Sitting of 2 May 1966

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MEMBERS SWORN
The following Members took and subscribed the Oath, or made and subscribed the Affirmation required by Law:
Colonel Sir Tufton Victor Hamilton Beamish, M.C., for Lewes.
John Howard Cordle, esquire, Bournemouth, East and Christchurch.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE

    Earnings Rule
    Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, what would be the cost to her Department of raising the maximum income before the earnings rule for retirement pensioners comes into force to £10 a week; and if, in order to end the present discouragement to pensioners continuing at work where they would otherwise wish to do so, she will consider raising the present limit.
    The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Margaret Herbison): I am afraid that it is not possible to make a realistic estimate of the cost of raising the earnings limit to £10 a week. As to the second part of his Question, my hon. Friend will be aware that I have referred this matter to the National Insurance Advisory Committee.
    Mr. Allaun: Has any estimate been made of what the country would gain from the production which at present is being lost in this way? Does not my right hon. Friend think that this offset would be far bigger than the cost of the proposal?
    Miss Herbison: One just does not know how things would turn out at the present time. We have 240,000 men between the ages of 65 and 70 who are in full-time work and not drawing pension, and one does not know what their decision would be if the earnings limit were raised extensively. But there is the greatest desire under the National Plan and, I think, by the whole of the Government, that we should get as many people working as possible. I think that we have to wait until we get the Report from the National Insurance Advisory Committee.
    Mr. Deanasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance when she will receive the Report of the National Insurance Advisory Committee about the earnings rule.
    Miss Herbison: The Committee has announced that it is open to receive representations on this subject until 16th May. I cannot forecast the length of time the Committee will need to complete its inquiries and prepare its Report.
    Mr. Dean: Can the Minister give an assurance that the Advisory Committee realises the urgency of this? Does she recollect that it is over two years since the earnings limit was changed and that since that time earnings have risen by over £2 10s.? Surely it is, therefore, urgent that there should be further help for those who want to earn part-time?
    Miss Herbison: I am quite certain that the Committee is fully seized of the urgency of this matter and that it will be examining it urgently because of that. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the Committee's remit. We want the Committee to examine various aspects, not just the level at which the earnings rule will begin to operate. We want the Committee to examine, for example, what deductions thereafter should be made and whether any changes should be made in that respect. Then there is the question of the way in which earnings are calculated. We have had many questions about that. Then there is the problem of workers who work for part of the year and do not work for the other part of the year. The Committee has a great deal to study, but I am sure that it will do it urgently.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister's answers are getting a bit long.
    Mr. Manuel: In connection with the earnings rule and in particular in its application to old age pensioners, will my right hon. Friend indicate whether her Department has had any discussions with the Treasury as to the advisability of raising the earnings rule to start at seven-twentieths instead of at nine-twentieths. I have received a delegation in my constituency on this matter. I think that such a change would be of immediate benefit whilst we wait for the outcome of the major review.
    Miss Herbison: This is a matter for the Treasury and not a matter for this Ministry.

    Poor Households (Survey)
    Mr. Hugh Jenkinsasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will carry out a survey of the living conditions of the poorest households in this country and publish a report.
    Miss Herbison: I cannot add to what I said in reply to my hon. Friend on 9th March. I shall, however, be answering a later Question about a survey bearing on one aspect of the matter.
    Mr. Jenkins: Has my right hon. Friend noted that according to a recent authoritative analysis of official information, there was during the 'fifties an increase in the proportion of the population living below the National Assistance level? Is she satisfied that this trend has been arrested and will be reversed?
    Miss Herbison: It would be very difficult to say whether this trend had been arrested. There is a very great deal of concern about those families. The estimate I have is that about 300,000 are living below the National Assistance Board's scale. I hope to say something about this in answer to another Question.
    Sir K. Joseph: Is the Minister aware that we are deeply concerned about the subject of this Question, though we must, of course, keep our comments until the right hon. Lady has answered Question No. 14, as I suppose it is? But is she aware that we do not accept that the standard of living of those on National Assistance fell during the 'fifties, because while we accept the good will and much of the value of the work, "The Poor and the Poorest," to which the hon. Mem-
    1208
    ber for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) referred, the Question fails to acknowledge the real value of National Assistance benefits, themselves raised between the two base dates under comparison?
    Miss Herbison: I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman misunderstood what my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) said. What my hon. Friend said was that there are families where the parent is working but who are getting less. That is the only point he made.

    Old-age Non-Pensioners
    Mr. Iremongerasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what provision she proposes to make for people of pensionable age who were excluded from the national insurance scheme from its inception.
    Miss Herbison: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Members for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. David Steel) and for Barry (Mr. Gower) on 22nd November, 1965.
    Mr. Iremonger: Would the right hon. Lady accept it from this side of the House that retrospective Answers running back into the last Parliament are not in the best interests of the House? May I ask her to bear in mind that this question is very urgent? About 25,000 of these people die every year. Their capital is being rapidly expended and, unless she does something about their needs very soon, many of these very old people will be beyond help.
    Miss Herbison: During the past year we carried out a survey into the circumstances of retirement pensioners. In addition, the National Assistance Board gave a very great deal of publicity to the help available, and 50,000 more people today are in receipt of a supplementary pension. We hope that the other Measure announced in the Gracious Speech will help and that the Act dealing with rates rebates will be a very great help indeed for these people.
    Sir A. V. Harvey: On a point of order Mr. Speaker. Could you give guidance on this matter? As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) said, it is unusual for a Minister to

    1209
    refer to a Question answered in a previous Parliament. If we could go back many Parliaments Ministers could get out of it in that way.
    Mr. Speaker: I ruled on that point last week. I hope that these points of order, unless they are particularly important, will be raised at the end of Question Time.

    Retirement Pensions and Benefits
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance when the Government's proposed increase in retirement pensions will be paid to the pensioners.
    Mr. Freesonasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether she will consider taking steps to provide a further interim increase in pensions for the retired disabled and widowed, and in National Assistance Board payments.
    Miss Herbison: Retirement pensions and other benefits and allowances were increased substantially just over a year ago ant, despite some increase in prices since then, they have an appreciably higher purchasing power than any previous rates.
    Mr. Hughes: Does the Minister realise that the date asked for in my Question is very important to these senior citizens so that they may keep pace with the rising cost of living? Will she say what the date is?
    Miss Herbison: I am afraid that I cannot say what the date is, but perhaps my hon. and learned Friend will be interested to know that to restore the value of the total pension to what it was in March, 1965, would amount to 3s. 3d. for a single pensioner and 5s. 4d. for a married couple. The increases were 12s. 6d. and 21s. respectively.
    Mr. Freeson: My Question has not been answered. Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that it will take some time before the Government's proposals for a major improvement will come to fruition? In the meantime, pensioners are without a further increase and the cost of living is going up. What action will be taken to help them in the interim period, which should probably be about 18 months or two years, I expect?
    Miss Herbison: My hon. Friend says that it may be 18 months or two years before there is a general increase. I cannot give any date at present, but I can say that when the pensions were raised in March last year the increase was 18 per cent. to 19 per cent., and they are still very much above the value they had in 1963 when the last increase was given by the previous Conservative Government.

    National Assistance
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance what progress is being made with the amalgamation of her Department and the National Assistance Board; and whether the consequential result will be an improvement in the benefits payable to retirement pensioners.
    Mr. Deanasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance when she will introduce legislation to replace National Assistance by a new system of benefits.
    Miss Herbison: The Gracious Speech made clear the Government's intentions in regard to the matters raised by the hon. Gentlemen, and I would ask them to await developments.
    Mr. Hamilton: Can my right hon. Friend give any idea of the time-table she has in mind in this respect? Will she recognise that, however administratively convenient and tidy this may be, there is no substitute for hard cash for these people?
    Miss Herbison: I agree very much with my hon. Friend. I can assure him that the Measure will be brought before the House at the earliest moment possible, and I hope that is not very far away.
    Mr. Dean: Can the right hon. Lady give an assurance that when the legislation does come it will also pay attention to the disregards in order to give further help to those who have been thrifty in the past but who in some cases are not able to get any help under present arrangements?
    Miss Herbison: On the general question of disregards, I ask the hon. Member to await the publication of the Measure, but I can assure him that we have given

    1211
    very serious consideration to the question of disregards and to many other matters.

    Industrial Disputes (Unemployment Benefit)
    Mr. Chapmanasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance when she will receive from the Royal Commission on Trade Unions its interim Report on payment of National Insurance benefit to employees made unemployed by an industrial dispute.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Norman Pentland): It is for the Royal Commission to decide when it is in a position to report on this subject. On the general question of the Royal Commission's progress, I would draw the attention of my hon. Friend to the recent statement issued by the Royal Commission which makes it clear that it is well aware of the urgency of its task.
    Mr. Chapman: Is the Royal Commission seized of the importance of making this the subject of a separate and interim Report? Does my hon. Friend realise that there are tens of thousands of men smarting under a sense of grievance, and have been for a long time, that this fund apparently lets them down at the moment when they need it most?
    Mr. Pentland: I am, of course, aware of my hon. Friend's concern but, as he knows, the trades dispute disqualification for unemployment benefit goes deeply into the field of industrial relations and involves a number of trade union principles which are bound up with many of the considerations and problems which the Commission is now considering. I assure my hon. Friend that by virtue of this fact alone this is a serious obstacle in the way of making an interim Report, but the Commission is seized of the urgency of this task and its members are diligently applying their minds to it.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. We are moving a little slowly. It may be because of the sunny weather.

    Trichlorethylene
    Dame Joan Vickersasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she will classify trichlorethylene
    1212
    as dangerous to health in order to establish another industrial disease so that victims of the fumes created shall be entitled to industrial injury benefit and to compensation if unable to continue their normal work.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Harold Davies): Control of the use in factories of substances which are dangerous to health is for my right hon. Friend, the Minister of Labour. On the question of the cover given by the Industrial Injuries Act my right hon. Friend is satisfied that poisoning by trichlorethylene at work is already adequately covered by the accident provisions of the industrial injuries scheme.
    Dame Joan Vickers: May I ask the hon. Gentleman to look into this question again because, as he knows, I have taken up a case with him in regard to a decision where a person was not able to get any compensation after suffering from this type of poisoning?
    Mr. Davies: Certainly I would look at anything which the hon. Lady asked me to look at again. The hon. Lady's constituent has already appealed to the medical appeal tribunal and I should like to wait for its decision before I give any answer in depth.

    Sickness Benefit
    Sir C. Osborneasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she is aware that a Cleethorpes charlady, who works 12 hours a week, and for whom a stamp of 11s. 10d. per week has been paid for years by her employer, was recently taken ill and was told she could not claim sickness benefit; if she will look at this type of case and consider what alterations can be made to the regulations to enable either the injured to claim sickness benefit, or the employer to pay less for his weekly stamp; and if she will make a statement.
    Mr. Pentland: I am aware of this case. I see no reason why married women who opt out of paying contributions should expect to receive the benefits which flow from them. No proposal to reduce the employer's contribution for part-time workers has in the past been found which would not be either undesirable in the interests of the insured

    1213
    population in general, or unworkable. But the problem is being borne in mind in the current general review of the social security arrangements.
    Sir C. Osborne: I am much obliged for that consideration, but does not the Parliamentary Secretary think it unfair to the employer to make him pay 11s. 4d. a week to cover a risk which he could get covered outside for l0s a year? Is it not unfortunate to drive these part-time women workers on to Public Assistance when they are able to do a little part-time work?
    Mr. Pentland: We are aware of the problem, of course; the contributory system and everything else will be carefully considered in the major review.
    Mr. O'Malley: Has there been at any time an inquiry in my hon. Friend's Department to establish whether the necessity of paying the National Insurance contribution—which can be up to a quarter of the wage paid—discourages potential employers from offering employment, with particular reference to areas where there is a lack of employment prospects for women both on a full-time and a part-time basis?
    Mr. Pentland: I should need to have notice of that specific question, but I can assure my hon. Friend that all such aspects are being investigated in the major review.

    Family Allowances
    Sir C. Osborneasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she is aware that several Stallingborough scientists who worked temporarily in the United States of America and continued to pay Income Tax and National Insurance contributions, cannot now draw their normal family allowance until they have been resident in this country for a probationary period of several months; if she will have this Regulation altered; and if she will make a statement.
    Mr. Pentland: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply my right hon. Friend gave him on 22nd February.
    Sir C. Osborne: That was a most unsatisfactory reply. Why should the Government treat these young scientists like criminals and put them on probation for six months before they can draw the
    1214
    family benefit to which they are entitled? Is not this a bad way to treat young scientists, and does it not cause them to stay in America instead of returning here?
    Mr. Pentland: We have nothing to do——
    Sir C. Osborne: Oh yes, you have.
    Mr. Pentland:—with the decisions people take, scientists or anybody else, as to how long they reside in America. No part of the National Insurance contribution is allocated to family allowances. In the Government's view, it would not be practicable to attempt to link eligibility for family allowance to liability to pay United Kingdom Income Tax.
    Sir C. Osborne: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will try to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

    Unemployment Benefit (Married Women)
    Mr. Kelleyasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance if she is aware that when a married woman is discharged from her employment because she is unable to work overtime for compelling domestic reasons she is classed as having committed industrial misconduct; and if she will take steps, by legislation or otherwise, to have this altered.
    Mr. Pentland: Any question of disqualification for unemployment benefit must depend on the view taken by the independent statutory authorities of the way in which the statutory provisions apply in the particular facts of the case. If my hon. Friend has a specific case in mind and cares to let me have details I will look into it.
    Mr. Kelley: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware that the Ministry's representative at a recent tribunal in Doncaster gave enthusiastic support to this rather pernicious doctrine that a woman was denied unemployment benefit because she refused to deprive her husband of her companionship in order to have the employer's wishes gratified—[An HON. MEMBER: "Quite right, too."]—Is my hon. Friend aware that this is not likely to encourage women to enter industrial employment?
    Mr. Pentland: In view of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, I think it would be better if he lets me have written details of the case.

    Family Circumstances (Survey)
    Mr. Mappasked the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance whether she will arrange for a survey of the circumstances of families with a view to finding out more about their problems; and how many of them are actually living below the standard set by the National Assistance Board.
    Miss Herbison: Yes, Sir. I am arranging for some of my officers to visit in June a representative sample of about 2,750 families receiving family allowances. They will ask about the families' circumstances and I hope that when the answers have been analysed I shall have much useful information, in particular about how many are living below the standard to which my hon. Friend refers.
    Mr. Mapp: I am sure that both sides of the House, as well as many social workers, will welcome that announcement. Will the approach be widely drawn regionally, having regard to the imbalance of prosperity over the country? In particular, will the research have regard to very large families? Finally, how long will it take? We ought to be applying the remedy, rather than conducting research, by the time the autumn comes. May I press——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that supplementary question has gone on long enough.
    Miss Herbison: I can assure my hon. Friend that this work will be carried out as urgently as possible after the visits are made in June of this year. Families in which there are a large number of children will certainly be visited. The survey will be spread over the country.
    Sir K. Joseph: Is the Minister aware that we on this side of the House think that this is one of the most urgent social needs that the country faces? Is there not in her opinion enough information already available, particularly from social workers and from the Department of her right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, to enable some helpful actions to be taken during the summer months, even though perhaps
    1216
    the full Government policy must await the autumn?
    Miss Herbison: No; I am afraid that we have not got all the information that we need on which to base proper fundamental action. This is why we are treating this matter urgently.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH

    Hearing Aids (Batteries)
    Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Minister of Health what would be the approximate annual cost of supplying batteries for hearing aids to retirement pensioners and others requiring them, on National Health Service prescriptions, or in some other way.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Charles Loughlin): Batteries are available without charge to all users of National Health Service hearing aids.
    Mr. Allaun: Will my hon. Friend consider making the same service, which I appreciate, available through chemists' shops, where at present many pensioners are having to pay 1s. 10d. roughly every three weeks for batteries?
    Mr. Loughlin: We have more than 600 hearing aid centres and hospitals issuing batteries of this kind to National Health Service patients. There would be extreme difficulties in attempting to put batteries on prescriptions at present. My hon. Friend whispers "Why?". Obviously we do not want to impose additional burdens on the medical profession at present, because they are overworked. Many local voluntary organisations operate a system of exchanging batteries with issuing hospitals.

    Drugs
    Mr. Lomasasked the Minister of Health if he will set up a committee to inquire into the profits of firms supplying drugs to the National Health Service.
    The Minister of Health (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): This subject falls within the terms of reference of the Committee of Inquiry which the Government appointed last year to examine the relationship of the pharmaceutical industry with the National Health Service.
    Mr. Lomas: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the most recent example of profiteering, inasmuch as Messrs. Pfizer were producing a drug identical to one produced by I.C.I. but selling it at three times the price. Is this being considered by the Committee, or would my right hon. Friend consider asking the First Secretary of State to refer this matter to the National Board for Prices and Incomes?
    Mr. Robinson: No, Sir. I think this matter had better be left for the Committee which has been set up to examine this and related problems. I understand that the Committee has sent out a detailed financial questionnaire to pharmaceutical firms.
    Mr. Fisher: In order to put this matter into proper perspective, would the Minister confirm that in fact the price index for 1,200 major prescriptions of medicines actually declined by 4 per cent. per annum in 1962 and 1963 and rose by only 2 per cent. in the whole period between 1955 and 1965, although at the same time the prices of manufactured goods as a whole rose by 26 per cent.?
    Mr. Robinson: I should want notice before I could confirm or deny the figures quoted by the hon. Gentleman. It is a fact that we have been able very recently to negotiate some substantial reductions in drug prices through the voluntary price regulation scheme.

    Prescriptions
    Mr. Kenneth Lewisasked the Minister of Health whether the increase in the prescribing of drugs and the consequent increase in costs arises from more of the cheaper drugs being prescribed, or from a greater prescribing by doctors of more expensive drugs.
    Mr. K. Robinson: The increase in the number and cost of prescriptions has not been confined to cheap or expensive drugs, but is reflected in almost all therapeutic groups.
    Mr. Lewis: If the Minister can make that statement, cannot he give us a breakdown of the figures? Would he do it either in the form of a letter to me or in a list set out in the OFFICIAL REPORT? We cannot tell whether this extra £50 million is really justified until we see the breakdown.
    Mr. Robinson: First of all, may I point out that it is not an extra £50 million. Secondly, it is very difficult for me to say what are cheap and what are expensive drugs without any further definition. Of course, I should be glad to answer, as far as I am able, a further Question or a letter from the hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Lubbock: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the cost of prescriptions is bound to increase when many diseases which formerly received inpatient treatment in hospitals are now treated in the home, particularly mental illness? Have we not to accept this situation when discussing the question of increases in costs?
    Mr. Robinson: Certainly this is one of a number of factors which make up the complex reasons for the increase in the drugs bill. One factor obviously is that the population is increasing the whole time and, at an even faster rate, the proportion of old people, who make more than average demands on the National Health Service.

    Old People (Malnutrition)
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that many old people are suffering from malnutrition; and if he will now take steps to tackle this problem.
    Mr. Loughlin: Reports from the most recent surveys do not support this, but my right hon. Friend is having the evidence further examined.
    Mr. Hamilton: Does my hon. Friend not admit the authenticity of the evidence produced by the Food Education Society? Is it not the case that medical officers throughout the country are producing alarmingly extensive evidence of the existence of this problem among large numbers of our own people? What sense of urgency have the Government got in tackiing this problem?
    Mr. Loughlin: I am advised that certain of the assertions on which the allegations are based are not accepted by the majority of geriatricians. We are not complacent about the situation. This is why I say that my right hon. Friend is examining the evidence and that the whole of the information from

    1219
    the Food Education Society will be examined.
    Mr. Woodburn: Is my hon. Friend aware that in at least two places£in London, I think, and in Motherwell£investigation has shown that many people who are regarded as bed-ridden and incapable of moving have been able to return to normal life when they have got rid of malnutrition? Would the Department investigate this question still further?
    Mr. Loughlin: I can only repeat what I said. We have had two recent surveys—one in 1963 and one in 1965—which do not bear out what my right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) says.

    Food Shops (Dogs)
    Mr. Huntasked the Minister of Health whether he will now introduce legislation to ban dogs from all food shops.
    Mr. Loughlin: Regulations already require that food in shops should be kept out of reach of any risk of contamination, and my right hon. Friend does not at present think that it would be appropriate to legislate against one particular risk.
    Mr. Hunt: Is it not rather unreasonable to put the onus on shopkeepers in this way when, as the hon. Gentleman will know, many of them are reluctant to take tough action for fear of antagonising their dog-owning customers? Therefore, is it not time that traders were backed up by the full force of the law? Can the hon. Gentleman give any indication when legislation is envisaged?
    Mr. Loughlin: We do not want to take legislation on one particular risk. That is the reason that the words "at present" were used and emphasised in my answer. But there is a responsibility on shopkeepers to ensure that foodstuffs are kept free from contamination of any kind. Dogs are a risk of contamination and they ought to be kept out of shops.

    Disabled Persons (Two-seater Cars)
    Mr. Ness Edwardsasked the Minister of Health if he has concluded his inquiries into the provision of two-seater
    1220
    cars to victims of industrial accidents and persons suffering from paraplegia; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Loughlin: My right hon. Friend hopes to have completed his review of the provisions of vehicles for the disabled before the end of the year.
    Mr. Ness Edwards: Is not my hon. Friend aware that he promised us this last year? Is he not further aware that miners are having their conferences in the next few months and they will be anxious to hear what report he is going to make about this situation, as it is causing a great deal of apprehension in the valleys and is deterring recruitment to the mines?
    Mr. Loughlin: I do not think there is any question of making promises last year about this year. We have always made it clear that it would be about two years before this review could be undertaken in the light of the effects of the improvements that were initiated in 1964. I want to make it clear that we have not made any promise that there will be an extension in the provisions in relation to victims of industrial accidents.
    Mr. Ness Edwards: On a point of order. My hon. Friend should at least look at the correspondence in the Department. We were promised——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order.
    Mr. Braine: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that 20 years after the war it is increasingly difficult to defend a situation where preference is given to those whose locomotor disability arose from war service rather than from industrial accidents? Would he not agree that it is difficult to defend a situation in which a distinction is made between a locomotor disability and some other form of disability affecting mobilty. [Interruption.] I am entirely on the side of the right hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards.) Will the hon. Gentleman look into this again?
    Mr. Loughlin: I am rather surprised that the hon. Gentleman should suggest that we should depart from the traditional policy to which both sides of the House have subscribed, that there should be preferential treatment for war service pensioners. I can assure the hon. Gentleman

    1221
    that we are examining this matter in its entirety. We want to get it through as soon as we possibly can, and we shall.

    Clinics (Health Checks)
    Mr. Lomasasked the Minister of Health if he will give support to the establishment of clinics where health checks can be undertaken by the general public.
    Mr. Loughlin: Only for conditions which are reliably detectable at an early stage and for which there is an effective treatment.
    Mr. Lomas: Is not my hon. Friend aware of the experiment that was carried out in Rotherham where one out of every six of the population failed to pass the nine-part examination? Does he not consider that there is an urgent necessity here for an early-warning system of this kind to check the health of the community?
    Mr. Loughlin: We have to bear in mind that all the proposals that are advanced have to be fitted into the total amount of resources that we can apply to any particular service. As a general rule we are in favour of the early detection of most problems by the medical practitioner working in concert with the hospitals and local health authorities.
    Mr. O'Malley: In view of the established demand and value of the screenings set up at Salford and Rotherham, would my hon. Friend consider the possibility of the Ministry putting out a pamphlet to local authorities pointing out the value of this type of service?
    Mr. Loughlin: The value of this type of service is pretty well known throughout the country, but we will examine what my hon. Friend says.

    Retired General Practitioners (Pensions)
    Mr. Bryant Godman Irvineasked the Minister of Health on what grounds retired general practitioners were recently awarded a 2 per cent. increase in their pensions.
    Mr. K. Robinson: The Pensions (Increase) Act, 1965, provides for increases in pensions payable under the National Health Service Superannuation Scheme
    1222
    to those who retired on or before 1st April, 1964. The increases ranged from 2 per cent. to 16 per cent. according to the date of retirement.
    Mr. Godman Irvine: Could the Minister add a little to that Answer and help me to explain the position to my constituents, all of whom seem to have come in the 2 per cent. class?
    Mr. Robinson: I can only suggest that that is an odd coincidence. The 2 per cent. figure is applicable only to those whose pensions began between 1st April, 1963, and 1st April, 1964. I have no power to grant increases other than in accordance with these Acts.

  HOSPITALS

    Midwives (Sheffield)
    Mr. Wainwrightasked the Minister of Health how many midwives were employed in the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board's area at the latest available date; and how many vacancies now exist.
    Mr. Loughlin: 842 whole-time and 266 part-time at 30th September, 1965; 12 additional midwives would be needed in order to re-open all beds now closed, but for full manning the hospital authorities would like to recruit far more.
    Mr. Wainwright: Would my hon. Friend consider making it easier for State registered nurses to take the midwifery course, bearing in mind the need to maintain their salaries while taking that course? Secondly, may I ask whether there is any attempt to restrict the number of women going into hospitals to have their children there at present?
    Mr. Loughlin: I am sorry, but I did not quite hear the second part of that supplementary.
    Dame Irene Ward: The answer is "Yes".
    Sir J. Langford-Holt: Do I understand the hon. Gentleman——
    Mr. Wainwright: On a point of order.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will leave it to the Chair. I know what he is anxious about.
    Sir J. Langford-Holt: Do I understand the Parliamentary Secretary to say that

    1223
    it is not possible, seven months later, to tell the House how many midwives are employed in this area? Are not they paid?
    Mr. Loughlin: I never said anything of the sort.
    Mr. Wainwright: Will my hon. Friend answer the first part of my supplementary Question? In the second part I asked whether there were any restrictions which prevented women from having their children in hospitals.
    Mr. Loughlin: I do not know that there are any restrictions. Obviously, the problem of beds and staff is a restriction, but, apart from that, admission to a hospital is determined by clinical need or social need. Whilst hon. Members opposite may laugh at the idea that we have a restriction by virtue of beds and staff, it is not wholly our responsibility.

    Nursing Staff (Pay)
    Dame Irene Wardasked the Minister of Health whether he will give an assurance that in future money to pay nursing staff will not be reduced or frozen at short notice.
    Mr. K. Robinson: My Department has not reduced the sum it has allocated to any hospital authority. If at any time an authority is in danger of overspending it may need to act quickly to avert this, but I have encouraged hospital authorities to keep a continuous watch on the trend of expenditure, particularly expenditure on nurses' salaries, so that sudden changes may be avoided.
    Dame Irene Ward: But will not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is a matter which is concerning the nursing profession very much indeed, and is not he aware that the subject is under discussion by the professional associations for nursing, so that there must be something in it? His Answer is not very satisfactory.
    Mr. Robinson: I recognised that the phrase in the hon. Lady's Question was taken from a pamphlet published last Thursday by the King's Fund and the the Royal College of Nursing. I know that there is a good deal of concern in the nursing profession about this. There is also a measure of misunderstanding,
    1224
    which, I am sorry to say, the hon. Lady seems to share. The fact is that nursing expenditure increased very considerably in recent months, and difficulties arose in some areas because hospital authorities spent considerably more than they had budgeted for on nursing staff.

    Pinewood Hospital Buildings, Wokingham
    Mr. van Straubenzeeasked the Minister of Health when his Department vacated the Pinewood Hospital buildings at Wokingham; and when he expects to hand the buildings to Berkshire County Council for use in connection with East-hampstead Park College of Education.
    Mr. K. Robinson: The last patient left on 21st January but some buildings are still in use as a store. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is considering whether the property could meet a requirement he has in mind. I am unable, therefore, to indicate yet whether the property can be made available to the Berkshire County Council.
    Mr. van Straubenzee: I quite understand that the Minister is not the sole person responsible for the delay, but will he accept that he has a special responsibility to see that the delay in using these buildings does not extend beyond the three months it is at the moment? Will he take it that I am visiting the area on Saturday and I should like a decision by then?
    Mr. Robinson: At present the matter rests with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I am quite sure that he will take no unreasonable time in coming to a decision, but, obviously, until I am satisfied that the property is not needed for Crown purposes, I cannot authorise its disposal to someone else.

  MINISTRY OF LABOUR

    National Union of Seamen (Industrial Dispute)
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Minister of Labour if he will make a statement on his efforts to avert a strike by the, National Union of Seamen.
    The Minister of Labour (Mr. R. J. Gunter): I have seen representatives of the union and of the shipowners and I

    1225
    am keeping in close touch with developments. It is, of course, my earnest wish, as I am sure it is that of the Whole House, that a satisfactory solution will be found to this dispute by which strike action will be avoided.

    Docks (Legislation)
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Minister of Labour what provisions for public ownership on an estuarial basis he proposes to make in his legislation to improve efficiency and industrial relations in the docks.
    Mr. Gunter: None, Sir.

  REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA (MR. MICHAEL DINGAKE)
  Mr. David Steelasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what representations are being made by Her Majesty's Government to the South African Government on behalf of Michael Dingake, a British protected citizen, who has been illegally deported from Rhodesia to South Africa.
  The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mrs. Eirene White): As soon as we heard about this case, Her Majesty's embassy in Cape Town was instructed to ask the South African Government the reason for the detention of Mr. Dingake. Further representations have subsequently been made at a high level to the South African Department of External Affairs.
  Mr. Steel: Have the protests been made on the basis that this person was deported from Rhodesia to South Africa instead of to his own territory of Bechuanaland, or have they been concerned merely with his present trial in South Africa?
  Mrs. White: The difficulty about the deportation is that at the time when it took place it was believed, in perfectly good faith, that Mr. Dingake was a South African citizen, and only subsequently was it confirmed that he is a citizen of Bechuanaland.

  ANGLO-ARGENTINE TRAMWAYS
  Sir W. Teelingasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of his discussions with the Argentine Foreign
  1226
  Minister when in Buenos Aires concerning the settlement of the Anglo-Argentine Tramways claims, what progress has been made in this matter; and if he will make further representations.
  The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Walter Padley): Negotiations between the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company and the Argentine Government for a settlement of the company's claim are still proceeding in Buenos Aires. I am watching the situation closely.
  Sir W. Teeling: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that it is over a quarter of a century now since the shareholders ever got anything out of this concern, and, in the meantime, the Supreme Court in Argentina has said, within the last six months, that they are absolutely in their rights? Will he assure the House that he will fight for the British subjects who want this money?
  Mr. Padley: Certainly, Her Majesty's Government will continue to give the company all appropriate support.

  RUMANIAN AND HUNGARIAN BONDED DEBTS
  Sir W. Teelingasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the present progress of the negotiations for the settlement of the Rumanian and the Hungarian bonded debts.
  Mr. Padley: Rumanian sterling bonded debt was discussed in the framework of the Anglo-Rumanian financial negotiations which opened in London last month. There is now to be a short pause in these discussions.
  On Hungarian bonded debt I have nothing to add to my reply of 21st February.
  Sir W. Teeling: Why is there this short pause?
  Mr. Padley: So that the parties to the dispute may consider their position.

  DIPLOMATIC SERVICE (EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN)
  35. Dame Joan Vickersasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will remove the limitations placed

  1227
  on the employment of women in his Department and give them the right to apply for all appointments on the same basis as men.
  Mrs. White: Appointments to the Diplomatic Service are made through open competitions, under the auspices of the Civil Service Commission, in which men and women compete on equal terms. There are no general limitations on women. The only appointments reserved for men are in the Security Guard Branch, for which women would not normally apply.
  Dame Joan Vickers: I congratulate the hon. Lady on her appointment to the Foreign Office. Can she tell me how many women have held appointments in higher grades is her Department?
  Mrs. White: In the Diplomatic Service as a whole about 30 per cent. of appointments are held by women, but in the administrative grade there are only 27, which is about 2·4 per cent. of the total.

  GERMANY AND POLAND (FRONTIER)
  Mr. Brooksasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government are now prepared to recognise the Oder-Neisse frontier as the de jure boundary between Germany and Poland.
  Mr. Padley: Our position, as has been made clear on a number of occasions in this House, is that the final determination of the frontier between Germany and Poland cannot be formalised until there is a peace treaty.
  Mr. Brooks: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern for historical consistency, but will he agree that the second millennium of the Polish people deserves a better fate than the incessant frontier changes which have characterised the first 1,000 years of their history?
  Mr. Padley: I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend, but the truth is that this cannot be determined until there is a German peace treaty.
  Sir C. Osborne: When does the Minister expect a peace treaty, and what is he doing to help to bring one about?
  Mr. Padley: Through normal diplomatic channels and meetings between Foreign Secretaries we are seeking the peaceful reunification of Germany, when the question of the Polish frontier can be settled.
  Mr. Shinwell: If the present position cannot be formalised, may we have an assurance from my hon. Friend that there will be no disturbance of the present situation?
  Mr. Padley: As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said on 6th December, when the question of the frontier between Germany and Poland comes finally to be settled, naturally the views of the present inhabitants of these disputed territories will be a most important factor.
  Mr. Michael Foot: Will my hon. Friend represent to the Government that they should not stand on protocol in this matter and that it causes great distress to people in Poland that the suggestion should be made that this matter is still open to any decision? Everyone knows that the frontier is settled, so why cannot the British Government make the same declaration as was made, say, by the Government of France? Why must we stick to old-fashioned protocol in such matters as this?
  Mr. Padley: It is not for me to define or defend the French attitude, but it is a fact that the French Government signed the Bonn Convention of 1954 and the tripartite statement of 26th June, 1964, and those are still obligations of Her Majesty's Government.

  U.S.S.R. (CULTURAL EXCHANGES)
  Mr. Peytonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if, in view of the continued imprisonment of Mr. Gerald Brooke, he will reconsider the advisability of cultural exchanges with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
  Mrs. White: I have nothing to add to the replies which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary gave on 26th April to the hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher).
  Mr. Peyton: Does the hon. Lady realise that the weak-kneed and,

  1229
  apparently, defeatist answers given by her right hon. Friend on that occasion gave rise to widespread dismay and the feeling that the Government are not really interested in pressing this case, and will she convey to her right hon. Friend the specific request that he approach the Russians and point out that continuation of this cruel sentence, on the most flimsy ground, is no good basis for cultural or any other friendly relations?
  Mrs. White: We are, of course, fully aware of, and we share, the feeling of hon. Members in all parts of the House that the sentence on Mr. Brooke was unjustifiably severe, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that, during the past year, we have succeeded in obtaining treatment for Mr. Brooke a great deal better than that generally accorded to prisoners in Soviet confinement.
  Mr. Dalyell: In spite of the unsatisfactory position as regards Mr. Brooke, will my hon. Friend confirm that it would he a step in the wrong direction if the implication of this Question were to be accepted?
  Mrs. White: I agree that it is at least possible that, if we took the kind of action suggested in the Question, there might be a general deterioration in our relations with the Soviet Union, and the Russians might be even less willing to heed our representations about Mr. Brooke.
  Mr. Lubbock: What steps has the hon. Lady taken to ensure that Mr. Brooke has reasonably adequate medical attention?
  Mrs. White: Representations have been made through our consular service in Moscow.
  Mr. Peyton: In view of the lamentably inadequate nature of the reply——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. In the conventional way.
  Mr. Peyton: As you will, Mr. Speaker. I beg to give notice that, in view of the unsatisfactory nature of that answer, I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

  BRITISH GUIANA (UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION)
  Mrs. Knightasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why Great
  1230
  Britain abstained from voting on the resolution on British Guiana, passed in the United Nations on 10th December, 1965, which requested that the state of emergency be ended and political prisoners released.
  Mrs. White: The United Kingdom abstained because, while there was much in the resolution which we welcomed, one of its paragraphs was out of date, and another—that to which the hon. Member refers—related to matters which were constitutionally the responsibility of British Guiana Ministers.
  Mrs. Knight: Is the Minister aware that living in my constituency are four dependent relatives of a Briton detained in British Guiana since June, 1965? Would she please note that Britain's abstention on this resolution, and misunderstanding perhaps about it, has led to widespread recriminations?
  Mrs. White: If the hon. Lady would care to see me about it, I should be very happy to explain the position about the abstention, which is as I have explained in my reply to her original Question.

  SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE
  Dame Irene Wardasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in implementation of the plan to write an official history of Special Operations Executive operations in each European country, following the recent publication on France, when he proposes to authorise the commencement of a book on operations in another country.
  Mrs. White: As the hon. Lady is aware, the history of S.O.E.'s activities in France has only just been published. There is no immediate intention of publishing histories of its activities in other European countries.
  Dame Irene Ward: In view of the fact that Mr. Foot has already been asked whether he would like to continue the plan which was originally established when Mr. Macmillan acted in this matter, does it not seem a little odd—as he has refused for reasons of his own—that we still cannot go forward with the original plan? Is the hon. Lady aware that it

  1231
  would be a very good moment to start a history of the resistance in Norway, which was particularly brilliant and helpful to this country?
  Mrs. White: With great respect, the hon. Lady is mistaken in suggesting——
  Dame Irene Ward: I have stated what I have been told.
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mrs. White: She is mistaken in suggesting that there was any plan to take this matter country by country. I think that it would be better for us to see the reactions of serious historians to the recent publication before any further decision is reached.

  PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS

    Abingdon Street Garden (Footpath)
    Mr. Robert Cookeasked the Minister of Public Building and Works whether he will improve the drainage of the footpath which crosses the Abingdon Street garden.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Building and Works (Mr. James Boyden): The drainage gullies were recently examined and were found to be partially blocked. They have now been cleared and this should remedy the trouble.
    Mr. Cooke: The Minister should bear in mind that he will ignore the drains at his peril. Will he bear in mind that this has not worked since it was constructed by his predecessor, and will he make sure that the public are not inconvenienced in future?
    Mr. Boyden: I do not wish to get into trouble with the drains, but I can assure the hon. Member that every avenue will be explored.
    Mr. Mapp: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, may I ask for your advice? I accept that this Question is a Question which it is at least competent technically to ask, but is it not wasting the time of the House?
    Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the hon. Member will raise that point at the end of Questions.

  EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

    Boreham Church of England Primary School, Chelmsford
    Mr. St. John-Stevasasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will take action to remedy the overcrowding and other conditions at Boreham Church of England Primary School, Chelmsford.
    The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Goronwy Roberts): A new county primary school at Boreham providing 280 places has been included in the Essex authority's 1967-68 major building programme. This new school will absorb the pupils from Boreham Church of England Primary School, which is due for closure under the authority's development plan.
    Mr. St. John-Stevas: In view of the present primitive conditions at this school, which are seriously handicapping the education of a whole generation of children, will not the Minister take some temporary measures to alleviate the position? Will he not treat it as urgent and so alleviate the anxieties of many parents at Boreham?
    Mr. Roberts: My right hon. Friend is conscious of the poor physical conditions at the Church of England school concerned, and he has told the authority that he is ready to consider favourably any requests which it makes for an early start to the county school in the 1967-68 programme.

  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Television Advertising Films (Employment of Children)
    Mr. Hugh Jenkinsasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in view of the fact that he has found it impossible to draft regulations under the Children and Young Persons Act, 1963, without legalising the present illegal employment of children in television advertising films, if he will introduce suitable amendments to the Act designed to retain the illegality of the present unlawful employment of children.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Alice Bacon): A draft of the regulations was circulated to interested bodies

    1233
    in August 1965. Some of the replies have not yet been received and we are at present holding discussions with those whose comments we already have. I can make no statement about our final decisions until these discussions have been completed.
    Mr. Jenkins: Is it not the case that the Act permits the employment of children in this sphere? Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no good reason why the employment of children, which is generally forbidden, should be allowed here?
    Miss Bacon: Yes. One of the difficulties is differentiating between films in which children appear for television advertisements and films for other purposes, which might be for similar commercial purposes. As my hon. Friend knows, while Equity, the organisation with which he is associated, has criticised the regulations, it has said that it is not opposed to the employment of children under 13 in television and films under proper protection. But there is this difficulty, as he knows, of differentiating between films for ordinary purposes and films for television advertisements.

  NATIONAL FINANCE

    British Forces, Germany (Foreign Exchange Cost)
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his latest estimate of German off-set payments against the foreign exchange cost of British forces in Germany in and in respect of the two-year period ending 31st March, 1966.
    The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Diamond): £116 million.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has made to the Federal German Government regarding the shortfall in fulfilment of the Anglo-German Agreement on German purchases to offset the foreign exchange costs of British forces in Germany during the two-year period to 31st March, 1966; and, in view of the anticipated rise in the foreign exchange cost of these forces during the
    1234
    current financial year, what representations he is making to the Federal German Government to avoid an additional deterioration on balance of payments account.
    Mr. Diamond: I do not expect any shortfall under the current Offset Agreement.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: How does the Chief Secretary reconcile that second reply with his Answer to me last week that only £24 million of the £42 million promised by the German Government last summer and supposed to be used up by the end of March has so far been used up? Surely this indicates a serious shortfall? Would he not agree that the forecast which he gave for expenditure next year suggests a balance of payments burden in 1966-67 which will be considerably heavier than it was in the previous period?
    Mr. Diamond: The forecast of expenditure, although somewhat heavier than in the previous period, is no heavier than that which it was estimated to be at the time the negotiations were undertaken and it was the basis on which the figures were arrived at.
    Mr. Shinwell: Does not my right hon. Friend recognise that we have not received satisfactory compensation from the West German Government for the services rendered by our Forces and that we have had this answer from respective Governments for the past 13 or 14 years?
    Mr. Diamond: I realise that this is a matter with which Members on all sides of the House are closely concerned and, indeed, the Government are closely concerned with it too.
    Mr. Lipton: Would not the simplest solution to the problem be the recall of British troops in Germany entirely?
    Mr. Diamond: It would be anything but simple.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter at the earliest possible opportunity.

  PALACE OF WESTMINSTER (MEALS FOR VISITORS)
  Mr. Robert Cookeasked the Lord President of the Council what facilities exist in the Palace of Westminster for meals for visitors.
  The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Herbert Bowden): Meals for visitors as the guests of hon. Members are provided by the Refreshment Department in the Strangers' Dining Room and Members' Cafeteria. Visitors to the galleries may obtain passes enabling them to use the Strangers' Cafeteria, and civil servants, Parliamentary Agents and others engaged on Parliamentary business are also allowed to use it.
  Mr. Cooke: Would the right hon. Gentleman address his mind to the large number of schoolchildren who visit this Palace in the summer, bringing their own food and some of them picnicking in Westminster Hall? Could he find somewhere else for them to eat their lunch?
  Mr. Bowden: I am aware of this problem and I have seen schoolchildren refreshing themselves. The Services Committee, when it is set up, might look at this matter.
  Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Would the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that it is not only schoolchildren with whom we are concerned but a very large number of visitors who wish to look at the Palace of Westminster during our Recesses? Would he take a rather more liberal attitude to this matter, because we are all anxious that the Palace of Westminster, of which we are very proud, should be seen as widely and conveniently as possible?
  Mr. Bowden: Yes, Sir. I should like the Services Committee to look at this matter. In fact, refreshments provided for visitors during Recesses might help us to get out of the red.
  Mr. Pannell: While supporting what has been said, may I ask whether the Services Committee could take some steps to get in touch with the Greater London Council and use the Londoners' meal service, which is very helpful to schoolchildren visiting this place and parties,
  1236
  as I have found from my experience over the last 15 years.
  Mr. Bowden: When the Services Committee is set up it might look at these arrangements.
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that he will not interfere with parties of schoolchildren who are quietly eating their sandwiches in Westminster Hall?
  Mr. Bowden: The strange position is that at the moment I have no right to interfere at all. As Leader of the House I have no interest in this, in a sense, until such time as the Services Committee is set up.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is it not sheer cruelty to children to bring them to a place like this, and cannot my right hon. Friend discourage it?
  Mr. William Hamilton: When will the Services Committee be set up? When it is set up, will it have responsibility for Westminster Hall?
  Mr. Bowden: I am not sure when it will be set up, but I hope that it will be set up very soon. I would need to check this, but as far as I remember Westminster Hall is jointly the responsibility of the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Services Committee.
  Mr. Hamilton: Get him out of it.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp) wished to raise a point of order.
Mr. Mapp: The point of order which I sought to raise earlier and which I now seek to raise concerns Question No. 41. I seek to raise this matter in relation to the importance of Question Time. I acknowledge that the Question is technically correct and that the Minister of Public Building and Works has responsibility for this little footpath in some part of London. But I ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker, because this is a matter of such extremely minute importance and in order oniv, technically, because the Minister of Public Building and Works happens to have authority in this field. I ask whether a subject of this kind should not be ventilated through correspondence

1237
with the Minister and that the decision should be allowed to rest. Possibly a little guidance, or maybe a kind word from you, Mr. Speaker. would indicate to all of us that there is a time and an opportunity for all things and also a time and opportunity when issues of this kind should not be raised.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has addressed a point of order to me which is not really a point of order at all. It would be impossible for Mr. Speaker to hope that kind words and guidance from him could have any effect on his 629 colleagues. We can rule only on Order. The Table can rule only on Order. Judgment, discretion and the magnitude or the triviality of a Question is a matter for the hon. Member himself. But I am certain that the House will note the observation which the hon. Member for Oldham, East made.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Hector Hughes: On a point of order.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The fact that the hon. and learned Member seeks to raise a point of order does not mean that he is called until in fact I call him. Mr. Gordon Campbell.
Mr. G. Campbell: On a point of order. May I respectfully congratulate you, Mr. Speaker on the timing of Questions today which has resulted in every single oral Question being taken.
Mr. Hector Hughes: On a point of order. I wish to raise a point of order following a point or order raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp) of a slightly different character but relevant to the same line of thought. I refer to Question No. 49. [Laughter.] My mathematics are astray. It was question No. 47 concerning meals for visitors. I venture to seek your guidance on whether that is not a matter on which the hon. Member—the same hon. Member, the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke)—could have got his information in other ways.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that we are not going to start using the valuable time of the House for pursuing inquests into the kind of Question which has appeared on the Order Paper. If Ques-
1238
tions are in order, they are accepted. If they were not in order, they would not be on the Order Paper.

ZAMBIA AND RHODESIA
Mr. Paget: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9 to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely,
A raid launched from Zambia across the Zambesi into Her Majesty's Colony of Rhodesia.
That it is definite is, I think, clear. That it is urgent and important is, in my submission, also clear. So far the conflict with Rhodesia has been an economic conflict. At this point a fundamental change in the circumstances has occurred—an organised raid, led by men trained in China and coming from Zambia, has invaded Rhodesia, resulting in a considerable battle. That resort to violence and invasion has incalcuable consequences—that the Rhodesians may have to cross the Zambesi in order to patrol and protect their frontier, and that there is great danger to people from a compaign of massacre and murder in Rhodesia and attempts to terrorise the African population so as to break down the system of Government.
We have seen this occur before and, in precedent, I would ask you to refer to the Adjournment debate granted by your predecessor on 31st March, 1953. The occasion was the Uplands massacre in Kenya. At that point sporadic crime had been occurring in Kenya within the Mau Mau movement, but at Uplands, near Nairobi, there occurred for the first time a heavily organised raid. At that time, I put it to the House in these words:
"… the attack … is a quite large-scale military operation and involves a new situation. …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st March, 1953; Vol. 513, c. 1037.]
It was on such submission that your predecessor granted leave to move the Adjournment under Standing Order No. 9.
In my submission, that precedent covers the present situation. Here we have a turn from economics to violence, a new situation, dangerous and important and requiring urgent discussion both as to action in Zambia, where we have troops and where we are supporting the

1239
economy, and as to action at the United Nations before which, for the first time, there is a genuine threat to the peace.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely,
A raid launched from Zambia across the Zambesi into Her Majesty's Colony of Rhodesia.
I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for intimating to me earlier today that he proposed to attempt to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9, and I assure him that I have read very carefully the precedent of my predecessor to which he referred.
May I say, first, to new Members exactly what is happening at the moment? Mr. Speaker is not deciding whether the matter which the hon. and learned Gentleman seeks to raise is important. No hon. Member would seek to raise anything under Standing Order No. 9 unless he thought the matter was grave or important or serious in some way. What the hon. and learned Gentleman is asking Mr. Speaker to do is to use his powers under Standing Order No. 9, because certain events seem to the hon. and learned Gentleman to fall within the terms of that Standing Order, to suspend part of the day's business of the House in order that what he seeks to raise may be discussed. That is what happens whenever an hon. Member seeks to raise a matter under Standing Order No. 9.
I have given very serious consideration both to the points that the hon. and learned Gentleman raised with me this morning and to the precedent that he mentioned. I am bound in this House, in dealing with such requests for leave, by a whole series of precedents stretching over the years. The precedent he quoted does not change the Ruling that I am now going to give.
However serious the matters may be to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred, the House will appreciate that
1240
Standing Order No. 9 cannot be applied except in the case where, first, there is full information on the facts and, secondly, where the administrative responsibility of Her Majesty's Government is directly involved. In the present case, it does not appear that all the facts are available to us or to be clear where the administrative responsibility lies. I am afraid, therefore, that in these circumstances I cannot accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's application for leave to move the Adjournment of the House.
Mr. Paget: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Since, I understand, you ruled on the ground that the full information is not available, may I take it that there will still be a first opportunity when the full information becomes available?
Mr. Speaker: I thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman might say that. I cannot commit myself ahead on any decision I will make on an application for leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9. If the hon. and learned Gentleman felt that he wished to make it for some other reason later I would have to consider it. I refuse to byself ahead on Standing Order No.would be a most dangerous pre
Mr. Biggs-Davison urther to that point of order, Mr. Spe r. Perhaps I am wrong, but did I understand you to say that there is some doubt as to where the responsibility in the matter lies? Is there some doubt as to where the responsibility for the protection of the territory of Rhodesia now lies?
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) has roughly paraphrased what I said. He must not question my Ruling on the Standing Order.
Mr. Biggs-Davison: Further to that point of Mr. Speaker. I was not questioning your I was asking for elucidation. I did not understand it.
Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman refers to what I have said he will see that he has roughly paraphrased what I said.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  BUILDING CONTROL BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.41 p.m.
  The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. Reginald Prentice): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  Hon. Members who served in the last Parliament will be familiar with this Bill. Indeed, some of them were more familiar with it than I was, because I am in the position today of making what amounts to my maiden speech as Minister of Public Building and Works. I hasten to assure right hon. and hon. Members opposite that I do not claim any indulgence on that account, partly because the matter which we are discussing and my own speech will in some respects be controversial and in that sense, therefore, I shall find myself contravening the traditions of a maiden speech. But there is at least one parallel with a maiden speech proper that I wish to observe—that is to be relatively brief.
  I want to be brief, partly because it is a good habit for Ministers to be brief, and partly because the proceedings on the Bill are due to finish at a comparatively early hour and many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate. For these reasons, I want to speak on what seem to me to be the main issues of principle between the two sides of the House and not to go too much into what might generally be regarded as Committee points.
  The purpose of the Bill is to provide permanent machinery for the control of privately sponsored building projects of a value of £100,000 or more. It therefore affects only a part of the building industry. According to a recent figure, about £180 million a year—about 7 per cent. of all new starts in building and indeed, in all parts of construction defined in the Bill—will be affected.
  Our purpose is to lay down a rate at which starts can be made in this sector of construction and to use that power, alongside those already exercised by the Government in the public sector, to correlate demand and capacity and to ensure that priority is given to projects of relatively large social value.
  1242
  The case for this ought to be considered in the main by looking forward, but I understand, from reading the proceedings of the Bill in the last Parliament, that quite naturally much of the discussion was concerned with the situation that existed in July 1965, when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced measures to deal with the economic situation, and with the situation of the construction industry in 1965 and 1966. Clearly, this will be part of the framework within which we shall be discussing the Bill this time.
  But the point to which the House should direct its attention is that we are concerned here with a permanent piece of machinery and one that will affect the well-being of the construction industry as a whole and, therefore, the well-being of the economy in the years ahead. Looking back to July 1965, it would be difficult in retrospect for anyone to argue against the proposition that, at the time, the country had an over-heated construction industry within an over-heated economy and that it was essential for the Government to take some measures to restrain pressure of demand.
  Equally, I think it would be difficult for people to argue—although I am prepared to listen with interest to what is said in Committee—that in taking measures to restrain demand the Government should have confined them to construction in the public sector. I do not see that anyone can make a defensible case for saying that the economic situation required the Government then to defer university building, road building etc. but not to do anything about holiday camps or restaurants. I do not believe that any kind of presentable case could be made for saying that the private sector should not have been included in the restrictive measures taken.
  We need to look forward and, in doing so, the House should have some regard to the time scale of what we are doing. In particular, we are not discussing the state of the construction industry now. Any decision taken now and any taken in the months ahead when the Bill becomes law will really be affecting the pressure on the construction industry in 1967 and 1968. It is this forward looking view that is really relevant to the question of whether the Bill should have its Second reading.

  1243
  We can draw a lesson from July 1965 and a similar lesson from occasions under Conservative Governments who found it necessary to slam on the brakes on the construction industry and the economy generally at times of economic difficulty.
  We have to face the fact that in the post-war period Governments of all parties have found it necessary to exercise a measure of control over construction activity. In most of the situations in which this has been done, including that of last year, the exercise of that control has been by a blunt instrument, or has been arbitrary or perhaps unfair, and it has been felt to be unfair by those in the construction industry who have said that they always take the brunt of an economic crisis to a greater extent than others. It was not the best kind of control for that reason.
  To paraphrase what I said a few minutes ago, when a measure is taken suddenly to prevent new projects from starting, it has an effect not only on the immediate future, but on one year and two years ahead. In other words, it controls the level of demand at a later period when the economic situation might have changed altogether. That is why that kind of measure was unsatisfactory, and that is why the Government need powers of a permanent and more sophisticated kind. That is the essential issue which the House has to decide this afternoon. If hon. Members opposite do not agree, I put it to them that when their party was in power they found it necessary to slam on the brakes and use blunt instruments from time to time when those instruments were not the most effective means. Part of the case against what they did and against what we were forced to do last July is the case for the Bill.
  The kind of powers which the Government need to have in this respect should have three main characteristics. First, in addition to the powers over the public sector, which already exist in many different ways, there should be powers over the private sector. I do not know whether hon. Members opposite accept that proposition, but if not I should like to hear their arguments against it. I can only say that if there are to be powers to control school building in the public sector, there should be powers to control projects at least as large in the private
  1244
  sector. There are powers relating to the level of housing and hospital building, and similarly there should be powers relating to holiday camps, restaurants, bingo halls, and so on. This is a proposition which it is difficult for the Opposition to counter.
  Secondly, the powers should be reasonably long-term, because, as I have explained, starts in construction in a particular year affect the following year and the year after. Therefore, the way in which the Government operate these powers should be related to the forecasts of the progress in demand and the pressures on the industry in the following year and the year afterwards. Our aim, therefore, has to be as far as possible to ensure that the industry is not subject either to under-employment or overheating, but that there is a framework within which controlled expansion related to the growth of efficiency in the industry can take place.
  Thirdly, the powers which the Government possess ought to enable us to discriminate both between different types of construction and different areas of the country, so that we can operate a different kind of policy in an area subject to local unemployment from that in another area where there is over-full employment and overcrowding.
  In other words, what is needed is a sophisticated discriminatory system which can operate in time and which therefore makes it less likely for any Government in the future to need to operate the kind of control which is applied in a hurry by slamming on the brakes and preventing development from taking place. It is against that background that I want to describe what is in the Bill. I shall do so briefly, because I have no wish to detain the House too long.
  In Clause 1 there is the main provision which makes it unlawful to carry out work in construction or alteration of buildings or fixed work of construction and civil engineering unless that work has been licensed, or comes within one of the categories exempted in later Clauses. In Clauses 2 to 7 there is a list of exemptions of which the more important are work costing under £100,000, work in progress or contracted for before 28th July, 1965, all housing work, all industrial building, all work in development districts and all work

  1245
  in the public sector. In other words, there is exemption for about 93 per cent. of current starts in construction, leaving about 7 per cent. remaining, although within the 93 per cent. a great deal is already subject to public control in one form or another.
  Clause 8 gives the Minister power to vary the scope of the control. Generally speaking, any decision to extend control in any way would need an affirmative Resolution of Parliament, while any decision to relax it would need only the negative procedure. Two very important aspects are entrenched within the Bill and cannot be altered by regulation. The Bill cannot apply to housing and cannot apply to projects of less than £50,000 in value, so that variations downwards can extend only that far.
  Clause 9 deals with enforcement and related matters. Here I should like to take the opportunity to repeat what was said by my predecessor during one of the stages of the Bill in the last Parliament. We regard this aspect of the Bill, and particularly the powers of entry, as being matters to be used only in the last resort. Our approach to the Bill is that the penal sanctions have to be included, but we expect them to be used only in very exceptional circumstances. It is relevant to that to say that ever since last July a system of authorisations has been operating between the Ministry and the industry very well and, on the whole, with the co-operation of everyone in the industry. There have been very few exceptions to this, and I take this opportunity of paying tribute to those in the industry who have co-operated in this way.
  In the best traditions of the House, a number of Amendments were made to the last Bill in Committee, Amendments to which hon. Members from both sides contributed. While some were made in Committee, others were put down as a result of discussion in Committee for what would have been the Report stage. By and large, I have aimed to preserve these Amendments and I have no wish to interfere with those arranged after joint discussion and agreement between the two sides in the last Parliament.
  Inevitably, one Amendment was made in Committee which I feel bound to reverse. That deleted the reference to alterations in Clause 1. Clearly, it is absolutely logical that if the Bill is to
  1246
  apply to new construction, it should equally apply to alterations. Alterations can use up resources on a very big scale, in the same way as new construction, and they may be less desirable. In certain circumstances, someone refused a licence to set up a new building might instead make alterations to an old one, costing just as much but being far less desirable from the planning or aesthetic point of view. This is therefore a logical Amendment. Whether hon. Members opposite will accept it as such, I do not know. They are always logical in these matters and they ought to see the logic of this case.
  I turn to what has been one of the most difficult and controversial aspects of the whole argument, the subject of retrospection. I reiterate to the House what was said towards the end of the last Parliament by my predecessor and the Leader of the House about the way in which this operates. I say straight away that I agree completely with what they said about this matter, but I would like to deal with the argument about it. This has not only engaged hon. Members but been the subject of editorials in The Times and other comment.
  When the Bill becomes law in, say, a few weeks' time, it will then be unlawful to proceed with any project within the scope of the Bill which has not been licensed. As was explained in the last Parliament, no penal sanctions apply to actions taken before the date on which the Bill becomes law. I should like to make it clear that we are dealing with the status of what one might call overlapping projects—projects started between 28th July, 1965, and the date on which the Bill becomes law, and which are not then completed.
  If a project of that kind is within the definitions of the Bill and it is unlicensed, then it will be unlawful to proceed with work upon it after the Bill becomes law. For that purpose the whole value of the project counts, not merely the value of the work remaining to be carried out after the date upon which the Bill becomes law.
  Mr. Eric Lubbock(Orpington): Can the right hon. Gentleman explain something which has been puzzling me? Supposing one embarked upon a project, for which the estimated cost was £98,000,

  1247
  and included in the contract was an escalation clause allowing the contractor to claim more because of wage increases or material cost increases. If the final cost came to more than £100,000, would the developer then have to apply for a licence or would he be exempt?
  Mr. Prentice: There is provision in the Bill for some reasonable note to be taken of increases. I will not follow the arithmetic of the hon. Member, but I will ask my hon. Friend to reply to him later if he has the time.
  Mr. A. P. Costain (Folkestone and Hythe): As the Minister is spelling this out so clearly, will he make it quite clear that this does not apply where a contract has been signed for the work to start before 28th July, 1965?
  Mr. Prentice: That is correct. All work for which the contract have been signed before 28th July, 1965, is exempt. What the Leader of the House was saying before Dissolution was simply that the Bill was retrospective in the sense that I have described. There is no retrospective penal sanction for work done before the Bill becomes law but there is the risk of a possible refusal of a licence. That is the risk, taken by someone in this position, of being left with a building partially completed. As a matter of common-sense, anyone who was in any doubt about this ought to take advantage of the arrangements made by my predecessor, by which advice could be obtained. As the House will recall, authorisations from my right hon. Friend, and more recently from myself, will count as a licence for this purpose.
  I would like to deal with the merits of the arguments raised. I quite take the point that this House has always been sensitive, and rightly so, about retrospective legislation. We ought to be clear what the argument is about. It is possible for hon. Members opposite to argue that there should not have been any restraint on construction in July 1965. It would be wrong to argue thus, but it could be argued. Hon. Members opposite could argue, and again it would be wrong, that this restraint should be confined to the public sector. But if the point is taken that there was a need
  1248
  for restraint, which had to apply to the privately-sponsored projects as well as to the public sector, then I do not see how the Government, last July, could have used any other instrument than that which they did, and say, "We intend to legislate and to make that legislation retrospective". That was the instrument they had to hand and I do not think that any viable alternative has been put forward in the arguments which have taken place about it.
  If we take the position since then, it could be argued that there is no need for permanent legislation. Again I think that this would be a wrong argument. If we are right in saying that we need permanent legislation then there has to be continuity. The worst thing possible for the construction industry would be to exercise restraint for a while then to relax, or abandon it, and then to reimpose it again, by Act of Parliament. If that is what hon. Members opposite think, then they would get no thanks from the construction industry.
  It would be very unfair to the majority in the industry who have co-operated with the Government on this, to give some kind of carte blanche to the small minority which has chosen not to cooperate and it would be quite unworkable, at this moment, to say that the Bill will only apply from the date it becomes law, because that would be an invitation for everyone to rush in to get contracts signed and work started in the weeks immediately ahead. There has been a very long period between last July, and whatever date in the next few weeks when the Bill becomes law. Several reasons and a series of circumstances, which are unlikely to be repeated, account for this.
  For one thing the economic crisis of last July, and the methods used to deal with it, occurred just before this House went into Recess and there was a period when it was not practicable to legislate. The period from the autumn onwards was very crowded, with a great deal of long overdue legislation. If I wanted to be controversial, and I do not, I would say that after 13 years of another sort of Government, there was an awful lot for us to do very quickly. The programme was crowded and became much more crowded with the Rhodesian crisis, and the need to pass the emergency

  1249
  legislation through Parliament at short notice.
  This situation was made more difficult by the small majority of the Government and then, a few weeks ago, we performed the patriotic duty of taking time off for a General Election in order to knock hell out of hon. Members opposite All of these things took an abnormally long time. It may be a legitimate comment to say that Parliament ought to be able, even despite circumstances of this sort, to legislate on public policy rather more quickly. This is perhaps a criticism of the way in which we do things in this House, and a reason for looking closely at proposals for Parliamentary reform, something the Government are anxious to do. Given the situation, and the circumstances which I have outlined. I feel no need to make any apology for the retrospective aspect of the Bill now before the House.
  I said earlier that I hoped that we would focus our attention upon the future effects of this proposal. I hope that this Parliament is going to be forward-looking in all that it does in the years ahead. The construction industry is faced with the need to expand production for its industrial and housing programme, and for other social programmes. It will have to expand its production at a considerable rate without any appreciable increase in manpower. It faces the need to be more efficient and to expand at a rate greater, on the whole, than the rest of the economy.
  It is entitled to look to the Government to make provisions which will provide a framework in which this steady growth can take place, without unreasonable interruption from ups and downs imposed by the Government. In the last few years it has certainly had to face a fluctuating period that has been bad for growth and efficiency. In 1963 the industry's order books went up by 10 per cent. and in 1964 by 15 per cent. There were certain political reasons behind these figures—the Election and so on. It became a very overheated industry. The interesting thing about last year is that despite the credit squeeze and the deferring measures, despite the beginning of restraint in the areas to which this Bill relates, output still went up.
  Mr. Geoffrey Rippon: Surely that is the point which the
  1250
  Minister has been making from the outset—that these controls and restrictions do not bite upon the construction industry or its programmes for a period of time. Therefore, there is no possibility of their having any real effect this year. The effects will come later, perhaps when one does not want them.
  Mr. Prentice: There were more short-term effects. There were certain short-term effects concerning the movement of Bank Rate and its effect on private housing and by deferment in the public sector. Demand was affected in 1965, although the right hon. Gentleman is right in saying that those policies will have other effects in 1966 and even in 1967. The point that I was making was that in 1965, when there was, compared with the previous year, a drop of 6 per cent. in demand for the reasons which I have given, there was a 2½ per cent. rise in output, which merely illustrates that the industry had gone through this overheated period and some short-term measures were needed. But what we want for the future of the industry is a steady increase in demand and an increase in output, with the two being kept in touch with each other.
  There would clearly be a danger in 1967 of overheating in the industry again if there were no power in the hands of the Government to exercise the kinds of control proposed in the Bill. The forecast is an increase of demand of about 5 per cent. in 1967 over 1966. Much of that, we hope, will be absorbed by extra efficiency, but there is need for a control to fall back on to make sure that the two things keep in step with each other.
  I submit that the Bill and the policies behind it are in the interests of the construction industry and of the economy. For these reasons, I commend it to the House.
  4.12 p.m.
  Mr. R. Chichester-Clark: May I begin by offering my congratulations to the Minister on what he called his maiden speech as Minister of Public Building and Works. He said that his speech would be non-controversial. I found it almost non-controversial because he made an excellent case for not having controls, certainly not permanent controls. None the less, the right hon. Gentleman's

  1251
  speech was charming and amiable, and we are grateful for it.
  We are dealing with a Bill which has had a very attenuated and unhappy history. It is still a bad Bill. I readily concede that it is better drafted and even improved in content, but that is because it incorporates so many of the Amendments which we on this side of the House put forward in Committee on the previous Bill. We conducted our business in that Committee "with some despatch" and we contributed towards making it a "better and tidier Bill"—not my words. but those of the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), to whom I pay tribute for his kindness and personal generosity towards me and other members of the Committee on almost every occasion.
  In Committee, the Government were, to say the least, somewhat accident-prone at one time. Their back-bench Members, drenched in the persuasive oratory from our side or overcome by mid-morning thirst, and, on one occasion, by a desire to visit Strasbourg, exemplifying a European urge not always obvious on the benches opposite——
  Mrs. Renée Short: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: I see that the hon. Lady notes that point—allowed some Amendments to be carried against the Government. There would probably have been rather more repercussions among hon. Members opposite had it not been for the admirable percipience—almost crystal ball percipience—of the Government Whip who resigned before the defeats occurred. Our Amendments, as the right hon. Gentleman said, have not been adopted in the Bill, although the proceedings in the Committee—modesty almost prevents me from saying this on behalf of my hon. Friends—were an example, as the magazine Building said, "of Parliament at its best."
  But we still have this bad Bill before us. The question which arises is: why do we have to have a Building Control Bill at all? By the way, it is not a question of there not being time for a Bill even in the early part of 1964 or in 1965, as the Minister suggested in his closing remarks. It was not lack of time which stopped the Bill coming forward. I sus-
  1252
  pect that it was because the then Minister, who took office in October, 1964, was not persuaded of the need or desirability of controls.
  Mr. Charles Pannell indicated dissent.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but between his taking office in October, 1964, and January, 1965, he twice told the industry that he foresaw no chance of the Government imposing further controls on the industry. At that time, he had an ally, Mr. Fred Catherwood, who was preaching the admirable gospel, "The Government do not want licensing". The Minister was with him on this. Licensing is coming and Mr. Catherwood is going. He deserves to go where he has gone. We are, however, stuck with this Bill.
  By 27th July, 1965, the Minister had spent his fight against control and, if I may use that rather fashionable but vulgar phrase, had rolled over on his back like a spaniel and had accepted that they were coming. On 27th July, 1965, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the controls. But no serious reason has been advanced for the need to introduce them. The right hon. Gentleman started this afternoon, and then I thought drew back, to claim that they had something to do with the shortage of materials. I should not have thought that that was the case, because the Government should blush with shame at the glut of bricks with which we are faced. Then he tried to claim—indeed to some extent he did claim—that it was to redirect the resources, and I shall seek later to explain why that view is not sustainable. The right hon. Gentleman can hardly claim that it was to damp down the building industry. After all, the Government want houses to be built rather than hotels—in fact, more building, not less. That claim is not tenable, in my view, either.
  Therefore, what is the reason for the Bill? The original reason was given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 27th July. He said that the Bill was part of the Government's measures to
  "reach our aim of eliminating the deficit in the course of next year and of maintaining the strength of sterling …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 27th July, 1965; Vol. 717, c. 228.]
  While that may or may not be the reason for introducing a control Bill, it is not

  1253
  a reason for introducing a permanent control Bill. That was why, on 8th December, I asked the Government why, if their crisis was temporary, there was a need for a permanent Measure, or whether the Government believed that their crisis was permanent. The right hon. Member for Leeds, West went away, as he is doing now, and for two months brooded on this question. He is going to find the answer now. After he had brooded, the Parliamentary Secretary hatched up an answer. When I heard the reply, it was so ludicrous that I am almost disposed to spare the hon. Gentleman the embarrassment of reminding him of it—almost but not quite.
  The occasion was the ordinary general meeting of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Many off-the-cuff remarks—and some of them perhaps prepared—are male by members of the Government at dinners, but on this occasion they were made at an ordinary general meeting on 7th February this year. The Parliamentary Secretary explained that:
  "if a time limit is imposed on the operation of this Bill, the Government will be deprived, once the time limit has expired, of a useful weapon to deal with the situation. Indeed, if it were to arise again there would be no alternative but to have recourse to retrospective legislation once again and this would surely be as unwelcome to the trade as it would be to my Government."
  That is fair enough. The Government's record of retrospection is bad enough already. But then the hon. Gentleman warmed to his task and we got the meat. He explained that
  "in another economic crisis, the measures which were appropriate to the 1965 crisis would probably not be exactly what was needed".
  That is a pretty important admission, and, in my submission, an excellent reason for not making the Bill permanent.
  But, as the hon. Gentleman said—and this is another of his gems—
  "The Government, in this Bill, is aiming at the anticipation of a crisis so that measures can be taken in good time to ensure that a really serious situation does not arise".
  The Government have dropped the pretence that the Bill was to deal with the July crisis which they had created, and we are now told that the purpose of the Bill is to deal with future crises which the Government expect to create. We have all heard of contingency planning, but that is really ridiculous! Even as
  1254
  contingency planning, it is absurd because the
  "present measures might be altogether inappropriate at a later date".
  That was what the Minister said.
  Now, I suppose, that is why we are getting this contingency planning—if contingency planning is the reason for the Bill—rushed through on the tail of that other useful Measure, the Outlawries Bill. Certainly, speed has not always characterised the handling of the Bill previously.
  I said earlier that the reason behind the Bill can hardly be the redirection of resources, and I maintain that now. When I spoke on the previous Second Reading, I pointed out to the Minister that his proposal would be unlikely to result in the building of a single new house. That is because the organisation and personnel for building houses and hotels are two completely different things. Housing is exempted from the Bill, but the crazy logic of what seems to be the Government's argument—and I heard echoes of it again this afternoon—is that while people cannot build an hotel or a bowling alley in certain places, they can build them in Liverpool or in Glasgow.
  The Bill almost propounds the extraordinary philosophy that if a builder wants to build a casino, he must build it in a place where there ought to be a house. This is a most extraordinary philosophy. How it helps the housing plight of some of the large cities which have a housing plight is difficult to understand. If a major firm is told that it may not build an hotel in Eastbourne, it does not follow that it will build houses instead, much less build them instead in Liverpool. But it may build a hotel there.
  Mr. Lubbock: Do not both sectors use plasterers and bricklayers? If an organisation is prevented from building an hotel in Eastbourne, will it not have to disgorge some of that scarce labour to other people who are willing to build houses elsewhere?
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: Yes, there could be a number of bricklayers involved, but this is a tiny part of the problem. I do not know whether the hon. Member has done any research into the kind of people that these larger firms use for the type of things that the Minister is trying to stop. I do not know whether he has looked at the question

