparently born in wedlock but whose father is in fact not the husband of the marriage. But, my Lords, such difficulties are capable of arising to-day so far as legitimacy or illegitimacy is concerned. I agree with my noble friend Lord Conesford that the problem will be complicated by the possibility that the child may subsequently be legitimated as a member of another family. However, I think that these problems can be worked out by the courts as they arise, and that in themselves they do not afford a reason for opposing Clause 1 of the Bill.
My noble and learned friend Lord Conesford made a most eloquent attack on the working of this part of the Bill. I do not think that he put enough importance on the question of the future of the children. It is always possible, and right, to investigate the difficult cases which the Bill brings out, but I should have thought that whether action would be taken in a number of the cases which my noble and learned friend postulated would depend on whether that action was for the benefit of the children. In other cases, it may well be that we shall never be in a position in which sleeping dogs will be allowed to lie, but the matter may arise in the future when the benefit of the children's children may come into consideration. Therefore I must advise the House that I do not think that the difficulties are insurmountable, or that in themselves they afford a reason for rejecting the clause.
I come to Clause 2, which deals with the children of a void marriage. As the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, said, this clause is based on the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce. But, of course, it has a far older history than that. It is important that we should consider this matter objectively, in view of the criticisms that have been made. The effect of Clause 2 is to legitimate the child where the parents have gone through a ceremony of marriage, notwithstanding that a decree of nullity is made subsequently, provided that one or both parents were ignorant of the impediment to the marriage—that is to say, if one of the parties to the marriage that was no marriage was innocent, then the child is legitimate.

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The interesting thing is that, so far as my researches go, not only is this the recommendation of the Morton Commission, but I understand—and I asked my noble and learned friend Lord Keith of Avonholm to check on the matter—it has been the law of Scotland for hundreds of years, before and after the Reformation: it was Canon Law governing the countries under the Church of Rome from time immemorial, and still is. Therefore, I do not think that we can laugh off, as a reductio ad absurdum, something which within the countries of Europe and in my own country has operated successfully for hundreds of years. That is the position, and the Morton Commission, having looked at that, suggested that we should bring our law into line. Of course, to us nurtured in English Common Law, it is a really remarkable conception, the hypothesis that where there is no marriage because one of the parties is already married and where the other party is innocent, the child shall be legitimate, but in my view something which has such respectability of ancestry cannot be laughed off.
But it will be necessary (I hope the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, will agree) to see that the clause is amended on Committee stage so that it does not have retrospective effect in regard to succession to property—that is to say, that it does not disturb existing rights—and also amended in order to make proper provision for succession to titles of honour. There are two ways in which this can be done. Again I should be grateful if noble Lords would consider this question between now and Committee stage. On the one hand, we could provide that Clause 2, like Clause 1, should not apply to titles of honour at all, so that a child of a void marriage, like the child who is legitimated by his parents' subsequent marriage, will never be in a position to succeed to a title. That is one possible way of dealing with this. On the other hand, it may be said that there is a clear distinction between someone who is treated as legitimate under Clause 2 and someone who is legitimated, either under Clause 1 or under the old Act, by his parents' subsequent marriage, in that the former is treated as being legitimate throughout while the other remains illegitimate until the marriage.
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We now come to the difficulty that on this view it would be illogical to distinguish between the child of a void marriage and the child of a voidable marriage. May I remind your Lordships, in the briefest terms, which marriages are void and which are voidable? A void marriage is one which is bigamous; where there has been a mistake of the parties as to the nature of the ceremony; where one is of unsound mind, which is found by investigation; where the parties are within the prohibited degrees; or where the parties are not of age, or it is a sham marriage. A voidable marriage is one where there is impotence; where the marriage has been solemnised under threats or fear or duress; where the marriage takes place while one of the parties is in a state of intoxication; where there is wilful refusal of intercourse; where there is unsound mind not found by investigation; where there is venereal disease or where the woman is pregnant by another man.
