I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

This Measure was considered at some length both on Second Reading and in Committee and, for the most part, we on this side consider that it does not divide the House on any great principle of policy. But in order that it should be effective for the purpose for which it is designed we feel that certain Amendments should be made.

The purpose of the Bill is to seek to remedy the very bad state of affairs which at present exists, in which such a very large quantity of our foodstuffs is being destroyed by rats, mice and other pests. Part I deals particularly with the destruction of rats and mice, and in Committee we had a considerable Debate on a series of Amendments put down to Clause 2. These were designed to make it abundantly clear that although after the Bill becomes law local authorities will be responsible for the destruction of rats and mice, it should, at the same time, be the duty of every citizen to do his utmost to destroy the rats and mice in his own premises or factory, irrespective of the provisions of the new Measure. It is because we believe that this is not amply safeguarded in the Bill at present that we have put down this Clause.

In Committee the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture said that our Amendments were put down in the wrong place, and we considered that there was force to that argument. We therefore submit this new Clause in the hope that the Government may be able to accept it. In Committee the Parliamentary Secretary said:

"… we will think about the question whether there is advantage in restating what I believe is obvious to everyone, that it is the duty of every occupier of premises everywhere to kill his own rats and mice."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 28th April, 1949; c. 36.]

The Parliamentary Secretary said he would see if there was anything to be gained by restating that general principle. Weeks have gone by, and now we are considering this Measure again we would be very interested to know the result of his deliberations. We hope the result will be to enable him to accept the Clause and include it in the Bill.

The main reason for the Clause is the real fear that we on this side of the House have that when this Bill becomes an Act people will get the impression that everything will be all right so far as the destruction of rats and mice is concerned because the Government and the local authorities will do everything necessary, and that they, as individuals, will have to do nothing other than, possibly, to notify the local authorities that they have rats and mice on their premises. We think that would be an extremely dangerous and bad point of view for the general public to take, and that it should be stated quite specifically in the Bill that it is

"the duty of every occupier of land to take such steps as may from time to time be necessary and reasonably practicable"

we put those words in advisedly—

"to keep the land occupied by him or her free from rats and mice …"

I beg to second the Motion.

I should like to add a word or two to what has been said by my hon. and gallant Friend. The position at present is that under the existing law the provisions of this new Clause are really the law. Section 1 of the Rats and Mice Act, 1919, laid it down as a duty that every person should

"take from time to time such steps as may be necessary and reasonably practicable for the destruction of rats and mice on or in any land of which he is the occupier."

I have listen to all the proceedings on this Bill and I have heard no argument put forward, either by the Minister of Agriculture, who I am sorry is not here this morning, or by the Parliamentary Secretary, to show why, to that extent, the existing law should be repealed.

There has always been an obligation on the occupier to keep down rats and mice in his own premises, and I believe that one of the reasons why, in many areas, the rat population is increasing at present is because during the war there was a relaxation of that sense of responsibility. I am not so concerned as to whether some occupier of a flat, a tenement, or a cottage should have that duty or not; they are not the grave sinners in this respect. In the earlier stages of the Bill, the Parliamentary Secretary made great play about a woman who lived in a particular flat in the City of London. I do not think we want to raise that matter today; it was an unfortunate reference on the part of the Parliamentary Secretary—

Even if we are not going to have it again, I would point out that I did not refer—and made it clear that I did not refer—to any woman anywhere that I knew. What was said was that, in using a particular phrase, it might be thought to refer to a particular block of flats. That was withdrawn, and I am surprised that the hon. Member should refer to the matter in that gauche way.

The House will judge whether I am gauche or not. According to column 29 of the Standing Committee proceedings, the Parliamentary Secretary referred to a Mrs. Jones who lived in tenement No. 25, Peabody Buildings, and also to a Mrs. Smith who lived in tenement No. 5. Whether either of these two people is a mythical being, I do not know, and, to a great extent, that is immaterial. I thought it was an unfortunate reference, and I was trying to hide the Parliamentary Secretary's gaucherie in proceedings which might have made him liable for action for libel. It was an unfortunate incident, not only because he was bringing in this particular Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones, but also because he tried to make it appear as though we were endeavouring to put this duty on to a particular housewife.

The people who should fulfil this duty are, of course, the large commercial firms and factories who, at present, employ commercial firms or employees of their own for the sole purpose of keeping down rats and mice. I am rather surprised that during these proceedings no reference has been made by either side of the House—probably we are as guilty as hon. Members opposite—to the Industrial Pest Control Association, who undertake this work as a commercial enterprise, and who, under the 1919 Act, have done a great deal to rid the country of the menace of rats and mice. At present, there are many large firms, especially in the dock areas, who employ this commercial organisation. It would be unfortunate if these business enterprises were deterred in any way from using these commercial firms. Therefore, I ask the Government to accept this new Clause, which has been very carefully drafted in order to fit in with the words to which my hon. and gallant Friend referred in his speech.

It is not nearly enough that people should think, when they see a rat, that their only obligation is to go to the telephone and report the matter to their local authority. Their obligation should be to kill the rat and to see that, so far as their own premises are concerned, they are free from rats and mice. After all, in this war—because it is a war, as the Parliamentary Secretary very eloquently said on Second Reading—time is of the essence of the contract. It is vital that there should be no delay. But there will be delay if commercial firms do not employ their own rat catchers, and think that all they have to do when they are "infested with rats"—the phrase used in the Bill—is to notify the local authority concerned.

In the earlier proceedings, reference was made to the "Rodent Mail." I should think that, if there is such a paper as the "Rat Herald," there will be headlines in it tomorrow morning—if this Clause is defeated—to the effect that an armistice has been declared by the Government in the warfare by rats on the civil poulation, and that any future warfare will be conducted only by military or para-military formations. It may go on and say that the underground war has ceased. Everybody should be actively engaged in the war against rats, and for that reason I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will accept the Clause.

I wish to support what has been said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir T. Dugdale) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), but more particularly on the ground of economy. The Chancellor of the Exchequer impressed upon the House yesterday that we had no money to spare, and that the utmost economy was necessary. I believe there is a tendency today for people who wish to get rid of rats to leave the matter in the hands of the rodent officers and the officials rather than to take active steps themselves.

I came across a case the other day where a lady who, seeing a rat going into a hole in her garden, told the gardener to do something about it. In the past, the gardener would have got a ferret and a terrier or two, and in his spare time, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon, would have got rid of the rat without any loss of working time or any cost to the State. What actually happened was that the gardener telephoned the rodent officer and quite quickly—they were very prompt about it—a car arrived with two strong men, a terrier, spades and ferrets, and the rat was accounted for at considerable cost to the State, which might have been avoided.

It should be impressed upon people that it is their own duty first to destroy these rats before they ask the State to help them. The addition to the Bill of these lines will be a very definite gesture towards economy, and may impress upon people that it is their duty in the first place to catch these rats, and may help in saving the expense which the employment of an official or a rodent officer is bound to incur.

I want to add a few words because it is most important that we should have this new Clause in the Bill. It is quite impossible to argue that this Clause will do any harm to the Bill. It may well do a great deal of good; in fact, we on this side of the House are convinced that it will do a lot of good. Unless the Parliamentary Secretary can convince us that it can possibly do any harm, I hope we shall go into the Division Lobby against him. At the present time when everybody is becoming so State-minded and full of nationalisation, and believes that the State will do everything for him, we want to see people having a pride in their own establishments and getting on with the job. If rats were running all over their own beds they would probably take the necessary action, but in an industrial building or a farmyard where the rats do not intimately affect people, it is felt it may well be left to the State to do the job.

The local authorities, however, are not infallible. In the case which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke) quoted, the local authorities cleared the rats, but sometimes they may not be so effective. If people get the impression that the State will keep the rats away, we shall be going backwards instead of forwards. It is true, as the Parliamentary Secretary will, no doubt, point out, that if people do not take steps to get rid of their rats a notice can be served on them, but that notice may well be served much too late, so that nothing will have been done about the rats. Therefore, it is much better to place the responsibility fairly and squarely on their shoulders now.

The most important point about this new Clause is that which my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) mentioned, namely, that we want to get some headlines in the Press about this matter. We want the agricultural Press and the industrial Press to come out tomorrow with headlines saying that people who own firms or industrial works are responsible for keeping rats down. That will be a very salutary reminder that the responsibility rests, in the first place, on the occupier. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will take notice of what we have said.

I only hope that the hon. Member for Tonbridge (Mr. G. Williams) gets his headlines in the Press. I cannot help thinking that, despite all the discussions we have had, there must be a considerable misunderstanding on the other side of the House of what the Bill is intended to do, and what happens when action is taken under the Bill when it becomes law. There seemed to be a suggestion that we are relying upon notification because we want the State to have the whole responsibilty. That indicates that hon. Members opposite have not read Clause 4 in particular.

I propose to continue to resist this new Clause, despite the blandishments of the acting Leader of the Opposition this morning, not because I am wedded to some particular course of action, but because I am as certain now as I was in Committee upstairs, that to insert this Clause can add nothing at all to the purpose of the Bill and might easily cause the very delay which everybody says we are anxious to avoid. It is the duty of every citizen—and tucking away three lines at the back of the Bill to provide for new arrangements to deal with pests will not add to it—to get rid of the pests that afflict his property, whether he is the owner or the occupier. It is clearly his duty. It remains his duty, and nothing we insert here will make it any clearer.

In the 1919 Act Section I lays down this duty. The hon. Gentleman is repealing the 1919 Act. When he talks about a Clause being put at the back of a Bill, I am sure he knows, with his Parliamentary knowledge, that the place where this new Clause would go in the Bill would not be determined by the fact that it was added on the Report stage.

If the hon. Gentleman will try to follow my argument I think he will see the point I am trying to make. We are repealing the 1919 Act, which included this provision, for the very good reason that, despite the statement of this, principle at the beginning of that Act, the Act has done very little to help to deal with the problem. The re-statement of this principle in this Bill would do no more to help to deal with the problem. It has become quite clear over the passage of years to everybody interested in this matter that we want something more than a statement that it is the duty of the occupier to deal with the nuisance.

What we want is early notification to the responsible authority that rats and mice are about, and the notification is wanted sufficiently early, so as to give us a chance to find where the rats are coming from. It is not good enough to say that the occupier of a tenement, farm or factory has a duty to kill the rats, because they may be coming from somewhere else. We want the notification, and we want it immediately if possible so that we can find the place where the rats are coming from, because that is the source of the infestation.

If we say in this Bill what we all agree is so, and what I have stated very bluntly and deliberately in the hope that it may get that publicity of which the hon. Gentleman spoke—if we say that it is the duty of the occupier to deal with the nuisance as we did in the 1919 Act, and then go on to provide sanctions and penalties, there is a risk that we shall then be inviting people to notify us of what they will tend to regard as their own failure. We shall then have people delaying immediate notification while they themselves try to deal with the matter. We think it is much better that in the Bill itself it shall be made the clear duty of people to notify, relying upon the ordinary common sense of folk, which is as least as great outside this House as it is within it, because they will not want to continue having rats and mice in their homes merely because they have told the local council about it.

That brings me to Clause 4. The fact that people notify the council does not mean that the council will necessarily take over the duty of getting rid of the rats. Under Clause 4 the council may serve a notice on them requiring them to do something about it. If they do not do enough about it, under succeeding Clauses the council may do it and then charge them for it, and indeed they may prosecute them for not having carried out their obligations. I gathered from the speech of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton that he was afraid that the Bill would shut out the anti-pest organisations.

11.30 a.m.

In fact, the opposite would be the case. The council may require the owner or occupier to deal with the pests, and the only way that duty can be carried out is by the owner or the occupier going to the anti-pest contractors and asking them to do the job and paying them for doing it. It will, in fact, assist the commercial work of these contractors. I repeat that we are much more certain if we follow this course that the local authority will be notified, and that is, not to keep one small habitation clear of vermin, but to keep the whole area free. It means that it is possible for them to know that there is infestation and at the same time for the contractor to be getting on with the job.

I was dealing with the case where a factory employs a pest contractor every day in the year. The Parliamentary Secretary is now dealing with the point where a contractor may be called in if there is an emergency, which is quite a different point.

The hon. Member seems to fear that because we do it this way round, the pest contractors may not be used so extensively. I believe that they will. The fact that people have to notify that pests have been seen and are liable to be proceeded against if they do not, is likely to lead them to make much greater use of these private contractors.

The argument has been put forward on two grounds. The second ground is that of economy. It is said that we had much better put the duty on occupiers, because they will then not use the State. If that is the attitude, then we ought not to be having this Bill, because the whole point of the Bill is that if we are to succeed in this war on pests, we have to deal with the matter as a much wider operation than merely that of an individual farmer, house owner or occupier. We must proceed on a community basis and area by area. If we cannot get the source of infestation traced, the local authority cannot proceed to see that the area concerned is cleared.

It is amply provided in the Bill that local authorities may charge the costs to those who are responsibile for individual habitations or industrial hereditaments, but in the case of small tenenements and houses it may be there will be no charge, because the infestation will probably not be very considerable and notification will avoid building up greater infestation in the area. By this Clause we are risking confusing the citizen as to the first thing he must do. We want him to notify so that we know where the infestation is, and we want him not to regard notification as being in some way an indication of his failure to deal with infestation. He may then be told to do certain things, and we shall know where the rats and mice are manifesting themselves.

For these reasons, I cannot accept this Clause. It has no sanction attached to it, although the word "duty" is used, which is really a general statement of the position. I do not think we need divide on this point, which is purely a matter of mechanics and efficiency. We have all stated it is a duty, and we think it is better to leave the Bill as it is rather than put in two duties and have confusion in an individual's mind as to what we want him to do.

We are most grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for supporting our Clause. He has supported it in every way, except in the sense that he does not want to see certain words printed on a piece of paper. It is a great thing that we should be unanimous on this point, and I hope that he will get over his coyness in seeing his wishes interpreted in print, a coyness which is common to other Ministers. But I cannot agree with the argument he used in one respect, and that is on the question of economy. Quite clearly, it is an economy if an individual can do something for himself without employing someone else to do it for him, because the local authority will not be paying money out of the ratepayer's pockets except in an extreme case. That is the point we wish to drive home.

The whole tendency of modern legislation is to encourage people to think that they are merely sheep and that they have to make use all the time of some remote organisation which comes under the control of the Government. It is this sheep-like attitude which we detest. I know the Parliamentary Secretary has said that the words used in the 1919 Act, which he is repealing, have not brought about the desired effect. He went on to say, and I agree with him to a certain extent, that the words in the 1919 Act have not proved satisfactory, but that we are now replacing them. That is rather significant. Surely, we should not attempt to replace them, but should add other words giving additional powers and duties so that the individual's activities can be assisted. That is our whole argument.

