Sitting of 24 June 1966

Preamble
The House met at Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  POSTAL AND PROXY VOTING BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  11.5 a.m.
  Mr. Charles Doughty: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  Although the Bill is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell), Mr. Speaker, you and the House will be sorry to hear that he is unwell and unable to be in his place today. It therefore falls to me to move this Motion.
  The Bill, as you will observe, Mr. Speaker, is a Bill to amend Section 12 of the Representation of the People Act, 1949. The House will be aware that in 1949 we passed the Representation of the People Act which dealt at considerable length with the rules, regulations and methods of conducting elections, both general elections and by-elections. For the first time it introduced a measure, to be found in Section 12 of that Act, enabling people who, far various reasons which I shall enumerate in a little more detail in a moment, are absent from their constituency on polling day to vote either by proxy or by post.
  Up till then if a person was prevented by illness or other reason from voting personally at an election by going to the polling station and recording his vote upon a ballot paper, he was to all intents and purposes disfranchised. When I say "he", of course, the feminine gender is included. By that Act certain persons who were too ill to vote, who were away on employment or in one of the Services, could, by making proper application in time, record their vote either through a proxy or by post. But that did not
  1106
  include everybody who might, for any good reason, be away from the constituency and be unable to get to the polling station on polling day.
  The purpose of this short Bill is to extend that Section of the Representation of the People Act so that those who are absent from the constituency on polling day and are genuinely unable to vote, can, by taking the necessary steps, vote either by proxy or by post. Up till now and, indeed, at the present moment if they do not fall within rather narrow limits defined in Section 12 of the Act they are unable to record their vote for a particular candidate at an election. This Bill seeks to alter that hardship which is placed upon a number of electors. It does not enable those who say "I prefer to vote by post instead of going to the trouble of walking to the polling station" to do so. They must have a genuine reason for being unable to be present at the polling station on election day.
  Therefore, Clause 1(1,a) of this Bill amends Section 12 of the Representation of the People Act by inserting the following words in subsection (1), after paragraph (e):
  "(f) those not falling within any of the above paragraphs but unable or unlikely to be able to go in person to the polling station by reason of their absence from the constituency throughout the hours of the poll";
  One may ask who exactly would benefit from an extension of this Act. One can answer genuinely, first of all, those who are away on holiday, be the holiday short or long, and also those who may be away genuinely visiting or looking after friends or relations. Many a person learning of illness in another person's home will go at once to help, and this cause can lead to the absence of quite a number of electors from the constituency on polling day.
  Nowadays, a good deal more than in 1949, people take holidays at times of the year other than what one might call the popular holiday season. There are many who like to take their holidays in the winter. I dare say that, many a time, hon. Members will have seen a colleague in the House with a leg in plaster and walking around with the aid of two sticks after having had a skiing accident during a short period of rest from this place. This is probably the

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  best evidence I can produce to show that many people like to take their holidays in the winter. An election, be it a General Election or a by-election, can come along almost at any time and people perfectly properly away for rest or recreation of that sort become automatically disenfranchised.
  The Bill is in no sense a political Measure. I do not know, and no one can know, how such people would vote were they able to be present. I am quite sure that all parties in the House, in these days of universal suffrage, would not wish to disfranchise electors simply by reason of their absence on their normal occupations, on recreation or in helping friends elsewhere in the country.
  It is interesting to recall what happened once in the House, towards the end of July, when a Motion for a Writ for the election of a Member was moved. The Motion was opposed by some hon. Members. They did not carry it to a Division, but there was a considerable debate upon the Motion. The chief objection was that the by-election would be taking place at the end of July and many of the people in the constituency would be thereby disfranchised if they were, as might well be expected, away on holiday at that time.
  At the end of the debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod), then Leader of the House, said:
  "I would dearly like to see legislation enabling people to vote when they are away on holiday, and if I could be assured of the Opposition's support I would be ready to bring in a Bill to that end."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd July, 1963, Vol. 681, c. 1286.]
  He did not do so. It falls to me today to introduce the Measure which will enable the whole argument of that debate to be avoided at any time in the future should a similar situation arise.
  One does not know when a general election may come. The Government had a very small majority in the last Parliament and, if they had been defeated, a general election could have come quite suddenly. Unfortunately, although, I think, hon. Members in this Parliament are a very healthy lot, accidents can happen to individuals at any time and elections or by-elections can
  1108
  take place with very little notice. If this should happen during the holiday season, a very large proportion of the electorate will find themselves disenfranchised. I hope that the House will accept the Bill and enable that injustice to be remedied
  We are aware, of course, that the remedy proposed is open to abuse. People might say that they were likely to be away on holiday or absent for some other cause simply because they did not want to walk a few hundred yards, or, in country constituencies, travel several miles to the polling station in order to vote in person. For this reason, my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South has made his proposed extension of Section 12 subject to fairly strict conditions. The form suggested in the Schedule would not only have to be signed by the applicant for a postal or proxy vote but would have to be subject to attestation. Incidentally, the application must, of course, be put in after the Writ for the election has been issued and not later than 12 days before polling day.
  It is provided that the attestation must be made before someone in the category of persons set out, who may conveniently be described as respectable people able to take the attestation and look after it. If at any time it should be found that someone who had applied to be treated as an absent voter under the terms of the Bill had made a statement which he knew to be false, he would be liable upon summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £100. I believe that that will be a sufficient deterrent to anyone inclined to make an application improperly.
  I am sure that my hon. Friend will be grateful for any assistance which hon. Members can give in Committee to improve the Bill, but the main object is to enable people at present subject to injustice to exercise the vote which is their right. Hon. Members will often have heard people in their constituencies speak strongly about their being unable to vote because of absence from the constituency on polling day for one reason or another not covered by Section 12. It is only right that the result of an election should be determined not by a minority of electors but by everyone who is, or should be, entitled to vote.

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  This is a short but important Measure. It will remove many genuine grievances felt by a large number of electors in every constituency. I commend it to the House.
  11.18 a.m.
  Mr. David Weitzman: The House will regret exceedingly the reason for the absence of the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell), who should have moved the Second Reading, and will wish him a speedy recovery to health. The arguments in favour of the Bill have not however, lost any force by the speed of the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) who has moved the Second Reading in his stead.
  The reasons for the Bill given by the hon. and learned Gentleman appear very attractive at first sight. One might well be tempted to say, "Let us give an opportunity to anyone to avoid his being disfranchised". But, when we examine the matter a little more carefully, we see that this is a Measure which ought not to be passed. I oppose the Second Reading.
  The Bill would make a vital change in our electoral law. It would mean, as the hon. and learned Gentleman recognised, that the way was open to a great deal of abuse. It is proposed to allow anyone to state that he is likely to be away on polling day and that, accordingly, he would like to have facilities to vote by post or by proxy. This is a very serious change. It is all very well to say that some people have suffered injustice, that we ought to think of those who are way on holiday, who are looking after elderly or sick people elsewhere, or who are away for other reasons. But this would be a very wide power indeed. In my view it is a power which ought not to be given.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to Section 12—which is the Section dealing with this matter—in the 1949 Act. It is important that we should look at that Section because, I respectfully suggest, it represents very widely the exceptions which can be made to the general rule. We recognise that an essential part of our electoral law—in the words words of Section 12—is that
  "All persons voting as electors at a parliamentary election shall do so in person at the polling station allotted to them …"
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  That is an essential part of our electoral law. It is only in exceptional circumstances that we depart from that rule, and we take that view not only because of the necessity of voting personally but because of the sacred principle of the the secrecy of the ballot.
  The exceptions set out in that Section are very wide, and it is important to remember them. First, there are
  "those registered as service voters".
  Then there are
  "those unable or likely to be unable to go in person to the polling station"
  for a number of reasons which are set out, and they, too, are very wide. The first is
  "the general nature of the occupation, service or employment of the person in question".
  The second is
  "that person's service as a member of any of His Majesty's reserve or auxiliary forces".
  The next is
  "the particular circumstances of that person's employment on the date of the poll either as a constable or, for a purpose connected with the election, by the returning officer".
  The next is the candidate, or the candidate's wife or husband, who no doubt must assist the candidate. The next is the returning officer at a General Election and at a General Election
  "the particular circumstances of that person's employment on the date of the poll by the returning officer at some other constituency for a purpose connected with the election in that constituency".
  Next is
  "those unable or likely to be unable, by reason either of blindness or any other physical incapacity, to go in person to the polling station or, if able to go, to vote unaided".
  Next, there are
  "those unable or likely to be unable to go in person from their qualifying address to the polling station without making a journey by air or sea".
  Next, there are
  "those no longer residing at their qualifying address".
  One sees that these exceptions are very wide. I suggest that the position had been studied very carefully when that Act was passed in order to see the exceptions which could be made to the important principle that voting should be in person at the polling station and in secrecy.

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  The Bill would make a vital change in the position set out in Section 12 of the 1949 Act. Under the Bill this exception would apply to those
  "unable or unlikely to be able to go in person to the polling station by reason of their absence from the constituency throughout the hours of the poll".
  It is not only a question of being unable; it is a question of "unlikely to be able". What does "unlikely to be able" mean? Any person may say, with very good reason, "I am likely to be unable to go", or he may well say, "I do not want the trouble or difficulty of going to the poll on the day. I will say that I am likely to be unable to go."
  Hon. Members may say that he is dishonest in his intentions, but who is to prove that he is dishonest in his intention? Clause 2 of the Bill sets out a penalty,
  "Any person who, in an application to be treated as an absent voter … makes a statement which he knows to be false shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £100".
  How are we to prove it? The hon. and learned Gentleman knows well enough that it is almost impossible to prove that a person did not have the intention which he said that he had. That is what would have to be proved —that he did not have the intention of being absent. The penalty Clause is derisory; it could never be applied or could be applied only in the rarest possible circumstances. To suggest a penalty of this kind in this way is in my view absurd.
  Another important point concerns the secrecy of the ballot. When a person goes into a polling booth he has heard all the arguments, or he has not heard them, he has studied the election manifestos, or he has not studied them, but at any rate when he goes into the polling booth he is alone there and can alone exercise his judgment and vote in accordance with what he wishes. But if a person is allowed to vote by post, let us think for a moment of the opportunities it might give to those who might desire to take advantage of the situation. Pressure might be put upon the person who is to vote. There might be arrangements to talk to a number of people and to instruct them in the actual exer-
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  cise of their votes. We should be moving a long way from the secrecy which we have in the polling booth.
  This is a very simple Bill put forward, I have no doubt, with the best of intentions. I have no doubt that if it were applied simply to one class of people, who were on holiday, it might be a very worthy thing, but it cannot be restricted in that way. It is far too wide. It is a fundamental departure from our electoral law. I hope that the House will reject the Motion for a Second Reading.
  11.27 a.m.
  Mr. Dennis Walters: I should like to intervene briefly in support of the Bill, which should have been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell). I should like to associate myself most sincerely with the regret expressed at the reasons for which he has not been able to move the Second Reading and at the same time to congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) on the skilful and able way in which he took over and introduced the Bill.
  I do not intend to follow all the points raised by the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman), but it seemed to me that he dismissed the penalty Clause rather too easily and he made two further points which I found difficult to follow. I do not see why there should be any abuse. Why should pressure be exercised because a person intends to vote through the post instead of voting in the secrecy of the ballot? No doubt he will receive all the usual pressures which voters receive before elections, but I do not see any reason for any undue pressure being exercised in this case. The hon. Member also referred to abuse. It is perhaps as well to remember that ultimately the only abuse would be that somebody who wanted to vote was actually able to do so. He would be voting in one way instead of in another.
  I think that the principle which underlies the Bill must be widely accepted and acceptable in a democratic society because it is the principle that voting should be facilitated wherever possible. It is one of the principal aims in a democracy to see that as many people as possible exercise their right to vote, and the Bill is

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  aimed at achieving precisely that. It is an attempt to make it easier for people to vote, and for that reason alone should be widely welcomed and supported.
  It will remove a number of unjust anomalies. Many hon. Members have encountered some of these in the course of their electoral experiences, as I have, and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East, has referred to some of them.
  I will mention specific instances. Where a husband goes away on business and takes his wife with him, he can vote but she cannot. That is wrong and indefensible. If a Service man is on a temporary posting and his wife is with him, he can vote but she cannot. That also is wrong and indefensible. During the last election there were a number of instances in my constituency of persons who had to be away from home to look after sick relatives. It is wrong that they should be denied the right to vote.
  These days, quite rightly, there is much talk about the desirability of staggering holidays. Because of this, people tend to take holidays at different times of the year. It is frequently the case in a firm that the younger and more junior members of the staff find themselves on holiday at rather less favoured times— less favoured for holidays but more favoured from the point of view of General Elections. It is wrong that all these should lose their right to vote.
  It is the responsibility of the State to see that no citizen is penalised and denied his rights. The aim of the Bill is to see that fewer people are arbitrarily denied their right to vote, which is one of the most important rights one can have in a democratic society. I hope that the Bill will be approved.
  11.32 a.m.
  Mr. W. H. Loveys: I join in regretting the reason for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell) and I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) on moving the Second Reading so well. I cannot understand the objections raised on the benches opposite. The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) mentioned that anomalies would be possible under the Bill, but
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  these could be sorted out in Committee. He said that people might claim that they would be away on polling day and be allowed a postal vote even though in fact they would be at home and capable of voting at the polling booth.
  My hon. Friend the Member for West-bury (Mr. Walters) was right in drawing the attention of the House to the fact that, even if that happened, the point is that the person concerned is having the vote and that everyone in this country should be entitled to vote. The Bill is small and simple and may not be considered as important as other matters the House has been discussing this week. But it is not unimportant to the individuals concerned and it is right that this House should protect the rights of individuals.
  That right is simply the right of being able to vote. Even in a constituency like mine, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East has referred to as having a somewhat indecently large majority, otherwise referred to as a "safe" seat—a person is furious if he discovers on polling day that for some reason he is disfranchised. The time is over-ripe for this injustice to be removed.
  I cannot understand the opposition to this Measure. We may hear more about it from the right hon. Lady the Minister of State. The opposition always comes from the Socialist side of the House. I have never been impressed by any of the reasons put forward for opposing this proposal. It is not a party political Measure. Perhaps there was an argument once in that more Socialists than Conservative voters could not take holidays but that is not the case now. This is simply a further step towards "one-man, one-vote".
  The present list of those available to vote by post or proxy is very limited. It includes those away on business. But if a man takes his wife with him she cannot have a postal or proxy vote.
  Mr. Eric Lubbock: This point has been covered by one of the recommendations of the Speaker's Conference.
  Mr. Loveys: But it has not yet been brought into law. I am reciting the position as it stands now.

  1115
  Another group able to vote by post or proxy are the sick, the blind and the infirm, and that is right. Those who have moved from one part of the country to another between elections can have the vote and Service men and women have the vote. If the Bill is passed we shall be able to include a large number of people who are now completely disfranchised.
  Apart from the wife who accompanies her husband on a business trip, what about men and women attending conferences? This would probably give more favour to trade unionists than to anyone else because they probably attend more conferences than anyone else. Those on holiday would be able to vote. Why should people be deprived of the vote because they are on holiday? The British Holiday and Travel Association estimates that about 4 million people go abroad each year. In addition, a large number of people are engaged in the hotel industry. They are particularly affected because they have to take their holidays out of season during the period when elections usually take place.
  Mr. Doughty: My hon. Friend has mentioned the period during which elections take place, but I remind him that we are not only dealing with General Elections. One cannot tell when an hon. Member will die or when a by-election will be caused by some other reason. Such a by-election can—and very likely will—happen in what is sometimes called the holiday season.
  Mr. Loveys: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for making that point. I do not think I mentioned General Elections in particular. I mentioned elections. The Bill applies to General Elections and to by-elections, although not to local government elections.
  In the South of England, farmers finish their harvest at the latest towards the end of September and like to try and get away for a holiday in October. Then there is the small category of those living in closed orders, in nunneries and monastries. Just because they choose that way of life is no reason for losing the vote.
  If the Bill is defeated we shall also continue to deny the right to vote to others while granting it to ourselves. If
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  a Parliamentary candidate is fighting a constituency in a part of the country away from the one in which he lives, he is able to obtain a postal vote. This is a simple matter of fairness and justice and would be a step towards a more complete democracy.
  11.40 a.m.
  Mr. Eric Lubbock: I intervene briefly in the debate because when the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) put forward a bill on this subject two Sessions ago, I was one of its sponsors. I agree entirely with those hon. Members who have said that in principle one wants to extend the vote to everybody who wishes to exercise it and that if anyone is absent from his constituency on polling day, for whatever reason, we should try to enable him to cast his vote none the less. But I have changed my mind on this since that Bill was presented, and I think that it is necessary for me to explain the reasons for doing so.
  It would be out of order to refer to the evidence which has been presented to your Conference on this subject, Mr. Speaker, but I regret the Conference's decision not to publish the evidence which would have been very material to this debate. Without actually quoting what has been said to us by the registration officers and the Association of Municipal Corporations and others who would be concerned with the administration of this proposal if the House chose to approve it, I must say that the difficulties appear to be not only formidable, but insuperable.
  Much as I would like to have accepted the proposal put so eloquently by the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty), I must ask him to take this matter into consideration, and in none of the speeches so far has the problem of administrative difficulties been mentioned. The House cannot afford just to approve in principle without considering what effect the Bill would have on registration officers and the machinery provided by local authorities at election times.
  The sponsors of the Bill suggest that applications for a postal vote should be submitted after a writ has been issued, but not less than 12 days before polling day, which gives the local officers very