In all that group of voidable marriages, the position, as my noble and learned friend Lord Denning said, is that a child born before the proceedings have been taken to void the voidable marriage is now legitimated under the Act of 1949. So there is no doubt that in that case, the case where there is a voidable marriage which is afterwards annulled, and annulled in the form that it should be treated as never having taken place at all, the child of that marriage is legitimate and can succeed to a peerage or any other title of honour. That is the real difficulty which I see with regard to this matter; and that is why I would ask your Lordships to consider whether it is not fairer, having that in mind—that is to say, the position of children of voidable marriages—that the Act should apply only to children born after the Act comes into operation and should not have any retrospective effect. I am sorry to have taken up so much time, but this is an immensely important point. Your Lordships' House is the only place that is likely to be interested in the composition of your Lordships' House in this field, and I think it is right that we should consider it. I have ventured to explain it in order that on the Committee stage we may have the views of noble Lords from all parts of

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the House, which I shall very much welcome in dealing with this point.
The only other clause on which I propose to say anything is Clause 5, which provides that affiliation proceedings in magistrates' courts are to be treated as domestic proceedings. As I understand it (my noble and learned friend Lord Denning will correct me if I am wrong), the restrictions on publicity in domestic proceedings still allow that newspaper reporters shall be present; that newspapers may publish the names, addresses and occupations of the parties and witnesses, the grounds of the application, a concise statement of the charges, defences and countercharges, submissions and decisions on any point of law and the decisions of the court and any observations made by the courts in giving them. A similar provision in the Summary Procedure (Domestic Proceedings) Bill, 1937, was, as we have heard, rejected on the Motion of Lord Atkin. Lord Atkin was a great friend of mine and, in my respectful view, the greatest judge before whom I have ever had the honour of appearing. Therefore I could not approach the dictum of anyone with more respect. The only point is that in fact affiliation cases are not widely reported. It is possible to report them to the extent that I have said.
There is another aspect which I think it right to bring to your Lordships' attention. Since 1937 we have had over twenty years' experience of domestic proceedings, and that experience does not give us any reason to suppose that the restrictions on publicity I have mentioned or on the size of the bench have encouraged perjury. I am told that Clause 5 of the Bill is supported by the Justices' Clerks Society and also by the Council of the Magistrates Association. In these circumstances, again there is a difficult point for your Lordships to consider: on the one hand, the expression of opinion of great weight some twenty years ago, and, on the other, the experience we have had ever since.
The points I have drawn to the attention of your Lordships are difficult ones. I have tried to set out the conflicting arguments that we shall have to consider on the Committee stage. I shall be most interested to have the views that are
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held by your Lordships and very much assisted in my own thought by the reasons on which those views are grounded. We have always a double duty. We have to adhere to the principles that we hold. On the first clause there is a division of opinion, and your Lordships have heard the views on either side; and on the other clauses there are not so much differences of principle as differences as to what is practicable and what is desirable. I have endeavoured to put the points to your Lordships, and I hope that what I have said may be of some assistance in forming the views which we shall have to consider on the Committee stage. It is rare, as your Lordships know, for me to come to your Lordships without expressing a strong view of my own on a subject, but here I feel that the occupant of the Woolsack has a special duty to put not only the difficulties but the absence of difficulty before your Lordships. There is no doubt that to-day the House wants to give this Bill a Second Reading, and it is in that spirit that I have ventured to address your Lordships this afternoon.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, before the Question is put, there is one question I should like to ask my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack. I have listened carefully, as I am sure the Whole House has, to the speech he has just delivered, but I am still new clear what view the Government take upon this Bill. I understood my noble and learned friend to say that they did not regard it as a political question, but as a purely legal one. But this is not only a political assembly, but also, as I understand it, the highest court of law in the country, and I think we ought to have some guidance. It is, after all, an important change that is proposed in Clause 1 of the Bill. Under it, as I understand, a child who had previously been regarded, or might previously have been regarded, as the legitimate offspring of one man can be legally made the legitimate offspring of another man. That is a considerable legal change. I am not saying that it is a proper or an improper change, but I feel strongly that the House ought to have guidance from the Government of the day on a point of this importance. I know it is impossible for my noble and learned friend to give it to-day, but I hope that, for the

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assistance of those of us who feel that important legal and moral questions are involved in this Bill, the Government will be able to give us some guidance when we come to the Committee stage.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I do not know whether my noble friend Lord Salisbury was here when I dealt with this matter. What I said at an earlier stage in my speech was that this was a question where the Government were most anxious to get the views of the House. The words I used were: "When this Bill was before another place the Government spokesman said that the question was pre-eminently one for the consciences of individual Members and a matter on which the Government would wish to be guided by the wishes of the House." That was the attitude of the Government, which I have repeated k to-day; and before my noble friend arrived in the debate, it was pressed, I think by my noble friend Lord Iddesleigh, that this was a matter where the Government should allow your Lordships to express independent opinions and not make it a matter of persuasion. That was the view which I expressed. But I also endeavoured to make clear in what I said that the changes did not, in my view, raise any points that it would be legally impossible to carry out.
