Sitting of 21 June 1974

Preamble
The House met at Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS

  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (NURSES)
  Mr. Raison (by Private Notice)asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if she would make a statement on the threatened extended industrial action in the National Health Service.
  The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mrs. Barbara Castle): I understand that the Confederation of Health Service Employees has announced its intention of intensifying its industrial action among its nursing members in National Health Service hospitals in a number of ways. If carried out, this action will inevitably cause inconvenience and hardship on patients as well as placing a burden on staff not involved.
  Lord Halsbury's Committee is already at work and I understand that he hopes to be able to report by the late summer. I should also stress again that any increases arising from the inquiry will be backdated to the date of my announcement. It was in the light of this assurance that the Staff Side of the Nurses and Midwives Whitley Council issued a statement following my announcement in which it said that, provided the Committee reported within a reasonable period of time, it would regard these developments as an answer to its representations, and it recommended the suspension for the time being of all forms of industrial action and urged all constituent organisations to adopt this policy.
  I should hope that, in view of this, and in view of the recent additions to nurses' pay, COHSE would, even now, call off its action. In the meantime, I hope that the whole House will join with me in paying tribute to the vast majority of nurses and their representative organisations who are behaving responsibly.
  Mr. Raison: Is the right hon. Lady aware that we on this side entirely accept what she has just said? We supported her decision to set up an inquiry and to backdate to May the payment resulting from it, and we agreed to accept its findings. Is she further aware that there have already been rather disturbing reports of deteriorating standards of care, particularly in psychiatric hospitals, about which there have been accounts of wards being locked? If Mr. Spanswick of COHSE means what he says—that there is no doubt that this action will affect the patients—this must give very serious cause for concern.
  Does the right hon. Lady agree that it is unacceptable that industrial action should take the form of people refusing to carry out part of their duties, presumably without loss of payment? Will she take urgent steps, in which she will be fully supported by the Opposition, to do all she can to persuade COHSE to call off its action as quickly as possible?
  Mrs. Castle: I am glad that we are in agreement on this matter, at any rate. As the nurses had been due to have such an inquiry for two years when the Opposition were in office but did not set it up, I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman supports our action in setting up this inquiry. However, in view of the speed with which the present Government acted, and in view of my categorical assurance to nurses that the award will be backdated to last month, I should have thought that those concerned would have realised that their claim for an independent review had been met with the utmost speed and that the Government had no interest in delaying the inquiry's findings.
  I repeat that Lord Halsbury has said that he will act as quickly as is compatible with the carrying out of a proper review. Therefore, I reiterate my appeal to the members of COHSE to fall in line with the vast majority of the 400,000 nurses, of whom COHSE represents 20 per cent. at most, and please to put the interests of the patients first.
  Mr. Grimond: As the Secretary of State has said, speed is extremely important. However, can she give more precise information about the phrase "the late summer"? Is there any hope

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  that the report will be in her hands by the end of July?
  Mrs. Castle: I should have doubted that. The Halsbury Committee is taking written evidence now, and it has asked for all written evidence to be in by the end of this month. It will then take oral evidence. But I repeat that it would be contrary to nurses' interests for me to try to twist Lord Halsbury's arm in order to hurry the report, because the nurses asked me to institute a thorough and unfettered inquiry in depth. Lord Halsbury is aware of the need to produce the report as quickly as is compatible with that aim of the nurses, and he has lost no time in getting down to work.
  I cannot be more precise because I am not dictating to Lord Halsbury about his findings or his method of working. This is a free and unfettered inquiry in the interests of nurses. But I say this for the reassurance of nurses: if the report happens to be produced when Parliament is not sitting, that in itself will not hold up action by the Government. We have pledged ourselves to act upon the report as quickly as possible.
  In the meantime I must repeat to Mr. Spanswick, who wants a down payment of £4 to the nurses, that since I set up the inquiry the nurses have had the increase under stage 3 of £2·25 a week or more plus £1·20 increase under the triggering of the threshold agreement. If later today there were to be further triggering of the threshold, the nurses would benefit. Therefore, nurses in the meantime are being insulated against an increase in the cost of living.
  Mr. Spriggs: May I thank my right hon. Friend for the reply that she has just given? However, is she aware, as I am sure she is, that from past experience when this House has been waiting for a report we know that we can wait for many months before it is produced? In view of the fact that this report may take a little longer than all of us would wish, will she reconsider her attitude towards an interim payment to the nurses in this case?
  Mrs. Castle: If there were any danger of this report being protracted over a longer period and if, in the meantime, nurses' pay was static while the cost of living was rising, I should accept my hon.
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  Friend's suggestion, because I know the low base from which the nurses start and their representations for this revaluation.
  I have given careful consideration to that request. But knowing that the nurses have had their stage 3 payment, knowing that unlike many other low-paid workers they are covered by the threshold agreement and will have continuing increases if the triggering off continues, and bearing in mind also that I have given a pledge that the findings will be backdated so that the nurses will be entitled to a pay increase as from now, I came to the conclusion, which I think that the majority of the staff side accepted, that it was better in the interests of the nurses that we did not get into a long haggle about a down payment now. A down payment would have to be arbitrarily fixed, with no agreement as to whom it should cover, with some members of COHSE saying that it should go only to lower-paid nurses, others saying that it should go across the board, some wanting one figure and some another.
  Rather than enter into that kind of wrangle over an interim payment, I think that the majority of nurses support me when I say that it is better for Lord Halsbury to have a free and unfettered rôle ahead. We are talking about disruptive action by fewer than 20 per cent. of the nurses. On the basis of Mr. Spanswick's own claim, we are talking about a membership of 70,000 out of a total of 400,000 nurses. It is a minority who, by their action, are putting additional burdens on the remainder of the nurses and their organisations who are acting responsibly. I think that we can give more attention now to the constructive response of the majority rather than to the disruption of the minority.
  Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall call one more hon. Member to ask a brief question. This is Private Members' time. Mr. Monro.
  Mr. Monro: I appreciate that the right hon. Lady is not responsible for the National Health Service in Scotland, but has she heard from the Secretary of State for Scotland about the position in Scotland, especially in relation to psychiatric hospitals? Will she accept that I strongly support her view that the

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  members of COHSE should return to work until the inquiry reports, which I hope will be as soon as possible?
  Mrs. Castle: I only heard the latest announcement by COHSE late last night. Clearly, in the short time that I have had before replying to this Private Notice Question, it has not been possible for me to make the detailed check for which the hon. Gentleman asks.

  EDUCATION (MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN) (SCOTLAND) BILL
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  Motion made and Question, That the Bill be now read a Third Time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 56 (Third Reading), and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

LOCAL REVENUE BILL
As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
LOCAL REVENUE BILL
  Clause 1

    POWER TO PROMOTE LOTTERIES
    11.15 a.m.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summerskill): I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 12, leave out 'a local lottery or'.
    This is purely a drafting amendment to improve the grammar.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Dr. Summerskill: I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in line 14, after 'not', insert:
    ', subject to the following provisions of this section,'.
    This is a paving amendment, looking ahead to the introduction of a power to increase the figure in line 16 by regulations.
    Amendment agreed to.
    The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Mr. Charles R. Morris): I beg to move Amendment No.
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    3, in line 14, leave out from 'the' to 'or' in line 16 and insert:
    'aggregate of the rateable values of the hereditaments (within the meaning of the General Rate Act 1967) in their area (including any hereditament which, by virtue of any enactment any body is to be treated as occupying in that area).
    This is merely a drafting amendment.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Mr. Graham Page: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Before embarking upon more substantial amendments, may I draw attention to Amendment No. 5 and apologise for the fact that the introductory words to it are not very helpful or accurate. May I ask for an oral amendment to be made to the introductory words so that the amendment reads:
    "Page 1, line 16 after 'less' insert …."?
    As we shall be grouping amendments Nos. 5, 6 and 7, I think that it will make for ease of debate on those grouped amendments if that oral amendment is made.
    Incidentally we have a Notice Paper dated yesterday which has on it a number of starred amendments. You will realise, Mr. Speaker, that they are not really starred.
    Dr. Summerskill: Are not we about to deal with Amendment No. 4?
    Mr. Speaker: We are, but I think that the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) wanted to give notice of the oral amendment to Amendment No. 5, to which I imagine there will be no objection.
    We shall now deal with Amendment No. 4.
    Dr. Summerskill: I beg to move Amendment No. 4, in line 16, leave out '£6,000,000' and insert '£500,000'.
    The effect of the amendment would be to prohibit the total turnover of lotteries promoted by a single local authority exceeding £500,000 in any one year. This would mean that monthly lotteries, as envisaged by the Bill, would be limited to some £40,000 worth of tickets instead of £5,000,000 under the Bill.
    The amendment was criticised in Committee as a unwarrantable interference with the autonomy of local authorities and as an attempt to emasculate the Bill. It is, however, the Government's view

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    that a restriction of this kind, linked with the restrictions proposed in a later amendment are essential in the interests of the public, of local authorities promoting lotteries, and of other good causes seeking to raise funds through similar schemes.
    Lotteries cannot be considered in isolation, or as similar to other administrative functions exercised by local authorities. They are a form of gambling and must be considered in the context of the whole of the gambling law.
    The broad philosophy of that law today is that it should interfere with the freedom of the individual to gamble as little as possible, but that it should impose firm controls on those who promote gambling commercially so as to ensure their fitness, to prevent fraud and abuse, and to prevent excessive stimulation of gambling.
    These objectives have been translated into a number of controls. I will give the House a few examples from other branches of the law. There are controls for betting and gaming and licensing systems for them. There are controls for casinos. These are reinforced by confining casinos to certain gaming areas where the population warrants such facilities.
    There are controls for bingo which are reinforced by provisions which limit the prize money. There is also strict control of prizes, which is illustrated again in provisions controlling machines in gambling.
    However, despite all that, the strictest controls are on lotteries. These are not permitted for any commercial purpose whatsoever. Private lotteries are lawful, and lotteries conducted at entertainments as a means of fund raising for good causes are permitted. The provision most widely taken advantage of is one which permits societies set up for charitable, sporting or other disinterested purposes, to run small public lotteries, subject to a number of conditions, the most important of which are limits of £750 on turnover, £100 on single prizes and 5p on the price of tickets. The society must register with the local authority, and it is understood that tens of thousands of small societies are registered for this purpose and run lotteries under these provisions within these limits.
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    The only area where control of this kind has not been imposed has been the football pools. The result has been the creation of a near monopoly in which one firm, capable of offering individual prizes in excess of £600,000, dominates the market at the expense of any competitor, including those schemes organised to benefit sport and charity.
    I have given this account of other features of the gambling law primarily to illustrate the importance of provisions in various spheres designed to limit the scale of various forms of gambling. They also illustrate the way the various limits, both on scale and in other respects, operate to prevent any stimulation of the total volume of gambling and unrestricted competition which would be bound to lead to such competition. The gambling market is strictly regulated, and ordinary market forces have been substantially modified.
    It was against this background that the interdepartmental working party's report envisaged that lotteries for good causes might be permitted at two levels: a national level with maximum prizes of £25,000 or £75,000 compared with the £100,000 proposed for the football pools; and a lower tier of small public lotteries with the existing limits substantially raised to correct the erosion of inflation. Because the working party estimated that there is a limited elasticity in the market, and to safeguard the public from endless badgering to buy tickets and from the cost of stultifying competition, it recommended that the national schemes should be subjected to strict disciplines likely to reduce the eligible promoters to a score or so. Even then it envisaged that a curb would have to be imposed on the football pools to release the necessary funds.
    All the evidence and experience suggests that lotteries must be limited either in scale or in number, but this Bill does neither. The existence of tens of thousands of small public lotteries within the limits of the present law has given rise to no public mischief. In the case of the pools, however, including those schemes saved by the Pool Competitions Act 1971, about a score of separate enterprises operating on a large national scale find the competition as much as the market will bear, and three or four of the 1971 Act schemes have already dropped out.

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    The Government believe that if it is to be open to local authorities to promote lotteries it should be open to local authorities at all levels. But this involves numbers far greater than the market could possibly bear if the scale is unlimited. The Government's conclusion, therefore, is that if this measure is not to be either stillborn or seriously prejudicial to the chances of charity and sport, the scale of lotteries permitted must be restricted to the level envisaged by the amendment.
    The turnover limit proposed in the Bill could be reached only by the very largest authorities. It involves a monthly sale of 2 million tickets of 25p. This figure might be reached in London, but in few, if any, other areas. To reach this limit the most vigorous promotion would be needed, coupled with the appeal of very large prizes. The figure in the Bill amounts effectively to no limit at all and would unleash unrestricted competition between authorities, which would be likely to create considerable public nuisance, to result in many schemes actually making a loss, and to expectations aroused in the public being disappointed. Last but not least, at the same time serious prejudice might be caused to the sources of revenue on which many charities and sporting clubs depend.
    The larger authorities, to whose finances lotteries would make proportionately less difference, would be able to promote schemes with greater appeal and so draw off the funds from the smaller authorities. It is quite clear that if a reasonable opportunity is to be offered to the smaller authorities and if charity and sport are not to be permanently prejudiced, the Bill must fix a very much lower turnover limit that smaller authorities may have some prospect of reaching.
    The figure proposed by the Government is very much larger than is at present permitted to sport and charity and is justifiable only on the assumption that the existing limits will be raised in the very near future. Even so, the amendment proposes a limit which is considered to be as high as could reasonably be fixed at this stage in the light of existing experience. It is, however, recognised that inflation will affect all figures fixed statutorily in this way. Accordingly, the
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    next Government amendment provides power for the figure fixed to be increased.
    The Bill proposes a scheme from which all local authorities may derive some benefit. If, however, it is tailored to the supposed potential of London and one or two other large authorities, its effects are likely to be largely self-defeating. For these reasons, it is, in the Government's view, essential that the limit on turnover should be cut down in the way proposed.
    Mr. Graham Page: The amendment is an effort to restore an amendment proposed by the hon. Lady in Committee, which, after a full debate, was defeated. I recognise that the Government may be getting a little peevish about the defeats that they have suffered in the last few days. However, I hope that they will not take their peevishness out on this modest Bill.
    There is already considerable restriction on local authorities on the amount of the proceeds of any lotteries over one year which they promote. The House will see that the restriction is that the proceeds in any one year shall not exceed 10 per cent. of the rateable value of the property in the local authority's area. Therefore, out of the 457 counties and districts, the limit of £6 million would apply only to 34 counties—about two-thirds of the shire counties—the five major districts of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and Leeds, the Greater London Council, three London boroughs and the City of London. All the others of the 457 districts would be restricted to very much below the £6 million figure in the Bill.
    11.30 a.m.
    Looking at the average of the rateable values of districts throughout the country one finds that the figure is about £10 million, with many well below £5 million, so we are not talking throughout the country of lotteries of £6 million. In general, we are talking about lotteries of about £1 million a year in many of the districts, and the responsible counties should be permitted to raise their figure.
    The idea of imposing a limit of £6 million is that the larger authorities should be able to run lotteries, monthly if they wish—a lottery with proceeds of £500,000 a month or £1 million bi-monthly. I am sure that if we restrict the proceeds of lotteries to the figure which the Government propose the Bill

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    will be stillborn, as the hon. Lady said. It will be stillborn if we accept the amendment, but it will be a flourishing, bonny baby for local authorities and local authority revenue if we allow them a little liberty to raise the sort of money that will be a relief to the rates. The whole purpose of the lotteries is to give some relief to the rates, not to oblige local authorities every time they want to undertake a welfare or amenity project to have to put a further burden on ratepayers.
    Dr. Summerskill: It is misleading to try to put the Bill over as a measure that will provide relief for ratepayers. It could be an additional source of revenue to local authorities, but I do not think we ought to let the public believe that the Bill will relieve them of any rates.
    Mr. Page: I do not see the difference between relief of rates and an additional source of revenue to local authorities. Let us consider what local authorities were doing for a couple of years during the previous Government's tenure of office. Operation Eyesore in all cost £39 million, spread over about 18 months. We had to cease that because of a reduction in general public expenditure. If, by means of these lotteries, local authorities could raise £20 million a year—a modest sum compared with a total of £5,500 million local government expenditure—it would be possible to restore the whole of Operation Eyesore. The public would be pleased to do that, not by a further burden on individual ratepayers but by making a contribution to it. After all, nearly everybody is willing to contribute to a lottery. I have never known anyone complain about buying a lottery ticket, certainly not in the way that people complain about increases in rates.
    The hon. Lady made a point about competition with existing lotteries run by charities, churches and sporting clubs. I hope that as a result of the departmental working party on lotteries the limits on those clubs are bound to be increased in due course when the Home Office can get round to introducing legislation based on the report.
    There is a distinction to be made between putting a restriction on those lotteries and what is proposed here. Here we are dealing with a lottery run by the
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    elected representatives of the people, and surely we can trust them to decide upon the amount for which they will promote a lottery within this restricted limit of £6 million a year, or 10 per cent. of rateable value. That is a substantial limit on the discretion of local authorities, and it ill-becomes any member of the Government to propose that we should put further restrictions on the discretion of local authorities.
    I had the opportunity of conducting through the House the Local Government Bill for the reform of local government. Throughout the proceedings the then Opposition pressed for greater freedom for local authorities, yet here we have many of those hon. Members trying to impose further controls upon local authorities. The proposed controls are adequate, and we shall come later to Clause 4, which gives the Secretary of State considerable veto powers if a local authority is overstepping the mark in running these lotteries.
    I am certain that local authority lotteries will not compete to any substantial extent with those run by charitable, church and sporting clubs, all of which have their loyal supporters. Football club supporters will not turn away from football bingo, but will continue to support their football team. Those who support church and charitable lotteries will not turn away from them and buy tickets in the local authority lottery. I cannot see that any competition will arise on that score.
    Local authorities are given a heavy responsibility to provide for amenity and culture, and to provide for the disabled and the chronically sick. I am sure that many of them will use these lotteries to finance projects for the disabled and for amenity and culture, and to that extent they will assist the charitable concerns.
    What is more, I believe that local authorities will turn to charitable societies, such as the Spastics Society, for advice in promoting lotteries to alleviate difficulties and distress among the disabled and chronically sick. I am sure that these lotteries will be used for that purpose in conjunction with the charitable societies. I therefore see great advantage to the societies through the Bill.

    863
    I must resist the amendment. If it is accepted, it will impose such a restriction that there will not be relief for the rates which the Bill is intended to provide.
    Mr. Michael Spicer: I was a little disappointed to hear the Minister say that the Bill would not provide some relief to the rates. If the amendment were accepted the Minister's statement would be true, because the Bill would not then provide very much relief.
    It is also true that this modest Bill will not substantially affect the crisis in local government revenue. My constituency is very much aware of this crisis, which we shall be debating at length next week. We have reached the stage at which there is a real possibility of ratepayers refusing to pay the rates.
    There are four ways in which one could do something about the situation. First, one could transfer expenditure incurred locally to the national level. Secondly, one could increase the rate support grant. Thirdly, one could cut local expenditure. Fourthly, one could introduce measures to increase the revenue of local authorities.
    I am not saying that the Bill will substantially increase local revenue. We shall next week have an opportunity to discuss other measures that will affect substantially the amount or revenue that can be collected locally, but I believe that in its unamended form the Bill will make a useful contribution to local authority finance. That point was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page).
    I do not follow the argument about the iniquities of gambling. I thought that you, Mr. Speaker, had knocked that argument on the head when, in a previous incarnation, I believe, you introduced the Premium Bond concept which subsequent Chancellors of the Exchequer have not been particularly chary about increasing. Unamended, the Bill will make a modest contribution to the problem. Amended, it certainly will not do so.
    Mr. Michael English: I welcome the Bill, which is a good Socialist measure. I see no reason why the proceeds of lotteries should go
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    only to private persons or organisations. I welcome a Bill which will enable public and democratically-elected organisations to tap the same source of funds.
    However, I see no harm in the amendment. It is not unusual in Britain to introduce something in a small way and see how it goes; then, as perhaps in this case, the limit can be raised if the idea is successful. If there is a Division I shall therefore vote for the amendment.
    The discussion seems to have been primarily on the nature and virtues of the idea itself. I have long given up hope of central Government ever doing anything effective about local authority finance. I have long thought that the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) was a good Minister in the last Government; had there been more like him, we might not have won the last election. I welcome the fact that he is now in a position, on the back benches, where he can really do something. It is a pity that successive Governments have not introduced legislation to deal with the appalling situation of local authority finance. I disagree with the Minister for that reason. She says that this proposal will not assist the rates, by which I take it that she means that it will not bring the rates down, because local authority expenditure is going up——
    Dr. Summerskill Dr. Summerskill indicated assent.
    Mr. English: Since that is what she means, I accept it.
    However, like all representatives of central Government, my hon. Friend seemed not to be terribly happy about giving local authorities additional sources of finance. The present situation is ludicrous. People actually think that their rates pay for local authority services. They do no such thing. The overwhelming bulk of local authority services has to be paid for by the Exchequer, from taxation, but the rates are blamed, although they are a minor part of the revenue. The revenue allowed by the central Government is quite insufficient to cover local authority expenditure. They are permanent borrowers, which is of great benefit no doubt to those who lend the money in the City of London, but hardly to the individual citizen who pays two, three, four or five times over every time a local authority builds a house or a school.

