I wish to make a statement. I have to inform the House that I have received an invitation to attend a ceremonial sitting of the Tynwald, in the Isle of Man, to mark the centenary of the democratically elected House of Keys. The House will know that, during several centuries of history of both this House and the House of Keys, there has existed a most cordial relationship.

I hope that it will be the wish of the House that I should accept the invitation, and I hope, therefore, that the House will grant me leave of absence for Tuesday, 5th July.

Hear, hear.

It would be wrong for me to refer to any of the business which you have just mentioned, Mr. Speaker, but I am sure that it would be the wish of the House that we should say how pleased we were to hear your first announcement regarding yourself. We hope—I am sure that I speak for the whole House—that you will have a happy and enjoyable visit, that the weather will be kind, and that you will be able to convey to our colleagues in the Isle of Man our very best wishes for their success.

I thank you personally, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity of an Adjournment debate. This is the second occasion in 21 years when I have had this pleasure, though I cannot promise you that it will not happen again for another 21 years.

The matter I wish to raise is very serious. It is serious in that a number of laws are being deliberately broken. It is serious in that, due, perhaps, to lack of manpower and to several difficulties and present anomalies, many of these laws do not seem to be enforced by the authorities. I refer, of course, to the evasion of the road fund licence duty.

I want to focus both Ministerial and public attention upon what has become a public scandal. There are thousands of vehicles on the road which have no road fund licence. I will not quote the figures because they were quoted officially by the Minister as recently as 3rd March in the House. But his figures, in thousands, bear no relation to the facts, since he quoted only those known to him. He did not, and could not, quote those unknown to him.

I am not attacking people who inadvertently forget to tax their vehicles, because all of us, including myself—excluding you, of course, Mr. Speaker—might do that. I am concerned about the very large number of motorists who deliberately go out of their way to evade this tax for a paltry sum, because to defraud the Treasury of a maximum of £17 10s. a year works out at only about 1s. a day. It may well be said, "Why worry?" A shilling a day may not mean much to thousands of motorists, but in aggregate to the Treasury it comes to a very large sum.

It is not only a question of the motorist who says that he will not pay the tax because he cannot afford it. I do not believe that there are any motorists on the road who cannot afford a 1s. a day. If there are, they should not have a vehicle on the road. It is not just the poor chap with the old jalopy. It is not the hard-working man who is the sole offender, although there are some in that category. But there are some motorists who have quite large incomes inasmuch as they are able to run large cars.

During the past few months I have taken the opportunity of going round and noting this evasion. You, Mr. Speaker, will be surprised when I tell you that I have even noted Jaguars, Humbers and Rovers, and only in the early part of this year a most magnificent Rolls-Royce, without current road fund licences. I was invited by the Greater London Council, as all G.L.C. members were, to have lunch with the Chairman. I was a little early, so I passed the time walking round the G.L.C.'s parking area. The G.L.C. is the licensing authority whose job it is to ensure that every vehicle has a road fund licence when it is on the road. In the parking ground there were dozens and dozens of cars without road fund licences. I saw a most beautiful Rolls-Royce and asked the commissionaire, "Whose car is this?" "Oh", he said, "it belongs to one of the members". I said, "Do you notice that it has a road fund licence six months out of date?" Needless to say, he said, "It is nothing to do with me". Immediately afterwards a most magnificent £3,500 sports car pulled up behind. I saw one of my then Parliamentary colleagues get out and I said, "You have not a licence on this car". He said, "No. I never worry about things like that." It may be that because he never worries he is not now a Member.

As I have indicated, this does not apply only to poor people. It applies also to trade vehicles. People in business are doing it. Some private individuals buy second-hand tipping lorries from reputable firms, then set up on their own, go round collecting rubble and get paid so much a load. The more loads they carry the more money they get. I am told that some of these people are picking up as much as £20 or £30 per day in this way. But many are not paying the nominal road fund licence tax.

I have indicated that this is an offence. Several offences are being committed, which I will mention. I think that unconsciously the Departments are aiding and abetting these offences. I say "unconsciously", because I am sure they are not doing it deliberately. I do not believe that they are vigorously enforcing the law. First, there is the Home Office, under whose jurisdiction come the Metropolitan Police. It is the duty of the police to report to the licensing authority vehicles for which there is not a valid road fund licence. Incidentally, whether a vehicle is being driven or not, the mere fact that it is on the road without a current licence is an offence. It is the job of the licensing authority to take action.