I was very anxious that we should get the view of the House on this matter, and I shall take note of what the noble Marquess has said. I hope that not only shall I get a question from the noble, Marquess, but that I shall get his view on this matter. It is exactly the view of someone who has such great influence over the views of the individual consciences and opinions of Members of the House that I should like to hear. I hope I am not differing from him, but I think it is right that on a matter of this kind the House should form an independent opinion, provided that I am there all the time to give the help that I can on any legal aspect of the matter. I assure the noble Marquess that I shall be there, and I shall unhesitatingly give the help.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, it is always open to noble Lords in this House to give an independent view, and I hope they always will. It is one of the great merits of this House. But I think it puts the House in a certain difficulty if the Government express
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no view at all. I listened to every word of the noble and learned Viscount's speech, but all I understood him to say was that there were no legal impossibilities about implementing Clause 1. I appreciate his guidance given to the House to that extent. But on whether it is a good thing to do this or not we get no guidance at all. As I understand it, the view of the noble and learned Viscount—and, I suppose, the view of the Government, because he represents the Government—is that they have not any definite view at the present moment. They would rather hear what the House has to say about it. They are right to want to hear that, but the House would like to have some expression of view from the Government.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I will certainly convey what the noble Marquess has said to my colleagues. I would remind him that this is a Private Member's Bill, and not a Government Bill. Although my experience in Parliament is short compared to that of the noble Marquess, I have been in this building now for nearly a quarter of a century, as have many others in this House, and I would say that it is by no means unknown that on a Private Member's Bill the Government, while weighing the arguments, leave the matter to the House. I understand that the noble Marquess thinks that we should not do it in the case of this Bill. I will pay every attention to his view, as I always do, and consult my colleagues about it. But I am surprised that the noble Marquess is surprised that the Government should take that attitude on a Private Member's Bill. I have seen it done, I should have thought, certainly dozens, if not scores of times, in the twenty-five years I have been in this building. But I will bring my noble friend's opinion, which I value very much, to the notice of my colleagues.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I say that I certainly respect the view of the noble Marquess, but there are some of us who feel that this is a matter of high moral importance and one upon which we are perfectly competent to form a judgment without the advice of the Government. Of course, on legal and practical questions we are delighted to hear the advice of the noble

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and learned Viscount, but on a moral question we are all competent to form a judgment, and I hope that the House will be free to do so when this matter comes up again.
6.15 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, perhaps I might say a word on that last point to start with. I have probably, as a Back-Bencher, had more experience of Private Member's Bills than the noble Marquess, and it falls to my lot not infrequently to be asked to steer Bills of this kind through your Lordships' House. My experience invariably has been that the Government express this sort of neutral position with Bills which are non-political. The most that the sponsors can hope for is a certain amount of benevolence, which I asked for in my opening speech and which I should like to claim that I obtained, because the noble and learned Viscount has made it perfectly clear that there is no particular difficulty from the legal angle in administering Clause 1 of the Bill. The courts are perfectly competent to handle the sort of problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, devoted so considerable a part of his speech. That being so, is it not obvious that we have to decide this matter as a matter of moral principle? It is on that basis that I am asking that these unfortunate children should have the advantage of legitimation through the passing of this measure.
I do not want to take up a great deal of your Lordships' time at this late hour. I should like to thank all those who have taken part in this discussion, especially those who have assisted my point of view, who have been the great majority, and also the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, who has, as he almost invariably does on this type of occasion—in fact I might excise the word "almost" brought his legal knowledge and, what is more important, his judicious mind to bear on these problems. I am personally very grateful to him for the analysis with which he has provided us and obviously some of the points which he raised, particularly in connection with Clause 2, are ones which need to be carefully considered. If in consultation with him or his advisers anything can be done to clear up the situation
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in advance of the Committee stage so that we may handle it in a more efficient way, I shall be exceedingly glad to take part in it.