If this new Clause were accepted, it would make the point completely clear. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider some analogous points which should make him think again before refusing this Clause. What is the position of the householder? He does not ring up the police every night to ask whether it is right to open or shut his window. He does not ask the police every night whether it is really essential that his lights should be turned off at the appropriate time, or whether he should take measures of security to ensure that his house is not burgled. Householders do not ring up the local authority to ask whether it is time they should have a bath to keep themselves free of vermin,

Sometimes his neighbour has to do it.

The responsibility is laid upon the individual, which is our point.

If this Clause were accepted, the Parliamentary Secretary thinks we should be cutting across this great campaign. Of course, we should not be doing anything of the sort. We should be introducing an element of voluntary recruitment to carry out the campaign, assisted by the powers of Government, both local and national. Is the Minister really inclined to conscript every individual to deal with the rats and mice while denying the right of the volunteer to come forward and do his own job without being told to do it? That is the implication of the Parliamentary Secretary's speech if he persists in his refusal to accept this new Clause. I ask him even now to think again about this. Nothing in this new Clause would delay notification for one moment where it was necessary. I cannot see that any argument used by the Parliamentary Secretary has been against this new Clause, and as he has argued in favour of it, I hope that he will withdraw his opposition to it.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

We on this side of the House believe this to be the most important proposal which we have put down for this stage, because unless the Government can see their way to accept this new Clause, or themselves to move a new Clause which will have the same result, we believe that the Bill will be completely useless.

A similar Clause—not in quite the same terms—was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) during the Committee stage. The principal objections of the Parliamentary Secretary when replying on that Clause were, firstly, that it was inappropriate for one Government Department to be subject to the regulations of another Government Department, and, secondly, with regard to lands occupied by the Armed Forces, the question of secrecy might arise. This Clause covers the second objection and provides that in relation to land held for the purposes of a Government Department the provisions of the Bill shall be subject to such modifications as may be in the public interest. As to one Government Department being subject to the regula- tions of another, we feel that the Government must just get over that objection in this Measure if it is to be a success administratively.

It will be remembered that we had a very large measure of support in the discussion on this subject upstairs. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Stubbs) is not present, because he gave us some extremely good examples of the type of problem which this Clause is intended to prevent. He gave us an example of an area of about 2,000 or 3,000 acres in his constituency which was occupied by the military, and when they left, the place became infested with vermin and nothing was done to put the matter right. We also had support from the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye) who is very knowledgeable on these subjects and has had practical experience of the destruction of rats and mice in the part of the world from which he comes. We had an interesting contribution from the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Tolley), who also supported our arguments. I am referring to these hon. Members because from such sources support for this might be imagined to be unlikely. There was complete agreement among hon. Members on this side of the House during the discussions, and my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank) thought that the problem had serious aspects.

Rats have no regard for boundaries, and lack of interest on the part of a section of the community may bring to naught the steps taken by their more active neighbours. If great areas of country are left outside the provisions of the Bill, it becomes impossible for local authorities to operate it effectively. Not being respecters of boundaries, the rats would wander from the areas being cleaned to the dirty areas and there breed and increase their numbers, to the detriment of our food supplies as well as preventing the objects of the Bill being accomplished.

The House will agree that, on the whole, Government Departments have been proved to be the worst offenders in this respect, particularly in the case of military camps, battle training areas and airfields which are not at present in use. We are not complaining against the Services in this respect—we admit the difficulty—but if we leave these great "islands" isolated from the provisions of the Bill, how are we to make the progress we all desire in reducing the rat and mouse population?

Another big Government Department which has responsibility in this connection is the Forestry Commission. In Committee the Parliamentary Secretary gave an undertaking that he would make an inquiry into the arrangements with the Forestry Commission before the Report stage, and I hope that he will be able to inform the House of the result of those inquiries and say what they propose to do about it. I also hope he will tell us by what method the Government propose to deal with this problem if they are not prepared to accept the Clause. I trust, however, that the Government will accept the Clause, and then we shall know exactly where we are. We shall know that no area of land or building can defy the law through a claim that is outside the law. If, for any reason, the Government cannot accept the Clause, I hope they will give a very detailed account of the methods they propose to make the Bill effective if at the same time they leave out the centres of infection by rats and mice which at present exist.

I beg to second the Motion.

I hope that the Minister will look more favourably on this Clause than he did on the last one. We debated the subject very fully in Committee. Looking through my HANSARD again, I find that the arguments were almost overwhelmingly in favour of including Government Departments. There was much support from hon. Gentlemen opposite at that time, and the only real objection during the proceedings was on account of secrecy. There may be secrets in certain Government Departments, though they must be comparatively rare, but under the Clause modifications may be made in cases where it may be necessary. The secrecy argument is a very weak one because during the war all these secret places had to be cleaned and had to have charwomen. At present the grass has to be mown, and the weeds have to be kept down and paths kept in order. Who does that? Someone is brought in from outside and does it under supervision, or someone pledged to secrecy does the job. I am sure that the Minister can get over that little difficulty.

I shall not enlarge on the fact that Government Departments are very bad offenders because hon. Members must all agree on that, but the important point is that if a Government Department has a kind of sanctuary for rats in a certain area, the block scheme is impossible to operate. There are sanctuaries in deer forests in Scotland. It is surprising how quickly the deer find their way into those sanctuaries and sooner or later they reach such a number that they have to push out into other parts. If Government Departments are to be exempt, that sort of thing may happen.

12 noon.

The Minister knows that Government Departments are offenders, and he must make them play their proper part in the scheme to destroy rats. That is particularly the case because more and more Government Departments are being created every day, so that the purpose behind this Clause will gradually become more and more important. Moreover, Government Departments are already somewhat unpopular and if ordinary individuals realise that Government Departments are being treated differently from the way in which they are being treated themselves, it may well cause some sort of resentment. It might be like exempting the police from the penalty for getting drunk or like having one law for the rich and another for the poor. It must appear that justice is done and I believe that in this Clause we go a good way towards making it quite clear that justice is being done.

Government Departments must take their responsibilities. This is a democratic country, but if Government Departments are to be exempt it will become very akin to the great dictatorship countries where they are exempt from not complying with the regulations which apply to ordinary people. I am sorry that the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye) and the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Tolley) are not here, but no doubt they will be in the Lobby on our side when it comes to a Division. They both spoke very strongly and forcibly in Committee on this point and, indeed, the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Stubbs) sent shudders down our spines when he told us about 600 rats invading one stack. That was just outside a Polish camp and there is no question of secrecy in connection with Polish camps. I hope those hon. Members will support us both vocally and in the Lobbies and that the Minister will take note of the fact that there is strong feeling in all parts of the House on this matter.

I do not want to take up more than a moment in supporting this Clause, but it is one which particularly concerns the county and constituency in which I live, because in Wiltshire there are about 100,000 acres which belong to the War Office. In addition to that, mainly in my constituency, there are other areas under the control of the Royal Air Force and the Ministry of Supply. In the interests of all the surrounding districts I believe this Clause should be accepted. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ton-bridge (Mr. G. Williams) said, if there are small areas which are not covered by the same rules for killing vermin as those which apply to the general public, then inevitably the number of vermin increases. I hope the Minister will consider this Clause favourably.

May I, first of all, reply to the hon. Member for Tonbridge (Mr. G. Williams) on the subject of the Forestry Commission? It may interest him to learn that we have never had a solitary complaint from any source what- soever to the effect that the Forestry Commission have failed to co-operate in the destruction of any of the pests with which—

I think the Minister is confusing my hon. Friend's speech with what was said by his own colleague, the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye) in the Committee stage, when he said that the Forestry Commission were great offenders. Nothing has been said against the Forestry Commission by hon. Members on this side of the House.

The hon. Member will recollect that the hon. Member for Ton-bridge made special reference to the Forestry Commission in his observations.

I have not mentioned the Forestry Commission.

I think the Minister is referring to my speech.

The hon. and gallant Baronet also made reference to the Forestry Commission. Perhaps he could give one example where the Forestry Commission have failed on any occasion to co-operate either with the local authority or the county executive committee in the extermination of pests. So far, no such evidence has been brought to our notice. Since a similar Clause was moved in Committee the Parliamentary Secretary has held a thorough investigation to see whether complaints have been made about the Forestry Commission and we find that they do not exist. Indeed, the Forestry Commission have themselves their own pecular problems about certain kinds of pests—rabbits, deer and so on—and I should think, in their own interests, they would be the best example in the country of clearing their own forests, if they are ever to get any trees at all. Therefore, the arguments both upstairs and in the House about the Forestry Commission have no relevance, since no one has provided a specific case.

With regard to the War Office, it may well be that, on odd occasions, pest officers have not instantaneously had the right of way which they thought they ought to have had, but perhaps the War Office would be justified in that action on some occasions—not that we have found them unco-operative at any time—should there be a danger to the pest operator in walking on to an area where there might be unexploded ammunition.

It seems to me that the case against this Clause is very simple. First of all, the ordinary tenant of Crown property is covered by the Bill as it stands, so that the new Clause can apply only to Government Departments. Surely, without being subject to the provisions of this Act, compelling a Government Department to conform to the law, the Government Department would, in fact, conform to the law. It would be rather embarrassing if Government Departments were to be made subject to orders by local authorities.

What we have done is to take pains to ascertain from all Government Departments who might be affected, aerodromes, storage departments or the War Office, what would be their attitude and we have their assurance that they are willing to enter into consultations not only with local authorities but also with county executive committees, where they are the authority, in order to ensure that the fullest possible opportunities are provided for the authority and that action is taken to ensure that the Government Department complies with the law fully and absolutely. On those grounds I cannot see any reason why we should accept this Clause.

Before the Minister sits down, may I ask him what is the position of something which is similar to a Government Department—the national railways? Are they covered in the statement he has just made?

Certainly, and, of course, on top of that, should any Government Department fail in their duty under the Act any hon. Member could bring it to the notice of the House at any time.

It would be difficult without getting out of Order.

I am not clear about this matter. What is the exact position about the nationalised railways? When we had the good old-fashioned railway system they were good at looking after their property, but now, as is well-known, there is a steady depreciation in railway stations, especially the big ones; there is far less cleanliness and in all probability there is a far greater infestation of rats and mice.

Perhaps the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) would permit me to intervene to clarify the position. The Railway Commission is not a Government Department in the sense that one would interpret that phrase under the Clause. Therefore, they are entirely outside this Clause on the Order Paper.

That is all the more reason why the Government should have come here with a proper arrangement to put this Clause right so as to make sure that deficiencies in the Clause are corrected. If that is so, then even what the right hon. Gentleman said condemns his own Department for not having obtained efficiency in this matter. It really is a growing menace in the whole of the countryside at the present time that we have these great railway lines running through the country and—

Railway lines are subject to the ordinary law and, therefore, do not come within this Clause. They are not affected by this Clause in the least.

They are subject to the ordinary law, and I imagine that, therefore, they could be prosecuted in the ordinary way. That being so, we are going to have a busy time in front of us, because many of us undoubtedly will be finding ourselves in trouble with them about this matter. Therefore, I hope that the Clause will be passed, and that all will be brought under the law in the normal way.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman about the Forestry Commission. He said he had never had any complaint that the Forestry Commission had not kept its land clean from rats and mice. I do not see why we should expect him to know that there have been complaints on this matter. However, in the Committee there were clear complaints about the Forestry Commission. I was in Norfolk a year or so ago, and one of the complaints there was that Forestry Commission land was a perfect sanctuary for pests of all sorts and kinds. I know it is very difficult for anyone to complain about the Forestry Commission because we find it so difficult to complain about Government Departments in these days. People do not like to complain about their very powerful neighbours of that kind, because to do so puts them in great difficulties.

Let me ask the right hon. Gentleman another question about this. This Measure will apply to Scotland. Can he really say that the Scottish Office have never yet had any complaints of any kind about vermin on Forestry Commission land in Scotland? Will he kindly tell me how I am to complain about the Forestry Commission? Suppose I go on some Forestry Commission land, as I hope to do in due course, and suppose that while I am there I see rats and mice, do I complain to the Forestry Commission first, or to the right hon. Gentleman, or—if I am in Scotland—to the Secretary of State for Scotland?

Really, when the right hon. Gentleman says there is a lack of complaints about the Forestry Commission, he makes me think that he has not made a great deal of research into the matter. I agree with him in what he said about its being obviously the duty of the Forestry Commission to keep down rats and mice in the interests of growing trees. No one could dispute that. Whether that is done is a very different matter: it is another matter whether Forestry Commission lands are harbours from which rats and mice come out on to other ground. I very much doubt if the right hon. Gentleman's information is anything like as accurate as the information of the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye), who was quoted just now.

What we are trying to do by this new Clause is to lay on Government Departments the same duties as, under the ordinary law, we lay on ordinary private individuals. It is all very well to say, "Oh, no Government Department would ever defy the rule of another Government Department." Many of us who have been in the House for some years would be only too surprised to hear of any Government Department that kept the rules of another Government Department if they did not happen to suit it. That is the sort of argument the right hon. Gentleman put forward against this Clause. If one Department has rats on its premises and another Department complains about that, the amount of time wasted in the communications between the two will be three or four times the amount of time that would be taken if a Government Department were communicating with a private individual, and forty times the amount of time two private individuals would take if one made a complaint against another.

I hope my hon. Friends on this side of the House, who, I think, have done a very useful bit of work in bringing this matter up, will go to a Division in support of the Clause, because there is little difficulty in pointing out that the right hon. Gentleman has no intention whatever of getting other Government Departments to enforce the extinction of vermin. We all knew the Government are not willing to do it. To be in the countryside and see the ever-increasing incursions of Government Departments into our countryside is heart-breaking and fills one with a sense of hopelessness. It is not surprising that we hear such speeches as that made just now by the right hon. Gentleman, when he clearly treated this as just a small matter to be pushed on one side, as though Government Departments were above the law and everything else, and their properties were regarded by rats and mice as holy places to which they must not and would not go.

12.15 p.m.

Let us consider places such as Plymouth, where there is much Government Department property, with poor people living all around it. They have no protection whatever against the incursions of rats and mice out of Government premises. That is the sort of position in which we are put today, and not only in the big towns but also in the countryside. Although I am not surprised at the attitude of the Government, yet the country as a whole will know that the Government have no intention whatever, however loudly they talk about this war on rats and mice, of doing anything to clean their own stables first.

I am very disappointed by what the Minister has said today. It is one of the difficulties of our Parliamentary procedure that even when there is unanimity on the Committee stage amongst Members on all sides we cannot at a later stage get done what we want done, and yet the only reason why, in the Committee, we did not have a Division and defeat the Government on this, was that we regarded this Bill as a nonparty Measure. We preferred rather that the Government should take this part of the Bill back for reconsideration and redrafting. Hon. Members on the other side, if there are any who have read the report of the proceedings of the Committee, will know that what I am saying is not an exaggeration.

Indeed, the strongest arguments for some statutory method of dealing with Government Departments that harbour rats and mice came from hon. Members on the Socialist side of the Committee. I think they went too far. I did not agree with the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye), who, now that he is under the discipline of the chief Patronage Secretary, has absented himself from our proceedings today, when he complained in Committee of the handling of the rats and mice problem by the Forestry Commission. I think the Commission is woefully bad over foxes, but that is another matter for another Friday.