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    I am sure that the right hon. Member for Crosby does not believe that this Bill will be more than a drop in the ocean, but at least someone somewhere is tackling the problem. I shall vote for the amendment, and I shall certainly vote for the Bill.
    Mr. Hugh Fraser: I hope that the Minister will reconsider her proposal. The House sees this Bill as an amelioration—little more—of the present situation, in which there is a growing revolt against rates. In my constituency, there was a meeting at Trentham, of representatives from all over the country, which suggested that the rates should not be paid. This Bill would make a valuable contribution, since it could produce between £20 million and £100 million. It may not be more than a drop in the ocean, but it would be a drop on the parched lips of ratepayers starving in a desert of maladministration, and it would be well received.
    I do not want to make too much of a political point, but the Minister's attitude is far less practical than that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) in terms of controlling the size of these funds. It is a typical Socialist approach to seek the report of an interdepartmental committee. I have very little respect for such committees, especially when they deal with things like gambling. When such a committee sees gambling as an inflexible matter with no elasticity, I advise it to look at the accounts of Joe Coral and other bookmakers, or even the reports of the Church Assembly, which will show that gambling expenditure has nearly doubled in the last eight or nine months because of inflation.
    11.45 a.m.
    The Minister should also consult some of the Latin-American embassies in London. She will find there, too, evidence of great flexibility, by which many things are paid for by lotteries in a period of hyper-inflation. The whole of the excellent hospital service in Caracas is due wholly to a weekly tierce on the horse races on Sunday. The scope for putting the gambling instinct to good use is enormous. That is where I fundamentally disagree with the attitude of Labour Members. If there is to be gambling, let it be directed in the right
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    direction—in this instance, to help this Bill and see that the money is put to good use to relieve the ratepayer.
    Mr. Stephen Ross: I have supported the Bill from the outset, not because I love lotteries—it is a pity that we have to resort to that method—but because local government is facing a breakdown because of acute shortage of finance. Rates are too high, and the public are in a militant mood. Rightly, they will not accept any supplementary surcharges. The squeeze on local authorities is getting worse, and I believe that next month they will be facing the facts of life when they have to pay even higher market rates for the money they borrow—anything from 13 per cent. to 16 per cent. This can only lead to a further cut-back in worthwhile schemes, putting some of our services in real jeopardy.
    Already, as the Minister will know—because the Department must be getting representations—the reserves of local authorities are running out. My own authority set aside about £1 million in balances which was thought to be sufficient. Practically all that will now be extinguished by massive inflation. I am receiving representations, in common with all hon. Members, I am sure, from my local authority, which is alarmed at the way things are going.
    The limit of £500,000 under the amendment will mean that many large authorities will not be interested in promoting a lottery. The costs of the promotion, the staffing and the very prices will make sure that the scheme is stillborn. Many worthwhile schemes, like recreational facilities—which are in short supply in many areas—the renovation of buildings of character, which could help our present housing problems, and even projects like old people's homes will not get off the ground. They will all be put back ad infinitum.
    I shall therefore vote against the amendment. I am sorry that it has been reintroduced after it was so crushingly defeated in Committee.
    Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: I strongly oppose the amendment. The Minister misled the House when she said that the Bill would not help solve the rates problem. Of course it will not sweep it away, but it will ease it considerably in

    867
    certain areas. I have long favoured the idea of a lottery. When the last administration carried out their wide-ranging reform of local government they made a great mistake in not going further in reforming its finances. I believe that this is a belated chance of moving in the right direction. I hope that we shall have sweepstakes—and a poll tax, I believe, would be of help. Clearly, local government needs new and more buoyant sources of local revenue, and this is one small way in which the House can help today.
    I shall not go into the problems of the cities, but the desperate shortage of capital for major projects means that authorities such as the GLC are bound to use what resources they have now to put money into long-term plans and to be skimpy when it comes to the arts and sport. The GLC has a good record in protecting the arts, with over £2 million a year allocated. Surely such a sum could be found by the GLC and other local authorities running their own lotteries. It is very rare that both sides of the GLC agree on anything, but it so happens that they have for some time agreed on the idea of the GLC's having its own lottery. The House should take note when such agreement is reached.
    I worked for two years for the Hong Kong Government. Anyone who has visited that colony knows what success it has had with its sweepstake. Hong Kong has very good hospitals, equipped with extremely modern operating theatres. The money for these theatres is supplied by sweepstakes.
    You, Mr. Speaker, have been accused of introducing Premium Bonds. Only a short while ago I read of the problems of Mr. Harold Macmillan when he introduced them. One has only to remember the Chancellor's remarks earlier this year to appreciate how public opinion has changed, and how the present Government have recognised that public opinion on this issue has changed. I believe that the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), if unamended, will do much to attract people away from foreign sweepstakes, which are operated here illegally, and away from the bookies and the betting shops. If the Minister has her way
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    she will hamstring the Bill. I hope that the House will oppose her amendment.
    Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: I should start by declaring an interest, in that 10 or more years ago was employed by the Spastics Society in its fund-raising activities. I have received a long communication from the society about the Bill but that, I regret to say, has not motivated my intervention today, because I have not had time to read it. My secretary is one of the refugees from the explosion in the annexe to Westminster Hall and she has been unable to produce the document for me. What I shall say has not been put into my head by my former employers. However, I thought it only right to say that I had that connection. So far as I recall the general tenor of the papers that I was sent by the society, it was that the society felt acute anxiety about the effect that the Bill might have.
    It is right to deal in a fairly wide-ranging way with the purpose of the Bill when considering this amendment, because it is such a major amendment that it could almost be called a wrecking amendment. I do not think that the Minister's purpose is to destroy the Bill totally. Inevitably, however, if the Government amendment is passed, it will take away the object of the Bill, which is to give some relief to ratepayers. As that is obviously the intention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), this is a matter which the House should consider at some length.
    I have such high admiration for my right hon. Friend that I was delighted by the tribute that was paid to him from the Government benches just now. It is only with great trepidation and caution that I am seeking to intervene in opposition to one of his proposals. However, I gave considerable thought to the matter before deciding to speak today.
    I have made the point in the House, and, indeed, many times outside it, that it is quite obvious that something must be done urgently about the problem of the burden of the rates. Put in a nutshell, the fact is that local authorities are obliged to compete with the depreciation of the currency and the general pressure on them to expand their activities. But their source of revenue, in so far as it

    869
    derives from the ratepayers, is not buoyant, because many ratepayers are not able to expand their incomes to keep pace with inflation. Therefore, rates have to bear particularly hard on those living on small incomes, particularly on small fixed incomes.
    In Kensington we have so many of such people that certainly it should be my business to try to encourage the House to do everything it can to secure a complete reconstruction of the finances of local authorities. My right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby is addressing himself to the same problem, and I fully share his anxiety. But I do not believe that palliatives will make any serious difference.
    This morning my right hon. Friend mentioned—I think that my note of the figures is accurate—that the total of local authority expenditure is now £5,500 million. That is a staggering figure. There are many people who would like it to be much greater when they think of all the things that local authorities might or, indeed, should be doing. It has also been said—I think that my right hon. Friend agreed—that if the Bill were passed unamended it might permit local authorities to raise, outside the rates, between £20 million and £100 million. Even if that figure were an under-estimate and the figure was twice the highest figure £200 million it would be only a small contribution towards the £5,500 million. My right hon. Friend must agree that the House will not be relieved of its obligation to find an entirely new way of dealing with the problem of rates if this measure is passed.
    Because of our enthusiasm to get something done to relieve ratepayers, it would not be right for us to rush into passing a measure the side effects of which have not, perhaps, been fully appreciated in the House. No doubt this matter was fully discussed in Committee, but the House should give long consideration to it before hastening to encourage local authorities to go into the business of raising money by exploiting the public's gambling instinct.
    I have only a little to say on that matter. I should not like my right hon. Friend to think that I was trying to use the clock to defeat his Bill. Therefore, I shall make my points as quickly as
    870
    possible. I do not believe that back benchers should try to defeat each other's Bills by the use of procedural devices.
    What may have been the ruination of my career in Parliament is the fact that I was once taught the rhyme:
    "Dare to be a Daniel,
    Dare to stand alone;
    Dare to have a purpose true,
    Dare to make it known."
    One of my purposes in seeking election to the House was to obtain the total reconstruction of the cash relationship between the individual and the State, in all its forms. Local authority expenditure comes high on the list. I do not know whether I am the only Member who thinks it shocking and scandalous that local authorities might be encouraged to exploit the gambling instinct as a regular source of revenue.
    One does not want to take too hard a line on this matter. If a local authority had a particular objective on one occasion for which it wanted to raise a modest sum, there might be a controversy if the rates were devoted to it. Where many people living in the local authority's area were disposed to see funds from the local authority being used on, perhaps, a once-for-all basis, it might not be scandalous or shocking for the local authority to organise a lottery when there would be a great deal of general sympathy with the objective, but, as I read the Bill, my right hon. Friend envisages the organisation of lotteries as a regular source of income; not merely for specific stated objectives but as a year-in, year-out way of raising money for local authorities.
    12 noon.
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Crosby dealt briefly with the question of competition with charities. If he were right in thinking that there would be no competition with charities, and that this extra £20 million or £100 million could be received by local authorities without taking anything from the Spastics Society and other bodies—not always of a charitable nature—which raise money by the exploitation of the gambling instinct, he would simply be diverting money into gambling in addition to what goes into it now.
    If, on the other hand, the total amount of money people put into lotteries and gambling of all kinds were to remain the

    871
    same, but local authorities were to derive £20 million to £100 million from it, those other bodies would receive that much less. Those other bodies might be football pools. If that were where the money came from I do not think that many people would be too deeply distressed, but if bodies such as the Spastics Society, which depend largely on the organisation of regular lotteries, were to have to part with anything like £20 million or £100 million every year, the Bill would indeed have disastrous side effects.
    I hope that by making these remarks I shall not be thought to have delayed the Bill unduly or to have damaged the worthy objective of hon. Members on both sides who want to get something done about the burden of rates and get it done quickly. However, I believe that the arguments presented by the hon. Lady in moving the amendment were substantially right, although I do not commit myself to supporting all that she said. If there is a Division, I shall be bound to go into the Lobby in support of her amendment.
    Question accordingly negatived.
    Mr. Leslie Spriggs: Gambling in Britain has reached an all-time high. Every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, in most towns and cities there are queues waiting to enter one-time cinemas which have been turned into bingo halls. I do not object to people pleasing themselves what they do with their money and their lives, within reason, but we must consider carefully what the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) said. Lotteries are the wrong way to raise money for local government purposes. Local authorities need more money, but there are other ways of raising it.
    I appeal to my hon. Friend the Minister not to withdraw the Government amendment. On this occasion it would go well with the public if the feeling of the House were to be tested. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will want to consider this proposal, perhaps in greater detail, at a later stage.
    Question put, That the amendment be made:—
    The House divided: Ayes 41, Noes 49.

    Division No. 49.]

    AYES

    [12.4 p.m

    Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

    Huckfield, Leslie

    Pendry, Tom

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Jeger, Mrs. Lena

    Perry, Ernest G.

    Bishop, E. S.

    Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

    Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

    Brown, Ronald (H'kney, S.&Sh'ditch)

    Lyons, Edward (Bradford, W.)

    Richardson, Miss Jo

    Clark, A. K. M. (Plymouth, Sutton)

    MacFarquhar, Roderick

    Sandelson, Neville

    Cocks, Michael

    Magee, Bryan

    Shaw, Arnold (Redbridge, Ilford, S.)

    Cox, Thomas

    Marshall, Dr. Edmund (Goole)

    Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)

    Davidson, Arthur

    Mason, Rt. Hn, Roy

    Spriggs, Leslie

    Edwards, Robert (W'hampton, S.E.)

    Melish, Rt. Hn. Robert

    Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)

    English, Michael

    Mikardo, Ian

    Summerskiil. Hn. Dr. Shirley

    Faulds, Andrew

    Millan, Bruce

    Whitehead, Phillip

    Flannery, Martin

    Morris, Charles P. (Openshaw)

    Graham, Ted

    Newens, Stanley (Harlow)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

    Parker, John (Dagenham)

    Mr. Ivor Clemitson and

    Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

    Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

    Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth.

    NOES

    Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

    Jenkin, Rt.Hn.P. (R'dgeW'std&W'fd)

    Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

    Atkins, Rt.Hn.Humphrey (Spelthorne)

    Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)

    Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

    Baker, Kenneth

    Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

    St. John-Stevas, Norman

    Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord

    Kirk, Peter

    Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)

    Buck, Antony

    Knight, Mrs. Jill

    Sims, Roger

    Chalker, Mrs. Lynda

    Lawson, Nigel (Blaby)

    Spicer, Michael (Worcestershire, S.)

    Channon, Paul

    MacGregor, John

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    Cope, John

    Made), David

    Thomas, Rt. Hn. P. (B'net, H'dn S.)

    Durant, Tony

    Mayhew, Patrick(RoyalT'bridgeWells)

    Townsend, C. D.

    Eyre, Reginald

    Miller, Hal (B'grove & R'ditch)

    Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)

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

    Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Gilmour, Rt.Hn.Ian (Ch'sh'&Amsh'm)

    Page, Rt. Hn. Graham (Crosby)

    Winterton, Nicholas

    Grylls, Michael

    Parkinson, Cecil (Hertfordshire, S.)

    Wor ley. Sir Marcus

    Gurden, Harold

    Prior, Rt. Hn. James

    Hannam, John

    Pym. Rt. Hn. Francis

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Havers, Sir Michael

    Renton, Rt.Hn.SirDavid (H't'gd'ns're)

    Mr. Victor Goodhew and

    Heseltine, Michael

    Ridsdale. Julian

    Mr. Paul Hawkins.

    Hunt, John

    Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey

    Mr. Speaker: The next amendment is No. 5, with which it will be convenient to discuss Amendments Nos. 6, 7 and 29.
    Mr. Graham Page: Having regard to the result of the Division, I do not wish to move Amendment No. 5, Mr. Speaker, if you will be good enough to call the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State to move Amendment No. 6.
    Mr. Speaker: Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify the position of Amendments Nos. 7 and 29? Are they to be discussed?
    Mr. Page: I do not wish to move Amendments Nos. 5 or 7, or the new Schedule, which is Amendment No. 29 on the Amendment Paper. I am prepared for the debate to take place on Amendment No. 6.
    Dr. Summerskill: I beg to move Amendment No. 6, in page 1, line 16, leave out from 'less' to end of line 19 and insert:
    '() The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument—

    (a) substitute a greater sum for that specified above; and

    (b) prescribe provisions to be included in any scheme under this section.

    () The regulations may in particular, but without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing subsection, limit the amount or value of prizes in a local lottery and the price at which tickets or chances may be sold'.
    The effect of this amendment is to give the Home Secretary power to prescribe by regulations the contents of the schemes which will regulate local authority lotteries. In addition, the power will include power to increase the turnover limit prescribed in the Bill. Very little thought has been given to the conduct of lotteries by local authorities because it is a new concept. Some precedent exists in the provisions which regulate the small public lotteries which societies may promote for charitable, sporting or other disinterested purposes. Ideally, the rules of such lotteries ought to be determined by Parliament and set out in the statute itself, as happens in all the rest of the gambling legislation. There has not, however, been sufficient time for consultation to determine what those rules should be, and there is no alternative, therefore, but to leave this to be dealt with by subordinate legislation.
    874
    It has to be remembered that the whole of the gambling law, and in particular the conditions under which organisations or societies—whether established for profit or for good causes—may profit out of the conduct of gambling, is part of the criminal law. The criminal law sets out clear conditions which are applicable to all, the breach of which involves a penal sanction. This Bill exempts local authority lotteries from the whole of that part of the law.
    The argument of the promoters is that local authorities should be left a virtually free hand to write those parts of the criminal law which apply to their own activities in this field, with power to change it from time to time at their own desire. This is an unprecedented proposal and is objectionable on basic constitutional grounds. The question is not one of making differential provision such as for pensioners' bus fares as between different local authorities, which was the analogy quoted in Committee, but one of a dispensation from the provisions of the criminal law.
    12.15 p.m.
    It is not simply a question of conferring a function on local authorities to run lotteries as they like, the manner of the exercise of which may and should be left to their discretion. The function in question involves an activity which, when conducted by any other organisation, which may be a national charity of the highest repute, is subject to strict controls which are imposed in the public interest.
    Other forms of lawful gambling are subject to supervision in various ways. In Committee it was recognised that similar arrangements should apply to local authority lotteries, and the Government amendment was accepted which brought them within the jurisdiction of the Gaming Board. Unless adequate power exists to prescribe the content of local authority schemes, however, that control becomes unworkable and illusory.
    I should tell the House that since the proceedings in Committee—perhaps the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) will note this point—Sir Stanley Raymond, the Chairman of the Gaming Board, has represented to the Home Secretary that unless the Bill is amended as proposed in this amendment the

    875
    board's job will become impossible. Part of the board's function under Clause 4 would be to determine whether a local authority's lottery had been conducted in accordance with its own scheme. If the local authority had virtually unfettered power to write its own rules and to change them from time to time, this scrutiny could do no more than bring to notice undesirable features with no power to take action to end them.
    Administratively, however, the board's job would become impossibly complex. Instead of one common scheme, thousands of variations would exist, the rules of different tiers of authorities might differ within the same area, and the task of verifying whether the appropriate set of rules had been observed would become impossibly burdensome. The Gaming Board has a staff of only about 30 inspectors, and a slightly larger clerical headquarters staff, and could not practicably fulfil this rôle.
    The matters to which the rules will relate will be of considerable importance. Provision will be required to ensure that common rules apply to advertising restrictions, to restrictions on sales to minors, to restrictions on points of sale and similar matters. Finally, if authorities which have the strongest market are to be prevented from unfair competition with weaker authorities a common limit on the level and amounts of prizes will be essential together with limits on the price of tickets.
    This amendment is not an attempt by the Government to retain an unwarranted control over the autonomy of local authorities; it goes to a matter of fundamental constitutional importance. If the rules of these lotteries are not to be written in the statute itself, it is imperative that Parliament should have a late opportunity, by means of a statuory instrument, of satisfying itself as to the content of those rules and that they adequately safeguard the public interest on the matters in question. If this amendment is rejected, serious consideration will have to be given to the feasibility of the rôle of the Gaming Board under the Bill and to the wider constitutional objections described and to alternative ways of overcoming these in the course of the Bill's progress in another place.
    Mr. Graham Page: I had hoped that the Government could allow the local authorities greater freedom than the clause will now allow, but I do not think that the hon. Lady's view of it as a matter of fundamental constitutional importance really applies. I believe that the Secretary of State, the local authorities and the Gaming Board can get together to make the proper regulations, and I hope that, to facilitate progress with the Bill, the House will accept the Government's amendment. For that reason, as I have said, I propose not to move my Amendment No. 7, nor to urge the House to accept the schedule, which appears as Amendment No. 29.
    Dr. Summerskill: I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Mr. Speaker: We come now to Amendment No. 8.
    Mr. Page: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. All the remaining amendments from No. 8 to No. 28 either have already been discussed or are purely drafting or tidying-up amendments. In the circumstances, if the hon. Lady agrees, I should be quite happy to have them taken en bloc.
    Dr. Summerskill: I agree, Mr. Speaker.
    Amendments made:
    No. 8, in page 1, line 19, at end insert—
    '() A statutory instrument made under this section shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament'.
    No. 9, in page 1, line 19, at end insert—
    '()I It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State before making regulations under this section to consult—

    (a) the Gaming Board for Great Britain, and

    (b) such associations of local authorities as appear to him to be concerned'.

    No. 10, in page 1, line 19, at end insert—
    '() A scheme made under this section may be varied or revoked by a subsequent scheme so made'.
    No. 11, in page 1, line 23, leave out 'Revenue' and insert 'Lotteries'.
    No. 12, in page 2, line 6, leave out 'Revenue' and insert 'Lotteries'.[Dr. Summerskill.]

  Clause 2

    PURPOSES OF A LOCAL LOTTERY
    Amendments made: No. 13, in page 2, line 24, leave out from 'tickets' to 'and' in line 26.
    No. 14, in page 2, line 28, leave out 'any profit that may accrue to them' and insert 'money accruing'.
    No. 15, in page 2, line 32, leave out 'profits of' and insert 'money accruing from'.
    No. 16, in page 2, line 41, leave out 'profits of' and insert 'money accruing from'.
    No. 17, in page 2, line 42, leave out 'profits of' and insert 'money accruing from'.
    No. 18, in page 3, line 11, leave out 'profits of' and insert 'money accruing from'.
    No. 19, in page 3, line 12, leave out 'profits of' and insert 'money accruing from'.
    No. 20, in page 3, line 14, leave out 'the profits' and insert 'it'.—[Dr. Summerskill.]