I think the noble and learned Viscount has shown the unreality of the arguments put forward by the Royal Commission against this proposal. They are hypothetical. They are just as capable, in my view—and this, quite obviously, was the view of the most reverend Primate—of being turned in favour of this proposal as against it. On the other side, weighing down the balance and weighing it down with a real bang, if I may suggest it, is the concrete fact that we shall remove this disability, this stigma, these legal deficiencies in the present law which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, particularly analysed with such logic and force. I thought, if I may say so, that he answered in advance the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, or most of his arguments. The noble Lord had obviously worked them out very carefully in advance. I think that if he looks at the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in Hansard, he will see that most of his points are in fact answered in that speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, is an old friend of mine. I have always admired the complex, subtle, almost intricate quality of his thought, and it was only too evident to-day. I thought the argument was so legalistic that, as the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack said, he really overlooked the position of the unfortunate illegitimate child, the whole object of this Bill being, of course, to put that right. I hope your Lordships will not be too much impressed with the arguments he put before you. In the same way, I thought the very sincere argument put to your Lordships by the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, had also been answered in advance by the most reverend Primate, whose statesmanlike speech I very much appreciated.
I will not take this matter any further. I was a little surprised that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, objected to Clause 2. I think his argument, if I may say so, was essentially a logical one. Logical arguments are not always valid in law even, and certainly not in politics, and the fact that this has worked perfectly well for

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hundreds of years in Scotland surely is a complete answer. After all, this is shown by the case of the bigamous marriage which he mentioned: an innocent woman there bears a child. Why should not her child be legitimated? Why should not that unfortunate baby who came into the world in that way be made legitimate just as much as the child covered by Clause 1? I think the noble and learned Lord, if he considers it, will see that this is not a case where logic should be pursued to the extent of destroying a great deal of happiness in the way that it would if this clause were taken Out of the Bill.
LORD CONESFORD: May I put one point to the noble Lord. If he treats the law of Scotland with such respect when he comes to Clause 2, why does he treat it with such contempt v. hen he comes to Clause 1?
LORD CHORLEY: The noble and learned Lord knows quite well that it is a sort of convention that matters of this sort shall be dealt with first of all by Bills relating to England, and then the Scottish Members of Parliament, who have a very proper regard for their own rights and the position of their country, if they think fit can introduce similar Bills in relation to Scotland. I am sure that if we had introduced a Bill relating to Scotland as well there might have been considerable objection to it. I am accepting the noble and learned Lord's contention that if this thing can work perfectly well in Scotland for hundreds of years, and, indeed, throughout Europe, as it has been shown it does, the logical argument against it is one which ought not to be allowed to prevail.
I appreciate that in Clause 5 there is a real difficulty, as I said in my opening remarks, as regards the administration of justice in open court, which is obviously of great value and which in every ordinary case I should certainly wish to defend. But there are cases, as experience over the last twenty years has shown in connection with children's courts and in other ways in which domestic matters of this kind are in question, in which that administration of justice in the full glare of publicity is not a good thing. On the whole it seems to the sponsors of this Bill that this type of case falls into that group.
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It may be that it is a near thing, but I think the noble and learned Lord has shown that while, when this type of domestic hearing was introduced some twenty or so years ago, there was a great deal of opposition to it by men whose experience of the law was great and whose opinions were of great weight, on the whole those forebodings have not been validated by the experience which we have had of the working of these Acts. I would suggest that this particular matter will fall into that group. I do not wish to take up any more of your Lordships' time. I hope you will now give this Bill the Second Reading for which I ask.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

FIRE SERVICES BILL [H.L.]
6.25 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do resolve itself into Committee on the said Bill.
Moved, That the House do resolve itself into Committee on the said Bill.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD MILNER OF LEEDS: My Lords, before the vote is taken on the Motion of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, I might perhaps, as a matter of courtesy to the House and to the noble and learned Viscount, and with the permission of the House, mention one matter. Your Lordships may remember that on the Second Reading the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and I mentioned a matter in which the County Councils Association and the Association of Municipal Corporations took an interest. That was the right and desire of local authorities to have power to appoint their own chief fire officers. It was intended and understood that an Amendment would be put down. Unfortunately, that was not done, and in the circumstances, particularly as I gather the Government desire to take not only the Committee stage but the Report stage to-night, I hope I may be permitted to put down the appropriate Amendment on Third Reading.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords I have no objection. I think that in the circumstances it would be convenient to take that course. I am very willing to discuss the Amendment with the noble Lord. I dealt with it on Second Reading; I shall be glad to give it further attention. As it is the only Amendment I think that what he suggests would be a convenient course.