  1255
  of structural steel erectors, reinforced concrete workers, marble masons, mosaic workers, terrazzo craftsmen and many other people. If the hon. Member has done his homework, I wish that he had come to the Committee on the last occasion, as he promised.
  Mr. Lubbock: I was not asked to come to the Committee on the Bill.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: I am certain that if the Liberal Party had asked to have a representative on the Committee, they would have got one. They promised that they were coming.
  Mr. Lubbock rose——
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: I must go on——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) knows the Parliamentary way to interrupt. He must practise it.
  Mr. Lubbock: The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) ought also to be aware that the Liberal Party is not invited to serve on a Committee unless it has 35 members.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: The trouble with the Liberal Party was, as usual, that on Second Reading they said something they did not mean. They told us that we would hear a lot from them in Committee.
  Mr. Lubbock: Will the hon. Member give way?
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: I am sorry, I must get on. The Bill does not mean that more houses will be built in Liverpool, but it may well mean that a firm which is frustrated by this piece of legislation will go and build an hotel there.
  As I said earlier, speed, which is a factor in the waning confidence of the industry, has not always characterised the passage of the Bill. In fact, it has been almost an example of stop-go in the way that it has been handled.
  On 19th November, 1965, the former Minister told an eagerly attentive gathering of quantity surveyors—and my report of what he said is headed
  "Minister's vigorous defence of building controls":
  "I know you would have liked more consultation but we are moving against time.
  1256
  Getting the Bill out quickly is vital and I hope it will put you all at rest."
  As I said in Standing Committee, I understand that the applause for that remark was rather less than deafening.
  Of course, the right hon. Gentleman was moving against time, and he was moving against rather more than time. He was moving against the massed cohorts of his own Cabinet, who scratched his Bill from the legislative race to allow the Royal Assent to be given to certain other Measures so that Ministers could come to the House day after day to publish their election addresses, as we saw only too well shortly before the Election. I remember a whole day being devoted to the White Paper on leasehold enfranchisement. It could well have been devoted to Report and Third Reading of the Bill. Then, the Minister would have had his Bill and one source of anxiety in the industry would in that way have been removed.
  Since then, the vital factor of confidence in the industry has not been helped by the rather unhappy statements which we were given on retrospection in the dying days of the last Parliament. The Minister referred to some of them today. The House will recall that all that we managed to extract from the Leader of the House, and it was given under pressure, was what the Minister told us this afternoon: that there would be no retrospective penal action.
  We have had, therefore, the spectacle of the Government trying to use powers which they did not possess, based on a Bill which did not exist, in a Parliament which had been dissolved. Today, we are left with the situation in which a builder who began and completed his work without authorisation before the Bill gets Royal Assent cannot be prosecuted, but that another builder who started after 28th July without authorisation and has not finished by the time of Royal Assent may have to desist from what he is doing. It does not matter how far advanced he might be. We may find, I suppose, that people who have incurred enormous expense are left with, perhaps, only a roofless monument to Ministerial folly.
  Incidentally, the Leader of the House told us when bailing out the right hon. Member for Leeds, West that the industry had broadly accepted the situation

  1257
  in which it found itself as a result of the right hon. Gentleman's statement and the kind of statement that he was going to make. He said that the Government's purpose was to give guidance. It was, therefore, rather surprising to find in the Contract Journal of 17th March—I found this only a few days ago—the rather acid statement that:
  "Not having seen the latest figures resulting from Mr. Bowden's private opinion poll of building industry feelings, the House would not challenge this remark."
  However, despite the absence of good cause, we are faced again with the Bill and the clumsy way in which it has been handled. Our charge has always been, just as the building industry's objection has always been, that we cannot view the Bill in isolation. It must be viewed along with the great nexus of controls which the Government have introduced. I need not enumerate them again this afternoon, because the Minister will have studied them recently.
  This extensive system of control, simultaneously with the cut-back of local authority mortgages and the severe famine in building society mortgages, has, however, hit private enterprise extremely hard, and no one can be surprised by that. It has hit the housing sector immediately, as the drop in completions and starts of homes for sale has shown all too clearly. Other sectors, as the Minister has said, are affected less directly and at a later stage. That is what is so sinister about it. They will be affected so much later that we cannot really tell what will happen.
  The former Minister showed that he understood that when he gave that unforgettable, unforgotten interview to the Builder of 20th November, 1964, because he said:
  "Controls of the sort which the Government seek to introduce now will not achieve their full effect until many months after their introduction."
  That was certainly noted by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), who was at that point not with us, when he wrote in the Building Industry News:
  "The full effects of the Government's savage restrictions on public and private construction work will not be felt immediately. The slowdown of the rate of public expenditure and the postponement of starting dates will certainly soon cause the sort of dislocation and
  1258
  delays that put up costs. But the measures will only really begin to bite hard when the work now in progress, or for which contracts were signed before 28th July, has been completed. Then the repercussions will be severe and will last for a very long time."
  On the former Second Reading, I deployed various statistics which sought to show the run-down in confidence in the building and construction industries. I recognise that statistics are rather dreary, but the House will appreciate that they are essential if one is to strip away the covering protection of Government propaganda and see what the situation really is.
  The N.F.B.T.E. state-of-trade inquiry reveals that the building industry is still slowing down. Those were the National Federation's words of 18th April. The replies to its questionnaire indicated that order books and work in hand had generally continued to decline. In fact, the majority of firms which replied contemplated doing less work in 1966 than in 1965. I need hardly say how important that statement is.
  The inquiry also found that the medium and small firms were basically the ones which were really being hit. I doubt whether that was ever the intention, but it is important for two reasons. Firstly, because it bears out what the Leader of the Opposition once called the Government's policy of "the survival of the fattest", and secondly, because it seems to me to be a classic example of the undesirable spread of effects of controls and restrictions far beyond the areas which they were intended to affect. The major purpose of this Bill is to control large firms which undertake large construction work not to start competing with smaller firms for smaller contracts. Of course, the little man is now suffering.
  In the first nine months of 1965 the industrial production figure went up two points. In 1963-64—I gave this figure last time—it rose by nine points. We did not have the figure for the last quarter of 1965. I wonder whether the Minister could give us the figure for the whole year when he winds up the debate. I said last time that the building industry expanded under a Conservative Government at a record pace and its production record was second to none. I wish the right hon. Gentleman would examine what I did say—I do not often ask people to do that—on 8th December,

  1259
  when I read out the statistics, and possibly he will be good enough to ask his hon. Friends to stop talking about all the wasted years. This is something we are very tired of hearing about. [An HON. MEMBER: "So are we."] If one looked at the figures one would not think them wasted years.
  I am afraid there is still a considerable lack of confidence in the building industry, and something must be done to put confidence back into the industry. I was glad to hear the other day that the right hon. Gentleman is to see the N.F.B.T.E. in the near future. I think he said that. Because unless something is done to put that confidence into the industry, he can forget all about the targets in the National Plan, and the national housing plan, modest though they are.
  Let us look at the figures. I have some here, and a new figure came out today. After allowing for price changes and seasonal factors, the total orders obtained in the last quarter of 1965 were 10 per cent. lower than those obtained in the third quarter. Orders obtained in 1965 were lower than those obtained in 1964, £2,912 million as compared with £2,993, or a fall of about 5 per cent. after required adjustments. The January figure was somewhat better, but the February one, which only came out today, was £12 million worse.
  That is the situation with which we are faced at the moment. Now there are certain new factors which have entered into the arena of diminished confidence. On Thursday we had the Minister of Housing bringing one of the Whitehall battles right to the surface. When he was asked, I understand, about the future of the N.B.A., his interesting reply was that this was a matter which embarrassed him considerably because he was still in dispute with his right hon. Friend the Minister who sits opposite to me at that Box today. So that the battle has come to the surface.
  But it is a matter which is worrying the industry very considerably. It is worried, too, by the possibility that the whole conception of the administration of the licensing arrangements machinery may be transferred to the Minister of Housing and Local Government. The industry's
  1260
  doubts about this arise from the somewhat vague statement in the Labour Party's manfesto which made reference to this possibility. The industry is very concerned about it, and, as I understand it, the industry's fears stem really more from an instinct about the Minister rather than about his Department.
  At the time of the Committee stage of the last Bill, I remember saying that we would be left to rely on the benevolence of the Minister—so much depended on administration that could not be set out in the Bill. I remember saying that good intentions are no substitute for clear legislation. We may find a different Department under an entirely different Minister in charge of these operations.
  Building, which I have quoted earlier today, on 15th April, said:
  "During the Committee stage of the Building Control Bill, the reintroduction of which is expected to be announced in the Queen's Speech, Mr. Pannell gave every possible assurance that he and his officials would handle the licensing system sensibly; that it would be a kind of fingertip control envisaged in a recent leading article in Building."
  It added, rather naughtily:
  "It is much more difficulty to imagine Mr. Crossman displaying such delicacy, precision and consideration. Already the Construction Industry Training Board is responsible to the Minister of Labour and the two little Neddies to Mr. George Brown's Department of Economic Affairs, so we trust that Mr. Prentice will stoutly resist a severe encroachment on the responsibilities of his Ministry."
  Of course, if I can help him in any way I shall be only too delighted to do so.
  Then there is a story about the N.B.A. It is also suggested in some quarters that the research and development work carried on under Sir Donald Gibson and also the Agreement Board may be transferred to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. Well, I know the industry would very much regret such a happening. It is thought, rightly or wrongly, that the Ministry of Public Building and Works is a somewhat non-political Ministry as set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, was extremely helpful to the industry, and the industry would not wish to see it stripped of its powers.
  There are certain points to which I would like an answer from the Minister. These are more detailed points. Firstly, in regard to the retrospective provisions,

  1261
  is there not still need for a clear statement—I do not know whether, on reflection, and after reading what the right hon. Gentleman said today that will seem a clear statement of the position—but a clear statement as to the position of the building owner, professional agents and the contractor who started work of a licenseable kind after 28th July, 1965? We know that there will be no legal sanction against them; but there is this point if the work is not completed: if they have taken legal advice and possibly been given wrong legal advice, will this help them, possibly, in their attempts to get licences from the Minister? Will it help them with their applications?
  Secondly, and this I regard as important, will the Minister produce, or consider producing, an annual report of what has been happening in the way of licensing and of the kind of licensing—of the type and whereabouts of licences—and will he consider producing what may be called a bulletin of licence—that is, if he is imposing conditions as to costs and types of materials and so on? This is the kind of thing which is needed as a guide to the industry and to people contemplating looking for licences.
  It might be thought, for instance, that the Minister was at some time or another trying in this way to promote industrial building. To be told this would be a guide to possible applicants, and it would save time and money from being wasted in planning work for which they were unlikely to get licences.
  The third point is this, will the Minister be prepared to discuss applications with applicants and tell them, possibly, that if they wish to vary their applications in some way or another—for instance, not using copper or some other material which may be in short supply or be particularly expensive at that time—then the licence may be granted? I think that this, again, would be a help to the industry, and it is a matter which should be considered.
  Fourthly, will he issue a plain man's guide to the provisions of the Act? Would he also consider including a guide on all the controls and on the interaction of one with another. That would be a considerable help.
  It appears from the new Clause 1(3) that licences are not transferable. I should like to know what the effect will
  1262
  be on the building owner who, being a company, has been taken over, or whose company is reorganised in some way or another. Does that mean that there may possibly be further delay in obtaining a licence or, indeed, in applying for a licence? Need there be delay there?
  Then it seems to me that in retaining the power under Clause 8(1, c) to bring laboratories and warehouses back into control is hardly in keeping with the times, or with the Prime Minister's one time Op-Art vision of "forging a new Britain in the white heat of the scientific revolution." And the Queen's Speech itself unmasks the remarkable fact that science is to go on. Perhaps these points could be looked at again. We shall return to them in Committee.
  This is a bad Bill. To say that it is not as bad as it was is no justification for us not voting against it tonight. We are told that it affects only 7 per cent. of the whole of the construction industry, and that that amount will be further whittled away when we come to pass legislation dealing with the development areas. There is no doubt that it is a smaller Bill than the last one, but the argument that it is only a small one is not an argument to condone what is really an illegitimate conception. We have here a Bill which is irrelevant to social needs, which is really an attempt by the Government to operate retrospectively a building licensing system without the prior consent of Parliament, and we must take this very seriously indeed. For this reason, and others which I have advanced, I have no hesitation in asking my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against the Bill tonight.
  4.40 p.m.
  Mr. W. S. Hilton: I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark). I was impressed by the long roll of organisations which he listed in support of his conclusions, including the N.F.B.T.E. The only sad fact about it is that he omitted to mention any support from the people who do the work in the construction industry, represented by the trade unions of this country, and I hope to remedy that defect during my speech.
  I hesitate to make a maiden speech on this subject because I feel so keenly

  1263
  about it, and I realise that there are certain traditions of the House which demand that a maiden speaker keeps within the bounds of, shall we say, respectability, and I realise that if I do not I shall be transgressing the fine reputation which my predecessor Percy Holman had in this House. During his 21 years here he earned a reputation for almost continual kindness and courtesy, and in paying him a tribute for those characteristics I like to think that this is not merely a token tribute, but something which I can say on behalf of the whole House to a man who diligently served it for more than 21 years.
  Percy Holman represented an area which I am proud to represent now, Bethnal Green and South Hackney, which is inhabited by what some misguided people call typical East-Enders. There is nothing typical about East-Enders. In this area, persecuted religious and political minorities from all over the world have found a warm and hospitable welcome which has been denied them in other parts of the country. There is, therefore, nothing typical about the generosity of character which I have found there. The tolerance to be found in the East End of London is something to be experienced.
  It was suggested to me that the greatest example of tolerance which the East-Enders of London had shown in the last century was to allow themselves to be represented in this House by a man with an accent like mine! My accent is misleading. I was born in Yorkshire, and I spent the first six years of my life there. Fortunately, or otherwise, I was the son of a skilled building craftsman who could obtain no work in Yorkshire and gradually drifted through the North until he managed to obtain a seasonal job in Scotland, and I obtained a permanent accent. I mention this not because I think the House is interested in my autobiography, or even that I am capable of writing it at this stage, but to show the criminal waste of building craftsmen at a time when the people of this country desperately needed homes, and when it was necessary to replace obsolete accommodation. This waste is something which, though not on the same scale, could be repeated unless we support the Bill tonight.
  1264
  Let me try to tell hon. Gentlemen opposite about the industry which we are discussing. Very often we hear people opposing any kind of Government planning or legislation for an industry because they say that the industry is well organised and co-ordinated and can control itself. The building industry lacks almost any crystallisation of capital and control, and this fact must be recognised. There are 70,000 individual employing agencies in the construction industry. This is bad enough, but we now have a number of what the unions term "pirates" in the industry, the labour-only sub-contractors, who employ about 4 men apiece. There are 50,000 of them in the country, which means that there are 120,000 employing agencies all competing with each other for labour.
  There is no elasticity of labour supply in the construction industry at this time, and although some people have said that last year was something of a recess for the industry, during most of the year there was a net deficit of craftsmen, and I had building employers crying on my shoulders asking me to get them craftsmen—an extremely uncomfortable process for me. If we expand the building programme we as a House will be responsible if, with the restricted labour supply which exists at the moment, we find that we are getting less efficiency than we could get by applying the safety valve which the Minister is proposing.
  I find this question of brick supply rather a peculiar one. Hon. Gentlemen opposite ask about the number of bricks in stock with tragedy in their voices, and then express pleasure when they realise that there are more bricks than usual in stock. During the severe winter of 1962-63 brickyards in this country had a stockpile of more than 912 million bricks, but within a few weeks of better weather—and in this country that means that the rainfall is not as high as it normally is—those bricks were eaten up, and it is common history that we ran into a brick shortage. As research officer of the N.F.B.T.O. I was asked by bricklayers in Scotland to find them jobs. They were out of work because of a lack of co-ordination of supplies and labour, at a time when the people of this country required homes. We had, therefore,

  1265
  gone full circle in the 30 years since my father experienced this kind of thing. It is not a question whether we on these benches can afford this situation. The question is whether the House can afford to allow an overload in an industry which is not capable of meeting it.
  The point at issue is not simply and solely that all the men are employed. The latest statistics issued by the Ministry of Labour show that, on average, they are also working 50 hours a week. For some reason or other some people expect building workers to be rather inhuman, but I suggest that we cannot expect them to work very much longer hours. If there is not a 7 per cent. control over the programme, and if we insist on a free and open market, it is the people who are represented by the Opposition benches who will suffer in the first instance, because the wage rate will escalate from the present 40 to 80 per cent. above the basic rate.
  Building workers will be attracted from one site to another. There will be no chance of building up special work teams to construct houses or anything else. Building workers will be peripatetic rather than productive. Is that what hon. Gentlemen opposite want? It is certainly not what the unions want. They want the activities of their members devoted to the common good, and they believe that the industry needs some sort of a safety valve to do that. The Bill provides a safety valve of 7 per cent. If I were asked how the ills of the building industry could best be rectified I would propose complete social ownership. However, I have been told not to express that point of view today, because apparently it is a controverial subject in the House.
  Mrs. Renée Short: Say it, nevertheless.
  Mr. Hilton: I think that I have already said it. In the absence of anything else, however, I am telling the Opposition with complete sincerity, as one who has studied the industry and has friends among the employers—strange as it may seem—that there should be some control so that the industry simply does not blow up due to overloading. If we allowed this industry to suffer a completely free and open market the wage rate would escalate—and I am sure that hon. Member opposite do not want that—the wage drift would escalate, and materials will also rise in
  1266
  price. Would anybody on either side of the House be glad to face an irate prospective owner-occupier who demands to know why his house is taking longer to build and is costing more?
  Since I came to the House several people, probably assuming me to be the spokesman of the construction industry, or its main defender, have asked me, "Why does it take over a year to build a council house?" It does not take over a year to build a municipal house, or any other kind of house, if we judge the situation purely from the physical aspect. It can be built in three or four months. But there are people—perhaps not Members of Parliament who are in a privileged class—who, after asking a builder to erect a house for them, find that nothing happens for three or four months and that the green grass remains undisturbed. They then pester their builders, who send two or three men to dig a trench, misleading the poor clients into thinking that something is happening.
  This is why it will take longer to build houses the greater the overloading there is on the industry—because builders will accept every item of work they can possibly get. They will try to spread even more thinly a labour force which is completely restricted. We can do a great number of things by offering extra pay, but we cannot create a building craftsman overnight. If I could have done that I could have made a small fortune last year, when some people said that there was a recession in the industry but when, in fact, the industry was completely overstretched.
  I therefore support the proposals contained in the Bill. I emphasise that the 7 per cent. is purely a safety valve; it is not the application of doctrinaire principles—even though I may be in favour of applying doctrinaire principles to the industry. I would ask those who say that the Bill is a doctrinaire Measure whether it is not more doctrinaire to allow the industry to become completely overloaded, in the interests of a free market, so that housebuilding times are extended and costs escalate. Is not that more doctrinaire than the idea of applying a 7 per cent. safety valve to the industry? If I were merely expressing my individual support for the Bill it might be regarded as quite insignificant, but I am speaking on behalf of our 20 building unions,

  1267
  which were not mentioned by the Opposition but which want to see the energies and activities of their members devoted to the common good rather than to speculative profit.
  We support the Bill in its general principle not because we believe it to be the application of doctrinaire legislation, but because we believe that it will make the industry in general more efficient and help us more easily to satisfy those of our people who urgently require accommodation.
  4.54 p.m.
  Mr. A. P. Costain: It is always a pleasure for a back bencher to follow a maiden speaker. It is customary in this House for the back bencher on the opposite side of the House to pay a compliment, which is sometimes not as justly deserved as it should be, to the previous speaker. I can say with all sincerity that we have heard a fine maiden speech. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Hilton) upon making such a speech without a note. It is clear that he has a good knowledge of the building industry.
  I must declare an interest, in that I have a knowledge of the building industry, acquired over about 40 years. The hon. Member defends the Bill, and in doing so says that it is not a doctrinaire Measure. I cannot agree. It brings in doctrinaire principles. He says that if we have a safety valve of 7 per cent. in the building industry everything will be all right, and he suggests that the Bill provides that safety valve. The value of a safety valve depends on whose hand is on it. What hon. Members on this side of the House object to is the fact that the cold hand of Whitehall is on the safety valve—and Whitehall does not possess a great deal of intimate knowledge of the building industry.
  The hon. Member seems to think that the House should be surprised that he has a number of friends among building employers. I have a number of friends among the operatives and in the unions. In fact, at one time Dick Coppock, whom the hon. Member will remember, was a very great friend of mine. We had many arguments and disagreements, but in spite of them we became very close friends, because we respected each other's point of
  1268
  view. Incidentally, I also congratulate the Minister on his maiden speech. It is a little unusual for a Minister to make a maiden speech on such an old hack as this Bill—because it had been right through the Committee stage.
  The Minister thought that the Bill should have a quick passage. It should have a much quicker passage than the previous Measure, because a great deal of the nonsense which was written into the first Bill has now been eliminated. If the previous Minister had taken our advice on the first day in Committee and come to an agreement with us, as I asked him to do, to limit the amount by which he could reduce a licence to £50,000, instead of trying to fight several Committee days on the basis that it could go down even to £10, we would have made much better progress, and the Bill might have been an Act by now.
  In introducing the Bill the Minister talked about the need for control. He made it clear that what worried him and his Department—although the previous Minister did not let this cat out of the bag quite so clearly—was that if there were a restriction on the public sector there must also be a restriction on the private sector. That is doctrinaire policy, and is typical Socialism. It puts forward the proposition that if one person cannot have it nobody else can. In replying to the Minister my hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) made it clear that many items which are restricted by the Bill do not contribute towards building houses.
  The hon. Member for Bethnal Green told us about his father's having to go from Yorkshire to Scotland in order to obtain employment, and explained his very pleasant accent as being due to that unhappy event. It is quite unusual in the building industry for people to go north. We generally find that people come from the north to work down here. I hope the hon. Member appreciates that this Bill will not solve those sorts of problems, because it only restricts; it does not say that work shall be done in Yorkshire because there is an excess of supply in Yorkshire. All it says is "Thou shalt not."
  The hon. Gentleman referred to the excess supply of bricks and I will not develop that point now. He quite rightly

  1269
  said that in the very severe winter of 1963 there were over 900 million bricks in stock. That was an act of God, and a regrettable one, but we do not want an act of government to make the acts of nature even worse.
  The hon. Member was interrupted by his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short). I would only warn him that in these debates the hon. Lady is always very vocal. I hope that he does not make my mistake of being led astray by some of her interruptions, as they are always away from the point.
  We have to ask, "Is this Bill necessary?" In the Second Reading debate on the previous Bill on 8th December, I suggested that the industry was not overheated but that certain bearings were overheated, and that what was needed was some type of licensing that would take the overheating out of a section or sections. I said that if we want to control some Type of production it is better to control those materials that are in short supply rather than have overall control. If there is a shortage of a certain skill or craft, it is better to restrict its use rather than put a blanket of loss of confidence over the whole industry.
  I said that what was needed was a Measure that would make it illegal to use short supply materials or labour on anything but essential projects. The advantage of that would appeal, I am sure, to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green because he must, with his great knowledge of the industry, realise that the industry does not become overheated from start to finish, from the north of Scotland to the south of England. It does not become overheated in each individual trade. People are often unemployed in the building industry because there is a bottleneck in the supply of materials or a scarcity of labour.
  My proposal, which I wish the Minister had adopted, was that we should not use those types of labour and material in short supply for anything but essential work. That would have the further effect of encouraging substitute materials to be manufactured, it would encourage other crafts to be introduced, and it would encourage designs which required only the type of labour that could be trained for that type of work. The hon. Member will appreciate that if
  1270
  we used that sort of control we would get a more even distribution over the whole industry, but this idea of 7 per cent.—the idea that one can build a bingo hall in Glasgow but cannot build a nursing home in Folkestone—does not make sense to us on this side.
  I have compared the new Bill with the former Measure and it is extremely interesting to see what has been altered. The Minister has already explained, or tried to explain, why in Clause 1(1) the Government have reintroduced alterations. I still say that his arguments are not well founded. The Bill covers a two-year period. How on earth can anyone sort out over that period the amount of money that has been spent separately on maintenance and alterations in order to come to a decision? They did not know at the time that the figures had to be kept separately, and so could now quite innocently be committing an offence. That is not very likely when the figure is £100,000, but would be more likely with a lower sum.
  Subsection (3) of Clause 1 is new, and: quite clearly states:
  "(3) Any licence under this Act in respect of any work shall be issued to the person at whose expense the work is to be carried out, and the licence shall operate to authorise only work carried out at the expense of that person."
  My hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry asked whether a licence automatically transfers when one firm amalgamates with another? I would further ask: what happens if the man who has the licence dies? There is then no longer a licence. Is the work then being carried on illegally? Will his heirs automatically go to gaol because they have been left a building with no licence attaching to it? This is an important consideration, and should be answered.
  There is the further position of two adjoining factories merging. Each, separately, might be carrying out £55,000 or £60,000 worth of building work, but when they unite, by a forced or a willing marriage, they might unwittingly be committing an offence. Will the Minister give an assurance that that would not be a criminal offence.
  The other new subsections in Clause 1 are fairly clear, but I think that Clause 2(4,b) will need to be amended in Committee.

  1271
  This is to be a short debate, and I promised I would speak for only a very short time. I still contend that this Bill is unnecessary and that it is, in itself, taking confidence from the industry. A much more simple Measure could have achieved what the Minister wanted and the most retrograde fact is that it is permanent legislation. If ever there were a clear admission by the Socialist Government that they expect to keep the country in crisis for the whole of their time in office it is the introduction, as one of their first Bills in a new Parliament, of a Bill imposing building controls for all time. Are we to accept that they themselves, after a fortnight of a new Parliament, admit that they will make such a hash of our economy that we—one of the few free nations of the world, one of the free democracies that have building licensing—will have to live for all time with building controls? I can only think that they have no confidence in the future.
  5.10 p.m.
  Mrs. Renée Short: I first congratulate my right hon. Friend on making his first speech as the Minister and presenting his first Bill. I pay tribute to his predecessor for the work he did for the building industry, which has allowed us to reach this stage unalarmed by a shortage of building materials.
  We have had some highly contentious speeches from the Opposition. It ill-behoves either the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) or the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) to talk about the need to get this Bill through with speed. When we started the Committee stage of the Bill in the last Parliament we spent a whole day discussing whether or not we should meet the following week. We spent that whole day simply because hon. Members opposite were piqued about being called together before Christmas. There were 47 pages in the OFFICIAL REPORT of speeches dealing with whether or not we should meet in the next week.
  When we met the following week, we spent most of the time discussing an Amendment by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe suggesting that we should stand the Bill on its head and
  1272
  discuss Clause 8 before discussing Clauses 1 to 7.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: The hon. Lady is the last person from under whose feet I should wish to pull the carpet, but not only did the Minister say at the end of that debate that we had dealt with the matter with some despatch, but he caused the Committee to be adjourned before the usual time.
  Mrs. Short: Be that as it may, we wasted a great deal of time on that debate. I hope that this time we shall get the Bill through quickly although I feel, as did my right hon. Friend, that when there has been a General Election which has caused Bills to be lost and the same party has been returned to Government determined to carry on with those Bills, it ought not to be beyond the wit of the House to find some machinery whereby the whole process does not have to be gone through again.
  It seems that the Opposition is still unaware of the basic tenets of the Bill. Hon. Members opposite still tell the House that they do not understand why it has been brought forward. We had from the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe precisely the same speech as he made upon Second Reading last time, in which he urged the Minister not to embark on the control of materials and labour in the way in which he is doing, but only to be concerned with the rationing of materials. It would cause a great deal of alarm throughout the industry if my right hon. Friend accepted the hon. Member's advice. I am glad that he is not going to do so.
  As my right hon. Friend said, the Bill is to regulate starting dates and to get a major control and a balance between supply and demand in the industry. Look at the demands to be made on the industry by the Government and the planned proposals before the nation in the National Plan. There are proposals to reach at least half a million houses per annum. I believe we can do much better than that. There are proposals for increased school and other educational building, for hospital building—a field grossly neglected by the Opposition when they were in Government—and the demands for increased road building. It is quite clear that we have to introduce this Bill if the labour force and materials

  1273
  are to be available for what we believe to he building priorities in the interests of the whole nation.
  We have to adjust the demands on the construction industry with its capacity. The situation which was allowed to continue for far too long when the party opposite was in power was a social scandal. We saw buildings such as motor-car showrooms, new "pubs", prestige office blocks and so on being put up. Those sort of buildings were allowed to go on unhibited and to siphon off money, men and materials to the detriment of building which was socially necessary and infinitely more desirable.
  Mr. Robert Cooke: The hon. Lady has spoken of siphoning off money, men and materials, but how does she think that money which was to be spent on motor-car showrooms will necessarily be spent on housing?
  Mrs. Short: The money has to come out of the national pool somehow. If it is unnecessary expenditure it adds to the cost of necessary building.
  Mr. Robert Cooke rose——
  Mrs. Short: The hon. Member must possess his soul in patience and remain seated on the bench. I shall not give way to him again. Unnecessary expenditure of money has to come from somewhere. If it is taken out of the economy that is to the detriment of building which is needed and it adds to the cost of goods which are sold. The result has been an over-expanded industry and an over-heated economy. What is serious to hon. Members on this side of the House, if it does not seem serious to hon. Members opposite—and it should—is that the building of a house by a local authority took as long as 18 months. That is an absolute scandal. But it happened because men were put to work on more profitable prestige jobs. Many of those prestige jobs are standing empty today, four or five years after they were built.
  This shows the stupidity and incompetence of the Opposition, when they were in power, to put the nations affairs in order. The nation is paying dearly for the Tory Party's acceptance of "Powellism", the sterile doctrine of the anti-social anti-planners.
  1274
  These are some of the problems which the Bill has to tackle. The Bill will affect about 7 per cent. of the construction industry. It will apply, naturally, to new building and to alterations. Hon. Members opposite seem unable to appreciate the fact that alterations take men and materials and that those men and materials form the key to this problem. Projects in the private sector costing less than £100,000 will not be affected. Housing will not be affected, and industrial buildings and buildings needed for scientific research work will be excluded from the control of the Bill.
  My right hon. Friend will be able to keep work flowing through the pipeline so that alongside the tremendous impetus coming from local authorities, public bodies of all kinds and from the nationalised industries, there will be a steady flow of work by private enterprise to keep demand and capacity in line with each other. My right hon. Friend's predecessor made clear that prospective clients will be able to ascertain from the Minister in advance whether their schemes are likely to receive his approval. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will do everything he can to help the building industry and to remove uncertainty about starting dates. He is an eminently reasonable man and I am sure that he will deal with them fairly, intelligently and quickly.
  I was surprised that the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe did not raise the question of the attitude of architects in his speech today, as he did so in Committee. I am sure my right hon. Friend will be glad to know that the Bill is welcomed by architects and surveyors.
  Mr. Costain rose——
  Mrs. Short: I have given way and I want to get on with my speech. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will be glad to see a letter which I shall be pleased to show him. It is from an asociation representing architects and surveyors. It says that the general consensus of opinion among building surveyors seems to be that the Bill will not materially affect their practice, but that it will do a service to the building industry because it will generate more interest in high priority building. So they are on the side of my right hon. Friend.

  1275
  The architects believe that the Bill would not affect their work significantly, except for those who have specialised in jobs costing more than £100,000. Those architects are certainly in a position to diversify the kind of work they do. There will be plenty of work for achitects and surveyors and the construction industry and there is no need for them to feel that they will be adversely affected.
  I raise two points which I think are germane to this problem. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to deal with them in his reply. There is the danger that possibly co-ordinated development of town centres could be adversely affected by the Bill where there is a composite scheme—this could affect either a private enterprise or a local authority scheme—of houses, shops and offices in the same development where some parts of the scheme may not be licensed under the Bill. This might create a kind of unbalance. I believe architects would like to have reassurance on this point.
  Then there is the question of precisely what constitutes a development district under Clause 4. Perhaps my hon. Friend would say a few words about the south-east region in this respect, because we have been concerned about the drift to the South-East and the overheating of the economy generally and of the building industry in particular in this part of the country.
  It is clear that architects and surveyors are behind the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Hilton), who made such an impressive maiden speech, made it quite clear that the building workers are behind the Bill. So it does not look as though anyone is against the Bill, except perhaps for a few hon. Members opposite.
  One of the major problems is the question of labour supply. There is the problem of how to increase productivity and output in the building industry. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is very concerned with the question of encouraging far greater use of industrialised building systems. The application of building research is also absolutely essential. It is scandalous that it should take so long, sometimes 15 to 20 years, for the results of research to be applied in the construction industry.
  1276
  The problem of labour is what the Bill is intended to tackle, in that it will take labour away from unnecessary prestige, luxury jobs and make labour available for the jobs which we believe are important. There are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green said, over 50,000 labour-only sub-contractors in the industry today. They handle about one-fifth to one-sixth of the total building force. There are grave dangers in the development of this. People who buy privately built houses run the risk of buying a shoddy job because of the activities of labour-only sub-contractors. This is a very grave problem. Now that the practice is spreading into the civil engineering industry it means that the problems of insecure or unsafe buildings can affect a very large section of the population. Besides this, they avoid P.A.Y.E., National Insurance contributions and membership of the union. Fringe benefits are denied them, as is insurance against accident and death on the job. All my right hon. Friends who are concerned with this should take action upon it.
  In view of the problem of the productivity of housing, which the Bill is intended to go some way to meet, I suggest that my right hon. Friend the Minister should look very urgently at the terms of reference of the National Building Agency. If in conjunction with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government he could extend that Agency's terms of reference to the task of building dwellings all over the country—houses for rent—as indeed his French opposite number is doing with great success, then not only would he be able to ensure continuity of contracts, but he would be able to balance any fortuitous fall in the level of building outside his own control. It is vital that we should make some urgent progress which would give us some kind of publicly-owned building industry. I know that the Agency is well able to undertake this, provided that we can enlarge it and give it the men and the tools to carry out the job.
  My right hon. Friend would then be able to have a look at another project on which I do not look very kindly; that is the so-called research organisation within his Department. This should be liquidated because it is an absolutely pointless set-up. It was set up by the

  1277
  last Conservative Minister of Public Building and Works, the present right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon). He did this in order to be one up on his right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), who was then Minister of Housing and Local Government. This is a completely unnecessary and irresponsible waste of public funds. I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider abolishing this organisation and extending the powers of the National Building Agency, with a view to increasing the productivity of the construction industry as a whole and producing the houses we so urgently need.
  The Bill is a first step in a series of what I hope will be constructive and worth-while Bills to increase the productivity of the building industry. I hope that we shall be supported by right hon. and hon. Members opposite in Standing Committee and thereafter in seeking to get the Bill through the machinery of the House as quickly as possible.
  5.26 p.m.
  Mr. Eric Lubbock: I shall not rehearse all the arguments which were used in the previous Second Reading debate last December. I want to remind the House merely that the Bill has the general support of the Liberal Party, because it appears to us that it is a genuine attempt to concentrate the resources of the building industry on the socially most valuable projects, although in that Second Reading debate my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) made a number of Committee points to which he hoped that it might be possible for us to return.
  The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) touched me on a rather sore point, because we were not invited to nominate anyone to the Standing Committee, but perhaps he would have a word with his right hon. Friends so that a place can be made for us on the Standing Committee on this occasion. Then I should be very happy to give him the benefit of my advice and to introduce some of the Amendments which we mentioned last time.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: It is always possible for any hon. Member who is not on a Standing Committee to table
  1278
  Amendments for that Committee and get someone, in this case it might be from either side, to move the Amendments for him.
  Mr.Lubbock: As the hon. Gentleman will realise, if we had not dissolved when we did it would have been possible on Report for us to have tabled the Amendments of which we spoke, if they had not been dealt with before. I hope that with the hon. Gentleman's co-operation we shall be able to get a Member on to the Standing Committee which will deal with the Bill. I shall be only too delighted, if the hon. Gentleman will use his influence with his Chief Whip to see that that happens.
  Mr. Robert Cooke: Would the hon. Gentleman refer to the statement of the leader of his party in the last Parliament—8th March, 1966. column 1922—that the Government should drop the whole project?
  Mr. Lubbock: My right hon. Friend made it quite clear that, although we were in support of the Bill, we utterly deplored retrospective action taken over a Dissolution, which one newspaper called "the new constitutional horror". The hon. Gentleman must not attempt to distract me from the thread of my speech, or I shall take a great deal longer.
  I have not changed my opinion on that subject. I still think that, in spite of everything the Minister said this afternoon, private Members must protest against the new and dangerous precedent which was set by the last Government in carrying retrospection over a Dissolution, because it could be carried to almost unimaginable lengths. Immediately before a Dissolution statements in large numbers could be made by Government spokesmen, which, they would say, would have the force of legislation behind them assuming that their party was returned to power. Therefore, during an election period nobody would know exactly where he stood until after polling day, when he would know whether that particular party had been returned.
  So I do not retract a word of what was said on that occasion by my right hon. Friend, but my right hon. Friend was not speaking of the merits of the Bill itself. If the hon. Gentleman will look at the OFFICIAL REPORT for the previous day,

  1279
  when my right hon. Friend made a speech after the then Minister of Public Building and Works had made a statement in the House, he will find that my right hon. Friend said right at the beginning of his remarks that we supported the general principles of the Bill.
  The hon. Member for Londonderry quoted something that the Builder had said about the former Minister, about his delicate touch and fingertip control. I only wish the former Minister had been here to listen to that, because I do not think that these epithets have ever been applied to him before. I very much hope that the present Minister will also have this delicate touch and fingertip control in applying the provisions of this Bill once it reaches the Statute Book.
  I do not think, however, that the hon. Gentleman was quite fair when he said that we were anticipating future crises. What we are trying to do is to prevent future crises from occurring, by taking action in good time to prevent the overloading of the building industry, which has been a recurrent feature of all the economic crises that we have had since the war. Therefore, I entirely agree with the principles on which this Bill is based.
  I do not agree, on the other hand, with some of the criticisms made by newspapers to the effect that it will be very difficult to distinguish between the projects that ought to be allowed permission and those that ought to be refused permission under the powers conferred by this Bill. I noticed that the hon. Gentleman did not make this point this afternoon It must be borne in mind that if the figures given by the previous Minister are correct, we are only talking about 500 projects per annum worth £170 million, and this is a very small fraction of the industry's total output, amounting to only about 7 per cent. I should be interested if the Minister, in winding up, could tell the House whether the figures given by the previous Minister have been borne out in practice. The industry has been submitting licence applications to his Department since 27th July and he ought to be able to tell us whether the estimate of 500 projects valued at £170 million has been borne out.
  The other thing that we particularly like about the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness mentioned on
  1280
  the last occasion—this again does not seem to be appreciated by the Conservative Opposition—is that the development areas are totally exempt. Therefore, we hope that this will encourage the more uniform use of resources in the building industry as well as a flow of wealth into the areas concerned.
  I want to make only two brief points which have occurred to us since the Bill last had its Second Reading. One of them I touched upon in an intervention in the Minister's speech. I do not think he has answered it very satisfactorily. There is some doubt about what will happen to projects with an estimated cost of less than £100,000 which then suffer from cost escalation, either of wages or materials, so that the final bill presented to the developer is over the limit mentioned in the Bill. Clause 2 states:
  "Work shall be exempt from control under this Act if

  (a) in the case of work done in the construction of a building or of any works, the cost of constructing the building or works … is less than £100,000."