  Clause 3

    PROCEEDS OF LOTTERIES
    Amendments made: No. 21, in page 3, line 18, leave out 'Act' and insert 'section'.
    No. 22, in page 3, line 21, at end insert—
    '(1A) It shall be the duty of a local authority to maintain a separate lottery fund for each local lottery which they promote'.
    No. 23, in page 3, line 24, leave out 'representing any profit that may have accrued to the authority' and insert 'accruing'.
    No. 24, in page 3, line 29, leave out 'Revenue' and insert 'Lotteries'—[Dr. Summerskill.]

  Clause 5
    INTERPRETATION
    Amendment made: No. 25, in page 4, line 6, leave out 'this part of'.—[Dr. Summerskill.]
  Clause 6
    STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS
    Amendment made: No. 26, in page 4, line 11, leave out Clause 6.—[Dr. Summerskill.]
  Clause 7
    SCHEMES
    Amendment made: No. 27, in page 4, line 26, leave out Clause 7.—[Dr. Summerskill.]
  Clause 8

    SHORT TITLE, COMMENCEMENT, APPLICATION, CONSTRUCTION AND EXTENT
    Amendment made: No. 28, in page 4, line 28, leave out 'Revenue' and insert 'Lotteries'.—[Mr. Graham Page.]
    Motion made, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
    Dr. Summerskill: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Since Government Amendment No. 4 regarding scale has not been accepted, I am not sure what the procedure should be at this moment. I gather that I may not make a speech on Third Reading, but I wish to make clear that, as the amendment on scale—which the Government regard as fundamental—has not been accepted, we cannot support the Third Reading.
    Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 56 (Third Reading):—
    The House divided: Ayes 55, Noes 46.

    Division No. 50.]

    AYES

    [12.22 p.m.

    Allason James (Hemel Hempstead)

    Cope, John

    Grylls, Michael

    Atkins, Rt.Hn. Humphrey (Spelthorne)

    Durant, Tony

    Gurden, Harold

    Baker, Kenneth

    English, Michael

    Hannam, John

    Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord

    Eyre, Reginald

    Havers, Sir Michael

    Buck, Antony

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

    Hawkins, Paul

    Chalker, Mrs. Lynda

    Gilmour, Rt.Hon.Ian(Ch'sh'&Amsh'm)

    Heseltine, Michael

    Channon, Paul

    Gorst, John

    Hunt, John

    Jenkin, Rt.Hn.P. (R'dgeW'sid&W'fd)

    Newton, Tony (Braintree)

    Spicer, Michael (Worcestershire, S.)

    Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)

    Parkinson, Cecil (Hertfordshire, S.)

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

    Percival, Ian

    Thomas, Rt. Hn. P. (B'net, H'dn, S.)

    Kilfedder, James A.

    Prior, Rt. Hn. James

    Townsend, C. D.

    Kirk, Peter

    Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Knight, Mrs. Jill

    Renton, Rt.Hn.SirDavid(H't'gd'ns're)

    Winterton, Nicholas

    Lane, David

    Ridsdale, Julian

    Worsley, Sir Marcus

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Rippon, Rt. Kn. Geoffrey

    Young, Sir George (Ealing, Acton)

    Lawson, Nigel (Blaby)

    Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

    MacGregor, John

    Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Mayhew, Patrick (RoyalT' bridgeWells)

    St. John-Stevas, Norman

    Mr. Graham Page and

    Miller, Hal (B'grove & R'ditch)

    Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)

    Mr. Victor Goodhew.

    Morgan-Giles. Rear-Adm.

    Sims, Roger

    NOES

    Atkins, Ronald

    Hamling, William

    Parker, John (Dagenham)

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

    Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

    Bishop, E. S.

    Hattersley, Roy

    Pendry, Tom

    Booth, Albert

    Huckfield, Leslie

    Perry, Ernest G.

    Brown, Ronald (H'kney.S.&Sh'ditch)

    Jeger, Mrs. Lena

    Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

    Callaghan, Rt.Hn. James (Cardiff.S.E.)

    Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (B'ham, St'fd)

    Richardson, Miss Jo

    Clemitson, Ivor

    Lee, John

    Sandelson, Neville

    Cocks, Michael

    Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

    Shaw, Arnold (Redbridge, Ilford, S.)

    Cook, Robert F. (Edinburgh, C.)

    Lyons, Edward (Bradford, W.)

    Spriggs, Leslie

    Cunningham, G. (Isl'ngt'n & F'sb'ry)

    MacFarquhar, Roderick

    Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

    Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth

    Magee, Bryan

    Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

    Edwards, Robert (W'hampton, S.E.)

    Marshall, Dr. Edmund (Goole)

    Whitehead, Phillip

    Faulds, Andrew

    Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy

    Flannery, Martin

    Hellish, Rt. Hn. Robert

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Foot, Rt. Hn. Michael

    Mikardo, Ian

    Mr. Ted Graham and

    Fraser, John (Lambeth, Norwood)

    Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

    Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth.

    Freeson, Reginald

    Newens, Stanley (Harlow)

    Question accordingly agreed to.
    Bill read the Third time and passed.

SPOUSES OF UNITED KINGDOM CITIZENS (EQUAL TREATMENT) BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
12.33 p.m.
Mrs. Lena Jeger: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I begin by expressing some surprise that, as I understand it, my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for immigration is likely to be intervening, I am sure helpfully, in the debate. The principle of the Bill has nothing whatever to do with immigration. It seeks to provide equal status in citizenship for men and women. Since it is a Bill about sex it is, I feel, highly suitable for the Private Member's Bill procedure. If it had been about immigration it would have been much more complicated.
The purpose of the Bill is clearly set out in the Long Title. It is:
"To amend the law so that non-British men marrying British women shall have the same rights with regard to settlement and citizenship as non-British women marrying British men"
Basically the purpose of the Bill is to bring us a little nearer to the end of the
880
traditionally patriarchal society in which a woman is automatically expected to live in the land of her husband as part of his baggage, wherever she may prefer to live or from whatever country she may come. Of course, that is totally illogical, because when the situation is reversed there is no question of a British man not bringing a foreign wife into this country. In fact, the latest figures suggest that about 5,000 foreign women a year come to this country by virtue of marriage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is an indication, however, of the unfairness of the present situation.
This is not a new measure. This mutual right used to be recognised. This is one of the few areas—it is extraordinary in these days of progress towards women's liberation—in respect of which the clock has been put back. On 30th January 1969, in columns 366 and 367 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, the Home Secretary announced that he was ending the right of husbands, by virtue of marriage, to come into this country from the Commonwealth or other countries overseas. No doubt we understood some of the thinking behind that announcement, but it certainly caused a great deal of distress and hardship. I am aware of many letters from all over the world from British women saying that they have found a total lacuna of advice in many of our

881
consulates, and that it was only when they wanted to come home that they were suddenly informed that they no longer had any right to bring their husbands to live with them in their own country.
I am trying to help the Government and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will realise my good intention. There was an item in the Queen's Speech—and we know that the Government always keep their promises in the Queen's Speech—which said:
"My Ministers will make proposals for securing equal status for women."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th March 1974; Vol. 870, c. 47.]
I can imagine nothing more unequal than forbidding a woman to live in her own country with the spouse of her choice when that right is given to men. I know that the Government may be short of time, and that they will appreciate my assistance in using the luck of the Ballot so that the matter may be considered in Private Members' time. All parties are committed to the ending of discrimination, and I am glad that the sponsors of the Bill come from both sides of the House. Unless we are successful in what we seek we shall be continuing a contradiction of human rights laid down in the United Nations Charter and the European Charter on Human Rights. I appreciate, as did many people, the courageous and difficult decisions which were made by the previous Government about the Ugandan Asians and the further steps taken in compassion and good sense by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I hope that today hon. Members on both sides will wish to remove this remaining anomaly.
I feel sorry for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, because he cannot win however compassionate and however fair he may be. He is bound eventually to be criticised from some directions, and the steps he has taken by amnesty, which included allowing previously illegal immigrants to send for their dependants, have served only to make more angry and more passionate the girls who lived most of their lives in this country and who suddenly found that they could not come home with their husbands. They simply cannot understand the justice or relevance of that.
882
I produced a modest Bill because the closer I came to the complications of the subject the more I realised that we need a comprehensive and thorough review of the whole law of citizenship, nationality, domicile and settlement. That would be far beyond the scope of a Private Member. This whole issue has been made more urgent and complicated by what I hope will be our temporary membership of the EEC, in which it will be essential for there to be more freedom of movement. That will discriminate against people from outside the EEC.
I know that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is considering some of these anomalies, but I shall not be put off from what I am trying to do, and neither will the other sponsors, by being told that a more comprehensive study must be undertaken. In my view the starting point of such a study must be the establishment of the principle of equal status for husbands and wives, for men and women. We may as well start today.
I had the honour to introduce and take through all its stages in the House a previous British Nationality Act which removed certain disabilities from women married to Commonwealth citizens, and I hope that the success of that Bill will set a happy precedent. But at that time I had more help from the Home Office than I have had for the present Bill.
All hon. Members know the difficulties of private Members in trying to prepare complicated legislation. I am deeply indebted for the help from certain progressive lawyers who have given their time and assistance, but we are without parliamentary draftsmen, and any suggestions, amendments or improvements will be welcomed.
I am also encouraged by another precedent. When my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) sought to bring in a similar Bill in July 1973 his sponsors included my hon. and learned Friend the present Solicitor-General and my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office, who, I understand, is to reply to this debate. He must be very happy today to have the opportunity of proving that his probity is matched by his consistency.
I am also encouraged to know that the Labour Party's women's conference at

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Swansea the other weekend sensibly unanimously expressed support for the Bill. In the face of this, I am sure that none of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench would dare seek to interfere with the progress of the Bill.
It would be unfair not to refer to the effect of the Bill on immigration, although I emphasise that it is primarily not a Bill about immigration. If the Government have problems about immigration relating to the numbers of people involved, they must be dealt with by number and not by sex. Here is the heart of the problem. All Governments have wanted to emphasise that immigration restrictions, to be acceptable, must not discriminate on racial grounds, but I say that they should not discriminate on sexual grounds either.
I felt that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary fell rather below his usual standards of accuracy on 28th March when he stated:
"I believe that there is, too, an element of sex discrimination which is difficult to defend."
The fact is that there is not an element of discrimination but a totality of discrimination. My right hon. Friend went on to anticipate that a change in the law would lead to a
"substantial and continuing new wave of male immigration".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th March 1974; Vol. 871, c. 612.]
I must ask—I think all hon. Members have a right to ask—what is the basis for that fear in the first place? I appreciate that in 1968 there had been a steep rise in the number of Asian fiancés and husbands coming into this country, but I have not brought in this measure lightly. I have had long discussions with members of the Indian. Pakistani and other communities in this country, and I can only pass on to the House the advice that I have received, that this trend is declining rapidly and that young women in the Asian communities are increasingly looking for husbands among the communities in this country. I am sure that many of them, possibly born and brought up in this country, will not follow indefinitely the more traditional trend of the original country of their ancestors.
We must also take into account the tact that according to the 1971 census there were 4,170 single women of 16 years and over in the Pakistani community and 23,215 single men in the same age group.
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In the Indian community there were 20,680 single women of 16 and over and 36,425 single men. Those figures suggest no great need on the part of young women of Asian communities to send across the world for men, whom they may never have seen, to become their husbands. I know that this practice still occurs but I suggest that it is on the decline.
Much thought is being given to this matter by the Ministers responsible and I understand that consultations are being held regarding the possible effects of my Bill. This is bold enterprise for my hon. Friend the Minister of State and his fellow Ministers. We are to a certain extent living in an era of predictions, many of which turn out to be untrue. We appreciate, for instance, how difficult it is for even experienced pollsters to predict accurately the voting intentions of the British public. How bold must be anyone who attempts to forecast the marriage intentions of any section of the community. There are a number of hon. Members who are happily married to women who were not born in this country. The absurdity of taking a survey of those hon. Members when they were aged 16 or 17 regarding their marriage intentions and the possible nationality of their future brides is self-evident.
We are living in a world which is becoming smaller and smaller, and in which people are becoming much more mobile. We encourage young people to go abroad to study, and I have received many letters from people who have done that. I was discussing a problem regarding this recently with a mother who has a son and a daughter—both brilliant children—who got scholarships to American universities, one to Harvard and the other to Yale. The mother told me that she is not concerned that her son may fall in love with an American student and marry her because that would not cause any problem, but if her daughter falls in love and marries an American student the mother has to face the possibility that the daughter and her husband will not be able to come home to this country. That is a real dilemma.
In my enormous mail there have been only a few cases concerned with Asian countries. I am not praying this as supporting an argument for my Bill, because I believe in the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of women, and I do not

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care where people come from. But I have been very impressed about the large numbers of women married to Australian, Canadian, Swiss and Swedish men who are not allowed to bring their husbands home to this country. We ought to be encouraging international marriages. It may be one way to increase international understanding as the world get increasingly closer to the scale of a village.
It is difficult to see the extent of the problem with which I am concerned. When I asked how many husbands had been refused the right to come here with their British wives, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, on 5th April, that he could not tell me. If he does not know how many have been refused how does he know how many want to come in? It was an extraordinary answer, because he knew that 2,000 had come in during the past five years.
It would be ungracious of those of us who sponsor the Bill not to thank my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the other Ministers concerned for the more relaxed and friendly attitude they now have to the rules governing these matters. That is much appreciated, but it destroys the argument if Ministers wish to claim that there is no need to change the law because they are letting everybody in under the present rules. I say, "Why not change the law?"
There is a big difference between having a rule which can be arbitrarily altered at a stroke by a statement, with no debate in the House—as happened in January 1969—and having the rights of such people written into the law of the land. If my hon. Friend thinks that that is good enough for the rules, I say that the principle is good enough for the law and deserves the majesty of the law. It should be codified as a right.
Another problem is caused by leaving the matter to the rules. It creates a great deal of work. Hon. Members are never happy about increases in the numbers of civil servants and bureaucratic procedures. The one-by-one examination of all the cases not only constitutes an enormous amount of bureaucracy and paper work but is unsatisfactory for everyone who is turned down. It is slightly easier to accept refusal when one wants something which it is not within the power of the law to confer. It is totally unacceptable to feel that one's whole
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future is decided by the capricious decision of a man who might have had a row with his wife the night before or have had a busy day. There is an element of the capricious in all administrative decisions which go against a person.
I do not think that British men need have any inferiority complex. I do not expect a great orgy of marrying foreigners by the women of Britain. Good luck to them if they want to, but why there should be any expectation of an enormous increase in the pattern I do not know.
I understand that there are many difficulties about the Bill, and that because it is complicated it probably has many faults, but all that we hope to do on Second Reading is to establish the principle.
Mr. David Lane: I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady, but I have been pondering something she said. It is important that we should have no misunderstanding about the precise effect of the Bill in relation to the present Act and the present rules. I think that the hon. Lady has got the position slightly wrong. She was arguing that any Home Secretary could alter the practice in this important matter merely by a stroke of the pen, not even by altering the rules which have to come before the House. I believe that that argument is wrong and that the practice to which the hon. Lady and others object, and which the Bill seeks to change, can be altered in either a more or a less liberal direction by a change in the immigration rules, but that any change can be made only with the agreement of the House.
As I understand the position, the Bill is trying to change the basic Act—the Immigration Act 1971. If the hon. Lady succeeded in doing that there would have to be consequential changes to the rules. It is not a point of the greatest substance, but the Minister of State might care to confirm that I have correctly stated the position, in case misunderstandings arise.
Mrs. Jeger: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am sure that he, with his experience, knows much more about this complicated subject than I do. But a statement was made by the Home Secretary in January 1969, and I and many

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women who were concerned understood that it was to take immediate effect. This complicated Bill, which I am commending in principle, lists at the end a number of other Acts that will have to be amended. Nobody appreciates more than I do the complications of the situation.
In fact, the hon. Gentleman has helped me, because he has tried to describe some of the difference between the law and the rules, which I find very confusing to the public—to the ordinary men and women who are involved. That is why I am so anxious for Parliament to take a step today towards altering the law.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon): I did not wish to interrupt my hon. Friend, because I wanted to try to explain the position in some detail in the course of my speech, but to help her now I would say that there is no difference between a law passed by statute and a law which is delegated legislation, passed in regulations. It is the law, and it must be changed in the proper way. If it is an Act, it must be changed by a new piece of legislation passed through the House, and if it is rules, under the Act it must be changed by new rules which must be laid before the House. In those circumstances, it is the law that immigration officials have to apply; it is not a matter of a capricious afterthought resulting from a bad night. The officials have to apply the law according to the rules laid down by Parliament.
Mrs. Jeger: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but rules are consequential upon laws, and if my hon. Friend is trying to say that both have equal status, all I am saying is that the matter should be codified into the law of our land. I was not trying to suggest any lack of conscientiousness or endeavour on the part of the immigration officers, who have a very difficult job, but it is true that some decisions can seem capricious. The very fact that in recent months more favourable decisions have been given than were being given at this time last year indicates that there is an element of personal decision-taking or of a change in official directives and policy.
One immigration officer told me recently that the whole thing had become a bit of a farcical routine because my
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hon. Friend was being so generous. and the officers understood, gladly, that they were to adopt a more generous approach. This is very confusing for people who last year were refused but are now encouraged to try again.
I shall not detain the House by giving many examples of the sort of situation which I am trying to remedy. I have a sad letter from two elderly people in Norfolk whose daughter rashly married an American and who now finds that she cannot come home with him. The father wrote:
"My wife and I are old-age pensioners. We dearly want my daughter, her husband and our two grandchildren to come and live with us. Our home is ready to receive them, and their return to us would bring some happiness to us for the few remaining years of our lives."
I have a bitter letter from an English woman married to an American. They were refused permission to come here last year. It was a choice between her country and her husband. The couple are working in the EEC. The wife writes:
"A final twist to this sordid tale—in precisely two years my husband could become a naturalised German, and then the Home Office could not refuse us entry under the EEC rules."
This is a situation of total absurdity.
Mr. Paul Hawkins: The hon. Lady mentioned an elderly couple in Norfolk. I do not know the name of the couple. I wonder whether they are my constituents. The Government were kind enough to allow into the country an American husband and two children who were relatives of an elderly couple in my constituency. They are now in this country. I do not know whether that is the couple referred to by the hon. Lady.
Mrs. Jeger: The letter which I have is dated 11th June, so I doubt whether it is the same couple. The hon. Gentleman has helped me, because he has pointed out that in Norfolk there are two elderly couples, one of whom could get their American son-in-law and grandchildren into the country and one of whom could not. Could anything be more fatuous? I thank the hon. Gentleman for helping me.
All I am asking the House to do is to give the Bill a Second Reading and accept the principle set out in the Gracious Speech that the Government believe in

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equal status for men and women. If that creates problems for the Home Office Ministers, they must deal with them, but the House must agree to the principle.
1.1 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon): I hope that House will forgive me if I speak at this early stage. It might be helpful if the rest of the debate were to take place against the background of the Government's thinking rather than that the matter should be discussed in the absence of a clear statement on where the Government find themselves in relation to this difficult problem.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) for giving us the opportunity at last to debate this issue so that I can make plain the Government's position and the difficulties attendant upon this problem. My hon. Friend began by saying that she was a little surprised to see me, as the Minister responsible for immigration, present to answer the debate. Among my other tasks, I have the duty of dealing with the law of citizenship. Therefore, my presence is appropriate. However, this is a problem not only about the rights of citizenship but about one of the most important rights of citizenship, namely, the right of entry into the country of which a person holds citizenship. Therefore, immigration is a significant matter to be dealt with in relation to this problem.
However, the matter goes further, because, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the problem arose initially from a decision in 1969 to change the immigration rules in a way which prevented a woman who married a man outside this country from having the automatic right to bring him in, whereas a man who married a woman outside this country had the right to bring her in even if he was not a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and even, since the 1971 Act, if he was not a patrial. In other words, a person could bring in a wife if he was settled here.
Therefore, the question has always been whether it was right that we should have done what we did in 1969. Should we put the clock back to give equality to both sexes under the rules relating either to
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their rights as patrials or to their rights as people who are settled here? As my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South indicated that this is a complex subject and that she found difficulty in distinguishing between the rights under statute and the rights under the rules, perhaps I may be allowed to digress and set out the background.
Under the 1971 Act, anyone who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and who is a patrial—that is, a person who was born here, or whose father or paternal grandfather was born here or who acquired citizenship by registration or naturalisation here—would have the automatic right to come into the country. Outside that, people are allowed to come into the country at the discretion of the Home Secretary. But that discretion is exercised either by immigration officers at the ports or through the provision of entry certificates issued by high commissions abroad which can also be vetted by immigration officials.
That discretion is exercised under rules laid before Parliament. The rules are subject to the negative procedure and may come up for discussion. Indeed, they did come up for discussion shortly after the entry of this country into the EEC. They were defeated and had to be taken back. As a matter of personal complaint, may I say that I wish that the rules were more well known by hon. Members who must deal with immigration cases, because there is a tendency to overlook the importance of the procedure when the rules are discussed. On the last occasion, almost the whole of the discussion centred on the question whether Australians should be allowed to come in at London Airport in a particular way. There was practically no discussion about the problems inherent in the immigration rules.
However, the rules, because they are delegated legislation, have the force of law and therefore must be applied save and except that there is still a discretion in the Home Secretary over and above the rules to allow people into this country if he wishes. That discretion has been used to some extent in relation to this problem.
Mr. Sydney Bidwell: How far does my hon. Friend think that the Minister is bound by the rule which talks about there being no hardship to the woman going to the land of the man