The Minister's argument today is, that although he has looked at this matter there is nothing more that he can do than he has been attempting to do and failing to do in this matter ever since he took office in 1945.

There would not have been any rats and mice if Conservative Governments of pre-war days had done their duty.

I really do not think that the right hon. Gentleman is quite correct in that, because the rat, as he knows, is an imported animal, and great numbers of rats have come into the country quite recently during the war, through the docks, and have got inland through the military encampments. I know that in my constituency we kept rats and mice down very well before the war. This large increase in the numbers of rats and mice has come about through the Ministry of Works encampments, which included encampments for the War Office and the Air Ministry.

There has not been the same care on such Government premises in keeping down the rat population as was exercised by the country people before their careful work was spoiled by the spread of encampments and other Government pre- mises. I gave the Committee an instance of large areas of agricultural land that suffered largely because of one particular camp, which was first occupied by a military unit, then by a Russian contingent, and finally by Italian ex-prisoners of war. I am not going again into that very disastrous occurrence. When I told of it in the Committee other hon. Members gave other examples of the same sort of thing.

The methods of consultation are not sufficient at the present time, and therefore I beg the Minister of Agriculture to think again on this problem because the answer he has given us is not satisfactory, or even accurate in all respects, as regards this Bill. He has quoted in his reply the words the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry first used when he was speaking on a proposed new Clause which had this object in view and before it had had support from the Socialist Benches. He then said:

"There are two classes of Crown property. There is the property which is owned by the Crown, but which is in the occupation of some private individual military unit or commercial undertaking …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 5th May, 1949; c. 122.]

I must stop there. I could never understand to what he was referring by "private individual military unit." I did not know we had any private armies here at present. I think that is the fallacy which lies behind the whole of the Minister of Agriculture's arguments; that a military unit, if commanded by an officer, is not part of Crown property. It is the very fact that these pieces of Crown property are occupied by military formations with their garbage dumps which causes the great trouble to the country and because of that we are moving this new Clause.

The Parliamentary Secretary went on to say that the other class of Crown property is property owned by and in the occupation of the Crown. The Minister repeated that argument and said that it was all right if the Crown owned the property and it was occupied by someone else and this Measure was in force. I would draw attention to Clause 4 under which it may well be that the occupier of that property may have notified the presence of rats and mice on the premises and the local authority would in the normal course have ordered structural repairs or other works as laid down under Clause 4. That cannot happen now because that property, although occupied by an individual undertaking, is owned by the Crown. I ask the Minister to apply his mind to that problem. How are we to secure that structural alterations take place on Crown property which is occupied by someone else when the local authority have been notified by the occupier to take the necessary steps to clear the property of rats and mice? I did not hear one argument in the speech he delivered that attempted to deal with that point.

The reason why the 1919 Act has failed in recent years has been that we have been increasing the area of land occupied by Government departments. Just as that area has increased, so there has been a lack of responsibility in the matter of keeping down vermin. I hope we shall not have to divide on this, but that the Minister will give some better assurance than he has given and will talk the matter over with his Parliamentary Secretary to see if this Clause, or something like it, can be inserted in the Bill.

This new Clause and the following new Clause (Notice to be given of use of poisons) appear to relate to each other.

They deal with separate points, Sir. Could we refer to them both and, if necessary, have separate Divisions on them?

We might have a discussion on the first new Clause and then have a Division, if necessary, on the second.

I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker. I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

This Clause lays down that no person other than an officer employed by a local authority or other authority for the purpose of exercising the powers of the local authority under this Act shall place on or in any land any poisons other than virus poisons for the purpose of the destruction of rats and mice. The House may well ask what are "poisons other than virus poisons"? The poisons I am talking of are zinc phosphide, strychnine and arsenic, which are used for killing rats and which are extremely dangerous. I owe an apology to hon. Members who were on the Standing Committee because, quite by inadvertence, I misled them on this point. When in Committee, I moved a new Clause very similar to the second new Clause on the Paper. I said it had the support of the Rodent Operators' Association. I said so believing it to be true, but I have now been informed that the views I put forward were the views of an ex-chairman, and that the present chairman does not hold those views. It had to be done in this personal way because the Association had not met for three years. After our meeting, the Association met and agreed with their present chairman but disagreed with their former chairman, who considered that these poisons had done the harm in the country, which I argued they were doing

While that is the view of the rodent operators who lay the poisons, I have had voluminous correspondence from owners of animals and pets which have been destroyed by these poisons, asking me to secure Parliamentary approval for a provision that only an official shall put down the poisons and that when they have been put down, precautions such as I have set out in the second proposed new Clause shall be taken; in other words, that the occupier of the land and adjacent land shall be notified and, wherever possible, a notice should be erected. Although this Clause has not the backing of the Rodent Operators' Association, it has the co-operation and assistance of the R.S.P.C.A., who believe that this, or something like this, is a necessary provision.

I will quote from a letter from a man who recently lost a very valuable young dog through the use of one of these poisons. He says:

"I suppose it will not be until a child is picked up dead in a field that you will ever be able to persuade the House of Commons to act in this matter."

I wish to stress the danger of laying down zinc phosphide, strychnine, or arsenic, for rats and mice. It may well be that every precaution is taken by the unskilled person in laying the poison in a hole, but, when the rat gets the poison, a dog or cat may touch the rat and, in its turn, be poisoned. That is how these catastrophes occur. I do not believe my correspondent was exaggerating when he said that it might happen that a child in a field or tenement where these very dangerous poisons are used, might be liable to be killed. I hope the Government will treat this problem with the seriousness it deserves.

12.30 p.m.

I am told that there has been heavy mortality among pigs and poultry on farms since the policy followed for killing rats changed from the use of "Liverpool Virus" and "Rodine" and that type of poison to the use of these arsenic and strychnine poisons. There have been many cases of large numbers of pigs and poultry having been killed. I do not wish to insert into the Bill a Clause which will weaken the efforts of the local authorities to destroy rats and mice, but I think Parliament should count the cost in that matter, and that those who own pets of which they are very fond should receive protection from Parliament in this very important matter.

If the Parliamentary Secretary thinks that the drafting of these Clauses is not absolutely watertight I can assure him that I and those whom I represent will be willing to change our draft in any way so as to achieve the effect we desire. I remember that the hon. Gentleman was rather sarcastic in the Committee about my phrase "adjacent or contiguous premises." He asked how that was practicable when large areas were involved. I can tell him of one sheep farmer who informed me that he had lost all his sheepdogs through the laying of these poisons on the moor around his farm. This is a great and growing danger, and I hope these new Clauses will receive from all parts of the House the support which they deserve.

I have a good deal of sympathy with the case which the hon. Member has put, but can he tell me how it becomes safer if these poisons are laid by a rodent officer and members of the farming community are not allowed to lay them? How does the rodent officer make the use of these poisons safe if the farmer cannot do so?

That is why the two Clauses require to be considered together. In the first new Clause it is stated that no one but a rodent officer shall lay these poisons. In the second it is stated that when he does so, he must notify the occupier of adjacent or contiguous premises within a reasonable distance of the place where it is intended to lay such poison, which is not always done now, and also affix a notice on the highway or in a prominent position saying that the poison is there. I believe that by these two precautions the mortality to which I have referred will be decreased.

I beg to second the Motion.

The object of this Clause is that if poisons have to be used, they shall be used only by responsible people who know their dangers and will be responsible in using them. I should like the use of poisons to be dispensed with completely. There are many complaints about the cruelty of steel traps but it is nothing like the cruelty of poisons, even when they are being used on vermin. I agree that, there, it is probably necessary to use poison to destroy rats and mice in cases in which communities of those rodents seem to acquire some immunity from viruses, and to deal with which some alternatives have to be found. Those cases are not very common. To permit rodent operators to have the power in such cases to use poison would be ample.

The danger to herd and sheep dogs and other domestic animals from poison is great. I do not refer so much to the direct danger of eating the poison, but to the risk of eating the animals that have already been poisoned. A great many animals, including dogs, are unfortunately carrion feeders, and a dead animal, particularly if it is rather "high," has an irresistible attraction for them. Not only-dogs but cats, which are some of the best killers of rats and mice, have suffered heavily through eating rats and mice which have been poisoned. That is also true of wild animals and birds, and so the process goes on; rooks and crows eat those dead animals, they are killed and another creature eats them: it is like throwing a stone into a pond—the circles go on widening, with increasing death.

I was not a Member of the Standing Committee but I noticed that one argument against our proposal was that people should look after their own domestic animals on their own land. That would be the answer to our case if every poisoned animal would conveniently die on the property of the man who had put down the poison, but that is not the case, particularly with arsenic, which is a slow poison. They may travel some way, and are likely to do so if there is water in the neighbourhood, because poisoned animals make for water. They may even fall into the water and their dead bodies may drift a considerable distance.

It would be prudent to limit these powers. There is a tendency nowadays to try to widen the power to use poison, instead of trying to narrow it as should be done in modern days, when we have alternatives like viruses. I remember that when the Agriculture Act, 1947, was being discussed the Ministry tried to extend the provisions of Section 8 of the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, to animals other than deer or hare, including rabbits, moles, badgers, and certain birds. There was some dispute about that, and as a result, when the Measure became law, that provision was very much restricted. The only provision for allowing poison at all was confined, as will be seen from Section 98 (3) to the placing in rabbit holes of poison gas and substances generating poison gas. Those provisions were limited, but here is a case in which I feel no attempt is being made to limit them. For those reasons I hope these two new Clauses will be seriously considered and accepted by the Minister, either in their present form or in a modified form.

It is difficult to see how the arguments on which these new Clauses are based have been conceived. When my hon. Friend the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Mrs. Middleton) asked the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) why it was safe for a rodent officer employed by a local authority to lay these poisons and why it could not be made safe for a private person to do so on his own land, the hon. Member fell below his usual standard in his reply. He said that it was because of that point that the second new Clause had been put down, because when the poison is laid by the rodent officer he would say, "I will stick up a notice for the dog to read."

The second new Clause is intended to cover the position even were there no first new Clause. The argument relating to the second new Clause is that a notice shall be put up by any person after the placing on any land of any of these poisons. The hon. Member has not met the point, that if there is anything in the argument that the laying of these poisons is wicked and that the wickedness is not offset by the advantages gained, it is no less wicked for one person to lay the poison than another.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House by representing me as having said something which I did not say. I said that there were two safeguards. The one in the first Clause is that only an officer of a local authority can lay such poisons. The second, which is provided in the second new Clause, is not only the affixing of a notice but the notification of the occupiers of the adjacent land. I agree that the dog cannot read the notice and this accumulation of safeguards would not make poisons safe—they never will be safe—but would diminish the risk of the poisons.

That is the whole point. The point I was making, if the hon. Member will listen, is that he has not given the answer. He clearly envisages that poisons which are dangerous will have to be laid. In his first Clause he says, "We will limit the laying of them to the rodent operator employed by the local authority. We will not permit any occupier of land, any farmer, to lay these poisons on his own land." We had a long argument, earlier, about the wickedness of relying on the State, and not allowing a private person to do his own job.

Now we have the hon. Member saying that we must not allow a man to do his own job, and that there must be a duty laid upon the rodent operator. My hon. Friend the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth asked why it was safer for one person to use a poison than another, and the hon. Member in his interjection made it quite clear that it is not; but for some reason or other he wishes to impose this limitation. I say that it is intolerable that a farmer should not be permitted, indeed, should be prohibited from proceeding to carry out the duty, clearly laid upon him, of getting rid of these pests when they are on his land.

There is a whole variety of other reasons why these proposed Clauses are wholly misconceived. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) has obviously conducted a good deal of research into the efficacy of various poisons and the comparative dangers of virus and poison. I have been too busy to follow him in that particular line of country, and I must rely on medical, veterinary and scientific evidence compiled by other people. I am sure that the views of the hon. Gentleman about virus and non-virus poisons are misconceived. On the one side the danger of poison is being overstated and, equally, I am certain from the evidence before me, he has completely underestimated the danger from picking up and passing on of those poisons which he would permit to be put down without any safeguard at all. I do not think that we can accept the one as being very much more dangerous than the other.

There are other grounds on which these Clauses should fail. They are purely practical grounds. The hon. Gentleman may say that we might get together and think of another Clause, but it is a late stage in the Bill for that, and on grounds of principle we could not do anything about it. If the occupier is not allowed to lay these poisons, then a notice under Clause 4 could not specify the use of the poisons. If the occupier failed to take the steps prescribed in the notice, the local authority could enter, but could not lay poisons which might be held by the best medical and scientific evidence to be right in the circumstances of that case, because the notice had not prescribed those poisons for the occupier. The notice would not have prescribed them because the Clause which it is proposed to put in the Bill would have barred them. Consequently, nonsense is made of the whole thing.

The hon. and gallant Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke) put his finger on a very important point. It is true that in some extraordinary way these small mammals apparently build up a resistance to one particular kind of poison, and that the only chance of success in this field is to be able to "ring the changes." The effect of this Clause would be to prevent that being done; to continue the use of one poison would almost have the effect of building resistance to it.

There is more than one form of virus, and it would be possible to "ring the changes" on them before coming to the ultimate solution of using poison.

There is more than one form of virus but, nevertheless, one would be employing one broad agency and the resistance is to the broad agency and not an individual proprietary brand.

Another practical difficulty is that under Part II of the Bill no local authorities are involved. If the Clause is carried I am advised that it allows the right to lay poisons, only to officers of the local authorities; neither the owner of a food store nor officers of the Department would have a right to lay poison to kill rats and mice in a food store. The argument we had from the other side of the House on Second Reading about the vital needs to protect food would completely fall to the ground, because this proposed Clause would stop that being done. Further, the Clause would prohibit, except by an expert, the fumigation of ships against rats and mice. It would be possible to fumigate with a very higher concentration against insects and mites; if there happened to be rats and mice we could take them in our stride. But for rats and mice only, it would not be possible to proceed against them in a manner which is regarded as the right method to adopt.

I do not think that the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, with all his researches, can set himself up as a final authority upon the scientific and practical considerations involved in the war against vermin and other pests. There is a whole wealth of research and investigation and practical experiment going on all the time. Why should we lay down in the Bill that what occurs to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton on the 14th day of July, 1949, is the end of all research and the end of all knowledge on this matter? We cannot concentrate on one type of poison as against another.

With regard to the purely humanitarian side, I have always been a dog-lover myself, and have almost always had a dog in my home. I am very angry when somebody does some foolish thing which causes agony to pets, but it is necessary to remind the House that here we are dealing with a Bill to bring about the more efficient extermination of pests. We are not for the moment passing a Bill for the protection of dogs. If we want to do more than is already provided under the 1911 Act—which lays down penalties for people who lay poison and allow it to get into contact with pets and other animals and cause cruelty to them—then we must amend the 1911 Act. But for the moment we are engaged upon a Bill to promote the quicker and more efficient extermination of pests; and those who have pets must take care to keep them off the land of other people. So long as we do that, the chances of their picking up poisons laid by somebody else in the pursuance of a very wise campaign to get rid of pests will be a great deal less than would otherwise be the case.