On Question, Motion agreed to: House in Committee accordingly.
LORD FARINGDON: I do not quite know what the procedure is in these circumstances. I did speak to the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor this afternoon. I should apologise to him for the very short notice I gave him that I had certain points I wanted to raise on the Committee stage of this Bill. I should point out, by the way, that the responsibility for the short notice is largely the noble Viscount's own fault: he was so extremely persuasive and convincing on Second Reading that I had decided that it was not necessary to put down Amendments dealing with any of the points I raised on Second Reading. However, certain events have arisen in the last few days which, had they occurred earlier, would have led me to put down Amendments.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am very anxious to answer the noble Lord's points. He gave me notice before the House met. I should have thought he could do it on the Question that Clause 1 stand part, or on the Question that the House do resume, whichever the noble Lord likes, and whichever the Lord Chairman thinks right.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: If the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, wishes to raise a point on any particular clause of the Bill, if he would indicate which clause I could put it so that the clause could be discussed before it was allowed to stand part.
LORD FARINGDON: I am very much obliged. I wish to raise points on Clauses 5 and 7.
Clauses 1 to 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Conditions of service]:
On Question, Whether Clause 5 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD FARINGDON: On this clause very considerable anxiety has arisen as a result of an announcement in the newspapers yesterday evening about certain changes in the recruitment of men for the Fire Services. It was announced that the Home Office were considering the creation of a corps of cadets; that they were going to reduce the age of recruitment from nineteen to eighteen, and that they were going to consider, or recommend, the employment of local authorities' own employees as retained firemen. The first two of these points, the question of cadets and that of lowering the recruiting age, had, I understand, been referred to the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council. That Council has not taken a decision and has, I believe, referred the question to a special sub-committee, which also has not reported. In the circumstances, considerable anxiety has arisen, and I wonder whether the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor can tell me anything about it. Had I known earlier, I should have put down some Amendments to this clause.
The question of a retained fireman is something which, at any rate in the London zone, is entirely new—there have never been retained firemen. This idea of enrolling a local authority's own employees as retained firemen is a new idea; it is one which I believe has not yet gone to the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, and of which, I believe, they have heard nothing. I hope, therefore, that the noble and learned Viscount will be able to tell me something about these proposals and whether they are, in fact, going to be enforced.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think that the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, has in mind a cutting which I have in front of me. The heading is:
"Younger firemen may be recruited,"
and the text begins:
"The Home Secretary, Mr. R. A. Butler, is looking for new ways to encourage young men to become firemen."
It is perfectly true that my right honourable friend is looking for new ways, in the sense that he is always considering that point; but I want to make it clear that he is not starting on schemes without consideration. That, I think, is the point which is worrying the noble Lord. As regards television publicity,

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which was the first matter that was mentioned, a little has been done. With regard to reducing the minimum age of firemen, the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, is quite right that a committee of the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council has been set up to consider whether the minimum age of entry should be reduced from nineteen to eighteen, and the same Committee is considering the setting up of a cadet scheme. There is nothing more to it than that. There is no intention on the part of my right honourable friend of taking any steps until he has had the advantage of seeing what the committee have said.
With regard to the recruiting of local council employees as retained firemen for an emergency, my right honourable friend has taken no special steps to encourage the recruitment of council employees. Of course, like myself, and every other Home Secretary, he is glad to hear of any filling up of vacancies in the establishment of retained men of which there is a deficiency in the country as a whole. But he is not aware of any plan to recruit retained firemen as substitutes for whole-time men, or to interfere with the general plans that are going on at the moment. I think it is simply a case that rather more could be read into the report—I am not corn-planting; I am sure it was clone with the best of motives in order to try to help—than the actual facts warrant. I have now endeavoured to put the facts as known to me fully before the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon.