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if she enjoys no lower standard of living than is known in that country, which means that she should not object to carrying water jugs on her head? To what extent is the Minister governed by that rule?
Mr. Lyon: If my hon. Friend will wait a moment, I shall deal with that matter.
In 1969, the Home Secretary decided that it would not be right to allow this automatic right to a woman to bring in her husband, or for a male fiancé to come in, and that it was necessary to limit that right. My hon. Friend is correct in saying that on that occasion an announcement was made to the House in the form of a statement and the rules were not changed until later. But they were changed and they came before the House. That happened before the introduction of the appeal procedure into the immigration control system. Therefore, all that the Minister was doing was announcing the way in which his discretion would be exercised.
At that time, the rules were not of great importance. Now they are of considerable importance because they are the basis on which the appeal tribunal and adjudicators decide the cases and on which the immigration officers decide the cases. Therefore, it we were to change the rules, the change would have to be announced to Parliament and would have to come before Parliament in order that the tribunal should apply it.
Mrs. Jeger: This is the nub of the argument. All this machinery of rules that we hear about does not seem to apply to a British man bringing in a foreign wife. It is about that that we complain. We want the rules to be the same.
Mr. Lyon: If my hon. Friend will be patient, I think that I have some helpful news. I said that I wanted to digress to explain the machinery because it was badly understood. My hon. Friend indicated that she was not quite clear about it. That is why I have digressed into this technical point. I shall come to her argument in a moment.
What happened was that in 1969 the Home Secretary decided to change the rules. He indicated that he would expect immigration officers to apply a rather narrower test to women who wanted to
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bring in men for marriage. The way in which he did it was to say that there was no automatic right but that they would be allowed in if they could show hardship, and the rules set out what was meant by "hardship". Unfortunately, when finally the rules were interpreted by the tribunal, it defined "hardship" in a way which was very restrictive. It defined it in the way indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell) by saying that, in effect, it would mean that a woman would have to go and live in circumstances which were so much below those that she would enjoy here that it would be inequitable to ask her to go.
What we did when we came to investigate this problem after coming to power in March was, first, to consider this problem of hardship to see whether it would be possible to extend the interpretation wider than that which had been given by the tribunal. Because of the way this immigration control works—it is dependent on the discretion of the Home Secretary—it was possible to do that since we were not restricting the right but extending it. Therefore, since then, we have defined hardship for the purpose of our officials as being much wider than the interpretation originally given by the tribunal. A great many of the hardship cases which caused concern at the beginning of this argument earlier in the year have been allowed to come in.
I noted what my hon. Friend said about the immigration officer and his comments about me personally. All that I can say is that I cannot remember personally handling one case where there has been a refusal of admission.
That does not necessarily mean that I can concede the whole case, which is what my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South suggests. We still had to go on to consider the basic issue of principle. It is not enough simply to say that these should be discretionary matters and that we should apply the discretion flexibly. If there is an issue of principle, we ought to try to meet it if we can.
From the beginning, my hon. Friend and many of those who have supported her in her campaign on this Bill have approached the matter on the basis that it is an element of sex discrimination

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against women which should be ended. Although I am conscious of this problem, my central concern right from the time that I first began to look at the problem has not been the issue of principle about sex discrimination but the real distress caused to anyone who marries someone outside the country and feels it right that they should live in this country. If it is possible to give them the right to choose, I want to give them that right. I have always approached this problem on that basis.
Mr. Lane: The hon. Gentleman was helpful a moment ago in taking up the matter referred to by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) about the easier administration of the rules which he has now authorised. The hon. Lady referred to a conversation in which an immigration officer is reported to have said that virtually nothing was refused. May we take it from the hon. Gentleman that it is only in the relaxation of the hardship definition in these cases which he announced some weeks ago that the administration of the immigration control has been relaxed, or are there some other respects about which the House should know?
Mr. Lyon: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. In case there is any misunderstanding, we are talking about the administration of this rule in relation to husbands and fiancés and about the exercise of discretion in relation to hardship. It is in that sense that there has been a considerable relaxation in the interpretation of "hardship" which was announced to the House, which we have since applied, and which has been found to meet many of the cases coming before us.
When I came to look at the problem, there seemed to be four different ways in which we could approach it. First, if this was a problem of sex discrimination, we could change the rule in relation to men who were allowed to bring in their wives. We could apply to them the same provision, that they have to prove hardship. That, at any rate, would have got rid of the element of sex discrimination. But that would not seem to be a very sensible way to proceed. If the rule was causing personal distress to many couples who wanted to live in this country, to double that distress by applying it to men who
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wanted to bring in their wives might be consistent in principle but would not meet the argument. That is why I have never approached this simply as a question of sex discrimination.
The second way was to give the right to patrials. In one part of it, that is the effect of my hon. Friend's Bill. By giving patriality to wives when they marry patrial husbands, the effect in immigration terms is that the wife gets her right to enter, and we could limit it to that right. However, there are a number of objections to that. The first is that I do not like the idea of patriality. My party does not like it. We opposed it during the passage of the Immigration Bill. We regard it as racially discriminatory, and we want to change it as soon as possible. In order to change it, we have instituted a review of citizenship which inevitably, because of the complexities of the problem, will take a little time. It will inevitably mean some consultation overseas. Therefore, it cannot be rushed.
In order to get rid of patriality, we have tried to find a way of defining citizenship so that we know who is a British citizen. If I go on to explain why that is necessary, I shall digress unduly. However, it is at the root of most of our problems about immigration.
If, in the British Nationality Act 1948, we had considered a clear definition of "citizenship" so that it was clear what a British citizen was, as distinct from a British subject, who was anyone born anywhere in the British Commonwealth—an enormous number of people—we should never have had the problems about immigration legislation that we have had since. Every attempt by successive Governments to deal with the problems of immigration has been to attempt to cut down the right of citizenship enshrined in the 1948 Act, without seeking to deal with the central question of who is a British citizen.
What we now have is a citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies which is full for patrials and less for non-patrials. A man can be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and not have the right to come to this country because he is not patrial. In other words, there is citizenship at two levels—firstclass and second-class citizenship—and we want to get rid of it. If we get rid of it, it is clear that in the review we

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shall have to deal with the whole problem of sex equality and the right of a woman to acquire citizenship in the same way as a man acquires citizenship. That is why the citizenship parts of the Bill must wait for the review. I hope that my hon. Friend will understand that I am with her in principle.
Mrs. Jeger: This matter is very important. Why must the Home Office have a review to establish the difference between a man and a woman?
Mr. Lyon: I was hoping that I should not have to go on to indicate the difficulties, if we accept the Bill, before completing the review. I shall come to that in due course, if that is what my hon. Friend wants.
There are difficulties about accepting the Bill as it is. I assure my hon. Friend that we accept the general principle and would approach the redefinition of patrials in that light. It is primarily for that reason that I could not accept that, merely because one was the husband of, or was about to marry, a patrial, one would be allowed to come into the country.
There is another difficulty. Patriality would cover some cases, but it would not cover those who were settled in this country who were not patrials. A man who had settled here and then married outside this country could bring in his wife even if he was a non-patrial. But a woman in similar circumstances could not bring in her husband. In the result, we should still have the problem of sex discrimination as between non-patrial spouses. Clearly, if we are to deal with the problem, we should deal with it altogether.
The third way of dealing with the problem would be to give the right to spouses but not to fiancés. My hon. Friend has tried to do that in the Bill. All the references in the Bill are to people who have married, not to people who are coming here with the intention of marrying. That proposal has some attractions, but if the problem is one of numbers, it is not a real defence. A husband can bring in the woman he marries without any let or hindrance. Indeed, there is a considerable practice of the marriage taking place outside this country and the woman then coming here. It is not that the couple were living in the same country before
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hand, but that the marriage takes place and shortly afterwards there is an application to come to this country.
If we say that a man who marries a woman who is settled here can come in after the marriage, girls would go to the countries of their intended spouses, marry, and then apply for them to come here. In effect, there is no real distinction between a spouse and a fiancé. Therefore, we could not approach the matter in that way.
We are then left with the fourth possibility, which is to go back to the pre-1968 rule. That has been my preference from the beginning, if we can do it. The real question is: what does it mean in terms of the number who would be allowed in. accepting that it was that initially that caused the rule to be changed in any event?
I should like to go into this matter in a little detail. For reasons which I shall indicate later, it may be that this is more academic than it seemed at the beginning. I ought to give the background and the reason why we hesitated and have been carrying out research.
In 1965 the total figure of entry for marriage for the whole of the Commonwealth was 524, of whom 138 came from India. In 1966 the total figure went up to 1,925, in 1967 it went up to 2,708, and in 1968 it went up to 3,591. Those figures are for both male and female. The break-down for 1968 is 1,676 men and 1,915 women. Of the 1,676 men, all but 180 came from India. There were practically no applications from Pakistan. The entry from the West Indies and other Commonwealth countries amounted to about 180. This was basically a question whether there was a sudden increase in the number of men who wished to come from India, and possibly later from Pakistan, to marry and to enter this country. Because it was thought that this might be the beginning of a trend which would lead to a substantial intake, we decided to change the rule.
Mr. Robin F. Cook: Does my hon. Friend accept that the figures show that more women than men entered this country in 1968 to marry? Why, therefore, did the Government choose to discriminate against the women as opposed to the men citizens of this country?
Mr. Lyon: I can answer only for my responsibilities since March this year. I am giving the facts in order that hon. Members may establish their own opinions about the situation. Those were the facts. If my hon. Friend draws that inference, he is entitled to do so. We had to consider whether that decision was justified and whether it meant that there was the beginning of a trend, which was stopped then, but which, if we changed the rule back, might continue. My hon. Friend has made a solid point to which I was coming in due course; namely, that the number of women allowed in then was greater than the number of men.
The difficulty was that at that time our system of immigration control depended upon work vouchers. The number of work vouchers issued to India in that year was about the same as the number of men who were allowed in for marriage. I have no doubt that that had some effect on the decision that was then taken. At any rate, since then the number of men coming in from the Commonwealth for marriage has fallen considerably. But the number of women coming in from the Commonwealth for marriage—this is relevant to my hon. Friend's point—has also declined, even though they had the automatic right to enter. This is one of the factors that we have been considering in our analysis of the problem.
We have been trying to assess the pattern in future. My hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South said that we were brave to do it. I think that she is right. The future really depends on two questions: first, how many people in this country would be reaching marriageable age in any given year; and second, how many of them would want to marry outside this country?
If the problem were related to the Indian subcontinent, as it seemed in 1969, how many of the Indians, Pakistanis and Bengalis settled in this country would make that kind of decision? We thought at the beginning that the numbers coming from India in 1968 reflected the difference between Indian traditions and those of the rest of the Commonwealth. We thought that within the cultural diversity of the Indian subcontinent, with arranged marriages, there were different traditions from those which obtained in the rest of the Commonwealth, and that
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people from there might more usually want to marry outside this country than would be the case with people from other parts of the Commonwealth. It was because we were concerned about that that we looked into the figures.
Although it is impossible to be absolutely clear about what the future pattern will be, because of the figures that we have been able to obtain both from our own statistics and from the census returns indicating the future pattern of the sexual balance within the country I suggest that the problem will not be as great as we feared at the beginning, and will not be as great as it was thought it would be in the early days when this rule was changed.
Although I cannot make an announcement about the matter today, the likelihood is that the difficulties in making a change have considerably diminished, and what we have therefore to consider is the way in which we can make the change, if possible, the kind of conditions that we ought to impose to avoid evasion and bogus marriages, and what kind of checks we ought to ask immigration officials to carry out to make sure that there is no evasion, or at least that it is kept to a minimum. Those are the problems that we are now considering.
I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will very soon be able to make a statement about this whole matter. If we decide to change the rule, the proposal to do that will have to come before the House, but, for the reasons which I have indicated, it may be possible to implement a change of policy fairly soon in any event.
I have dealt with the central problem of people coming into the country. The Bill deals with wider measures of citizenship and patriality. It is better that we should deal with the whole problem of citizenship at one go. One of the difficulties over the years of trying to nibble away at citizenship rights or to change them in some way in Immigration Bill after Immigration Bill is that we have caused deep offence and real difficulties to people who thought that they had rights in relation to British law and suddenly found that they did not. The 1968 Immigration Act was one of the most difficult parts of our legislation pattern.
We are anxious this time to do the whole thing properly and to ensure, if

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we get a comprehensive definition of British citizenship, that it is fair, humane and just as between different races holding British citizenship and, equally, as between the sexes. We hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will allow us to make that consideration and in due course put the appropriate proposals before the House.
Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann: If there is to be this consideration, which must take time, why can there not almost immediately be implementation of a very much greater change of policy than has appeared so far? My hon. Friend told us that immigration officials were saying that nobody was refused entry, but I am sure hon. Members will agree that it takes a long time to get approval from the Home Office to allow a husband to enter, even in cases where it is apparent that he will eventually do so. Can there not be a greater change of policy now while we are awaiting the outcome of the Department's consideration of the matter?
Mr. Lyon: I have dealt with the difficulties to which my hon. Friend has referred. If we were to change the rule back to the pre-1968 position, the automatic right of the husband of a woman settled here would be guaranteed. The only question for immigration officials would be that of establishing the relationship, which they have to do in any event. Subject to that, the wife would have the right to bring in her husband.
Mr. Douglas-Mann: On the question of hardship, if there were a ruling from the Home Office that there is to be almost a presumption of hardship unless the contrary is indicated, in the vast majority of husband and wife cases—as distinct from fiancé cases—that would enable entry into the country to be achieved immediately and would avoid some of the distress that is caused while people are waiting for the Home Office to make up its mind.
Mr. Lyon: I have said that the Home Secretary hopes very soon to make a statement about this matter. I do not think that there is any need to be worried about any change of policy if there is to be one. Any hardship cases that have been brought to my attention have been dealt
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with flexibly, but if my hon. Friend has any particular case in mind I shall be glad to consider it. However, I suspect that it may be overtaken by events.
There are difficulties about the way in which the Bill has been drafted on the question of citizenship. One would expect that, and my hon. Friend has conceded it. One of the interesting points about the Bill is that if we were to accept Clause 7(2) we should pass retrospective legislation. We should allow citizenship rights to be given to women who have married since 1948—back for two or three generations—and change their citizenship status in a way that might give them the right to claim United Kingdom citizenship, thereby causing considerable difficulties not only for us but possibly for them. I say that because, in certain circumstances, the position might be that if they lived in a country which was anxious to get rid of United Kingdom citizens and their citizenship status was suddenly changed, they might be obliged to get out of that country even though it was never their intention to leave.
Mrs. Jeger: No doubt that could be put right in Committee. Clause 7(2) suggests only that for the word "woman" there should be substituted the word person", and for the word "herself" there should be substituted "himself". I do not see how all these problems about ancient generations arise.
Mr. Lyon: If that change were made, it would do away with the sexual discrimination which has existed for 25 years, of which men have been able to avail themselves for all that time. If the word were changed to "person", it would mean that for women the injustice of 25 years ago would be put right and for them we should at one fell swoop make the change for all marriages since then, whereas for men every marriage has been considered in relation to the law at the time that it took place. Therefore, there is no retrospective effect upon the status of men.
I concede that this is a technical point, but it is precisely for that reason that one has to approach the whole question of changing the law of citizenship with some care. That is what we are doing. I have conceded the issue of principle to my hon. Friend. I have told the

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House that, when we come to announce our decisions in relation to citizenship, we shall bear all these matters in mind.
I think that I have said enough about the central problem of hardship and about the immigration rules to show that when my right hon. Friend makes a statement about this in due course he may be able to deal with all the anxieties of the House. In these circumstances, I hope that the House will feel that, even if one does not wish to oppose a Bill with these principles, it is not necessary to consider the matter at great length.
1.41 p.m.
Mrs. Lynda Chalker: I was delighted to hear the comments of the Minister of State about the future statement of the Home Secretary, and I am pleased that a lot of research has been going on. If one thing has happened since the advent of this Parliament it is that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger), myself and many others have spent a great deal of time making sure that we actually had some action from the Home Office on this issue, which is to me a basic right—whether a women may freely bring her husband into the country of which she is a citizen.
I am not fully cognisant of all the ins and outs of the law, but I do not think that any hon. Member, other than a former parliamentary counsel, can avoid being tripped up in some way. In that light, I am grateful to the Minister for the way in which he clarified the situation this morning and I think that I would be right in saying that all those who earnestly read HANSARD after the debate will also be grateful.
However, there still remains with us a problem, however kind and however right the Home Office is—and we know that the Minister of State has a big heart, as he has shown decisively in the last few months over many cases which I and other hon. Members have taken to him. There is a question here which I feel in my bones—why is it always the rôle and the wish of the men which takes precedence?
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) was quite right to point out the difference in the figures. Why did they go one way? I suggest that
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the decision was taken in 1969 to allow British husbands to bring their non-British wives into this country and not vice versa, despite the figures, because of the enormous outcry there would have been from the gentlemen had that not been done.
However, I do not want to go too much over ground that the Minister has already covered. No hon. Member who goes through the trickery of trying to produce a Private Member's Bill ever expects it to be perfect. We all know that there are faults, whether in Clause 7(2) or anywhere else—I still do not understand the Minister's argument, or why it matters whether it was 25 years ago or 40 years on—but if something is wrong with our law it is our duty as Members of Parliament to work to put it right. If there is something wrong in a subsection of a Private Member's Bill, we have a Committee stage and a Report stage to put it right.
If I may be so bold, I remind the Minister that he himself felt it necessary, in the last two weeks, in a Committee, to put another Bill right—to the extent of deleting every clause and substituting his own wording. If that is possible on one Bill, I am sure that he is not without the wit and knowledge, and the support of the Civil Service, to do exactly the same if he believes that this Bill errs in some little way.
To return to the original speech that I had intended to make before the Minister pipped me at the post, I want to raise some of the problems of which he is aware but of which I wonder whether all hon. Members are aware, at least in as much detail as has come to my notice in the last 12 months.
It is no secret from the House that I might have found myself, once upon a time, in the position of one of these poor unfortunate British girls married to a non-British husband. It did not happen, but that is beside the point. I did not know when I was 19 that it could happen in 1969. I would perhaps have been living here in the interim, so it would not have affected me, but had I been living in Switzerland, it would have affected me if I had decided to return here in 1969. Perhaps I would have known now, with my own brother married to a continental girl and my father to a naturalised British girl, but in my own small sphere

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of experience it would never have entered my consciousness then that this right would not be the same for all in this fair British nation that we all speak of and love, because we have always sought to treat human beings as equals.
This seems a case, not only in this part of the law but in many others—and particularly in regard to this Bill—in which we must seek to give the same rights to women as to men—not by the whim of the pen, or the wish of a kindly Minister, or on the instruction of the Home Secretary, but as of right. I see no reason why, in any of our dealings, we should treat women as second-class citizens. It was convenient enough in the First and Second World Wars to send women into the arms factories to take up the jobs which men could not do because they were fighting at the front. Whenever there is a disaster, those who go to help are not asked whether they are male or female. If they have the attributes needed in a case of necessity they go in to help regardless of sex. Therefore, if it was good enough during the war to allow women to do men's jobs—this is still true in so many jobs today, thank goodness—it seems an inalienable equal right which this country should give its womenfolk.
Although there were few things in the Queen's Speech to which I felt that I could give my wholehearted support, the thought that at long last the Government intended to recognise that women were no longer the underdogs was one small point of cheer. I am sure that it will be repeated in future Queen's Speeches, whenever they come—the sooner the better, perhaps. But whatever goes on, I recognise the fears of many people in the country—not perhaps so much in this Chamber, where we like to delude ourselves that we are slightly better informed—who have, by various means, pressure groups and others, been terrified at the thought that by giving an equal right to women this small measure will open the floodgates to immigration.
As the Minister said, that is not so. I do not know whether he knows it, but at one time in my life I had to learn about statistics. When I started looking at this problem, without the benefit of civil servants but with some very kindly friends, I concluded that there was no need for
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worry. I am delighted that the civil servants have backed the Minister up and told him that he need not be worried.
Anyone who cares about the future of this country has to care for every person in it. It is because of this that I will not support whole-scale immigration, wherever it comes from, nor will I say that it is right for those who are here. But what is patently wrong is that men should be able to bring their wives into this country without restriction while women have to go through the rigmarole we well know—which admittedly, in the last few months, has been abated by the kindness of heart of our Minister.
Now, in America, New Zealand, Australia and Israel—just a few of the countries from which our bags of letters have come—there is a recognition that a difficulty exists. That difficulty, which was not seen before—as I would not have known or been able to foretell in 1961—was not even known to so many British women living abroad. It is because of the publicity which this issue has raised that I feel that this is the time—because it is better late than never—that we must put this matter right; whether it is for someone married 25 years ago or 40 years ago, I do not mind.
I have letters on my files—not necessarily from constituents—from women who married American soldiers during the last war and who are still living in America, and very unhappy to be living there. Sometimes their children are in this country with grandchildren who have no wish to go to America. It does not matter when a woman married; if she is a British citizen she should have the right to settle here.
I find it also most important, in our new way of life—because there has been a great change in the last 25 years—to recognise the internationalism of young people particularly. We encourage travel and exchange visits between students of different nationalities. We encourage people to take part in voluntary work overseas. We encourage people to work for organisations such as the United Nations, through UNICEF and the World Health Organisation. That is all perfectly laudible, but it is little wonder that British girls who offer to serve this country by going to work abroad are deciding to marry non-British citizens, whether or not patrial.