It is always difficult to speak in these Debates, when arguments are put forward by Ministers who have had no practical experience of the matters under discussion. I only wish that some day I may have the pleasure of seeing the Minister of Agriculture and his Parliamentary Secretary farming land, because I should like to see the results. I am sure that if they did so, their opinions would be very different from those which they hold today. I do not wish ill to them; I think too much of them to suggest that they should get their living by farming. I merely suggest that they should farm some land as a hobby. It would prove a most expensive hobby for them. During our consideration of the Bill, practical suggestions have been advanced by practical men on both sides, but, generally speaking, the Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary were adamant.

I hoped that the right hon. Gentleman himself would have dealt with these new Clauses, because we heard the argument of the Parliamentary Secretary in Standing Committee. In reference to the first of the Clauses, I should like to say I loathe the use of poisons. I think most hon. Members share my feelings. We should limit as far as possible the number of people entitled to lay poisons. There would be fewer rats and mice if people kept more cats. Cats are the best means of keeping down rats and mice that it is possible to have on a farm. By the Bill we shall restrict and reduce the number of cats available for that purpose. It is essential that we should have a Clause to limit the number of persons allowed to lay poisons. It should be left entirely to responsible people such as rodent officers. The power should not be given to occupiers of land, who may be responsible or irresponsible, to lay poisons just when and where they think fit.

In Standing Committee we made a reasonable suggestion that it should be the duty of the rodent officer, when he had laid poisons, to notify not only the owner and occupier of the land on which it had been laid but also to the occupiers of neighbouring land and private houses. I was impressed by the powerful practical suggestions which were made. The Parliamentary Secretary said:

"If our officers lay poisons we must certainly notify the occupier."

If it is the duty of the rodent officer to notify the occupier of a farm, why should it not be his duty to notify the occupier of private premises which may be only a few yards away? The danger to the owners of land and private houses near to the land where the poison has been laid is extreme. I speak with some experience. The Parliamentary Secretary also said that it was a constant instruction to give notice in writing to the occupier. He added:

"If that were not done we ourselves might be liable if there were danger to a farmer's animals."

If it is now necessary to notify the owner, why not notify people who occupy adjacent property? The Parliamentary Secretary also said:

"If, however, folk fence their animals in, the risk of contact and the danger are much reduced."

How practical is that? Is it suggested that the owners of private houses or cottages should fence in their cats? How can they do that unless they are notified? If they are notified, they can take reasonable precautions to keep their animals out of danger. If they are not notified they might lose all their cats. I have suffered in that way. We took all the precautions we thought necessary, but the cats got away and were killed. Again, it was suggested that owners should keep their dogs on the lead. I do not know what the R.S.P.C.A. would think of that suggestion. I hate to see people with dogs on the lead. I should like to make it impossible for dogs to be kept on the lead or to be kept at all in towns. I do not believe that country people would consider it practicable to keep their dogs on the lead.

If it was compulsory on the rodent officer to put up a notice showing where the poison was laid, then the owners of dogs or other pets could keep their animals under control, and so ensure that they did not take poison. The Parliamentary Secretary said we could not possibly have notices put up to show that poison had been laid. He said that a man would be proclaimed to be

"… a sort of pariah, to be marked out as a feper."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, Standing Committee D, c. 137–8.]

What nonsense. Why should not this notice be put up so that anyone passing by can be informed that poison has been laid?

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Mahon (Mr. Turton) mentioned the danger to children, and that was pooh-poohed. I say that it is a practical risk. It is well known that the rodent officers often carry out a certain amount of pre-baiting. Children playing in the vicinity might find the pre-bait and, in these days of hunger, might eat some. The next day they might tell their companions that they have found something very tasty, and they might also have a bite. By then the pre-bait may have been poisoned, and the children will suffer. That could happen. I hope that the Minister will realise the risk of laying poison without taking every precaution. I do not consider that the suggestions of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton are impracticable. I maintain that the rodent officer should be the only man to lay the poison and that he should not only notify the owner and occupier of the land, but the owners and occupiers of adjacent land. Also notices should be posted stating that the poison has been laid.

With the leave of the House, I should like to answer the attack made upon me by the Parliamentary Secretary.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not be given the leave of the House, since there has been no attack at all.

The hon. Gentleman has the right to make a second speech.

The Parliamentary Secretary made it appear that I claimed to have all knowledge of the science of this business. Indeed, I have not. I have put down this new Clause on one ground only. My constituents have suffered grievously from the indiscriminate use of poison. People living in other constituencies have written to me to the same effect. I am very sorry that the Parliamentary Secretary, with all his debating skill, to which we are accustomed, has not really grasped the humane aspect of this Clause. This is not a question of scientific knowledge. In his Ministry he has got scientists and administrators who know how to kill rats and mice in the quickest possible way. I grant that, but at the same time by these provisions he will kill a great number of pets and agricultural animals. I had hoped that he would have said that though he could not accept the Clause in its present form, his Ministry would take more care in future to see that pets and other animals would not be destroyed. I agree that he has destroyed these new Clauses very cleverly by saying that we ought to have put in the words, "Government Department" or, "Government officers." He said that they ought to be allowed the use of all toxic poisons. I am distressed that he adopted this attitude, but, because I agree that the Clause would require amendment before I could ask my hon. Friends to vote on it, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

I should not have intervened but for the fact that just now I heard the Minister of Agriculture endeavouring, as I thought, to prevent my hon. Friend from speaking. These courtesies of the House are always given to Ministers. We have gone out of our way again and again to grant this facility to the right hon. Gentleman. I never imagined that he would do a mean thing like that. All I can say is that I am deeply grieved that my judgment of him has been so mistaken. I thought that he would not do anything like that, and it makes me very sad when I think of the courtesy shown to the right hon. Gentleman. I do not think that he really meant it.

As I am on my feet, I will say that it is monstrous that no further and better attempt was made by the Government to accept the suggestion of my hon. Friend. These are perfectly good Clauses, though they may be worthy of amendment, and it may be possible to deal with the matter in another place. If the Members of my party wish to divide, they will have my support, although I cannot agree with every detail in the two new Clauses.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 14, to leave out "and."

The purpose of this Amendment will be seen from the Amendment in page 1, line 18, which proposes to insert:

"and

(c) the council of each county district in each county may delegate to the county agricultural executive committee for that county its functions under this Act excepting in relation to such parts of the county as are comprised in an urban district having a population exceeding twenty thousand."

Here we provide power for the selected local authority, the council of a county district, to delegate its authority to the Minister's own county agricultural executive committee, if they so wish. I take the view that this is the most important Amendment that we have to put forward today, because I cannot see how the setup in this Bill is going to work easily, smoothly and with proper co-operation between the local authorities and the Minister's county committees without this new subsection. Before we come to the details of the Amendment, it is wise to remind the House of what was said on this matter on Second Reading by the Parliamentary Secretary, who was then introducing this Measure. The hon. Gentleman then told us:

"The provisions of Part I have been worked out in consultation with the various national associations of local authorities, with the result that we have on this Bill … been able to get agreement on the broad design."

I suppose the Parliamentary Secretary would agree that that broad design must clearly involve the question of who are the operating authorities, and whether they should have power to delegate. A little later in the same Debate, the hon. Member for Thornbury (Mr. Alpass) asked the Parliamentary Secretary:

"Can he tell the House whether the County Councils' Association, which is deeply interested in this question, was also consulted?"

The Parliamentary Secretary replied:

"The consultations included all the appropriate national associations of the local authorities, of which the association mentioned by my hon. Friend is one."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd February, 1949; Vol. 461, c. 1906–7.]

I should have thought that what the Parliamentary Secretary was trying to tell the House was that the County Councils' Association had been consulted and had approved the broad design of this Measure, but, in fact, that is not so. It is quite true that the County Councils' Association was consulted, but they did not approve this design. They said that, in their view, the correct authority for carrying out this Act was the Minister's own county agricultural executive committee, and that is one of the reasons why I regard these Amendments as of importance. It is true that the Rural District Councils' Association was consulted and did approve the design which handed over the power of administration to them, but I think the Minister will agree that the Association itself would like this power so as to be able to delegate their responsibilities to the county agricultural executive committees.

I therefore put the case in this way. The county councils of this country wish to have a mandatory power of delegation to the county agricultural executive committees. The rural district councils on their side, would prefer a discretionary power to delegate in suitable cases, and therefore this Amendment has the backing of both the County Councils' Association and the Rural District Councils' Association. I hope that the Minister will not treat this Amendment in quite the same way as his Parliamentary Secre- tary has treated the new Clauses today and the other Amendments which we put forward on earlier stages of the Bill.

What is the set-up in the Bill at the moment? It will mean that the Part I powers will be carried out by about 1,000 different authorities, that there will be power of enforcement in the hands of those authorities, and that there will also be a power of providing services in the bands of 61 county agricultural executive committees. I believe that that is the inherent weakness in the Bill as at present drafted. We have a dualism in many places which is quite unnecessary. We also have the further difficulty that exists now and will exist when the Bill becomes law, that we shall have the cottage property which will be entirely under the power of the rodent officer of the rural district council, and the farm property next door which will be looked after by the county agricultural executive committee. I think that is a waste of manpower, as well as a waste of public money. It will also entail, as the Government have recognised, an increase in the rates.

I have not said anything of the kind.

I think the Minister's asides were not directed to me, perhaps, but to the hon. Gentleman sitting behind him. I understand that to be his point. If it is necessary to increase the rates to destroy rats and mice, I admit that, high as the rates are at present, I should have to agree to it, but if this dualism is unnecessary, Parliament should try to find some way out of it. I should have thought that the right way was to give the rural and urban district councils of the smaller areas the power to delegate to the Minister's pests control committees, who are acknowledged to be skilful in the killing of rats and mice. Curiously enough, that power does not occur in the whole of this Bill.

It may be that the Minister can point to Clause 12 (2) and say that if he received a complaint that some district council was not carrying out the powers, he could issue the necessary order and empower the county agricultural executive committee to take over those powers, but that is not really a satisfactory alternative. It means that, first of all, there would have to be a failure to carry out the powers, and then there would be supercession of the local authority by a Parliamentary order, and I want to avoid that.

Not all these rural district councils have had persons carrying out the orders and dealing with the killing of rats and mice. This Bill puts into statutory form a number of Defence Regulations and Statutory Rules and Orders at present in force, and there are, am credibly informed, more than 100 of these local authorities who have not got the staff and are not carrying out their powers. Many of these rural district councils would prefer the powers under the Bill to be handed over to the county agricultural executive committees, but I believe they would be indignant if that were done after they had been superseded by the Minister under Clause 12. Therefore, I hope the Minister will accept this Amendment which I believe will secure greater efficiency in the working of the Bill.

The real trouble, of course, is that the rat may be in the cottage or the farm, or it may go a hundred yards into the area of another local authority, but it is still the same rat, and, therefore, the way to deal with it is to have as wide an area of control as possible. That was the design of the county agricultural executive committees. It may be that I shall have occasion at times to complain of the extravagance of these committees, but that does not weaken my argument that when we have this very large number of officers, employing, I think I am right in saying, 135,000 operators, they should be used to the full, and we should not prevent a local authority handing over powers to the county agricultural executive committees.

I wish to ask my hon. Friend one question. He has given us a series of very interesting, and, I am sure, very correct details as far as local authorities are concerned. But this Bill includes Scotland. I am sure it would not be right—and I am equally sure that the Minister would not consider it right—if he did not tell us also the position as far as Scotland is concerned because, without those figures before us, it would be very wrong to consider England and Wales only and not the whole British Isles.

I think my hon. Friend is quite right. I omitted Scotland because I did not want to complicate the matter further. It is, of course, an incongruous position that under Clause 1 (2) the local authorities in Scotland will not be the county districts; they will be the county councils. In Scotland, we are going back to the 1919 Act and having this matter administered in the rural areas by the county councils. Therefore, my Amendment does not deal with Scotland. In Scotland there is another difference. There we have not got the county agricultural committees operating these pest destruction services; they are only, I believe—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—dealing with foxes and deer. In Scotland, they have always left rats and mice to the larger urban authorities and to the county councils. Therefore, there is not in Scotland the dualism which we have here at the moment, and which we shall continue to have under the Bill.

That being the position, I hope that the House will accept this Amendment. It deals with the rural district councils and also with the urban districts which have a population of less than 20,000. We inserted that definition in order to secure that those urban districts which are rural in character should not be treated differently from the rural districts.

I beg to second the Amendment.

It has been very fully and ably explained by my hon. Friend, but I wish to add a few words about the importance of the agricultural executive committees carrying out this task. The whole problem of rats and mice becomes more and more agricultural almost yearly, because we are now growing much more corn in this country than we were before the war, and, therefore, the chief damage is being done on the farms. Rats live in quantities mainly in the farming areas. The county agricultural executive committees are obviously very interested in this task. Their job is to help people to produce food and also to preserve food. They know what the fields should produce, and they spend their time in giving advice and making recommendations; in fact, they are responsible in this way to a very large degree.

It is no use the agricultural executive committees advising the use of certain fertilisers or certain methods of producing more if the eventual crops are going to be eaten by rats and mice. The point I am trying to make is that the agricultural executive committees not only know the land, but have an interest in it, and where there is an interest there is an incentive. As hon. Members opposite know well, we Conservatives believe in incentives. The agricultural executive committees have a direct incentive to keep the property in which they are interested free from rats, and, therefore, they are the most likely people to do it.

Farmers are more likely to co-operate with people who know their job. Where the district councils are carrying out the job—maybe in the villages or small towns—they may well become complacent if they find that the farmers are doing the job well. But the farmer, even though he is keeping down the number of rats on his farm, may well find that there are rats just over the boundary in another district council. It is far more difficult for him to get the assistance of another district council to which he does not belong, than it is to ask the agricultural executive committee, which is covering the whole area, to do it.

I know that during this Debate some hon. Members may say that the agricultural executive committee is not a democratically appointed body, and, therefore, is not the right body to do the job. But our Amendment simply authorises the district council to delegate its powers to the agricultural executive committee. Even if they delegate their function they are still responsible for those functions, so that if there is any come-back it will be on a council which is democratically appointed. That being so, I do not think there is anything detrimental in the fact that the agricultural executive committees are not actually representative of the people. I believe that this Amendment would be very helpful. It does not make it compulsory for the council to delegate its powers, but it gives it the chance to do so. I believe that the councils will do it in nearly every case, and that the Minister is aware of that. I hope, therefore, that he will treat this Amendment with great respect.

I always treat Amendments with courtesy, and also in- deed—despite the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams)—those who move them, although there are occasions on which it is extremely difficult to retain a moral sense of courtesy. Perhaps I shall have an opportunity later on to reply to the hon. Member for Torquay should it be necessary, but I prefer not to do so now.