  That must mean the final bill which the developer has to pay, and not the amount that is shown on the quantity surveyor's bills of quantities when the estimates are placed before the developer. Therefore, we could have a very difficult situation arising in which a developer has a project which is going to cost £95,000, let us say for the sake of argument, and then as a result of cost escalation during the course of the construction, it finishes up at £105,000.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, and I am obliged to him for giving way. He will recall—I am not suggesting that this is a complete answer to his point—that we extracted from the Government in Committee the information that there would be a tolerance of about 5 per cent., I believe.
  Mr. Lubbock: If this was extracted from the Minister, it should be written into the Bill. It should be made quite clear, either in Clause 2 or by some other means, that if people in good faith enter into a contract of a value of less than £100,000, then they will not be penalised if, through no fault of their own, the final bill amounts to more than the limit specified in the Bill.
  Mr. Mark Carlisle rose——
  Mr. Lubbock: The reason that I raised this matter at the point that I did raise it in the Minister's speech is that he said that no action would be taken against people who started work since 27th July last when the Chancellor's announcement was first made. I believe that many of these people will be in the position that I described after this Bill gets on to the Statute Book. They may suddenly discover that, as a result of the increase in cost, which the right hon. Gentleman knows has taken place during the past 12 months, they will be faced with a final bill of a good deal more than 5 per cent. over the theoretical limit in the Bill.
  Mr. Carlisle: The hon. Gentleman has, to some extent, gone on to the point that I was going to put to him just now, that this is of particular importance when we are concerned with contracts for projects under course of construction. Will not the hon. Gentleman agree that it has been made clear in Committee that the criminal offence is created the moment a single brick is laid which takes it over the minimum £100,000? If a person starts without a licence and goes over that limit as a result of escalation, he is in danger of committing a criminal offence without prior knowledge.
  Mr. Lubbock: Yes, he started in perfectly good faith thinking that the project would cost less than £100,000. We want not only an assurance on this but an assurance that an Amendment will be written into the Bill safeguarding these people from the possibility of criminal prosecution.
  There is one other point that is causing us anxiety. There is a new feature in the situation which has arisen since last December—the danger that the Bill may achieve its effect by taking the heat off the construction industry while, at the same time, the Government's general credit restriction policy will prevent the resources of the industry from being properly redeployed into the housing sector. Looking at the housing summaries for the first two months of this year, one finds that the number of completions is 4,000 down on the equivalent months in 1965, and the reduction has occurred in both the private and local authority housing sectors. The figures of local authority
  1282
  housing completions are down by 1,100 in the first two months of this year compared with 1965, and in the private sector the figures are down by 3,500.
  As regards private housing, the Building Societies Association's figures published last week show that although there was a record inflow of funds amounting to £244 million in the first quarter of the year, the societies were able to lend on only 110,000 properties as compared with 115,000 in the final quarter of 1965, a decrease of 5,000 properties, because of the continual increase in house prices in that quarter. Thus the fall in local authority completions, although smaller, is an even more serious matter because it indicates that the measures taken so far to increase council house building, such as the Housing Subsidies Bill, are not yet having the desired effect.
  Therefore, I emphasise to the Government that their policy of restricting certain inessential private building, to which we are going to give approval in this Bill, makes sense only if it is accompanied by further measures to stimulate house building. It would be out of order for me to discuss it in detail, but I think we are entitled to assurances from the Government on this question before the end of the debate.
  5.38 p.m.
  Mr. Reginald Freeson: I should like to pursue the last point raised by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock). I agree with him that this Bill can be seen to make sense only if it is taken as part of the general context, not just dealing with the general housing situation but a positive planning and programming measure to deal with the whole social field of building construction in this country. It is for this reason that I welcome the Bill so far as it goes. My regret is that I do not feel it goes far enough, and we shall have to take up certain points with which it does not deal as time goes on.
  I hope the Minister and his collegues in other Departments will concern themselves with what I believe to be a very serious situation administratively at Government level which has been developing for some years. That is the failure for many years to plan and programme public building works throughout the whole

  1283
  of the field of local government and national Government. We see little sign yet of an integration of administrative policy as between, for example, the construction of clinics, of hospitals, of schools and of housing, all of which are under the oversight of different Ministries, whichever may be the local authorities undertaking or planning these projects. We see little sign of an effort to fit these together at a fairly local level according to a proper programming of our resources.
  In so far as the Bill begins to establish a limited control over the activities of the building industry in the private sector, much more limited than it has been for many years over the building activities of local authorities and Government and other public authorities, we must all give it a welcome while at the same time putting certain queries. It cannot be denied that, if people want schools, clinics and homes built in the areas which call for a stepping up of this kind of activity, something must be done to bring under control the wide-ranging activities of the private sector which reflects no sense of priority or social need within the context of all our building resources.
  In the borough where I live, part of which I represent in this House, there are still standing empty many thousands of square feet of office accommodation. It has been empty for years. In London today office projects are still being started. The control which we imposed, which I welcomed at the time in November, 1964, has not been effective enough, and I fear that this Bill will not be effective enough. No one denies that the action announced by the First Secretary of State within weeks of our coming into office in the last Parliament was right, but it was not drastic enough. My fear is that the same will apply to this Bill.
  I regret very much that efforts to bring the control limit down, as was suggested earlier in the debate, into the region of £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 were unsuccessful. It is sheer nonsense to tell a local authority, as happened recently in my district, that it must not spend more than £95,000 in the coming year on minor capital works for all its schools—we have plenty of ancient ones in my district—while at the same time allowing
  1284
  a £56,000 ballroom to be built, which will be converted into a bingo hall later, or allowing, not far from the same spot, a new floor to be put on the top of a motor cycle depôt. That motor cycle depôt does flourishing business, and I have no doubt that it needs more room, but which is more important—having some indoor toilets put into our schools or allowing that extra floor to be put on at a cost of about £8,000? Which is more important to the community? This is the point which will be missed.
  Not very far from here, there are new "pubs" being built which will not cost anything like £100,000. But which is more important—having better schools built in this part of Westminster and having better clinics and better swimming pools here and elsewhere or allowing projects of that kind which will come well under the £100,000 limit or, in many cases, under the other limit mentioned in the Bill, the figure of £50,000 which can be applied if the Minister so decides, subject to Parliament?
  These are the aims towards which we must work. The Bill takes one short step, as did the Control of Office Development Bill in the last Parliament, also a welcome move, as was the First Secretary of State's announcement in November, 1964, which preceded it. But these must be seen only as first steps, negative steps, if one likes, towards building up more positive administrative control as a matter of policy over how we use our building resources for the public good. We are not getting them used in the right way. We are allowing things to be done in our community which, desirable as they may be, are not as important as the things which are being left undone and which we are unlikely to see being done for many years, because so much of our resources in the building industry are devoted elsewhere than to such sectors of first priority and social need as those to which I have referred.
  I do not know, and I do not pretend to know, what the answers are to the problem of integrating administrative policy, but there is a definite need. I have outlined the problem briefly, and I hope that, after this Bill has become law, the Minister will be in close consultation with his colleagues in the Government who have a direct responsibility for major building works throughout the

  1285
  country in order to see whether something much more effective can be done.
  What so often concerns me is that a general financial weapon is used to control the expenditure of, for example, local authorities in a variety of ways which has no real relationship to actual building resources in the region or locality concerned. I can understand it to a certain extent if a Government Department says that only so much must be spent in the next year on minor capital works in a given area, but I can fully understand it only if it is known, and we can be assured, that that figure and the figures applied in all local education authority areas are based upon a knowledge of the resources available in any area.
  I see precious little evidence of this. I saw precious little evidence of it under the last Government and, I confess, I have seen precious little evidence of it forthcoming under the present Government, certainly from the standpoint of administrative controls. With housing it does not arise so much because, as has been said, in so far as local authorities can extend their housing programmes and enlarge them, the Minister will welcome this and give them the go-ahead to expand their activities.
  There is another direct relationship between the point I am making and the very limited nature of the step now proposed under the Bill. It has been said, apparently with some pleasure—the hon. Member for Orpington made the point—that the develpment areas are excluded from the Bill. Why should they be? Why should a bingo hall be built in place of a new school or a new classroom? The Bill should be extended to the development areas. We should not be frightened by the Opposition's sneering at us for imposing controls. We do not wish to impose control for control's sake. I have had many years in local government, and it has sickened me, as it has sickened thousands of people of all parties, to see the waste which has gone on in the building industry, to see the bingo halls, the "pubs" and the car showrooms being built while we could not have indoor toilets installed in our schools.
  I want the Government to take much more effective action. This is my message today, and I make no more than these two points. First, there must be a much
  1286
  closer study of the method of controlling public building works and a much closer integration of the administrative controls which exist as between different Government Departments in relation to the local authorities and other public authorities. Second, there must be a much greater desire to take more drastic action to bring under control expenditure of resources on relatively unnecessary building works so long as we cannot get our schools built or modernised and so long as we cannot get the hospitals, clinics and health centres, not to speak of housing, constructed in this country.
  There is nothing to be ashamed of here. I am prepared to stand up in this Chamber and elsewhere and advocate it. People come to me as a Member of Parliament or to other public representatives and complain that, "Our kids have to go across the playground in snowy weather in the winter and the pipes are frozen up". Yet, at the same time, there is a "pub" being built down the road. The "pub" may be very desirable. I like a drink myself, I like a good restaurant, and I want to see nice dance halls and all the rest built. But it is no good people complaining about rotten conditions in some of our old schools, hospitals and clinics if at the same time they, we in this place, and members of the Government continue to accept and, indeed, welcome and encourage non-priority building going on just round the corner from the very schools, clinics and hospitals about which complaint is made. I hope that we shall not leave the matter once the Bill has been passed. It is far too serious a matter for us simply to pass the Bill and then to leave it there.
  5.51 p.m.
  Mr. Mark Carlisle: I listened with interest to the arguments of the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) and I will attempt shortly to deal with them. Before I do so, may I make some comment about those parts of the Bill which are different from the Bill as it first came before the House in the previous Parliament? No one would deny that the alterations which have been made in the Bill between its two appearances in the House are an improvement. Although I am still opposed to the principle of the Bill, I should like to make one or two comments to the new Minister on the changes which have been made

  1287
  and to ask him one or two further questions.
  I am glad to see that the Minister has carried out the pledge which his predecessor gave to me in Committee on the last occasion by including new subsection 9(7) which ensures that in future no prosecution can be undertaken under the Bill other than with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Minister said today that he is not anxious to use the penal sanctions of the Bill, and this is what his predecessor said in Committee. But the Minister would not have had the power over the bringing of prosecutions had he not accepted the recommendations made from this side of the House and included them in the Bill.
  I also welcome that he has removed the Clause whereby imprisonment could be imposed by the magistrates' court. But I put one specific question to him: he has removed the power of imprisonment under Clause 2 but has retained it under Clause 9. Is this intentional or merely a mistake? We are now in the position, as the Minister said, that in the magistrates' court the maximum penalty for building without a licence is a fine of £300, but under Clause 9 one is still in danger of imprisonment for three months by the magistrates' court for failing to answer any question put by the Minister at the time at which a building was built in case it has been constructed against the terms of the licence. It seems to me that this is wrong. If the Minister has removed the short-term imprisonment in Clause 2, and he has rightly done so, he should look at Clause 9 to see whether it should not be deleted from that Clause, too.
  The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) made great play of the fact that the Committee stage took a long time. It may be that the position which I have just described has occurred in the Bill because the last four Clauses and the Schedule to the previous Bill were passed in one morning's sitting of the Committee through the co-operation of the Opposition with the Government. It may be that it was the failure of the Opposition to raise the point at that time which has resulted in this matter not being looked at again by the Minister.
  1288
  Another change—and I believe an important and welcome change—which has been made is the Minister's acceptance of the argument which we advanced as to the burden of proof in criminal prosecutions under the Bill. Previously a person carrying out the work was in danger of being prosecuted and convicted even though he might not know and might not even suspect that a licence was ever required for the work which he undertook. A main sub-contractor might be called in to do a small part of the job and might have no idea that the total cost of the project was such as to require a licence. The Minister has removed that possibility. I am glad that he has made that important change.
  May I offer another method by which the Bill could be improved still further, and this concerns the question of the licences required. I have asked this before but I respectfully ask the Minister again to consider it. The contractor wishes to know whether the Government intend to allow him a licence for a particular building. Why not include in the Bill, therefore, a system of outline permission as is done under planning law? We cannot expect a contractor to go to great expense in preparing plans without knowing whether a licence will be granted.
  The Minister's predecessor replied that there would be an unofficial agreement. I am not questioning the Minister's good faith in any way, but Ministers change, and how can a contractor be sure that an unofficial promise of a licence by the Minister's predecessor will later be turned into a licence by the subsequent Minister in office? I ask the Minister to consider whether he can introduce a system whereby someone who is anxious to obtain a licence can apply for outline permission as it done under ordinary planning law.
  I turn briefly to the whole principle of the Bill and say that I oppose the principle because I believe that it is the imposition of control for the sake of control. The Minister challenged us to say how we justified opposing control in the private sector of building when control exists over the building of hospitals, schools and other necessary and desirable social buildings. This point was made by the hon. Members for Willesden, East and Wolverhampton, North-East.

  1289
  With respect, the Minister is making a fundamental mistake. The control to which his hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East refers is not a control caused by a shortage of building components but a financial control, a financial limit placed upon the carrying out of repairs to schools, the building of schools and the building of offices. This limit was placed by the Government because, in my view, they have their priorities wrong in the expenditure of money within the social services. But it is not a control deliberately imposed to prevent the building from taking place. It is merely the absence of money to carry out the building required.
  On the other hand, we have resources available at the moment; we know that nearly 900 million bricks are lying idle in this country. Yet the Government have chosen to place a deliberate control on the use of these resources in the fond, and I believe erroneous, belief that by doing so they will ensure that these resources are used for more socially desirable purposes. It is not lack of resources which has prevented the achievement of socially desirable projects in this country but lack of finance to build the new schools and hospitals. There is no need for the Bill. If there were a need for it, then the hon. Member for Willesden East would be right; it would be pointless to remove the development districts from it. There is no need for the Bill. It merely creates a form of bureaucracy with no purpose. I am still opposed to the principle of the Bill, although I welcome the fact that it is better in detail than it was before.
  5.58 p.m.
  Mr. T. W. Urwin: I welcome the opportunity, however briefly, to participate in the debate. It is unfortunate that the debate is of such short duration. I am sure that had there been more time, more hon. Members would have been interested in expressing their point of view. But it must be said that many of the arguments deployed this afternoon have already been dealt with adequately in the Second Reading debate in the last Parliament and during the Committee stage.
  I do not want to take up too much of the time of the two Front Bench speakers who will wind up the debate. I am pleased that in the speeches particularly of my hon. Friend the Member for Willes-
  1290
  den, East (Mr. Freeson) and the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), the spokesman of the Liberal Party, more consideration has been given to the social aspects of the Bill. It is important that on both sides of the House we should see how the valuable resources in the construction industry can be mobilised when the Bill is passed.
  We are talking about a Bill in relation to the building industry, the oldest industry in the country, and yet, paradoxically, a veritable Cinderella industry, one which has been grossly under-planned as long as I have been connected with it and one which inevitably has had to bear the brunt of the economic crises which have occurred frequently over the last few years. If we look at the National Plan and the target which it sets out—raising the house building programme to 500,000 houses a year by 1970 and catering for 850,000 additional school population by 1970—we recognise the additional strain which will be imposed on the industry if it is to provide the educational buildings required and the new hospitals required by the Health Service and to participate in the modernisation of industry and the production of the new factories which are essential to our economic recovery. In addition to being badly under-planned, as we realise, the industry is grossly under-manned. It is required to achieve a target of 4·8 per cent. increase in productivity annually until 1970 and probably to increase beyond that target after 1970. That is what is required by the National Plan.
  Like my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East, I am especially pleased, as are many of my colleagues in the development areas, that development districts have been left out of the terms of the Bill, even though I sincerely hope that people will not be inclined to take advantage of this fact in order to build luxury buildings and other buildings, such as bingo halls and clubs, which have been described as coming into the luxury category. In my opinion, those within the building industry are sufficiently responsible to react to their own responsibilities in this matter. The omission of the development areas is undoubtedly a good thing.
  In order to carry the argument to its logical conclusion, surely hon. Members opposite should welcome any legislation

  1291
  which channels the available material and resources of craftsmen within the industry to the more desirable social projects which we need. As I said on Second Reading in the last Parliament, I give a wholehearted welcome to the Bill. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short), I hope that we shall have much more co-operation in Committee in passing the Bill through its stages as speedily as possible towards the Statute Book.
  6.3 p.m.
  Miss Harvie Anderson: I venture to speak on the Bill partly because I am somewhat familiar with its predecessor, but mainly because I believe that it has very little practical and overall value and also because it represents restriction. I am glad to see that the enthusiasm of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Hilton) has returned, although I am sorry that he missed other interventions in the debate when he could have heard other points of view than his own.
  This is a restrictive Measure. It is restrictive through the control it imposes on industry and does not offer a compensatory opportunity for expansion elsewhere.
  Productivity in the industry between 1958 and 1964 increased by about 5 per cent. The trouble is that in the last quarter of 1965 alone this went down by some 10 per cent. Luxury jobs have been referred to, and here I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson). The Government are seeking in the Bill to control luxury jobs outwith the development districts—yet within the development districts these jobs are to continue to go on. Thus the overall effect from that point of view is very limited.
  I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), who said at the outset that the proportion of really non-essential building that will be eliminated by any building licensing procedure, however devised, will be minimal compared with the damage done to the industry. If we want evidence of this, we should look for a moment at what has happened, partly as a result of the threat of the Bill, to
  1292
  the housing programme. Both sides agree that housing should proceed at an accelerated pace, but what has happened to local authority and private house building?
  The most disquieting feature arising from the disruption of the industry and of its planning is that, in the third and fourth quarters of 1965, local authority building was down by about 10 per cent. and private building by about 5 per cent. That is a serious situation and gives me no confidence that the Bill will contribute to improving the position of essential building while delaying, as it seeks to do, luxury building.
  What we need is an expanding construction industry. We shall not get it by offering it uncertainty, which can at best only mean delay and can cause disruption which will not become effective or obvious, even to this House, for twelve or eighteen months.
  My second complaint is based on the permanency aspect. Neither from the right hon. Gentleman nor his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), have we had any convincing answer. During the proceedings on the previous Bill it was clearly stated many times that the original intention was that it should meet the economic needs of the moment. That was stated again and again—for example, during Standing Committee proceedings, in column 94. But I am not convinced that the permanent feature embodied in the Bill is anything other than an imposition of the doctrinaire aim which lies behind this Measure.
  In dealing with exemptions, perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will do me the honour of recalling that I moved an Amendment in the last Parliament to exclude Scotland from the Bill. The Minister was then so impressed with my argument that Scotland, with the exception of Edinburgh and Leith, was excluded from the Bill. Now we have this new Bill with all the ramifications of its application simply to control Edinburgh and Leith in Scotland and, curiously enough, to control in Leith one of the largest industrial and commercial projects in Scotland, the erection of a considerable concern for the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society. What an extraordinary thing for the Government to wish to restrict in any way.

  1293
  If the procedure is gone through, the S.C.W.S. project may be the subject of a licence, of course, but my argument remains that it is unnecessary to extend the Bill to Scotland in order to restrict the Co-operative Society's activities and the essential and long overdue development of some of the central parts of Edinburgh.
  I know that we are running rather short of time and so my final point concerns the exclusion of a number of things, including local authority projects and projects of the nationalised industries. It is no consolation to me, and I doubt whether it would be a consolation to any housewife, to know that a great new building is being erected for my local electricity board simultaneously with a rise in electricity charges. If we are to get priorities right in the building industry, we should look seriously at the exemptions in the Bill. We have the example in Scotland, which is not very convincing logic, and the example—the only one I have time to illustrate, of the local electricity board.
  I could go on a long time to give similar examples but shall restrain myself in the interest of time. I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned the alterations in relation to criminal proceedings which are now reduced. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look most carefully at Clause 9 and seek to apply to it the argument which has eliminated criminal procedure in Clause 2. I note the statement that there will be indulgence for those who make genuine mistakes, but who is to judge what is genuine and what is a mistake? There are still great flaws in the Bill and I remain primarily opposed to it in my confirmed view that it is a measure designed to impose restrictive control in the interest first of control itself.
  6.11 p.m.
  Mrs. Lena Jeger: I welcome whole-heartedly the principles in the Bill, unlike the hon. Lady the Member for Renfrew, East (Miss Harvie Anderson). Because of the shortage of time, however, I can refer only to two points. It is wrong that Clause 2 should exempt from control work costing less than £100,000. It is far too generous an upper limit. I could tell my right hon. Friend of the expertise of some developers and contractors in break-
  1294
  ing jobs down into a number of units, with the result that each unit will obtain exemption under Clause 2 whereas the whole job may represent a much larger expenditure.
  Secondly, I am particularly concerned about Clause 5. Is it not possible to revise the exemption for works carried out by the Crown? I do not want to be too parochial about this, but my constituency suffers a great deal—overmuch, some of us think—from the activities of the Crown. I refer particularly to the activities of the Crown Estates Commissioners in the Regent's Park area.
  Many hon. Members will recollect that the Gorell Committee some years ago recommended that the Nash terraces in Regent's Park should to a large extent be rehabilitated and retained, and I am very happy that that has been done. I must confess an interest, because I am myself a tenant of the Crown in my own constituency in Regent's Park.
  I have been very distressed in recent years because there has been a tendency on the part of the Crown Estates Commissioners to hand out the work of rehabilitation and redevelopment to private contractors and developers. For instance, in Albany Street, there is a row of shops in perfectly good order and doing a very good local job of serving the community. Above the shops are flats in which people are happily living. Recently I called on a young couple living in such a flat. They have their own lavatory, bathroom and kitchen and are perfectly content.
  Suddenly, along comes notice to quit in the unsacred name of redevelopment. The Crown has come to an arrangement with a private contractor that the whole row of shops, with the living accomodation above, is to be demolished. There is nothing wrong with these premises. The only motive for doing this, I am afraid I can only conclude, must be that someone is going to make some money out of this extraordinary exercise.
  Yet, not five minutes walk away from this perfectly adequate accommodation, there are slums at the back of St. Pancras and Kings Cross Stations which are such a disgrace that at every election when canvassing there I fervently hope that by the next election they will have gone. But year after year they remain.

  1295
  I cannot see what is the basic usefulness of a Bill which has the kind of exemptions that will permit private developers, under cover of an arrangement with the Crown, to pull down adequate and in some ways attractive and useful property while at the same time making it so difficult for the people who will be displaced to be accommodated.
  I am sorry that there is time only to refer to this one scheme, but under it new shops are being built along Albany Street which are to be let at £1,000 a year exclusive, and they have no living accommodation above. The new flats that are being built in the area are completely beyond the reach of the people who are being displaced in order to further this exercise.
  There is a beautiful scheme of redevelopment in one of the terraces, Chester Terrace, facing Regent's Park, where one can buy a 90 year Crown lease on a house for between £45,000 and £50,000. Of course, it is said that these are expensive properties because of their splendid position in overlooking the park. But, without straying too far from the Bill, I ask what on earth developers have done that they should deserve to make some profit out of the existence of Regent's Park, which they have neither bought nor maintained and which is completely irrelevant to the financial arrangements entered into.
  I have raised this matter on the Bill because I do not see why the Crown, with its very wide resources and a far larger building programme than is generally realised, should be exempted from this element of control. If the purpose of the Bill is, as I hope, to see that our building manpower and resources are projected into those sectors where they are most needed, we cannot have a situation in which the Crown Estates Commissioners are able to go on providing expensive accommodation and to give notice to quit to people living in apparently adequate accommodation. These things are contradictory to the spirit of the Bill and I hope that it will be possible at least to amend Clause 5 so that we can bring some of these schemes within the ambit of legislation.
  6.20 p.m.
  Mr. H. P. G. Channon: I hope that the hon. Lady the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras,
  1296
  South (Mrs. Lena Jeger) will forgive me if I do not comment on what she had to say about that aspect of her constituency which she described. The last time when we took part in the same debate together the subject was Cyprus, on which, to my astonishment, I found myself in substantial agreement with some of the things she said.
  The most agreeable feature of the debate, the House will agree, has been the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Hilton). As soon as I saw the list in The Times of new Members of the House of Commons, I had a wager with a friend that the new hon. Member for Bethnal Green would make his maiden speech on the Second Reading of the Building Control Bill. We are very glad that he has done so, because he brings to this problem a depth of experience which few if any of us in the House can match.
  We were also fortunate in having the Minister come to the debate with a fresh mind. My hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark), the Parliamentary Secretary and I are all too familiar with the subject by now, although on this occasion in our travels we missed the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) who conducted the last Bill almost to the end of the journey, but not quite. By one Parliamentary day the Government failed to obtain their objective of getting the former Building Control Bill, because they preferred—and I think the House recognises that this is true—to spend three days electioneering, debating the Welfare State, leasehold reform, and new taxation proposals. We shall be interested to hear tomorrow from the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether those new proposals have been modified since that debate.
  Perhaps it was wise from the Government's point of view to decide to concentrate on propaganda rather than legalising the building control scheme which they had been putting forward and operating for nine months, to use the unhappy phrase of the last Minister, on the authority of the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 27th July. At any rate, the Government's priority was propaganda rather than legislation, and we all know that priorities are the language of Socialism.

  1297
  On the last occasion, the right hon. Member for Leeds, West promised us that this would be the first Bill of the Session. It was the 21st. The Parliamentary Secretary—we must not forget him—told us in Standing Committee:
  "My right hon. Friend's Department has a sense of urgency about the Bill."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 16th December, 1965; c. 33.]
  I dread to think what happens to a Government Bill when there is no sense of urgency, but perhaps we can congratulate the new Minister on bringing the Bill forward so early in the Session.
  Although we do not like the Bill, my right hon. and hon. Friends and I think that the present state of limbo of the construction and building industries is the worst of all, and it is vital for them to know exactly what their future is to be under the building control scheme. Therefore, if the House agrees—and I suspect that it will—to give the Bill a Second Reading, I can assure the Government that we will wish to pass its stages quickly, because it is only fair that the construction industry, which has been waiting for the Bill for a long time, should have it at the earliest possible moment.
  During the course of the passage of the two Bills, we have been given various reasons why the legislation should be permanent. There is no doubt that the original reason which was given for the introduction of the Bill was the economic crisis and the statement of 27th July. There was no intention when the Government came to office of legislating on building controls. It was not in the 1964 Labour Party election manifesto and I doubt whether it was in the election manifesto of the right hon. Member for Leeds, West, although I have not read it. After the right hon. Gentleman had been in office for about a month, he told us that the construction industries were in a generally satisfactory condition. He told the magazine then called The Builder that he had no intention of imposing further controls and he said:
  "We see the industry in a positive and not a negative way."
  I do not know what changed the Government's view into deciding to take a less positive and more negative attitude to the problems of the industry, but I suppose that it is fair to say that it was
  1298
  largely the economic situation. We have, therefore, to decide why they have adopted permanent legislation to cure what, we hope, is a temporary situation.
  After all, one of the first Measures introduced into the last Parliament was the Control of Office and Industrial Development Act. It was announced on the second day of the last Parliament. It expires in 1972 and is, therefore, not permanent. What is the Government's intention about offices? Are they to abandon office control in London and Birmingham in 1972 in the unlikely event of their still being in power at that time, or is it their intention to continue office control by using the terms of this Bill? If so, that is a fine commentary on the assurances which we were given during the passage of the Control of Office and Industrial Development Bill when we were told that its provisions would he temporary.
  There is no doubt that the Government have shifted their ground in their approach to building controls. On 27th July, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not talk about permanent control of the building industry. He wanted to cure the economic situation which existed at the time and tomorrow we shall see whether he has been able to do so. The Parliamentary Secretary—I will not weary him by quoting further from his speech of 7th February to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors—said on that occasion more or less that the Government needed the Bill as a contingency measure for the next economic crisis. It is scarcely encouraging for the House to be told that on the eve of the Budget.
  Sir Douglas Glover: The next crisis cannot be long now.
  Mr. Channon: I have never known him to be so before, but I hope that my hon. Friend is wrong on this occasion.
  We must admit that this is a better Bill than that which was presented to the House last November. We think that it is a bad Bill, although better than it was, and the credit for making it better and our thanks must go to the right hon. Member for Leeds, West, who accepted many Opposition Amendments, and we must thank his successor, the present Minister, for honouring the commitments which the right hon. Member made during the Committee proceedings on the

  1299
  earlier Bill. As originally introduced, the Bill would probably have been more acceptable to the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) and the hon. Lady the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South The Minister then had power if he chose to reduce the cost limits to £100. It is a great step forward that the Bill has been limited so that control cannot go below £50,000.
  But why does the Minister need to go even that far? Can the Parliamentary Secretary assure us tonight that it is the Government's intention to honour the previous Minister's undertakings which were given to us in Standing Committee when he said:
  "I can assure the Committee that there is no intention at present to have included anything below £100,000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee E, 1st February, 1966; c. 206.]
  Does that remain the Government's intention? If so, the provision is a contingency power, merely a reserve power, and that, too, is what the right hon. Member for Leeds, West told us at the time. Is that the new Minister's position?
  The Parliamentary Secretary will know that if the limit is fixed at £100,000 about 500 projects a year will have to apply for licences, projects costing about £180 million. If the limit were ever to be £50,000, there would be 1,000 projects a year at a cost of about £220 million. Hon. Members opposite will agree that the cost of living is unlikely to remain steady, whichever party is in power. Therefore, with the passage of time, inevitably the control will become potentially more severe. If in the circumstances of 27th July in the Government's view there was no case in the foreseeable future for reducing the limit below £100,000, surely there is no need for the Minister to keep this reserve figure of £50,000 in the Bill. If he thinks that it is vital to continue with this £50,000 figure, we are owed an explanation of the possible circumstances in which it would be likely for a Labour Government to reduce the figure below £100,000.
  Another assurance which we were given in Standing Committee concerned administration, because whether the Bill works well or badly depends on its administration.
  1300
  I must ask the Parliamentary Secretary about tolerance. The previous Minister told us that he would allow 5 per cent., or £20,000, tolerance to people on their building licences—he would licence an approved project at the approved cost but he would make it a condition that the cost would not be exceeded by 5 per cent. or £20,000, whichever was the less. To take the example of a £200,000 licence, there would be a note on the back saying that if it was not exceeded by more than £10,000—5 per cent.—no action would be taken against the builder concerned. Can the Minister confirm this very useful provision will still apply?
  I hope that the Minister also appreciates that it will be necessary to amend many of the standard contract forms in the building industry as a result of this Measure and that as soon as possible he will help the industry in this task, if necessary giving them assistance in drafting the necessary amendments. One of the points bound to crop up is what will happen to a building owner? How will he be protected in his contract if the contractor, not the building owner, uses material forbidden under the terms of his licence? The Minister may forbid the use of copper. What are the contract positions for the building owner and contractor? Can the Parliamentary Secretary also clear up the difficulty about starting dates? I am glad that the Minister is prepared to give professional advice for several years ahead, but what evidence of bona fides will he require? Surely not outline planning permission, because if that is necessary it will often involve people in considerable expense to no purpose in the long run?
  Can the Parliamentary Secretary also tell us what will happen to the normal applicant, the person compelled to start within six months? If a reasonable case is put to the Minister, will he grant a supplementary licence postponing the starting date? The Parliamentary Secretary will know that we are still unhappy about the six months rule and that we are also unhappy about the power of revocation remaining in the Bill. Can he go so far as to say that before he uses the power of revocation—because it will often hurt the innocent more than the guilty—he will hold some form of inquiry? I ask the

  1301
  Parliamentary Secretary to give an assurance that he will consider this before we give this Bill as Second Reading—if we do give it a Second Reading.
  I agree with those hon. Members who have said throughout the course of this debate that we have to consider the general effect of the whole of the Government's activities towards the construction industry. From 1955 to 1964 the construction industry expanded enormously. In 1955 the value of new work done by contractors was £1,336 million. In 1964 it was £2,219 million—£893 million of which represented new housing. That can be claimed as a substantial achievement. The position is very different now. How are the Government going to maintain their target in the National Plan?
  Can the Parliamentary Secretary tell us what rate of expansion he thinks that the industry will require to attain the target in the National Plan and how does that tie in with the Minister's remarks this afternoon about his fears of a 5 per cent. expansion in the building industry next year. The National Federation of Building Trades Employers told us earlier this year:
  "1965 opened on a note of uncertainty and the year has been in many respects a disappointing and discouraging one for the building industry."
  The building industry has had an enormous amount of legislation directed towards it during the lifetime of the present Government. There has been an enormous amount of legislation, either put through or promised. But legislation alone does not build houses or expand the building industry. Added to the Government's action of 27th July last and the deferments announced by the Chancellor, and added to building controls, the building industry has had to face higher costs, increases in taxation, pressure for higher wages and the threat of the Government's Land Commission increasing the cost and diminishing the supply of building land.
  Is it surprising that the cumulative effect has been to undermine confidence in the building industry? The last quarterly state of trade inquiry by the N.F.B.T.E. shows that the building industry is still slowing down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry has pointed out. In figures issued today the
  1302
  Minister of Public Building and Works show that the total orders for new construction during February are lower than in January. The Minister's hand-out says:
  "The main reduction was in new housing in both the public and private sectors and was distributed throughout most of the regions."
  Are the Government proud of that? I maintain that the activities of the Government towards the construction industry have resulted in the total orders for new construction in 1965 being 5 per cent. lower than in 1964 and in their having to admit that in February the main reduction was in new housing in both the private and public sectors.
  What about bricks? The hon. Member for Bethnal Green mentioned these. I do not wish to take him up on his maiden speech, but he said that at the end of March, 1963, the brick stock was 912 million. The position today is that stocks are 882 million and the difference between the two situations is that in 1963 the glut was caused by the weather whereas in 1966 it is the direct results of Government action. The Government have created a glut of bricks, not the bad weather.
  Mr. Urwin rose——
  Mr. Channon: I hope that the hon. Member will forgive me for not giving way as I have only three more minutes. Apart from the effect of the Bill upon the construction industry, the most extraordinary part of it has been its history. We were told how early it was going to be introduced and that alterations were to be exempt. After the three months of the Summer Recess last year, when the Government were presumably drafting the Bill, they came forward, three months later, with a changed Bill in this important respect. Finally, we were told, in the dying days of the last Parliament that the Government's control over the industry sprung from the Chancellor's statement of the 27th July and that builders who went ahead did so at their peril.
  It is small wonder that the Leader of the House had to come down and promise no retrospective penal action. The trouble about that was that it was not an assurance at all because the Bill, as drafted, provided that there would be no retrospective criminal sanction on work done