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It is in this light that I want to thank the Minister—who has just left the Chamber—and join with him in what he said in the House last night in the debate on the Pakistan Bill in paying tribute to the staff at Lunar House, who, in the last three months, have been working at all hours of the day and night to help to alleviate that distress of which we all know. With every case that I have taken to them involving my constituents, they have managed to find some way of allowing families to be reunited—but I wonder how many people realised that this would happen, or even that this needed to happen.
When I think of the people who have been living in America for so many years—the wives of United States and Canadian Service men, who are just about coming to retirement now and want to come back to this country—I can see another shoal of letters and problems for the staff at Lunar House to cope with. The Minister said last night that he did not think it right to make any large increase in the staff dealing with these problems. He must surely know, therefore, that unless he is prepared to take some legal redress on the present situation he will be in an administrative fix before long and he will need to bring an equivalent of the Pakistan Bill to the House so that the staff can sort out the postbag in Croydon.
Wherever a girl has married a man from a country in which there is a great deal of harassment—Uganda, or an East European country, for instance—there has rarely been a refusal. If there has been a refusal by the Home Office, the decision has usually been reversed some time later. But the hardship which a British girl married to a Hungarian or a Bulgarian suffers in the intervening time can cause the breakdown of the marriage. To me, marriage is still an important thing. It should be something which we work to preserve. Where a woman is married to a non-British citizen from an Eastern country, even a year of indecision—that is the time it often takes our Foreign Office to get all the relevant details to pass to the Home Office for the Home Office to sort out the problem—can be a great hardship. I have known of some sad cases of breakdown of marriage and
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consequent problems because of the citizenship of the children.
In the Minister's grand review of the citizenship laws of our land, when he reviews the problem of marriage will he please review the problems of offspring of such marriages, who are born outside this country to a British wife and a non-British husband? Unless he does that, this will be the second campaign that we shall be running hard. If the Minister does not do this, to quote from the Catholic Herald—though I am not a member of the Roman Catholic Church—
"I have the impression that nobody at the Home Office is very worried about the wrath of God."
That was said in an article published at the end of May this year. The wrath of God may come down upon the head of the Minister and his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but it will be nothing to the wrath of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South and the hon. Member for Wallasey—myself—if the Government do not get the job right now.
Turning to the other categories of persons who have been writing to me, I join with the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South in saying that very few of the persons seeking our help have been of Asian origin, living now outside this country. That is something which worried me, because I felt that we could have heard from most of the European and North American nations, and from Australia, New Zealand and Israel, the more Westernised nations, but not from where there are other grave problems. From my discussions with some leaders of the Pakistani and Indian communities, I do not believe that this is the problem that I first thought it was. They have sought to arrange themselves in such a way as to find out what their problems will be. In recent discussions I have also been told quite firmly that there is now a grave problem for Indian and Pakistani fathers in wishing to arrange the marriages of their daughters, because this is something against which their daughters rebel. If the employment of Asian women in our country is to be encouraged—which I am sure it is—we shall find this a declining problem.
Therefore, whereas I once thought that we had heard from the European and

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the Westernised tip of the iceberg, my talks with Pakistani and Indian leaders have told me that that is not so and that far fewer Pakistanis and Indians are prepared to go through with arranged marriages.
The other group which is suffering more, perhaps, than even the Home Office realises—although I am sure that the Minister will get to grips with this problem if he has not done so already—consists of those girls who are married to Europeans who are citizens of those countries which are not members of the European Community. They can probably have a life which, on the whole, we would not constitute as hard, living in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland or Austria. But it is surprising, unless one has lived abroad for quite some time and is prepared to go on living there of one's own free will, just how irksome the differences and problems can be. Whereas they do not seem to be hardship cases, in the true sense of the word, even with the Minister's relaxation, there are families who are having considerable problems because they cannot be reunited. If any specific cases come to my notice, I shall press the hon. Member concerned with them to take them up if he has not done so. But that is one area which is almost grey in the definition.
Wives of husbands from the EEC countries come in. We can press where there is hardship if it means that a woman, such as one of my constituents, might have had to live in a mountain village in Greece, dressed in black from dawn to dusk.
Those are the obvious problems. The problems that are not obvious are from other European countries. Although I cannot call some of the ways in which they live there a hardship, I hope that those cases will be reviewed as kindly as the other cases are being reviewed.
It is not a matter of the humiliation which a number of persons have gone through. Even if that humiliation is being mitigated by the slightly swifter and, perhaps, less deep investigations by the staff of the Home Office in the light of the relaxation of the rules, it still seems to me to be wrong to treat men one way and women another way. We know that problems will arise if we
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change our immigration rules. Whatever changes are made in life, problems arise. I appreciate all the work that the Home Office has done, but I believe that this example of sex discrimination must be abolished.
That is why I was particularly delighted when the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South introduced this Bill. During the three months that I have been in Parliament I have learned of and experienced the frustrations that back benchers frequently experience at their inability to help people and groups who are affronted by our law.
Britain has always been a generous nation—some might say too generous. One thing which neither the nation nor Governments have failed to do is to call on women when people are needed who are prepared to stand up and be counted.
The women of this country now unite in making a plea to the Home Secretary to take action, whether through the Bill, with necessary consequential amendments, or through the machinery of the Home Office, which we hope will be speeded up. We call upon the Government—minority Government though it may be—to do one thing for the group of people who always give their share to Britain. I hope that speedy action will follow.
2.2 p.m.
Mr. Sydney Bidwell: It is a pleasure to follow in the debate the hon. Lady the Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker). We realised soon after the hon. Lady came to the House that she has a powerful attachment to the campaign for womens' rights—perhaps "equal rights with men" would be a better way of putting it. We knew before the hon. Lady came to the House that she had an equally powerful attachment to the cause of abolishing discrimination on the grounds of colour or ethnic origin.
These two matters must inevitably come together in the debate, because they involve the rate of intake into Britain and, as I concede to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane), they must be attached to a general public anxiety that immigrants should be able to get a livelihood and that greater social difficulties will not arise from an increased intake.

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I do not think that my hon. Friend the Minister of State fought shy of those realities. Certainly the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall cannot fight shy of those considerations.
I have taken part in many debates on immigration. I must in this debate pay a tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister of State for the manner and the spirit in which he is handling individual cases. I am sure that if ordinary members of the general public had the responsibility, the anxieties and the anguish of considering these cases, they would reach exactly the same verdict as does my hon. Friend.
I am often in correspondence with my hon. Friend. I therefore know that he does not give way on every case. If the case is in line to go before the appeals machinery, my hon. Friend is prone to putting his name at the end of a letter stating that he will not intervene. Sometimes the hearing is not immediate and considerable hardship arises from the delay.
I ask my hon. Friend to consider the question, not just of long-standing marriages where there has been a separation, but where there has been a financial arrangement and where the families feel bound by the arrangement—in other words, where the relationship is long standing and sometimes is caught only marginally by the 1969 measures.
Mr. Lyon: My hon. Friend, by raising this problem, enables me to clear up a point about the way in which I review these cases. I take the view that in the end we should move much closer to a judicial control of immigration than to an executive, discretionary control. I hope that in due course if there is a refusal it will go automatically to the adjudicator and then to the tribunal. I am anxious to encourage this. I recognise the problem of delay in the appeal machinery. We are trying to reduce the delay so that the right of appeal will be a valuable one and not just a way of postponing a decision.
Mr. Bidwell: Following my hon. Friend's intervention I will say something which I had not intended to say but which is relevant to the present system of consideration. The appeals machinery inevitably places a legal interpretation on
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the matter of establishing a person's right to come here or to remain here. Advising solicitors are beginning to tell clients in these unfortunate circumstances to withdraw their appeals and to throw themselves on my hon. Friend's compassion, principally because of the way in which precedents have built up.
We are considering mainly the inescapable principle of the equality of the sexes, equality of opportunity, equality in the way which was enshrined in the Gracious Speech. My hon. Friend puts before the House his considerable knowledge of the law and the rules applying to immigrants, but he cannot escape from the overriding principle. He made no attempt to do so.
Rights have been enshrined in our immigration law since the 1962 Act. We defined who is to have those rights. The 1971 Act introduced the concept of patriality and altered the freedom of Commonwealth citizens to enter this country. We cannot regard the matter as a chicken-and-egg relationship between the statute law and the rules which must be related to the law.
I understand that Home Office Ministers are thinking of making a change to establish equal rights. They are thinking of doing this by changing the rule back to what it was prior to the steps taken in 1969, which followed the fear of a considerable exodus from Kenya. The previous Government also had to contend with the considerable exodus from Uganda. I and many of my hon. Friends who have a continual interest in this matter were quick to congratulate the Tory Government on their handling of the Kenyan-Asian crisis.
Under the terms of this Bill or the change in the rule strongly hinted at by the Minister of State this afternoon, there would be a fear of large numbers of Asian husbands coming to this country. Indeed, I have no doubt that quite a number of them would take advantage of the opportunity, although I do not think it can be measured exactly in terms of the Home Office statistics and researches. Obviously, if there were a change in the present situation, when it is quite a struggle to get a husband into this country from overseas, it would benefit many young women of Pakistan and Indian origin.

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I have a document drawn up by a social worker in the Southall area, attached to the staff of the Ealing Community Relations Council. I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister of State has a copy of this document and that he will be visiting my constituency shortly. I think that he has kindly suggested that a number of women who are affected by the present law should talk to him, and we are very grateful to him for that offer.
According to the 1971 census there are about 20,000 single Indian girls over the age of 16 in this country, but there are over 36,000 single Indian men over the age of 16. As there are more single Indian males than females in this country, men will tend to bring their brides from India. However, under the arranged marriage system, by which parents arrange the marriage of their children, many matters are taken into consideration. For example, it is preferred that the prospective bride and groom should have the same religion, be of the same caste and almost the same age, and have the same economic, social and educational background. The man prefers the girl to be attractive, well educated and well off. The parents of the bride-to-be prefer the man to earn a good livinig or be capable of earning enough to care for their daughter and to keep her well. He should not be a drinker, a gambler or have any other vices. I mention these things because they are not irrelevant to the public fear that there could be many Asians coming here as a result of the prospective change in the law.
I must confess that I had this fear. It raises the question of the kind of men who are likely to come here and what is likely to happen as a result. As the hon. Lady the Member for Wallasey and I know from our recent "safaris", as I call them, in the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration, where we are currently considering employment—we have been to Slough and to High Wycombe—there is a great demand for labour. Employers are seriously understaffed, and this is a major problem. The intake of these people could, therefore, be beneficial to the economy. They would not go to areas of unemployment. They would inevitably go, as they did from 1954–55 onwards, to areas of high employment.
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But certain attendant social difficulties could arise. The GLC has said that the Southall part of my division is one of the most overcrowded parts of London. If we believe that the long-term solution to that kind of problem is to fight fiercely for equality of opportunity, everything should work out all right. If there is a fair involvement of the British educational system, there is nothing basically to fear. I believe, against my background and my involvement in this problem, that the ordinary working people as a whole need have no fundamental fear from the changes which are contemplated.
The old concept of the breadwinner is becoming outmoded. The term "breadwinner" has featured frequently in our debates on race relations. We have known cases of hardship when the hon. Member for Cambridge was Minister, when a woman, having arrived in this country at an early age and having been through the British educational system and as a result having secured a good job with a high salary, has been prevented from having her husband here. She has been in a state of anguish, perhaps visiting her husband only twice a year. I know of a case in which a young woman held a very high and responsible post in the service of BOAC, as it then was. I understand that at last her husband is being given permission to join her.
The idea of the man being the breadwinner is disappearing. I appreciate that throughout the world it is the man through whom citizenship is usually acquired. I do not know what the practices are in Common Market countries, but I know what the general practice is in the world in general. Of course, some countries recognise dual citizenship, although India is not one of those. I suggest that whatever happens in the Common Market countries—I do not know whether it is easier for a husband to join his wife in those countries—certainly in this country there is a valid reason for his being allowed to do so. The change has all the hallmarks of compassion, and out of sheer common sense it is time that Britain made that change. I support the Bill.
2.20 p.m.
Sir George Young: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member

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for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell), who is my neighbour from the next constituency, particularly because this is probably the only occasion on which we shall ever agree.
I am provoked by what the Minister said a few minutes ago. He said it might be helpful for the House to consider the matter against the background of Government thinking. I believe it will be much more helpful for the Government to consider the matter against the background of the thinking of the House, because he underestimates the concern of hon. Members on this issue. I for one am deeply reluctant to await even more studies before we rectify what many of us believe, in spite of a 40-minute speech by the Minister, to be a simple anomaly.
His speech was intensely depressing because I had assumed that he was an enlightened man who would go out of his way to help the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) in presenting the Bill, but he seemed to get submerged beneath the administrative difficulties. I do not understand why a procedure currently applying to wives wishing to join their husbands could not simply be applied to husbands wishing to join their wives. That seems simple to me, but then I do not have the benefit of legal training.
It seemed from what the Minister said that future Government action depended on future forecasts of people of marriageable age and the cultural and matrimonial habits of people from the Indian sub-continent. The Minister seemed to lose sight of the principle involved, which is that married couples have a right to live together and they should be able to choose which of the two homelands they should live in. At the moment the totally anomalous situation is that the wife has the right to join the husband but the husband has no right to join the wife.
As for public opinion, I have had not one letter asking me to oppose the Bill, but I have received several asking me to support it. Perhaps more important than constituents asking me to support it, my wife has told me to do so. Perhaps she wishes to be free at a later date to marry someone who may be a citizen of this country, but cleanly I would oppose the Bill at my peril.
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The Minister said he knew of no cases which had been turned down, but he knows only of the cases that come to him. In my constituency there is a Polish couple who are married. She is a citizen of this country, but he is not. He came here for a fixed period, married her and they now have a child. He appealed against a Home Office decision which invited him to return to Poland, and he lost. The Home Office says that the wife and child—the child is a citizen of this country—should go to Poland. The conditions in Poland are not easy and it might not he in the woman's best interests to return there. Only by accident did I come across this case, and I have taken it up with the Minister. I hope he adopts an enlightened view about it.
What would have happened had they not met me? The family was being split and the child would have been separated from its father. It is not good enough to rely on Members of Parliament discovering cases and relying on the Minister to take a humane view. The Minister has dealt humanely with any cases I have taken up with him, but we should have humanity embodied in the law rather than dependent upon the whims of Ministers, because the hon. Gentleman's successors might not share his enlightened approach.
The Minister attempted to seduce us at the end of his speech with the promise of Government action later, but we were not told when legislation might be introduced and there is no guarantee that hon. Members opposite will be in a position to introduce legislation anyway. Many of us would rather settle for the bird in the hand than wait for possible legislation at a future date to be introduced by we know not whom.
2.25 p.m.
Mr. Robin F. Cook: I wish to support the Bill. Mine is not a large constituency, nor does it have a large body of immigrants. More than 90 per cent. of my constituents are from my country and nearly all the rest are English, whom the Home Office still permits my female constituents to marry. In my brief time in the House, however, I have had to deal with three cases affected by this law. The remarkable thing in all three cases was that the husband was a skilled and qualified man who had a real contribution to make to the economy

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or culture of the country, and there could be no rational argument or reason for excluding him.
I do not subscribe to the view that somehow we can mysteriously combat racial prejudice in this country by rigid immigration control which reflects racial discrimination and prejudice. But for what it is worth each of these husbands was white, and fluent in English. I echo a sentiment uttered yesterday by my hon. Friend the Minister when I say that their entry would in no way be calculated or designed to inflame racial prejudice in this country. Yet they are excluded.
One case in particular illustrates the difficult anomalies and Alice-in-Wonderland situation we encounter because of these rules. My constituent is a female and cannot therefore confer the right of permanent settlement on her husband who is an American. Some years ago in her youth she was a member of the British Communist Party and because of that she cannot be admitted for permanent settlement in the United States. One wonders where the two Governments imagine my constituents will reside permanently—perhaps at some mid-Atlantic point or on an island in the Caribbean. If I put this case to my hon. Friend the Minister as one of hardship it may be allowed on that ground, especially if it is dealt with by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office, whose heart I am sure would be melted by the case. That does not get round the fundamental principle that my constituent, because she is a female, has no right to confer citizenship on her husband, whereas a male would not be deprived of that right.
From what the Minister said today and on previous occasions I understand that the Government are carrying out a review, that they are attempting to amass facts and statistics to shed light on the problem. However, we already have a perfectly adequate body of statistics about the immigration problem, in so far as it is a problem. We have the results of the 1971 Census. A copy of it is available in the Library, and if my hon. Friend examines it he will find figures which throw an interesting light on the debate. Where it deals with Asian immigrants of marriageable age it
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shows that for every two marriageable women there are three marriageable men. Two conclusions may be drawn from that. First, if we abandoned the rules it is most unlikely that there would be an immediate influx of male Asian immigrants to this country. For one thing, I doubt whether the Asian community would tolerate it.
Here, I must take up an interesting point from the Minister's speech. He said that since 1968 the number of Asian women entering the country to marry Asian men had declined. As I understood it, he was in some way using that fact to justify discrimination against women, but I draw a totally different inference from the figure. It clearly shows that the custom of arranged marriages is in decline and is being resisted by Asians in this country. One would expect that, because the more Asians live here the more they will refuse to accept an arranged marriage with a partner from an entirely different culture.
The second conclusion is that even if there were the danger of a new wave of Asian immigration, and even if it were right to use sex discrimination to thwart it—and I do not accept that proposition—we are discriminating against the wrong sex. We should be discriminating against the men, not the women.
May I say a few words about the future of the Bill? Some of us in the House were unhappy that we were denied a debate on this matter when it was last before the House. I am pleased that we have managed to have such a full debate on the issue today, and that no such device as was used last time has been used on this occasion to prevent us considering the matter. But we are aware that one reason that such a device has not been used to day is that there is relatively little chance of getting the Bill on to the statute book in the remaining time available in this Session.
It is important that we should be clear about what the Government intend to do regarding this issue, because at the end of the day the Government will have to remedy the situation. I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Minister has said that the Government have the matter under consideration. It is important that we impress upon him the fact that this is