The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) made great play with the county councils and their views. The hon. Member knows that the County Councils Association have no functions under the terms of this Bill at all. The Association of Municipal Corporations and the Urban District Councils Association do not approve this Amendment, and originally the Rural District Councils Association were in support of the Bill as it now stands. If there has been any weakening on their part it has not been notified to the Ministry of Agriculture. Therefore, all the authorities concerned prefer the Bill as it now stands, to this Amendment.

I am bound to confess that while I always listen carefully to the interventions of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, I scarcely know where he really stands in this matter. In the first place he said on Second Reading:

"I believe the Bill is right in transferring the powers of rat destruction from the county councils to the distriot councils, because the district councils or the borough councils are the health authorities for the area and they should properly have this power."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 23rd February. 1949; Vol. 461, c. 1940.]

Now he proposes an Amendment enabling these authorities, who he says ought to have the power, to delegate that power to somebody else.

Why should the health authorities be associated with these duties? As the hon. Member knows, it was explained very carefully upstairs in Committee. These functions are intimately interlocked with those of the public health service. The county agricultural committees are not a public health service. Secondly, the public health officers are familiar with the conditions throughout their districts, not always the purely rural portions but the built-up portions in county towns, villages and so forth. Thirdly, the cost of maintaining the appropriate organisation, in so far as it is not recovered, should be borne out of local rate funds. Clearly that was the point of view of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton when he spoke on Second Reading. Now he proposes an Amendment to allow the county district committees to delegate their powers to county agricultural executive committees.

What are the duties of a local authority under the terms of this Bill? Clause 2 states that they must

"from time to time … carry out such inspections as may be necessary for the purpose aforesaid."

—not only inspections of agricultural land and agricultural buildings but apparently inspections within the parish area where houses and shops and so forth are erected. What the hon. Gentleman is asking is that we should turn our voluntary county agricultural executive committee members into inspectors of all kinds of property to determine whether or not there is any infestation. That only needs to be stated for its absurdity to be seen.

This Amendment allows the county district council to delegate its functions to county agricultural executive committees, but not in an urban district where the population is 20,000 or more. So that all urban districts with a population of 20,000 or more must fulfil their functions under Clause 2 of the Bill. The hon. Member made great play with what he called uniformity, and he said that instead of having a whole series of bodies, we ought to have one body doing this important job. This Amendment would create the chaotic conditions which the hon. Member suggests we ought to avoid. One rural district council would be able to delegate to the county agricultural executive committee, and the next rural district council might not be able to do so. Therefore, in two adjoining rural district council areas, one rural district council would have to carry out its functions under Clause 2, and in the other rural district council area the county agricultural executive committee would carry out the functions.

The hon. Member referred to the mobility of rats, and said that they do not stay in one given area. That is perfectly true. It is because of that that we want to see rural district councils carrying out their duties faithfully and in co-operation with their neighbours and the public health authorities, for that is the only possible means whereby we shall rid ourselves of the infestation of rats and mice. I noticed that while the Amendment allows a rural district council to delegate its authority to a county agricultural executive committee, by implication the agricultural executive committee must accept those delegated powers without so much as by your leave. In other words, apparently a body which has been set up exclusively to help, advise and guide in the production of food, is to be shouldered with the responsibility of the rural district council, without the agricultural executive committee having even so much as an appeal.

What is more, without having a say in the matter, the agricultural executive committees would have no means of obtaining reimbursement for any expense to which they were put in carrying out the duties of the rural district council, since they could not apply to the rates. Therefore, they would have the functions imposed upon them, they would have to spend money in carrying out the duties of the rural district council, and they would have no means whereby to reimburse themselves for the expense of the operation.

As the hon. Member said on Second Reading, the rural district councils are obviously the public health authorities and, therefore, they are the right bodies to carry out these duties. I am not being political about this at all. I think it is most logical to place responsibility exactly where it ought to be. As the hon. Member is aware, before the introduction of this Bill, 1,212 authorities were charged with the duty of carrying out these functions, and in only 145 cases were the functions not delegated by the county councils. It seems to me that we should complicate the matter enormously if we were to accept this Amendment. I suggest, therefore, to the hon. Member in all good faith that if we really want to rid ourselves of this menace of rats and mice we must leave the responsibility with the right and appropriate bodies, the rural and urban district councils.

I suggest that the county agricultural executive committees should be left with the job of food production. Let their pest operators service farms where the farmers invite them in, so that to that extent they can be as helpful to the rural district councils as possible. I think this is a proper sub-division of functions, and for this and other reasons which I have stated, I hope this Amendment will not be pressed to a Division.

We have had a very interesting discussion on this Amendment, and although I agree with the Minister that there is no obligation imposed in the Amendment and that it is mere machinery, it is by far the most important part of the machinery that we have to consider if we are to get effective action under this Bill. In answering my hon. Friend's Amendment, it seemed to me that the Minister was more engaged in arguing against the details of the Amendment than thinking of the possibilities of its advantages. What we still want to do is to destroy rats and mice.

That is exactly what the Opposition do not want to do.

That is the object of the Bill, as we understood it, and that is what we hope to see. We are not at all sure that the machinery provided by the Government is the best for this object. It would appear that what my hon. Friends have been doing is what the Government ought to have done, and that is to have conversations with the different local authorities, since our discussions in Committee, to see if the Bill can be improved. On the other hand, the Minister comes to the House with exactly the same arguments he used in Committee, having done nothing since then. If the right hon. Gentleman will pay particular attention to this Amendment, he will see that during the last two days it has been altered, following the further consideration which has been given to the point. The original Amendment used the word "shall" and referred to "each county."

I and my hon. Friends had Amendments down in Committee, which were not selected by the Chair, to widen the authority to the county. I accept at once that this Amendment is a great deal better than those we originally intended to move, to which I made reference on Second Reading, as did the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye) who spoke from his considerable experience. I think we have learned, since the Bill was printed, that we were probably mistaken in that view, and that, by and large, the right body should be the district council, which means that we have moved towards the Government so far as that is concerned. My hon. Friends, in order to make it more flexible and to avoid duplication, have put down a further Amendment, whereby they make it permissive for the county district council to delegate its functions to the county agricultural executive committee.

The idea of that is to use the services of these committees, and the pest officers attached to them, to the best possible advantage and without duplication, and, by so doing to get the maximum number of rats and mice destroyed in the interests of the nation. I can see that we shall not be successful in persuading the Minister to accept this Amendment, as he does not appear to be in a very receptive mood today. Nevertheless, I will prophesy that as time goes on, and he has to administer this Measure, he will find these suggestions very helpful. He should try and make the administration of this Measure as flexible as possible and avoid all duplication, so that we may get the maximum possible results.

I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister seemed to be rather annoyed about something I said, and seemed to depart from his usual courtesy.

I do not think that arises on this Amendment.

I was referring to what the Minister said about my remarks during our earlier discussion. I was going to say that I had no intention of causing any offence, and that I am sorry he felt offended. I now wish to turn to what the right hon. Gentleman has said about this Amendment. Whenever I have any dealings with local authorities, they always complain of having too much work to do, and say that they do not want any more work put upon their shoulders. Under this Bill, we are tightening up the amount of work they have to do.

The point of this Amendment is whether, in certain cases, the local authority might not get its work done better if it could hand over to the agri- cultural executive committee. I do not want to overburden the agricultural executive committees, but there are many areas which cannot be dealt with by the local authorities but are very suitable for some central authority. An illustration that comes to my mind is the great area of Dartmoor. Several local authorities on the north and south impinge on that area. The only possible way to deal with that area is to have one central body, and the only central body I can think of is the agricultural executive committee, particularly in view of the number of Government Departments involved, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the War Office, and so on.

Another illustration which comes to my mind is the case where a local authority has part of its area stretching out into a country district for about 10 miles. In that case it might be convenient for the local authority to delegate the whole of the area to the country agricultural executive committee. Let us now turn to Scotland.

It was made quite clear that this Amendment cannot apply to Scotland.

I am not at all sure about that, because some authority must deal with the position in Scotland.

That is not mentioned in the Amendment.

There are agricultural executive committees in Scotland, and I understood the object was to give them more powers, although, as my hon. Friend said, it is a case of dealing with foxes or some other animals in Scotland.

The hon. Member cannot pursue this line, because local authorities in Scotland are quite different from those in England. He can refer to England, but not to Scotland.

I accept that, and I will simply comment on how very bad the situation is under this Clause, when apparently Scotland is left out.

We are not now discussing the Clause. We are discussing an Amendment.

I should like to see the proposed Amendment amended, if necessary.

The hon. Gentleman, who has had a great deal more experience in the Chair than I have, must know that he has been out of Order almost the whole of the time he has been speaking.

I must accept your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. If I was out of Order in what I was saying about the application of this Bill to Scotland, I equally accept your correction. Nevertheless, after what the Minister has said I am sure I should be in Order in mentioning local authorities in England and Wales, so let me now illustrate my point by referring to Wales.

In Wales there are vast mountain areas, and I am of opinion that in areas impinged upon by two or three local authorities it would be far better to have the assistance of the agricultural executive committees, so as to have what might be called a combined operation in dealing with the rats and mice, rather than leaving it to local authorities who, in all probability, would not really attend to the problem except in their own immediate neighbourhood.

The Minister seemed to think that some of us were not very keen about dealing with this problem. My reason for supporting the Amendment is because I believe that the Government and local authorities should not be tied down too tightly. This Amendment is permissive and would give wider powers of co-operation between more widely spread districts and, areas. For that reason it would be much better if the Government, instead of being obstinate, were to come forward openly and say, "We cannot accept the Amendment as drafted, but we will have the Clause amended in some other way," and thus co-operate with us. No party question is involved here. None of us wishes to hold up the Bill, or to lengthen the proceedings. The lengthening of our proceedings today has been due only to needless interruptions on behalf of the Minister, and because the Minister has done nothing whatever, particularly on this Amendment, to ensure what we all want to see—the killing of rats and mice. He is rather looking after his own interests, and saying that he is right and no one else possibly could be. If there is a Division on this Amendment I shall support my hon. Friend. In the event of there being no Division, or of my hon. Friend withdrawing the Amendment, I can only say that I hope that the opportunity will be taken to introduce the Amendment on another occasion.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 27, to leave out from "section" to the first "as" in line 28.

This Amendment refers to Section 290 of the Public Health Act, 1936. The Clause as drafted would only allow that Section to operate if structural works were laid down in the notice. Our view is that it should be somewhat wider. I am sorry that the Parliamentary Secretary has not the assistance of a Law Officer on this wholly legal point. Subsection (2, b) says that the notice may in particular require

"the carrying out on the land of any structural repairs or other works so specified."

We understand from our advisers that that would be a wider notice than one merely referring to the carrying out of structural works. Of course, under paragraph (a) the notice might require

"the application to the land of any form of treatment specified in the notice."

It is therefore quite clear that by including the limiting words

"requiring the carrying out of any structural works"

the appeal under the Public Health Act is limited to a very narrow field.

I do not see why there should not be a wider scope for appeal. After all, the 1936 Act has been used in other Acts with some advantage, and I do not see why these limiting words should be put into this Bill. It may be that the intention of the Parliamentary Secretary in drafting this Clause was to secure that there should be an appeal under paragraph (b) but not under paragraph (a). If that is his intention, I suggest that the wording should be:

"requiring the carrying out of any structural repairs or other works so specified"

using the wording of paragraph (b). To use different wording in the two paragraphs causes a certain amount of confusion. Not only that, but it will involve certain expense when the matter has to be argued in the courts, and we do want to save expense if we can.

I do not think that on this Amendment there is any great party division between the Parliamentary Secretary and myself. We only wish to make the Bill better, and I hope that, after consulting a Law Officer, the hon. Gentleman will accept this Amendment. I do not want to waste the time of the House by unnecessarily putting forward complicated legal arguments. I do think that this is a reasonable and necessary Amendment.

I beg to second the Amendment.

It is not my intention to accept the Amendment, and I do not think we need do so. The intention of subsection (5), as has been seen quite clearly by the hon. Gentleman, is that there should be an appeal against a notice requiring any structural works which will involve a good deal of expense in alterations and adaptations. It is proper that there should be provision for appeal, but not in regard to treatment which is urgent, where the trouble would get worse and worse unless dealt with immediately. That is why we have inserted in subsection (5) the words:

"requiring the carrying out of any structural works,"

in order to show quite clearly what the occupier or owner, on whom the notice is served, has an appeal against.

Subsection (2, b) refers to the carrying out on any land of any structural repairs, not structural works. The hon. Gentleman will notice the words "or other works." Quite clearly we envisage work which is not a repair, but which may be a new work.

In other words, not structural work.

It says "or other works." The intention of paragraph (b) is not to refer to any form of treatment specified in the notice, but only to

"structural repairs or other works so specified."

If the order is not under subsection (2, b) it refers to "any structural work." That is why we deliberately use different words in subsection (5), which refers to "any structural works," whether they be structural repairs or other works speci- fied. Being "structural works," there is an appeal against them all. If the order does not affect structural work at all, an appeal does not lie—

The hon. Gentleman has missed the point.

Let me finish the sentence—but so long as the order requires work to be undertaken, such work being a structural repair or other work of a structural nature, the appeal does lie.

The whole point, which the hon. Gentleman has not answered, is this. If the work is not a structural work but a work of a different nature which can be specified under subsection (2, b), is it the intention or not to grant an appeal?

The hon. Gentleman is reading subsection (2, b) wrongly. The words are:

"The carrying out on the land of any structural repairs or other works."

"Structural" is quite clearly applicable to all the works in respect of which an order is served under subsection (2, b).

The Parliamentary Secretary seems to think that the words "structural works" can cover any sort of work. If one was ordered to build a new shed or a new wall to a shed, that would be a structural work. On the other hand, if one was ordered to stop up certain holes with cement, would that be a structural work or not? I should have said that it was a repair, but I am not a lawyer. Is it the Government's intention that this should cover repairs—

It says so. It says:

"The carrying out on the land"—

elsewhere in the Bill we state that "land" means any building or place upon the land—

"of any structural repairs."

Stopping up holes with cement is a structural repair.

That is all very well, but it says "any structural works" and not"repairs."

It does in subsection (2. b)

We are coming to the point, which has been brought out very clearly, that it is the desire of the Minister that all kinds of repairs which may be done shall have the right of appeal. It is clear that that is the opinion of the Parliamentary Secretary. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Mal-ton (Mr. Turton) put down this Amendment in order to clear up that point.

We do not seem to be on very strong ground in accepting the view of the Minister. He has his advisers, and we realise that he does his best in these matters, but my hon. Friend is a highly distinguished lawyer and a far better legal authority than anyone on the Government Front Bench. That being so, the House was right to examine this Amendment. With the complete lack of legal advice from the Government, I still tend to think that, in all probability, there is a great deal to be said for the Amendment, and I hope that it will be looked at on another occasion.