  1303
  before Royal Assent. The assurance of the Leader of the House was worth precisely nothing and altered nothing unless the Minister meant that work done before the Royal Assent would not count towards the £100,000 limit. I gather that that is not the situation. I wonder whether the House realises that an industry which employs 1,800,000 people, vital to our expansion hopes, is still faced with a Second Reading of a Bill nine months after legislation has been threatened, and nine months after the Chancellor's action. The Bill is still in the state where a leading article in Building of last week pointed out that:
  "The retrospective provisions are not fully understood."
  This is a disgraceful way to treat an industry of such importance. The industry has been treated with contempt by the Government. The truth is that after saying that they would not impose controls, as the last Minister said, the Government imposed them at a period of temporary economic crisis and found an excuse for making them a permanent measure. No one complains now that the building industry is over-heated. No one complains about this who looks at the figures for new constructions or for housing starts.
  It is the Government who have made it difficult for the building industry to expand, who have imposed controls for the sake of controls and who have introduced a permanent system to tackle a temporary problem. They have done nothing to help housing by this Bill, as has been shown conclusively by my hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry and others. The Government have done nothing to help the construction industry by this Bill. This is an unnecessary, out-of-date, retrospective, petty little Bill, and I ask my hon. Friends to vote against it tonight.
  6.39 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Mr. James Boyden): As everybody in the House who is interested in the building industry knows, the main obstacle to the building industry's capacity to cope with the demands made on it is the supply of labour, especially skilled labour. In the past, credit squeezes have caused exaggerated unemployment in the development areas and this has always particu-
  1304
  larly upset the building industry in those areas. Those of us who live in development areas and know their problems are very conscious of this. Just as general employment in these areas always recovered more slowly when the squeeze was relaxed than in the prosperous areas, so it was in the building industry. The Government's policy nationally of maintaining full employment, despite damping down consumer demand, is a break-through in social and economic policy as distinct as the Keynes' theory of the multiplier was in its day. One of the differences is that the Labour Government have applied the policy quickly and with success.
  Perhaps I can particularly illustrate this with regard to the Government's policy in the building industry in the North-East. Apart from the period of a freak blizzard in December last year, unemployment in the building industry in the North-East has, month by month, been lower in the last winter than for a very long time. It would be fair to say that employment conditions this winter have been as good as they normally were in a Tory summer. A Labour winter is as good as a Tory summer.
  There is a factory building boom in the North-East. There is considerable activity in Government building, such as the M.P.N.I. at Newcastle, Army houses at Catterick and the Post Office Savings Bank in Durham. Large road schemes and housing drives are beginning to gather momentum, particularly through factory built houses and through local authority consortia.
  This is the background to the introduction of the Bill and the announcement about it last year. The limitation on Government expenditure on building announced last July, plus the proposal to introduce the Bill and subsequent administrative actions which followed this—they have all been damping down the building industry—have maintained full employment in the prosperous areas and better employment in the building industry in the development areas than for very many years.
  In the second half of 1965 building orders in Scotland rose by 3 per cent. and in the Northern Region and in the North-West there was only a very slight fall in orders which obviously did not affect very much the general prosperity

  1305
  of the building industry there. Although in Wales and the South-West orders fell much more in the second half of 1965, the total value of orders placed in Wales in 1965 was substantially higher than for 1964 and the orders in the South-West were as high in 1965 as in 1964. We must remember that the 1964 figures, as a percentage increase, were much higher than 1963 because of the bad winter of 1963, and there was something in 1964, I believe, to do with an election.
  Since as a general rule the areas which I have been talking about and other development areas have had less than their share of construction and house building under the Conservative Administration than the more prosperous areas, it is thoroughly desirable socially and economically to absorb in these areas the unused labour which exists—and it is only in part of the country that there is unused labour—in the development areas. In other words, the Government's policy nationally has been a great success as far as employment and the building industry are concerned. This is the background to the Bill and it is one of the substantial reasons why electors voted as they did in the recent election. It is true to say that Labour's management of the economy is succeeding.
  A parallel struggle is in damping down domestic demand in the battle for the prices and incomes policy. The building employers and the building trades unions can certainly claim credit for having achieved recently a reasonable long-term wage settlement. I think that the Under-Secretary of State to the Department of Economic Affairs and, perhaps, myself can claim some credit for this since we took some part in discussing the situation with the employers and with the trade unions. Certainly credit is very much due to the trade union leaders who have shown great responsibility in this respect and commendable statesmanship in understanding the Government's policy.
  I am delighted that we have had in this debate the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Hilton). He gave us a vivid explanation of the danger of wage drift in the building industry and the effect on the cost of housing of wage drift and feverish inflation in some parts of the industry. It was most refreshing to hear in the House the voice of someone from the trades
  1306
  union on this particularly complicated and difficult industry. I hope that we shall hear my hon. Friend speak on other matters, but always when we discuss the building industry. He made a most thoughtful speech which faithfully reflected the 12 years or so that he has been thinking and working on this problem as a research officer in the building industry trade unions. I congratulate him most sincerely on his speech.
  The Bill sets out the administrative framework which will add yet another element of stability and opportunity for steady expansion to the building and construction industries. I think that the industry has only partially understood this. It is of course difficult to talk about "the industry". Building and construction are many sided and one section is often very quick to criticise another, frequently when the faults are mutual. The rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland on the football field is nothing compared with the rivalry between the professions and the builders over who does what. It is often assumed that it is the trade unions which argue about who does what, but in the building industry one finds this kind of divisive effect all across the board.
  Far too often the professions and contractors have assumed that it is highly desirable to have so many contracts available that the contractor has to switch labour and staff from one job to another in a feverish attempt to cope with the impossible. The Bill will remedy this situation. It is surely much better for individual contractors that they should have a steady amount of work with more regular customers and a more stable team of craftsmen. The picture which my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green painted of 50,000 labour-only sub-contractors is nothing short of horrifying. The policies of the Ministry of Public Building and Works will work in well in this matter of steady expansion by encouraging the most formative part of building expansion.
  I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) was so unkind to D.G.R.D. because many of the activities which it and the Department as a whole are encouraging—such as serial tendering, negotiated contracts, group contracts, improvement of building techniques—are the

  1307
  sorts of things which add to the productivity of the building industry and which will enable us to get the steady expansion which will result from the Bill. If, for example, all the best techniques which the best firms applied in winter building were applied by the less effective and less progressive firms, we should have about £50 million of extra building in the course of a year merely by applying fairly well-known bad weather building techniques.
  Reference has been made several times to the finger-tip control of the Bill. Whatever word may be used, it certainly is not a chopper; it is not a Wirral hatchet. It is a delicate device which hon. Members in the Committee were from time to time at some pains to make even more delicate. At present, as has been said by several hon. Members, the Bill will affect about 500 jobs a year. Their approval or deferment—I emphasise that it is deferment and not rejection—will derive from the best possible consideration of the pressures on the industry locally and nationally.
  No one will dispute that the regional and national headquarters of the Ministry of Public Building and Works are in the closest touch with the building industry—the contractors, the professions and the trade unions. They also have close contacts with the other Government Departments concerned—the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Power, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Labour. Our regional directors and their staff know their local industry intimately and are the builders' friends. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), as Minister, many times declared that it was one of his pleasures and duties to represent the building industry to his colleagues and to champion it. My right hon. Friend said this within my presence and publicly.
  The builders and the building professions appreciate this understanding and respect it. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why the building industry has co-operated so well in this limbo, to which the hon. Member referred, between the initiation of the Bill and its becoming law in the near future. I pay tribute to the building industry for its sense of fair play in this matter.
  1308
  The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) seems to have a phobia about Whitehall. Who would speak for the building industry if it were not for the Minister of Public Building and Works? Perhaps the hon. Member wishes to be the industry's spokesman. Certainly, as he would agree with his knowledge of the Ministry, the regional directors and the headquarters of the Ministry are good friends of the industry and know it intimately. They are likely to be the best people to administer the Bill.
  I was asked by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) about the figures. So far, about £45 million worth of building has been authorised to start up to the end of last month—April—and £24 million worth has been authorised for the months of May to October. The starting dates were spread out to fulfil the intentions of the Bill.
  The breakdown of the work is as follows: offices, 57 jobs with a value of £22 million; shops, 21 jobs with a value of £5 million; private educational, 18 jobs, £6 million; hotels, 17 jobs, £5 million; hostels, 12 jobs, £3 million; storage, 28 jobs, £8 million; mixed development, 20 jobs, £11 million; and miscellaneous jobs, including nursing homes, training centres and religious buildings, 27 jobs to a value of £9 million.
  The Bill enables stop-go to be avoided and it establishes proper priorities. That is why it needs to be permanent. It creates the conditions for steady realistic expansion and there is strong incentive for the industry to increase its productivity. Take, for example, the maintenance side of the industry, which employs something like 40 per cent. of the labour resources of the industry. A 10 per cent. increase in the efficiency of maintenance work would enable licensing to be dispensed with. Therefore, if the efficiency of the industry in maintenance and in winter building reached its maximum, this fingertip control would be even lighter. I am sure that my right hon. Friend would welcome the day when, although the Bill will be on the Statute Book, he need not operate it because the industry would be in balance.
  Mr. Chichester-Clark rose——
  Mr. Boyden: I cannot give way; I have many points to answer.
  Criticism has been made of the industry that it has not been doing enough research and that it does not communicate adequately the results of its research down through the industry. My right hon. Friend is looking forward to the establishment of the Building and Civil Engineering Research and Information Association as a breakthrough in the information field. The building in-try needs a service similar to that of the National Agricultural Advisory Service. I hope that this new service will soon get under way and will be as effective as the N.A.A.S.
  The Bill will enable due consideration to be given to building material shortages. At the beginning of the last Parliament, my right hon. Friend and I were constantly criticised for the shortage of bricks, cement and plasterboard. Most of the criticism came from hon. Members opposite, who complain even more bitterly today of the brick surplus. Even some of my hon. Friends had strong views on cement and my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) gave me the honorary title of "Blue Circle 'B'". Rather less fuss is made when the position improves.
  My right hon. Friend expects during 1966 that contractors will have no difficulty with bricks, cement or plasterboard. Considerations of materials shortages, except perhaps copper, will probably not need to come into the control this year. I should like to pay tribute to the cement companies for the way in which, in the difficult times in the past, they helped the Ministry of Public Building and Works in ensuring that cement got to the right places.
  The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Chichester-Clark) asked whether, when legal advice was taken about the difficulties of a contract, this would exempt the undertaker from penalties. Legal advice might be evidence of good faith but not necessarily so. The hon. Member asked whether the Minister would issue an annual report. My right hon. Friend will certainly explain his policies from time to time, but he prefers at the moment not to give a definite commitment about an annual report.
  I was asked whether there is a "plain man's guide" to the Bill. A document
  1310
  has been published, but I do not know that it is a plain man's guide. It is a background note to the Bill. When the Bill is passed, however, a leaflet will be produced to explain the operation of the Act. The hon. Member for Londonderry asked about the difficulties in getting guidance from the Ministry. Any developer who wants advice from the Ministry has only to write and he will he accorded an interview by the staff and will have matters explained to him.
  I was asked by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe whether, if somebody died, the licence would be transferable. I refer the hon. Member to our earlier discussions in Standing Committee at about page 166 of the OFFICIAL REPORT. This provision was included at the request of the Opposition.
  Great play was made by the hon. Member for Londonderry about the hostility of the building Press—the Contract Journal was quoted—to the Bill. That is far from being the fact. A great many of the journals have given the Bill a good reception. For example, the Illustrated Carpenter and Builder stated:
  "Even the building industry must admit that Mr. Pannell has common sense as well as social sense and economic sense on his side. The limping progress of house and other essential construction during the past ten years has been very much due to the burden of prestige building that it has been called upon to carry."
  The Builder, which has been quoted by hon. Members opposite, refers to a N.F.B.T.E. report, which it calls gloomy, and states:
  "This report shows once more the lamentable myopia of the builders' leaders, who can see licensing only as a threat to their main source of fat, not as a planned expansion of essential new building and renewal which should be their flesh and bone."
  I hope that tonight there will be no doubt that sweet reason will prevail to carry the Bill into law very quickly indeed. The building industry has played the game and shown a sense of responsibility. I wish that hon. Members opposite would stop inflaming the smaller builders, who are very prone to being inflamed by hon. Members opposite, against the Bill and against the Government. I hope that hon. Members opposite will exercise a certain amount of responsibility in supporting us on the Bill getting the priori-

  1311
  ties right and giving the building industry a stable and economic base from which to advance.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 279, Noes, 181.

  Division No. 3.]

  AYES

  [6.59 p.m.

  Abse, Leo

  Ennals, David

  Lomas, Kenneth

  Albu, Austen

  Ensor, David

  Loughlin, Charles

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  Luard, Evan

  Alldritt, Walter

  Faulds, Andrew

  Lubbock, Eric

  Allen, Scholefield

  Fernyhough, E.

  Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

  Anderson, Donald

  Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Archer, Peter

  Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

  McBride, Neil

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  McCann, John

  Ashley, Jack

  Floud, Bernard

  MacColl, James

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

  Foley, Maurice

  Macdonald, A. H.

  Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  McGuire, Michael

  Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

  Ford, Ben

  Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Forrester, John

  Mackie, John

  Barnett, Joel

  Fowler, Gerry

  MacLennan, Robert

  Baxter, William

  Fraser, J. D. (Norwood)

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Bence, Cyril

  Fraser, Rt. Hn. Tom (Hamilton)

  McNamara, J. K.

  Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

  Freeson, Reginald

  Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

  Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Gardner, A. J.

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

  Binns, John

  Garrett, W. E.

  Manuel, Archie

  Bishop, E. S.

  Garrow, Alex

  Mapp, Charles

  Blackburn, F.

  Ginsburg, David

  Marquand, David

  Boardman, H.

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Booth, Albert

  Gourlay, Harry

  Mason, Roy

  Boston, Terence

  Gray, Dr. Hugh

  Maxwell, Robert

  Bowden, Rt. Hn. Herbert

  Gregory, Arnold

  Mayhew, Christopher

  Boyden, James

  Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

  Mellish, Robert

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

  Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanellv)

  Mendelson, J. J.

  Bray, Dr. Jeremy

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  Mikardo, Ian

  Brooks, Edwin

  Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)

  Millan, Bruce

  Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Brown,Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)

  Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

  Buchan, Norman

  Harper, Joseph

  Moonman, Eric

  Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

  Hart, Mrs. Judith

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Cant, R. B.

  Haseldine, Norman

  Moyle, Roland

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Hattersley, Roy

  Murray, Albert

  Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara

  Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis

  Neal, Harold

  Chapman, Donald

  Henig, Stanley

  Newens, Stan

  Coe, Denis

  Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret

  Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

  Coleman, Donald

  Hilton, W. S.

  Oakes, Gordon

  Concannon, J. D.

  Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)

  Ogden, Eric

  Corbet, Mrs. Freda

  Hooley, Frank

  O'Malley, Brian

  Cousins, Rt. Hn. Frank

  Horner, John

  Oram, Albert E.

  Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

  Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Orme, Stanley

  Crawshaw, Richard

  Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)

  Oswald, Thomas

  Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)

  Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

  Owen, Will (Morpeth)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Howie, W.

  Padley, Walter

  Davidson, A. (Accrington)

  Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

  Paget, R. T.

  Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)

  Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

  Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

  Park, Trevor

  Davies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Parker, John (Dagenham)

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Hunter, Adam

  Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Hynd, John

  Pavitt, Laurence

  Davies, Robert (Cambridge)

  Janner, Sir Barnett

  Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

  Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

  Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Pentland, Norman

  Delargy, Hugh

  Jeger,Mrs.Lena(H'b'n&St.P'cras,S.)

  Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)

  Dell, Edmund

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.

  Dempsey, James

  Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)

  Price, Christopher (Perry Barr)

  Dewar, D. C.

  Jones, Dan (Burnley)

  Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)

  Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

  Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

  Price, William (Rugby)

  Dickens, J. M. Y.

  Judd, Frank

  Probert, Arthur

  Dobson, Ray

  Kelley, Richard

  Pursey, Cmdr. Harry

  Doig, Peter

  Kenyon, Clifford

  Randall, Harry

  Donnelly, Desmond

  Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham)

  Rankin, John

  Dunn, James A.

  Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

  Redhead, Edward

  Dunnett, Jack

  Kerr, Russell (Feltham)

  Rees, Merlyn

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Rhodes, Geoffrey

  Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e)

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Eadie, Alex

  Lee, John (Reading)

  Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

  Edwards, Rt. Hn. Ness (Caerphilly)

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Robertson, John (Paisley)

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

  Robinson,Rt.Hn.Kenneth(St.P'c'as)

  Ellis, John

  Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

  Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)

  English, Michael

  Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)

  Rodgers, William (Stockton)

  Roebuck, Roy

  Stonehouse, John

  White, Mrs. Eirene

  Rogers, George

  Swain, Thomas

  Whitlock, William

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William

  Swingler, Stephen

  Wilkins, W. A.

  Rowlands, E. (Cardiff, N.)

  Symonds, J. B.

  Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Ryan, John

  Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)

  Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)

  Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)

  Tinn, James

  Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

  Sheldon, Robert

  Tomney, Frank

  Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)

  Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.

  Urwin, T. W.

  Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

  Shore, Peter (Stepney)

  Varley, Eric G.

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Short,Rt.Hn.Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

  Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

  Winnick, David

  Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton,N.E.)

  Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)

  Winstanley, Dr. M. P.

  Silkin, John (Deptford)

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Winterbottom, R. E.

  Silverman, Julius (Aston)

  Wallace, George

  Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.

  Slater Joseph

  Watkins, David (Consett)

  Woof, Robert

  Small, William

  Watkins, Tudor (Brecon & Radnor)

  Yates, Victor

  Snow, Julian

  Weitzman, David

  Zilliacus, K.

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Wellbeloved, James

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)

  Whitaker, Ben

  Mr. Charles Grey and

  Mr. George Lawson.

  NOES

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Goodhew, Victor

  Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Gower, Raymond

  Nabarro, Sir Gerald

  Awdry, Daniel

  Grant, Anthony

  Neave, Airey

  Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Gresham Cooke, R.

  Nicholls, Sir Harmar

  Batsford, Brian

  Grieve, Percy

  Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

  Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

  Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Eunds)

  Nott, John

  Bell, Ronald

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Onslow, Cranley

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

  Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

  Osborn, John (Hallam)

  Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos & Fhm)

  Hamilton, Marquess of (Fermanagh)

  Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

  Berry, Hn. Anthony

  Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

  Page, R. Graham (Crosby)

  Biffen, John

  Harris, Reade (Heston)

  Percival, Ian

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

  Peyton, John

  Black, Sir Cyril

  Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Pike, Miss Mervyn

  Blaker, Peter

  Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Body, R.

  Harvie Anderson, Miss

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. J.

  Hastings, Stephen

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Hawkins, Paul

  Quennell, Miss J. M.

  Bromley-Davenport,Lt.Col.SirWalter

  Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

  Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

  Bruce-Gardyne, J.

  Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter

  Buck, Antony (Colchester)

  Heseltine, Michael

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Higgins, Terence L.

  Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

  Burden, F. A.

  Hiley, Joseph

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Campbell, Gordon

  Hill, J. E. B.

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Carlisle, Mark

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Rippon, Rt, Hn. Geoffrey

  Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert

  Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John

  Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

  Channon, H. P. G.

  Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

  Roots, William

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Holland, Philip

  Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

  Clark, Henry

  Hordern, Peter

  Royle, Anthony

  Clegg, Walter

  Hornby, Richard

  Russell, Sir Ronald

  Cooke, Robert

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  St. John-Stevas, Norman

  Cooper-Key, Sir Neill

  Hunt, John

  Scott, Nicholas

  Cordle, John

  Hutchison, Michael Clark

  Sharples, Richard

  Corfield, F. V.

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh & Whitby)

  Costain, A. P.

  Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

  Sinclair, Sir George

  Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Smith, John

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

  Kaberry, Sir Donald

  Stodart, Anthony

  Crouch, D. L.

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)

  Crowder, F. P.

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Talbot, John E.

  Cunningham, Sir Knox

  Lancaster, Col. C. G.

  Tapsell, Peter

  Currie, G. B. H.

  Langford-Holt, Sir John

  Temple, John M.

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

  Dance, James

  Lloyd,Rt.Hn.Geoffrey(Sut'nC'dfield)

  Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

  d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

  Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)

  Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

  Longden, Gilbert

  Walker, Peter (Worcester)

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  McAdden, Sir Stephen

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Doughty, Charles

  MacArthur, Ian

  Wall, Patrick

  Drayson, G. B.

  Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

  Walters, Denis

  du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain

  Ward, Dame Irene

  Eden, Sir John

  Maddan, Martin

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Magginis, John E.

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Errington, Sir Eric

  Marten, Neil

  Whitelaw, William

  Eyre, Reginald

  Maude, Angus

  Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

  Farr, John

  Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Fisher, Nigel

  Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

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

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Forrest, George

  Mills, Peter (Torrington)

  Worsley, W. M.

  Fortescue, Tim

  Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

  Wylie, N. R.

  Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford & Stone)

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)

  Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)

  More, Jasper

  Mr. Francis Pym and

  Glover, Sir Douglas

  Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

  Mr. R.W. Elliott.

  Goodhart, Philip

  Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

PRIVATE BUSINESS

  GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL
  (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  7.11 p.m.
  Mr. Jack Dunnett: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  Many of the provisions of the Bill are non-controversial, but I find that since last Thursday, when the Bill was read the First time, there has been a certain amount of controversy so I cannot say that there is now very little of it. Much of the controversy centres on the Amendments put down by hon. Members opposite, and it might assist the House if I go through the Bill briefly, dwelling, so far as I can, on its more controversial Clauses.
  Part I requires no comment. Part II is non-controversial. It deals with the proposed taking over by the Greater London Council of an unused cemetery, or an ill-tended cemetery, with provision with proper safeguards for it to be taken over as an open space in due course.
  Part III, which I thought was noncontroversial, but which I gather may now not be so, deals with further powers of the G.L.C. to provide amenities on open spaces, in particular the transfer of 10 acres of Hainault Forest for use as a camping site. These 10 acres represent merely part of 1,100 acres of open space there, and they will be used under stringent safeguards.
  I thought that Part IV was non-controversial, but I gather that there may be some comment of an adverse nature on it. It deals mainly with public safety. There are a number of measures in force dealing with public safety in public buildings, but there are gaps in the law, and the Clauses in this part of the Bill are designed to fill them. To give one example, public exhibition halls, which are covered by Clause 21, are regulated only when they require licences for
  1316
  dancing and music. Local authorities have dealt with these safety measures informally, and this Clause is designed to give formal legal sanction for the powers which they have exercised in the past. I believe that some hon. Members are reading more into this Clause than is intended. If this is so, I think that this can be dealt with in Committee. The intention is to do nothing more than fill in gaps in the law and to make law what has been the practice, almost with the force of law.
  Part V, which contains the financial provisions, is the part on which there is the most disagreement. Clause 23 deals with the vexed subject of allowances for local government members. At the moment they can claim allowances under three heads. The first is for travelling, and this Clause does not provide for any alteration in that. The other two forms of allowance are subsistence, and what can broadly be called financial loss. It is intended to compound these two allowances into an agreed fixed figure.
  Perhaps I might give the House some examples of the allowances which are paid at the moment. Financial loss is fixed at 25s. for up to four hours, and 50s. for over four hours. Subsistence allowance of 12s. 6d. is paid for not less than four hours, and it can go up to 68s. where there is an overnight duty involving a total absence of 24 hours. There was perhaps a time when these allowances were reasonably adequate, but in this day and age they are not.
  I think we all recognise that those who seek elective office at local level do not do so for motives of gain. Equally, they should not be compelled to subsidise the public service, and bearing in mind that our methods of local government provide for policy to be made by elected members, if they lose financially as a result of being elected, there is an increasing disinclination on their part to seek elective office.
  It is proposed, in Committee, to suggest an Amendment to this Clause to bring in certain safeguards. For example, these allowances will be payable only while an appropriate resolution of the Council is in force, and they will be subject to a maximum figure to be imposed by the Minister. It is true that the Maud Committee is considering this matter. It

  1317
  might be thought that this part of the Bill is an attempt by the G.L.C. to anticipate the views of that Committee. It is well known that committees tend to take some time to bring forward their recommendations, and that it takes some time after that for suitable legislation to be implemented. If the Measure were passed with this Clause in it, and the Maud Committee's recommendations were to conflict with it, no doubt the Clause could be revoked or amended in the appropriate way. In the meantime, the G.L.C. is concerned that perhaps the most suitable people are not being elected because of the considerable financial loss involved.
  The G.L.C. is the largest council in the country. There are 8 million people within Greater London, packed into 616 square miles, with a rateable value of £625 million, and a budget of no less than £400 million a year. I am not suggesting that this necessarily calls for a higher calibre of councillor than that of a parish council—no doubt the degree of devotion to duty would be the same—but it might require someone of perhaps greater ability to deal with such sums.
  The present system encourages those who have no other duties or have other incomes to go on the council. It discourages those who work on a normal daily basis for their living and who can claim no more than 50s. for the loss of a whole day. Because of the problems in the G.L.C. and the need to have people of the highest calibre, the G.L.C. felt that this Measure should be brought forward as soon as possible, without waiting for the recommendations of the Maud Committee, always remembering that if the Maud Committee were to report adversely, this could be dealt with in subsequent legislation. Both parties on the G.L.C. support this Measure and this Clause. There is absolute unanimity on it.
  I should perhaps tell the House that I have an interest to declare. I am a member of the G.L.C., and if this Measure went through I would, in other circumstances, receive these allowances. In fact, I am not standing for re-election in April, and if these allowances become payable before then I shall not claim them. I mention that merely to put the matter in order.
  Clause 24 is another Clause which is opposed by the right hon. Member for
  1318
  Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter), who wishes to delete it in its entirety. The Clause is intended to give the G.L.C. powers to contribute to an individual borough—or boroughs—which incurs expense by providing a service which is of value to people other than those within its boundary. It may not be read by hon. Gentlemen opposite on that basis, but that is the intention.
  As at present drawn the Clause is unlimited, and negotiations have been taking place between the G.L.C. and London boroughs in an attempt to reach some agreement. Agreement has been reached with about three-quarters of these authorities to limit the scope of the Clause to four groups of subsidy. If agreement is reached with all the other London boroughs, the G.L.C. will be content to limit itself in Committee to asking for these four forms of ability to contribute. If they cannot reach agreement they feel that the whole subject should be discussed in Committee, and they would go for the whole Clause.
  I should like to list the four headings to which the Greater London Council—subject to the qualifications that I have mentioned—would be willing to limit itself. First, there is provison for works. in furtherance of traffic management. The Minister has given specific permission, in view of the urgency of the matter, for certain contributions to be made, on the understanding that legislation to bring the matter into order is brought in, and this Clause is designed to put the matter in order.
  Secondly, there is the location of nonconforming industry. This is a matter which concerns more than the inhabitants of an individual borough. It concerns a much larger area, and cannot be other than in the interests of the county as a whole. A number of boroughs have applied for contributions, and the Greater London Council, which has shown great willingness in this matter, has asked the Minister for permission under Section 136 of the appropriate Act. Once again, this Clause, in the proposed amended form. does away with the need for individual application.
  Thirdly, it is thought appropriate to be able to make contributions to borough councils which have engaged in housing developments and are willing to accept

  1319
  nominations for their housing lists from the Greater London Council. This means that an authority with insufficient funds to carry out a scheme can nevertheless do so without the need for the county council taking part ownership. This would be an out-and-out contribution, but on terms that a certain number of places may be made available for the Greater London Council.
  Next, there is the provision of additional open space. It may be that a borough has open space available for acquisition within its boundaries. It is well known that if the open space is sufficiently attractive people from far and wide, perhaps even outside the Greater London Council area, would wish to share the amenities. The Greater London Council feels that in those circumstances it would be proper for it to make a suitable contribution.
  Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter: If I understood the hon. Member correctly, he said that Amendments on the lines that he has suggested would be introduced in Committee if a certain number of further boroughs agreed. Is he aware that the Parliamentary Agents acting for the G.L.C. sent me a letter, which I received this morning, containing the words:
  "The Member speaking on behalf of the Council in the debate"—
  and I take it that that is the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central (Mr. Dunnett)—
  "on Monday night will be in a position to give an unqualified assurance to the effect that Amendments will be included in the filled-up Bill as presented to the House of Commons to implement this agreement."
  As it may affect the subsequent course of the debate and, perhaps, the Instruction which stands in my name, could the hon. Member make contact with the Parliamentary Agents in order to make sure whether matters have not advanced rather further than he thinks?
  Mr. Dunnett: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for making my task easier. I shall seek further instructions before the end of the debate. At the moment I am not in a position to give an undertaking. All that I can say is that if all the London boroughs feel that, within the broad agreement, these four
  1320
  functions are reasonable in the circumstances, the basic Clause in the Bill would not be pressed, and those four types of contribution would be substituted. I will do as the right hon. Gentleman has asked me. Before leaving this Clause I should point out that it is true that the Local Government Act of 1950 provides for county councils to make this sort of contribution to rural and district councils within their area.
  Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North): On a point of order. I hope that it is not disrespectful to ask the hon. Gentleman whether my ears have deceived me. I thought that I heard him use the word "instructions". Is it to be understood that the hon. Member is speaking in this House under instructions or in his capacity as an hon. Member?
  Mr. Dunnett: The instructions to which I refer are instructions given by the Greater London Council to its officers, concerning the terms in which it would seek to amend this Clause in Committee. I have to discover what instructions have been given to these officers. I have no instructions.
  The other Clause which might be deemed controversial because it attempts to exclude the whole of Part V is that which gives the Greater London Council power to raise finances on a temporary basis, through bills. These are analogous to Treasury Bills, and Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol already have this power. Although the London County Council used to have it, for some reason when the party opposite drafted the London Government Act it omitted it. It is hoped to restore this power. Neither the Treasury nor the Bank of England has any objection.
  Part VI is formal, and I do not think that there is any controversy about it. It was provided that a number of building works and road works must be completed by a certain date. It is unlikely that these dates will be met and the Bill is designed to put the matter in order.
  Part VII deals with the suggestion that certain dangerous operations should be made an offence. Clauses 29 to 35 attempt to make it an offence to carry out these dangerous operations. This is not new. Last year the City of London successfully brought in a similar Measure,

  1321
  and these Clauses are drafted on almost identical lines. These incidents are fortunately not common, but I can give one example. Less than two years ago a coach was passing round the North Circular Road at the junction of Brent Bridge, where building operations were taking place, when a 6½ ton crane mast fell on to the coach, killing seven people and injuring 27 more. There was no provision for any criminal proceedings, or any power to ascertain whether anyone had been criminally negligent. These Clauses are designed to make such an operation an offence, and are on the lines of the City of London Bill. In case any hon. Members have any misgivings, there is specific provision in Clause 31(4) that it will be a defence to show that reasonably practical steps were taken for safety.
  Mr. Charles Doughty: The hon. Member has given an example of a crane falling on a bus or coach. Does he realise that such a case is not covered by the Bill? This was considered to be an accident not connected, except indirectly, with building operations.
  Mr. Dunnett: With respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, the crane was on the site as a result of road building operations, and it is believed that the Clause is wide enough to cover it. If it is not it can be made sufficiently wide in Committee. The House felt that the City of London Bill last year covered accidents of this character, and that Measure followed three or four incidents in the City of London itself which caused some furore at the time.
  They are my comments on the Bill. It will be seen that, subject to the further comments of other hon. Members, the Measure is designed to enable the Greater London Council to fulfil its functions more fully. It is true that a number of detailed points require examination but I respectfully suggest that they should be left for the Committee in due course.
  Mr. Speaker: Before I call the next hon. Member to speak it would be convenient to the House if I informed it that I have selected the Instruction standing in the name of the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter). I have not selected the instruction in the name of the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger). That Ruling does not narrow the debate
  1322
  on the Second Reading at all, although it would have some bearing on any subsequent debate after the Second Reading.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Does what you have just said, Mr. Speaker, indicate that it would be in order if I were to raise in this debate the issue raised in the Instruction of mine, although this might have consequences in respect of any subsequent debate?
  Mr. Speaker: By all means. The right hon. Gentleman is quite in order, on a Second Reading debate, to raise any matters which arise out of the Bill, and this Clause is one.
  7.29 p.m.
  Mr. Graham Page (Crosby): The House will be very grateful to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nottingham., Central (Mr. Dunnett) for his careful and full explanation of the contents of this Bill. I oppose its Second Reading because this Private Bill contains much which unjustifiably seeks to alter the general law, and in many cases, some of those mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, the law which was embodied in a Public Act which came into operation as recently as about a year ago.
  It is right to recall, first, that by the London Government Act, 1963, the House decided what powers should be invested in the Greater London Council and what powers should be invested in the London boroughs. When a Private Bill is promoted to extend the powers which were granted in a Public Bill so soon after that Public Bill has passed through this House, the onus is on the promoters of that Private Bill to justify its proposals.
  Substantial new powers are sought in this Bill for the Greater London Council. Some of those powers, if justified, would justify not only a Private Bill but a reform in the general law, and I should have thought that no Government ought to countenance a jumping of the gun by a local authority when and if there are points of reform in the general law which should be the subject of legislation. It is no compliment to the Government that a local authority should seek to do this, and it is something of an insult to other local authorities. Clause 23, dealing with payments to councillors is an example of the Greater London Council's jumping

  1323
  the gun in regard to the Maud Committee, and I shall return to that point later.
  Some of the provisions of this Bill would justify general reform of the law, and some of them are new powers which are an attempt to get round the 1963 Act. An example of that is Clause 24, whereby the Council, indirectly perhaps, seeks to take on certain functions that were deliberately vested in the London boroughs by the 1963 Act.
  This is not just a Bill for granting powers already recognised as precedents. It contains so many new powers that it would not have been right for the House to allow it to go to Committee merely on the nod. It is right that we should have on the Floor of the House an explanation of the new powers which are sought. I will not use the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour and say that it is "All grab" by the G.L.C., but it seems to be very greedy in trying to get further powers. I am not referring to powers such as those in Part II, the taking over of a cemetery—we know these Clauses only too well in Private Bills—but when one comes to Part III, and particularly to Clause 16, it is a very different matter. Here the Council is going into business, on the ratepayers' money, as a "Butlin's" on 10 acres of Hainault Forest.
  I will run quickly through the Bill in this way to point out where I think there are objections. Clause 17, in Part III, extends the powers to provide facilities for public recreation. I do not object to this sort of thing, but when one come to Part IV—powers of licensing large public exhibitions—very careful scrutiny should be given by the House. In Part V, allowances to members and contributions to borough councils are somewhat revolutionary in Private Bills.
  As to Part VI, the House should know why it is necessary for there to be an extension of the time for carrying out certain compulsory acquisitions for executing works of some national importance, because they concern the streets of London. There is also in Part VI an attempt to repeat for the Council the Clause which was given by the House to the City of London last year on very special pleading that it was a Clause necessary for the City of London but
  1324
  would not apply to other local authorities.
  These are not merely Committee points but matters of substance and of principle: the enclosure of a wide area now available to the public for recreation; the control of national exhibitions; the payment of local councillors; the allocation of functions between the Council and the London boroughs; the whitewashing of the failure to carry out certain works of national importance, and the creation in Part VI of criminal liability in respect of owners of property for the acts of their independent contractors.
  Having listed those points in that way, let me deal with them in a little more detail to show those to which we have objection. Going back again to that part of the Bill dealing with Hainault Forest, there is public legislation for the control of camping sites, caravans, and so on. What justification is there for the Council going into business in providing camping sites and avoiding the general law on the subject? I think that the Council recognises that it was not desirable to seek general powers to do this, but is this perhaps the thin end of the wedge for general powers, or is it really concerned with merely the 10 acres of land in Redbridge? It seems an extraordinary function for the Greater London Council—I stress the word "Greater"—to take 10 acres of land in Redbridge to run a camping site——
  Mr. John Biggs-Davison: If my hon. Friend is referring to the 10 acres proposed to be taken in Hainault Forest, is it really his impression that these are in Redbridge? It is my impression they are in my constituency.
  Mr. Page: I was looking at the minutes of the Greater London Council. If the Council is wrong over this, I bow to my hon. Friend, but the minutes put "Redbridge" after Hainault Forest, and I thought that it was in that area.
  Mr. John Parker (Dagenham): It is in my division, as it happens.
  Mr. Page: At any rate, it is somewhere in the Greater London Council jurisdiction—down in the forest something must have stirred.
  Clause 21 deals with the licensing of public exhibitions. It may come as rather