917
an urgent situation requiring urgent action. The growing mood in the country is that sex discrimination, is intolerable and unacceptable and that there should be radical action to deal with it.
Since the start of the current Session we have been told on a number of occasions that the Home Office is undertaking an overall review of sex discrimination and that it will bring in a comprehensive measure which will deal with it in the widest possible sense, but there is no point in the Home Office's coming up with a wide measure on sex discrimination if action is not to be taken on the fundamental issue—the denial to a woman of the right to confer citizenship on her husband, a right which is already granted to him.
If the Bill fails to reach the statute book because of what may happen today, or in the ensuing weeks, we shall expect to see action from the Government within the current Session.
2.31 p.m.
Mr. John Moore: I have a particular pleasure in following the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook), especially in the light of his remarks about the unfortunate way in which the Bill was previously denied a thorough airing and discussion. I shall keep my remarks brief to ensure that there can be no excuse today for similar action.
I have two interests to declare relating to this matter. First, I am the fortunate possessor of a foreign wife, and the law allows me to bring her to this country. If the position had been reversed I should never have been able to appear in this House. Secondly, I have in my constituency Lunar House. I endorse the remarks which have been made regarding the exceptional activities and the skill of the people there who have to administer the present unfortunate legislation.
In the few months that I have been here I have learned that anything which seems to have the combined wishes of the two Front Benches—contrary to the views of hon. Members on the back benches—must arouse my intense suspicion. I am always paralysed, as it were, at the constant way that I have been assured in my short spell here—my stay may be even briefer than I expect because
918
of these few remarks—that so many things are not possible because they are terribly difficult and involve all manner of inconvenience, even though the particular proposals may be relatively simple.
We should not be discussing this issue today. The fact that we are discussing it illustrates the essence of the inequality and discrimination in our society. It is clear to me that when we have to argue for women's rights there is something physically wrong in our society, which is supposed to have no discrimination.
I shall say a few words about the basic principle involved. I am not terribly concerned with administrative abuses. The law is more important than the abuses which flow from the law. In a society we should surely endeavour to correct abuses, not try to create an incorrect law from which abuses must flow. We are in a situation in which no one with any sanity can possibly defend the extraordinary principles which we have been arguing about. All we wish to see is the principle of true equality under the law continued.
I recognise that there are difficulties, but every time attempts are made to change the law regarding discrimination different obstacles are presented. For instance, when we are considering true equality for women in terms of remuneration we are told that it would be too costly, and that it cannot be done this year, or in 1980, but that it may be done by the end of the century. Today we have not been told about cost; we have been told about potential abuse and administrative inconvenience. But women cannot wait because of such reasons. We have an opportunity to express clearly our views to both Front Benches. I take the point of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central, that regardless of whichever party is in power in the near future this matter is now pressing.
2.35 p.m.
Mr. Arnold Shaw: I am pleased to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Moore), particularly because I wish to underline the urgency needed in this matter. My hon. Friend the Minister dealt with the problem in a way, but to a mind such as mine, which is untutored in legal matters, what he said seemed confusing. The central point which needs attention, and which should be brought

919
out time and time again, is the inequality between men and women in the matters which the House has been debating. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) who has been a doughty fighter in the battle for equality of the sexes.
I represent a constituency which includes a number of immigrants. Most of the correspondence I have received on this subject has been about white women who, because of the circumstances which have arisen, cannot live in this country. I am particularly mindful of a letter from the mother of two daughters. Both are gifted girls. One has been to university and the other is at university at present. One is married to a Rhodes scholar in Australia and another is to marry a Rhodes scholar in Australia. The mother dearly wishes to have the daughters with her, but as things are they are precluded, except with the permission of a Minister.
I am not as pessimistic about such matters as are a number of hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. My optimism arises to some extent from the generous and humanitarian consideration which has been given to a number of cases of which I am personally aware by the present incumbents in the Home Office. I realise that my right hon. and hon. Friends are anxious to meet the various points which have arisen in the course of the debate. We are told that a statement will be made shortly and I am more than hopeful that some action will be taken in this matter.
Much has been said about the problem of immigrants. We must be extremely careful to distinguish between the problems of immigration and the central theme of the debate, the equality of the sexes. In every case in which I have had letters from members of the Asian community in my constituency they have pointed out that time is passing and that the situation today is very different from what it was some years ago. Girls are not prepared to accept the sort of limitation set by parents in the past and are looking around among people in their own areas, and making their choices accordingly. This may still aggrieve parents, but it is what is happening.
It is not easy to send a girl to the country of her ancestors to acquire a husband. It is very costly; indeed, the way things
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are going it will become virtually prohibitive. Figures show that there are more male than female Indians and Pakistanis. These things are evident. We hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider the various points made from both sides of the House. I am optimistic that all the expressions of opinion will be heard sympathetically and that we shall see action as soon as possible.
2.40 p.m.
Mr. David Lane: I, too, am glad that we are having a thorough debate on this issue. We are all aware how much public interest and feeling have been aroused by it. It has been a very useful debate in which several of the problems have been aired. I applaud the persuasive and charming way in which the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) moved the Second Reading, and the eloquent and moving speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker), who is one of the other sponsors of the Bill. We have had similarly constructive speeches from hon. Members on both sides throughout.
As we made clear at the last General Election, my party is committed to promoting equal opportunities for men and women. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) was Home Secretary we had in the Home Office legislation in draft, almost ready to be introduced, when the General Election came. All hon. Members are now waiting impatiently for the Government to announce their proposals on the wider questions, which were mentioned again at Question Time only yesterday.
The Bill deals with an important aspect of equality between the sexes. It is based on the principle, which is in the title, of equal treatment, or, in the rather more lurid words I see in graffiti on the university walls in my constituency, "Sexism, out!". That is a fine principle to which we are all committed. But, as the Minister of State said, there are some practical problems to which we must give close study before we make any change in the law. In particular, the House must think carefully before it puts on the statute book any legislation—whether a Bill of this kind or changes in the immigration rules, whether it comes from the Government or in a Private Member's Bill—without the firmest reassurances from the Government of the

921
day that a new loophole in our immigration control will not be opened.
Ideally, legislation on immigration or nationality is better attempted by the Government, but I welcome any initiatives by private Members because, as in this case, they help the House, the Government and the Opposition to focus their minds on a problem which we all realise has aroused proportions of public feeling which were not present only a few years ago. This is a good illustration of the way in which public opinion has been moving in this country and other countries and the way in which it is soon reflected in the House. It is one of the great virtues of legislation proposed by private Members, whether or not it reaches the statute book in any particular Session.
Anyone who has been a member of a Government trying to administer this part of our immigration control and nationality law knows what an intensely difficult matter it is. I think that the House acknowledges this. I have vivid memories of a number of cases which came my way in trying to do the job the Minister of State is now doing—cases which I had to administer as fairly as I could in the light of the law and the rules. Ministers and officials in the Home Office have always tried to deal fairly and sympathetically with the intense human problems represented by all these cases—borderline cases and some that are not so near the borderline.
There was an implication in some speeches by Labour Members that the previous Government took an over-rigid attitude to those cases. I do not accept that. I can think of many which came my way where, generally with advice from officials, we were prepared to bend the rules on grounds of hardship—for example, parents in this country whose health was failing and who would have found it difficult to go on in their years of retirement without the continuing presence of their British daughter in this country.
I can also think of cases involving husbands from Eastern European countries where I gave the benefit of the doubt to the couple concerned, although a stricter interpretation of the rules might have decided the matter otherwise. That is the sort of case that is most recent in my memory: only a few weeks ago I held
922
a meeting in the middle of Cambridge on a Saturday morning and in the crowd was a Polish woman now settled in this country, who was beside herself with anxiety because her daughter, born in this country, had still not been able to get her Polish husband over here permanently or even for a visit of any long duration. I know from that case the despair, anxiety, trouble and often the breakdown of family life that may be caused. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Pym), whose constituent she happens to be, is now dealing urgently with the matter.
Three background points are important in considering the problem. The first, which several speakers have mentioned in passing, is the practice in other countries. It is not necessarily a guide to what we should do, but we should bear it in mind. I am grateful to the Library for some thorough research on the matter of immigration and nationality rights of Commonwealth or alien husbands and fiancés, and how other countries deal with both those aspects of the problem. A varied picture is presented.
Several other countries make the spouses, of whichever sex, wait rather longer than we do before having rights to nationality, and their rules seem to be somewhat more biased against women than ours are. As regards immigration control, some other countries are more liberal than we are and others less. We ought to bear in mind, too, that most of the other countries we are considering, whether in Europe, the overseas Commonwealth or the non-Commonwealth countries overseas, do not have the continuing strong pressures for male immigration that we in this country face and shall continue to face for some time.
It is clear that public opinion has been changing steadily in the past few years as regards breadwinners, heads of household or whatever phrase one uses, not only in this country but elsewhere. Here I call in aid one quotation to reinforce my view that we in this country have not been laggard in dealing with the immigration or nationality problems of women as compared with men. I quote the right hon. Lady who is now Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Affairs. She said from this very Box in a debate on equal opportunities for

923
women last year, when she was shadowing Home Office matters:
"Under the Government's immigration policy a man may bring his wife to this country to live with him, but a woman is not entitled to bring her husband to this country to live here with her. This is a principle that is almost never questioned in the way all Governments run their immigration policy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd February 1973; Vol. 849, c. 1865.]
This is increasingly questioned in this country and elsewhere. Let nobody think that this country has been lagging behind.
Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: In fairness to my right hon. Friend, I must say that she was questioning it and was saying that the matter had not been pursued vigorously enough by previous Governments. She was not saying that there was any international comparison.
Mr. Lane: I thought it reasonable to quote what the right hon. Lady said as indicating that the situation had been generally accepted internationally. However, fashions are changing in this important matter.
I need not dwell at length on the second background point because the Minister of State reminded the House of the good reasons which existed in the mind of the Home Secretary in 1969 when he changed the rule to remove the right of a man marrying a British girl automatically to come into this country. Those of us who know the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) realise that he would not have been persuaded to make a change of that sort without very strong evidence for its necessity and without the development of serious abuse.
That was the situation at the end of 1968 and the beginning of 1969. We cannot lightly brush aside the fear of a further wave of immigration if the rule is changed back. I was interested to hear what the Minister of State said about the analyses, statistical and otherwise, which the Government are making. However, on 28th March, soon after the new Government took office, the Home Secretary said at Question Time that it was possible that if the rule were changed back, as the Bill would change it, there would be
"a substantial and continuing new wave of male immigration, particularly from the Indian subcontinent."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th March 1974; vol. 871, c. 612.]
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I am not passing judgment in the matter, because we are all anxious to hear more about the statistical researches and the up-to-date assessment which is being made, I hope in depth, in the Home Office. However, I remind the House of this because it is a practical implication of the Bill which cannot be lightly set aside or overlooked.
The third background point is that the system of administering the present law is already pretty flexible. I do not say that this is a satisfactory way of leaving the matter permanently, because clearly it is not. Views and circumstances have changed, and it raises difficult issues of judgment and of fairness for anyone who has to administer the law. However, compassionate factors have always been given full weight by successive Governments in administering the law since 1969. The Minister of State has made clear that the system is now being administered in an even more flexible fashion.
Imperfect though it is from a number of points of view, the system is not working badly. It is administered in a humane and feeling way, and gross injustices are not being done, although we are all aware that certain cases take a great deal of ministerial and official time to sort out fairly.
Mrs. Jeger: I agree completely with what the hon. Gentleman said about the increasingly compassionate attitude which is being adopted, but does he realise that one of the difficulties of women in this situation is that the husband, when allowed in on hardship or compassionate grounds, is usually admitted only for 12 months, after which a fresh application must be made? This is very unsettling for young married couples who cannot even get a mortgage.
Mr. Lane: I am aware of that, but almost invariably permission to stay is extended. I am aware of few cases in which that has not happened.
We have spent most of this afternoon considering the immigration aspects, but the Bill seeks to make two fundamental changes—one in the nationality law and one in the immigration law. The major change in the nationality law is in Clause 5. I must sound a note of caution. We are aware of the possibility of abuse of our citizenship laws by rogues of both sexes who want to get round them. In

925
the last few months men have been advertising themselves in journals as being prepared to marry women in this country who would not otherwise have been able to stay here, thus making an absolute farce of marriage. It could well work the other way round if we are not careful and do not take great pains to prevent abuse of this sort.
If the Bill were passed in its present form and a man marrying a British girl in this country obtained automatically the right to British citizenship simply by virtue of that marriage, it would be welcomed by rogues who want British citizenship for their own purposes and who would not stop at entering into a shady commercial deal to get what they want. That is a risk which the House must bear in mind.
Frustrating though it is, I am sure that it is right to try thoroughly to reform the citizenship and nationality laws all at once, as the Conservative Government were preparing to do when they set in train the Whitehall inquiry which has been taking place for some time and which the present Government are continuing. [Interruption.] The Minister of State is chuckling, but we gave a great deal of thought to the problem of the nationality law. Public opinion has been changing in this matter. We in the House are becoming more aware of the anomalies.
Throughout the years that I have been a Member there has been support on both sides of the House for a thorough review. It has taken some time to get it going. It was started by the Conservative Government, and I am glad to hear that it is being continued. I hope that it will not be long before constructive citizenship and nationality proposals are produced which will solve many of the difficulties. That is the right way of dealing with the nationality law.
We must consider, secondly, the practical consequences of changes in the immigration law. They may turn out not to be serious, but, whether we are changing the rules or the basic Act, we must carefully think through the consequences.
Reference has been made to the position in 1968 and 1969 and the reasons which led the then Home Secretary to make a change in this respect, because there were pressures and because abuses were being
926
practised. In one sense the total pressure to come into the country, especially from the Indian subcontinent, is even greater today than it was four or five years ago. Against that, the Minister of State and others have quoted the changing position of the immigrant communities here in terms of the balance of numbers and the custom of arranged marriages. These are all factors that we have to weigh.
We have also to keep in mind the general public anxiety. It is a genuine anxiety among a great many people that we should not change the law in any respect which will result in a large surge of new male immigration. The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell) knows this. I was interested in what he said. Perhaps I might quote what was said in another place a few weeks ago by the other Minister of State, the noble Lord, Lord Harris. He said:
"The danger is that if this matter were to be mishandled by the present Government or by their successors we could experience a substantial new wave of immigration. The Government recognise that there is still a need to maintain a balance between the number of immigrants entering this country and the capacity of the country to absorb them. We have a responsibility towards the immigrant population not to put them as individuals into a situation where integration is made impossible or very difficult. This situation could arise if people were to be admitted in such large numbers that fear and resentment—both enemies of effective integration—were to be increasingly felt by the indigenous population. It is for this reason that we accept the need to control the flow of immigrants."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 28th March 1974; Vol. 350, c. 795.]
Reassurance is vitally necessary that any change in this direction will not lead—and can be demonstrated as likely not to lead—to a large increase in the number of new immigrants coming here.
The crux of the decision facing the Government, as it would have faced the previous administration, in contemplating any change, is that we are all anxious to ensure more justice for women in terms of equal opportunity at the earliest possible date; but we have also to satisfy ourselves that there will be no risk of abuse by people trying to get round the immigration control. It is not just the matter of arranged marriages, or the changing patterns of Asian family life, or whatever it may be. It is an unfortunate fact that there are people of all colours in all countries who will go to

927
any lengths of guile to get into this country—
Mrs. Jeger: Of both sexes.
Mr. Lane: Of both sexes—and to establish their rights here. We have to be sure, as far as we humanly can, that we are taking steps to prevent abuses of this kind being practised.
It should not be beyond the wit of Government to devise precautions. If and when a further statement is made, we shall listen carefully and critically to what is said.
Mr. Arthur Latham: I was trying to ascertain whether the review to which the hon. Gentleman referred had included any investigation into the numbers which might be affected in connection with male spouses entering the country. I pick up the hon. Gentleman especially with regard to his remarks to the effect that it should not be beyond the wit of Government to devise precautions which would not continue to include this element of sex discrimination. In numerous cases about which I wrote to the hon. Gentleman and his predecessor in office, there was never any hint that there was any review or likelihood of a change in policy, and apparently it was beyond the wit of the Department to use any other means than sex discrimination.
Mr. Lane: I am sorry if I have misled the hon. Gentleman. I was talking about the review of citizenship law, not of immigration law.
In summing up, I ask the House to keep in mind three matters in deciding what to do about the Second Reading of the Bill and any later consideration of the issue. The first is that we are taking decisions against the background of the forthcoming general reform to provide equal opportunities for men and women, about which we have been promised a White Paper later in the summer.
Secondly, we have the simultaneous review now going on into citizenship law, which clearly overlaps the first and will have to pay special attention to the rights of people of either sex and how they may be inter-related.
Thirdly, there is the problem of immigration upon which the Minister of State
928
concentrated the main burden of his argument.
I repeat, public opinion must be reassured that if we are to make changes through this Bill, or at a later stage through the rules or in any other way, there will not be abuses in the field of either immigration or nationality. If the House votes in favour of the principle of the Bill by giving it a Second Reading, we must look very closely into the practical implications, in the hope that satisfactory solutions may be found.
3.5 p.m.
Mr. Martin Flannery: Having listened to the two Front Bench speakers, especially my hon. Friend the Minister of State, I am reminded of Dickens' great novel "Bleak House", which is concerned with the law. In the opening pages Dickens describes a scene outside the Law Courts on a foggy morning. He does it brilliantly for about three pages. The confusion in that area in the Strand is so dreadful that the imagination boggles at how the carriages managed to get through. Then, in a brilliant and witty line, he says:
"But the confusion there was as nothing compared with the confusion inside the Law Courts."
He then devotes the rest of the book to explaining that confusion.
I listened with care to the tortuous way that my hon. Friend threaded his way ably—quite a tour de force—through the intricacies of the law, but I emerged far more confused at the end than I was at the beginning. I would not dream of not attributing compassion to my hon. Friend, for which I am sure he is duly famous, in the charming qualities that he displayed in trying to unravel the situation; but I felt that peering through the law—not his delineation of it—was sex discrimination and, even more vicious, racialism. I think that is within the law and that is why my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) is trying to unravel the situation with this Bill.
It is good to hear hon. Members on both sides speaking in much the same vein in this debate. Indeed, I should like to echo that the need for the Bill

929
is in itself a disgrace to our democracy. The fact that this debate is taking place is to many of us a sad matter. The need to rectify the situation is one of those elementary needs that should have been tackled a long time ago.
We live in a male-dominated world. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. Those of us who saw the subjection of women on the Indian subcontinent many years ago during the war—I observed it for four years—were led to the conviction that we now have because it was such an awful experience. We thought that that situation did not exist at home. That was during the period from 1940 to 1945. But to an extent that situation still exists in this country and we are still trying to rectify it.
Democracy does not recognise a sex barrier. To the extent that any sex barrier exists, democracy itself is diminished. The Bill is an attempt to try to set this matter right by putting women more clearly on an equal plane with men.
This afternoon we heard speeches by my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South and the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker). It was self-evident from those speeches that they are the equal of any man in this House in the way that they pleaded for the setting right of this great wrong.
Britain has led the world in the drive for human rights over a very long period. This matter is a blot on our escutcheon in that drive towards human rights. We are setting things right, but we still have a long way to go.
I cannot understand this fear of large numbers of Asian men coming into this country. My hon. Friend the Minister of State said that the women who have come here as immigrants are tending to marry within this country, and I think that that is true. None the less, they have an inalienable right to marry men who live outside this country and be allowed to have those men come here and live with them. To force them to make this choice is undemocratic, and needs rectifying quickly. I cannot conceive that the tortuous threading of our way through the law should be seen as any barrier.
All the time my hon. Friend was speaking I was thinking that I must not allow myself to be bemused by all these
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arguments, but must get back to the fundamental fact of sex discrimination and ask that the Bill go through rapidly to set the matter right. Therefore, I appeal to my hon. Friends to take as little note of these argumentations as they can. I am sure that the motivations are well meant, but if they are to obstruct the passage of the Bill we should forget them and join hands across the Chamber to get the Bill through.
3.11 p.m.
Mr. George Cunningham: I apologise for intervening when I did not hear more than the first five or 10 minutes of the main speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger), or the intervention of the Minister, but I feel strongly about the Bill. I am strongly opposed to this measure, but I shall not obstruct its passage. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) that it is possible to share all the views that he expressed but, nevertheless, to oppose the passage of the Bill.
Most of the case for the Bill has been made on the basis of discrimination as between men and women. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South made it clear that she saw it as a Bill not about citizenship or immigration, but about discrimination as between men and women. Surely the fundamental point that needs to be made is that we can get rid of discrimination between men and women without doing it in the manner proposed in the Bill, which opens up the way—no one can doubt this—to possible dangers which may turn out to be realised.
In so far as the present law is discriminatory between men and women—and no one can doubt that it is that—it is difficult to see whether it is discriminatory against women or against men. It discriminates against women in the sense that a woman citizen of this country entitled to residence here cannot bring in her husband by reason of the marriage. I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South say that the business of one spouse bringing in the other as baggage was an outdated approach. In so far as one regards the present arrangements as discriminatory against women, it is only because one might regard the man as the baggage of the