I have a file here of dozens and dozens of letters which show that, to use a non-Parliamentary term but one which is found in the Army vernacular, the "passing of the buck" between Ministry and Ministry is amazing. If one takes the matter up with the Ministry of Transport it says, "This is not our responsibility. It is the Home Office's responsibility." If one takes it to the Home Office, it says, "It is not our responsibility. It is the licensing authority's responsibility." If one takes it to the Treasury it says, "We only impose the tax. It is not our job to see that it is paid." While the ball is being passed backwards and forwards, one does not know exactly where the ball is. All I know is that this practice still goes on.

I have emphasised that I am not concerned with the man who forgets. One may have a bad memory for perhaps a week or a fortnight, but when it comes to three months or 12 months, two years, three years or four years—and I can produce evidence on this—it is stretching one's absentmindedness a little to far.

Then there are those I would term as "the clever dodgers". They use various methods to evade the tax. They are the blatant evaders. Where the licence should be on the windscreen—and this is the height of impertinence really—they put a little label which reads, "Tax applied for", "Tax in the post", or "Tax pending". They have run out of wonderful expressions. But if one looks at these "Tax applied for" notices, one finds sometimes that they have been on the windscreen for almost as long as the car has been in existence—tattered, torn, faded with the sun, because they have been there month after month and, indeed, year after year. I call this "the windscreen smokescreen".

The police know that this goes on, and so do the licensing authorities. The police, I suppose, because they are too busy and have quite a lot to do, take no action. Not on one occasion but on numerous occasions—even as recently as yesterday afternoon—I have stopped a policeman and said, "Look, officer, will you please take notice that here is a vehicle without a licence. Will you take action and report it?"

Indeed, on one occasion when I was coming to the House, being pulled up by traffic lights, I saw a number of vehicles stretching the length of this Chamber, and parked on both sides of the road. I noticed a couple which I thought were unlicensed, so I pulled my car in and stopped for two or three minutes to go along and see, and I counted nine vehicles unlicensed—or, at least, with no sign of any road fund licence. This was outside Caledonian Road police station. I thought this a wonderful opportunity, so I went into the station and saw a police sergeant and I said, "Please take note that outside your station there are nine vehicles without a licence."

Perhaps it is unfair of me to report as completely and absolutely true what I am now revealing, for there was an altercation, and I accept that about my ex parte statement the officer concerned might well say that he did not say what I reported him as saying. All I will say is this, that he immediately said to me, "Well, of course, if you go around here you will find three or four thousand." I said, "That doesn't mean anything." He replied, "We are so busy, and so much of this goes on we have just given it up." I then said to him, one of his fellow officers being there then, that I wanted the matter recorded, and then he began to shift and to change.

I have seen and reported dozens of cases. I have seen police officers standing talking to some of these trade lorry experts who evade licence. I have seen them standing talking to a driver, and they themselves must have seen, as I have seen, that the vehicle has been unlicensed for as much as 12 months on end.

There has been a lot of publicity on this, and I want to pay a tribute now, if I may, to the Press in general, because they have tried to focus Ministerial and public attention on it, and I particularly pay tribute to the London Evening News and Daily Mail. A number of papers have both shown photographs and have given details in articles. I was so pleased to see an article by a young lady called Caren Meyer in the Evening News on 4th May—and, by the way, so astounded by what I read in it—that I thought this something the Ministers concerned should have their attention drawn to, and I put down an Early Day Motion —No. 40—to draw attention to it. Unfortunately not many hon. Members signed it, but that does not matter. The facts are in the article.

In my Motion I ask the various Ministers to have a look at it, because it is fascinating. There are described in it dodges that even I did not know of. It is reported here that a chap admitted that for months and months he was in arrears with his licence. He admitted being pulled up by the police. He admitted that he got a licence put it on the car. and showed it to the police, and said, "I have got a licence." He immediately went back and cashed it in and got his money back—because there is a refund system. This article was fascinating. I cannot read it to the House because it would take too long, but I should like any hon. Member who can to get the Evening News of 4th May and read it. I would ask the Ministers, what are they doing about it?

I shall not read my Motion to the House because I assume, as I hope, that it will be quoted, and so I shall save time by not reading it, but I ask there for the various Ministers to look at this. We have here today one Junior Minister. I do not know whether he is speaking for each Department, the Treasury, the Ministry of Transport and the Home Office, but I ask him, what action have the Departments taken on that article? What action have the police taken? What action have the Treasury taken? Have they attempted to interview Miss Myer? Have they gone along to the Evening News to get evidence? Have they come along to me? I do not know about the others, but I know they have not come to me. I would have loved to have given the Ministers statements. I would have loved to have given the police statements, but, of course, no one has been along to see me to ask for evidence. So far as I am aware no one has written to me about it. I know, of course, that a letter could have gone astray in the post, but I am always about here, and no one has asked me to give any evidence at all.