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  little time to cope with applications for postal voting facilities. I must tell the House that it is only by the use of a considerable amount of overtime and by the hard work of local government officers in registration departments that the work is completed even under the present legislation. Without taking on large numbers, who would inevitably be unfamiliar with the work and likely to make mistakes, it would be impossible for the additional burden to be carried.
  The hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East said that people must have a genuine reason for being absent on polling day, but the only reason which he mentioned was absence on holiday. That would obviously be the most important.
  Mr. Doughty: I mentioned that as one of the reasons. I gave as another example people looking after sick friends or relations, and another hon. Member mentioned wives away with husbands on business.
  Mr. Lubbock: It was one of the principal reasons and we probably all accept that absence on holiday is by far the most important.
  But once it is accepted that people are entitled to postal voting if away on holiday, in practice it would be extremely difficult to refuse applications for any reason. Completing the form which appears in the Schedule, it would not be at all difficult for a person to submit an apparently valid reason for being away on polling day on the off-chance that his absence might be necessary. Registration officers would be swamped with a deluge of applications from people who might think that they were likely to be away. They would not have to know at the time of submitting applications that they would be away, because paragraph (f) which it proposed to insert into Section 12 of the Representation of the People Act, 1949, merely says that they have to be unable or unlikely to be able to go in person. One can see that many electors might feel that they had to put in applications just to be on the safe side and on the off-chance that they might be away.
  There is some doubt about whether the examples mentioned by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Loveys) are not already covered by the 1949 Act. If a
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  person is attending a trade union conference or, for that matter, the conference of a political party and is an official, under Section 12(1,b (i)) of the 1949 Act, he would be deemed to be absent from his constituency by a reason of his occupation, service or employment. The other example of the wife being away with her husband on business, which I agree to be extremely important, I tried to cover myself in Bills which I presented both in the last Session of Parliament and the one before that. But we now have a recommendation from the Speaker's Conference that absent voting facilities should be extended to those people. I am delighted that that is the case, because I have always thought that that was a logical and necessary extension of the existing facilities. But as the recommendation has been made by your Conference, Mr. Speaker, the hon. Gentleman need not have any anxiety that it will not be contained in the subsequent legislation.
  Your Conference has been considering these matters at some length and in some detail and has received expert advice from various sources and has come to some conclusions which have been communicated to the Prime Minister and published. It would be wrong for us to take a decision on one item of the voting system without regard to all the other matters which have been under consideration. This would be piecemeal legislation.
  I may be asked why, if that is my view, I brought forward Bills for the extension of absent voting facilities to wives away with husbands on business. That would be a fair question. At that time, in spite of private assurances from the Home Office, I did not see the prospect of early legislation on the subject and I felt that something could be done before the General Election to enable people to exercise their votes. But that situation does not face us today. I do not expect that we shall have another General Election for three or four years—I may be wrong about that, but I think that we have all had enough of General Elections for the time being—and in that case there is plenty of time for these matters to be dealt with by the House rationally and sensibly instead of in piecemeal legislation dealing with one issue at a time.
  The postal and proxy voting facilities in this country are very much more

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  generous to the elector than those of many other States in the Western world. Some of the remaining anomalies will be removed on the recommendation of the Speaker's Conference. The House would therefore be advised to wait until the Home Office comes forward with comprehensive legislation and not let this Bill go through now.
  11.49 a.m.
  Mr. Albert Booth: The hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) mentioned the victims of ski-ing accidents abroad as some evidence of the kind of people who could legitimately he held to be likely to be out of constituencies at times other than normal holiday periods and therefore requiring postal votes in circumstances not provided for in present legislation.
  Mr. Doughty: I used the example of hon. Members who had been victims of ski-ing accidents to show that people took winter holidays. I did not say that the victims of ski-ing accidents were disfranchised.
  Mr. Booth: I accept the correction, but I think that the example can be made applicable on a rather wider basis. Surely hon. Members are not the only people who have ski-ing accidents abroad? In my own constituency one is not likely to see many such people. Before one would be likely to see many victims of ski-ing accidents abroad in Barrow-in-Furness, one would not only have to have a big increase in general incomes there—
  Mr. Walters: Will the hon. Gentleman take the point, which I tried to emphasise, on the subject of staggering holidays, which tends to apply more to the junior members of firms, who are encouraged to go away at less favourable times of the year?
  Mr. Booth: Yes, I will take this point into consideration. However, before one is likely to see many victims of skiing accidents abroad in my constituency, one would not only have to have a large general increase in incomes but also a big improvement in the holidays given by the major industry of the town.
  I am not opposed to the point raised by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters). I am in favour of there being
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  a vast spreading of holidays. My major objections to the Bill do not stem from any narrow constituency bias. I do not think that this is a logical way of dealing with a very real problem. The Bill proposes to add a paragraph to the Representation of the People Act, 1949, stating:
  "(f) those not falling within any of the above paragraphs but unable or unlikely to be able to go in person to the polling station by reason of their absence from the constituency throughout the hours of the poll".
  If this Bill became law, this paragraph would refer to all people covered by the preceding paragraph. It would refer to people unable to go to the poll by virtue of sickness, blindness and any of the reasons which at present entitle people to obtain postal votes.
  The logical way in which to include a paragraph such as this within the Representation of the People Act, 1949, would be to delete all the existing paragraphs which give people entitlement to postal votes and to substitute this paragraph. The fact that it is not being done in that way points to one of the weaknesses of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) rightly pointed out that if one uses a paragraph like this in the Act it would lead to tremendous difficulties for those concerned with the machinery of postal voting.
  Turning to the penal Clause, I react almost instinctively against such a Clause. Quite clearly the intention of anyone who would seek to abuse it would be that of safeguarding his right to vote, and I find it hard to accept that there can be any sympathy for the proposition that we should be able to fine a person up to £100 for attempting to do this. In any case, it would be almost impossible to probe into whether one was likely or unlikely, because this is a matter of opinion.
  I am in favour of the extension of the Act, because I accept that there are injustices, but this is not the way to do it. It is an illogical method which would result in very great difficulties in the operation of the Act, while the penalty Clause would operate against the very laudable motive of a person trying to preserve his right to vote.
  12.55 p.m.
  Sir John Langford-Holt: There is quite a lot of force in the arguments of the hon. Member for

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  Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Booth) and the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) when they say that this is not the correct vehicle, and that we should wait until something is done in a more comprehensive manner. Having been in this House for nearly 21 years, I have heard Government after Government and Minister after Minister, on both sides, pray this in aid as an excuse and a reason for doing nothing. Far too often, unless the issue is forced, nothing is done. The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Orpington painted a picture of people who were longing to get postal votes and avoid going to the polls. This was the impression which I got and I hope that I am wrong because it has not been my experience over the years.
  On many occasions I have known people entitled to postal votes, on medical grounds, but who would not take the vote because they had a very strong and rooted desire to go to the polls and vote in person. The postal voter gets very little advantage, and since an election is won and lost by the floating voter he loses the advantage of being a floating voter up to the last moment. The Representation of the People Act, as the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North said, provided that people shall vote and vote in person at the polling station, with exceptions. These exceptions are basically concerned with the general nature of the occupation of a person and the circumstances of employment.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Loveys) said, there are stronger and better reasons than employment. I had an example during the election. I know that we have heard this before but it happened to me. A person was torn in their loyalties because they had been asked, as a matter of urgency, to look after an old and ailing relative and they could either refuse to do that or lose their vote.
  Mr. Lubbock: Under this Bill, if such a person had received an urgent request less than 12 days before the poll he still would be unable to obtain a postal vote.
  Sir J. Langford-Holt: I am coming to that point in a moment. All that I am saying is that we must have good reasons for not doing these things. The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North made a valuable point about the question of secrecy when he said that everyone given a postal vote would be liable to have their arms and minds jogged by someone next door. This is an argument for having no postal votes. If it is secrecy that we are concerned about, I see no difficulty in saying that a postal vote should be registered in a police station.
  Mr. Weitzman: I was pointing out that there would be an increase in the number of people who would have the privilege of voting by post, and therefore a tremendous area over which this lack of secrecy might prevail.
  Sir J. Langford-Holt: I agree. This could be covered without much difficulty by requiring such postal voters, not those who obtain a postal vote on medical grounds, to cast their vote in a police station or other suitable agency.
  The real argument against this proposal is the administrative difficulties. We should place on record the enormous debt of gratitude which we owe to the returning officers who have a very arduous job to do. They get very little thanks for it, apart from a two-minutes' speech at the declaration of the poll when candidates are usually aware of anything but being thankful to the returning officer. This seems to be the one valid reason for opposition to the extension of the right to a postal vote.
  The hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness said that in his constituency there were few people who went ski-ing in January and Ferburay and therefore that this was a reason for not having the postal vote. He destroyed the one argument against the Bill because if so few people are involved there would not be administrative difficulty.
  Mr. Booth: I said that I did not base my objections on that constituency premise.
  Sir J. Langford-Holt: I realise that. But the hon. Gentleman made the argument; he cannot get away from that.

  1123
  Opposition to this type of proposal always comes from the wrong end of the telescope. The Executive must justify any limitation in the freedom of the individual and any action which they take which limits the freedom of the individual. In the same way, they must justify their opposition to a person's absolute right and freedom to vote. They must prove on solid administrtive grounds, which they have not yet done, that these things are impossible. Difficulties there will be. But the Executive must always start from the point of justifying their opposition to a person being able to exercise his absolute and vital right in a democratic system, namely, the right to vote.
  12.2 p.m.
  Mr. Martin Maddan: This is a Friday debate, and we know that the purpose of Private Members' Bills introduced on Fridays is often more to give an airing to a subject and perhaps to elicit the Government's attitude rather than to press them to their final conclusion. I apologise that I was not present to hear my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) introduce the Bill.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt) said, the purpose of all the arrangements surrounding the poll is to get the maximum possible poll. That is what it is all about. It has been said that a by-election might be held in a peak holiday period. This happened to me 11 months ago in Hove. The number of people who found themselves disfranchised because they had arranged their holidays and, for reasons which we can understand, were not able to change them was very substantial indeed. This cannot be held to be desirable.
  The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) said that having to travel by sea or air is regarded in certain circumstances as a reason for having a postal vote. Why should not this be regarded as a reason for having a postal vote if a person is on holiday and has to return home by sea or air?
  Mr. Weitzman: If a person travels somewhere by sea or air he is definitely away. The criticism of this proposal is that it is so open to abuse. Anybody
  1124
  may say that he is likely to be absent when in fact he will not be absent.
  Mr. Maddan: Many points could be made and amendments suggested in Committee. But what we are concerned with today is the principle of the Bill. It might be argued that if the postal vote were confined to those who travelled by sea or air—those who went furthest for their holidays, a fact which some people might equate with Tory supporters, though I do not know why—it would be disadvantageous to the party opposite. I would not put forward the proposition that there should be such a limit.
  There are many classes covered by the Bill, but in the main it involves holiday-makers. We have to face the fact —and it is a very good thing—that today holiday-makers come widely spread in huge volume from every section of the community.
  We must also face the fact that holidays are important to production. I can remember when trade unions pressed for holidays with pay not only because they were beneficial to the worker and his family but because it was a valid argument that efficiency would be increased if people could get away from work for a holiday. Therefore, we should not disfranchise those who go away for a holiday. If we support this Bill, we are departing only by a hair's breadth from the existing postal vote for those who are away on business. There is not very much in it. The present limitations which were drawn up just after the war are out of date.
  We talk a lot about modernising Parliamentary procedure. We should not hesitate to modernise the electoral machinery. We have a reforming Home Office, and the right hon. Lady the Minister of State graces it. I hope that its reforms will not stop short at this extremely important point.
  Reference has been made to registraion officers and their problems. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury that we can always find an administrative difficulty about anything that we do not want to do and that we can always find a way round administrative difficulties about anything that we do want to do. If any hon. Member wants some ideas as to how to get round this problem, I shall be most glad

  1125
  to discuss it in detail with him, but I will not bother the House with the matter today. We should be able to take that as read.
  Registration officers have a lot of difficulties. Reference has been made to the fact that Mr. Speaker's Conference considered the question and made a recommendation about wives being away with husbands on business. A good rule is: no names, no pack drill. But I know certain areas in which registration officers have made a practice of this for some time, and I am glad that they have. We can be sure that registration officers have difficulty in interpreting the present limitations. They are probably open to more interpretations than one. Fortunately, some registration officers have the good sense to stretch the limitations in the direction in which certainly the whole weight of public opinion is moving and in which, I hope, the weight of official opinion is moving, too.
  Hon. Members on both sides of the House, together with the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), agree that the present restrictions pose very real problems. Difficulties have been found in the solutions put forward. But we should not regard them as a reason for objecting to the principle of the Bill, which is what we are considering. Bearing in mind that the purpose of our electoral machinery must be to enable the maximum number of people reasonably to vote, I very much hope that the right hon. Lady the Minister of State will indicate sympathy for the Bill. We know that through other machinery proposals for electoral reform are coming forward. This being so, it might well be that this proposal should be incorporated in them. That is a matter for decision.
  If as a result of this debate the weight and strength of opinion in favour of the principle that people should be helped to cast their vote by every possible means is pressed and accepted, the purpose of the promoters of the Bill will have been well served and their efforts well worthwhile.
  12.10 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Sharples: Everyone who has spoken has, in one way or another, expressed regret
  1126
  that my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell) was not able to be present to move the Second Reading of his Bill. All of us who know my hon. Friend admire the courage with which he has carried on his duties in the House under conditions of considerable difficulty and wish him well in his illness.
  My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) was a powerful advocate in support of the Bill, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South will read with great interest his remarks in moving the Bill. My hon. and learned Friend received support from hon. Friends of mine on this side of the House—my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Loveys), my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Walters), my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan). It can be said generally of the debate that it has been conducted in a non-partisan spirit and that we have had useful and constructive suggestions together with thoughtful speeches from both sides of the House.
  There is no doubt that we are agreed that the essence of voting is personal attendance at a polling station and the marking of a ballot paper in a secret booth. That has always been agreed by all political parties. There is no doubt whatever that the further one departs from that principle, there more possibility there is, however small it may be, of abuses of one kind or another creeping in to our electoral system. It can be said that we are proud of our electoral system although we may not always like the results which it produces.
  It must, however, be accepted that certain people are unavoidably prevented from exercising their vote in person. As was pointed out by one of my hon. Friends and by the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman), provision is already made under the Representation of the People Act, 1949, for certain people in those categories who are unable to vote in person to be able to vote either by post or by proxy. To mention some of the principal categories of people who are so entitled, there are

  1127
  the sick and the blind, the Armed Forces, those who by reasons of their work or business are forced to be away from then-normal places of residence where they qualify for a vote and those who have changed their addresses and moved to another local government area.
  The question which the Bill raises is whether we should extend the categories of people who are able to vote either by post or by proxy and, if so, how far we should go in extending these privileges to them. Let us be in no doubt about one thing. Every one of us in the course of a General Election has come across people who either write to us or whom we see and who say to us with deep feeling, "If only I had been able to exercise a postal vote or a proxy vote, I would have wished to exercise my democratic right." There are very strong feelings among people who, for reasons beyond their control, are unable to exercise their right to vote but who are not included in the categories covered by Section 12 of the 1949 Act.
  A particular category of people whom one comes across are the wives of those who are away at business or at work. One frequently finds difficult cases of this nature. Also in this category of people who are not able to exercise a proxy or postal vote but who, nevertheless, can be said to come firmly into the category of those who are unavoidably prevented from voting are those who are looking after the sick or after aged relatives who cannot be left for any time while the people caring for them go to the poll. These are genuine cases in which, if one might apply the description of hardship in this category, hard cases exist.
  It is much more difficult when one considers people who are away for what might be called voluntary reasons. It is very difficult because it is becoming increasingly hard to define those who are away for voluntary reasons. More and more people today have to take their holidays at times of the year when holidays would not normally be taken. It has been the policy of both the present Government and of the last Conservative Government to encourage the taking of staggered holidays and to try to get away from the holiday season concentrated into August and the first two weeks of Septem-
  1128
  ber. This undoubtedly has the effect of reducing the periods of the year when a General Election can take place. If one considers also other factors such as the timing of the Budget and the financial business which has to be transacted in the House of Commons, the periods of the year when it is possible to have a General Election are probably now reduced to only two or three.
  My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East raised the important point of by-elections. Knowing all the factors, it is at least possible to decide to have a General Election when it will fit in with the business of the House and cause fewest people to miss voting by reason of being away, but by-elections come upon us at times which are not usually of our own choosing. In recent years there have been cases in which by-elections have had to be held in the knowledge that many people who would be entitled to vote would not be able to do so because they would have to take their holidays at that time, whether or not they wished to do so.
  On the other hand, there is no doubt that if we were to extend the principle of allowing a postal or proxy vote to every person who was away on holiday, or felt that he was likely to be away on holiday, at the relevant time, it would mean a vast increase in the number of people so entitled to vote, and it would by virtually impossible to exclude anyone who wished to vote in this way.
  The Bill seeks to overcome this difficulty, first, by imposing a penalty for those who knowingly make false statements in obtaining a postal or proxy vote of this kind, and, secondly, by including in the Schedule a fairly detailed form of application which will have to be signed before anyone would qualify to attest his signature, which would put him to a certain amount of inconvenience. Nonetheless, even with the Penalties contained in Clause 2 and the Schedule the number of people entitled to vote in this way would be considerably increased.
  The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury also referred to the administrative difficulties which would arise from a provision of this kind. I have not had the benefit of seeing the evidence presented to your Conference on Electoral Reform, Mr. Speaker, but

  1129
  although powerful cases may have been made out in respect of the administrative difficulties that will arise if an alteration of this kind were made, if the House considered it right to make them means could be found of overcoming those difficulties, and I would not consider them to amount to an insuperable argument against making a fairly important and radical change in the electoral law.
  Mr. Lubbock: Does the hon. Member think that the House is entitled to state its view that the evidence placed before Mr. Speaker's Conference should be published, so that hon. Members could have the benefit of this evidence before them in making their decision?
  Mr. Sharples: Yes. I was going to refer to that. One of the difficulties with which we are faced is the fact that we have not been able to see the arguments advanced before Mr. Speaker's Conference, or have the benefit of the evidence placed before him. I strongly support the view expressed by the hon. Member for Orpington that the evidence should be published, together with the minutes of proceedings. We should then know what had taken place.
  I am not so much concerned with the administrative problems which might arise; I am much more concerned with the question whether we should not consider very carefully the effect of an infinite extension of the right to vote by post upon the principle that voting in this country should, wherever possible, take place under the system which we know as the secret ballot.
  Bills of this kind have been introduced in varying forms, more or less for the same purpose, on a number of occasions in recent years. Since the last one was introduced your Conference on Electoral Law, Mr. Speaker, has been established. I am sure that we would be wrong to seek to make this kind of radical change in the electoral law without first making every attempt to obtain all-party agreement. The right vehicle for obtaining such agreement is your Conference, Mr. Speaker, which I understand is shortly to be reconvened.
  In a letter to the Prime Minister you have already made certain recommendations about the extension of absent vot-
  1130
  ing. Your Conference has recommended that
  "wives of any persons accompanying their husbands whenever their husbands are so qualified"
  should qualify to be treated as absent voters, and that
  "Wives of Crown servants and members of the forces should be entitled to vote by proxy as from the time they leave the United Kingdom. Absent voting facilities should be extended to electors who no longer reside at their qualifying address but reside at an address in another constituency within the same borough."
  That letter contains no reference to any conclusion reached by the Conference on the wider question of proxy or postal voting for those who may be away on holiday, which persons would be covered by the Bill. I do not know the extent to which this subject was considered by your Conference, and there is no indication in your letter whether or not it was considered, although I have no doubt that some consideration must have been given to it.
  It will be open to the Conference, when reconvened, to consider any subject of this kind which members of the Conference may wish to raise.
  I am sure that the Conference, when reconvened, will take note of the views expressed by hon. Members of both sides in today's debate. I am not sure of the intentions of my hon. and learned Friend about the Bill, but certainly the debate has been extremely useful and I hope that further consideration of this important problem will be given by the Conference. This would probably be the best way of dealing with this difficult matter, on which strong feelings are held not only in the House but in the country generally.
  12.30 p.m.
  The Minister of Stale, Home Department (Miss Alice Bacon): I am sure that the whole House regrets that the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Sir R. Russell) has not been able to be here this morning to move the Second Reading of his Bill because of illness. It is rare for an hon. Member to be lucky enough to secure a place in the Ballot, and particularly lucky when he is in the position of being first in the list of subjects on a Friday. It must be a great disappointment to an hon. Member in such a fortunate position to find that illness prevents him