LORD FARINGDON: I thank the noble and learned Viscount very much for that explanation. It is not wholly unexpected, of course. I rather anticipated that it would show that somebody had "jumped the gun" and that this was intelligent anticipation, or perhaps even more than that.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [Establishment Schemes]:
On Question, Whether Clause 7 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD FARINGDON: This is a point which I raised on Second Reading, when the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor gave what at that time seemed a satisfactory reply. Within the
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last few days, however, my anxieties have been raised considerably, because I am given to understand that at a disastrous fire just recently it was found that the fire cover was considerably inadequate. As this happened in a county where the fire authority had failed to carry out the directions of a Home Office circular based upon the advice of the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, it makes one wonder a little how effective will be the authority of the Home Secretary in cases where fire risk has increased and where additional cover may be needed. Particularly in view of the payment to local authorities of the block grant, there may be a strong tendency to fail to give the cover in newly built-up areas or in areas where there are new factories, and I am extremely anxious to know just how the Home Secretary is going to make his authority felt. The noble and learned Viscount gave me, as it seemed to me, a perfectly adequate reply op Second Reading, but in view of what has happened so recently I rather wonder whether the authority which he says—and quite rightly, of course—the Home Secretary will have, will in fact be adequate: and if he thinks that it will be adequate, how the Home Secretary is going to make it effective.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, has in mind the fire at Ilford, but my honourable friend Miss Hornsby-Smith, in answering a Parliamentary Question in another place, gave details about the times of attendance and mentioned that thirty-nine pumps had attended the fire from five brigades. She said that there was certainly no delay in the operation of the fire services.
The noble Lord may have had this in mind, and perhaps I may take as an example the Home Office Circular of November, 1958. He will remember that that recommended that in an area of the type where the Ilford fire occurred one appliance should attend within five minutes and the second within eight minutes. The reports received from the chief fire officer show that in the case of this fire one appliance was on the scene within three minutes, and, while the exact time of arrival of the next appliance has not been established, we do know that two were on the scene eleven minutes after

1227
the first call, and they may well have been earlier; and reinforcements which were sent for arrived quickly. From the full report which the Home Office have received, there is no occasion to doubt the efficiency of the manner in which the fire was tackled. But if there is any specific point it will probably be more convenient if my noble friend were to let me know, and I will look into it.
On the general point, whether my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has adequate powers to compel a fire authority to increase its establishment if industrial development is taking place in its area, I do not know that I can go much further than I did on Second Reading. Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to repeat what I then said, for I feel that it is important that it should be said again. In our view, if the scheme in force is unsatisfactory, the power of the Secretary of State to intervene, and make a scheme under subsection (5), in conjunction with regular inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Fire Services, will provide a sufficient safeguard for cases of this kind. That is the view we have formed. But again I should be very glad if the noble Lord will let me know about any point he has in mind, and I will look at it with great pleasure.
LORD FARINGDON: I thank the noble and learned Viscount very much for that answer. I had not intended to bring up the case of that particular fire. It was simply that it had made me feel a little anxious, in that it had been reported, not that there had been any failure on the part of the brigades concerned but that the fire cover was considered inadequate; or so I understand. I had reason to believe that the Home Office circular had not in fact been operated in the case of the local fire authority, and therefore I was anxious to know that the Home Secretary would be able to make his fiat really effective. But I thank the noble and learned Viscount.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Firemen's Pension Scheme]:
On Question whether Clause 8 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD FARINGDON: On this clause might I ask the noble and learned Viscount
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whether he has anything to add to the reply which he gave me on Second Reading concerning the pensions payable to men seconded for duty at the Fire College? He then said discussions were going on.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I told the House, at the instance of the noble Lord, that discussions were proceeding and—I touch the wood of the table in front of me—my information is that the discussions are going very well. I have nothing more concrete to report to your Lordships at the moment, but, as I told the noble Lord, if I have I shall let him know and will deal with it accordingly. But all the information I have is good news.
LORD FARINGDON: I thank the noble Lord for that statement, but it occurs to me to wonder where we go from there. We are to have the Report stage to-morrow and there will remain only the Third Reading. If an agreement is reached, presumably there will have to be an Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I believe the noble Lord has forgotten, for once, that this Bill started here, so that there are still the resources of another place to deal with it.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedule agreed to.
House resumed.
Bill reported without amendment.

STATUTE LAW REVISION BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill, whose nature is shown in its name, be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a,—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.
House adjourned at a quarter before seven o'clock.