  1325
  a shock to hon. and right hon. Members to know that the Council has no power to impose conditions on the holding of some of what I might call national exhibitions. Clause 21 states:
  "No premises described in the schedule to this Act, whether or not licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquor or for any other purpose, shall be used on or after 1st January, 1967, for the purposes of a public exhibition or any other public display of the like kind … except under and in accordance with the terms of a licence … granted by the Council in pursuance of the provisions of this section."
  This provision refers to such very well known buildings as are set out in the Schedule—Alexandra Palace, Central Hall, Earls Court, Olympia, the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Horticultural Halls and the Seymour Hall.
  We are assured by the Council that it has no power to control the licensing of those halls for exhibitions nor, apparently, has anybody got that power. This is a very grave matter of public safety. I suppose one has under the roof of some of these buildings at any peak time of an exhibition some 30,000 or 40,000 people, and the danger to them if the management of the building is not right is very great. It makes one wonder whether this should be the responsibility of a local authority, or whether it should be put in the hands of a Minister. To some extent that is recognised in Clause 21(3) which says:
  "The Secretary of State may from time to time, after consultation with the Council and with such other persons as he thinks fit, by Order, amend the Schedule to this Act so as to—

  (i) add thereto premises …

  (ii) alter the description therein of any premises; or

  (iii) remove any premises included therein; …"

  If in this case this sort of building and this sort of exhibition is to be the responsibility of the local authority, why should it not be so in the case of other local authorities? I immediately think of the gatherings that may occur during the World Cup competition, in Liverpool near my constituency and in other places at that time.
  Does no one have control over licensing places where these sort of things are happening? If that is so, the general law needs reforming. We should hear from the Government, this having been
  1326
  brought to their attention by the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill, what they intend to do under the general, law. If the Government have intentions about the general law, as I think they should have, it would be wrong for the House to pass piecemeal private legislation in advance of public legislation on an important matter of this nature.
  I pass to Clause 23, which introduces an entirely new principle to local government—the payment of councillors. The Committee on Management of Local. Government, which briefly is known as the Maud Committee, was set up to consider in the light of modern conditions how local government might best continue to attract and retain people, both elected representatives and principal, officers, of the calibre necessary to ensure its maximum effectiveness. Under those terms of reference the Committee must necessarily consider the payment of councillors and whether or not it is wise to provide for payment for services which councillors give, but here the Greater London Council is trying to anticipate the recommendations of the Maud Committee.
  I understand that the Parliamentary Secretary has been encouraging the Council to do so. We hear of informal discussions last June when he finished by telling the Council to put the Clause in the Bill. I hope that he will rise and justify that a little more. Suppose the Maud Committee recommends against payment. Frankly, I hope that it does not, but suppose that it does. Will the Government then support the Greater London Council in its specially favoured position under the Bill? We were told by the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central that this payment to councillors will be prescribed by the Minister. Will the Minister prescribe it if the Maud Committee recommends against it? Generally, many of us think that the payment of councillors is bound to come, for the very reasons which the hon. Member mentioned, in order to secure the best men and women to serve on councils of this sort. I rather hope that the Maud Committee will recommend it.
  We recognise, of course, the burden of work upon Greater London councillors, but I doubt if it is greater than the burden on councillors in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and all the

  1327
  other big cities. Certainly, it is not greater than the burden on chairmen of committees in the councils of those great cities. I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary can tell us when the Maud Committee is likely to report. I should have thought it was quite likely to report before this Bill receives the Royal Assent. Let us wait and have a uniform law on this subject, worked out not on this abbreviated Private Bill procedure in which we have to indulge in this House, but on a Public Bill in proper debate and procedure in this House. It is a matter of the greatest importance that we should get this subject right and that there should not be piecemeal legislation about the payment of councillors by some local authorities and not by others.
  The next Clause, Clause 24, looks innocent enough. It deals with contributions by the Greater London Council to the execution of works, to the expenditure by a borough council; but, of course, the contribution by the Greater London Council to any one borough comes from the money which the Greater London Council collects from all boroughs or, to put it in another way, which other boroughs are obliged to pay without any escape. The money collected from all the boroughs is to be devoted at the discretion of the Greater London Council to assisting any one particular borough which the Greater London Council chooses to assist.
  The hon. Member for Nottingham, Central, was unable to give any undertaking about the limitations to the Clause. As it stands the Clause is very general. Subsection (1) says:
  "The Council may make any contribution they think fit to expenditure of a borough council or the Common Council."
  Its effect, in those words would be to nullify the careful division and balance of powers in the 1963 Act. I will leave my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) to develop this point if he is fortunate enough in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Clause 26, which is at the beginning of Part VI of the Bill, provides for an extension of time for compulsory acquisition in order to carry out a number of important works entrusted to the Greater
  1328
  London Council. The power of compulsory acquisition in order to carry out these works would expire on 1st October, 1966, if it were not for this Clause. Of course it is customary for this House in dealing with private legislation to give a local authority a specific time within which to exercise its compulsory powers. It is not right that there should be a threat of compulsory acquisition hanging indefinitely over property.
  Clause 26 deals with the matter by reference to certain Statutes, but I understand that paragraph (a) of subsection (1) relates to the northern approaches to Waterloo Bridge, paragraph (b) to the subways in the Strand and other important central developments of that sort, as well as, in Clause 27, the widening of Finchley Road to admit the M1 traffic to London. These are important matters. It behoves the promoters of the Bill to explain why they have not been carried out, when they are to be carried out, and why these extended powers are necessary, particularly having regard to the literally tens of thousands of individuals who are unable to plan or develop matters in connection with property affected by these compulsory powers without knowing when they are to be used.
  I come to the final complaint on the Bill, in Part VII. It seeks to make the owner of property—I underline the word "owner"—criminally liable under Clause 30 for excavation upon his land which threatens to take support away from the highways and under Clause 31 for building operations which give rise to a risk of danger to the public.
  The point of these provisions is to make the owner liable. This occurs in subsection (3) of each of the Clauses:
  "the owner of the land on which an excavation is made shall be taken as being the person responsible for the making of the excavation"
  and he escapes only by proving that he took all practicable steps to avoid the danger and if he brings before the court the person whom he holds to be responsible and satisfies the court that the offence was committed without his, the owner's, consent, connivance or wilful default.
  This was a Clause which was new to the House last year when it was introduced into the City of London Bill. My

  1329
  hon. and learned Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve), who put the case for the Bill on behalf of the Common Council of the City of London, said this:
  "It simply is not good enough for my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby to say that if this sort of protection has to be given in the City by the creation of a special criminal offence it will repeatedly be followed throughout the rest of the country. The conditions prevailing in the City can hardly he met by example anywhere else, save perhaps in the most crowded parts of Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow and not even then because nowhere else could the redeveloping of land lead to the speed and sometimes to the sort of recklessness which has resulted in the incidence to which I have referred in the City of London.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd February, 1965; Vol. 707, c. 149.]
  It was not only that this special pleading for the Clause was put by my hon. and learned Friend from the back benches. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport said again and again in his speech—I refer hon. Members to column 155—that it was special to the City of London.
  Mr. David Weitzman: I can understand the hon. Gentleman quoting the matter in that way, but why is it different in the City of London from London generally?
  Mr. Page: It is very different, because the plea when the Clause was first introduced was that it applied to the densely populated area of the City and to the very deep excavations which were going on in order to build very high blocks in the City. It was asserted that there was no other place in the country—this is what we were told at that time; I will not go on quoting from what the Joint Parliamentary Secretary said—where this could be justified.
  Mr. Weitzman: Surely all those things apply to London generally.
  Mr. Page: How on earth can it apply to the far from densely built up districts in some parts of the Greater London Council's area? How on earth can the Greater London Council justify this Clause over the whole of its area? It may have one or two places similar to this in the City of London, but if the Clause is justifiable for the Greater London Council for every area of the Greater London Council it is justifiable for the whole country.
  Mr. Weitzman: It probably is.
  Mr. Page: If it is, then is should be the subject of general legislation. This is another case of the Greater London Council taking powers which the Public Act of 1963 did not give it.
  To justify that, let me list the powers already vested in the London boroughs to deal with this sort of trouble. The London boroughs have powers of control over dangerous or neglected structures under the London Building Acts. The London boroughs have to deal with dangerous buildings and structures under the Public Health Acts. They have powers under special Acts to deal with the erection of hoardings, demolitions. excavations, the closing of highways when they are in danger from building operations, and the making good of a street which has been damaged by building operations and the charging of the expense to the person responsible for that damage. These powers are already vested in the London boroughs.
  The Bill seeks to superimpose on these powers in the Greater London Council to proceed against the owner of property for any act which may occur on his land. The general attitude of seizure of power under the Bill is shown by the extensions which the Greater London Council seeks to make to this very Clause. It has not been satisfied with saying that it shall be an excuse for the owner if he can show that he took all reasonably practicable steps. The Council wishes to leave out the word "reasonably" and oblige the owner to take all practical steps or else suffer criminal penalties.
  The Council is not satisfied with saying that these operations shall not be a danger to persons in the street. It extends it to danger to members of the public, and thereby duplicates the provisions of the Factories Acts and of the general law. This is an example of the Council seeking powers already vested in the borough councils to deal with this sort of subject.
  Mr. Dunnett: Clause 32(2) makes it clear that it is the borough council in the area where the accident occurs which has these powers. This is an amplification of the borough councils existing powers.
  Mr. Page: In the same Clause the Greater London Council is given the

  1331
  power to take proceedings. This is extending the powers which were given in the 1963 Act.
  I return to what I said at the beginning. Where the powers sought by the Greater London Council in this Private Bill are such as the House feel are justified, then they are justified as a change in the general law and the Government should come forward with proposals for reform of the law on those subjects. Where they are not justified, they are an effort to unbalance the 1963 Act and to claim powers to the Greater London Council which were deliberately left to the London borough councils in the 1963 Act.
  7.58 p.m.
  Mr. John Parker: I should like to give general support to the Bill, but I should like to ask some questions about Clause 16. As I have already stated, the greater part of the Hainault Forest is at present in my Parliamentary constituency. It was part of the borough of Dagenham. It was transferred to the borough of Redbridge under the London Government Act, but until the next General Election comes it remains in my Parliamentary constituency, though it may then be transferred to that of the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) under a redistribution scheme.
  I want to speak about Hainault Forest partly from the point of view of people living in the immediate neighbourhood and partly from the point of view of people who live in other parts of my Parliamentary constituency. What does the term "camping place" mean? Does it mean a place for putting up tents of a temporary character, or does it mean a caravan site? There is a great deal of difference between the two. I do not think most people would object to a camping place where tents are erected and are removed after a short time by people who have camped there. There would be a great deal of objection to a caravan site, many of the caravans on which might well remain for a considerable time, if not permanently, on the site.
  There is adjacent to the Forest the Hainault Estate of the Greater London Council, part of which is at the moment in my Parliamentary constituency, part in Ilford and part in Chigwell. All the people living in that area greatly enjoy
  1332
  this open space, and I personally have had a number of petitions objecting to the idea of having a caravan site erected inside Hainault Forest.
  Hainault Forest serves as an open space for an enormous number of people from the eastern London area. It was taken over by the L.C.C. in 1902. In recent years a lot of work has been done in planting new trees so that it can be enjoyed by people in the neighbourhood, and it is greatly used. At present from the very crowded areas of my constituency people travel by bus or in their own cars to Hainault Forest where they have picnics and enjoy the open country, with its pleasant scenery, away from the built-up areas. But, very important, youngsters of school age make a point of cycling there—especially in school holidays—and enjoying themselves in the open air. If it is intended to take over a part of Hainault Forest and construct a caravan site there, the whole atmosphere of that open space will be destroyed, as well as the pleasure that people get from it.
  It is alleged that it is necessary to have a caravan site here in London where foreigners who come to visit London can put their caravans. Why should they put them in Hainault Forest? It is a long way from central London, and I do not see why these facilities should be provided in that area. I do not think many people in the inner parts of London would wish to travel there and park their caravans. It is too near London for people who want to go holidaying. It is very suitable for picnicking and for people who want to spend an enjoyable day in the open, whether they be grownups or youngsters.
  It is right and proper that strong objection should be taken to altering the character of this open space. I do not object to providing a car park there, in some out-of-the-way place where the cars cannot be seen. Most of the large parks have car parks nowadays. I do not object to the provision of refreshment facilities and lavatories. They are necessary if a large number of people are going to use these places.
  Mr. Doughty: I am seeking information. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether Hainault Forest is in the green belt or not?
  Mr. Parker: It is in a green belt area, I think. There are other open areas around it. I believe they are to remain in agricultural use or to be retained as playing fields. It is not intended to affect them. Hainault Forest is similar to Epping Forest, which was taken over by the Corporation of London in about 1850 and has been well maintained, particularly recently. Perhaps I may say a word or two about it. For a long time it was just left alone, but in more recent years a satisfactory forestry policy has been applied by which some of the older trees are thinned out and young ones allowed to grow. In addition, new trees are planted, and I am happy to say that that policy has been introduced recently in Hainault Forest. It is being maintained as a satisfactory lung for eastern London, and I hope it will be maintained as such.
  I have no objection to allowing camping for weekends, and I am in favour of providing all the necessary facilities so that full use can be made of it as an open space, but there is a great difference between a camping site of that kind and a caravan site such as one sees around the coast, which, unfortunately, once they are established, are difficult to get rid of. Very often the wheels drop off the caravans and they then become shanties which are permanently attached to the site.
  It may be argued that that sort of thing is not intended in Hainault Forest, but once caravans are there the danger is very great. I should like to know what is meant by a camping place. Is it meant just a place for tents to be erected? If so, I do not object. Neither do I object to the other necessary facilities being provided, but if it is intended to make it a caravan site, I strongly object on behalf of my constituents.
  8.4 p.m.
  Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter: At the beginning of this debate, Mr. Speaker indicated that he would be good enough to select the Instruction which stands on the Order Paper in my name to be moved after the Second Reading. He also indicated, in reply to a point of order, that it would be possible also to raise the same issue on the Motion, "That the Bill be now read a Second time." This seems a very convenient procedure because, as hon. Members will gather from my intervention during the speech of the hon. Member for
  1334
  Nottingham, Central (Mr. Dunnett), the necessity or otherwise to move that Instruction may be affected by whatever assurances the hon. Gentleman is able to give after discussion.
  Before I come to that aspect of the Bill on the Motion for the Second Reading, I should like to put one or two points. In the first place, I think this is a rather curious Measure for a Private Bill. Its title is itself a trifle misleading. Hon. Members will see that it is a Bill
  "To empower the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Company to sell to the Greater London Council the lands known as the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery; to confer further powers upon the Greater London Council and other authorities; and for other purposes."
  No doubt, "other purposes" cover the very substantial points of public importance which this Bill raises, but anyone casually taking up a copy of this Bill and looking at the Title would not realise what extremely serious public issues of general importance the Greater London Council is seeking to legislate about.
  I wish to comment, too, on the Memorandum which that authority circulated to hon. Members in the last. day or two. The second paragraph contains an observation to which, in view of the contents of the Bill, hon. Members may well take exception. It states:
  "It is submitted that there are no provisions of the Bill which do not merit being adequately considered in Committee where any objections can be discussed more conveniently and effectively than on the Floor of the House."
  That observation would have more validity were we concerned with the normal Private Bill matters which appear in the earlier part of the Bill. But when one is dealing with public issues such as Clause 24, to which I shall come in a moment, and Clause 23, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) referred at some length, it is underrating the function of Parliament to suggest that issues of that public importance can simply be remitted to argument before a Select Committee.
  Indeed, this House has been for many years vigilant about attempts in the shape of private legislation to alter the public law. The first occasion for that vigilance arose a very long time ago, before the 1857 Act enabled divorce to be obtained other than by legislation. The House may recall that before that date a Bill

  1335
  was presented and went before Parliament, which contained, I think in Clause 227, the provision that the town clerk's marriage be dissolved. So lacking in vigilance were our predecessors of that date that that went through, saving the town clerk the expense of a private bill of divorcement, but also—lawyers will, no doubt, argue about this—providing permanently that whenever anybody is appointed town clerk of the city concerned, his marriage automatically comes to an end. That is an illustration of the dangers of leaving these matters solely to Select Committees.
  I will come to Clause 23, the payment Clause. The hon. Member for Nottingham, Central—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby that the House is indebted to him for the clear and helpful exposition that he gave—admitted that this was presented in advance of the Maud Committee, and he said that Committees sometimes take a considerable time to report. That is certainly the experience of us all. But surely what he then said is an argument against proceeding in this Bill to confer these powers. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby, I believe that payment at least for members of major local authorities will come. But when a move of that sort comes, it should come by way of public legislation with the Government of the day responsible for it, and one particular local authority should not attempt to jump the queue.
  Mr. Dunnett: Would it not be an advantage to the Committee and, in due course, to the Government of the day, to have seen a pilot scheme of this kind in operation?
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: No, I do not think that it would; and, if I may say so, the hon. Gentleman's observation shows some lack of appreciation of what is done by our Select Committees on Private Bills. As the House knows, individuals or bodies affected by the Measure are represented properly by learned counsel, and the particular private interests of those affected by the Measure are argued. The issue here before us is a public issue of great importance, and those of us who are involved in local government are concerned that it should be approached in
  1336
  the proper way. I doubt that there will necessarily be argument on the question in the Select Committee because, apparently, no one's interests are affected adversely. But, be that as it may, I do not consider that argument in the Select Committee is any substitute whatever for public discussion followed by public legislation taken on the Floor of this House.
  Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will appreciate the embarrassment which could be caused by the Clause. If the Greater London Council is given this power, then the Minister of the day, according to the Bill, has either to prescribe payment or not. If he refuses to prescribe, he will, apparently, be flying in the face of a decision of Parliament. If he does prescribe in advance of the Maud Committee, he may well be laying down arrangements which either the Maud Committee itself rejects or which this House or, indeed, the Government of the day reject, on consideration of its report. I can foresee real embarrassment not least to the Government of the day resulting from one particular local authority, at a time when, as everyone knows, the issue is coming forward for decision in the fairly near future, getting ahead and introducing a scheme in advance of a reasoned and reasonable decision on the issue as a whole.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby said, none of us under-rates the very hard work done by members of the Greater London Council. This is certainly true of the distinguished individuals who represent the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames on that authority. But I do not think they would say, and I do not think anyone would say, that they are necessarily harder worked than members of the councils of the great cities of Birmingham and Liverpool, for example. Indeed, although those cities are smaller than London, their powers are a great deal wider because they are county boroughs with the full authority of local government.
  I should have thought that the House would be disposed to take the view that this is an issue which must await the report of the Maud Committee, the advice of Ministers responsible to this House, and the decision of the House itself. The Parliamentary Secretary will be able

  1337
  to tell us whether, when the Maud Committee reports, the Government will produce legislation in the light of its conclusions. In advance of what the hon. Gentleman may say, I take it that that would be very likely. I imagine that it would be the Government's duty to do so. We shall create quite unnecessary awkwardness for ourselves and, possibly, considerable embarrassment for the Government—not that that is something which normally loses me any sleep—if we agree to what is now proposed at a time when, as I have said, the whole issue is being considered and is about to be reported on by an expert Committee. Suddenly, at this stage, we are asked to legislate in respect of one particular authority in advance of the whole issue being determined.
  If there had been no Maud Committee sitting, if the Government had refused to act, and if nothing were happening, I could sympathise much more with the Greater London Council in putting forward this proposal, but, as the matter is being dealt with in the right and traditional way I very much hope that the Greater London Council will not think it necessary to persist in this proposal at this time. Obviously, it is a delicate matter, as hon. Members, with their recollection of our own matters of remuneration, will understand. It is a matter of some embarrassment to members of that authority to have to bring it forward, no doubt. I hope that they will feel that the right course in present circumstances is to let it drop, to let the question be taken up by the Government on a national scale as soon as the Maud Committee's report is available for consideration.
  Like my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby, I have considerable reservations about Clause 31. The circumstances in which one can impose criminal liability, not civil liability, on individuals in respect of actions with which they have directly nothing to do must be very limited. I rather regret that this House gave these powers to the City of London, but, as my hon. Friend reminded us, this was done on the basis of, literally, special pleading about the very special circumstances of the City of London. We must accept that as having been done. But it is nonsense to say that the circumstances of the famous square mile are
  1338
  reduplicated over the whole of the Greater London area in which live one-sixth of the population of these islands and which contains still not only many areas of widely dispersed housing but many open spaces. This is going too far and I consider that no case has so far been made for doing it.
  I come now to Clause 24.
  Mr. Dunnett: I promised to try to obtain some information on this point which might assist the right hon. Gentleman in marshalling his argument. I am not authorised to give any such undertaking on the limitation of the Clause as was suggested. This is because the Greater London Council does not meet on this matter till tomorrow.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but, in view of the letter to which I have already drawn attention, I feel bound to pursue the matter and sketch in the background. The Clause is enormously wide. My hon. Friend read subsection (1) and so will I:
  "The council may make any contribution they think fit to expenditure of a borough council or the Common Council."
  When one realises that the Greater London Council is not a rating authority, that every penny it spends is raised by precept on London boroughs which themselves have the odium or responsibility of raising the rate from their ratepayers, one realises how enormously important an unlimited power of this sort could be. It alters the whole basis of the London Government Act, 1963.
  Many of my hon. Friends accepted that Act not on the basis that it was simply a widening of the geographical area of the London County Council but on the ground that it set up a new pattern of regional government in this country. We accepted it on the basis that the London boroughs would be, to use the jargon, "most purposes" authorities and the Greater London Council would simply conduct those matters which, for practical reasons, have to be conducted on a regional basis. Greater London is, of course, a region. As I said, one-sixth of the population live within it. To transfer so much substantial power as is here suggested would be to alter the whole basis of the 1963 Act.

  1339
  This is power. Let there be no doubt about that. To be able to say that one can levy a precept on every borough in the region and then, at one's unfettered discretion, hand out the product of that precept to those local authorities one chooses is of the essence of power. I do not say that the Greater London Council, for all its present political majority, would necessarily abuse that power; but we should be giving it power to do so. We should be giving it power to hand money over to only those authorities whose policies or whose politics it approved and to levy the money from the whole of the area. We should be giving it power drastically to affect rate levels in particular boroughs. We should be giving them authority to use the power of the purse to dictate the policy of London boroughs whose electors might wish to see totally different policies pursued.
  And we should be doing it not because this was essential but because of some relatively innocuous purpose which is thought to be served. One thing about which I thought hon. Members on both sides were always determined was that they would give to nobody, not even to Ministers whom we could call to account, and still less to outside bodies, any more power over the subject than they could show a definite cause to need for practical purposes. The hon. Member would not pretend that the Greater London Council need this wide power. He said that there are four specific directions in which they need to be able to make grants. None of them, he will agree, except possibly the last in respect of housing, involves any substantial expenditure. Yet in order to do this the Greater London Council are seeking from Parliament the immensely wide power to make any payment they think fit to any borough.
  Mr. Dunnett: I apologise for interrupting so frequently, but it is only fair to the Greater London Council to say that it is more than likely that they will be content to limit themselves to the four heads which I mentioned. But, to be fair to me, I cannot give that undertaking because I am not so authorised to do.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's difficulties, but it is
  1340
  hardly for an hon. Member in charge of legislation to ask Parliament to pass a Clause of this kind when he himself says that he does not think it likely that they will want the powers. Is that treating Parliament in the right way? I know that we have all been put in difficulty by the time-table of this Parliament. We on this side of the House have been put in difficulty by this Measure being rushed forward at this stage after only a few days notice. I appreciate that the time-table makes that necessary. All the same, I do not think that it reflects much credit on the Greater London Council that they should come forward with a demand of this sort for these powers and then to say through the mouth of their spokesman that they do not really want them.
  The hon. Member said that he is not in a position to give an assurance. As I told him when he was kind enough to give way to me during the course of his speech, I have been in touch with the very distinguished firm of Parliamentary Agents whom the Greater London Council have the good fortune to employ over this Bill. I saw their representative a few days ago and we had some discussion, and in the light of that discussion I received this letter this morning which I propose to read to the House. It is dated 29th April. It is headed, "Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill" and it reads:
  "I am writing to let you know that the London Boroughs Committee had a meeting yesterday when the agreement between the Greater London Council and the London Borough Councils who have petitioned against Clause 24 of the Bill was approved. As a result the Member speaking on behalf of the Council in the debate on Monday night will be in a position to give an unqualified assurance to the effect that Amendments will be included in the filled-up Bill as presented to the House to implement this agreement."
  I know, and hon. Members know, this very distinguished firm of Parliamentary Agents, and we know that they would not write such a letter without the proper authority of their clients. I say at once that they would not wish to mislead a right hon. Gentleman or the House. I think that it calls for some inquiry in the light of that letter, dated 29th April, that the hon. Member, having taken the trouble to make some inquiries, is not able to give the assurance that that letter quite plainly forecasts.

  1341
  This is a very unhappy position for the House. I appreciate that it is a very unhappy position for the hon. Member. But I am sure that he and those advising him appreciate that if this attitude is persisted in, it places those of us who have put down this Instruction, and who came to the House in the belief that an acceptable compromise had been arrived at, in a position of very real and very unfair embarrassment, and it may be that we shall have to seek what procedural methods there are to secure that this debate does not terminate tonight and in fact does not terminate until the hon. Member in charge of the Bill or the Parliamentary Secretary are able to give us the assurance quite plainly forecast. I do not think that the hon. Member will dispute the letter. I have read the whole of it. I do not think that this is the proper way to treat the House of Commons, and it is for the hon. Member to suggest how this situation could be dealt with.
  Mr. Dunnett: I am sorry to interrupt gain. The Parliamentary Agents wrote that letter in good faith. They hoped that their advice would be accepted. All I can say for the time is that their advice has not been accepted. But that is certainly no reflection on them.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: This is an intolerable position. It may well have been, in the light of this letter, that those who like myself were interested in the matter decided that it was not necessary for us to attend tonight or to leave the Instruction on the Order Paper. For that reputable firm of Parliamentary Agents to write this letter—and to the best of my knowledge I have had no contradiction—raises very serious questions of good faith. I am the last man—I know this firm well—to make any charges against them. I must press the hon. Member to put the position right. If assurances are given even to one right hon. Member—and I can tell the House that the assurances were shared with me by those of my hon. Friends who are interested in these affairs—it is not good enough for the hon. Member to say that it was given on the basis that their advice would be accepted but that their advice has not in fact been accepted. As far as I know, no steps were taken to inform me and we were simply left to go into the debate.
  1342
  The hon. Member may well wish to consider the matter further. He may well wish to consider whether at an appropriate stage, before we come to the Instruction in my name, this debate should be adjourned. He may well feel, and the Greater London Council may feel, that even the inconvenience which might result from some delay in the Bill would be less unfortunate than the atmosphere of suspicion of their future actions which reliance on the present course of events might well produce in the minds of hon. Members on both sides of the House. I appreciate that the hon. Member is in a difficult position. I have been in positions of difficulty myself, and I am not without sympathy with him. But he will understand that what he said raises quite serious questions of the relationship of the House with local authorities outside and with those who speak for, represent and act for those local authorities outside.
  Were he to contemplate in these circumstances trying to bulldoze this Bill through tonight without getting the matter properly cleared up, then even if he succeeded—and I do not know whether he would—it would undoubtedly do lasting damage to the relations between this House and the greatest of local authorities in this country. I asked him in all seriousness, and in the interests of all of those for whom he speaks in the House, to give that matter some thought before the debate ends.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. R. J. Mellish): May I intervene in the right hon. Gentleman's speech to state what my understanding of the position is as a member of the Government? At 6 p.m. today, with the knowledge that this item was to be raised, I was advised that they were almost on the verge of agreement—that is, the Greater London Council and representatives of the 11 Greater London Boroughs who had objected to this Clause for one reason or another. They were confident that agreement would be reached in a matter of days. That is as I understand it, and it was to be part of my speech tonight in reply to the debate. It may well be that since the right hon. Gentleman received his letter there have been these discussions about which I have spoken and which I hope will be

  1343
  finalised to the satisfaction of all. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman ought to know what I know of the situation as a member of the Government.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am obliged to the Parliamentary Secretary for his intervention. But he is an old Parliamentary hand and he will realise that this leaves the House in a very unsatisfactory position. If we proceed with the business as arranged, the House will some time tonight have to decide on the Instruction standing in my name. I appeal to him, as an old Parliamentary hand, to appreciate that it is not a satisfactory position in which to leave the House.
  If those concerned are not in a position to come to a decision, and yet wish to go on with this Clause regardless of what Parliament says, and unless they are prepared to introduce the Amendment which even their own spokesman has said is reasonable, surely the right course is, at the proper stage, after further discussion, to move the Adjournment of the debate until such time as they are able to give Parliament the answers to its questions.
  Mr. Mellish: There would be a great deal in what the right hon. Gentleman says if the Bill were to become law tonight with its Second Reading. But in fact it will go to a Select Committee for consideration which will have a chance to ask the questions and consider Amendments in the light of what has been said in this debate. A Select Committee, which will consist of Members of both sides of the House, will take the job over.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I thought that I had dealt with this point in advance. What the hon. Gentleman says is true on the points that are of an ordinary Private Bill legislation character—for example, the point about Hainault Forest, to which the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) referred. But no one challenges the fact that it substantially alters the London Government Act, and effects a major change in legislation, which came into effect only a year ago and that it may or may not be a matter on which individuals may wish to petition. The Act affects the structure of local government covering one-sixth of the population of the
  1344
  country and it is not good enough to say that this matter must be left to a Select Committee. This is a matter for Parliament itself.
  Mr. Iremonger: Before my right hon. Friend sits down——
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving): Order. I think that the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has already sat down. Mr. Iremonger.
  8.34 p.m.
  Mr. Iremonger: I was hoping to ask my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) a question before he sat down, because I am not absolutely clear about quite where the London Boroughs Committee came into this very disturbing picture and how the Parliamentary Agents in any case could purport to say that they had confidence that an Amendment would be made after they had, as I understood my right hon. Friend to say, discussed the matter with the London Boroughs Committee.
  Surely it is the Greater London Council which is promoting the Bill and it is the G.L.C., and the G.L.C. alone, that could give the assurance which would entitle the Parliamentary Agents to say that an Amendment would be made in Committee. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is seized of my inquiry and would like to intervene on the point as to where the London Boroughs Committee came into the case, since that Committee is not able to instruct anyone about an assurance in such terms.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: My hon. Friend rightly says that the G.L.C. is promoting the Bill, but I understand—and the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central (Mr. Dunnett) will correct me if I am wrong—that the G.L.C., having entered into an earlier agreement with the London Boroughs Committee, apparently finds some difficulty in accepting an alteration without its consent. I think that is the basis of the problem as the G.L.C. sees it.
  Mr. Iremonger: It leaves the House in profound difficulty. What looked to me to be a Bill with serious defects turns out to be a scandal. I cannot see how the House could possibly give it a Second Reading in this debate, and I hope my

  1345
  right hon. Friend will press the point. If the hon. Members supporting the Bill do not ask to adjourn the debate, I hope that we will divide against it on Second Reading so that it can be reconsidered.
  I had intended to comment on four Clauses, but the points I wished to make have been referred to already with great persuasiveness and skill. I therefore merely want to support what has been said, first in reference to Clause 16, which concerns the proposed camping place in Hainault Forest. As the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) said, this place may become a direct constituency concern of mine.
  This proposition is very unwelcome locally. What the hon. Gentleman said about it is right. People are asking where it will stop. They say that it is not merely the idea of having a camping site that alarms them but the uncertainty as to what sort of place it is to be and what else will come in its wake. They also wonder what useful purpose it can serve as a tourist attraction, since, if one chose the corner of London furthest removed from the Channel ports, it would be the north-east corner. The access which the campers on the site will have to London's main tourist attractions will not be easy.
  If the Bill does proceed tonight—and I hope that it will not—I trust that these points will be reconsidered in Committee and given very much more careful consideration and be more closely defined. I myself put down an Instruction to the Committee which would have deleted Clause 5, if the House had agreed with me, but Mr. Speaker said that it would not be called. However, I am happy to make my points seriatim on Part V—Clauses 23, 24 and 25.
  On Clause 23, I think that it is presumptuous to anticipate the Maud Committee and pass serious general legislation of this kind simply at the instigation of one local authority. I am surprised that both sides of the G.L.C. seem to have acquiesced to this. It would have been preferable to leave this provision out for it to have been brought before the House in the proper way, and apply to all great local authorities alike.
  Clause 24 causes particular misgiving to the borough part of which I represent. It is arbitrary and it will give sweeping
  1346
  power to the G.L.C. at whim as and when it sees fit to add expense to any borough. It is a "kissing goes by favour" Clause.
  It is all very well for the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central (Mr. Dunnett) to say that the G.L.C. would not dream of doing this sort of thing, but we have to look at what is in the Bill, and to let the Bill through in this state would be a scandalous dereliction of our duty. I cannot see how the drafting of the Bill could have gone into this matter at all. The hon. Gentleman's statement makes it all the more extraordinary. Since the G.L.C. seems to have had a good idea of what it wanted to do, I cannot see why it saw fit to enlarge it so greatly. I should myself welcome contributions from boroughs other than my own, because that is what it would be, for the acquisition of nonconforming user industrial premises; but this goes both ways, and other boroughs might not feel so happy about it. Who will choose which non-conforming users are deserving of being subsidised by the rates paid by the electors of other boroughs?
  I should have liked to have seen in any Clause which the House was asked to accept in this sense some positive system adumbrated for chooing which borough should have which subsidy and for what purposes. I am surprised that so few hon. Members seem to have been alerted to the very undesirable precedent in this Clause and I hope that upstairs, if the Bill gets further, a very different Clause will emerge if the Bill is submitted to the House for Third Reading.
  Clause 25 is not mentioned in the promoters' statement which was circulated to hon. Members—mine reached me only an hour or so ago—is one of the Clauses which the promoters think likely to be objected to, but it is none the less highly objectionable. It provides that the amount which may be raised by London boroughs by bills, which one understands is to aggregate about £30 million, shall be allocated as between individual boroughs and the amounts they may raise at any given time decided by the London Boroughs Committee. It is quite outside the contemplation of those who have taken part in the proceedings of the London Boroughs Committee that it should be employed in any kind of executive capacity like this, let alone

  1347
  having an arbitrary power of the utmost importance in deciding on the availability of public funds, comparable to the power of the Treasury in giving loan sanction for major public works.
  The London Boroughs Committee is only an association of local authorities. Page 3 of the promoters' statement actually says that it is a body representative of the London Borough Councils but whose decisions do not bind its individual members. So modest a rôle is that conceived by the promoters of the Bill for the London Boroughs Committee that they do not paint it in any more pretentious colours, and yet it appears in the Bill as a body which is to have the decisive voice in deciding what boroughs are to have the power to raise these large sums by the issue of bonds.
  The House never intended that power of this kind should be put into the hands of this body as it is in this Clause. The alternative, which would be infinitely preferable, is for the allocation to be done by the Treasury on the same basis that it gives loan sanction for the raising of funds for other purposes. I understand that this has been suggested in responsible quarters, and I hope that it will be intended to amend the Clause in that sense in Committee. Otherwise, possibly a scheme might be acceptable which would allow the Boroughs Committee to prepare a scheme of allocation, but to allow the boroughs individually to object if they were not satisfied with the allocation made, with appeal to the Treasury whose decision should be final.
  I hope that this will be noted and that at whatever stage in the life of this Parliament the Bill goes to a Select Committee, this may be borne in mind as representing the very serious misgivings of the Redbridge Borough Council, which has been good enough to let me know its feelings in the matter. Those are matters of detail. It is convenient and appropriate that they should be raised on Second Reading. But far more important is what my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames has said about the principle raised in Clause 24.
  Apart from putting on record the important matters which I have mentioned, I want to say that I do not think that the House can possibly vote for this
  1348
  Bill tonight in view of what my right hon. Friend has said. This is a Private Bill, it is not a matter in which the Government are deeply implicated. It is a matter, above all, in which hon. Members in their private capacity have to make their own judgment and have to vote. I hope that it will not be present in the minds of hon. Members opposite that the majority party in the Greater London Council is the Labour Party, that it is a Labour Government who might find it convenient to have this Bill go through, and that it interferes with an Act passed by a Conservative Government. The very sinister centralising powers are certainly not in conformity with Conservative principles.
  Those considerations should be put aside and hon. Members should address themselves to the profoundly important constitutional implications to which my right hon. Friend has referred. I certainly do not find it possible to vote for this Bill and I hope that other hon. Members will feel likewise.
  8.45 p.m.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I want to make one or two observations on the points which have exercised Members in this debate, in particular the question of the proposals for a different arrangement for meeting the expenses of councillors. Before I do so I should say that the creation of the Greater London Council was an act of folly but it was an act of folly which was not committed by this Government. It was an act of folly by hon. Gentlemen opposite and they are now faced with this enormous authority which they have created and which was referred to as something approaching a regional authority.
  I would hardly call it a regional authority, because it is not large enough, but it is the nearest thing to a regional authority that we have. It is a bit of a monster because it is a regional authority in size, created without giving a thought to why it was being created. It was created for reasons which aroused some suspicion on this side of the House at the time. It was suggested that certain political aims were involved. If political intentions were there they do not seem to have achieved their object.
  But the Government, and, as the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) has pointed out, the Labour