  1131
  from moving his own Bill. We are, therefore, grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) for stepping into the breach and moving the Second Reading so admirably and concisely, although, as I will show, I disagree with much of what he said.
  This Measure is the fourth edition of a Bill which was introduced by the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) in 1963. To give a little of the history of Measures of this sort, the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet obtained a Second Reading but did not complete its Committee stage. The following Session we had a revised version of the Bill—at any rate, the long and short Titles were different—introduced by the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles). We had an interesting Second Reading debate on that Bill, but it failed to obtain a Second Reading. Then, last December, the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Frederic Harris) introduced a Bill which did not get as far as its Second Reading, although it was almost the identical twin of the one we are considering today.
  I am sure that hon. Members will not wish me to say a great deal about the present provisions for absent voting at Parliamentary elections or about the development of these provisions since absent voting first became a feature of our electoral law in 1918. However, it is worth noting that before the Second World War, except for Service voters, the only persons eligible to vote as absent voters were persons likely to be unable to vote in person at a polling station by reason of the nature of their occupation, service or employment.
  Looking back, it might seem strange that even as recently as the ' thirties persons who were, for example, sick, or who had removed from one end of the country to another, were not eligible to vote as absent voters. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt)— said that in these matters the Government had usually to be pushed by private Members' legislation. I remind him that it was in a Government Bill, under the Labour Government of 1945 to 1950 that provision was made for absent voting by other persons who are now entitled to vote by post or by proxy, as the case may be.
  1132
  Hon. Members have already given the list of those principal groups who are at present entitled to absent voting facilities. I will not repeat them, except to say that it will be seen from that list that provision is made for a fairly substantial number of persons to obtain absent voting facilities. I am sure that we all agree that these are the electors who are primarily entitled to be treated exceptionally, even by those who would seek to extend the list.
  The categories of absent voters were greatly enlarged between 1945 and 1948 and my hon. and right hon. Friends certainly do not take the view that the present categories must remain fixed forever. In common with other provisions of electoral law, the arrangements for absent voting need re-examination from time to time. When the hon. and gallant Member's Bill was debated by the House last year, consultations were already taking place, through the usual channels, with a view to setting up a Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law, which would include members of all the political parties represented in the House. My hon. Friend who is now the Minister of State for Wales, the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. George Thomas), suggested that this was a compelling reason for not giving a Second Reading to the hon. and gallant Member's Bill. And, as I have said, that Bill failed to secure a Second Reading.
  As the House will know, last summer the late Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster accepted an invitation from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to preside over a conference which was asked to examine and, if possible, submit agreed resolutions on a wide range of matters relating to parliamentary elections. The question of "absent voting generally" was among those referred to the Conference. Subsequently, you, Mr. Speaker, agreed to take over the Conference in order that its work could continue.
  Mr. Speaker has sent three letters to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, dated 28th December, 1965, and 8th February and 7th March, 1966, setting out recommendations of the Conference. These letters have been published as Command Papers and can fairly be described as "interim reports" of the Conference. The work of the Conference was interrupted by the General Election,

  1133
  and some of the Members of the Conference as originally constituted are no longer hon. Members of the House.
  Mr. Speaker recently agreed to reconstitute the Conference in this Parliament and we await the announcement of the names of those hon. Members who have accepted an invitation to serve on the Conference as reconstituted.
  When the third of Mr. Speaker's letters was published, the last Parliament had just been dissolved and a Proclamation had been issued for a new Parliament. Hon. Members were, naturally, somewhat preoccupied at the time over the number of votes, postal and otherwise, they were likely to obtain in a few weeks' time, and may have overlooked the Command Paper while the General Election campaign was under way.
  Those hon. Members who did study it or who have subsequently studied the report will find that it contains a number of recommendations about absent voting, two of which, at any rate, would apparently be met by this Bill. The first of these is that the Representation of the People Act, 1949, should be amended so as to include among those qualified to be treated as absent voters, by reason of the general nature of their occupation, service or employment, wives accompanying their husbands when their husbands are so qualified. These wives, being absent from their qualifying address on the day of election, would seem to be within the terms of the Bill we are discussing today.
  Secondly, the Conference on Electoral Law has recommended that the wives of Crown servants and of members of the Forces should be entitled to vote by proxy as from the time they leave the United Kingdom. It is, I understand, an effect of the present arrangements for registration and absent voting that these wives are, in effect, disfranchised until their registration as Service voters takes effect. These wives would also obviously be within the terms of the Bill.
  The third group to whom the Conference recommends that absent voting facilities should be extended are electors who no longer reside at their qualifying address but who reside at an address in another constituency within the same borough. These would not so obviously
  1134
  qualify under the terms of the Bill. They are absent from their qualifying address all right; indeed, they have removed for good from their qualifying address, but they would probably not, in the words of the Bill, be
  "unable, or likely to be unable" to vote in person at a polling station. It might be very awkward for them to do so, but it would not be impossible.
  Although I am not in a position today to say what view the Government take on this recommendation of the Conference, speaking personally, I realise the difficulties. I represent a constituency in a divided borough of Leeds, and my great headache at the last three elections was to get the large number of people who had moved from three miles south of the city to eight miles north of it into another constituency altogether, but who still remained within the local government area, to come back to vote.
  There has always been an anomaly between the county constituencies and those in divided boroughs. If a person moves from one local government area, maybe from one village to the next village, in a county constituency, it is possible for him to get a postal vote, but if someone moves from several miles south of a city, to several miles north of it—and in some of our big cities a person may move as much as 15 miles— because he is within the same local government area, it is impossible for him to get a postal vote.
  The Conference on Electoral Law is, as I have said, in the middle of its deliberations, and they are to be resumed. The proceedings of the Conference are not published, and I think that of the hon. Members who have spoken in the debate today the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) is at a decided advantage because he knows what has been considered by the Speaker's Conference.
  The proceedings of the Conference are not published, and it is not within the power of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to direct that they should be so. This is entirely a matter for the Conference itself to decide, but maybe what has been said today will have been heard by those who are responsible for this.

  1135
  It seems a reasonable inference from the fact that recommendations have been made for certain limited extensions of absent voting, that the Conference does not propose to recommend a wide extension of absent voting on the lines of the Bill. If that were not so, some of the limited recommendations which the Conference has made would seem to be unnecessary. On the other hand, this is no more than an inference as far as I am concerned, and the Conference may consider that it is open to it to make further recommendations about absent voting if it so wishes, but, not being a member of the Conference, I cannot know this one way or the other.
  It is true that the Conference on Electoral Law has asked the Electoral Advisory Conference, which advises my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, to consider a suggestion that the law should provide for a right of objection to names included in the list of absent voters. It may be, therefore, that we can expect some further recommendations from the Conference on Electoral Law about absent voting.
  What is clear, however, is that the Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law, having been asked to consider the question of absent voting generally, has not so far made any recommendation for a change on the lines of the Bill. And even if it had, it might not necessarily be right to proceed piecemeal with one recommendation, since a Bill of this nature would have repercussions on the election machinery generally, and especially on the timetable of the election. I think that because the Speaker's Conference has not made any recommendation so far, this should be regarded as a decisive factor in the question whether the Bill should be given a Second Reading. The House may, however, consider that we should again look in some detail at the arguments for and against the Bill.
  I am sure that we all know of hard cases where persons anxious to vote nevertheless find that they are unable to do so because the election falls, for instance, during a holiday, and they are away. Perhaps there were not so many problems of this kind during the last election because it was held in March when few people were on holiday.
  1136
  The Bill seeks to amend the 1949 Act so as considerably to widen the facilities for postal and proxy voting, extending this facility to electors who for any reason might be away from their constituencies during the time of the poll. This would include not only holiday makers. It could extend to anyone who planned to spend a day by the sea or in the country, or to go on a fishing trip or a coach outing. The possibility of abuse of this facility cannot be ignored, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) said, and it would be almost impossible to check the validity of any application.
  Mr. Walters: The person concerned would have to go to one of the scheduled people in advance and say that he was going to be away on that day, and a form would have to be signed. This would make it much more difficult for somebody planning to go away for a day.
  Miss Bacon: I do not think that that is so, because somebody would have to check this, and it would be well-nigh impossible to check on all the people who made such applications.
  Mr. Maddan: There is a natural barrier to abuse, which is that people do not like filling in forms. This is a pretty good way of resisting abuse.
  Miss Bacon: I do not think that one could really count that as a reason for giving the Bill a Second Reading.
  It is reasonable to expect that if postal and proxy voting facilities were widely extended there would be a substantial increase in the number of applications received. At present the average percentage of absent voters for each constituency at a General Election is about 2½. If the Bill were passed, the figure could increase substantially. Such an increase would create both administrative and financial difficulties, and perhaps I might tell the House of some of the administrative difficulties which would arise.
  Under the present timetable for a General Election, there are 12 days, excluding Sundays, between the last day for the receipt of applications to be treated as an absent voter, and polling day. Many electoral registration officers regard this period as barely adequate to cope

  1137
  with the provisions of the Act, particularly in county constituencies. If the number of applications doubled, as it might well do, and went as high as 5 per cent., or more, the problem of extra cost would arise in every constituency, and additional staff would be required.
  A much wider application of postal and proxy voting would mean that the electoral registration officers would be faced with an impossible task within the present timetable provided for a General Election. The machinery might well break down unless the period of 12 days was extended. To cope with the task, the present provision of the last day for receipt of applications would probably require to be extended from 12 days to 18 days, and this would be one day before the issue of the Writ in a General Election.
  There is, however, another point about this. To bring forward the last date for applications for absent voting facilities would be to the detriment of genuine applicants for whom the provision of postal voting was first introduced. We all know that people become ill five, six, nine or perhaps ten days before polling day. If we were to extend the time from 12 days to 18 days, it would mean that many people who became genuinely ill within those six days between the 12th and 18th days would not be able to register as absent voters.
  In short, if postal voting facilities were considerably extended, and the election timetable were amended to make such provisions workable, the last day for making a claim would be 18 days before polling day instead of 12, and this would make the whole position very much more difficult for the genuinely ill person.
  As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North said, there is no check especially on a forecast of what someone is likely to do in two or three weeks' time. This Bill would mean that it became optional whether an elector voted in person or as an absent voter. The hon. and learned Member, in moving the Second Reading, said that the Bill does not enable anyone who does not want to go to the poll to have a postal vote. That might not be the intention of the Bill, but I think it would be an inevitable
  1138
  result of its terms. The principle in this country has always been that an elector votes in person except when there are very strong grounds for exceptional treatment. If the Bill were passed the whole character of our elections would change. There is something to be said for the principle that wherever possible people should go to the polling station and register their vote. There is also the effect which this Bill might have on the maximum for election expenses. I shall not go into that point in detail today.
  There are very great difficulties in regard to this Bill. Some people who have a natural desire to exercise their vote are prevented from doing so. No doubt the Conference on Electoral Law would have all these matters in mind, but no recommendation for a wide extension of absent voting has been made by the Conference. I do not think this way of piecemeal legislation is the way to go about electoral reform. I agree with what the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharpies) said about Mr. Speaker's Conference. Represented on it are hon. Members from all parts of the House. The best way to proceed with electoral reform is to await the various recommendations it will bring forward and then to bring those recommendations before the House of Commons.
  I hope, therefore, that the hon. and learned Member who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, having listened to this very interesting debate, will withdraw the Bill. If he does not choose to do so, I shall have to ask the House not to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  12.52 p.m.
  Mr. Doughty: Mr. Deputy Speaker, with your permission and that of the House, I wish to make a brief speech at the conclusion of this debate. This is the first of the Private Members Bills introduced in this Parliament. Private Members Bills are extremely important matters. Sometimes they introduce changes in the law which perhaps a Government does not wish to make, or which a Government have not time to bring in. We have had a most interesting debate on electoral law. Having heard the right hon. Lady and heard that Mr. Speaker's Conference on Electoral Law is now sitting, I am certain that this debate, interesting and useful as it has been, will

  1139
  be brought to the attention of the Conference as a matter which certainly requires very full consideration. I am sure that whatever recommendations are made by the Conference will be dealt with fully in this House by the Government of the day. In view of the fact that we have had this debate and now concluded it, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Bill.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): It is a technicality, but I do not think the hon. and learned Member technically can withdraw the Bill. He can ask leave to withdraw the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill.
  Mr. Doughty: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

  EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES (REGULATION) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  12.55 p.m.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The purpose of this Bill is to make it necessary for employment agents to be licensed. The House will be aware that employment agents perform a function, which in many spheres of employment is a useful and necessary function, in bringing together those who are seeking work and those who are seeking employees. The function of the employment agent varies considerably in various spheres of work. Perhaps where the employment agent is best known is in the sphere of office employment and also in the world of entertainment, theatrical, films, television and so on, but there are other aspects of employment as I have found in pursuing this matter in which some people feel it would be very advantageous if the legislation on the subject, which is very tenuous, were given greater substance.
  The purpose of the Bill is also to enable the Minister of Labour to issue regulations to ensure that employment agencies are conducted properly and fairly. In short, it is to see that the business practices of the best employment agents become the standard for all. The lack of legislation of the sort we are proposing has led to the establishment of practices in some areas of this work which are not desirable. The employment agency makes no product and does not render a standard service which is easily measurable. Therefore, it is prone to the possibility of abuse. What is surprising is that though it is very largely unregulated and some abuses have arisen, they are the exception and have not become the rule. This Bill seeks to ensure that they never become the rule.
  Many countries have already introduced legislation of the kind we are proposing. The Minister of Labour, in a Written Answer to a Question on 1st February this year, told us that 28 countries had ratified the convention of the International Labour Organisation on

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  the subject. Some of those countries have decided to abolish employment agencies, but it is not the purpose or the intention of this Measure that that should be done. In this country we regard the employment agency as being established and we do not regard the abolition—at least I speak for myself, I do not regard the abolition—of the employment agent as being at all desirable or possible in the circumstances of our country.
  Among the countries which have introduced legislation of one sort or another are the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Israel and Turkey. From this short list it is clear that countries of very different kinds have found that this sphere of enterprise is one which needs to be brought within the orbit of legislation of one kind or another. The view is taken in those countries which do not permit what is called the fee-charging employment agency to operate, that the making of an engagement to employ is not a transaction in respect of which a third party should make a charge. Be that as it may, the view taken in this Bill is that these agencies are firmly established and that what we want to do is not to abolish them but to make sure that they work to the advantage of employers and of employees and not to their detriment. That is the object of the Bill.
  Some of the countries to which I have referred have so framed their legislation on this subject as to enable them to ratify the Convention of the International Labour Office. An earlier Bill specifically sought to secure that this country did so. The present Measure does not seek that. Both sides of the House have declared their intention to introduce such legislation. In 1951 the Labour Government announced their intention to introduce legislation. In 1957 the Conservative Government not only announced that intention but published a short summary of the type of legislation they envisaged. There are considerable similarities between the Bill and announcements made by both Labour and Conservative Governments in the past. The name of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) among the sponsors of the Bill indicates that the Liberal Party is in favour of the Motion.
  I believe that the Bill would enable the Government to ratify the Convention of the International Labour Office if they
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  wished to carry out the expressed intention of their predecessors and, indeed, of themselves. I hope that they will decide to do so because, as we are members of the International Labour Organisation, it is desirable that wherever we can reasonably do so we should ratify the Conventions of that body. However, this would be entirely a matter for the Government after the legislation has been carried successfully through all its stages in both Houses, as I hope that it will be.
  I am particularly pleased to have secured all-party support for the Measure. I express my appreciation of the interest and help I have received from the hon. Members for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and Orpington and from my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Raphael Tuck), who in the previous Parliament introduced a Measure which was an improvement on an earlier Measure. The Bill is the third attempt by private Members to promote legistion of this subject.
  The Bill takes account, not only of the previous Measures, but also of the discussions which the hon. Members to whom I have referred have had with representatives of employers and of agents. The Bill has been modified to take account of those discussions. I am also very glad to have secured the support of the Government. I am conscious of the many imperfections of the Measure as it stands, in spite of the improvements which have already been made in it. A Bill drafted by private Members and which attempts to deal, almost for the first time, with so complex a subject must obviously have shortcomings which it will be necessary to correct in Committee. I hope that the House will decide to give us the opportunity to make these improvements in Committee. I take this opportunity of paying tribute to the great help which I and other hon. Members have received from the officers of the Public Bill Office, not only on this Bill but on its predecessors. They have helped us freely and readily, often working in their own time.
  The Bill will make it necessary for all employment agents to be licensed. They will have to say what scale of fees they propose to charge. They will also have to provide other reasonable details required by the Minister of Labour, who will have the power to issue regulations subject to the approval of Parliament.