931
woman, and he ought to be entitled to come in simply by reason of the marriage.
Surely it is more correct to say that the discrimination is against men. Under the present arrangements, a woman who is not entitled to come here acquires the right to do so by marriage to a citizen of this country resident here, and therefore she gains an advantage. It is the man who is not a citizen and not a resident here who cannot acquire the same right by marriage to a woman. We can all agree that the present arrangements are discriminatory as between men and women, but it is difficult to say whether they discriminate more against women than against men—
Mrs. Jeger: I am sure my hon. Friend will notice that the title of the Bill is
"Spouses of United Kingdom Citizens (Equal Treatment) Bill".
Mr. Cunningham: I accept that the Bill would give completely equal treatment. What I am saying is that the excitement and the campaign for this Bill has been as it were, a Women's Lib campaign.
Mrs. Jeger: Rubbish.
Mr. Cunningham: If I may go on; let us see whether it is complete rubbish, shall we?
Mr. Ian Mikardo: It may not be complete rubbish, but it is rubbish.
Mr. Cunningham: We shall see.
It has been thought of as a way of giving to women equality of treatment, which they do not have at present. They are regarded as being disadvantaged at present. No one can deny that that is the basis on which most hon. Members have received letters and representations about the Bill. It is not that men have said, "I am prejudiced against because I do not have the right to come to Britain by reason of marrying a woman." It has been a grievance felt more by women than by men—
Mr. Mikardo: This is hair-splitting.
Mr. Cunningham: Hairs should sometimes be split in legal matters.
Mr. Mikardo: Come, come.
Mr. Cunningham: Present arrangements are discriminatory as between men and women, but it is not clear who is most prejudiced against by these arrangements. I make that point very much in passing. It would be possible, and I think it would be better, to remove the discrimination as between men and women without according an automatic right to every spouse to entry of this country simply by reason of the marriage.
I accept and would be prepared to face the fact that that means that one would be taking away—if I may put it in conventional terms—from a male citizen of this country the right automatically in law to bring his wife from abroad to this country. That would become discretionary. Similarly, a female citizen would have to depend upon discretion for bringing in a male spouse. Given the way in which this discussion is normally conducted, and, I imagine, the way in which it has been conducted throughout most of today when I have not been here, I suppose that that would be regarded as rather outlandish—
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Hear, hear.
Mr. Cunningham: In fact this is the arrangement which prevails in most countries.
Mr. Flannery: So what?
Mr. Cunningham: I agree that we should not do only what is done in other countries, but the suggestion is that Britain is being unduly reactionary in the arrangements that it has.
An arrangement which said that spouses of whichever gender could come here but that there was a power to refuse, which would normally not be used, is the arrangement which applies, for example, in Canada. Australia and New Zealand—all countries which, like us, have had a large influx of immigration, in their case largely from this country.
The only case for what I am saying I would prefer to the arrangements in the Bill is the possibility of abuse. When people talk of abuse, mostly they speak of the possibility of large numbers of people arranging marriages and coming to this country on the basis of those arranged marriages. I suggest that good

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community relations could be prejudiced just as much by one or two highly publicised cases of abuse as by a wave of abuse. I do not think that there will be any wave. I cannot see hundreds upon hundreds of men arranging marriages in order to come to this country, but it only needs one or two to do so to set back the cause of community relations in this country quite severely.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Does my hon. Friend not accept that that is the argument which has been used since time immemorial to try to maintain barriers against any advance? The Indian girls and boys in this country who go to school with my children in comprehensive schools will look increasingly for the same kind of behaviour, background and involvement that they now find in the Anglo-Saxons with whom they are educated. It is no argument to say that because there may be some publicity of an individual abuse we should maintain this kind of direct prejudice against one of the sexes.
Mr. Cunningham: My hon. Friend must surely accept that I am not proposing that we ought to maintain that prejudice, that discrimination, as between the sexes. I am saying that of course that must be got rid of—but moving towards discretionary admission of spouses of either sex as against automatic admission. I ask hon. Members to face up to this question: what happens when one man from outside this country buys a form of marriage with a girl—
Mrs. Dunwoody: As has been happening for years.
Mr. Cunningham:—not necessarily an immigrant girl but any girl in this country? What happens then? Is the publicity attached to that case likely to advance the cause of community relations? It will harm it very much. We all know that these cases rarely occur and do not get much publicity.
Mr. Mikardo: What does my hon. Friend say to the fact that for quite a long time now young Englishmen have been advertising the fact that they are willing to marry girls from overseas in order to give them nationality? Why does he think that that has not harmed the cause of community relations and that it
934
would harm that cause only if it were the other way around? In all friendship, I put it to my hon. Friend that what he is doing is suggesting that we should get rid of discrimination against anyone by having discrimination against everyone.
Mr. Cunningham: The possibility that my hon. Friend mentions, of a woman from outside this country acquiring the right to enter by fixing a marriage, exists, and in so far as it is publicised—and there were some cases a few months ago—it does a lot of harm. The question is whether the cases which are the other way around will be as rare as that or more common. Which is likely? Let us see if we can get the facts clear, to see what it is that we are prepared to face. They are likely to be more common—
Mrs. Dunwoody: No.
Mr. Cunningham:—for the reason that outside this country there are x number of women who wish to enter this country, as it were, in their own right and who, therefore, may wish to fix a marriage in order to acquire the right to come here. But whatever is the number of men outside this country prepared to do the same thing, it is certainly higher. Men are the free movers. Whether or not one likes it, they are the people who tend to take a decision, in, for example, the West Indies, to move to Britain. Without reasons of marriage coming into it, there are more men wanting to move from their present abode to this country than there are women who wish to do that.
In so far as there is this abuse, therefore, the abuse of bringing men into this country is likely to be greater than the abuse in respect of women entering. There are those who say, "All right, I am prepared to face up to that and accept it on the basis that we do not want to keep out any legal spouse." I disagree with that point of view, but it is an honest view. I am not suggesting that we should use a discretion in order to keep spouses out. The discretion should be used to admit; but the discretion would mean something, in that one would have the power not to admit if there were evidence—one would not go searching for it—that in a particular case the marriage was no more than a form of marriage designed only to procure admission to this country.

935
I may be howled down on that proposition, but again it is not an arrangement which would be regarded as outrageous in most other countries. It is an arrangement which would allow us to accord to male spouses outside this country much more generous treatment than they receive now, because the Home Office feels that if it opens the door now very generously, it can never close it to even one case.
If the possibility of refusal where there is evidence of abuse is retained, it is possible to be much more generous. That is not the proposition in the Bill. I do not think that there is any chance that the Bill will be amended in Committee to make it accord with that view. I think that it would be much more in the interests of community relations in Britain if it were so changed.
The view I am expressing is a minority one, not only amongst hon. Members who have come to the House today but in the House as a whole and, as I understand it, amongst all the people who take an interest in these matters. Therefore, I do not propose to obstruct the Bill, even if I could do so; so it will go through. However, I think that when the first case of a procured form of bought marriage receives a great deal of adverse publicity we may have reason to regret what we are doing in the Bill.
3.26 p.m.
Mr. Bryan Magee: It is important for us all to be clear that this Bill does not propose to remove illiberalities from the immigration law. It proposes to remove sexual discriminatory elements from that law. In so far as the immigration laws are illiberal—I believe that they are extensively illiberal at present—they will remain illiberal even after the Bill becomes law. All that the Bill would secure is that all the same illiberalities would apply to men as apply to women. If there are any illiberal Members present, they can rest assured that they do not need to oppose the Bill to retain any illiberalities that they wish to retain.
The central principle of the Bill, then, is clear. It is to abolish sexual discrimination in our immigration laws. I have been astonished at how little reference to that central principle I have heard in the
936
debate, because I was under the impression that the purpose of a Second Reading debate was to discuss the central principle of a Bill.
We all know—at least, I think we all know—the real reason why there is an inclination in the Home Office to resist the Bill. Some people fear that, if a Bill like this were to become law, the following would happen For many years past a number of people living on the Indian sub-continent have been prepared to pay substantial sums to secure illegal entry into this country. The fear is that, because of the cultural institution of arranged marriages prevailing in that part of the world, it would then become possible for people willing to put up enough money to arrange a marriage on payment, which would then enable them to enter Britain.
If my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Jeger) says in reply, "But my Bill applies only to people who are already married. It does not allow people to enter Britain for purposes of marriage", the reply of my imaginary opponent would be, "Yes, but the air fare to Britain from India or Pakistan is a small proportion of what many people have shown themselves willing to pay to get into this country, and all that would happen would be that women would be flown out to be married to people who were willing to pay, and would fly back with their newly married husbands." If one is honest, one must face the fact that a Bill such as this opens up that possibility.
I make two points in reply to that. First, the sheer numbers involved make it entirely clear that it is a possibility that would be open only to a comparatively small number of people. Different figures have been given in the debate. It is easy, and I think fruitless, to embark on an argument about figures. The surprising thing to me about all the differing figures which have been given is how small they are. I am advised by the Runnymede Trust that the pool of available women—to use an unfeeling phrase—the pool of Indian or Pakistani women available for such arranged marriages is about 40,000. I do not want to argue about the precise accuracy of that figure.
But given that there are more men than women from those parts of the world

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resident in this country; given that the longer women from those parts of the world remain in this country the more influenced they are by our patterns of behaviour, our cultural institutions and our proclivity to marry a person of one's own choice rather than the choice of one's parents; and given the order of magnitude of the figure involved; I assert that it is a small problem in the context of our national life. And it is bound to be a diminishing problem. From the time when the Bill came into effect, the problem, however large or small, would he bound, after a initial period, to get smaller and smaller.
The second of my objections relates to the purpose of a debate of this kind: that is, it is an objection in principle. The principle enshrined in the Bill is the principle that sexual discrimination is not to be permitted in the laws of this country. It is a principle with which I am 150 per cent. in sympathy. There was a time in the history of this country when the law discriminated against Jews. Our laws have discriminated against Catholics and non-conformists; they have discriminated against people who owned less than a certain value in property. For most of the time when such laws were in operation they were regarded by the majority of people in this country as normal, because they were normal: they had always existed. And because they were normal they were acceptable. Yet there is scarcely an hon. Member who would not regard discrimination of those kinds as utterly repugnant today, and unacceptable in any legislation that this House might consider or accept.
We have reached a point in the social development of this country when sexual discrimination is of precisely this kind. It is a principle, like anti-semitism, about which no accommodation should ever be made, a principle on which no degree of compromise should ever be acceptable. In saying that, I admit that precisely because sexual discrimination is structural in the community in which we live, precisely because it is built into our society in such manifold, intricate and intimate ways, it cannot be removed overnight by a single act of legislation. It cannot be removed in any period shorter than a considerable number of years. But sexual equality is an end towards which we must move. We must never pass a Bill in this House
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which goes back, so far as that principle is concerned. And if a Bill of this kind would have the result of opening the gates to a marginally greater number of coloured male immigrants from the Indian sub-continent—if that is the problem, it must be met with solutions which are relevant to that, and not at the cost of sacrificing the principle of sexual equality. To try to solve an immigration problem by using an entirely different weapon, the weapon of sexual discrimination, is like trying to cure a man's toothache by cutting his head off. It is sacrificing the greater to the less.
Therefore, while acknowledging the reality of the problem which is feared by opponents of this Bill, and while acknowledging the fact that if the problem is created—and this Bill might create it—steps would have to be taken to solve it, the Bill should nevertheless be passed, because we must accept the full implications of sexual equality and then deal with whatever problems that creates, by appropriate means. If we acknowledge the ideal of sexual equality, then, like every other ideal, the acknowledgment is a façade if we accept it in practice only when it costs us nothing. An ideal which one follows only when it does not hurt is not an ideal: it is either hypocrisy or pragmatism. Let us live up to the ideal, accept the ideal, accept the problems consequent on embodying the ideal in legislation, and then face them.
3.35 p.m.
Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: By leave of the House, may I speak again? I wish to deal with two or three points which have been raised, notably by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane). However, before I do that, I wish to say that I accept entirely the spirit of the speech, so well made, of my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Magee).
From the very beginning, the Home Secretary has been convinced, as a member of a Government intending very soon to reveal their proposals—I think that they will be found to be radical, far-reaching and effective—to implement the principle of equality for women throughout the whole of our social life, that it would be wrong to retain in respect of immigration a rule which itself might be considered to be sexually discriminatory.

939
True, we could have dealt with the rule so as to remove the element of sex discrimination in the way I indicated in my speech, which has been expatiated upon by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham), but, as I explained, this would have continued—indeed, it would have increased—the amount of human distress caused. It was for that reason, right at the beginning of my speech, that I said that I regarded this basically not as an issue of sex discrimination but as one concerning the distress which is caused to people who are married, or who want to marry, and who want to come to live in this country.
I have a great affection for the hon. Member for Cambridge, but I listened with a good deal of incredulity to his account of how this situation was dealt with by his Government. I recognise his difficulties, but if I had not been inundated with cases revealing the distress which had been accumulated over the past few years, distress accumulated because those cases had been consistently turned down by the Home Office under the hon. Gentleman's administration, I should not have believed that it was quite such a pressing problem as it is.
In fact, because there has been that accumulation of cases, because the hardship was so great, and because the control exercised was so inflexible, this matter has come to the boil in the way it has. I am glad that it has. It gives us the opportunity to review the rule and consider whether it is necessary. But the reason it came to the boil was largely the inflexibility of the last Government.
When the hon. Gentleman names a few cases in which he was able to exercise discretion and allow entry, I can only say that I can name many more which I have now reviewed in which he consistently turned down an application on hardship grounds. I do not think that he can say that he was applying the rule with the same degree of fairness and flexibility as has been applied to it since the new Government came in.
Mr. Lane: I do not want to detain the House, but the hon. Gentleman is being unfair in laying at the door of the last Government the amount of human distress which the administration of the rule has been causing. The House knows
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the situation perfectly well, and I am sorry that he has introduced that note. I acknowledge that the administration of the rule has now been made more flexible, but the difficulties go back to the date in 1969 when the former Labour Government, for reasons which were accepted as overriding then, changed the rule in the way they did. All the difficulties we face today, all the sex discrimination, go back to that decision of the Labour Home Secretary in 1969.
Mr. Lyon: The hon. Gentleman said that he had instituted the review of citizenship. Again, I have some incredulity about that. We have certainly done it, and we shall continue with our review. We hope that it will soon be possible to introduce a completely new test of citizenship which will carry no sense of racial discrimination or sex discrimination.
The hon. Member for Cambridge drew attention to the statement made by the Home Secretary at an early stage in this discussion when we had begun the review about the possible implications for immigration. I think that my right hon. Friend has made plain since that he, too, has reviewed the matter in the light of the information that has come before us and that he does not regard the problem as being as serious as was first thought. It behoves any new Government to approach a problem of this nature with a fair degree of caution. That is what we have done.
I end with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury. He referred to a danger which might arise if there were a change in the rules. If there were a change, it is inevitable that at some time or other we should come across a bad case in the way that he indicates. The real test for us as a civilised community is whether we can stand up to the kind of criticism which would then be voiced. If we believed that a change was right and if, in all the circumstances, we concluded that it should take place, a few bad cases should not change our view about the issue on principle, and we would have to be able to stand before our constituents and explain the situation if they wanted us to change the rule back because of one or two bad cases that might be highlighted in some sections of the Press.

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The price of human misery for doing that is the kind of case we have had recounted ad nauseam from both sides of the House.
If this change comes we must be as firm in holding to the change as the House has been today in criticising the existing rule. Therefore, I ask for the support of hon. Members on both sides to make a firm stand against any such intemperate playing with racial feeling if a bad case came to light after the rule were changed.
Mr. Magee: Why, if the Government are so sympathetic with the principle of the Bill—and perhaps are prepared to do very much more—can they not simply accept the Bill as a first step, and then go on to do the something more?
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

LABELLING OF TOILET PREPARATIONS BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
3.44 p.m.
Mrs. Joyce Butler: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
In the few minutes left to me, I want to draw attention to the main aims of the Bill. It covers a very wide range of products which are used by men, women and babies and children. The number and use of these products is constantly increasing. In recent years consumers have been demanding to know more of what these products contain, but at the present there is no indication on the container, on the label or in any promotional material what the ingredients are.
I am constantly being approached and written to with complaints that constituents have been unable to identify ingredients which have caused them to have a rash or spots, for hair to fall out, for eyelids to swell up, and for various other problems to develop.
Doctors also have complained to me that although they have been treating patients for these kinds of troubles and
942
allergies derived from toilet preparations, they have been unable to discover the cause of the trouble from the toilet preparations manufacturers, and so they have not been able to advise their patients satisfactorily.
Only two days ago a friend told me that her family had given her a birthday present of a beauty course and after she had had this beauty treatment she was unable to see for a week because her eyelids were so swollen. Neither she nor the beauty salon had any idea what particular ingredient had caused the trouble.
The deaths of babies in France a short time ago from the excessive use of hexachlorophene in baby powder illustrates dramatically the dangers which can arise where there is insufficient care in the making of toilet preparations.
In the Bill I am not questioning in any way the known high standard of the cosmetic manufacturers in this country. I am merely seeking to give users the essential information for which they ask, and which they need, and I believe that it would be beneficial to reputable toilet preparation manufacturers if this information were provided.
The Bill is a short enabling measure. It gives power to the Home Secretary to make regulations in regard to the declaration of the specific name of ingredients in toilet preparations. There is no time limit proposed in the Bill within which the Home Secretary must make the regulations. I have deliberately left that open because in Clause 5(2) provision is made for the Home Secretary to have discussions with the trade as to the form the regulations shall take. It is obviously desirable that there should be adequate time for these discussions, and for representations to be made.
The penalties for not complying with the regulations are in line with penalties in other consumer protection legislation introduced in recent years and enforcement, as with other consumer measures, is by the weights and measures authority.
I wish to give my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary an opportunity to comment on the Bill, but I am anxious to draw attention to the difficulty we face in this matter because of discussions going on in the European Economic Community. Draft directives are at present under discussion in the EEC.

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There has been discussion on whether there should be a negative list of ingredients which must not be used because they are harmful, or a positive list of ingredients which can safely be used. A directive has, in fact, been produced relating to hexachlorophene. It states that, where appropriate, labels have to indicate that hexachlorophene is being used.
The discussions in the EEC are in a fluid state and no final decision has been taken. I emphasise that the discussions are taking place in the main between representatives of the trade and officials of the various governments, but I believe that the consumers' voice must be heard in these discussions as well. Therefore, I hope that the Bill will go through both on its own merits and as representing the consumers' point of view. I hope that it will become law here and that at the same time it will act as a spur to the EEC to do likewise and to produce a directive on similar lines.
3.49 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summerskill): The House is well aware of the deep concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) to safeguard the interests of the consumer. She is a persistent campaigner on the subject. I believe that she has introduced no fewer than five Bills on the matter since 1965. This Bill is another example. I am grateful to my hon. Friend, as the House will be, for providing this opportunity to consider the labelling of toilet preparations as a contribution to consumer safety.
I heard my hon. Friend's speech in introducing her Bill under the Ten Minutes Rule. Some of the points I make may have a bearing on that speech as well as the speech she has just made.
My hon. Friend has explained why she thinks it essential that every toilet preparation offered for sale should be labelled to show its ingredients and be accompanied by appropriate instructions about its proper, and safe, use. Her argument is that a declaration of the ingredients enables the cause of allergies or other adverse effects to be more readily identified; to help the consumer in her
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choice of product, for example, by enabling her to avoid products which contain particular ingredients, and, in general, to provide immediate information to enforcement authorities and others concerned with watching constantly over the health and safety of consumers. The need for adequate instructions on use is, I think, self-evident.
I am quite sure that no one would disagree that toilet preparations—and, for that matter, all other consumer goods offered for sale to the public—should be safe when properly used for their intended purpose, and that principle is an essential part of the Government's consumer protection policy.
Apart from the law relating to the sale and description of goods generally, there are at present few controls relating specifically to the safety of cosmetics and toilet preparations on general sale to the public. The basic statutory safeguard against the inclusion of dangerous substances in cosmetics rests in the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933, under which the sale and use of poisons included in the Poisons List, prepared by the Poisons Board, are strictly controlled. Among other requirements, the container must be labelled in a prescribed manner showing, among other things, the name of the poison and, in the case of a preparation, the proportion of the poison to the whole. In practice, very few listed poisons are ever used in cosmetics, but this essential safeguard remains.
I should add that my hon. Friend rightly expressed concern some time ago about certain lipstick dyes thought to be carcinogenic. I know that this is a concern of many women, particularly in view of the large number of different lipsticks which are constantly being put on the market, but the Poisons Board considered the matter and came to the conclusion that control under the 1933 Act would not be justified. Obviously the board would reconsider any fresh evidence on the risks thought to be associated with the substances concerned or on new substances thought to offer a serious risk to health.
In her previous speech, my hon. Friend raised certain specific points concerning VCM, HCP and Ponceau MX. Following the research in Italy which showed that vinyl chloride monomer—VCM—in

945
fairly low concentration in air could produce cancer of the liver in rats, we consulted our medical advisers, who told us that this gas should be considered as carcinogenous to man or to woman.
It is know that VCM has been used in some countries, but not in the United Kingdom, as a propellant in aerosols. There is no evidence that aerosols containing VCM have been imported but, as a precautionary measure, the Home Office has written to trade associations representing importers, wholesalers and retailers asking them to advise their members of the need to ensure that any imported aerosols which they may offer for sale do not contain this particular propellant gas.
Hexachlorophane was in use for many years as an anti-bacterial agent in a wide range of medicinal products, disinfectants, toiletries and cosmetics before studies undertaken in the United States suggested that if could be absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream and cause brain damage. The outcome of these investigations was considered by the Department of Health and Social Security, which recommended certain precautions relating to the use of HCP in medicinal products. About this time a number of babies died in France as a result, it is believed, of being dusted with baby powder which accidentally contained a high percentage of HCP.
Following discussions between the Home Office and trade associations about the use of HCP in non-medicinal products, it was agreed that this substance should not be used in making baby products; that, in other products, the level of HCP should be 0·1 per cent. for preservative purposes only; and that products containing HCP should be labelled, "Not to be used for babies". This agreement was given ample Press publicity and the manufacture of baby products containing HCP was discontinued early in 1973.
The third substance specifically mentioned by my hon. Friend was Ponceau MX, which is used as a colouring agent in cosmetics. In 1970, when my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green
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(Mrs. Butler) first asked about it, it was not easy to provide information immediately concerning its use because inquiries eventually revealed that perhaps only one United Kingdom manufacturer was using the colorant, and only to a very limited extent. We were informed at the time that the manufacturer was likely to discontinue the use of the substance and we are not aware that it is being used in cosmetics. The United Kingdom cosmetics industry tend to use only those colouring agents whose use is permitted under food safety regulations. Ponceau MX ceased to be used in food wrappings in 1970.
My hon. Friend rightly expressed concern about these carcinogenic fears, and I hope that I have managed to put her mind at rest—
It being Four o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER interrupted the Business.
Whereupon Mrs. JOYCE BUTLER rose in her place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put, but Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER withheld his assent and declined then to put that Question, and the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed upon Friday next.