I beg to move, in page 7, line 15, to leave out from "require," to the end of line 17, and to insert:

"cause a local inquiry to be held; and the provisions of subsections (2) to (5) of section two hundred and ninety of the Local Government Act, 1933 (which relate to the giving of evidence at, and defraying the cost of, local inquiries), shall have effect with respect to any such inquiry as if the Minister were a department for the purposes of that section."

This Amendment is in accordance with an undertaking given by my right hon. Friend in Committee when we were pressed to look at this matter again and provide that an inquiry under this Clause should be a public inquiry and that there should not be discretion about it. The Clause meets that undertaking in full, and I hope the House will accept it.

I am glad the Minister has looked at this again, and has found that his suspicions about how the local authorities would behave were not well founded and that he can trust them. It is better to set in motion this procedure rather than to appoint a small local dictator to say what is right or wrong, and after that, if need be, to have an inquiry. I am sure that this is the right way to do it.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Orr-Ewing) upon his considerable success in getting something inserted in the Bill. He has worked very hard in these matters. Many local authorities have had doubts on this question of appeals, and there were anything but happy feelings about it. My hon. Friend has managed to get the Government into a frame of mind to accept this, and that is an extremely difficult thing to do. It is a sensible Amendment, and it is never easy to get the Government to accept a sensible Amendment. Also, the Government are strongly prejudiced against anything which gives fuller scope for inquiry into these matters. It is a remarkable victory. It is an advance to the hon. Gentleman's fuller democracy—

The hon. Gentleman must address himself to the Amendment.

The Amendment refers to a fuller right of appeal, and I was congratulating—

The hon. Gentleman has referred to that two or three times. He must address himself to the Amendment.

I am very sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I did not think I was not addressing myself to the Amendment. I am sure that I should not have been expected to omit giving the hon. Gentleman the fullest congratulation. If I wanted to go into the Amendment fully and to explain exactly why in every detail the hon. Gentleman and the Minister have been right in what they have done, I would do so, but as it is accepted by the whole House, it seemed to me that it would be by far the best thing to allow it to be accepted and to be put into law, and to congratulate the Minister—

The hon. Gentleman has prevented me from putting the Question four or five times—

rose—

I am on my feet. I now propose to put the Question.

On a point of Order. Am I not allowed to finish my speech, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Not now.

Surely I have accepted your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Surely I am allowed to congratulate the Minister and the Government upon their simple words. I have no intention of carrying on for another two minutes. I only wish to make that perfectly clear, and not in any way to controvert your Ruling.

I beg to move, in page 7, line 22, at the end, to insert:

"(6) In the application of this Section to Scotland for subsection (3) there shall be substituted the following subsection:—

'(3) Before making an order under this Section, the Secretary of State shall give to the local authority an opportunity of making representations to him and shall take into consideration any representations made and, if the authority so require, cause a local inquiry to be held; and the provisions of subsection (3) to (9) of Section three hundred and fifty-five of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947 (which relate to the giving of evidence at, and defraying the cost of, local inquiries), shall apply to any such inquiry'."

This Amendment extends the principle of the previous Amendment in the application of Clause 12 to Scotland.

We must congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland on being here to deal with this point, which has nothing to do with any other Minister. We are delighted to see him here, and I do not think anyone, even the Patronage Secretary, would grudge the few moments during which the hon. Gentleman has come here to do something right and sensible.

I wish to ask the hon. Member a question in connection with this Amendment to line 25. Does he think that the next Amendment, in line 26, namely, after "business," to insert "or functions," is consequential on the Amendment to line 25?

No, Sir, it is quite another point.

Then the hon. Member may move the second Amendment alone.

I beg to move, in page 7, line 26 after "business," to insert "or functions."

Now we come back to the old question of weevils and the infestation of food. As Clause 13 is now drafted it will empower or direct

"every person whose business consists of or includes the manufacture, storage, transport or sale of food"

to give notice when that food is infested. Our view—and I wish we had a Law Officer of the Crown to advise us—is that this is too narrow. We believe that by this Clause there will be raised the whole question of public boards who can—not be said to be carrying on a business, quite apart from the question of the Government Department, which we are not raising on this Amendment.

The House will recollect that under Clause 22 the Government are being granted special powers to deal with the Railway Executive. It would seem, therefore, that the Railway Executive are covered by Clause 13. If they are covered in Clause 22, they are covered in Clause 13; and if they are covered in Clause 13 we get the Railway Executive storing food, and they are not a Government Department. They are not carrying on the business of storing food, or even the sale of food. They are, in fact, carrying out a function laid on them by Parliament. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will examine this, and will accept this small Amendment which I believe is necessary for drafting purposes.

I beg to second the Amendment.

Here, again, we have taken the very best advice, and have come to the conclusion that the term "busi- ness," as the Bill now stands, amply covers the example which the hon. Gentleman has given, and all others of a similar nature. Our advice is that the word "function" would have a meaning only if one imported into the Bill Government Departments, of whom it could be said that they were not carrying on a business, but were carrying out a function laid upon them. Organisations like the Railway Executive do carry on a business therefore, the word "business" covers their functions.

I very much doubt it, for this reason. Whenever I hear of the Government doing something, or refusing to do something, which will make the position of a Department more clear to the ordinary layman—and it would seem to me that by the insertion of the words:

"including a Government Department"—

I am not quite clear about the hon. Member's meaning. The Amendment to insert the words:

"including a Government Department"

is not being called by you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. That being so, how can it be said that I am refusing to do something which would make the position of a Government Department clearer?

We are now discussing the Amendment to line 26, and not the Amendment to line 25.

I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I thought the two Amendments were being taken together. That is what you said at first, and then you changed—

The hon. Gentleman did not hear. I did not change my mind at all. I asked his hon. Friend whether he thought the second Amendment was consequential on the first. He said "No," and in those circumstances, I selected the second Amendment.

That is exactly what I intended to say, but I put it in slightly different words. I am not at all satisfied with what the hon. Gentleman has said, and I regret that there should be but a scant number of hon. Members present to deal with this very important matter, which affects every person in the community and that we have no high legal authority here to give us his opinion.

Here, I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams). I accept the assurance given by the Parliamentary Secretary, and on that account I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 9, line 6 after "section," to insert:

"prohibiting or restricting the use of any premises for the manufacture, storage or sale of food or".

I raised this matter in Committee, and the Minister said that he would look into it to see whether the position was exactly as he had stated it to be. Under certain conditions, if a responsibility is laid upon somebody trading in or storing food to carry out certain structural alterations, that individual has a right of appeal. If he is not fully satisfied his case could be examined. But the case I raised upstairs was based on the fear that, while the examination of the Ministry into the manner in which food is stored is welcomed, yet the position may arise under this section in which the owner of the premises might say, "I think that this particular place is now free of infestation," and the Ministry would say it was not.

So long as premises are not free of infestation nothing is allowed to go into it or come out, and the individual concerned is completely debarred from carrying on any trade. If the premises are still infested it is right that he should be so debarred, but if there is any possible doubt about whether he is right and the Ministry is wrong, there should be some form of appeal to enable the man to restart in business. I appreciate the point made in Committee that we could not have a continual flow of foodstuffs going in and out of premises which were suspected of being infested, pending the decision of an appeal. But I do not think it is beyond the wit of man to say that an individual who feels he is being wronged should have some form of appeal against the order. That is quite a different thing.

I am not suggesting there should be freedom to move stuff in and out of infected premises pending the result of an appeal. I do say that the man should have the right to go to appeal and to say, "My advisers or my scientists"—because some of these problems are highly scientific—"tell me that the premises are quite clear. I have done everything I am supposed to do and I wish to re-start, but you say I must not, because something else should be done." I think it would be only fair to insert something of the nature of the Amendment in the Bill. I hope we shall get some encouragement from the Minister, and that he will accept this Amendment.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I do not think I can add anything to what my hon. Friend has said. There may be a loss of income to the user, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept our Amendment.

I did give the hon. Member an assurance after the Committee stage that I would look very carefully into this. I thought at the time that we had the same point of view. Since then I have had an opportunity of discussing the matter with various associations that are likely to give directions, and I have received from them an undertaking that the moment a direction has served its purpose, it will be instantaneously withdrawn.

Are they to be the sole arbiters? That is the point. If we can get some assurance from the Minister that they themselves will not be the sole arbiters, but that there will be some undertaking about general consultation—some review of the position—then I think that will be quite satisfactory. That is probably the intention, but if the right hon. Gentleman could say so, I think it would be helpful.

The assurance I am giving, or trying to give, perhaps vaguely, is that the trade associations themselves are the people with whom we discussed the matter, and they agreed that, so long as a direction that has served its purpose is immediately withdrawn, nobody will be punished thereby.

I do not think that that is entirely satisfactory whilst it is not in the Bill. I agree that it binds the present Minister of Agriculture. However, it does not bind his successors. It is one of those nice assurances given by well-meaning Ministers that have no validity in an Act of Parliament. Knowing the Minister of Agriculture, I know that he will always implement his assurance, but I do not know what the Prime Minister may do; there may be some change in the Ministry, and there may be another Pharaoh and everything may go entirely differently. That assurance, therefore, is completely wiped out. I do see the Minister's difficulty about the Amendment, but I think that before we part with the Bill we ought to have some surety for a form of appeal for a business, the livelihood from which may be lost on quite insufficient grounds. I should like the Minister to consider this matter before the Third Reading. We want more than a verbal assurance. We want a written assurance in this Bill.

I am sure the Minister is at the moment in conference on what my hon. Friends have said. I wish he would consider that. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Mahon (Mr. Turton) has just said about the Minister. I have agreed with that on many occasions. However, it is a most unsatisfactory position that we are dependent, not on legislation which is passed, but on an assurance not in the legislation. From that point of view my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should endeavour at some stage in the passage of the Bill to get an assurance inserted of the sort the Minister has given, so that the Minister's good wishes are expressed in the language of the Bill. That is all we want. The right hon. Gentleman can do it if he will.

In partial gratitude and with great hope, in view of the right hon. Gentleman's statement, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 11, line 4, to leave out "rats, mice."

We have got now to Part III of the Bill. The House will recollect that Part I deals with rats and mice, and that Part II deals with weevil and other pests. Now we have the Supplemental Part. It is, in our view, unnecessary here to give the Minister power to make regulations controlling the methods used for rats and mice because he has already that power under Clause 12. If he has the power under Clause 12 it would appear that to put additional power in here is entirely unnecessary. The House may fairly ask us, "Why has this matter suddenly come up now?". The answer is that the Government have been getting rid of their rather awkward use of the word "infestation," a process which originated in another place and was proceeded with in Standing Committee. In Committee the Government brought provisions respecting rats and mice into Part III of the Bill.

It does seem to us important that those who operate the Measure, the local authorities, the individual occupiers or the pest destruction contractors, should have clearly set out, where they can easily find them, these different powers of the Minister. By their muddling up Part I with Part III, and by their bringing matters relating to rats and mice into Clause 19, we think the Government are doing a disservice. We raised this matter on the Committee stage. The Government promised they would look into it again and move the necessary Amendments on Report stage. In this and in many other cases the Government, although, no doubt, they did look at it, have shown no outward and visible sign of their inward research, and I hope, therefore, that the Minister will tell us what has been the result of his researches.

I beg to second the Amendment.

It does seem to me that the Minister is doing the very thing he was trying to avoid when he resisted us upstairs in dealing with Clause 12, which really is the governing Clause as regards the powers of local authorities over those who live within their respective areas. If now the Minister is going, so to speak, to whittle down the authority of local authorities by giving direct instructions under this Clause, as regards rats and mice, to people carrying on trade and business within the areas of the local authorities, then, I think, confusion will be quite inordinately confounded. It is rather as though we had somebody coming from the Service authority and inspecting an Army unit and saying he did not care at all about what the general officer commanding had to say about it. I use that illustration because we have been assured many times that this Bill is the beginning of a battle and a campaign against rats and mice.

If we were to cut out rats and mice from the Supplemental Part of the Bill and from this Clause, surely it would be perfectly simple to add something, if need be—I do not think it would be necessary myself—to Clause 12 which would say that directions and regulations, and so on, could be made governing the individuals concerned with certain areas, as well as governing and encouraging the activities of local authorities. That is the intention of the Government. They want to govern the two, the individual and the local authority. If that is the intention it would have been more honest to face up to that on Clause 12. As they have not done that, they have not a leg to stand on in trying to keep the words in Clause 19.

I am sure the Minister is, inadvertently, doing something very dangerous to his own authority and to the authority of local authorities. As long as these words remain, what is the position of the local authority if it is brought up on to the mat and told, "So and so is not dealing properly with rats and mice"? The local authority would reply, "He is one of the chaps you deal with directly from the Ministry." That seems to offer a complete defence to the local authority for not having done anything at all. In that sense to retain these words is very dangerous. I wish we could have had an opportunity of debating these words on an Amendment affecting subsection (1) of Clause 12, which is very relevant to this Amendment. I hope the Minister will give some sympathetic consideration to this Amendment and will fully consider the implications.

Obviously, there is still a considerable misunderstanding which I hope we can now remove. Incidentally, every reference the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Orr-Ewing) made to Clause 12, should be read as Clause 13, as this matter arises on Clause 13, not on Clause 12.

I beg pardon.

It is not true that Part I applies to rats and mice and that nothing else in the Bill does. Part I authorises directions to local authorities. Part II has particular reference to loss of food from food stores, the manufacture, transport and so on of food and, in that connection, the Minister takes the place taken by the local authority under Clause 1. Infestation of food stores, warehouses, vehicles and so on, obviously includes infestation by rats and mice as well as by weevils and insects. It would be absurd if it did not. Obviously, if one is dealing with one matter, one must be in a position to deal with the other. The difference is not one of insect or pest, but one of mechanics in dealing with the matter.

Part III gives the Minister power in certain circumstances to control the operations of the commercial servicing contractors and to see that they are using up-to-date and approved methods. It would be nonsense to have power to control people who are operating against weevils and insects and not to have power in similar circumstances, if justified, to control those operating against rats and mice. The reason why the words "rats, mice" are here, is to keep that power for the servicing contractors. By leaving these words in, we keep the definition straight all through the Bill and at no stage are we out of line, or importing into one part of the Bill something which is dealt with in another.

Is it not possible, under the Clause as it stands, for the Minister to make an order covering the activities of a commercial undertaking, and, at the same time, to make an order covering the activities of a local authority within whose area the undertaking stands?

Not at this point. We had a discussion about that on an earlier stage upstairs. If the Minister gives a direction to a local authority, it will be about the carrying out of its functions, but that is quite a separate point. All we are doing here is to make sure that we have the power to see that approved, up-to-date and safe methods are used.