  1143
  This is one of the matters we shall have to consider, if the Bill goes to Committee. As the Bill is to be supported by the Government, it may be desirable to spell out in it some of the matters which we have thought appropriate to be dealt with by regulation. This is a matter on which hon. Members may wish to make observations. If it is felt that some of the subjects which it is declared should be the subject of regulation would be better spelled out in the Bill, I personally can see no objection to that.
  Among the other provisions of the Bill is one which would prevent excessive or unreasonable fees from being charged. This would operate whether such fees were charged to an employee or an employer. The nature of the employment agent's activity differs from one type of employment to another. In the world of entertainment, the employment agent acts, or should act, for the employee; he receives his remuneration by charging a commission on the employee's salary. In other types of employment—for example in office employment, where there is a shortage of labour—the employment agent acts as an intermediary between employer and employee and charges his remuneration to the employer.
  This difference will commend itself to the House as a reason why legislation, control, and registration, are needed. The operations of employment agents are so varied in their approach that in one type of employment where a large number of people are seeking relatively few vacancies the agent charges the employee, whereas in another type of employment where there is a relatively small number of employees and plentiful employment the agent acts almost on behalf of the employer and certainly charges the employer for his services. It is a fairly good rule that he who pays is the one who receives, or who should receive, the service.
  This clearly illustrates the difficulty that there is in laying down rules of general application to the detail of all spheres of this work. Even if in Committee we broaden the Bill to cover some of the points, it will still be necessary under the Bill to issue separate sorts of regulations to deal with the different types of employment agent who
  1144
  exist in practice. This point has been made by some representatives of employment agents. I take the point. I can well understand that regulations which would be applicable to agents dealing with office staff would be quite inapplicable to agents working in other spheres. The sphere of music, for example, where contract employment, about which I shall have to say something later, is quite a strongly established practice, would need a quite separate approach. Whether this should be the subject of a Clause in the Bill or the subject of a separate series of regulations is a matter which we might reasonably discuss in detail in Committee.
  Mr. Brian O'Malley: Before my hon. Friend passes from the point of the differing practices concerning who pays the commission—the employee or the employer—may I ask him if he has considered whether it might be useful, reasonable or practicable for this Bill to include a Clause which might change existing situations? Where, for example, at the moment the employee pays the whole of the commission, perhaps it might be not unreasonable that in certain circumstances at least a proportion of that commission should be paid by the employer, and perhaps this House might consider it reasonable to legislate on that subject.
  Mr. Jenkins: I have some little doubt about that, because it seems to me that what we would require to do in the first instance would be to draft Clauses which would lay down general principles and which, within those general principles, would give the Minister power to issue specific regulations. I should have thought it was hardly suitable for the Bill to attempt to change existing detailed situations.
  What I think we should seek to do is to see what are the best practices which operate in the various spheres of this work, and if we discover that those best practices are not working in any antisocial way, to confirm those practices, and then, at a later stage, perhaps, as the subject of regulation, if the Minister found it necessary to do so, seek to improve practices which it was felt were operating unfairly on either side.
  Mr. O'Malley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene again. Is he, therefore, saying that in the Bill as drafted the Ministry would at some time in the future, if it so wished, have the power to issue regulations to do the kind of thing which I suggested previously.
  Mr. Jenkins: Yes, certainly. That is within the terms of the Bill. The Minister would keep and maintain a central register and he would keep statistical and other information. I think this point may require some attention in Committee.
  There is in the Bill already provision for appeal against any decision of the licensing authority, but what we may need to spell out a little more clearly on further consideration is the question of the division of responsibility between the Ministry on the one hand and the licensing authority on the other. In the Bill it is envisaged that the authority actually issuing the licence should be the county authority—the Greater London Council, the county councils in England, and the county burghs in Scotland. But it is absolutely clear that the Ministry itself would need to be the body which issued the regulations and which gathered together the statistical material which the Minister would need in order to establish the facts for any future action. The exact line of division between those two sets of responsibilities might need discussion in Committee.
  Among the regulations which, as at present provided, the Minister would be required to issue—as I have said it is conceivable that some of these regulations might appear at a later stage as Clauses; I do not know—is the provision that an agent may only charge commission to an employee when he is acting solely on behalf of the employee and not in any other or dual capacity. It might seem at first glance that this is obvious and hardly needs spelling out. But in practice one knows of spheres of work—I know personally from my own experience in the world of entertainment—in which the rôle of the agent has become blurred and although his remuneration is paid by the employee, the actor or other performer, it is not always clear that he is acting in the sole interests of the employee. I am sure the House will agree that he who
  1146
  pays the piper should, in fact, call the tune.
  The Bill also provides that if the employment agent has other interests he may not have regard to these other interests but must have regard only to the interests of the client. This might be interpreted quite widely. If other interests were such that they were in no way against the interests of the client, no harm would be done. But it is the object of this Clause to make sure that the agent shall work for the client who is paying him, whether that client be employer or employee. He may not charge commission if he is the employer himself.
  Circumstances may arise, as they do sometimes—it is an increasing tendency, if I may refer once more to the world of entertainment which I know best— where the line between employer and agent has become blurred. The Bill provides that if the agent is himself the employer or has an interest in the employment concerned, he may not in those circumstances charge commission. The House will note that it is not said that he may not act as agent. It is, however, provided that he may not charge commission when he is himself either the employer or is connected with or has an interest in the employment. As I have said, the line between employer and agent has become obscure in recent years to the disadvantage of the professional performer and, I think perhaps indirectly, to the disadvantage of the public.
  There are provisions in the Bill governing work abroad and recruitment overseas. One hears of British dancers working in foreign countries where protection is very necessary before they start to make sure that the conditions of work are decent and right. One thinks, on the other hand, of the recruitment overseas of au pair girls, and one wants equally to make sure that so far as it is within one's power to do so, not only are the conditions of our own people working in other countries satisfactory, but also that the opposite applies and the conditions of people coming from abroad to work in this country are equally protected. The Minister would have power to issue regulations to that effect.
  In Committee, if the House decides that we shall reach that stage, it will be necessary to consider whether any special

  1147
  provisions are necessary to cover the growing practice of contract labour. The practice of contract labour is growing in more than one sphere. It is becoming increasingly the case in office work, for example, for girls, instead of being found permanent employment, to become as it were members of a team which is employed by the employment agent, and for this team to be the subject of temporary employment by employers who are unable to find permanent staff. The suggestion has been made that this shortage of office employees is artificially created by the employment agents themselves. I do not entirely share this view. I do, however, think that it is not unreasonable to suppose that, where a shortage exists, that shortage might be aggravated, to say the least of it, if, as I think is the case, it proves to an employment agent to be more profitable to operate in the sphere of temporary employment rather than in the sphere of permanent employment. This is an aspect of the matter which needs watching.
  There is also the development of contract labour in building and contracting. It has been suggested that the Selective Employment Tax may have an impact here and encourage the use of contract labour as a means for the employer to excuse himself from paying the tax. If so, the need for this Bill now, so that the matter can be subject to proper review to prevent abuse, is emphasised. Whether or not it was right for us to have waited so long for this Bill to be introduced, it is plainly right to wait no longer. From many points of view, it is well for the House to pass it now.
  Mr. John Page: I have been following the hon. Gentleman's speech carefully. Clause 5 deals with different regulations for different classes. Does the hon. Gentleman suggest specific categories of employment into which he thinks the work of employment agencies should be divided?
  Mr. Jenkins: I am much obliged for that intervention, which enables me to explain that the object is, either in the Bill itself—as now seems better—or by regulations issued under it, not to make divisions into categories but to recognise existing specific categories. I suggest, for example, recognition of the category
  1148
  of agents interested in office employment, the theatrical agent, and so on. Within those broad categories, one might wish to distinguish separate sub-categories. If one wished to do that, it would be sufficient to do it by regulation. For example, one might wish to distinguish between the sole agent in the entertainment world, the agent who acts for an actor in all circumstances, having a long-term contract with him, and the other type of agent who acts in respect of a single engagement. In office employment, it will be desirable to distinguish contract employment as a separate category.
  Mr. O'Malley: If I may go back for a moment—I am a little behind because I have just been sent some literature on the subject we are discussing and I have been reading it—I want my hon. Friend to answer a question on what he said about recognising existing broad categories. He mentioned theatrical agents as an example. As I understood him, he assumes that under that generic heading one would include the very large number of agencies which have sprung up in recent years which, to my knowledge, have little connection with the theatre but are concerned almost exclusively with the provision of "pop" and "beat" group music. Perhaps this type of agency should not be included within that broad category of theatrical employment agents.
  Mr. Jenkins: I was unable to agree entirely with the point which my hon. Friend raised earlier, and I cannot entirely accept what he says now. It seems to me that one must distinguish between agents operating in an entirely separate sphere, for example, in contract employment in building construction, in office employment and in the world of entertainment. Those are three broad categories separate from one another. But within those three broad categories there are sub-divisions, and I suggest that the purpose my hon. Friend seeks could be served better by the issue of regulations recognising these as categories within a category rather than by any attempt to pull them out as separate categories so defined. However, this seems very much a Committee question.
  The Bill provides for the safeguarding of employees' money by making it necessary that such moneys are paid into a

  1149
  separate client account. This is most necessary, for the practice of making payment to agents is growing, particularly in the entertainment world. The recent ruling by the Director of Public Prosecutions that such moneys are at present not secured in any way makes this provision particularly urgent. Money is being lost when agents default—this does happen occasionally, as in any business— and the ruling that, when an agency defaults, it is perfectly proper for money received by the agent to be lost in the general work of the agency makes the creation of a separate client account a matter of the utmost urgency. Sometimes, quite substantial sums of money are lost by people in the entertainment world, through no fault of their own.
  This Bill is long overdue. Legislation on the matter has become more and more necessary each year since 1951 when it was first decided to introduce it. It will be welcome not only by all employees and employers but by the best agents, who recognise that, while there is no effective legislation—for the byelaws are largely ineffective, and they are non-existent in most parts of the country—and while there are no established and generally applicable standards, the rules and regulations which the more responsible agents draw up for themselves are ineffective. A sort of Gresham's Law operates and the bad reputation and practices of the most irresponsible agents smear, quite often unjustly, the reputation of firms which carry on their business usefully, properly and honourably.
  Today, practically anyone may become an employment agent. There are many instances in which no proper services are rendered for fees charged and in which the fees themselves are fantastically excessive. There are many instances of fees being charged to an employee for services rendered to his employers. One example is that the B.B.C. employs an agent to engage crowd artistes on condition that he draws his remuneration not from the Corporation but from the unfortunate extras, thereby reducing their fees below the low minima which apply to these engagements. I mention the Corporation to show what can happen without legislation in an area of the highest probity. It will give the House an idea of what can go on in the "pop" world where some very odd people are now operating.
  1150
  Here is another example in an area in which one would not have thought that anything not generally accepted as right and proper would occur. This is a case in which the Sadler's Wells Opera went to Australia. An agent was asked by an Australian management to negotiate the deal, which was to take place in the leave enjoyed by the singers, who had the opportunity of going to Australia to earn some money by a short engagement during their holiday time. Acting on behalf of the Australian employer, the agent arranged the deal, but he said, "Although I am acting as an agent of your employer, I want you to understand that there is 10 per cent. in it for me". They replied, "Do you mean 10 per cent. of one week's salary?" and he replied, "No, 10 per cent. for every week that you are in Australia". He had written into the contract a clause which secured for him 10 per cent. of the entire salary bill of the entire company for the whole of the tour in Australia. That actually happened. It is only an example of what can go on elsewhere. It is surprisingly widespread.
  I think that I have said enough to suggest that from many points of view— not only because of the various abuses which can take place but from a more general and widespread point of view— this legislation is urgent. I hope that the House will agree that it is a necessary, urgent and useful piece of legislation and will send it on its way to Committee. If it becomes law it will give a number of important protections not only to employees but also to employers and, not least, to reputable employment agencies. I hope that the Bill will commend itself to the House.
  1.33 p.m.
  Dame Joan Vickers: First, I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) on his good fortune in the Ballot and on his clevefness in managing to bring his Bill forward today. He was very wily, if I may put it that way, in finding out that some of the people who came before him could have chosen today, and I congratulate him— double congratulations—on being clever enough to step in. He has been very keen on this type of legislation for a long time.
  I also congratulate him on his good fortune in having the Minister of Labour

  1151
  here. It is very good of the Minister to come here today especially as he has had an extremely strenuous week and as he had a very strenuous debate yesterday. It must be gratifying to the hon. Member for Putney that so much interest is taken in the Bill.
  I have given the Bill my support. Although the hon. Member is right in saying that it has had support in previous years, even going back to 1956, and that the Conservative Party made appropriate noises and said that they would introduce a Bill, eventually they said that time did not permit them to do so. From various Questions which we have seen, I assume that the Bill has the support of both major political parties—and of the Liberal Party in view of the fact that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) has signed the Bill. The hon. Member for Putney also has the majority backing of the Federation of Employment Agencies and the backing of the Confederation of British Industry. With this form of support, I hope that he will get the Bill on to the Statute Book. I am grateful to him for the consideration which he has given to one or two points which I raised previously, but I hope that he will think about one or two other points which I want to raise today.
  Employment agencies have undertaken a very valuable task for over 300 years. They were started in times when employment was not as easy to find as it is today. They have assisted in ensuring the universal right to work and a free choice of employment. That follows the United Nations Charter, which says that everyone has the right to work, the right to free choice of employment, the right to just and favourable conditions of work and the right to protection against underemployment. Even before we had employment exchanges, these agencies existed, and they have given very good service.
  It should be recognised, as I am sure it is recognised by the hon. Member for Putney, that nowadays they employ a great many skilled men and women who understand their job, who understand personnel management and know how to fit the right person into the right job. He has mentioned—which is natural, because he wants to stress the need for the Bill—some of the bad
  1152
  examples, but I am sure that he agrees with me that these are in the minority and that, although we need this legislation, a large number of these people carry on their work very well. This is shown by the fact that the majority of the employment agencies would welcome the Bill. In fact, they would welcome nation-wide licensing and control of the conduct of private agencies.
  They take this view because they are interested in the dignity of their job, most of them are proud of their profession and they want to see only people of good character entering the profession —which I am sure we all agree is very desirable. I understand that eventually they want entry into this type of profession to be by qualification and they want it accepted as a profession.
  It is hoped that when the Bill goes through we shall get away from the old impression of these agencies. I regret to say that many ill-informed people still consider that agencies are run by ancient spinsters in drab back offices. When one looks at how they conduct themselves, one sees that these agencies have a very good code of conduct which includes advertising, the placing of permanent clerical staff and of temporary staff and placing overseas, as well as the work which the agencies are doing for au pair girls.
  As the Minister of Labour is here, may I tell him how sorry I am that we still cannot get any legislation from the Home Office or his Ministry to check on au pair girls. I should like to draw his attention to a letter written to The Times by Mrs. J. M. Fletcher. One of the fears about the Selective Employment Tax is that people will no longer employ the domestic servant, on whom they will have to pay tax, but will take an au pair girl as full-time domestic help and in this way will not have to pay tax. This would be very bad. Reading from Mrs. Fletcher's letter I see that
  "local authorities in areas where licensing of employment agencies exist hold the view that au pair is employment, and if licensing of such agencies were extended throughout the country it would be difficult to hold a contrary view."
  This would be very helpful in controlling the question of au pair girls which, with about 15,000 of them in this country at

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  the moment, is becoming unmanageable. They need protection—and they have it in other countries where they can go to work only if they receive a permit or permission from the Minister of Labour.
  May I refer to the question of fees? I understand that subsection (3,e) is not acceptable to the agencies because they feel that it is not very workable. It will be difficult to decide what is "excessive or unreasonable "in view of the nature of the services provided and I hope that the hon. Member for Putney will reconsider this subsection, which I gather would be extremely difficult to work.
  Mr. O'Malley: Is the hon. Lady therefore suggesting that there should be no regulation in the Bill and no power in the Bill governing the amount of commission or of fees which such agencies are to charge? I draw her attention to Clause 1(8) in which we are told that
  "Any person aggrieved by a refusal to grant or renew a licence or by a decision to revoke a licence on the grounds that the fees proposed to be charged by the agency are excessive may appeal".
  I should have thought that if an employment agency had a solid case to be put forward in such circumstances it could be dealt with in this way.
  Dame Joan Vickers: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not agree. I was just coming on to the next pcint, which I have already raised with the hon. Member for Putney and which arises from the wording in Clause 1(3):
  "Provided that the scale of such fees or commission shall not exceed those determined by the Minister",
  I believe that this would lead to abuse. It has already done so in America. I quote from what an expert says on the subject:
  "Firstly, it seeks to control the fees charged by employment agencies. This we consider to be a thoroughly wrong principle which could only have the effect of lessening competiton between agencies".
  Bristol, for example, has 26 agencies. If a maximum fee is fixed it has been found, particularly in America, that people always charge the maximum. That is the danger. One fears that, if there is a maximum it will increase the fees all over the country. If there is to be a
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  maximum the charges in London will be very different from those in Plymouth, because in Plymouth the agency would not need to charge as much because rates of pay are less than in London.
  I would rather that there was no fixing of a maximum by the Minister in the light of what has happened in the United States where the agencies charge maximum fees on practically all occasions. It would be very difficult to appeal to the Minister if agencies were able to charge the maximum all the time. I would like to see a provision that the agencies must put up a notice saying what fees shall be charged so that any person can see what the fees are. This would be a better way of protecting the individual.
  Clause 3(1,f) reads:
  "regulate the fees to be charged by such agencies to employees (and may regulate fees to be charged to employers);"
  Surely this comes under the same category as the one I have just described. I would rather the Minister did not regulate the fees to be charged. Clause 3(1,j) says:
  "provide that an agent shall not falsely state that he is unable to supply permanent staff …"
  This is also quite unworkable. I do not see how one can judge. It will only be one person's word against another's. Furthermore, in my experience, temporary staff are usually people who can only work in a temporary capacity. Very few of them can work full-time. This is particularly so in the secretarial and domestic sections, in which most of those working are married women who cannot work full-time. I would prefer that these were not included.
  I gather that when supplying temporary staff agencies are acting as staff contractors and not as employment agencies. Under the present system of licensing authorities in England controlling the activities of agencies, the authorities have no right to control the staff of contractors supplying temporary staff. In the countries mentioned by the hon. Member for Putney as having done away with fee-paying agencies—I understand in Europe— the staff contracting services supplying staff have been allowed still to continue. I would, therefore, like this point considered also. In this case, the employer is the agency and the agency supplies the staff and pays the wages and National Insurance contributions and so on.