  1349
  government across the way, have the problem of trying to deal with the baby with which Members opposite have landed them. It is there and they have to do something about it and this is why this Bill is brought before the House.
  The position of the Greater London Council in the circumstances is a difficult one. Because of pressure on Parliamentary time, when it asks the House to consider its problems it is bound to do it in one fell swoop. Members are right to say that this is a bit of a mixed bag. It is a bit of a mixed bag because of the pressure on Parliamentary time and this cannot be avoided. It is quite right to say that the question of Hainault Forest and the proposed site is of a different order to the other questions raised here.
  On that point I would only say that I understand the feeling of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker). This is one of those things which no one ever wants, but when those of us who travel abroad by car see the provision which is made for caravanning and camping we may think that it is not altogether wrong that some small reciprocal arrangement should be made on this side of the Channel, if only to encourage some reciprocation in tourist travel and help the balance of payments. This is relatively small item compared with some of the other questions. The same applies to the point of what is to happen to exhibitions.
  When I first glanced at the Clause I was horrified. For a moment I thought that the Greater London Council was going to adopt the powers of the Lord Chamberlain, and when I think in terms of the powers of the Lord Chamberlain I think of censorship. I thought for one moment that the Greater London Council proposed to set itself up as a censoring body. If that had been the case, I should have proposed to go into the Lobby with the hon. Member for Ilford, North. But it is no such thing. The proposal is very necessary and urgent. It is that the G.L.C.—which, after all, is the fire authority—shall have legal power to act as a fire authority.
  Mr. Doughty: Clause 21 says nothing of the sort. It gives a complete licensing power. The Council might forbid the Labour Party conference being held in Central Hall if it so wished.
  Mr. Jenkins: Indeed. These powers are similar to those powers already exercised by the G.L.C. over the whole range of places of public entertainment, and it seems right and proper that this gap should be plugged. The Bill does just that.
  On the question of the payment of councillors, which is dealt with by Clause 23, this seems to me a necessary consequence of the creation of this enormous authority. As a member of the L.C.C., I found that one spent a great deal of time in filling out complex forms which seemed to be designed to discourage members from taking the bother to fill them out so that they would not claim their expenses unless they were absolutely forced to do so. The system is complex and undesirable. If the proposition—which I understand is generally accepted on both sides of the House—is that the expenses of councillors should be paid, then I should have thought that a more simple and better way of paying them would meet with general approval. The G.L.C. is here suggestinig that a more simple and better method should be adopted.
  It has been suggested that the consequence of this being adopted by the G.L.C. in advance of any general recommendation on the subject—most people agree that it is desirable that a similar recommendation should be made—would be thoroughly bad. I wonder whether this is true. Is it not reasonable and proper that a pilot scheme should be operated by such an enormous authority as this, which, it could be said, is exceptional, if, as is unlikely, the recommendation of the Committee should not be that for which both sides of the House hope? I trust that on consideration hon. Members opposite will think that the fears which they have expressed may be a little exaggerated and that this is not a question to which should be attached the very great weight suggested by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page).
  The point which exercises the minds of hon. Members opposite is the question of the power which it is proposed to give to the G.L.C. to make contributions to the boroughs. I agree that the Clause dealing with this matter is widely drawn. I am bound to say that I was glad to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Mr. Dunnett) say that it was the intention

  1351
  that the powers should be more closely defined.
  What, then, is the conclusion which we should draw? The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) made very great play about this, but I think that he has exaggerated a little. He suggests in his Amendment:
  "That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill to leave out Clause 24."
  This is a proposal to remove the Clause altogether. As I understand what he said, he does not want that to happen. Unless I misunderstood him, he is prepared to accept rather less than what is proposed in the Clause. He does not want to get rid of it altogether.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central said that for reasons which he explained he is not in a position to say tonight that this Clause can be revised in precisely the manner about which the hon. Member has heard from the Parliamentary Agents. It is a fairly reasonable assumption that during the Committee stage the discussion will revolve around those lines. Cannot the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, in all the circumstances, bring himself to say that on the basis of the remarks of my hon. Friend, he need not press to get rid of the Clause completely and that it is a matter which can be dealt with in Committee?
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Does the hon. Member appreciate that we have no firm assurance that there will be any limitation whatever in the terms of the Clause, which he himself very properly said was very wide? Secondly, does he appreciate that whatever the merits of the precise proposals for limitation may or may not be, there are certain questions of good faith in dealing with a matter when the responsible and authorised agents of the promoting authority have given an undertaking in writing?
  Mr. Jenkins: This is a matter for the promoting authority, for whom I am not in a position to answer. I understand the right hon. Gentleman's difficulty. What I am saying, however, is that he has played it a bit too hard and that in all the circumstances, it seems to me—it may not appear so to the right hon. Gentleman, in which case he must do as he
  1352
  thinks right—that in view of the partial assurance which he has obtained from my hon. Friend, he might find it proper to withdraw his Motion. It is a matter which I must leave entirely to the right hon. Gentleman. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, this is a matter for private Members' decisions, and he must make his decision upon it.
  That is my view of the Bill. I regard it as a necessary Measure. I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading and that some of the matters that have been mentioned during this debate will be raised by hon. Members, on both sides, during the Committee stage which follows.
  8.57 p.m.
  Mr. Patrick Jenkin: I was somewhat astonished to hear the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) suggest that the creation of the Greater London Council had political intentions. The hon. Member will remember, as I do, how, after the then Government published their preliminary scheme for implementing the Report of the Herbert Commission, representations were made to the Government by a large number of local authorities, particularly those on the periphery of the area.
  The then Minister, now the noble Lord, Lord Hill, successively lopped of large parts of the areas that were within the review area considered by the Commission and thus effectively prevented what at one time appeared to be a permanent Conservative majority on the Greater London Council. As evidence of good faith to show that it was not a political move aimed purely at destroying the former London County Council, one could not have anything more effective and relevant than that.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins: It is, of course, true that on that occasion, as on other occasions, the urban Tories triumphed over the rural Tories, but that did not make it any less a political matter.
  Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Member has a tortuous mind and is obviously able to see conspiracy where none exists. His remarks enable me to lead in and to sound a warning note about the whole progress on which the Greater London Council is engaged.

  1353
  Following the Report of the Royal Commission, the London Government Act, 1963, was passed. I disagree profoundly with the hon. Member for Putney when he says that it was unwise. I believe that it was a move of great importance and entirely beneficial to London. It was, however, based quite firmly on the rationale which the Royal Commission had spelt out, and many people regarded it as one of the best Royal Commission Reports ever.
  The rationale was that the powers of the London boroughs, the Middlesex boroughs and others in the outer London area had been eroded, for a number of reasons. In some cases, their powers had gone to the upper tier authority, in other cases they had gone to the Central Government. For instance, powers for dealing with traffic had to be taken by two or three successive Acts of Parliament passed since 1959 at very short notice in order to keep London traffic moving.
  Thus were effectively eroded their rôle and functions as local authorities. This, of course, had happened by a series of unrelated stages. It had happened, as it were, almost inevitably because of the growing complexity of the government of the Metropolis, and, indeed, it had happened almost unwittingly, because as it was over a period of time and was of a piecemeal nature people were unaware of what was going on. It was this process which was highlighted by the Commission which recommended that the borough council should be the primary unit of local government. This was the basis on which the London Government Act was established and passed. It was the bedrock of principle on which we should continue to act. London has made a new start under the new dispensation, and in many circles there is a new enthusiasm for the revival of genuinely local government in Greater London.
  I believe, however, that there is a danger of this process of erosion—if, indeed, that is the right word—happening again. Not, this time, in a series of unrelated stages, but by a series of successive—one could almost say, planned—steps. Not inevitably at all, because it need not happen, because the principle is enshrined in the 1963 Act. And certainly not unwittingly, because we are facing, and, it seems, in the future are increasingly likely to face, a planned, pre-
  1354
  meditated campaign of aggrandisement by the Greater London Council designed to upset that bedrock of principle on which the 1963 Act was founded. One may be excused for saying that this is not eroding the powers of the boroughs: that this is usurping the powers of the boroughs. I believe this is a trend about which this House, which passed the 1963 Act, should be very, very wide awake, and on its guard to prevent, because the whole rationale, the whole theme which underlay the Herbert Commission's Report, was that government in London should, so far as possible, remain local, and that the primary unit should be the borough.
  Mrs. Freda Corbet: Would not the hon. Gentleman admit that the purposes for which the Greater London Council wishes to have the power to make contributions to the boroughs, the four purposes which have been set out, constitute four very reasonable ones which are for the benefit of the boroughs and not at all for the greater glorification of the Council itself?
  Mr. Jenkin: I do not deny for one moment that the particular powers—we have not seen them spelt out in legislative form yet—as they were adumbrated by the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central (Mr. Dunnett), may be reasonable, and I am not taking exception to that. In a sense, these are not before the House at the moment. This is a point of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) made what seemed to me a legitimate and very powerful criticism. What I am addressing my mind to at the moment and what I am asking the House to give attention to is this threat, as I see it, of the reappearance of the erosion of the powers of the boroughs, this time the powers of the Greater London boroughs conferred on them by the 1963 Act.
  We had the abortive attempt to take the children's service away from the boroughs and make it one of the services of the Greater London Council. Fortunately that attempt failed. We had the threat—this will be debated in the House bcause this will require legislation—that the review of the Inner London education authority should not take place, that what was to be regarded possibly as a merely transition stage should,

  1355
  without further argument and without further examination, become final.
  We have the pattern of acquisition—about which I shall say something later—which the G.L.C. is pursuing in all parts of its area. The Bill contains a number of examples of the Council attempting to establish itself as a sort of super local authority, and not what it was clearly intended to be both by the Herbert Commission and the London Government Act, merely a body on a regional scale carrying out only those functions which it is right and proper should be carried out on that scale, and leaving, so far as it could, everything else to the boroughs as the primary units.
  I agree with everything that has been said about the Clauses by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames and my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). The argument which was used by the hon. Member for Putney, with regard to Clause 23, that this was somehow a pilot scheme and therefore justifiable, seemed to be contradicted in his next words when he said that the G.L.C. was, somehow, an exceptional body. What possible virtue is there in running a pilot scheme for something which is admittedly a wholly exceptional body?
  I accept the argument that it is not right to anticipate the findings of the Maud Committee. It will be remembered that, in the case of the remuneration of Members of this House, the matter was referred to an independent Committee, the Lawrence Committee, which recommended not only details about the actual remuneration, but a number of other matters, and if that had not been done very considerable embarrassment would have been caused. Here, with this Clause, there is no independent committee. It is left to the Minister to decide what level of allowances shall be paid to members of the Council, and presumably to decide in advance of any recommendations which may be made by the Maud Committee, relating not only to the allowances, but to the circumstances which surround them. This seems to me to put both the Minister and the Council in an impossible position.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins: It is a pilot scheme in the sense that it will provide an opportunity for methods of payment to councillors to be explored and to be carried into practice. That is the point of a pilot scheme. The G.L.C. being exceptional in the sense of being so large, the pilot scheme need not necessarily be operated in the unlikely event that the Committee does not recommend it.
  Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman's argument leaves me baffled. It is a most extraordinary suggestion, and I feel that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will wish to dispose of the pilot scheme argument and give it short shrift.
  With regard to Clause 24, the position in which the House has been placed by the letter written to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames by the agents acting on behalf of the G.L.C. is quite impossible, and indeed poses severe constitutional problems. This is the one Clause on which a number of local authorities—and not all of the same political persuasion—have expressed profound misgivings. The London boroughs of Enfield, Ealing, and Hounslow, all of which have Labour majorities, are among the group on the London Boroughs Committee which has expressed opposition to this Clause. Had it generally been known in the House, on both sides, that a clear and unqualified undertaking was to be given by the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central on behalf of the G.L.C., it is possible that this debate would not have taken place. The purpose of its being set down would have been served, and we should have heard no more about it. Now we find that no such unqualified assurance can be given. Apparently no authority was ever given to the agents to state that an assurance would be given, and, indeed, it could not have been given, because the only body which could give it—the Greater London Council or the appropriate committee—does not meet until tomorrow.
  This puts the House in an impossibly difficult situation. This is the Second Reading of the Bill. Is the House to give the Bill a Second Reading on the footing of an assurance which, in general terms, as the hon. Member for Peckham (Mrs. Corbet) said, might be very reasonable, but when no such assurance can really be given? I cannot see how we

  1357
  can do this and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Ire-monger), I would find it impossible to support the Bill unless a reasonable assurance is given at some point.
  I support what was said by the hon. Member for Dagenham about Hainault Forest. I sometimes find it difficult to remember that a small part of his constituency forms part of the London borough of Redbridge in which my constituency lies. There is no doubt that these forests—Epping Forest is another—which exist to the north-east of Greater London and just beyond, are regarded as of immense value by the inhabitants of the area, who are extremely jealous of any suggestion of encroachment or development. Since the Act of 1878, Epping Forest has been under the control of the City of London Corporation, who are the conservators They have established an enviable reputation for toughness, by which they resist any form of encroachment by however powerful a body.
  When, at the end of last year, I put down a series of Questions to a number of Ministers as to the powers they had exercised over Epping Forest, with one exception—the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who gave a pretty dusty answer—they gave what I could only regard as very reasonable and satisfactory replies. They said that they did not seek to encroach upon Epping Forest. They knew quite well that they would have a tough job fighting the conservators if they did.
  Hainault Forest should be under the same protection. There should be no less strict a régime against encroachment on that forest than is the case with Epping Forest. But the two forests are controlled under different Acts, and are in the guardianship of different authorities. I am certain that the Greater London Council ought not to set itself a lower target or lower standards of guardianship of the forest heritage with which it has been entrusted than does the City of London Corporation. The power which is sought to be included in the Bill to establish a camp site in Hainault Forest, may appear at first sight to be innocuous, but one understands that it is proposed to include caravans. As the hon. Member for Dagenham said, a few tents scattered among the bushes
  1358
  may appear harmless, but the monster caravan parks that one sees in serried ranks spread up and down our coast have done so much to disfigure it, whatever amenity and pleasure they offer to individuals. The thought that that sort of development should intrude into an area like that of Hainault Forest fills me with horror and gloom at the thought that people should have so little understanding of the nature of the environment with which we are now surrounded. I hope that the Clause will be given the most careful consideration in Committee because it requires it.
  There is another matter which arises under Clause 24, if amended on the lines suggested by the hon. Member for Nottingham, Central. This is the heading he gave—the power to lay out money in return for being able to nominate tenants in housing schemes. As he will know, the Council has made approaches to all the London boroughs seeking to acquire the right to nominate a specified proportion of tenants in the developments in those boroughs, and no doubt suitable financial arrangements will be made.
  The Act of 1963, perhaps unwisely, gave the Council power to build inside the boroughs—of course, only with the consent of the Minister. It might have been better had that power not been given. As it is, I hope that it will be exercised with very great circumspection. The Council is an authority with the resources to be able to establish new towns right outside the London conurbation. That is the direction in which it should seek to exercise its housing powers, not by building inside the boroughs within the perimeter of Greater London.
  In the meantime, it is perhaps not unreasonable that the Council should seek to find places for tenants, perhaps displaced by road schemes or other forms of development. But the way it has set about this does not altogether fill one with confidence. A certain amount of ill-feeling has been generated in Redbridge. The Council first suggested that it would, as it were as a lever, acquire any site in the borough that it could get hold of. The borough then offered 10 per cent. of its new housing as it became available but this was rejected by the Council as inadequate.
  The borough then offered a further 50 vacancies a year and, bearing in mind

  1359
  that councils not so very far away, such as Newham, have offered nothing whatever, that was a very reasonable offer on the part of Redbridge, and it was accepted. But Redbridge, I think quite reasonably, would like to make too conditions, or at any rate seek to put two points before the Council—and before the Minister, who is keeping a watchful eye on these developments.
  The first condition is that the taking up by the Council of some of the vacancies that come up in the boroughs should be regarded as a temporary expendient only. It should not be regarded as a fixed and permanent part of the administration of Greater London. I understand that it is at present envisaged to last about five years. At the end of five years it should stop, and should not be extended for successive periods of five years.
  The second point the borough not unreasonably would like to see is that the new consolidated housing list which the Greater London Council is in the process of compiling, and returns for which the boroughs have already submitted on the form that is agreed, should be compiled so that the true nature of the demand for housing can be known. It is strongly suspected, indeed widely believed, that there is a large measure of duplication between the housing lists of the boroughs and the Greater London Council housing list, and until these duplications have been eliminated it seems quite wrong that pressure should be put on boroughs to give up some of their housing—they all have long waiting lists—to the Council.
  There is also the problem—again this is a sort of aggrandisement problem—of the purchasing of land and buildings within the boroughs. There is one in my constituency at the moment, where a good deal of apprehension is being caused at the so-called Snakes Lane development site, of which the Parliamentary Secretary is no doubt aware, where originally the compulsory purchase order was sanctioned on the footing that this was private development and should maintain the character of the area in which the land exists. Yet there are now rumours that it is threatened by purchase by the Council, and this causes dismay and apprehension to a large number of people in the area. I believe that this trend to
  1360
  aggrandisement, as I have called it, this trend to usurpation, of which some of the powers sought in the Bill are an example, must be resisted.
  This Bill should give us a warning of another point. In the last 50 years of the existence of London County Council, between 1916 and 1965, no fewer than 61 Acts of Parliament relating solely to London were passed by this House. That number did not include Acts of which particular parts related to London. Of those 61 no fewer than 40 were general powers Acts. If one examines the Statute Book, one finds that it was the habit of London County Council to bring forward an annual general powers Bill containing an enormous variety of Clauses. This was not like the Finance Bill which has to be renewed annually; London County Council had its Money Act which had to be renewed annually.
  This system of having an annual general powers Bill was a source of criticism and London County Council sought by its general powers Acts—[Interruption.]—the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) might find this interesting; it is of some importance. Many of the powers which London County Council sought in those general powers Acts were powers which could perfectly well have been exercised under local government Acts and other general Acts, but it was easier for the great authority just the other side of the Thames to come year after year to seek new powers by Private Act of Parliament.
  This is a precedent which Greater London Council must not follow. The Council should regard it as an exception, not the rule, to come to this House asking for special powers. Where possible, it should exercise its functions using the powers which exist under the general law. I hope that if this Bill is passed into law, it will not be followed next year, in 1968, in 1969 and in 1970, by annual general powers Bills. That seems to be a bad precedent which Greater London Council should abandon.
  9.22 p.m.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Robert Mellish): I think it will be for the convenience of the House for me to intervene at this moment. Of course, that does not deny to other

  1361
  hon. Members the right to express their points of view when I have finished my speech. As I understand the time-table, this debate will go on until 10 o'clock and I shall be reasonably brief.
  We have had a long and interesting discussion, as we always do on these Private Bills sought by an authority, which in this case is Greater London Council and was formerly the London County Council. I remind the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Patrick Jenkin) that it was the Conservative Government which passed the 1963 Act giving Greater London Council the right to promote such Bills. Let us be quite frank. The Greater London Council is doing only what the House gave it the democratic right to do in the 1963 Act. If this Bill is given a Second Reading, it will go to a Select Committee composed of hon. Members from both sides of the House. That Committee will have the right to hear from Greater London Council the reasons why it needs the powers in this Bill, and also the arguments of those who petition against the Bill.
  I am advised that the individual London boroughs could be heard by the Select Committee if they individually feel that they want to oppose the Bill. That Select Committee will also have before it the views of any Minister, including my right hon. Friend, who is interested in the Bill. If left to itself, the Select Committee will take effective decisions on the Bill after hearing all the detailed arguments and any necessary evidence. Most of the Clauses in this Bill, as is generally agreed, are harmless and quite uncontroversial. Nevertheless, there are three or four Clauses which, since 7 o'clock, have provoked some dispute. I want to say a few words about those.
  The first and important one which concerns every hon. Member because of the principle involved, is Clause 23. This Clause will give the Greater London Council power to pay allowances to members of the Council. Those allowances could not exceed the maximum rates which would be laid down in regulations by my right hon. Friend for Greater London Council members. They would be in place of, and not additional to, the payment for personal financial loss and subsistence allowance payable to local authority members under Part VI of the
  1362
  1948 Local Government Act. The Greater London Council came to my Ministry and discussed the matter with my right hon. Friend. This was a meeting both of the ruling party, the Labour Party, on Greater London Council, and of the Conservative Party.
  They were united when they came to see us to discuss with my right hon. Friend the special problems associated here with the G.L.C. My right hon. Friend, having heard their case, felt that in the special circumstances of Greater London, the Greater London Council had a case worth putting to Parliament. I should like to get this on the record because I am sure most hon. Members who have knowledge of Greater London recognise this fact. It is an area with a population of about ·8 million, an area of almost 400,000 acres and, in spite of its size, it has fewer elected members than the old London County Council had. Indeed, the Greater London Council is smaller than the City Councils of Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool and the duties which fall on the G.L.C. members are correspondingly heavy. Also they are involved in a lot of travelling. The present system of financial loss allowances to councillors is tied to lost working time, and actual financial loss has to be proved, not just sustained, but proved. Such proof is much more difficult for some people than for others. We know that the requirement hits self-employed people and professional people. We know that it hits the housewives and retired people, and we believe that these are the sections of the community that certainly ought to be encouraged to do local government work.
  The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) and the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) made a very important and relevant point when they asked, "Why is this Clause now in this Private Bill when the Maud Committee is about to issue an interim report, and why give the G.L.C. encouragement to promote such legislation?" True, the Maud Committee is due to make an interim report shortly. But its final report is not expected for some time. The House will know that with a report of this kind it will be necessary to have discussions with all the authorities concerned; and, even when we have the final report, it could well be a period of not less than

  1363
  two years—I am talking of the period of time between getting the final report and having discussions with the authorities concerned—before any legislation could be brought before the House implementing what I think the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames was concerned about, namely, the provision which the Committee might well recommend of a payment of some kind to councillors.
  That is the background. My right hon. Friend thought that, having heard this all-party argument and because of the size of this authority and its duties, it was right that it should be allowed to remit the scheme and argue its case in front of a Select Committee. I put it to the House in no party spirit that there was great validity in what my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) said, that when one comes to implement any scheme appropos of what the Maud Committee may recommend, it could well be, taking into account the experience that has been gained, that this House and the country will be in a better position to judge what ought to happen in the future. At any rate, that is a point of view. I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept that, having listened to both sides, this was done by my right hon. Friend with every good intention, and, in so doing, he wishes to convey the information that the Government will not oppose the Bill on Second Reading.
  Mr. Graham Page: Could we get this quite clear? If the Maud Committee is not going to report for two years, and if the Bill goes through and becomes an Act, the Minister is thereby empowered to prescribe allowance for pay for Greater London councillors? Will he do so? Will he prescribe that pay and give it for two years ahead of any other local authority in the country?
  Mr. Mellish: Let me make it clear. I have said that there will be an interim report. We shall have some indication in the report of what Sir John Maud and the Committee are thinking of in the long term. I cannot say when the final report will be made. Nobody in my Department can. But it is the belief of my officers that by the time we get the final report and have had discussions
  1364
  with everybody concerned—this does not happen overnight on a fundamental issue of this kind—a period of two years could well elapse. This is why, when the Greater London Council promoted, on an all-party basis, the idea that an experiment should be made with regard to allowances, my right hon. Friend gave it at least his partial apostolic blessing. We thought that it would be right to let the matter go to a Select Committee which could then consider the case put before it and give its judgment. Of course, as the hon. Member for Crosby rightly said, it will be for the Minister to decide what the actual amount would be.
  I come now to Clause 31, which makes it an offence to carry out building operations in such a way as to endanger public safety. The Greater London Council claims that this is justified by the number of accidents in building operations in London. The City of London obtained similar powers from Parliament last year. There has already been reference to Section 9 of the City of London (Various Powers) Act, 1965. The hon. Member for Crosby, saying that he was one who opposed the giving of this power to the City of London, asked why this power should be given to the Greater London Council over its much wider area.
  I can only say again on this point that we believe that the arguments should be carefully considered by the Select Committee. We should not underestimate the intelligence of the members of such a Select Committee. It may well be that the Greater London Council will need these regulations only in relation to one or two of the boroughs. But it should not be forgotten here that we are talking of an area embracing 32 Greater London boroughs many of them with a population of 300,000. The matters dealt with in the Clause could not be dealt with in the Building Regulations issued by my right bon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works. They go beyond the scope of Building Regulations, and, whether one likes the Clause or not, I suggest that this is an important matter which ought to be considered by the Committee within the context of the whole Bill.
  I come now to Clause 24, which the right hon. Gentleman himself sought to

  1365
  have deleted by an Instruction. Once again, we believe that the Select Committee ought to be allowed to hear the pros and cons and arrive at a decision on the merits of the case put to it. The Clause will give the Greater London Council power to contribute towards the expenditure of a London borough or the City. It is based broadly on the power already available to county councils under Section 56 of the Local Government Act, 1958, to contribute towards the expenditure of district councils.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman is using the same argument as was used by the Greater London Council in the memorandum sent to hon. Members, but is not the snag in it that the relationship under the 1963 Act between the Greater London Council and the London boroughs is widely different from that between a county council and a county district.
  Mr. Mellish: I am coming to that point. The Clause now promoted by the G.L.C. is opposed by the Common Council of the City and by 11 London boroughs, but I repeat what I said earlier about my understanding of the situation. There has been close discussion and negotiation between the 11 boroughs which do not agree and the Greater London Council on the sort of compromise which should be put before the Select Committee for its approval or otherwise. Again, this is a matter for the Select Committee. I keep repeating this. I was advised late this evening that they were in fact on the verge of reaching such agreement.
  I can assure the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford that I have spent the last year and a half doing my best to encourage a happy relationship between the G.L.C. and the boroughs. There can be no future for housing or the solution of any of the other great problems if there is to be a running war, as it were, between these great authorities, the Greater London Council, on the one hand, and the London boroughs, on the other. Anything which we say in this House must be directed to ensuring that that happy liaison continues.
  From my knowledge of the matter, I can tell the House quite sincerely that the relationship between the Greater London Council and the Greater London boroughs
  1366
  has been extremely cordial, and even on this argument there has been a great deal of friendly discussion. I repeat that I am advised that they are on the verge of agreement. The basis of any agreement is not for me, of course. I am merely saying that the Select Committee should at least be able to hear whether such an agreement has been arrived at. If no agreement is arrived at—I put this to the right hon. Gentleman—the boroughs will have the right to go to the Select Committee and argue the matter, giving the reasons why they do not agree. I do not think that we can be more democratic that that, and this is why I was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman worked himself up into such a state. He seemed to be conveying to hon. Members that if the Bill left the Floor of the House, that would be the last that would be heard of it. It would only be the beginning of the story for there is machinery which enables it to be discussed and debated elsewhere. The boroughs will have the chance to oppose it.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: If, as the hon. Member says—and I hope he is right—the boroughs and the G.L.C. are on the verge of an agreement, is not that an overwhelming argument for not pressing the House to take the Second Reading or the Instruction tonight? He referred quite properly to the fact that the Select Committee can discuss this matter, but hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that this is a major issue of concern to Parliament as a whole. Surely it is not fair to Parliament to ask us to take a decision about a Second Reading or an Instruction when we do not know in what shape the proposition will be when the promoters come forward with it. If the hon. Member suggests that I was in a state of indignation, I can only point out to him that if he had received a firm assurance from the agents for the promoters and had then been told that this was being gone back on, he might have manifested a little indignation.
  Mr. Mellish: I respect the right hon. Gentleman and I note that he had a letter from the Parliamentary Agents which led him to take that point of view. I know nothing about this. The information which I have given to the House was what I had been told.

  1367
  I put it to the right hon. Gentleman that it is not the job of the House at this moment to try to act as arbitrator between the objectors and the sponsors. If the arguments are as strong as some hon. Members opposite seem to think they are, then no doubt the Select Committee will take them into account. The relationship between the boroughs and the G.L.C. is paramount, and it would be a disastrous folly, in my view, if the G.L.C. tried to bulldoze the boroughs into doing something which they found objectionable and if, in fact, there were no compromise agreement. Having said that, I ask that the Select Committee be given the chance to listen.
  I understand that the G.L.C. have found it necessary to make some contributions in connection with traffic management schemes. My right hon. Friend has made these transactions valid under the power given to him by Section 136 of the Local Government Act, 1948. But this can only be a temporary solution. If the G.L.C. find it necessary to make regular contributions, then my right hon. Friend thinks that it is only right that they should come to Parliament and ask for the statutory power to do so.
  There are a number of services where it seems perfectly proper and appropriate for the G.L.C. to make some contribution. Two examples which have already been quoted are, first, towards the cost of relocating industry in the interests of London planning generally and, secondly, towards the cost of housing in cases in which the G.L.C. wish, as they sometimes do, to nominate the tenant for a house built by a borough council. On the face of it these seem to be cases in which a contribution by the G.L.C. would be perfectly fair and proper, but it is a matter for the Select Committee to decide.
  We have had a considerable amount of debate about Clause 16 concerning the provision of a camping place at Hainault Forest. This Clause would authorise the council to provide a camping site not exceeding ten acres in Hainault Forest. The Forest is an open space, very popular for recreation and leisure, under the control of the G.L.C., even though more than half its 1,100 acres lie in Essex County Council's area.
  The first thing I want hon. Members to understand is that if the Bill is passed
  1368
  in its present form, and even if the Select Committee do not amend it, that is not the end of the story. The Greater London Council would have to apply for planning permission, and they would have to state where they wanted to place this camping site and in what way they wanted to use it. If there were objections—and if anything like some suggestions which have been made tonight were put forward I am sure there would be objections—there would be a public inquiry. The objectors would have the right to state their point of view, and including the Essex County Council, and hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker), who have spoken on the subject. They could put their point of view at the public inquiry and state their case on behalf of their constituents and otherwise. At the end of the day it would be for my Minister to decide what should be done.
  To suggest that if this Clause is passed, then overnight there will be caravans in the middle of this forest, one on top of another, generally desecrating the place, is to misunderstand the situation. There would be nothing like that at all, and there would be much more procedure involved than has been suggested. I hope that that satisfied most hon. Members who have spoken on this subject.
  Mr. Iremonger: The hon. Member said that all this procedure would be gone through, but in the end it was absolutely implicit that they were going to proceed and there were going to be caravans. It was merely as a temporary measure that we should have these proceedings.
  Mr. Mellish: I am sorry if that is the general impression. It was not created by anyone from this Front Bench; it is not suggested that this Bill would permit them at once to have a camping site in this splendid forest. The authority will have to state their case at a public inquiry if there are objections. Here again I hope very much that the G.L.C. will have the common sense to discuss this as friends and neighbours of Essex and to discuss it with boroughs which have a special interest in the matter. I very much hope that by these discussions they can avoid a public inquiry. But if only one person objects there must be a public inquiry, and hon. Members on both sides

  1369
  of the House would be determined to see that the procedure was carried through.
  Clause 21 is the part of the Bill authorising the council to carry out, as agents, certain functions of the Lord Chamberlain and to control by licensing, in the interests of public safety, public exhibitions, displays and so on in some premises. If I may have the attention of the hon. Member for Crosby—he initiated the debate; I did not—I remind him that he asked a number of questions on this subject. He asked why powers of this kind are not given to Liverpool, for example, and why London has to seek them. I understand that the background is that for many years the London County Council have been advising exhibitors or organisers about safety precautions in these halls. They have been doing this under the powers to license music and dancing. I understand that the organisers have always welcomed this advice and wish it to continue. The Greater London Council have been advised that as music and dancing is not the main purpose of these exhibitions, the advice which has been given is technically outside their powers to give, and what they are seeking to do is to equip themselves with a power to advise exhibitors in the interests of public safety.
  I am advised that other local authorities such as Liverpool have local laws of this kind. The hon. Gentleman raised the fair point as to whether the general law on the subject should not be considered, and on behalf of the Government I undertake that we shall look into this in the light of the discussion tonight to see whether the general law should not be tightened. I see the point. This does seem an odd way of ensuring that public regulations on safety are applied in these great exhibitions where perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 people are crowded into one hall. I have tried to convey the Government's views to the House and I am sorry if I detained it too long. I hope, however, that I have allayed some fears.
  Mr. Iremonger: The hon. Gentleman has made no reference to Clause 25 in connection with the power of the borough councils to raise money by Bills and the allocation of the amount raised being in the hands of the London Borough Committee.
  Mr. Mellish: I am advised that this has not caused any controversy among the boroughs themselves and that the London Boroughs Committee does not oppose the provision. I am advised also that neither the Treasury nor the City is opposed to it.
  I repeat that, when the Bill receives a Second Reading, which I hope it will tonight, that will not be the end of the story but only the beginning. A number of my hon. Friends are new to this House. They will have to consider a succession of Private Bills but I point out to them now that, at the end of the day, a Select Committee of the House goes into each Bill line by line and that those objecting have the right to come forward and put their case just as the promoters can argue theirs. It is against such a background that the Select Committee, acting in our name, will decide whether or not the Bill should be passed. It is right now that the House should give the Select Committee the chance to do that job.
  9.45 p.m.
  Mr. John Biggs-Davison: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman——
  Mr. Mellish: I am not a right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Biggs-Davison: Perhaps one day the hon. Gentleman will be a right hon. Gentleman. We all respect him very much. I am grateful for what he said at the end of the speech about Clause 16, which is not, as it stands, as uncontroversial and harmless—to use his own words—as perhaps he thinks. We will consider carefully what he has said and to some extent some fears will have been allayed.
  The hon. Gentleman said that planning procedure will have to be fully gone through if anyone protests against the installation of this camping and caravan site in Hainault Forest. As the Government will know, however, many objections have been lodged already. Hundreds of my constituents have signed a petition against the plan so to use ten acres of Hainault Forest.
  My constituents have been under the apprehension that the site the G.L.C. has its eyes upon is the very lovely expanse between Lambourn End and

  1371
  Chigwell Road Primary School. In view of what has been said by the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker), however, perhaps this is not so. In any case, a great deal of doubt and alarm and indignation has been aroused and the three local authorities concerned in my constituency—the Essex County Council, the Epping and Ongar Rural District Council and the Chigwell Urban District Council—have serious doubts and objections about these proposals. I do not want to say any more now. The hour is late and we have noted that the matter is open for objection to be made. This is by no means the end of the story.
  9.47 p.m.
  Mr. Charles Doughty: I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for the soothing words he spoke and the way in which he tried to keep the peace between the borough councils and the G.L.C. That is commendable, but the G.L.C. will not keep the peace long. It keeps on introducing Measures like this to give itself more and more powers which the House some time ago decided to give to the borough councils.
  I stand in a white sheet with regard to the London Government Act because I voted against it on Second Reading and fairly consistently after that. Despite that, it became law, and it is not right that wherever the G.L.C. and other Greater London Councils do not like it, they should, by a succession of general powers Bills, try to nibble away the Act. It only became effective law about a year ago. The attitude of the councils will cause considerable suspicion.
  Mr. Mellish: It is a fair point, but it must be pointed out that, throughout the preparation of this Bill, the G.L.C. consulted the London boroughs. In the main the boroughs are entirely behind the G.L.C. in this matter.
  Mr. Doughty: To a certain extent, but not beyond that. This is called a general powers Bill. The Preamble states that the Bill is for the purpose of granting
  "… further powers upon the Greater London Council …"
  Let us consider what is behind it all. Because of the time, I shall not deal with the number of Clauses I had intended to but I want to make a general plea on
  1372
  behalf of open spaces. I do not know the details about Hainault Forest but I listened to those who have spoken about it. We must be careful in dealing with open spaces, whether in the green belt or not, and not be taken in by such talk as, "This will only be a camping site" or "It will only be for foreign visitors". Let us leave our open spaces as they are. I say that only as a general rule. I shall not refer to Clause 23 except to say that it is always awkward when bodies frame legislation for their own emoluments. We have had some embarrassment in the House and there have been lengthy discussions about our own rewards.
  A great deal has rightly been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) about Clause 24. We deal with Bills as they are presented to the House, subject to a Minister or other person responsible giving an undertaking about what he will or will not do at subsequent stages. No such undertaking has been given to us tonight. Looking at the Bill as it is, in Clause 24 there is unquestionably and undoubtedly the clearest statement that, having obtained its precepts from some boroughs, the Greater London Council would be able to give them to others. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will refuse to give any council such a power. If the Clause were to remain as it is, I am sure that the House would take an extremely important and fundamental objection and would refuse to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  I think that the Parliamentary Secretary will agree with me about Clause 21 that whatever may be the intention of the Greater London Council—and I am sure that its motives are highly commendable—as drawn the Clause has little to do with them. The Clause deals with halls which we all know extremely well—the Albert Hall and Olympia and so on—which have enormous concourses of people and it is only right that their safety should be supervised by someone with a knowledge of safety regulations.
  But the Clause would give the Council power to say of any hall in the city, "We do not like the type of entertainment which you propose to put on—we do not approve of boxing matches, for instance—and we shall refuse you a licence". Let that be remembered when it is said

  1373
  that the Council proposes to use these powers only for safety regulations. Generations come and go and there may soon be a generation of the Council which forgets the Parliamentary Secretary's words and says, "We have power under the General Powers Act, 1966, so to refuse a licence and we intend to do so".
  I want to deal with the criminal offences set out in the Bill at greater length, because they have not been dealt with very fully by any hon. Member who has spoken, including the Parliamentary Secretary. I refer to Clauses 30 onwards. It is perfectly right and it has been recognised for a long time that, wherever they may be conducted, building operations are potentially dangerous. People go up high and drop things from a height and there are other reasons why building operations are potentially dangerous.
  Over many years, previous Parliaments have made regulations and have passed Acts to see that safety is at a maximum—the London Building Acts, the Public Health Acts and the Building Regulations themselves under the Factory Acts. They have all imposed severe penalties for those who break the law in this respect, but they are directed at the actual breakers of the law. Let us consider what is meant by the so-called offences in Clause 31(2).
  "Any person"—
  and I shall deal more fully in a moment with who that person is—
  "who … carries out building operations … shall secure that the operations are so carried out as to cause no danger to members of the public, and if in the course of the carrying out of such building operations there is any accident which gives rise to the risk of bodily injury to a member of the public, whether or not such bodily injury is caused thereby … shall … be guilty of an offence…."
  Supposing there is some completely latent factor which no human skill or application could have discovered and which causes a breakage of something a little way from the ground and something drops to the ground, the person concerned is liable for something for which in no circumstances could he be said to be responsible, for the provision speaks of risk of bodily injury and it may be an offence even when no actual bodily injury is caused thereby. That is certainly a matter which is quite contrary to all legal principles. Let us look to see who is the person who is made responsible. It is the
  1374
  owner of the land, a person who may have nothing to do with those operations, and who may be hundreds of miles away. We are told that these regulations were passed by the House in the case of the City of London last year. I have the appropriate Second Reading debates here but I do not propose to weary the House with them. I can assure the House that it was explained then that it was a special case, because so many high buildings were going up and deep excavations were necessary. That is quite different from the matter which we are now discussing, for the whole of Greater London. I sincerely hope that these Clauses will not be passed into law, remembering always that there is ample power under the present law whereby people who do something wrong and cause or are liable to cause bodily injury can be brought before the courts and liability decided.
  Let us take Clause 30(2). The definitions are complicated and if someone thinks that it is reasonably necessary to prohibit the use of the highway by pedestrians or vehicles, then the owner of the land, who as said may be hundreds of miles away, may be summoned before the courts. It is no good saying that in Clause 33 he can bring the real malefactor before the courts by giving notice. It is a most complicated procedure and the onus is thrown upon him to decide who was the malefactor.
  Take the case of a crane driver, 200 feet up in the air, who swings his crane round a bit too fast so that a part of it comes off the end and falls to the ground. The owner of the land who has contracted with a firm is summoned. He says, "It must be the crane driver". The crane driver says, "It was my employers who supplied me with a defective crane, without a proper brake". The owner of the land has to decide between the contractors and the crane driver. That is the position in which he is placed under Clause 33.
  I ask the Parliamentary Secretary, before the Bill gets to a Select Committee, to look at this most carefully and to consult one of the Law Officers to see whether these penal Clauses, under which people can be heavily fined and have convictions recorded against them, are in accordance with the ordinary practices of the law. Here a person is sought to be made liable for something which

  1375
  he could not have foreseen. He can be dragged before the courts in respect of an accident when he has had nothing to do with it. If he seeks to pass on the liability to someone else, he has to decide, as in the case of the crane driver or the contractor, or some third person, who is liable.
  For these reasons, these penalty Clauses are extremely undesirable.
  The Chairman of Ways and Means rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
  Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
  Question put accordingly and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Motion made and Question proposed,
That the proceedings of the Committee of Ways and Means may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Short.]
Mr. John Rankin: Am I in order at this stage, Mr. Speaker, in asking one or two questions about the Motion on American aircraft?
Mr. Speaker: We are not in Committee yet. We shall be dealing with that Motion when we get into Committee of Ways and Means,. This is a procedural Motion.
Question put and agreed to.