RIGHTS OF PATIENTS BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

ADULT LITERACY RESOURCES BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday 25th October.

DIVORCE (SCOTLAND) BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

SAFETY PACKAGING FOR MEDICINES BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

HARE COURSING BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

CONTROL OF ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS BILL [LORDS]
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

ABORTION (AMENDMENT) BILL
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Standing Committee B be discharged from considering the Abortion (Amendment) Bill and that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Grylls.]
Hon. Members: Object.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The motion is not agreed to.
Mr. Michael Grylls: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I seek your guidance on this matter? Although I am in no way seeking to suggest that the objection is in any way without the procedures of this House—I appreciate that it is not—this Bill has had a Second Reading and my understanding is, that being the position, that it means that this House wishes to consider it in Committee. All that this motion does—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to inform the hon. Gentleman that that is not a point of order. It is not a matter that the Chair can answer.
Mr. Leslie Spriggs: May I raise a matter on the same subject, Mr. Deputy Speaker? The hon. Member for
948
Surrey, North-West (Mr. Grylls) has the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House and of the people in the country in general—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must explain that we are dealing with unopposed business. I cannot take that point of order.

CHANNEL TUNNEL (RE-COMMITTED) BILL
Ordered,
That the Order for Committee be discharged and that the Bill, as amended (in the Select Committee), be re-committed to a Standing Committee.—[Mr. Michael Cocks.]

CHANNEL TUNNEL (RE-COMMITTED) BILL
  ADJOURNMENT
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ernest G. Perry.]

ORPINGTON HOSPITAL
4.4 p.m.
Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: During the first world war, the Canadian Army constructed a temporary military hospital at Orpington. It consisted of a number of asbestos-clad huts and it did duty for thousands of Canadian wounded and disabled soldiers until after the war, when it was handed over to the British authorities. Since then, it has served the local community, providing some 512 beds in 23 wards spread over a 39½-acre site.
The extraordinary feature of Orpington Hospital is that it is still in its original buildings, the aged single-storey structures more than 60 years old. Still more extraordinary is the high standard of its nursing staff, thanks largely, in recent years, to an outstanding matron, Miss Handcock, and the skill of its medical staff. The very antiquity of the buildings is one of the secrets of its success. This has been a factor in establishing a high degree of staff morale and a singular co-operation between staff, patients and local citizens.
The reputations of hospitals, like those of schools, are not dependent on modern buildings, but there comes a time when the state of the fabric makes further economic use impossible. Orpington

949
Hospital's physical condition is now such that in parts only the paint and patching and the will-power of the staff over 60 years have kept it together. At various times in the past people have said, "It cannot last another year."
The rebuilding of the hospital has therefore naturally been under consideration for many years. My predecessors and I have persistently coaxed, urged and lobbied Ministers about it. A petition signed by over 20,000 local citizens was delivered to the Department of Health and Social Security in 1972. Several public meetings have been held in Orpington, attended by enthusiastic audiences, calling for the early rebuilding of the hospital. A remarkable and almost unique body—the Orpington Nurses and Citizens Association—has been actively promoting this cause.
All these measures of pressure and protest culminated in December 1970 when the regional hospital board gave an assurance that it has no intention of closing the hospital. However, its plans for a future hospital in the area were somewhat vague.
On 24th February 1971, in a letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Barkston Ash (Mr. Alison), the then Under-Secretary of State, I was informed:
"The South-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, who are primarily responsible for hospital planning in the area, consider that a new hospital will be needed in the Orpington area, but no date can be given for the start of this development because of the priority that has to be given to more urgent hospital needs elsewhere in their region. As you may know, the Board are already developing new hospitals at Bromley and Sidcup and later on they hope to make some improvements to the existing facilities at Orpington hospital.
The siting of a new hospital in the Orpington area has not yet been decided and will be the subject of discussions between the Board and the Department."
Therefore, ONCA and I naturally pressed harder. To site the new hospital anywhere but in Orpington would be unthinkable. We had a 39-acre site with ample room for expansion, easily reached by public transport, near Orpington railway station and not far from Biggin Hill Airport.
The other hospital in my constituency—Farnborough—is excellent, but it
950
serves a quite different area and is on a smaller and more congested site, with permanent buildings.
The result of further pressure was a decision by the South-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, announced on 28th July 1971 in a statement in which it said:
"The Board…intends to provide in the long term a new district general hospital on the existing hospital site at Orpington. This proposal will require the approval of the Department of Health and Social Security and, in the light of the claims of other areas in the region for which the Board is responsible and the capital allocation at present available to the Board, it seems unlikely that a new hospital can be provided at Orpington for many years. It will be generally known that major hospital developments are currently being undertaken at Bromley and at Sidcup.
The Board is planning to undertake some upgrading of the existing facilities at Orpington Hospital with a high priority for staff accommodation on which it is hoped to make a start within the next 12 months."
That was fine so far as it went, and, satisfied that the site would be used, we concentrated on pressing for funds to be made available and plans of the new hospital announced.
A further letter from my hon. Friend the then Under-Secretary of State, on 18th December 1972, gave the position in the light of the pending reorganisation of the National Health Service. He said:
"In April 1974 we plan to introduce the new authorities, Regional Health Authorities, whose responsibilities will be wider than any of the present RHBs. Regional health authorities will take over the responsibilities of Regional Hospital Boards for planning hospital services. In theory the new authorities will not be bound by the decisions of their predecessors. But they will naturally not expect to see many changes of plan for major schemes to which there was already some commitment.
As far as the district general hospital development for Orpington is concerned, I am afraid I cannot really add much to the letter I sent you on 24th February last year except to say that the RHB's present plans envisage the new hospital being developed on the site of the existing hospital. The board have not yet been able to put a starting date on the redevelopment since there are so many other claims on limited capital resources."
Meanwhile there had been some development on the site. In 1972, three blocks of staff residences in permanent materials were built by the regional hospital board. There were other major improvements in the period after 1965,

951
such as the cytology unit, the hydrotherapy pool and an intensive care therapy unit, all of which had been provided out of funds raised by local citizens and, notably, by the hospital's own Society of Friends.
In view of what I have already said about this hospital, the House will not be surprised to learn that this society is one of the most successful in the country. Indeed, no hospital could have a greater or more generous band of volunteer kern who not only care for the patients and their visitors and help to transport out-patients, but who have in the last decade provided more than £70,000 for urgently needed features and equipment. During the last 10 years most of the contributions provided. out of public funds were not for improvements but, rather, for the replacement of outworn and outdated equipment at the hospital.
When the new Government had taken office I asked for a statement on this problem. The reply given to me by the Under-Secretary of State caused me and those associated with the hospital a great deal of concern, because he told me, in a Written Answer:
"The present financial climate of restraint in public expenditure affects the capital allocations which the Government can make available to the South-East Regional Health Authority for health building work, and it is not possible to say when approval might be given to the development of a district general hospital in the Bromley Health Area, which includes Ornington."—[OFFICAL REPORT, 7th May 1974; Vol. 873, c. 83.]
The Under-Secretary of State went on to list some of the so-called improvements at the hospital which, as I have said, were financed privately but were not improvements. They were replacements. It was the last sentence which I have quoted which troubled us most. Is it the case that, despite the assurance of the previous Conservative Government, the regional health authority does not accept that the new hospital. whenever built, will be on the site of the existing hospital?
I queried this with the Minister, and he kindly wrote to me on 11th June as follows:
"I do not dissent from what you say about the former South-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, but I hope you will not mind my reminding you that its successor, the South East Thames Regional Health Authority has
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wide responsibilities for comprehensive health care which the board did not have. Not only that, but the Bromley Area Health Authority and the Bromley Community Health Council are both in being. It is the AHA which has primary responsibility for health care planning within its area, in consultation with the CHC, while the latter's degree of involvement will be increased with the adoption of the Secretary of State's recently announced proposals 'Democracy in the National Health Service'. As you are no doubt aware, these proposals are intended to secure greater local participation in the running of the reorganised National Health Service. It seems to us that the existing system is out of tune with the needs of local committees, and one of the issues in which we believe the Community Health Councils should be closely involved is the development of health services in their own communities. Clearly, the new Authorities should be allowed to look afresh at the question of providing a district general hospital within the Area. Indeed such a review is already in progress, but it would be wrong of me to commit the Authorities to any particular outcome in advance, in the way you suggest."
So I have to ask the Minister: do we have to start this process all over again? Must we start petitions, deputations and lobbies and waste still more time on discussing this urgent problem, the principle of which has already been conceded? Does the formation of a new health authority mean that everything has been put hack to square one?
The regional health authority includes halt the members of its predecessor, the regional hospital board, including its chairman. Are they so unlikely to agree to a commitment by the board? Since it takes five to 10 years to finalise hospital building programmes even after plans have been approved, must we delay this project unnecessarily?
Everyone accepts that funds are not immediately available, but why is there delay in confirming the decision of the board? Why has the community health council not been consulted about this even now? Is this the new democracy of the National Health Service which the hon. Gentleman speaks? I understand that the construction of the new block of staff residences has been deferred. Is this the prelude to the cancellation of the whole project? Is there any truth in the ugly rumour that the site—nearly 40 acres of prime building land in an outer London borough—is wanted by the Government and the Greater London Council for housing? I hope that the Minister will scotch that one today.

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I hope that the Minister will confirm that all the sweat, toil and tears which have been poured out on producing the decision to rebuild the hospital on its existing site will not have been in vain.
4.17 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Health, Department of Health and Social Security (Dr. David Owen): The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) has made a case for a new hospital being built at Orpington. The present Orpington Hospital is clearly unsatisfactory and no one would deny that it needs rebuilding. Much of it, as he said, was erected during the 1914–18 war. The hon. Member has paid tribute to the skilled and devoted care given by staff in those buildings and I would certainly like to associate myself with those tributes. It has always amazed me, and it is a great credit to the staff, how they do not allow the quality of care to suffer, despite often working in old buildings which make care difficult.
For many years, it was envisaged that Orpington Hospital would eventually close, following developments at Sidcup, Bromley and Sevenoaks. But in 1971 the South-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board announced that, in view of the growth of population and other factors, the hospital would stay open and ultimately be rebuilt. Substantial interim improvements have been carried out at the hospital since 1965. I pay tribute, as did the hon. Gentleman, to the fact that some of these have been financed by voluntary efforts. It is good that people feel sufficiently concerned about their local hospital to raise funds and to add to its facilities.
A new pathology laboratory, a geriatric day hospital and three blocks of staff residences have already been built. The gas mains and hospital incinerator have been replaced and additional sanitary annexes provided for two wards. Replacement of a substandard operating theatre is in progress, as is the replacement of the hospital boiler and the electrical wiring. A temporary extension of the out-patient department has just been completed and provision of a hydrotherapy pool is under way. It is also planned, when the financial climate permits, to replace the hospital pharmacy. to build a further block of nursing staff
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accommodation and to make improvements to the X-ray department.
As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, the health authorities responsible for the Orpington area since 1st April are the Bromley Area Health Authority and the South-East Thames Regional Health Authority. The hon. Gentleman asks whether everything has to go back to square one. I do not think so. As he says, many of the members of these bodies and the officials are the same people, and there is a considerable amount of continuity in planning and information. In addition, there is the Bromley Community Health Council. Its members will be reviewing the question of health service in the area and will consider the whole future of Orpington hospital.
But I think that the hon. Gentleman had read into the letters and Questions many things which are not eligible to be read into them. Firstly, the letter from my predecessor dated 18th December 1972 to the hon. Gentleman makes it quite clear that, though the regional health authorities will take over the responsibilities of regional hospital boards for planning, in theory the new authorities will not be bound by the decisions of their predecessors. That is exactly what he said. They will naturally not expect to see many changes of plan to major schemes to which there was already some commitment.
I re-echo those words. There is no difference between the two Governments over this matter. It is a simple fact of life that I cannot tell the new regional health authority—if we believe in any form of devolution of authority at all—what are to be its priorities. But, given reasonable men, having looked at priorities across much the same area, there is no reason to expect that they will dramatically change those priorities.
As for the hon. Gentleman's suggestions about land, again it is not for us to intervene. If the regional health authority decides that this is its priority and that it wishes to build Orpington hospital on its present site, it is absolutely up to the authority, which must decide what is the first priority within its area.
In the past Orpington hospital has not been the first priority in the area of the old regional hospital board. As the hon. Gentleman conceded, other building projects are taking place fairly close by.

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Concerning lobbying and raising great petitions, I do not hide from the hon. Gentleman that these are not the key factors in deciding where a hospital is built. They could never be key factors. I do not dissent from the rights of anyone to lobby or to draw up petitions, but essentially there is no point in coming to me first. Their first port of call should be the area health authority and, from there, to the regional health authority. The main task of the citizens of Orpington is to convince the RHA—as, indeed, in the past it was to convince the regional hospital board—not just of the need to build on the present site, which would not necessarily be very difficult, but also that this is a matter of the highest priority, and, if necessary, number one on the list of priorities.
Mr. Stanbrook: If that is so, what is the reason for the delay in agreeing to the principle of the re-erection of a hospital on the existing site? That is not a question of priorities.
Dr. Owen: As I have said, this is not a decision for me to make. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise the issue with the chairman of the regional health authority, he should do so by all means. I gather that it is the same person who was previously chairman. It is for the authority to decide. But, after all, the authority took office only on 1st April, and perhaps it does not wish to make that commitment at present. But the absence of the commitment does not mean that it has changed its mind. There is, perhaps, a tendency to be too worried about that particular aspect. What is possibly behind it is a fear, "Because it may not be or is thought not to be the top priority, what will be the effects of the expenditure cuts on Orpington hospital?" Again, in the first instance this is a case for the regional health authority, to assign the priorities.
What is the rôle of central Government in these issues? The rôle of central Government is to allocate funds by need across the country. It is the rôle of the regional health authority to determine the priority of any particular hospital building project within its area. One of the gravest weaknesses of the National Health Service since 1948 is that because of the way in which we have allocated regional funds to the 14 authorities that we have
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now, which were previously boards, the funds were allocated on the basis of population and, more recently, weighted population. That has meant, broadly speaking—it is not completely true—that we have been dividing the cake into 14 different segments and have not taken account of the investment of the past.
Sir George Godber, in his valedictory report in 1973 as Chief Medical Officer of Health in the Department, said:
"…there is great unevenness in the distribution of the funds we have in proportion to population in Great Britain and within England. Some areas started with greater resources of people and of things and a higher level of finance than others. The South-East of England has substantial advantages over the North-East or the Midlands and Scotland has substantial advantages over England as a whole in manpower and money. At the end of 25 years these differences, particularly in the distribution of medical manpower, still exist."
I believe that one of the central problems for national Government, particularly for this Government, even though we face difficulties in public expenditure, is to redress what I believe to be considerable inequalities of health provision in the National Health Service.
In a recent article in The Lancet, Professor Peter Townsend drew attention to this and said:
"A deeper analysis of the persistence and even the widening of inequality may he required."
I openly concede, looking back over the past 25 years, that there is in some areas evidence of an actual widening of inequalities in health provision inside the National Health Service.
The Government's task is as quickly as we can to develop sophisticated objective criteria for allocating funds across the country on the basis of need and resources. This may well mean that the South-East Regional Health Authority will not get as much money as it has in in the past, or it may get more if it shows that in comparison with some of the other 14 regions it has relatively greater priority.
There is little doubt that in London, particularly in inner London, there have been very expensive capital programmes, with heavy investment in the centre on teaching hospitals. There is evidence that in the outskirts of London some areas have not received sufficient health care.
I urge on the hon. Gentleman and on the country that we cannot continue to

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regard health care in the narrow context of hospitals. It is very easy in any area—my own city of Plymouth included—to focus all attention on the provision of a district general hospital, which then becomes the status symbol of health care. Although the district general hospital is an important aspect of health care, some experts are becoming increasingly sceptical about the size of these hospitals. There is an increasing tendency to question the need for such large district general hospitals.
We need to look at health care, not in the narrow context of hospitals—we hope to produce proposals on community health centres—but also in terms of health centre provision. Now that the area health authorities are responsible for health centres, increasing attention needs to be paid to them and also to the family doctor service.
I hope, too, that we shall look at hospital provision as only one aspect of our priorities. I am strongly of the belief that we have not given sufficient attention to primary health care. It is very easy to get a headline story about cardiology or renal dialysis, but the Press devote little attention to the severe problems of waiting lists for those suffering from inguinal hernia, and so on, and the problems of the deputising service in general practice when that falls down. We need to concentrate just as much on those aspects of care and not think always in terms of the intensive care unit or the district general hospital, important though they are.
We have not hidden from the House, and I will not hide from the country, the fact that, if we are to do what I think is now right and pay substantially more to those who have worked for years with a great sense of dedication in the National Health Service—nurses are the most obvious example; I am thinking also of the professions supplementary to medicine and other workers in the hospital and community health service—and to redress their grievances, we shall have to spend much more on manpower and woman power than we have before, and our revenue resources will be much more stretched than they are.
Something must give in this process. I have made no secret of the fact that buildings must give. I am not making a judgment today about Orpington hos
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pital. It is not my prime rôle to make a judgment on Orpington hospital. That is for the regional health authority. If the regional health authority puts Orpington at the top of its list and, as a result of a capital allocation programme by central Government, that regional health authority has no money in any one year, the responsibility is laid fairly and squarely on the Government. If they decide as a matter of national priority that they would prefer to put their money into a depressed area in the North-East, that is a decision which I am only too happy to defend, if such a decision has to be made—or reversewise, that Orpington should be given greater priority over an area in the North-East. But it is not right for me to determine the priorities of the regional health authority in its own region.
If we are to devolve power out of this House—and that seems to be the broad general consensus, that we cannot accrete all this power into the centre—we must mean what we say and allow the areas to choose their priorities within the limits and overall guidelines which we decide. The fundamental responsibility of central Government is to allocate resources on the basis of need, and to see that in the next 25 years in the existence of the health service we redress the inequalities and restore a truly National Health Service. We may only get that degree of stringency when we face a very severe expenditure reduction.
People in the Press have said that we must be honest with the country. I am proud of the National Health Service. I do not deny that it needs more resources and that there is a difficult financial period which may continue for the next two or three years. But we cannot look at the NHS in isolation. The same can be said of education and of the social services. We have to confront people with the necessity to choose. We cannot in the present economic climate—nor, I think, could we in the last 20 years—escape the necessity to choose. We may well have to present to the country the cost of providing all the different things that everybody wants provided.
When we look at the history of the National Health Service and consider the fact that we take for granted various facilities in the regions and in our major cities which were totally absent at the

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beginning of the health service, we realise that we have made considerable progress. But we have tended to neglect primary health care and have concentrated too much on a hospital-oriented health service. I admit that hospitals play a very important part. No one denies that—least of all myself, having spent a vast proportion of my clinical time in hospitals.
Equally well, the balance has inevitably been shifted too strongly on hospitals because public opinion has seen the hospital as the hallmark of the health service. It is the visible edifice for 200,000 people. We must concentrate on conditions in small local areas for 20,000 people. I hope that the community health councils
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will see an important part of their rôle as checking that tendency, of promoting community health and seeing the service in the widest possible context, looking at the whole man and the whole family. In that context Orpington hospital's priority will have to be assessed in future years.
Mr. Stanbrook: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. Will he come to Orpington to see the hospital for himself?
Dr. Owen: I am always open to consider any such suggestion, and I will give consideration to the hon. Gentleman's invitation.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes to Five o'clock.

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