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  There is in Clause 4 what appears to be a misprint—or perhaps I have misunderstood. Clause 4(c) says:
  "… to notify the relevant licensing authority of the intention to place in employment any person under the age of 30 years;"
  Surely the age of 30 is a little old in this context. I wonder whether this is a misprint or whether there is some reason.
  I do not intend to say anything more now because I have discussed the Bill with the hon. Gentleman and I am in agreement with the rest of the points he has put forward. I know that had we signed the full International Labour Office Convention this might have meant the abolition of all fee-paying agencies. One reason for my support of the Bill is that although we have been able to sign certain sections, if the Bill goes through we shall not be able to sign the entire Covention. I am not anxious to see fee-paying agencies done away with. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and that it will return from Committee improved so that we shall all be able to give it our full support.
  1.46 p.m.
  The Minister of Labour (Mr. R. J. Cunter): Perhaps it would be convenient to indicate at this stage the attitude of the Government. I thank the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) for her kind remarks to me. My duty and pleasure is to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins). We all know that he has been most assiduous in his efforts to promote the Bill since he entered the House. Indeed, within my memory his interest in the subject goes back to long before he became an M.P. I have some reservations about certain points in the Bill which we can discuss later but I congratulate my hon. Friend not only on his tenacity and moderation in commending the Bill to the House but I welcome the Measure for itself.
  The activities of employment agencies have engaged my attention a great deal over the last few months both inside and outside this House. As a result of my discussions and consultations with interested bodies, I have concluded that the time has come for some measure of
  1156
  registration and control of employment agencies.
  The first thing that strikes the enquirer who would know something about employment agencies is the diversity of their activities and their proliferation in recent years. I estimate that there are in all more than 3,000 employment agencies and branches in Britain. Most of them operate in England and a large proportion are to be found in Greater London. Nevertheless they are opening in increasing numbers in many of our major cities and it is apparent to me that if the situation continues, as it may well do, we shall see many more opening in the coming months and years.
  My hon. Friend mentioned that the largest single group consists of theatrical agencies, with which he is particularly concerned. Close behind this type are the clerical and mixed agencies. Employment agencies vary considerably in size, from the largest, which has about 50 branches throughout the United Kingdom to small theatrical agencies which seem to be one-man organisations. By far the greatest increase in the number of agencies is in London, the South-East and on the fringes of London. For example, in the London postal area, 204 private agencies were listed in the classified telephone directory in 1952 compared with 689 at the present time. I also have evidence of a rapid growth in the Eastern and Southern regions and in the Midlands. In terms of the volume of business, commerce offers the greatest potential for the private agency. Many agencies not only act as a point of contact for the employer looking for labour and the employee looking for work, but in these days hire out temporary office staff. The Employment Agents Federation estimates that some 70 per cent. of all clerical agencies are engaged in this activity.
  If the activities of the agencies are diverse, so are their methods and scales of charges. Generally, however, the theatrical agencies are the only agencies which charge the employee from whom, it appears, they expect a commission of between 5 and 15 per cent. of his fees. All other agencies at this time of labour shortage charge the employer, and currently their fees vary from 1 to 2 weeks' wages to a certain percentage, usually about 5 per cent., of the

  1157
  employee's annual salary. That figure may rise considerably when it comes to managerial or senior staff.
  Over recent years, my Ministry has received many complaints about the activities of agencies, mainly in the form of letters from employers. The main burden of the complaints is that the employment agencies are pushing up costs by encouraging excessive turnover and, of course, by bidding up wages. There are also complaints about the lack of preselection when applicants are sent from the agency and also about the practice of some agencies, no doubt the less reputable, in approaching those whom they have placed after a short period to go to another job.
  There is also the situation in which agencies employ workers themselves, but hire them out for short periods as holiday reliefs or to cover emergencies. This, of course, inevitably causes unrest among existing staff, because these workers receive higher rates of pay than the employers' own staffs.
  Those are the complaints, but in fairness I should say that the Confederation of British Industry in its talks with me took the view that inquiries made of its members showed that the difficulties caused by the agencies were isolated and not sufficiently widespread in themselves to justify legislation. They feel that the employment agencies provide facilities which my own employment service cannot provide. They argue that competition is a healthy influence. This is a viewpoint to which we must pay attention. It is mainly directed, however, against the proposal that agencies should be abolished, which is not in our minds, and, secondly, against the proposition that power should be taken to regulate their working.
  On the whole, complaints from employees are less numerous except about theatrical agencies. The main burden of the grievance about theatrical agencies is that the fees charged have risen very steeply indeed and that employers also act as agents, as my hon. Friend said, so as to deduct a percentage of the artist's salary and that employers who have agency licences insist that the artist's agent must share his commission, failing which the artist loses the job. As my hon. Friend said, some television companies make their payments to the agents
  1158
  rather than to the artists, thus causing the latter to suffer delay before receiving their fees.
  With general agencies, the complaints generally seem to relate to bad premises and reception arrangements, undertakings in connection with jobs which are not kept, and failure to vet domestic vacancies before offering them to the applicants who go to the agencies. About many of these complaints we have already heard and we know quite a lot about them.
  Such regulation as at present exists is very patchy and directed on the whole to preventing the use of agencies for immoral purposes, or the use of unhealthy premises. There are some 200 local authorities in England and Wales who have taken power to register domestic agencies under the Public Health Act, 1907, but in Scotland only Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness have taken power to control agencies, domestic or otherwise, by local legislation, and of those Inverness has not yet used this power. As for the general run of commercial agencies, a number of local authorities have obtained local Act powers to license them, but these powers are now used only in Greater London, Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey and 14 boroughs. The theatrical agencies are regulated by local authority byelaws which normally make special provision for safeguarding the employment of women who are sent abroad. There is no regulation whatever of business consultants, or nonprofit-making agencies, such as trade unions, the professional bodies, or university appointments boards.
  The sum total of all this is that we have only very patchy information about the activities and numbers of employment agencies and that there is no general regulation of any kind in the United Kingdom. Since October of last year, my Ministry has been engaged in a large-scale inquiry in which it has had the assistance not only of other Government Departments, but of the local authorities known to have taken power to control agencies and also members of my own National Joint Advisory Council.
  The outcome of all these inquiries, which we have now carried as far as existing sources of knowledge permit, still

  1159
  leaves me in doubt about the real situation. I feel that with all the information which has been submitted by these bodies, there is still a large element about which we do not know enough. I find this a disquieting state of affairs. These agencies are dealing in human careers and human earning capacity. They are operating in a sector in which scarce manpower resources are under pressure and where conditions for the exploitation of this state of affairs are increasing. The economic impact of these operations may be considerable and in some aspects may be unhealthy. The case for further regulation therefore appears to me to rest on a number of considerations.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport mentioned the I.L.O. A convention was drawn up as long ago as 1959, but has not yet been ratified by this country. The convention offers Governments a choice—either to abolish fee-charging employment agencies conducted for profit and regulate others, or to regulate all fee-charging employment agencies. I feel that our failure to ratify this Convention may be raised at any time. It has not yet been raised but it could be, because the majority of other leading industrial countries have ratified. This is the first reason for taking some further measure of control.
  Secondly, the proliferation of employment agencies and the numerous complaints that I have received suggest that there may be an economic loss, not only in the wasteful use of agency staff and additional costs for users, but also through the encouragement, by certain agencies—but I emphasise not all—of bidding up wages, thus causing excessive turnover and, in effect, exploiting labour shortages.
  Thirdly, there is the disturbing lack of any recognised standard in the conduct of the agencies, particularly in respect of fees charged and the quality of the performance of the agency.
  Fourthly, the present incompleteness of regulation means that while there are reasonable standards in some quarters, there is room for less reputable agencies to flourish without anyone doing anything about them. Both employer and
  1160
  employee should be protected from such a situation.
  Finally, and this is the point which has been urged upon me by the Trades Union Congress, there exists a need for statistical and manpower information about the work of the agencies and the number of people passing through them, so that we can have some knowledge of the impact of their operations on manpower policy. These are the arguments which have led me to believe that there is a clear case for some further form of control of the employment agencies. I propose now to say briefly what form that control should, in my opinion, take.
  First of all I believe that all employment agencies should be required to obtain a licence before they can begin or continue operations. The licence should be issued by a central authority, and before a licence can be obtained the central authority should be satisfied about the activities of the employment agency and it should have the power to require an agency to supply information about its activities. For example the agencies should be asked to give the numbers and the types of staff employed; the numbers and types of staff whom they have available for hire to employers on a temporary basis, the details of fees charged, and whether they are charged to employer or employee; the types of occupations in which they deal; any limitation on categories of employers or employees whom they will accept as clients and details of their premises.
  I also believe that agencies should, for the purposes which I have outlined, be asked to supply details of the numbers and the types of vacancies which they have accepted during the preceding 12 months; the numbers and types of vacancies which they have filled in the same period and the numbers, by types, of clients they have registered. Only in this way will we be able to get a comprehensive picture of the manpower effects of what is going on in the employment world.
  Because some agencies are already regulated in certain respects in parts of the country, any legislation applying to the whole of the country should enable the Minister of Labour to regulate the activities of agencies in certain particulars which he deems to be necessary. The

  1161
  sort of particulars that I have in mind will be evident, in view of what I have been saying—they include fees and charges, maintenance of books and registers, advertising, engagement of persons for employment abroad, engagements of children and young people and standards of premises and conduct upon those premises.
  The Bill before us provides a framework for the sort of legislation that I have in mind.
  The hon. Member for Putney has already admitted that it is by no means perfect in detail and there are many respects in which we may amend it as it progresses through its various stages. Nevertheless the outline is there and the hon. Member is to be congratulated in providing such a useful general framework.
  This is not the time or place to examine the individual Clauses and paragraphs of the Bill. I have indicated briefly the information that I have about the activities of many employment agencies and I have explained why I think that it is necessary for us now to proceed with some more general form of regulation and control than is now in existence. I have explained the content of what I would hope to see in any finished piece of legislation on this subject, and I have said that the present Bill provides the outline and the framework for such legislation. I have said too that I hope to be able to amend the Bill in Committee stage. It only remains for me to commend this Bill to the House and to hope that it will be given a Second reading, which I think it deserves.
  2.7 p.m.
  Mr. John Page: I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) on his good fortune in being able to bring the Bill before the House today, to thank the Minister for being here, and to say that we are all glad to see him in a much happier state about this Bill than he was about the one which he had to introduce, as a stepfather, yesterday. This has been a good debate about a subject where there are some serious abuses, although there are a large number of excellent agencies which do a valuable job, both in placing mature people in employment and in the counselling of young people in their careers.
  1162
  But there are some abuses, and we believe that the public is in need of some protection. We must be careful not to build up too great a new tower of paper and I was nervous when the hon. Gentleman mentioned the new statistical evidence which would be before the Minister so that he could take future action. We must not exaggerate the circumstances of employment agencies as being too important over the whole range of employment generally.
  I believe that the Minister may shortly have to leave for an important engagement, and, in case he has to leave before I finish my speech, I should like him to know our views. We feel that providing employment is an important personal service and that it is important that the supervision of employment agencies should be as near as possible to the address of the agencies. In the same way as with child care and other personal services, the nearer the administration can be to the point of action the better it usually is.
  I think that the Minister's suggestion was that the Ministry should issue the broad regulations on how employment agencies should be operated and should keep a register of those who wished to run or were running employment agencies, but that the licensing authority should be the local authority. We believe that it is important that the local authority should be the licensing authority and that in the Greater London area it would probably be a mistake at this stage to remove the responsibility for licensing from the Greater London boroughs and put it centrally into the hands of the Greater London Council. Each Greater London borough is large and sophisticated. It is probably wise that the licensing and supervision should be left to the boroughs.
  Mr. Robert Maxwell: Would the hon. Gentleman explain precisely his party's objection to a centralised register when it assists with manpower planning?
  Mr. Page: We have no objection to a centralised register. What we wish to avoid is over-centralisation of administration and supervision. It seemed when the Minister was speaking that the amount of detail which the Ministry would require from people wishing to

  1163
  open an agency might take too much power from the local authority. That was the point which we wished to make.
  I turn to Clause 1 and the fixing of fees. We support the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) that it is almost an insuperable problem to try to fix maximum fees over the whole field —from a top "pop" group to a junior copy typist taking her first job. As my hon. Friend said, the scale of fees should be clearly advertised in the office. It might be right that before registering people should sign a document saying that the scale of fees has been shown to them. In this way there would be no misunderstanding about the fees chargeable.
  The hon. Member for Putney did not say what licence fee he thought should be paid by people who wished to set up in business as an employment agency. We feel that, as far as possible, licensing and supervision should not be too great a burden on the ratepayer and taxpayer and that the supervision should be self-financing within the employment agencies. This is particularly important when one considers that about 75 per cent. of all the agencies in the Greater London area are centred in the one borough of Westminster. It seems a bit hard on the ratepayers of Wesminster that they should have to bear the whole cost of administration and supervision of such a large percentage.
  Clause 2 deals with the establishment of the register by the Minister. I do not think that we need go further into that.
  I was rather disappointed that the hon. Member for Putney, when he came to Clause 5, did not go more deeply into the different categories, as the Minister did. The great difficulty for the House is that the kind of regulations suitable for the theatrical and model world seem quite unsuitable for catering. We do not want to impose regulations over the whole field because they might be unsuitable in certain cases.
  In Committee we shall have to ensure that differences are clearly stated in the keeping of books, and so on, as between one category and another. In the theatrical world, where the agent often receives the fees, it may be that the
  1164
  stringent regulations regarding clients' money are necessary. But it will be hard on the small employment agencies which may ask for a registration fee of £1 in respect of people who go to them for a job, which is returnable at a later stage if they find a job for them, if they have to keep the same kind of books as are kept for the payment possibly of many thousands of £s to an agent in connection with a theatrical engagement.
  On Clause 8, who would proceed against an agency if there were thought to be abuses or malpractices? Would it be the licensing authority? Would it be the client? Would it be the employer? If the latter, would he have to act through the licensing authority? I felt that the emphasis throughout the speech of the hon. Member for Putney was on the theatrical side rather than on the commercial side and catering and domestic side. We hope that this orientation can be split up in Committee. We do not want the same regulations and paper work in respect of a junior copy typist as cover the engagement of an internationally known "pop" group, although there are probably more "rolling stones" in our offices than there are in the theatrical profession.
  We believe that many improvements will have to be made in the Bill in Committee, but we hope that in the end it will become a useful and helpful Measure.
  2.18 p.m.
  Mr. Sydney Bidwell: May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) and wish him luck in getting his Bill through all its legislative stages so that he can finally have the honour of having introduced a worth-while Measure.
  It was appropriate that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour should intervene when he did, because he was able to tell us at a quite important stage of the debate the exact size of the problem. I confess that I did not understand that it was as serious as it apparently is. I must also confess to having subscribed to the view that it would be best if employment agencies did not exist at all and if the employment exchanges handled all matters of employment exchange. One cannot, however, have the best of all worlds. One assumes that by far the overwhelming amount of agency work is handled by the Ministry itself.

  1165
  To think philosophically for a moment of the general view of this side of the House, some think in terms of a similar ratio of both public and private enterprise in relation to economic activities as a whole, in which case the existing proportion of labour supply through agencies and through the Ministry would be just about the right kind of balance in the economy as a whole. That, of course, is something for which some of us on this side will have to work over a considerable period.
  In his usual compelling and impelling way, my right hon. Friend the Minister said that the existing situation was disquieting. He has also observed that in the matter of acting as an agency for job supply and procurement, we are dealing with human lives. My right hon. Friend said that, as far as is known, there are 3,000 employment agencies throughout the country and that it is only proper that some kind of Ministry supervision of their activities should be required by this new legislation. We have heard also—and in my opinion this is of extreme importance—that in the view of the T.U.C., which must necessarily weigh heavily with a Labour Minister of Labour, this reform is long overdue.
  When thinking of the activity of the agencies in relation to the kind of work about which my hon. Friend the Member for Putney is usually concerned, I suppose that that kind of work would not really be looked upon as labour supply. I imagine that, if private agencies did not exist in some form or another, there would be perhaps some kind of surreptitious intervention of a third party to pass, say, an actor into some sort of employment. We are dreaming if we think at this stage of cutting out private employment agencies altogether.
  The Bill, which consists of only a few pages, does not overtax us in understanding what it is all about. It has been outlined fully for us by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney. One realises that in Committee additional bits and pieces must be inserted and quite a number taken out. I am, however, sure that the Bill will not only be welcomed by the House generally as a long overdue reform, but will be welcomed by the public at large. Therefore, I wish it
  1166
  all the best in the next stage of its proceedings.
  2.23 p.m.
  Mr. Robert Maxwell: I too, welcome the Bill and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) on having the good fortune to introduce it. The reasons why the Bill will be found to be useful and necessary have been amply and well explained, not only by my hon. Friend, but by my right hon. Friend the Minister and hon. Members on the benches opposite.
  I rise to invite my right hon. Friend the Minister to consider the rather good fortune and benefit that could accrue to the nation from registering private employment agencies in the way proposed in the Bill by giving them a greater and better rôle, in co-operation with employment exchanges, in helping the nation in one of our major problems, namely, labour mobility and improving in particular our geographical and occupational labour mobility.
  Selective labour market measures must facilitate adjustments in today's dynamic labour market by promoting geographical and occupational manpower mobility. This is at present, to the great harm of our economy, not being achieved as well as it should.
  Our employment exchanges should, and could, do a great deal more to play a positive rôle in helping to bring about labour mobility. In co-operation with the private employment agencies, they should give greater assistance in adjusting the supply and demand in the labour market. The employment exchanges, together with the private employment agencies could, and should, play a more important rôle on our labour market policy.
  Geographical mobility could be stimulated by providing detailed information about where work is to be found and by furnishing displaced workers and managers with financial assistance to compensate them for the extra expenses incurred in moving. The Government should find new ways and means of assisting the mobility of workpeople by giving financial grants and inducements even to people moving their jobs temporarily, and should remove their present stringent restrictions whereby assistance

  1167
  is offered only on rare occasions and is limited to people whose wages do not exceed £1,500 a year.
  The Government's main policy on mobility, geographical and occupational, should continue to consist not only of moving the worker to the job, but also of trying to bring the job to the worker. The private employment agency could, and should, play an important rôle in this.
  The Ministry of Labour should, in my view, start consultations now, while the Bill is going through Parliament, with the private employment agencies and discuss with them not only ways and means of how to deal with the kind of problems which my hon. Friend the Member for Putney wishes to be dealt with. I certainly agree that serious problems arise in devising administrative instructions relating to the hiring or employment of workers from different industries. Certainly, what applies to the machine minder would with difficulty apply to the part-time model.
  In addition to putting those items right and having detailed discussions with the employment agencies on how the regulations might best be drafted in the interest both of those seeking employment, the employer and the agencies which make a profit out of their services, a by-product of discussions with the agencies could be to show how they might assist the Minister of Labour in fulfilling a better improvement in labour mobility. As the National Plan rightly stresses, one of our great shortages is manpower, and skilled manpower of all kinds.
  The employment exchanges on their own, although they are doing a useful job, are not doing it as well as they should. Most certainly they could not do it alone. I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour will take this opportunity to discuss with the employment agencies and with his own officials the best ways and means of harnessing the energy, the talents, and the resources of the private employment agencies to work jointly with the employment exchanges to improve the utilisation of our labour resources. Private employment agencies are in touch with thousands of employers, and know the vacancies which need filling. Equally they are in touch with tens of thousands of employees
  1168
  who are looking for those jobs. This is one gap which could genuinely be filled, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will not miss this opportunity of filling it.
  2.30 p.m.
  Mr. Brian O'Malley: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) both on the introduction of the Bill and the lucid and articulate way in which he presented it. I give it a very warm welcome. Before I came to the House I was engaged for many years in the musical profession, and I have vivid memories of debates and discussions, both at delegate conferences of the Musicians' Union and within individual branches and area organisations, concerning the difficulties in which musicians find themselves from time to time in respect of the provision of agency services and the types of agent they have to deal with.
  It is worth bearing in mind that if the Bill goes through the House it will be possible for the Government to ratify Part III of the I.L.O. Convention, although not Part II. We should not allow this occasion to pass without noticing that the Convention under discussion was adopted by the I.L.O. as long ago as 1st July, 1949. The Government announced in July, 1951 that in due course they proposed to introduce legislation to enable the Convention to be ratified, but 17 years later we are still waiting to ratify even Part III, although I am convinced that the amount of abuse today is much greater than what it was even ten years ago.
  This is not the occasion to discuss what the Government's policy should be on the ratification of Part II, although I suspect that some of my hon. Friends do not share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers). I do realise, however, that in some sections of employment employment agencies fulfil a function which labour exchanges do not.
  I want to put a question to the Ministry of Labour concerning the provision of facilities for musicians. Unfortunately, there is no one from the Ministry on the Treasury Bench at the moment. I appreciate the reason why my right hon. Friend has had to leave, but perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who is present, can pass on my question to my hon.