I know, of course, that the police are busy, and I am not attacking or castigat- ing the police. I know they are doing a good job, and I know that there are so many thousands of these cases that it is getting a hopeless task for the police to do anything about them. Therefore, I have tried to help the police. I have written both to the Home Office and to the licensing authorities.

Indeed, I wrote to the Greater London Council about one vehicle and told the Council where it can be seen. I told them what route it takes. I told them that from my personal knowledge this trading vehicle had not had a licence since October, 1964. I explained that this particular vehicle is used as a kind of mock auction where thousands of pounds—thousands of pounds—are turned over in two or three hours in a street market which is known to Londoners as Petticoat Lane and known as Club Row and that on Sunday mornings between 10 and 1 o'clock this vehicle will be there and turning over £2,000 or £3,000 merchandise —and it has not had a licence since 1964. Eventually, of course, the G.L.C. did prosecute—at the beginning of this year; but from that day to this, from January, it has still not got a licence, it still has not attempted to take out a licence. I could quote other cases. All the details have been given.

I would ask the Minister not to accept the official figures which come from various licensing authorities. Let him or someone from those Departments take five or ten minutes and go round in the normal business hours of nine to five to any Underground station in and around London and let them look up the side roads, and they will be able to count, as I have done, hundreds of unlicensed vehicles. Let them go to Finsbury Park Station. This morning I took note of 34 vehicles in two roads about the length of this Chamber. Let them go into Hendon, King's Cross, Caledonian Road —which I have mentioned—Turnpike Lane, in north London.

Indeed, in Turnpike Lane I once counted 12 vehicles. There was a chap commiting a parking offence and a police car—a Z car—came along and an officer got out to see about the parking. I said to the officer, "I agree that he is causing a parking offence, but what about these vehicles?" He said, "Oh, that is so prevalent now. We can't do much about it".

I mentioned that yesterday afternoon there was an alteration. It was in Doughty Street in the Holborn area by the crosing with Guilford Street. It was fascinating. A large coach, which I call a charabanc, was trying to turn from Guilford Street into Doughty Street and it could not do it. There was a "Keep Left" bollard in the centre and parked almost on top of the bollard was a most magnificent sports car blocking the way of the charabanc and on the other side was a beautiful red sports car, both of which were unlicensed. The policeman told the driver of the charabanc to give way and to use another road he showed him. I said, "That is all right, but tell me, can't you do something about these unlicensed cars?" I have the name of the officer and a number of people came up. I said to him, "That chap has taken the trouble to go another route because he can't get round because these cars are parked, but they are not really supposed to be on the road." Of course. nothing was done about them.

A number of people came up, including local inhabitants who said they were very upset because they cannot park their vehicles there; if they do, they are likely to be towed away. Ministers can go to see for themselves. At any ordinary business time of day in Mecklenburgh Square, people find parked outside their doors vehicles without licences. They themselves cannot get away even with parking, while people who do not pay licence get away with that.

On one magnificent car I counted 30 of those labels that say where it has been. It had been to Austria and Switzerland and almost all round the world. Thirty of these labels were stuck on, but there was no road fund licence. You will see stickers saying, "I have a tiger in my tank"—indeed, all the labels that one could imagine and all the fittings, but no road fund licence. These motorists will have not two spot lamps but four; not two horns but five; ocelot and leopard-skin upholstery covers—all the very best; but, by jingo, they will have no licence on their car. This ought to be stopped.

If a person causes an obstruction for two or three minutes, the police soon cart his car off. Why do they not cart off to the pound some of these cars that have no licences and charge these people a very heavy amount to get them back? Sometimes I go shopping with my wife in Wood Green High Road. I have seen several policemen going up and down the Wood Green High Road almost every minute of Friday and Saturday mornings chasing off "pavement spivs" selling such things as plastic macks. All round the streets there are dozens and dozens of vehicles which are breaking the law, but no action is taken over them. When I ask the policemen to take action they are too busy because they are chasing one or two of these spivs.

What can be done? First, the Minister could announce an amnesty; at a certain time and for a certain period people could be allowed to get their licences without being penalised, even for arrears. If these licences are not applied for and put on, then after the amnesty period has ended the cars should be carted off to the pound and the drivers should not get them back, even if they produce a licence, without paying a £50 fine.

I have received dozens and dozens of letters from all over the country putting forward ideas and suggestions and corroborating what I am now saying. Whilst I have not been able to answer them all, I do appreciate them. I would, however, ask the writers please not to write to me but to their own local Member of Parliament and ask him or her to do something about it. If all those who are interested in this matter were to do something and wrote to their Member something would be done Ministerially.