I have listened to the arguments with very great care and I appreciate all that my hon. Friend has said in favour of leaving out the words "rats, mice." I think the case is very strong from some points of view, but, having listened to the Parliamentary Secretary with equal care, as I always do, I have been rather weighted against my hon. Friend's view. On this occasion I think the Parliamentary Secretary made a reasonable case, although he might have explained it a little better, as to why rats, mice, insects and mites should all go together. In a building where there are rats and mice there may be infestation by some sort of mite as well. Also, if there are a lot of insects in a building they are likely to encourage rats and mice. I feel I must add my voice to that of the Parliamentary Secretary in asking my hon. Friends not to press this Amendment to a Division. I am sure much could be said for it, but if we once cut out "rats, mice" we might have divided, or dual authority, and from that point of view it would be far better if the Amendment were not accepted.

I am quite convinced by what the Parliamentary Secretary has said. If the words "rats, mice" are allowed here, he might issue directions dealing with non-virus poisons, about which I spoke earlier and for that reason alone, I now feel the words should remain. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 11, line 30, to leave out from the second "the," to the end of line 31, and to insert:

"destruction of rats and mice on any land."

We want a little clarification from the Parliamentary Secretary as to what he means by these words. It may be that they are left over from the original Bill before it was amended in the House of Lords. It would appear, if these words are left in, that we would be using the services of the pest control committee to deal not only with rats and mice, but with mites and weevils. We should like to know what is the intention of the Government in this matter. I think the right thing to do would be to leave the problem of the food services, Ministry of Food dumps and storage of grain, not to agricultural executive committees, but to the Minister's own officers in each province, and to concentrate on keeping -down rats and mice by the county committees provided in that respect. It may be that the Minister has some reason for wanting these words kept in, rather than our more clear words and, if I move this Amendment in the form of an inquiry, he may give an explanation.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The point here is quite a narrow one. We wish to leave subsection (2) wide enough for county agricultural executive committees in any area which are in a position to render assistance in regard to the treatment or prevention of infestation in warehouses, food stores, etc., to be able to render it. We wish to keep the position in this respect in line not only with Part I of the Bill, but also with Part II. This provision does not transfer responsibility from any one to someone else. It simply makes it clear that if a situation exists now or in the future in which a county committee is in a position to render assistance of the kind I have described, the Minister will be in a position to be able to use that assistance.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 11, line 38, after "general," to insert "or specific."

This point was raised during the Committee stage, and the point of this Amendment is to bring Clause 21 in line with Clause 12. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary said that he would think about it although on the Committee stage he was not very hopeful. We should be grateful to know what are the results of his thoughts since that date.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The answer is very simple. A local authority may, for example, have allowed conditions in their own sewers, refuse dumps or other properties in their occupation to get in such a condition as to necessitate urgent and immediate action. If such conditions arise in properties in their own occupation, they cannot expect to be treated differently from any other occupiers. To proceed by statutory instrument would be to introduce an unnecessary formality when dealing with an individual local authority, which is already subject to a general direction. That is my only reason for refusing to accept a provision for specific directions as distinct from general directions in cases in which we have to deal with a local authority who has itself defaulted in its own property.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 12, line 1, after "authorised," to insert "for that purpose."

We are here dealing with the question of powers of entry which are being given to officers of the local authority. The safeguard which the Minister is proposing in the Bill is merely that an officer must have an authority, that is to say that he is authorised by the local authority. We do not consider that to be sufficient. We ask that he shall be duly authorised to enter the premises for this specific purpose. There have been numerous complaints in recent months about inspectors of Ministries having abused their power to enter premises. It is important to the housewives of this country that there should be proper safeguards against any such abuse of power. I believe that we should put into the Bill the words of this Amendment so that any such person shall be "duly authorised for that purpose." I agree that local authority officials have not been so guilty of the indiscriminate use of powers of entry as have been the officials of certain Ministries. None the less, I believe that Parliament should take care to see that the interests of those who occupy these premises are amply safeguarded.

I beg to second the Amendment.

In these days of inspectors we must see that they are more fully armed with some authority in writing to show that they are authorised to enter these premises. We find that the homes of the people in this country are being increasingly invaded by people demanding to see something or other. We know of cases in which inspectors come along in pairs—always in pairs—in a motorcar and demand to know whether the occupier of some property has a wireless set or not. The citizens of this country are entitled to be protected against these deluges of officials who come to see what they are doing. In this case any inspector, whether he be a Ministry inspector or a rural district council inspector, should be fully armed with powers which he can present to the housewife or whoever may be concerned, to show that he has the authority to enter and inspect.

Here again we are concerned with quite a small point to which an amply satisfactory answer can be given. Clause 22 says:

"Any person duly"—

let me emphasise that word—

"authorised in writing by a local authority for the purposes of Part I of this Act, …"

The person who has the right to enter is the person duly authorised in writing by the local authority; he has authority and can show it when requested. The point is whether we could narrow this provision by saying that he must not only have proper authorisation in writing but that it must be for this particular purpose, means, for example, that a sanitary inspector who would be duly authorised to enter for unrelated functions would require to have an ad hoc authorisation for this particular visit. We think that that is unnecessary. He carries authorisation from his local authority duly authorising him to enter premises for quite a range of duties which are within his province, of which this is only one.

In reference to one of the comments of the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin), I would point out that before this Government ever came into office there were sanitary inspectors with rights to enter homes, and it has been held to be sufficient for them to have the authorisation which they are already given. We think that should be so and it is not because of any lack of sympathy with the point that has been raised but because we are certain that so long as the officer has authorisation in writing in relation to duties for which he is responsible that we take the view that there is sufficient safeguard.

It is a matter of opinion whether the acceptance of this Amendment would strengthen the position or otherwise. I agree that "duly" is a safeguard and I agree that it is conceivable that the words "for this purpose" might rule out the sanitary inspector, but there is no reason why he should not have the two authorisations with him—his ordinary authorisation for ordinary matters and a special authorisation for this purpose. That could be added to his ordinary authorisation, so that there is no difficulty in that respect. At the present time in many districts we are overwhelmed with visitors of this kind; we just do not know who is coming. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary said that there were sanitary inspectors before this Government came into power. Of course there were. The whole great sanitary system of this country was built up long before this Government. That is not the point, however.

The point is that whenever we on this side of the House try, as we are trying by this Amendment, to make it more difficult for more inspectors to go into more homes without the people in those homes knowing precisely why they have come, we almost invariably meet with flat disapproval on the part of the Government. They say that they sympathise but never under any circumstances, or at least very rarely, do they give way in the least on these matters, unless we can put strong enough pressure upon them. The point with which we are now concerned is a matter of opinion and is not one for the consideration of which very deep legal knowledge is required. I think that the Bill would have been better rather than worse by the addition of this Amendment. The ordinary people of this country would have less reason to fear the position which is being created by the Bill. I know the Parliamentary Secretary does not wish to burden people, but he is not the real authority. There are people above him who drive him into wicked ways.

I beg to move, in page 12, leave out lines 15 to 20.

These lines specify that when officials enter on a railway undertaking they are to comply with any reasonable requirements of the British Transport Commission.

On a point of Order. Would it be for the convenience of the House if we could discuss, with this Amendment, the next three Amendments to lines 16, 19 and 20 in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir T. Dugdale)? They all seem to cover a similar point and they follow the introduction of these words.

I am quite prepared to do that. If not, I should have to put the question to leave out line 15 and then 16. If the House would like to discuss them all together I shall be happy to allow that to be done.

That would be for the convenience of the House.

Since the next three or four Amendments would fall if the present Amendment were accepted, perhaps they might all be debated at the same time.

I hope my right hon. Friend will accept my Amendment and that will do away with the necessity of a long discussion on the following Amendments. The inclusion of any specific undertaking in this way always narrows the field of operation and, therefore, restricts it. As the following Amendments show, other hon. Members have been seized of this point. I think it would be unreasonable to suggest that when local government officers enter upon any property they will behave in an unreasonable fashion in the exercise of their duty under Part I of the Bill. We could, therefore, leave it to their discretion and generally reasonable behaviour on property, including railway property. I hope, therefore, the Minister will accept my contention that these lines are unnecessary and will accept my Amendment.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I hope the Government will accept it, especially in view of the readiness of one or two hon. Members opposite to enjoy themselves on subsequent Amendments.

I, too, hope the Government will accept this Amendment. We were not very happy when the Parliamentary Secretary put in this proviso on the Committee stage excepting one of the nationalised industries. Our argument has always been that if we are to except one of the nationalised industries then we must except all. Moreover, we fear that if this Government continued much longer there would be very few rats which would not be able to claim immunity on the grounds that they were nationalised rats. I do not think the Government meant to exclude nationalised rats. I feel that the Parliamentary Secretary was rushed into putting this Amendment down in Committee and that, on more mature reflection, he will realise that he has placed himself in a tactical difficulty and that the whole House is against him in his desire to have these words in the Bill.

If the Minister intends to be adamant in this matter, to use disciplinary measures against his Parliamentary friends and to keep in this proviso, then on grounds of common sense it must not be limited to the nationalised railways. After all, the electricity department is just as important from this point of view; there is as much danger in awkward inspections of generating stations as there may be in awkward inspections of the railway lines. I am told—although I do not know so much about coal and the Parliamentary Secretary does—that, equally on the grounds of security and safety, the National Coal Board could argue that they should be included. I warn hon. Members that if the Government are successful—and I hope they will not be—in getting the Iron and Steel Bill through, we shall have to introduce Private Members' legislation to obtain immunity from this Clause for iron and steel works. I hope that, in view of all that has been said and in view of the fact that Winchester and Yorkshire are together, and that Uxbridge is lending support, the Parliamentary Secretary will now give way.

One of the remarkable things about the British Parliamentary system is that we can move an Amendment into a Bill at one stage and accept an Amendment taking it out at another stage; and that I do. As the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. G. Jeger) has said, there were considerable discussions on this in Committee. Since then I have followed up those discussions and heard also the strong views of other people who were not able to be on the Committee. We are, therefore, glad to bow to the wishes of all sides of the House and to take out this proviso. I am sure that will leave the position quite safe and very much less cumbersome. Further, I am sure the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) need not worry; there are quite a number of rats still about in private enterprise.

These are very curious tactics, putting in an Amendment in one stage and taking it out at another. On the other hand, on the whole we support the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. G. Jeger) and we are pleased that he saw fit to move this Amendment. Our motto was, "Either all in or all out." It seemed to us to be quite a fantastic position to have one nationalised undertaking included in the proviso and everyone else outside it. The Government have seen fit to bow to the representations of the House and my hon. Friends and I are grateful they have done so.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

I do not think the House would wish that I should detain them for any length of time this afternoon and I will, therefore, say only a few words. This very short, but nevertheless not unimportant Bill has been very thoroughly debated in the course of its passage, and it is proper that that should be so. It may be that some hon. Members will feel that, even with all the discussions we have had, the Bill contains some weaknesses, but I think I should be in order in claiming that the general objectives of the Bill are welcomed and approved in all parts of the House. Rats and mice and food insects are responsible for enormous, and we believe avoidable, losses in our food supplies.

The Debates on the Bill have been carried on in a constructive and helpful spirit. Although the Minister has not been able to accept many of the Amendments proposed by hon. Members opposite, he nevertheless appreciates that all the criticisms they have made were made in the right spirit and were calculated to improve the Bill. I need only say that the real purpose, as far as we can achieve it—and I feel sure that will be the aim of the local authorities responsible under Part I of the Bill—will be not only that the campaign against rats and mice and food infestation shall be prosecuted with vigour, but that it shall also be conducted in such a way as to interfere as little as possible with the course of trade and domestic life in this country.

I am delighted that at last the Joint Under-Secretary has come into this question of rats and mice. We have missed him a lot and we have missed Scotland. I always felt that Scotland had a great deal to teach England in this question of rats and mice and pests and I have missed the hon. Member's co-operation for some time. The only other Minister we might have had present is the Minister of Health; at one time he started seeing blue rats. I wonder why he has not come today. I believe there was a time, when the iron and steel industry was not being nationalised, that he began to see pink rats, but I understand that now, after Blackpool, when he got an ovation from his party, and now that the iron and steel industry is to be nationalised, he sees only blue rats again.

Is this Bill the best that can be devised? That is the question we must consider. There is no party division on this Measure, but there is a real division of opinion whether this is the most efficient and economic weapon that we can use against the rats. I should like hon. Mem- bers seriously to examine this Bill on those grounds. First, let us take the question of economies. It is important that we should not waste public money unnecessarily on any branch of public expenditure. I noticed that earlier today the Parliamentary Secretary said that the question of economy did not enter into this matter. Indeed, the question of economy is of vital importance. The expenditure of money for this purpose may be a grievous burden to the taxpayer and may affect the cost of production of every article we manufacture. In England we are spending very large sums on the destruction of rats, mice and other pests.

I have here the Civil Estimates for the current year. Under Subhead A, which refers to salaries, there will be spent under this Bill a sum of £200,000 on 459 officials. Under Vote P—grants to local authorities—under this Bill the Minister proposes to spend £385,000 this year. Under Vote 9—agricultural production—the Minister proposes to spend £112,000 on 260 pest officers in the County Agricultural Executive Committees. Again, for the control of pests by County Agricultural Executive Committees, he proposes to expend another £425,000, and he will employ, 1,350 people. Judging from this document, which is all the information we have at the moment, it would appear that this year the costs under this Bill will be over £1,100,000 and the number of persons I have mentioned will total 2,069. That is only a small part of the cost. There will have to be a full staff of rat catchers for every local authority involved. That will mean that in 1,000 local authorities, if the Bill is to operate properly, there will have to be an increase in staff.

In recent years many local authorities have allowed these functions to be carried out by the sanitary inspector of the council. But that will not be good enough if the men are to be given the responsibilities mentioned in Clause 2. I think the Minister recognises this, because this year he has raised the grants to local authorities by a sum of £50,000. That means that he envisages at the moment an additional expenditure of £100,000. This is a considerable sum. We shall be spending on rats, mice and weevils, a sum of well over £1 million in taxation alone. In addition, we shall be spending a large unascertainable sum through the local authorities.

I am glad that the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is present. I wish he had given rather fuller reasons why he approved this Measure, because, from the Estimates, the matter is dealt with in Scotland in an entirely different way. In Scotland the expenditure is £6,000 a year for the pests committees and £52,000 in grants to local authorities. They do not spend a great sum, such as £200,000 on the salaries of officials dealing with infestation control, as is spent by the Ministry of Agriculture. They do not have this great expenditure of £537,000 for the county agricultural executive committees. Expenditure on pests control in Scotland is limited to the amount of £6,000. Before we pass this Bill I should like to know whether Scotland is very rat-ridden and weevil worsted as a result of this smaller expenditure. That is the main question: why should there be this great disparity in expenditure between Scotland and England? I had hoped to get enlightenment when I saw the Joint Under-Secretary get up to move the Third Reading, but he did not touch on that matter.