  1169
  Friend the Member for Luton (Mr. Howie) thereby giving one of our Whips some job to do this afternoon—or perhaps he can even pass it on direct to the Minister.
  I understand that in at least one European country official Government labour exchange services are provided for musicians who are seeking work—
  Mr. John Page: I have listened patiently to four hon. Members opposite talking about labour exchanges. They have been employment exchanges for so long that I felt I had to intervene. My patience was exhausted.
  Mr. O'Malley: I hope that the hon. Member will realise that in return for my giving way to him he has attempted to bite my hand off because his patience was exhausted, but that he did not treat me in the same way when I tried to intervene in a friendly way in his speech. Nevertheless, I take his point. As I have said, in at least one European country services are provided by the Ministry of Labour for musicians, and also groups of musicians, who are looking for work. It is not only a service to individuals; it is an agency service, dealing with contractors.
  I have no detailed information on this point, and if the Ministry of Labour has any information on practices of this kind in European countries I shall be most interested to hear it. I should also like to know whether the Ministry of Labour has ever given active consideration to the provision of such services here—at least in London, and perhaps also in our large provincial cities.
  I may be wrong, but I have the impression that this matter was considered in the immediate pre-war period. Presumably it was dropped as a result of the war, and has never been revived. I should like some information on that point, and I particularly ask my right hon. Friend to give serious consideration to the possibility of providing services for musicians who are seeking employment.
  I have had some experience of the entertainment and musical profession, and I know that there have always been unscrupulous operators who have described themselves as agents—shady,
  1170
  fly-by-night operators, acting in many ways as parasites on the body of the musical profession. I have one personal recollection of the operations of "agents" —and I deliberately refer to them in inverted commas. When I was in my teens the band for whom I was working took on a job involving quite a lot of money. The band leader was not able to get payment from the agent. Eventually the matter was settled in court, but there was little satisfaction for anyone at the end of the day. Fortunately, I was working for a band leader who paid the musicians, who were semi-professionals, at the end of the week, whether or not he was paid.
  Among semi-professional dance band musicians it is not unusual for band leaders to have to wait for cheques to come from organisations for whom they have been playing, and when there is a long delay the musicians sometimes have to wait. I have known occasions—they did not affect me personally, but I came across them when I was a trade union branch secretary—of musicians not having been paid by their band leaders because those band leaders had difficulty in getting money from people who described themselves as agents.
  The position has become much worse in recent years as a result of the changing pattern of demand in popular music. We have seen the development of the "beat" pop music industry, in which large numbers of young people are seeking employment for the first time. When I was a young musician—and in those days I played in conventional dance bands and not in the beat groups we know today —it was not usual for the band leader to go to an agency to seek work. I am informed that things are very different today and that "pop" groups—and I am not referring to the stars but the thousands of young people working in various parts of the country, sometimes for low fees—look for an agent to find them work as soon as they enter the entertainment business. In my younger days we were chary about using the facilities offered by some so-called agents and we preferred to find our own work.
  Hon. Gentlemen opposite dislike the idea that my right hon. Friend the Minister should have power to regulate the maximum rates which employment agencies may charge. I admit at once

  1171
  that there are some good agents. I regard the services offered by the large agencies and many of the smaller, reputable ones, as being of great use. However, I am concentrating on the unscrupulous agents with whom I have had some experience. I assure hon. Gentlemen opposite, from the conversations I have had with people in the business, that many young people in "pop" and "beat" groups are today being charged more than the 15 per cent. which my right hon. Friend mentioned earlier as possibly being the top rate.
  One hears accounts of unscrupulous agents making double bookings, cancellations at the last minute and unpaid bills. One also hears reports of agents who are also acting as contractors of labour, putting on functions and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney spoke of the need to define the functions of an agent and manager. It is important that this should be done and it is also necessary to differentiate between different types of function.
  I have also heard of cases where agents acting for "beat" and "pop" groups have owned not only the electronic equipment which is so necessary to groups of this kind but even the clothes the musicians wear. And it has not been a question of these young musicians paying the agent for this equipment by instalments. The agent merely takes a very large slice out of the earnings of the people he is supposedly managing.
  Mr. Brian Walden: I hope that my hon. Friend will not leave this very important point of agents who are also acting as contractors of labour until the Committee stage. In view of his great knowledge of this subject, I hope that he will give us more information about it.
  Mr. O'Malley: It is a somewhat technical point, but I agree with my hon. Friend that it is so important that I should give further details about it.
  When I looked in the House of Commons Library for some background information on the state of the law relating to employment agencies I almost drew a blank. I was surprised at the small amount of information we have on this issue. I then made inquiries at the head office of the Musicians' Union,
  1172
  of which I am a member. I was told that just over a year ago the union made inquiries of the Ministry of Labour, the Home Office, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the County Councils' Association and the Association of Municipal Corporations and virtually no information could be gained from them about which local authorities have power to regulate employment agencies which with such power were using it and what was the nature of the power that existed.
  I was, therefore, pleased to hear my right hon. Friend say that much fuller information was being collected now. While many of us believe that we know the general situation of the law governing employment agencies—those agencies operating in the spheres with which we are most closely connected—none of us can make a scientific estimate of how big a problem this is and how much abuse is taking place.
  I understand that some local authorities have power, under local Acts or byelaws, to regulate employment agencies, although most of them do not use it. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, the position is patchy. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary for this Measure to get its Second Reading so that, in Committee, we can go into the matters which worry us and improve the Bill.
  I take issue with hon. Gentlemen opposite when they object to the idea of legislation to regulate the rates of commission or fees. The House will observe that Clause l(3,e) states that a licensing authority may refuse to grant or renew a licence or may revoke a licence already granted
  "… to any person who proposes to charge fees or commission which would in the opinion of the licensing authority be excessive or unreasonable in view of the nature of the services provided …".
  The Clause later states that the Minister may issue regulations regarding the fees to be charged. This provision would place on a local authority the necessity to provide an expertise which it does not possess if, for example, it was asked to decide the amount of a maximum fee. It would probably be difficult for such an authority to discharge that responsibility or to decide what was excessive or unreasonable. The saving provision is that the Minister may issue regulations, although

  1173
  agencies may appeal to the Ministry because of a local authority's refusal to grant a licence on the ground that the fees charged are excessive.
  When the Ministry issues these regulations to fix the various rates of commission which may be charged for different sectors of commerce and industry, particularly in the entertainment world, I hope that outside authorities will be consulted, remembering that those authorities have not only the expertise to advise, but the interests of their members to look after. I hope that my union, the Musicians' Union, will have the opportunity of expressing any views which it might have on this subject. I want to find some way of dealing with unscrupulous agents who charge fees well in excess of 15 per cent. I see no other way of dealing with the problem than this method.
  While I have been sitting in the Chamber the Library has found and sent me a copy of the London County Council General Powers Act 1921 which gave the London County Council the power to license employment agencies. To a certain extent my hon. Friend's Bill follows the pattern of that Act, because it says:
  "It shall not be lawful for any person to carry on an employment agency … without a licence from the licensing authority authorising him so to do."
  In the London area there are already powers of that kind laid down in the Act to which I have referred. Licences cannot be issued to any person under 21, or to any person who may be unsuitable to hold such a licence, or in respect of any premises which are unsuitable for the purposes of an employment agency, or in respect of any employment agency which has been or is being improperly conducted. In spite of those provisions, one finds abuses in the London area.
  One of the values of my hon. Friend's Bill is that it extends the provisions which we have had for London to other areas, and it also tightens up the situation in a number of ways. The first important way in which it does this is to give the Minister power to lay down what the maxima shall be. Secondly, it gives local authorities the power to decline to issue a licence or to renew a licence when they consider that the terms of commission proposed to be charged by the agencies are excessive or unreasonable.
  1174
  I can see that there may be some difficulty of interpretation, but against that I set the fact that the range, scale, and amount of abuse which is going on at the moment is considerable. Furthermore, the interpretation difficulty is an administrative one which can be circumvented. At the moment large percentages are being taken by some of these people who describe themselves as agents. I regard this as the greater evil, far outweighing the objections made by hon. Members opposite.
  I suggest to my hon. Friend that it is essential to retain these provisions in the Bill, and certainly if I have the opportunity of serving on the Standing Committee which considers this Measure if it is given a Second Reading today I shall object most strongly to, and vote against, any proposal to remove these provisions from this Measure.
  Dame Joan Vickers: The hon. Gentleman did not read any section from the 1921 Act which said that the fees were controlled in London. They were maximum fees.
  Mr. O'Malley: I think that the hon. Lady will recognise that even if there is legislation some people will abuse it. My experience has been gained, not in London, but in the north of England, where there are no such regulations as those to which I have referred for the registration of employment agencies. I think that the Minister should issue regulations regarding the fees to be charged.
  Clause 7 says:
  "For the avoidance of doubt it is hereby-declared that moneys other than fees or commission received by an employment agency in respect of the employment of a client of that agency shall be regarded for all purposes as the property of the client in respect of whose employment they are received and having been received on his behalf."
  I warmly welcome this provision, but I have one important point to raise on the definition of an employment agency. It may be that the Bill is unsatisfactory from the point of view of a working musician, because an agent who makes an appointment for a group of musicians may be serving as the agent for only one member of the group. In these circumstances will the agent's business be held to be carried on
  "for or in connection with the employment of persons"?

  1175
  Perhaps my hon. Friend will consider this, and take advice on it. We can perhaps discuss this in Committee, though I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it privately before then.
  I warmly welcome the Bill, but there is one other matter which I wonder whether my hon. Friend has considered. In the Nurses Agencies Act, 1957, which is the only Act which I have been able to find in the short time that I have had available this morning which is similar to this Bill, we are told that the licensing authority shall be the county council or the county borough. As I understand it, under this Bill the licensing authority will be the county council or the county borough. In the 1957 Act we are told:
  "A county council may, on the application of the council of any county district … by agreement delegate … either with or without restrictions or conditions, any of the functions"
  set out in that Act to the county district, and that the county district can appeal to the Ministry on this score. Has my hon. Friend considered inserting a similar provision in his Bill?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Member, but this seems rather like a point which might be raised in Committee.
  Mr. O'Malley: The difficulty with a Private Member's Bill is that so often one does not have an opportunity between the Second Reading and the Committee stage to discuss matters fully with the promoter of the Bill. I merely ask my hon. Friend to consider this matter along with the other matters to which I have referred, and also to tell me whether the provisions of his Bill annul any of the provisions of the existing local Acts on this subject.
  I close as I began by saying that as one who for a number of years was a working musician I welcome the Bill. I welcome it not only for myself. I can assure my hon. Friend that if it becomes law it will have a very warm welcome from all sections of the musical profession and he will be remembered with gratitude by the profession for putting it forward.
  3.0 p.m.
  Mr. Alan Lee Williams: I wish to raise a general point which
  1176
  would be inappropriate to raise in Committee. I support the Bill and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) on bringing forward this excellent Measure. I understand that it is generally welcomed by industry to regulate this matter on a proper basis and to get rid of peripheral employment agencies which are subject to a great deal of criticism, and also perhaps to a great deal of corruption.
  I certainly welcome the Bill and give it my full support, but there is a general philosophical point I wish to raise. In a full employment society as time goes on there are bound to be many employment agencies established, so regulation of them is very proper. There is also a responsibility which falls on the Ministry of Labour to make its employment exchanges increasingly more sensitive to the needs of people with specialist skills. We are reaching a situation in which the Ministry of Labour employment exchanges deal generally with people without specialist skills and private agencies deal with people who have special skills, such as actors and musicians. It would be a very unhappy state of affairs if the Ministry did not itself try to move into this field to provide employment for those with specialist skills. It would be a great shame if we encouraged merely profit-making employment agencies to provide services for these people in the entertainment industry or in industry generally.
  I urge this on my hon. Friend and also on the Minister of Labour. They should consider that this side of the work also needs to be strengthened.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins Mr. Hugh Jenkins rose —
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member has exhausted his right to speak. He may speak if he can get the leave of the House.
  3.5 p.m.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins: If the House will permit me, as I have been asked one or two questions, I should like to spend a few minutes, if there is no objection, in dealing with the main points, although I recognise that I have no right of reply. It is clear from speeches made on both sides of the House that there is an expectation that I would have the leave of the House to make one or two points

  1177
  in reply. I shall be very brief and I shall deal only with those points which seem in courtesy to hon. Members to demand something to be said.
  First I thank the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) for her general support. As has been said, she is a sponsor of the Bill. In my opening remarks I said that she had been helpful not only now but previously in its history. I find myself in agreement generally with the points she made, with an exception. That is on the fixing of fees. Nevertheless, I feel able to give some assurance which I hope she will find satisfactory until we reach Committee when we could have further discussion.
  It is required in the Bill that agents should submit scales of fees and this should establish a norm. In issuing regulations concerning fees, the Minister would be concerned with what was the reasonable norm. It does not say anywhere in the Bill that the Minister has to lay down one fee and that that is the appropriate fee. It will be entirely right for the Minister to say that in certain areas fees should range between £X and £Y which he had discovered were the appropriate fees. I hope the hon. Lady will feel that that is a reasonable assurance until we reach Committee, when we can discuss the matter at greater length.
  Clause 3(1,j) provides
  "that an agent shall not faslely state that he is unable to supply permanent staff to an employer requesting the same, and supply instead (or attempt to supply instead) temporary staff".
  I am inclined to agree with the hon. Lady that, as at present worded, this might be difficult to enforce. Although I believe that the principle is right, I am not in any way wedded to the precise wording and I am ready to discuss this point in Committee.
  As to Clause 4(b) and the question whether ladies aged 30 require supervision when abroad, I am rather inclined to agree with the hon. Lady that we have advanced to the point where ladies may be relied upon to look after themselves. I should be happy to discuss with the hon. Lady in Committee whether we have not gone a little too far in this regard.
  1178
  The hon. Lady raised the general question whether staff contracting should be included in the provisions of the Bill. I think it should. The same people who act as agents also act as staff contractors. Although I agree that the same considerations which are applied to other types of agency work cannot be applied to staff contracting, it is vital that this type of intervention between the ultimate employer and the employee should be included within the broad aegis of the Bill, if only to give the Minister power to insure that there is no abuse of this operation. Examples have been given from both sides of the House of a tendency for this type of relationship to become an abuse, and for some people to say, "I am no longer an employment agent. I am a staff contractor, and therefore outwith control", although the relationship is essentially the same, particularly in the world of music. For this reason, I hope that the hon. Lady will not press this point. We can consider it again in Committee.
  The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. John Page) was concerned particularly with who is to administer the Bill when enacted. The hon. Gentleman thought that it should be the London boroughs rather than the Greater London Council. I believe that the G.L.C. is the right body. Prior to the London Government Bill, the London County Council was charged with the function of administering employment agencies. The L.C.C. had most inadequate legislation to do so, and consequently it did not do it very well. This is what the Bill is trying to correct.
  However, I believe that the L.C.C. did the job better than the London boroughs are even attempting to do it. Some of the boroughs which have power to do this are beginning to exercise their powers. Others have not the powers. The greater the degree of uniformity of approach by officials, the better it will be for those being regulated. Undesirable anomalies could arise if one borough adopted an approach different from that being adopted in another, particularly if an agency with branches in different boroughs found that one of its branches was being treated differently than another of its branches. I am inclined to think that agents themselves would welcome the widest possible degree of uniformity.