I have not mentioned something which is troubling a lot of people quite fairly. They ask, "Why should we pay for our licences so religiously when so many people are getting away with it? Should not something be done?". Of course, that is right. I can tell the Minister of a case where two cars in the same household have both been without licences for months on end. If the Minister wants, I can give him the name and address of the owner of a vehicle which has a C licence but has had no road fund licence, to my personal knowledge, for four years. I can tell him the street and where he can go and see it. It is there every Sunday morning, as regularly as I attend this House.

I want to make some tangible suggestions to the Minister. It has been suggested to me that we should drop the tax and increase the tax on petrol. But that would be inflationary and it would, perhaps, have a deleterious effect. Therefore I would not recommend it. Next, it is quite right and possible that both the traffic wardens and the police could do what the traffic wardens now do with regard to traffic offences. If I overstay my parking time in the City a warden comes along and sticks a slip on my car saying that if I do not pay a fine further action will be taken. I do not see why traffic wardens and police cannot have the same power to say that unless one pays for one's road fund licence action will be taken and one will have to pay double, treble, or whatever amount it may be.

It might be argued that the police and traffic wardens are too busy and that this cannot be done. I shall tell the Minister a very good way in which this problem can be solved quite simply. This would be to make it illegal, under threat of a very severe penalty, for any garage to supply a vehicle with petrol or oil, or provide any other service, unless it displays a current road fund licence.

There is also the problem of other motoring laws being broken, particularly the roadworthiness test. After it is five years old a vehicle must be tested for roadworthiness, and this costs 15s. But none of the people who do not have road fund licences are taking their vehicles for the test because they cannot have it tested without the licence, and so they save another 15s. That kind of vehicle may well not have been tested for five or six years and may be a death trap when it goes on the road.

Another problem is that of the derelict vehicles on the road which are a danger because kiddies put matches in the petrol tank, and so on. I could tell the Minister of other aspects of these problems and a number of remedies, but time seems to go so quickly when we are on this topic, and I know that the hon. Member for Essex (South-East) (Mr. Braine) wants to speak.

My last word is that the fines are ludicrous. The Greater London Council tells me that the average fine last year was £8. In Hertfordshire the average last December was £4. The maximum that can be charged, I am told, is three times the fee for the last licence period, and any chap who wants to avoid the licence can only be charged three times the quarter, even though he may have accumulated arrears equivalent to £60 or £70. Therefore it is a good dodge. They say, "The most I can be fined is £4 or £5 and I am going to get £60 or £70 back. It is worth it".

I ask the Minister to try to do something about this. If he does not, I give him this advice. I shall consistently oppose the Estimates from each of these Departments until something is done.

Mr. Speaker, I join the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) in expressing from this side of the House our very great pleasure in the announcement which you made at the beginning of business this morning. I am sure that everyone in the House will feel that nothing but the greatest good to the reputation and standing of our Parliament can come from visits of this kind. We wish you a safe journey.

I support much of what the hon. Gentleman has said this morning. Indeed, I think that he has done a great public service in focussing attention on what he correctly describes as a public scandal. There is no doubt that there is widespread evasion. One of my constituents came to me about a fortnight ago, probably prompted by the campaign which the hon. Gentleman has been waging with such persistence, and told me that one Saturday in the nearby county borough of Southend-on-Sea he had counted no fewer than 171 vehicles without their tax discs.

The truth of the matter—and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary must face this—is that the present system is one under which it pays to flout the law. I have been told of hauliers who run small fleets of lorries, taxed in different names at different addresses, who find it profitable not to pay the road fund licence and to run the risk of a fine. In due course they may pay fines, which can amount to £15, £20 or £25, but it pays them to do this. A constituent recently told me of a haulier who operates a fleet of ten or twelve eight-wheel lorries taxed in different names who is regularly fined but finds that this pays. He told me that the law is being flouted and everybody knows it, including the police.

What disturbs me is the way in which the law, the Regulations and the administrative arrangements that we in this place enact or authorise, place an almost impossible burden upon an undermanned and overstretched police force in the metropolitan areas.

My belief is that the Home Secretary could do a great deal to help by ensuring more carefully than in the past that the mass of regulations which Parliament in its wisdom feels obliged to authorise are enforceable and realistic. I suggest also that he should discuss with the Law Officers of the Crown the pressing need to require the courts at lower levels to take notice of trends in breaches of the law and to fix penalties so that they are a real deterrent. At the same time, he could hammer home the fact that it is not possible for the police to operate efficiently without greater co-operation from the public.