BUILDING CONTROL [MONEY]
[Queen's Recommendation signified]
Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 88 (Money Committees).
[Sir ERIC FLETCHER in the Chair]
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to regulate building and constructional work, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any administrative expenses incurred by the Minister of Public Building and Works in consequence of the provisions of that Act.—[Mr. Boyden.]
Resolution to be reported.
Report to be received Tomorrow.

WAYS AND MEANS
Considered in Committee.
[Sir ERIC FLETCHER in the Chair]

MILITARY AIRCRAFT (LOANS)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That it is expedient to authorise the Treasury, during the six years ending on 31st March, 1972, to issue out of the Consolidated Fund sums not exceeding in the aggregate four hundred and thirty million pounds, to be applied as appropriations in aid of moneys provided by Parliament for those years for defraying expenditure by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Aviation—

(a) in the purchase from the Government of the United States of America of military aircraft, or parts, equipment or other articles for, or for use in connection with, military aircraft, or

(b) in making payments to that Government in respect of costs incurred by them in connection with any aircraft, equipment or other articles so purchased, including in particular costs of development and testing and of training persons in their operation or maintenance,

so, however, that the sums so issued for any year shall not, in the case of either Ministry, at any date exceed in the aggregate the total amount proposed to be so issued to defray their expenditure on the matters above referred to by the estimates upon which this House has, before that date, resolved to grant sums to Her Majesty to defray such expenditure for that year.—[Mr. Diamond.]
10.3 p.m.
Mr. Emrys Hughes: I think we should have an explanation of why we should pass this Motion tonight. I understand that tomorrow we are to a have a Budget in which the whole financial arrangements of this country will be discussed and in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer will present us with a very grim picture of the economic and financial plight of this country. We are asked, on the eve of the Budget statement, to authorise the Treasury to issue out of the Consolidated Fund £430 million for the purchase of aircraft from America. I cannot imagine anything less expedient than this at the present time.
The Prime Minister is urging us that we have to increase exports and to keep a very careful eye on imports, yet it is proposed to commit this country to an expenditure of £430 million on the purchase of aircraft, which I understand are to be bombing aircraft, from the United States. This will not help the economic

1377
situation; it will make it more difficult. We are asked to bring about a great increase in productivity. For what?—in order to pay for bombing aircraft from the United States, the case for which has not, I believe, been made out. We are expected to do this "on the nod" and we have not even had any attempt to justify this enormous expenditure.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Diamond): I am most anxious that the House should have the full benefit of all the comments that my hon. Friend want to make at a time when the House will be anxious to give them full consideration and when the House will be seized of all the relevant information. I do not want my hon. Friend's speech not to be heard by everybody who would be most anxious to pay the fullest regard to everything he has to say.
Perhaps, therefore, I might remind my hon. Friend that the function of tonight's Motion not to authorise the purchase of the aircraft of the kind on which my hon. Friend is basing his argument, but is merely a technical precursor to the Bill which is to be introduced but which cannot be introduced, as my hon. Friend knows, without this kind of procedure. Once this procedure is out of the way and the Bill is introduced, I am sure that the House would be delighted to listen to the arguments, the case and the questions which my hon. Friend, or any other of my hon. Friends, might care to put.
Mr. Hughes: I have been here long enough to beware of these technical preparations. Once we are engaged on the technical preparations for the expenditure of this huge sum, we are surely committed to it. If my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary wants to make time so that we can consider our arguments in greater detail, all he has to do is to withdraw the Motion and postpone it for a more appropriate time.
Here we are embarking upon something which makes absolute nonsense of the economic policy of the Government. I suggest that the country cannot afford to go one step forward in embarking upon an expenditure of £430 million. If this is so irrelevant, immaterial and unecessary, why on earth is it brought before the Committee at this time of night?
We are entitled, therefore, to get a full explanation from whoever is responsible
1378
for explaining why these bombing aircraft are necessary for the country and how they will help the country's economic position. A warning should be uttered that there is strong opposition in the country to embarking upon very large expenditure on bombing aircraft at all.
Surely, the technical arguments should be introduced at this stage. When the country needs more money for education, more money for advanced factories, for the mining areas and for the building of factories for producing the goods to export to remedy our economic state of affairs, it is complete nonsense for us to sanction, in any preliminary or any other way, this expenditure on bombing aircraft from America.
I cannot see how the bombing aircraft will help the country's interests. We are to be committed to continuing the arms race. This £430 million will be spent on expensive bombing aircraft which, presumably, will carry the hydrogen bomb or the atomic bomb. At the same time, we are told that we must also embark, and we are embarking, upon a considerable sum for expenditure on other forms of nuclear warfare—the Polaris submarine.
I know that we are not discussing that expenditure in this debate, but when this country will tomorrow be calling upon its citizens to tighten their belts and imposing new taxation because our economic situation is precarious, it has to be made clear that this proposal is quite out of keeping with the arguments that the Prime Minister is using.
So I say that we must try—if I may use a military metaphor—to fire a few shots across the bows of this particular project, and if we can postpone our arguments till another time let us postpone this discussion, and let the Chief Secretary to the Treasury take back this enormously expensive programme which I believe will militate against what we need most in this country—a constructive effort to build the factories which will produce the goods which will save this country from economic crisis. Representing the constituency I come from, I say we want advance factories to provide work for miners who are shortly to be unemployed. We are totally against this embarking upon expenditure for bombing aircraft which will be a burden on the finances of this country and for which there is no

1379
possible military or economic justification.
10.11 p.m.
Mr. John Rankin: I am not at the moment concerned with the merits of the Resolution. What concerns me at the moment is the procedure. Paragraph 1, if I understand it correctly, gives to the Chancellor the right to expend £430 million. If he finds that that sum is not in the kitty he can extend the period of payment over six years, and if over the six years he still cannot, or thinks he cannot, meet the £430 million, then, under paragraph 2, he has power to issue Government scrip at, I assume, something like 5 per cent. or 6 per cent. in order to cover the £430 million. So that instead of a down payment he will spread the payment for aircraft over a number of years at the rate of something like £20 million or £21 million of £22 million every year. He will add to the capital burden which we presently bear. That, as far as I understand it, is the gist of our purpose tonight.
I fully realise, as my right hon. Friend has said, that a Bill will shortly be presented and that we can then debate the issues which have been so well raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). I am not going to say anything tonight about the Spey/Mirage. We said enough about that during the last Parliament. What seizes me is this figure of £430 million. I think that at this stage we are entitled to ask, where has this figure come from? I have taken a fairly active part in the debate about the F111A and so on. The sum of £350 million has been mentioned as the cost, and so has the sum of £300 million. On 13th April, 1965, when we had a debate on this issue at the time of the Budget, the Secretary of State told us that over the next five years we would not have to spend more than £20 million in dollars, yet now we are told that over the next six years we are facing a commitment of £430 million.
All that I am doing is directing the attention of the House to that startling fact. I may develop it later if I am fortunate enough to catch the eye of the Chair, but I think it is our duty tonight to face the fact that £20 million of specu-
1380
lative payment has become £430 million of actual and not merely potential demand. Surely this is a matter of sufficient importance to warrant the close attention of the House, especially when we are being asked to think about paying a sum of that magnitude on the night before, we are told, we are to have a really tough Budget. At the moment when we are talking about deflation, and about the difficult prospect ahead of us, we are told that we have so much up our sleeves that we can think of spending £430 million.
Those are the points which occurred to me when I read this Resolution, and doubtless they occurred to many of my hon. Friends and right hon. Friends, too. I therefore felt it my duty to do my best to put them before the House so that Members can think over them before we get to the real debate on this matter.
10.18 p.m.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Diamond): I think that it might be for the convenience of the Committee, which apparently does not prefer to treat this as a purely formal matter and allow it to go through on the nod, if I were to explain very shortly indeed what is the purpose of this Resolution.
As my hon. Friend said, this Resolution is merely paving the way to a Bill which the Government propose to introduce, which will have the effect of authorising the Treasury to borrow some money. When that Bill is introduced the Government will, of course, explain precisely the purpose, the nature, and the extent of the borrowing, but, according to the procedure of the House, it would not be proper for the Government to introduce such a Bill unless this House, in Committee of Ways and Means, had first given preliminary consideration to it, and in that way paved the way for the introduction of the Bill.
I hope that I can make it clear to my hon. Friends, both those who have spoken and those who may wish to speak, that the debate could perhaps the more conveniently take place—one recognises that it is a debate of considerable interest—when the Bill is introduced, and on which full information will be before the House. But if it is any convenience to the Committee I can immediately say that the

1381
sum of £430 million is arrived at because that is the amount which the American Government are prepared to loan in respect of the acquisition of three aircraft—not just one—the Hercules and the Phantom as well as the F111A. That is the amount which the American Government are prepared to loan, and the Treasury wishes to take power to borrow that sum in a way which will give the House the fullest possible control of every single item of expenditure each year, as it is being incurred, even though the cost is being met out of borrowings and not out of Votes provided by the House.
I am sure that it will meet with the approval of the House that we should remain in complete control, as if it were a Vote item each year. Therefore, arrangements are proposed which will mirror what will be going on on the other side of the Atlantic. That is to say, at the point at which the American Government provide funds for the American manufacturer of the aircraft or its equipment, there will be mirrored the same incurring of costs in Votes in this House, so as to give the House the fullest possible control of the annual expenditure being incurred and, I repeat, even though it is not being met out of the resources of this country but is being met by borrowing—which borrowing, in the fullness of time, will have to be repaid.
There are many details with which I could burden the Committee, but I doubt whether, at this hour, it would be the unanimous wish of the House that I should do so. I therefore hope that with this short explanation of the function of this procedural Resolution I will have satisfied my hon. Friends not only of the nature of it and of the wisdom of the Government in preparing the way for a Bill which will secure to the House complete control of expenditure of this kind, but—and this is a matter within your discretion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and that of my hon. Friends—that the proper time for a debate on the substance and the merits of the case would be when the Government introduce their Bill.
10.23 p.m.
Mr. S. O. Davies: This is not the first time that I have been compelled strongly to object on the Floor of the House to the Government's squandermania on foreign aircraft, which
1382
displaces so many of our own work-people. I have had experience of this in my constituency, and I know that my right hon. Friend has been skating on very thin ice this evening, but if this Motion goes through there is no gainsaying the fact that it will be a committal on the part of those who allow it to go through ultimately to purchase these aircraft from a foreign country, namely, the United States.
Mr. Diamond: I am grateful to my hon Friend for giving way. I hesitate to interrupt, and do so only to make it clear that in saying that the passage of this Resolution would be a commitment he is completely mistaken. It represents no commitment of any kind. The commitment arises on the ordering of aircraft, and that commitment has already taken place. What is being sought in due course, under a Bill, is increased power for the Treasury to borrow, and the time when the approval of the borrowing takes place is when that future Bill is passed. The passage of this Resolution does not commit my hon. Friend to anything of the kind that he has been suggesting.
Mr. Davies: But the purpose for which that money will be borrowed is the purpose of purchasing foreign aircraft, and that will displace our workers as it has displaced workers in my constituency. Their skills have been scrapped. Speaking on behalf of over 1,200 of my constituents, I cannot support the Motion. I say that with the skills, knowledge and craftsmanship that exist in this country it is wrong for the House to give power for the exercise of this stupid and uneconomic, if not disastrous, squandermania on the part of the Government.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
1. That is is expedient to authorise the Treasury, during the six years ending on 31st March 1972, to issue out of the Consolidated Fund sums not exceeding in the aggregate four hundred and thirty million pounds, to be applied as appropriations in aid of moneys provided by Parliament for those years for defraying expenditure by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Aviation—

(a) in the purchase from the Government of the United States of America of military aircraft, or parts, equipment or other articles for, or for use in connection with, military aircraft, or

(b) in making payments to that Government in respect of costs incurred by them in connection with any aircraft, equipment

1383
or other articles so purchased, including in particular costs of development and testing and of training persons in their operation or maintenance,

so, however, that the sums so issued for any year shall not, in the case of either Ministry, at any date exceed in the aggregate the total amount proposed to be so issued to defray their expenditure on the matters above referred to by the estimates upon which this House has, before that date, resolved to grant sums to Her Majesty to defray such expenditure for that year.
Resolved,
2. That the Treasury be further authorised, for the purpose of providing sums (or any part of sums) to be so issued, or of providing for the replacement of all or any part of sums so issued, to raise money in any manner in which they are authorised to raise money under the National Loans Act 1939 (any securities created and issued for that purpose to be deemed for all purposes to be created and issued under that Act).—[Mr. Diamond.]
Resolved,
3. That provision be made for and with respect to—

(a) the repayment to the Exchequer, out of moneys provided by Parliament for the service of the Ministry of Defence or the Ministry of Aviation, of the sums so issued, together with interest thereon, and

(b) the re-issue out of the Consolidated Fund, and the application, of sums paid into the Exchequer under the preceding subtparagraph.—[Mr. Diamond.]

Resolutions to be reported.
Report to be received Tomorrow; Committee to sit again Tomorrow.

MALAWI (GIFT OF A SPEAKER'S CHAIR)
Considered in Committee.
[Sir ERIC FLETCHER in the Chair]
10.26 p.m.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Herbert Bowden): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that Her Majesty will
1384
give directions that there be presented, on behalf of this House, a Speaker's Chair to the National Assembly of Malawi and assuring Her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same.
I am most happy to move this Motion. It is in the now established tradition of the House that we send a gift to the Legislature of a Commonwealth country to mark that country's attainment of independence within the Commonwealth. It is a great tradition that we always are glad to honour. The Committee may recall that in June, 1964, the then Prime Minister informed the House that Her Majesty's Government would propose that the House should offer to the National Assembly of Malawi the gift of a Speaker's Chair. The authorities in Malawi, whose wishes were naturally consulted, welcomed this proposal. The gift will be on display in the Upper Waiting Hall from 2nd-6th May, 1966, for hon. and right hon. Members to see.
If the Committee accepts this Motion, as I feel sure it will wish to do, arrangements will then be made by Mr. Speaker for a small delegation from the House to present the gift with our best wishes. The presentation is expected to take place during the first week of July to coincide with the official opening of the National Assembly, with celebrations to mark Malawi's becoming a Republic.
I recommend the Motion to the Committee in the expectation that it will be accepted as an expression of our friendship and good will towards the National Assembly of Malawi.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolution to be reported.
Report to be received Tomorrow.

MR. JAMES WYLLIE
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]
10.29 p.m.
Mr. Anthony Stodart: In presenting my case tonight, I want to be brief and severely factual and not to take up the time of the House unduly. May I first express my congratulations to the newly-appointed Under-Secretary of State for Scotland on what is, I think, his first appearance on the Front Bench in a Scottish debate, even though he is only holding a watching brief on this occasion.
I want to raise the case of a constituent, Mr. James Wyllie. The facts of the case are these. Mr. Wyllie was cited to give evidence in the High Court in Edinburgh in a case of alleged murder. He refused to take the oath and he was sentenced in that court on 21st December last to three years' imprisonment for contempt of court. I should like to make it absolutely clear that I regard this as a very serious offence and that I condone it in no way whatever. But, on 10th February, I received a letter from Mr. Wyllie in prison in Edinburgh. In this letter he made two points. He said that he had been told that he was in prison on a civil charge and thus could receive no remission for good conduct. In this case, of course, provided he qualified for it, that good conduct could mean one year. Secondly, he told me that in a letter received from the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance on 7th February his war disability pension had been forfeited for the period of his imprisonment.
I wrote to the Minister of State, Scottish Office, raising the question of remission and, on 8th March, I received a letter from him in which he said:
"Rule 144, (3) of the Prison (Scotland) Rules, 1952, states that civil prisoners …"
I emphasise those words for the argument I am to develop—
"shall not be eligible for any remission and the Secretary of State has no discretion to grant it."
From that I believe that even if one wished one could not escape the implication that this man is regarded by the
1386
Minister of State, Scottish Office, as a civil prisoner.
On 31st March, after I had written to the hon. Gentleman at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance suggesting that he should look at the case again in view of the fact that it was said to be a civil case, I received a letter in which he said:
"When a war pensioner is convicted of an offence, as distinct from being committed to prison for some other reason, his war pension becomes forfeit."
With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I must confess that I did not find that sentence entirely lucid, but I presume—he will correct me if I am wrong—that it draws a distinction between a crime and an offence. The letter goes on:
"Since you wrote, in view of the suggestion that Mr. Wyllie was committed to prison on a civil charge, we have been in touch with the Solicitor to the Secretary of State for Scotland, who has confirmed that contempt of court in Scotland is an offence under the criminal law."
It would seem that the solicitor to the Secretary of State for Scotland is in direct conflict with the Minister of State, Scottish Office.
I now come to what I believe is the nub of the case I wish to put. It is that the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance has got discretion when it comes to exercising the forfeiture of war pensions after offences are committed. There is absolutely nothing whatever mandatory in the Royal Warrant about forfeiture. Article 62 makes it absolutely clear that complete and utter discretion lies in the Minister's hands.
I would urge three reasons why in this case discretion should be used. First of all, I doubt if any precedent exists by which the Minister could find a comparison with this case. I believe, from the pleadings and the petition to the High Court which I have examined, that there has been no similar case in Scotland since 1822. Secondly, there is this conflict—and I think it must be recognised that there is a conflict—between the views of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary and those of the Minister of State whom I have quoted in this matter, and in that I make no complaint because it mirrors very clearly the difference of opinion on this subject which exists among some of the most distinguished advocates and barristers in both countries.

1387
The best description that I have got from a leading advocate on this subject when I asked him whether contempt of court is a civil or a criminal offence is that it is a civil offence which bears criminal sanctions. Certainly there is nothing whatever normal about the criminal procedure which operates in a case of contempt. There is no prosecution as we know it in Scotland by a procurator fiscal, and it certainly is, at best, right in the twilight world between the civil and the criminal.
I should like the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to tell me whether this pension would have been forfeited at all if the offence had been committed in either England or in that other civilised country akin to Scotland, Wales.
The third point that I want to put in my plea for discretion is this. If this man had committed this offence in England or in Wales, and if he had received the same sentence, he would without any doubt, under the Prison Rules of 1964 for England, qualify for a remission of sentence for good conduct, and thus he would at least receive his pension again after two years, provided he fulfilled the good conduct regulations, instead of three.
The purpose of discretionary powers is surely that they should be used in cases of particular difficulty, hardship or complexity. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that this case fits into the last category for the reasons that I have given. I hope, therefore, that he will be able to say tonight that at least if he cannot give a firm assurance that he will exercise his discretion, he will perhaps receive further representations and arguments upon this matter, and thereafter perhaps will look at them and consider exercising discretion.
10.40 p.m.
Mr. Ian MacArthur: The House will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) for raising the case of Mr. Wyllie tonight. Two issues arise from what he has put to us. The first concerns the question of the remission of sentence. As I understand it, Mr. Wyllie's conduct during his sentence of three years' imprisonment can earn no remission whatever because it so happens
1388
that contempt of court is one of the offences for which the Scottish prison rules allow no remission. This is in marked contrast with the prison rules in England where sentences for contempt of court are subject to remission. Therefore, Mr. Wyllie has been sentenced to what in England would have been 4½ years' imprisonment, and a sentence of this severity for this offence is unique. There must be a strong case here, at the very least, for a review of the Scottish prison rules on this aspect.
The second issue is the loss of Mr. Wyllie's war pension. I appreciate that this is a perplexing problem, but the decision hinges on the Minister's letter to which my hon. Friend has referred. I shall amplify the extract which he read. The Minister said, in his letter dated 31st March,
"We have been in touch with the Solicitor to the Secretary of State for Scotland, who has confirmed that contempt of court in Scotland is an offence under the criminal law. Mr. Wyllie's pension is, therefore, subject to forfeiture in the same way as those of other pensioners committed to prison for a criminal offence".
The loss of Mr. Wyllie's pension, therefore, follows from the belief that his offence is a criminal offence and not a civil offence. It follows also from the Minister's letter that, if Mr. Wyllie's offence were not a criminal offence, there might well be room for the exercise of the discretion which is allowed to the Minister under the Royal Warrant.
With great respect to the Minister, I question the definition of Mr. Wyllie's offence as a criminal one. I agree that it comes within the ambit of the criteria applying to a criminal offence, in so far as it was, apparently, calculated to pervert or, at least, to hamper the course of justice, and no one can condone that. But there are special features which distinguish it from a criminal offence as we know it.
First, there is no charge. Second, there is no prosecutor to move for a sentence. Third, there is no opportunity for a plea in mitigation. Fourth, there is no provision under the Summary Jurisdiction Act or the Criminal Appeal Act for an appeal. Application for review can be made only by resort to what is known as the nobile officium, which, as the hon. Gentleman will know, is the inherent

1389
power of the court to see that justice is done.
Surely, the Minister will recognise that these are important differences which distinguish this offence from a criminal offence as we know it. At the very least, there must be room for doubt, and, if there is room for doubt, the hon. Gentleman will agree that there is a strong case for exercising the discretion which is then open to him in regard to the continued payment of Mr. Wylie's war pension.
10.43 p.m.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. Harold Davies): The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) and his hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur) have raised a case tonight involving important issues of law. When the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West appeals to me as a Welshman to solve problems of Scottish law and important issues of that kind, he is treading on dangerous ground. Some of the issues which he raises are moral issues going very much beyond the scope of an Adjournment debate, in my humble submission, Mr. Speaker, and, although he touched on them in his speech, he will not, I am sure, expect me to deal now with those or with wider and complex legal considerations. I am sure that you, Sir, would call me to order if I were to attempt to do so.
Mr. Stodart: Why?
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): Because the hon. Gentleman is asking for a change in the law.
Mr. Davies: I submit that it would be out of order for a Member of Parliament to ask for the findings of a court to be dealt with in an Adjournment debate like this when, in fact, changes in legislation would be required.
Mr. Ross: Yes. That is why my hon. Friend is answering, not I.
Mr. Davies: It is my task to deal with the two specific points which the hon. Gentleman constructively and ably put before the House—the question of the withdrawal of Mr. Wyllie's war pension while he is in prison and the question
1390
of the remission of his sentence. These are two separate questions and I shall deal with them separately.
First, the question of war pension. Mr. Wyllie served in the Army for just under two years between 1960 and 1962, when he was invalided for a duodenal ulcer. He was awarded a pension at the 20 per cent. rate for that condition. This pension was in payment when he was committed to prison.
The hon. Gentleman has given a full account of the circumstances which led up to Mr. Wyllie's receiving last December a sentence of three years imprisonment at the High Court in Edinburgh for refusing to give evidence in a trial for attempted murder. I do not need to go over these circumstances again; they are on the record and are common ground. Suffice it to say that he was convicted and payment of his war pension was suspended. It will remain forfeit for so long as he is in prison. When he comes out it will be put back into payment.
The hon. Member has expressed the view that Mr. Wyllie should not have been deprived of his pension and that, in the unique circumstances of his case, my right hon. Friend should have exercised special discretion to exempt him from the normal rule. That is the nub of his argument. I do not think that the hon. Member wishes to question the propriety of the rule itself. It is well understood that a war pension, like many other forms of public pension, is not paid during imprisonment which results from conviction for a criminal offence. This has been the invariable and accepted practice over the years and it is based on a specific provision in the Royal Warrant.
We temper the rule if the pensioner is married by paying half his basic pension, together with dependants' allowances, to his wife and children whilst he is in prison. Moreover, if a pensioner has been committed to prison for some other reason than a criminal offence—for example, for non-payment of a judgment debt—then his war pension is not forfeit. But it has always been regarded as right that there should be some limitation of the State's liability in respect of a pension paid wholly from State funds if the pensioner is guilty of criminal behaviour which society regards as serious enough to call for imprisonment, during which

1391
time he is, of course, maintained, fed and clothed at the public expense.
Mr. Wyllie claimed in a letter he wrote to us before he approached the hon. Member that his offence in refusing to give evidence was not criminal but civil and that for this reason his pension should not have been withdrawn. This point was also taken up by the hon. Member when he wrote to me about Mr. Wyllie's case at the end of February.
I then caused specific inquiries to be made of the Solicitor to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, and it is clear that grave contempt of court of this kind is an offence under the criminal law in Scotland. I am advised that the same position obtains in England. There is no doubt that Mr. Wyllie was committed to prison for a criminal offence, not a civil one, and in these circumstances my right hon. Friend had no option but to regard his pension as forfeit in the same way as those of other pensioners so committed.
Mr. Stodart: The hon. Member is aware that in the opinion of the Minister of State this man was in prison but could not get a remission because remission was not available to civil prisoners. Presumably the advice given to the Minister of State was that this man was a civil prisoner. I am sorry to have intervened if the hon. Member was about to deal with that point.
Mr. Davies: I will deal with that point if I get the time to do so coherently. The hon. Member suggested that Mr. Wyllie's sentence was a harsh one and that we are adding additional punishment by taking his pension away.
Mr. Stodart: I did not say that.
Mr. Davies: I accept the hon. Member's statement. But, in any event, it would not be for me to say whether the sentence was harsh. I would only say that the case in which he refused to give evidence was a particularly brutal one of attempted murder. And I can assure hon. Members that there is no question here of additional punishment. As I have said, it is a question of some limitation upon the community's liability in the case of prisoners. I think that this is clear if we think of offences such as treason or crimes of violence or cruelty. In the case of offences such as these, I think that public
1392
opinion would revolt against the continued payment of a pension, particularly in view of the special character of payments made under the War Pensions Scheme. I know that other offences are less heinous, though they are nevertheless crimes against society.
The hon. Member argued that Mr. Wyllie's offence was forced upon him by fear to some extent and did not arise from criminal intent at all. I can express no opinion about that. But I can add that the test is whether the pensioner, having been found guilty of an offence, is serving a term of imprisonment in pursuance of a sentence of a court, and my right hon. Friend would be put in an impossible position if she were herself called upon to weigh the merits of the sentence which a court had imposed. I am sure that the hon. Member appreciates that. I am afraid that I have to tell him, therefore, that there are no grounds on which, in fairness, we could make a distinction in Mr. Wyllie's case and that his pension will remain forfeit until his release, when, of course, in the light of his disablement at the time, it will be restored to him.
I should like to turn to the question of the sentence imposed upon Mr. Wyllie and the fact that such a sentence does not attract a remission in the normal way. I must emphasise that in dealing with this matter I am replying on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, and I think that at this stage I should again remind the House—because it does have relevance to any possible future action by my right hon. Friend—of the serious view which was taken by the Lord Justice-General in his comments on this case and which is reflected in the sentence imposed on Mr. Wyllie.
Under Rule 144(3) of the Prison (Scotland) Rules, 1952, it is clearly laid down that prisoners who are imprisoned for contempt of court shall not be eligible to earn any remission of the period of imprisonment ordered. At the same time, the Rules laid down that any prisoner imprisoned for contempt of court shall receive all the privileges to which a civil prisoner is entitled. These include the right among others to have, if he so wishes, his own food and clothing sent into the prison. This does not mean that a prisoner imprisoned for contempt of court is a civil prisoner. The section of

1393
the rules applying to civil prisoners also applies to other categories of prisoners and practice suggests that it has been considered in the past that the grant of these additional privileges may have been made because the prisoner committed to prison for contempt of court has been denied remission.
I am informed that determinate sentences for contempt of court are extremely rare. Before the case which is the subject of tonight's debate, there is no trace of a similar case occurring in the present century. However, there was an occasion as far back as 1889 when the advice of the then Lord Advocate was sought regarding the powers which existed for the release of persons commited for contempt of court before the expiry of the sentence imposed.
The view then, and it is one to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State still has regard, is that contempt of court is peculiar in that it is an offence
1394
against the proceedings of the court and any period of imprisonment is imposed as the court's view of the punishment necessary to purge that contempt.
It can therefore be argued that, having expressed such a view, only the court can be expected to allow any variation in the original term of imprisonment imposed. However, it would be open to the Secretary of State where he considered it justified to approach the court and, with its agreement, to release the prisoner before the expiry of the original term. My right hon. Friend is of course aware that this procedure would be open to him if at any time he thought that Mr. Wyllie's release before the end of the three years' sentence imposed upon him could be justified. That is the position as far as we can take it this evening.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.

HOSPITALS
  Management Committees (Local Authority Representation)
  Management Committees (Local Authority Representation)
  Administrative Change
  Administrative Change
  Regional Hospital Board and Management Committees, Birmingham
  Regional Hospital Board and Management Committees, Birmingham
  Mental Illness (Number of Patients)
  Mental Illness (Number of Patients)
MINISTRY OF HEALTH
  N.H.S. Pensions (Review)
  N.H.S. Pensions (Review)
MINISTRY OF LABOUR
  National Joint Advisory Council (Report)
  National Joint Advisory Council (Report)
  Stone Workers, Portland (Redundancy)
  Stone Workers, Portland (Redundancy)
  Service Industries, East Perthshire
  Service Industries, East Perthshire
  Employment (Perth)
  Employment (Perth)
  Sick Pay (Qualifying Periods)
  Sick Pay (Qualifying Periods)
  GIBRALTAR
  GIBRALTAR
COAL
  Supplies, North West
  Supplies, North West
MINISTRY OF POWER
  Oil Refining Industry (Economies of Scale)
  Oil Refining Industry (Economies of Scale)
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Agricultural Industry (Bank Loans)
  Agricultural Industry (Bank Loans)
  Beef (Anglo-Irish Agreement)
  Beef (Anglo-Irish Agreement)
EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
  Geological Survey (Sourton Tors)
  Geological Survey (Sourton Tors)
  International Cancer Congress, Tokyo
  International Cancer Congress, Tokyo
  Cancer Research
  Cancer Research
  Cancer (Vaccine Treatment)
  Cancer (Vaccine Treatment)
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Overseas Assets and Liabilities
  Overseas Assets and Liabilities
HOME DEPARTMENT
  Stolen Motor Vehicles
  Stolen Motor Vehicles
  Royal Commission on the Penal System
  Royal Commission on the Penal System
  Civil Defence
  Civil Defence
LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES
  Departmental Staff
  Departmental Staff
PENSIONS AND NATIONAL INSURANCE
  Retirement Pensioners (Courses)
  Retirement Pensioners (Courses)
  Widow's Pension (Personal Case)
  Widow's Pension (Personal Case)
  Midland Region Medical Appeal Tribunal
  Midland Region Medical Appeal Tribunal
POST OFFICE
  Stamps (Special Issues)
  Stamps (Special Issues)
PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS
  Army Works Organisation (B.A.O.R.)
  Army Works Organisation (B.A.O.R.)
  Admiralty House
  Admiralty House
SCOTLAND
  Sugar Beet Acreage, Cupar
  Sugar Beet Acreage, Cupar
  North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (Tariff)
  North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (Tariff)
BOARD OF TRADE
  Imports and Exports (Estimated Values)
  Imports and Exports (Estimated Values)
  Consumer Protection (Legislation)
  Consumer Protection (Legislation)
ROADS
  Road Junction, Essex (Footbridge)
  Road Junction, Essex (Footbridge)
  New Road Signs (Publicity Campaign)
  New Road Signs (Publicity Campaign)
  Carlisle By-Pass
  Carlisle By-Pass
  Safety Measures, North Reddish
  Safety Measures, North Reddish
TRANSPORT
  Co-ordination
  Co-ordination
  Greater London Area
  Greater London Area
RAILWAYS
  Alnwick Railway Station (Closure)
  Alnwick Railway Station (Closure)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
  Public Bodies (Ministerial Appointments)
  Public Bodies (Ministerial Appointments)
  COMMITTEES ADVISING THE MINISIER
  COMMITTEES ADVISING THE MINISIER