  1179
  If the hon. Gentleman were to press the point, it seems to me that we should have to give the Ministry of Labour much greater powers so that we should reduce local authorities to mere administrative agents. If we want to give the local authorities any substantial power in the matter this can only be done by devolving these duties upon the county authorities. However, this is probably once again a matter with which we can deal in Committee.
  I am conscious of the pressure upon the time of the House. I should, however, like to thank my hon. Friends for what they have said about the Bill, and to say in particular to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) that I think I am in agreement with him on many of the points that he made.
  On the question of the I.L.O. Convention, I should like to trespass on the time of the House for a little longer because this point was raised not only by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham but also by the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport. As my hon. Friend has rightly said, the I.L.O. Convention can be implemented in one of two ways. It can be done either by abolishing these agencies or by regulating them. I should have thought that a great deal of advantage was to be found by the employment agencies themselves if the Government decided to regulate them. If Her Majesty's Government were to decide to regulate them under Part III of the Convention, then in so doing they would remove the necessity to implement the Convention under Part II which relates to abolition.
  If I were an employment agent, concerned about the possibility of finding
  1180
  myself abolished, I would warmly welcome a Government decision to implement Part III concerning regulations. I hope the hon. Lady may feel able to commend this point of view to any of the employment agents who have approached her on the matter.
  Those are some of the main points which have been raised in the debate. There is the philosophical point which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Alan Lee Williams), and I think it is an interesting one. I hope the Minister of Labour or, if not, the Front Bench generally was listening to my hon. Friend because it seemed to me that he had an idea which has a lot to be said for it. I think there is much to be said for the proposal that the Ministry itself should enter and operate in certain fields and provide a sort of regulator or norm which would encourage private enterprise agencies to adopt the practices set forward by the Ministry, which one would hope would be the best possible practices.
  I am grateful to the House for giving me so much time and attention on what I regard as an important matter and for the kindness with which the Bill has been received. I hope that we may now proceed to the Committee stage in which we shall, no doubt, improve the Bill. I hope that we may make progress in this direction, thereby introducing a protection which, as I have said, will be important for employers and employees and, not least, important in bringing a new status to the employment agents themselves.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

  PONIES BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.15 p.m.
  Mr. Marcus Kimball: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second Time.
  First, I must apologise to the House on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart), whose Bill this is. My hon. Friend has a long-standing constituency engagement which he had to fulfil today. Equally, he felt that, as the Bill was supported by all the pony societies in the United Kingdom and it was ready, we ought to get it started on its Parliamentary course. He hopes, therefore, that the House will understand why he cannot be here today, although he is most anxious that the opportunity of an early place in the Ballot should be taken so that we may take the Bill to Committee and speed it on its way to the Statute Book.
  The House will have noted that the Bill is supported by hon. Members on both sides. It has the support of the Parliamentary Animal Welfare Committee. It is supported by all the principal breeders of ponies in the United Kingdom. I say at once that relevant to the Bill is the Export of Horses (Excepted Cases) Order, 1966, S.I. 508. I am most grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for the part he has played in the laying of this Order which preceded the Bill. Everyone who breeds ponies or who is worried about the welfare of ponies is very grateful to him. We have had his sympathetic ear, and I know that he has done an immense amount of work to honour that Order brought before the House. But I must tell him that, although he was working frightfully hard, the machinery of Whitehall and St. Andrew's House is such that some of us despaired of ever seeing that Order brought in. This is why the working party which gave birth to the Bill was set out.
  The merit of the Order is that it ensures that every pony is inspected by a veterinary surgeon at the port of exit to be certain that it is fit to travel. That is all the veterinary surgeon has to certify. We are concerned, however, that the Order in itself does not go far enough. It provides for exemption of
  1182
  certain horses from examination before export, including, under paragraph 3(c),
  "any horse, other than a mule or ass, which the Minister is satisfied is intended for breeding."
  The whole reason for this Bill is the grave concern felt about the way ponies go out of this country. Hitherto, on an open general licence from the Board of Trade, up to 30 ponies in one go can be sent, the idea being that there will be inspectors at the port. The principal port for this trade is on the East Coast. But we have found even geldings going out, on open general licence, on the understanding that they were going for breeding. There is genuine concern about the way the exemption of ponies going for breeding is abused by the exporters of ponies.
  The House will know that there has been genuine anxiety felt by all people interested in ponies, by breeders and by those concerned with horse and animal welfare, about the fate of our ponies when they reach the Continent. It must be said that, so far, no one has been able to produce positive proof that ponies from the United Kingdom are being slaughtered on the Continent for food. An investigation has been carried out by the Horses and Ponies Protection Association. Investigations have been carried out by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There is an unclaimed award offered by the National Pony Society for concrete evidence of the slaughter of ponies for human consumption. This reward has not been claimed, and the case has not been proved.
  But anyone going to the ports and seeing what happens must be very worried on seeing the type of pony which is going out. No one can say that scrub ponies and unbroken ponies are going to meet the colossal demand there is on the Continent for children's riding ponies. No one can say that yearlings, going at the price they are, when they cannot possibly be ridden for three or four years, are going out for riding or breeding purposes.
  The Bill does nothing more than extend to ponies the same protection as has been extended to horses. There is a minimum value at which a horse may be exported from this country. There is a minimum value for mules, one for donkeys and one for vanners. But when that Act was

  1183
  drawn up there was no minimum value fixed for ponies.
  A working party was set up composed of a number of organisations. It included the Horses and Ponies Protection Association and the Ponies of Britain—and that organisation has done a vast amount of work on the Bill. But for the efficiency of that organisation we should never have been able to reach agreement on the Schedule to the Bill which divides all the native breeds of ponies by their ages and categories into an appropriate minimum value. It will be appreciated that to consult nine pony breed societies and to get an agreed answer from them all was a major effort.
  The Working Party also included the British Horse Society, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—who at their annual meeting the other day, gave the Bill a special blessing—the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and, most important of all—I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will note this—on the Working Party was the principal exporter of ponies from this country, Mr. Watts of Russell, Baldwin and Bright, one of the largest breeders for the export trade.
  When the Working Party had completed its deliberations and reached complete agreement, the Bill was produced, and it was presented to all other interested parties at a meeting in the House of Commons on 18th May. It received the support of everyone. Most important of all, the Bill received the support of the Dartmoor Livestock Protection Society, one of the societies actively involved in protecting the ponies on their own moors, and the New Forest Society for The Protection of Ponies also supported the Bill.
  There is one outstanding query on the Bill—a point raised by the National Pony Society. This was the question of the minimum value which the Bill fixes for ponies which have not been registered with a breed society. It must be appreciated that Private Members' Bills came on at a great pace this year and we had to produce our Bills much sooner than many of us expected. In the time available it was not possible to obtain from the National Pony Society and breeders of unregistered ponies a proper schedule
  1184
  on the basis of height for value, but I give the House an undertaking that if they give the Bill a Second Reading I will incorporate in Committee a Second Schedule based on a minimum value for height of all unregistered ponies. In other words, the unregistered pony value of £80 in the Bill will go and will be replaced by a Schedule.
  The Bill is very simple. Apart from the problems of unregistered ponies, it says quite clearly that no registered pony may be sent from this country unless there is a certificate in respect of it saying that it has been sold at over and above a certain value. We feel that by fixing the value in excess of the slaughter price on the Continent we go a long way to ensure that ponies are not slaughtered for meat on the Continent. One has to face the fact that most people on the Continent do not have the same high standard of treating horses and ponies as we have in this country so that many of these wretched animals in their old age will probably end up in the slaughterhouse. But by fixing a decent and fair value, bearing in mind the value for breeding and riding, we ensure that the pony goes to someone paying the right price for the right purpose and will not find its way to the meat market at an early age.
  There was a case in New Zealand the other day in which somebody wished to start a native breed of pony. In view of the very high price of transport they could not afford to transport ponies there and to pay the minimum value laid down in the Bill. We have, therefore, given an exemption in the Bill by which if the secretary of the breed society is satisfied that the person exporting the poney is genuinely seeking to found a breed of that pony in that country, he may issue a certificate so that the pony may be exported at below the minimum value in the Schedule. We also make it an offence to sell a pony as a native pony which is not registered as a native pony. This is a provision which everybody interested in ponies will welcome. The way some of the more inexperienced dealers are selling our native ponies abroad and are describing them as of the native breeds is an embarrassment, for they certainly are not of these breeds. This would be a very valuable provision of the Bill.

  1185
  In view of the vast amount of work and support from outside organisations, with the proviso that the objections of the National Pony Society on a value for unregistered ponies would be met, I hope that the House will agree to give this much-needed Bill a Second Reading. It would not reach the Statute Book until we had 17 months operation of the Order. Many people feel that the Order is in itself not adequate and that, if we are to protect ponies properly, we should have both the Order and the Bill.
  3.25 p.m.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Mackie): It might help the House if I give the Government's view now. I fully understand why the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) is not here but I should point out that he is my regular "pair" and it is a little hard that he should be lolling in Edinburgh while I have to work here.
  The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) has put his points ably. He has knowledge of the subject, as we all know. I thank him for his kind words and slight criticism of my Department and Government Departments in general because of the delay in laying the Order. I thought that he might have been satisfied with the Order and I am sorry that he is not.
  However, he has given his reasons and I appreciate that the Bill is sponsored by hon. Members of all parties. I also appreciate the amount of work that he has done, together with the members of the Working Party, to get agreement— I know how difficult that must have been—among the various bodies concerned. Such interests, as I know, always keep our mailbags full.
  The hon. Gentleman says that the Order does not go far enough, that the delay in getting it laid led to the Working Party being set up and that the Bill is the result of the Working Party's work. He has explained that the Bill is principally designed to safeguard the welfare of exported ponies. All of us here are closely interested in animal welfare and would agree with his objective and do all we can to help.
  1186
  Indeed, it has been the policy of the Government and of their predecessors over many years that all reasonable steps should be taken to minimise animal suffering, particularly in long travel. We want to ensure that suffering is kept to the absolute minimum possible. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we take steps to ensure this by means of the Balfour assurances when dealing with other kinds of animals going to various countries abroad.
  As I understand it, the background to the Bill is the trade which has developed in recent years in the sale of native British ponies to the Continent. Riding, for example, is becoming increasingly popular everywhere. The trade has increased considerably and the Bill is intended to control it so that it is restricted to ponies for breeding and riding and is not used to send animals to slaughter.
  A large number of cases of alleged export for slaughter have been brought to our attention but very little proof has been introduced. When investigated, they have not been substantiated. If they had been, then the trade would have been limited severely. It has been suggested that the trade is mainly in animals for slaughter. The Department has gone into this at considerable expense and trouble—we have sent people abroad to investigate—as have the various societies mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, but these allegations have not been substantiated.
  Another suggestion which has been made is that the animals concerned are of a type which is not fit for travel. Again, our investigations show that in nearly every case this is not so. However, we agree that fitness for the journey is an important factor in the welfare of animals in transport. One of the provisions included in the new Orders dealing with the export of ponies and horses which took effect earlier this month was that ponies of the class with which the Bill is concerned would not be exported unless they had been inspected by an official veterinary surgeon and certified fit for the journey. I had discussions with the hon. Member for Gainsborough about this, and I thought that he agreed that this would eliminate a tremendous amount of suffering.
  After all, a qualified "vet" at the port does not need to make a full veterinary

  1187
  examination, which is a very complicated and expensive business and a much longer process, but could have the animals run past him, and there are facilities for doing that, and so be able to eliminate a tremendous number of animals which were not fit for the journey. I thought that the hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with the Order. We feel that we would like to give it a run for a year at least, before taking further action, to see whether it eliminated what we admit to have been happening to some horses and ponies unfit for travelling. That is one of the reasons why I am disappointed that we have failed to satisfy the people concerned.
  As I have said, all of us are greatly concerned about the welfare of animals and I understand and sypathise with the motives of everyone concerned with introducing the Bill. However, I believe that the provisions of the new Orders about which I have been speaking, together with all the other regulations which will prescribe conditions aboard ship, will provide what we call a reasonable degree of protection. I do not think that we would be justified in causing an extensive interference with the trade, and I am sure that the Bill would impose an extensive interference with the trade.
  After all, Her Majesty's Government simply have no jurisdiction over what happens to the animals on the other side. Many years ago, I read a story, I think in the Strand, written by Somerset Maugham, I believe—it was certainly the sort of story which he wrote—describing the situation in a hunting area in this country in which people were worried about this same trade going abroad for human consumption. To cut the story short, they raised funds to keep the animals in this country to feed the hounds.
  I know the feeling about ponies, and one has read of pets going abroad to be slaughtered, but we have no control over what happens when they are abroad and, as the hon. Gentleman himself said, when these animals come to the end of their lives, if they have been sent to countries in which horseflesh is eaten, they end up in the slaughterhouse, anyway. Therefore, unless the hon. Gentleman wants to stop export altogether, ultimately they will be slaughtered if they go to countries which eat horseflesh.
  1188
  As the hon. Gentleman knows very well, in Shetland and Orkney and other parts of Scotland and in Wales the trade is of considerable importance, and we would not like to do anything which would damage the legitimate trade in ponies for riding and breeding.
  I come now to the provisions of the Bill in a little more detail. It is not quite so simple as the hon. Gentleman makes out. Everybody who presents a Bill always starts by saying that it is a very simple Bill with only three Clauses, but when this Bill is examined closely, it is seen to be not so simple. It is intended to prevent the export of ponies for slaughter, but it falls down in two ways. It does not make a distinction between the low-priced ponies which its supporters believe may be going for slaughter and similarly priced animals going for other purposes. Nor does it guarantee that animals valued above the minimum price will not be slaughtered. Obviously, they will be when they come to the end of their working days, as I have explained.
  If the House desires to eliminate the possibility of horses being exported for slaughter, the only way to do so, as I have said, is to prohibit the export of all horses except valuable breeding stock and similar categories which there is no difficulty about distinguishing.
  Secondly, the Bill requires Ministry veterinary staff to exercise their judgment as to the value of horses. This would be an exceptionally difficult task. I accept that it is only a practical difficulty, and not an argument of principle and that practical difficulties can be overcome through expenditure of time and money and the use of expert veterinarians, of whom we are very short. There are a lot of other things that we should like them to be doing other than spending their time carrying out this task.
  I do not wish to use up the time of the House in discussing questions like the market value of various breeds, which is a vast subject raising problems of dispute and arbitration. Everyone would think that their ponies should be in such a category. The number of veterinary examinations, as distinct from inspection, would be out of all proportion to the importance of the subject. We believe that Clause 3 involves a serious anomaly.

  1189
  The present stallion licensing scheme recognises both pedigree, or registered, and non-pedigree animals of the various breeds. We cannot accept that there are good reasons, on livestock improvement grounds, for restricting sales in the way envisaged in Clause 3. I cannot think that even the hon. Member for Gainsborough could suggest what Clause 3 has to do with the export of ponies if the restrictions were to apply only within this country and have nothing to do with exports.
  The Bill does not extend to Northern Ireland, and we know that Northern Ireland is a loophole in many other ways besides getting ponies out of the country. But apart from anything else in the Bill, leaving such a loophole would prejudice its intentions. I do not want to go any further than I have done, but I think that I have said plenty to show that the Government could not support this Bill, although, as I think the hon. Member for Gainsborough and his sponsors are aware, they are in sympathy with what the Bill wants to do and feel that the Order, which was laid only about three weeks ago, if given a proper run, will carry out the ideas behind the Bill to everyone's satisfaction.
  3.37 p.m.
  Mr. F. A. Burden: The House is becoming used to the fact that Ministers seldom seem to have done their homework well and, much as I like and respect the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, I feel that he has lapsed into that category which we have come to know so well in the past few weeks. If the hon. Gentleman had looked back at the Act of 1937, a major Act in this connection, he would have found that the reasons for the Act, to protect the export of horses, were because of the knowledge and the fears that horses would be sent abroad and slaughtered for food.
  I would commend to him, before he and his colleagues completely close their minds to the acceptance of this Bill, an inspection of the speeches made by my very distinguished predecessor, Sir Robert Gower, who was also Chairman of the R.S.C.P.A.—on the Council of which I have the honour to sit—and the other speeches made when the original Bill was amended. What was the subject of the main argument? It was that this
  1190
  country objected to the export of horses purely and simply for slaughter. Therefore, they decided that the best way to ensure that these animals were protected against import for slaughter was to fix a minimum price.
  Mr. John Mackie: Would the hon. Gentleman say where in my speech I indicated that I did not appreciate this point?
  Mr. Burden: If the hon. Gentleman appreciates this point, he has gone most of the way to accept the reason for the Bill.
  Mr. Mackie: I did not use the word "appreciate" in the sense that the hon. Gentleman is indicating. I meant that I did know this point.
  Mr. Burden: Now the hon. Gentleman has qualified it. He says that he knew it; he did not appreciate it. Certainly Ministers on the previous occasion appreciated it. I accept that when he says that he appreciated it, like so many Ministers on the benches opposite, he said what he fell but in the circumstances of his brief was forced to change his view. We are becoming used to that.
  A Statutory Instrument dated this year, No. 507, prescribes in paragraph (5).
  "minimum values of certain categories of horses for the purposes of section 37 of the Act."
  It sets the price of a heavy draught horse at £135; a vanner, mule or jennet at £125; and an ass at £25. Why, If there is no purpose in setting minimum prices for ponies, why should there be minimum prices for these horses? Why should they not be abolished rather than confirmed and increased? I should be happy to give way to the Minister if he would tell me the answer. [Interruption.] That is an indication: the hon. Gentleman does not know.
  What we are asking, surely in a logical manner, is that if minimum prices are laid down to protect the draught horse and other horses from export for slaughter, why should not the pony be so protected.
  When the original Act was introduced, there was little need to protect ponies. At that time there were plenty of draught horses and heavy horses which were much

  1191
  more suitable for slaughter. The weight of the animal made it a suitable proposition for export for slaughter. But vanners and heavy draught horses no longer exist in considerable numbers. Now the pony is much more popular.
  Attention has been drawn to the fact that a yearling pony would probably fetch a comparatively small price on the open market. A friend of mine told me only today that his family has a yearling pony the value of which is about £35. In view of the shortage of horse flesh, which is still much in demand on the Continent, that pony would probably be a very good proposition to import purely for slaughter. All that we are asking is that ponies should be given the protection given to heavier horses.
  Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary wants to see ponies exported in these circumstances.
  Mr. John Mackie Mr. John Mackie indicated dissent.
  Mr. Burden: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman does not. Then why are not the Government prepared to go some little way in giving these animals the same protection which they have given to the heavier horses, the ass and the mule in the Statutory Instrument?
  Mr. John Mackie: Has not the hon.
  Member defeated his argument by his last few remarks when he said that the pony worth £35 would be an exportable proposition for slaughter? If that is the value of it, it is exactly in line with what I have said. We are just as interested as hon. Members opposite in animal welfare. Our duty is to ensure that no animal travels that is not fit to do so. The whole object of all the Acts and Orders is along that line.
  I thought that I had made the point clearly that to value ponies which are way down in value compared with the other figures quoted by the hon. Member from the Statutory Instrument would cause difficulties and would require a staff of people for the purpose.
  Mr. Burden: It is no more difficult to assess the value of a pony than of the other horses listed in the Statutory Instrument, on which prices are fixed. They are market values. All we are saying is that a pony should not be
  1192
  exported if its value is less than a certain figure.
  I am particularly concerned at another aspect. These low-cost animals might well go abroad for research purposes, in some instances in laboratories on the Continent. I have serious concern at this aspect, not only in the case of horses, but of other animals. From the woolly Answers which I have received to Questions and the complete denial by the Government to take action, it seems to me that they are not paying the attention which they should to animals which are bred in research stations and sent abroad. We have no knowledge of the firms which breed them, where they go or the conditions under which they are sent.
  Mr. Scholefield Allen Mr. Scholefield Allen (Crewe) rose —
  Mr. Burden: I am sorry, I cannot give way any more. As, however, the hon. and learned Member would obviously like to speak, I will be happy to finish quickly to give him an opportunity of doing so.
  Mr. Scholefield Allen: I did not interrupt the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball), who finished his speech without mentioning a single Clause in the Bill, except a minor one. It is very complicated in many ways—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. and learned Member cannot make a speech on an intervention.
  Mr. Scholefield Allen: I was about to ask the hon. Member, instead of making accusations against the Government, to go through the Bill and explain it.
  Mr. Burden: The hon. and learned Member has got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary went through the Bill Clause by Clause. This is Second Reading. Any Amendments which may be necessary can, if the Government agree in principle to allow the Bill to have a Second Reading, be attended to in Committee. My hon. Friend has made this clear.
  I am dealing with the general aspect and the general situation. The Bill would make it uneconomic for people overseas to import ponies for slaughter purposes. We all know—and we accept this—that when ponies or horses become aged, they are almost inevitably slaughtered when