In Scotland they have been wise enough not to change their administrative set-up for dealing with rats, mice and weevils. They use the same methods and their expenses do not appear to have increased in the last year. But the Ministry of Agriculture adopt a different attitude. In order to provide for this Bill they have enlisted in this Department the help of an extra 30 officers in the last year for infestation control, and they anticipate that grants to local authorities will be increased by £50,000. Yet, when this Bill was first introduced, the Explanatory Memorandum said that there would be no significant increase in administrative expenditure. That hardly seems to be borne out by the Estimates published after this Bill was introduced, because there was this vast increase both in salaries at Headquarters and in grants to local authorities. I believe that we are spending too much money on pest destruction. A smaller amount of money, taking the example of Scotland, could achieve as efficient results, with a consequent gain to the taxpayer.

I turn to the other limb of the argument—the ground of efficiency. Is this set-up under the Bill the most efficient way of dealing with the problems caused by rats, mice and weevils? I refer first to the weevil. I am not yet happy that under the measures proposed in this Bill the Ministry will be able to deal with he weevil. The local authorities are given no control over the weevil, especially when it is in a Government store. The only authority for dealing with the weevil is the Minister of Agriculture and his Department, under Part II of the Bill. I have spent much time at Question Time drawing the attention of Government Departments to cases of weevil infestation of grain. When I drew their attention to it, they said that they had found that the grain was infested, but that they immediately had the matter put right. That has been going on for the last six months. Only on 3rd July, I tried to draw the attention of the Minister of Agriculture to a case, but the matter was directed to the Ministry of Food, and the Minister replied that 280 tons of barley at Borough-bridge had been infested by weevil, and that he had given orders that it had to be removed at once. This is a very great waste of the people's food, and we ought to be quite satisfied that the powers of the Minister of Agriculture under Part II of this Bill are sufficient to deal with the weevil.

However, let me address myself chiefly to the main point, which is the question of the destruction of rats and mice. Under this Bill, we are going to have a clear dualism in the administration of the destruction of these pests. Unlike Scotland, where I believe the local authorities carry out the destruction of rats and mice by their own rodent officers, it is the intention of this Government by the terms of Part I of this Bill to have the district councils to administer it by their staff, and, at the same time, to retain the pests officers of each county agricultural executive committee. We have tried today to secure some delegation of functions from the one to the other, so that the local authorities may delegate their functions to the county agricultural executive committees. That was one solution, but there is another, equally good, and that is to hand over the whole of the powers of the pests control committees and of the county committees to the local authorities, as is done in Scotland. I believe either alternative—

The county agricultural executive committees do not do this service in Scotland; it is done by the Department. I have been listening very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has been saying, and inasmuch as he was asking my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture to follow the example of Scotland, he was asking for more centralised control.

I gather that what the Joint Under-Secretary has been saying is that in Scotland they do not exercise any powers of pest control in the county agricultural executive committees. The hon. Gentleman says all that is done by the Department. I think he will agree with me that no expenditure by the Department is incurred except by way of grants, to local authorities, who carry out their functions under the Act.

No. The Department of Agriculture has a pests service and pests officers, and they do operate in the local authority areas in consultation and conjunction with the local authorities, who also have their pests officers, and the setup is not so very different from the English set-up, as the hon. Gentleman suggests.

I am grateful to the Joint Under-Secretary. Scotland does it very much cheaper and does not have these unwieldy pests control committees under the county agricultural executive committees. Therefore, they have less of the dualism than we have in England.

I believe that this Bill does not face up to the problem which we put to the Government initially, which was that we found in our constituencies that the cottage, the farm and the factory were being dealt with by different officers. If there was a rat in a cottage, we got the sanitary inspector coming along from the local authority, and it was his job to kill the rat. If it was a rat on a farm, we had the pests officer from the county agricultural executive committee. I am saying that that dualism has not yet been resolved, and I believe that that is the measure of the failure of the Government at the present time.

Quite apart from that, we have the problem that, in many parts of the country, there is no way in which this Bill could operate. I refer to all the mili- tary encampments and Ministry of Works hutments, where rats are bound to congregate, in regard to which the Ministry have refused to allow any part of this Bill to operate. Certainly, there are other areas which have been turned into battle training grounds—

That is not a matter which we can discuss on Third Reading. What is not in the Bill cannot be discussed on Third Reading.

I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker, if I have broken the rules of Order, but I was trying to criticise the powers in the Bill by saying that they were limited. I thought that so long as I merely said that without going into undue detail, I was not breaking any rule of Order. Am I not allowed, Mr. Speaker, to draw attention to the limit of the powers?

One may mention that they are limited, but one may not go into the details of how they are limited.

I bow to your Ruling, Sir. From what has happened today, it is clear that the powers in the Bill are very limited in that respect. This is a Measure with which we all have a certain amount of sympathy. We all want this war against the rats, but we want it to be economical and efficient.

I hope that after the criticisms that have been made, both at this stage and on previous stages, the Minister of Agriculture and the Parliamentary Secretary will go into the whole question of how they are going to administer their powers under the Bill in order to secure full efficiency and greater economy. That is something which they have wide powers to do. There is no reason why we should spend E1 million of the taxpayers' money on this service if it can be carried out as efficiently at less cost. I hope that when he replies the Parliamentary Secretary will give us the assurance that he as the assistant chief of the Department will look into the whole of this question to see if some of these problems cannot be remedied by administrative measures under the Bill. For those reasons, while I shall not vote against the Bill if it goes to a Division, I cannot vote in favour of it, because it has not been im- proved as I hoped it would be when it was first introduced. When the Parliamentary Secretary takes out his administrative pruning hook, I trust that he will cut out all unnecessary expenditure.

I wish to reinforce the argument put forward by my hon. Friend with regard to expenditure. During the last few years we have been passing through a series of recurring economic crises, and this Bill which we are placing on the Statute Book this afternoon only adds to our troubles. We cannot pull ourselves out of the mess in which we are today if we keep on taking the responsibility from the individual and placing it on the shoulder of the State.

What the hon. Gentleman is now saying arose under the new Clause which the House rejected, and, therefore, he cannot discuss that.

I wanted to make my protest against the cost of this Bill and to say why I thought it was too expensive. I wanted to say that in running these controls, the Minister should take care that the scheme is self-supporting with regard to cost. It should not be possible for cases such as that which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Grinstead (Colonel Clarke) quoted to arise He cited the case where a single rat was seen in a garden and where the good lady of the house told the gardener to communicate with the local authority in order to have it killed. Two strong men with spades, ferrets and a terrier came down to the house in a motor car and killed the rat. Although the operation was successful, I believe that had the good lady known that she was going to be charged with the expense of it, she would have got the gardener to kill the rat. Unless we tackle the series of Measures which are taking away the responsibility of the individual citizen and placing it on the State, we shall go on getting our country into a bigger mess than it is at the present time.

I should like to explain my own feelings on this Bill. I am very disappointed that nobody on either side of the House has been allowed to improve this Bill as many of us would have liked to see it improved. I entirely agree that the danger of running an expensive service without 100 per cent. efficiency is a danger which we must examine very closely. The figures which have been quoted on this side of the House appear to show a certain measure either of inefficiency or extravagance. Therefore, if the Bill is loose enough to allow extravagance or inefficiency, it is not as good a Bill as it could have been. Against that—I am trying to be absolutely fair—we must consider the value of the loss of foodstuffs in this country as a result of the effects of rats, mice, weevil and so forth.

I do not think that we have been given enough information to tie up the sort of expensive steps which this country is being asked to make under a centralised system, with all sorts of international steps which are being taken through an international organisation. During the whole course of the Debates there has been no mention of that aspect of the matter. Neither has there been mention of something which is dealt with in the Bill—the question of the damage that is done not only to stored crops but to growing crops. There are certain things we can do, but it seems to me that the powers have been so limited by the action of the Government that the Bill loses a great deal of its value.

From the point of view of principle, I cannot see how any Government which has respect for local authorities can have allowed certain Clauses to remain in this Bill. We have tried persistently at all stages to reinforce the powers of local authorities and to show that this House recognises their efficiency and keenness to get on with the job. We have tried to reinforce and encourage the activities of the individual, but we did not expect that the Minister would have insisted on retaining in the Bill Clauses which definitely whittle down the responsibility of local authorities. Nobody who studies Clause 12 can read into it anything other than a limiting effect on the local authority.

The Minister insisted in the Committee stage that he had to have the right to dictate the details of the measures which would be taken by the local authorities to deal with rats and mice. That is the most preposterous suggestion in this Bill. How can it be said in one breath, first, that we trust the local authorities to get on with this job and that, therefore, under this Bill we should give them powers; secondly, that we are going to direct the local authorities meticulously as to how they should carry out those powers; and, thirdly, that if they do not carry out the job at all we shall nominate somebody else to do the job in their area? If we link all those three factors together they do not make sense at all.

If the local authorities fail to perform properly their functions which are carefully set out in Clause 2, the Minister has power to set up an inquiry and appoint somebody else. For heaven's sake, if he does not trust the local authorities and finds they are not doing their job, they are the last people in the world to be given detailed instructions on how to carry it out; if they have failed to do their job in the first place, they are more than likely to fail again, and the Minister should nominate someone from outside. It is most regrettable that this slur in regard to the capabilities of local authorities should be allowed to remain in the Bill, where responsibility is pretended to be thrown upon them. It can only mean that the Minister does not believe for one moment that the local authorities are going to do the job, and that in future months he wants the whole thing directed to his own Ministry. It does not make sense.

We have removed the encouragement to the individual to do the job himself and have put the power in the hands of the local authorities, but we have then said that we do not trust them, which means that the only person left in the picture is the Minister. I should have thought that the Minister was going to have plenty on his hands in the coming months without having to pay detailed attention to this problem of rats and mice.

I should have liked to be able to give this Bill my full support, because in this country and throughout the world the loss of foodstuffs in store and in transit is so vast that any step which can be taken to reduce it is a valuable one. Frankly, I do not think these steps are of the value they should have been, and if closer consideration had been given to the matter, with joint consideration in the international field, we should have had a much better Measure.

One of the difficulties of a Bill going to Standing Committee is that we cannot go into all the points we would wish to raise. I would draw attention to Clause 25. Under that Clause, certain regulations can be made by the Minister dealing with those who can claim pensions either for loss or diminution of employment, particularly in reference to those who have been engaged in the Services. As we are leaving it to the Minister to make these regulations, it would not be inappropriate to ask him to assure the House that adequate pensions are to be paid, both in this country and in the North. In Clause 22, we have this proviso:

"Provided that where a person is authorised as aforesaid to enter upon any land belonging to a railway undertaking he shall, in exercising his powers under this subsection, comply with any reasonable requirements of the British Transport Commission or other persons carrying on the undertaking for preventing interference with railway traffic."

I am not at all sure precisely what that means.

That Clause was deleted on Report.

That is all to the good. That leaves me with another matter on which we should have some further explanation, and that is the question of Scotland. On the Report stage I referred to my doubts about the application of this Bill to Scotland, and I hoped that we might have an assurance from the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland that there is a plan for dealing with the problem in Scotland. I consider it very necessary that this Bill should give adequate powers there.

My first objection to this Bill is that Clause 21 adds to the number of Statutory Orders with which this Houes has to deal. That is a matter about which there has been much complaint in the past, yet this Bill now adds to the burdens of the House of Commons in that respect. It also adds considerably to the burdens of local authorities. Both those matters are the subject of much complaint throughout the country. I deprecate the imposition of these additional burdens, and I here wish to take the opportunity of emphasising my disagreement with the continual piling on of Statutory Orders, and the additional work imposed on local authorities. True, a grant is given, but at the same time their work is being added to, and they will have to find additional money themselves.

Those are the respects in which I consider the Bill defective. There is no doubt about our agreement on the main principles of the Bill. We agree on the necessity for the destruction of rats and mice, which Part I endeavours to deal with, on the stopping of the infestation of food, which is dealt with in Part II, and on the sort of combined operation set out in Part III. My only doubt is whether, it is necessary to have so long and complicated a Measure. Could we not have cut out many of the Causes, and had in their stead something much simpler, which would relieve the country of the obligation of so often sending two officials in a motor car to deal with one rat? While people recognise the necessity of destroying rats, mice, and other pests, they are apt to think that there is another and larger pest that they would like to see in the Bill, and that is the Government official. I will not enlarge on that.

The very fact that this Bill has come forward at this stage of the Session, and that both sides of the House are working together to try to make it a good Measure which will help to wipe out those pests which are responsible for so much of the present destruction of food, shows that we are prepared to deal with this matter amicably if possible. Nevertheless, there are in the Bill certain provisions which might well have been omitted, and certain Amendments might have made it a better Bill. Personally, I deeply regret that today the Government have not been more accommodating towards our attempt to remove some of the bad points in this Bill. Something might have been done to make it easier for the local authorities who have so much to do under the Bill, and, in certain circumstances, to arrange that work in a more efficient way. The Government have added to their burden in a way which is rather mean.

Having said those things about the Bill, and having made one or two protests against parts of the Bill earlier, I have only one thing to add. It is something which I said on Second Reading, that no matter how many pest officers and regulations we have, whatever we do on paper and in theory, nothing will kill off rats and mice with such efficiency as the ordinary house cat. Beyond that, nothing will stop pests and weevils and the other things which interfere with our food distribution while we have the incompetent administration of the Government as a whole.

In view of the enormous damage done in the past by rats, I welcome the Bill, even though it is not quite in the form in which we would like it. It must be an economic proposition to save £1 worth of food by spending 10s. It would even be worth doing if it cost £1 to save £1 worth of food, because we should at the same time be getting rid of the menace and nuisance of rats and the diseases they carry. I want to remind the House that two years ago I pointed out on the Adjournment, the menace of the rat and that it was an hon. Gentleman opposite who had the House counted out. Now the Government are at last listening to the words I used then.

I want to refer to two points. One is the responsibility of the occupier, which we thought ought to be in the Bill. I hope that the publicity which this Debate will have brought to it will have the effect we desire. The other point is that the Minister told us that he will take great care that Government Departments comply with the Bill, but he did not tell us what he will do if they do not comply and that matter is still in an unsatisfactory state. I hope that private people will make a great effort to see that the Bill works, that Government Departments will play their part, and that all parties will carry out the provisions to the best of their ability.

Throughout we have treated this Measure as a machinery Bill, and we wanted to be satisfied that the machinery is as good as can be devised. We have made certain amendments, and while we are not satisfied that the machinery is as efficient as can be devised, we believe that it is better than what was proposed when the Bill came to us on Second Reading.

When the Bill gets into full operation, a large number of people will be em- ployed and a great deal of public money will be spent. I commend to the Government the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) when they are considering the operation of the Bill. It is difficult to make any assessment of cost, but during the Committee stage as a rough guide we said £1 a rat. That may be an exaggeration, but at all events it will be very costly. The damage done by rats is very serious, but the House will agree that in a machinery Bill of this nature, designed to destroy rats and mice and to eliminate weevils, whoever administers it must watch the financial end and be certain that, in the national interests, they are getting value for money.

With those provisos, my right hon. and hon. Friends do not propose to divide against the Measure, but merely urge the Government to be very vigilant in their administration of the Bill when it becomes an Act.