  1193
  they have passed their working life. This applies in Britain as in every other country. In the Bill, we are trying to preserve our young stock from being sent abroad and from being bred to go abroad for slaughter purposes.
  I hope that despite the Joint Parliamentary Secretary's first implied refusal to allow the Bill to have a Second Reading, he will let it go through without a Division and allow it to go to Committee. The difficulties or differences which might have appeared could be removed with good will on both sides in Committee.
  3.50 p.m.
  Mr. William Hamling: I have great sympathy with the basic purpose of the Bill. For many years there has been concern about the export of animals to the Continent for slaughter for food purposes. I particularly remember a very good campaign carried on by The Guardian on the export of horses, and the horrifying stories told about the conditions not only under which they travelled but under which they were received in Continental slaughterhouses and then slaughtered. It is remarkable that the Bill contains a loophole which would enable this practice to continue in the case of ponies.
  The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) produced no evidence that this trade is being carried on. He pointed this out quite fairly. He said that there was just fear and supposition that this might be so. If the purpose of the Bill is to prevent this practice from being carried on it would be far better if it completely prohibited the export of ponies to the Continent, or, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary said, put such a high value on the ponies concerned that very few would be exported, except for breeding.
  The Bill sets out with an admirable purpose, which it does not fulfil. There are loopholes in it, and I am very surprised that the hon. Member for Gilling-ham (Mr. Burden) did not appreciate and deal with the objections that my hon. Friend put forward. My hon. Friend pointed out that the Order laid to ensure the inspection of ponies is only three weeks old. It is a little premature to bring forward a Bill to do something with which that Order is intended to deal.
  1194
  The hon. Member claimed that the Bill was supported by animal welfare societies. If those societies are concerned about the situation they ought to ask for much stronger legislation than this. It is said that the Bill would interfere with the trade in ponies. The House is entitled to know what that trade is—where the ponies are sent, what happens to them when they arrive, and who sells them.
  I am told that one person who is very much in favour of the Bill is one of our biggest traders in this respect. If the implication is that ponies are being sold for slaughtering this trader would seem to be concerned with that trade. It is only fair to the House that when such a Bill as this is presented much more evidence should be given than the mere fears expressed by hon. Members who have spoken in support of it.
  In my submission, the Bill will not do what it sets out to do. There is no doubt that under its provisions many ponies will still be exported, most of which will ultimately be slaughtered. There will still be a trade in ponies for slaughtering on the Continent, and their value when sold will contain an element which takes this fact into account. So the Bill will not do what it sets out to do.
  There is, further, the damaging limitation in Clause 4:
  "… This Act shall not extend to Northern Ireland".
  Why not? No explanation has been given why this limitation should exist. Will there be a possibility of ponies being exported to Northern Ireland and then being re-exported to the Continent? If so, that completely destroys the Bill. I said earlier, when discussing the export of horses—and some years ago the issue was being widely canvassed in the Press and The Guardian was running a campaign on the subject—that the trade came from Ireland. What is to stop the same sort of thing happening with ponies under this Measure?
  Mr. Scholefield Allen: If the trade really is profitable, as we believe it to be, would it not pay people dealing in these transactions to send ponies to the Continent via Northern Ireland on a big scale?
  Mr. Hamling: I agree with my hon. and learned Friend. If it is so profitable, it is obvious that the Bill is not sufficiently

  1195
  strong to control this trade. Or is it possibly that there are some people who want to make the trade even more profitable by fixing these prices? I am aware that this may be an unworthy suggestion, but it might be that, by placing this value on. ponies, profits would be enhanced. The Bill is not a good one. The limitation in Clause 4 completely destroys it. The method adopted would not limit the trade in any way but might well enhance it, make it more profitable and therefore stimulate the export of ponies.
  Clause 3(1) states:
  "It shall be an offence for any person to sell or offer for sale any pony as being a pony belonging to one of the native breeds to which this section applies unless such pony is registered in the stud books of such native breed".
  What does this have to do with exports? What is the purpose of the Clause? Is it, perhaps, intended to make the breeding of ponies more profitable? Is it intended to upgrade the breeds to make people who trade in these ponies spend more?
  My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Crewe was right when he said that when an hon. Member presents a private Bill he has an obligation to explain clearly the purpose of the Measure. This is, after all, a Second Reading debate. We are entitled to know precisely what the Bill will achieve, and it is not sufficient merely for hon. Gentlemen opposite to deal with one aspect of the Measure but not explain the others. I therefore—
  Mr. Kimball Mr. Kimball rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
  Mr. Speaker: I cannot accept that Motion.
  Mr. Hamling: This is basic to the Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] The Measure should be explained in detail and hon. Gentlemen opposite have not done a service to the House by presenting a Bill—
  It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed upon Friday next.

  ARMED FORCES BILL
  Sir Geoffrey de Freitas discharged from the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill; Mr. Brian O'Malley added. —[Mr. John Silkin.]

  BUSTLEHOLM QUARRY, WEST BROMWICH
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Howie.]
  4.0 p.m.
  Mr. Graham Page: I wish to raise the subject of the dismissal of an appeal against a refusal of planning permission for advertisement panels at Bustleholm Quarry, West Bromwich.
  I apologise to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary for not informing him beforehand of any specific points which I wished to raise on this Adjournment, but I am sure that with his great knowledge of town planning he will be able to answer my queries very easily, and indeed, I hope that he will be able to accede to my requests.
  Although I am not normally one of those people who read the end of a novel first instead of starting the story at. the beginning, I think that to assist the hon. Gentleman I shall give my conclusions first, that is to say, give what I hope will be the happy ending to this story, before launching out onto the development of the plot, because then, as I detail the facts of the dismissal of this appeal, the hon. Gentleman can adjust those facts to the proposition which I wish to put as a conclusion.
  Starting with the conclusion, I would say that if under the present town planning appeal procedure, as it applies to outdoor advertising, the fiction of a Ministerial decision following upon a site investigation can result in such a stupid position as has occurred in this case, then the procedure should be altered at once.
  There is provision within the regulating Statute, the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962 for an alternative form of procedure. Under Section 44 of that Act the Minister can appoint an independent tribunal to take his place in

  1197
  making decisions on appeals from local planning authorities on refusals of town planning permission so far as they relate to outdoor advertising. If the Minister would adopt that, it would have the added advantage of relieving him of the intolerable burden, of town planning appeals, and therefore would speed up the development of land. It would increase the now dwindling rate of housebuilding, it would benefit industry, commerce, home seekers, and the administrators in local councils, and perhaps might even nullify the argument for a Land Commission.
  In fact, the reduction of the time taken on town planning appeals is to my mind one of the most urgent reforms of today. I hope that I am not exaggerating in that, but appeals in town planning are like pebbles in a pond, they affect a wide circle of activities.
  Having summarised the last chapter of my case, let me come back to the preface. It is Section 34 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, which enables the Minister to make regulations concerning town planning permission for outdoor advertising. This is a repetition of a section in the 1947 Act, so the current Regulations dealing with this are the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations, 1960.
  Both in the Act and in the Regulations it is said that the purpose of any restrictions on outdoor advertising and the display of advertisements is the interest of amenity or public safety. For example, the Acts says in Section 34 that:
  "Provision shall be made by regulations under this Act for restricting or regulating the display of advertisements so far as appears to the Minister to be expedient in the interest of amenity or public safety."
  I understand the particular case I have mentioned, is not concerned with public safety but only with the amenities. Therefore I need not trouble the House with the second of those points, but I shall concentrate on the first, whether this decision makes any sense when set against the amenities of the district to which it applies.
  A firm, Arthur Maiden Limited, which owns poster sites, submitted an application to the West Bromwich County Borough Council on 17th August, 1965, for permission to erect an advertisement hoarding fronting Walsall Road, West
  1198
  Bromwich. The hoarding was to be a double hoarding in the shape of an arrowhead pointing towards the side of the road and each of the arms of the arrowhead if that is the right expression, each board, was to have a 12 inch picture frame around it. The size of the picture would be 20 ft. by 10 ft. The board would start 5 ft. above the ground and the top of it would be 17 ft. above the ground. In technical language I understand these are described as two 48 sheet bulletin boards in V formation.
  On 13th September, 1965, this application was refused by West Bromwich County Borough Council on the grounds, as they were stated in the refusal, that:
  "the site is unsuitable for the display of advertisements in the general interests of the amenities of the district".
  That is quite a common phrase used in refusing town planning applications for the display of outdoor advertisements, but I think it is recognised that what moved the council in rejecting the application was that it has in mind some very good and proper and valuable development plans for this district. But those plans are far in the future.
  In fact no date can be stated for when they may start. To that extent I think the council was wrong if it allowed that to affect its judgment. The applicants, not surprisingly, appealed to the Minister and the normal procedure of appeal in outdoor advertising cases was adopted, namely that the Minister receives written representations, from the council and the applicants, and an inspector from the Ministry visits the site and makes his report to the Minister.
  It is a pity, perhaps, that in debate in this House we cannot have a direction to put photographs on the record. I have in my hand some photographs of what the inspector saw when he visited the site. I have seldom seen such a dismal and depressing outlook. The road to which these boards were to front has an unmade pavement, an unkempt weedy grass ridge along the side of the pavement rising to only one or two feet and on that little ridge there are posts and a strand of wire which could not possibly be graced by the word "fence". The posts, crooked in many places, give a thoroughly dilapidated impression. Directly alongside that, there is a quarry.

  1199
  It is untidy, unsightly, with heaps of earth in various states of covering by weeds, with muddy puddles, and part of it is used as a refuse dump. All this, as shown by the photographs, is visible from the road.
  On the other side of the road, there is undulating land, covered with a sort of weed and scruff, which perhaps itself was once a quarry. It is wholly undeveloped for a long way either side of the site of the proposed hoarding. The nearest building—an unsightly garage-is some distance away. Some further distance away, scarcely within sight, is a residential area of pretty low development.
  What are the so-called amenities of the site? From looking at the photographs, I suppose the amenities might be a couple of oak trees standing alongside one of the rubbish dumps. This is the sort of amenity one associates with pictures by artists who are determined to present the sordidness but reality of life in an industrial area.
  To prove that I am not exaggerating, I shall quote from the Minister's letter refusing permission. I assume that the letter was drafted by a civil servant. Civil servants usually express themselves in moderate terms. I would not say that the terms of this letter are immoderate, but they are certainly very expressive. The second paragraph begins:
  "There is little development in the immediate vicinity of the site behind which, and not visible from the road, are some sandpits still being worked,"—
  I would correct that, because my photographs clearly show that these are visible from the road—
  "or in use as refuse dumps. Across the road from the site is an embankment to rough undulating open land with a long undeveloped road frontage. The site is flanked on one side by an untidy garage and some business premises and, although the other development in the area is residential, the standard of local amenity is rather low."
  One would have thought that the conclusion from that would be that it would be a splendid idea to brighten up this scene of dejection with one of these framed, one-picture advertisement boards. This was not the conclusion of the Minister. Here is his conclusion:
  "The panels would be splayed towards the opposite approaches on the roadway and it is considered that they would be over-prominent
  1200
  features in the road picture. Moreover in the approach from the north this over-prominence would be emphasised by the rising gradient towards the site and the panels would be seen against the skyline."
  Any poster site could be condemned as prominent. It would be a pretty useless site if it did not catch the eye of the passerby.
  The letter continues:
  "It is considered that the proposed panels would further lower the standard of local amenity."
  I draw attention to the word "further", which is itself an admission that the amenities of the district were already pretty low. The letter concludes in this way:
  "Accordingly the Minister dismisses the appeal."
  This is a solemn Ministerial decision that it is better to look at rubbish dumps than at a modern-type advertisement board. This is a decision that a drab, dirty, squalid quarry, as is clearly shown in the photographs I have, with its mucky puddles and mucky heaps, has a greater amenity value than a splash of cheerful colour on a poster. So far as I know, this House has never directed the Minister, either by Statute or in any other way, that posters are to be deplored. It would, in fact, be running contrary to public opinion if this House were to do so. I believe that the great majority of the public like looking at posters and I will bet that neither the Parliamentary Secretary nor his right hon. Friend the Minister forgot that fact during the last election. During elections we use them as prominently as possible because we know people like to look at them. The industrial man knows that he can sell his goods by posters. This is equally as important as the fact that the public likes to look at posters; industry and commerce need the salesmanship of posters. Posters sell their goods, and the Government, in considering a policy of treating rubbish tips as of higher amenity value than posters, should also consider the effect of that policy upon the health of British productivity.
  After all, Governments for many years have recognised the value of poster advertising in Government spheres. Diphtheria immunity, vaccination, savings, recruiting—all these have been advanced by posters to a very great extent. But there are too many local

  1201
  government and central Government administrators who look upon the poster as a sort of enemy of the public, as something to be stamped out at all costs. Yet the fact is that a poster gives pleasure to people and purpose to productivity.
  So I come back to what I said, that if mistakes of this sort can happen from the present procedure, that procedure ought to be altered. We have the chance to alter it by the process of Section 44 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, which enables the Minister to bring in regulations appointing and setting down the procedure for independent tribunals to hear appeals from refusal of planning permission by the local planning authority when it relates to outdoor advertising.
  I hope the Parliamentary Secretary is prepared to tell me today that he is anxious to relieve his right hon. Friend of the burden of outdoor advertising appeal procedure, that he will see that it is handed over to an independent tribunal and that by that means not only will the appeals concerning outdoor advertising be prevented from coming to the sad conclusion of this one, but that all the other town planning appeals will move up apace and we shall get them done quicker.
  4.19 p.m.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. James MacColI): I agree with one thing that the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) said, that there is no part of my right hon. Friend's duty which places a more heavy burden on him than the decision of planning appeals, because they very often involve conflicting interests of individuals and relations of individuals with the Government and often introduce very complicated and varied issues.
  I accept that it is very important that these matters should be deal with conscientiously and well. We certainly accept entirely what the hon. Gentleman said about the need to speed up decisions on planning appeals. We have never taken the line that we were content with the present position. It is important that that should be done.
  I quite agree that advertisement appeals are very difficult to decide. The matter must very largely be subjective.
  1202
  They depend upon the impression made on somebody of the effect of a poster or hoarding, whatever it may be, in an area, and that impression can very often differ widely from person to person. It is not easy to lay down rules in the matter.
  On the other hand, one has to look at three possibilities. There are those sites where no one would want to have advertisements, where the beauty of the area is such that it would be utterly incongruous to have the intervention of some sort of hoarding. There are other areas where a hoarding or poster, as the hon. Gentleman said, can be an asset, where it can provide a certain amount of colour and variety. Unfortunately, between those two extremes there is the great middle ground where it is very difficult to balance the advantages and disadvantages of having advertisements.
  The planning authority is quite entitled to look at the future amenity of the area and not confine itself only to the existing situation. This is made clear in Regulation 4(3) of the Regulations, which provides that, in the determination of an application for consent to display advertisements,
  "regard may be had to any material change in circumstances likely to occur within the period for which the consent is required or granted".
  I accept what the hon. Gentleman said, that in this particular case it is unlikely that there will be a startling improvement in the area within the period for which grant of temporary permission could be made. If it were simply a matter of saying that the planning authority had bold ideas for future improvements and, for this reason, we should not allow permission to be granted, that would not in this case stand. The issue, therefore, is the suitability of this site for a poster or hoarding.
  Very often, sites for advertisements are in commercial and industrial districts where the posters can play a big part not only in improving the variety and lightness of an area, but, as the hon. Gentleman said, in furthering the selling of things. The area here is not obviously commercial or industrial. It is an open area in which a fair number of people live and in which such amenity as there is should be preserved and, at the earliest opportunity, improved. The residents of the district and those who visit it, as the

  1203
  hon. Gentleman said, have the misfortune to have to tolerate a good deal of untidiness.
  At the same time, it is not all quite as unrelieved as the hon. Gentleman, inspired by the photographs, said. In fact, beyond the offensive features—there are offensive features—there is a view of quite pleasant green belt land, and to interrupt this view with two large advertisements on rising ground would not improve the amenities and would, on the whole, have a bad effect on the conditions on which people have to live. Therefore, bearing in mind the desirability of preserving in this area some degree of amenity, namely, the view, it was thought not desirable to pick the rising ground upon which to erect hoardings which would break that view.
  It is easy for anyone to say that my interpretation is wrong. It is an extremely difficult matter to argue, because it is a matter of judgment which must be made on the particular case. But we must not take the view that because an area is poor, and perhaps squalid, it is a suitable area for advertisements. We must not kick people when they are down. It would be undesirable to give the impression that any area in which there is an interference with amenities is suitable for hoardings and advertisements. In some cases the area may be suitable and in other cases it may not be suitable. I believe that in this case it was the right decision. It is a marginal decision and not an easy decision, but I believe it to be the right decision not to make this addition to the site.
  The hon. Member talked about the delay in deciding appeals, although I do not think that he was making the point about this case that there has been any excessive delay. This appeal was decided reasonably quickly and the machinery operated at every stage. But, on the general point, what should be done about the machinery for dealing with planning appeals? The hon. Member did not suggest that advertisements should be treated differently from other forms of planning appeal. He used this case as a text for saying that
  1204
  we should have tribunals for a wide variety of claims—but not for all claims.
  Mr. Graham Page: Section 44 deals only with outdoor advertising and I could apply my argument only to that subject. My point was that this could be a pilot scheme for independent tribunals.
  Mr. MacColl: I was surprised to find that the hon. Member's main point was not about the effect of Section 44 on advertisements but about the efficiency of planning by using independent tribunals. It may surprise him to know that my right hon. Friend is certainly not doctrinaire about this. He is very worried about the whole position of appeals machinery and has recently said in public, and I believe in the House as well, that he is looking very carefully to see the best way of reaching quicker decisions on appeals. The use of independent tribunals is one method which is possible and to which he will give careful attention. He has not shut his mind to it. My own view—I do not state this as my final view—is that I rather doubt whether it would greatly speed up the appeals or necessarily increase the confidence of people in these decisions. In some of these cases a great deal of money is involved and many of them contain an element of policy which it would be difficult to contract out to a tribunal.
  How should we choose the tribunal? The hon. Member and I had an interesting discussion on a Friday not long ago about rent assessment committees and the difficulty of finding people whose decisions would be accepted. It may be difficult to fix a fair rent but what of the difficulty of arbitrating between one point of view and another in cases such as this? I am not certain whether such a job could easily be left to independent people. But my right hon. Friend is fully alive to the problems involved and is only anxious to do the job as fairly and well as he can.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.

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