I think it is known that I hold a watching brief in this House for one of the police organisations. The hon. Member for West Ham, North was quite right in emphasising the impossible burden which the police, particularly in London, have to carry. One chief superintendent recently told me—these were his actual words:

"Parliament, Press and public must be brought to understand that we are engaged in a continuing and relentless civil war, the criminal against society, and because the police are not being given the tools for the job, society is losing."

There are over three and a half times as many indictable offences, over four times as many crimes of violence and over five times as many youths engaged in crime as in 1938. Moreover, not only is there more crime, but it is becoming more violent, more vicious and more organised. In these circumstances, the attitude of many police officers on this subject is understandable.

Briefly, what can be done about it? The hon. Member for West Ham, North has made some suggestions. One question which I address to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is whether it is administratively possible, now that we have computers, to tighten up the system of registration and to ensure that an end is put to this deliberate evasion of tax liability.

The hon. Member for West Ham, North dismissed the idea of abolishing the road fund licence and putting an additional impost upon petrol and diesel oil, and he may well be right about the inflationary consequences of such a method. Certainly, an equivalent amount could be raised by that means and it would be a foolproof system too, because the Government would at least ensure that they got 100 per cent. of the tax. It would be possible to arrange for exemptions for public service vehicles and other special categories. Such a method would be easy to administer and the police would no longer be put in an impossible position.

However, I have an open mind on the subject. My hope is that after the very careful case which has been deployed this morning by the hon. Member for West Ham, North, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will give the most careful attention to his suggestions and take up the matter as necessary with the appropriate authorities.

I should like to echo, Mr. Speaker, what my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) have said. We wish you a very happy and enjoyable visit to the Isle of Man.

This has been a useful opening to our Whitsun Adjournment debates. I want straight away to acknowledge the public spiritedness of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North in pursuing this campaign and drawing attention to the problem. We certainly want everybody to co-operate in trying to tackle it. There is absolutely no room for complacency in general about evasion of the law and, in particular, about the duty of citizens to contribute their share of the taxation in the case of vehicles on the roads.

As my hon. Friend remarked, this is the second debate within a very short time on the subject of alleged evasion of vehicle Excise duty. The hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Frederic Harris) raised the matter on 3rd March. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members will forgive me if I inevitably cover part of the ground simply to get the basic facts again on the record.

The legal background to the tax lies in the Vehicles (Excise) Act, 1962. With very few exceptions, all mechanically propelled vehicles are subject to Excise duty when used on public roads. In this context, using a vehicle on the road includes having a vehicle parked on the road. It must be licensed. The rates are laid down according to the type of vehicle and the way it is used, and all citizens with such vehicles should, under the law, obtain licences.

The 1962 Act lays down the penalties for unlicensed use. The maximum penalty is £20 or three times the annual rate of duty chargeable on the vehicle, whichever is the greater sum. This certainly was considered by the House to be a quite severe penalty and in line with penalties for other Excise offences. For the private car, the rate of duty for which, as my hon. Friend has said, is £17 10s. per annum, the maximum penalty is, therefore, over £50.

Those are the basic facts in regard to this matter and I pass straight to the question of enforcement. The question of vehicle Excise duty is the responsibility of county councils, as my hon. Friend has made plain. The councils are responsible for the enforcement of the law, but they are assisted not only by the police, on whom they are often dependent, but by ordinary members of the public who, like my hon. Friend, report cases when they see vehicles either displaying out-of-date licences or carrying no licences at all. I propose to give some record of the efforts which are made in this respect.

As with any case of law enforcement, the amount of effort devoted to it and the success achieved depends in the last resort upon manpower as much as anything else. The processes of enforcing this law are inevitably time-consuming. It is also true that we must have regard to proper safeguards on behalf of the citizen to prevent miscarriages of justice or unduly harsh law.

My hon. Friend has over a period presented a formidable catalogue of cases of apparently unlicensed use of vehicles.

He has done this both in Questions and in this morning's debate, and he has referred to the article in the Evening News of 4th May, with particular reference to the situation in London. I repeat to my hon. Friend the assurance which was given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that all these cases, whether mentioned in Press articles, by my hon. Friend or by any member of the public, are brought immediately to the attention of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police or of any other authorities who are responsible for taking necessary action with the licensing authority.

My hon. Friend has quoted figures suggesting that there is widespread evasion of the duty. It is very difficult, as he agrees to establish a comprehensive picture. One cannot conclude from observations in a few selected places, such as near underground stations, that the position all over the country is necessarily the same as one finds there. We have evidence from random checks carried out in various parts of the country and I want to give the House the results of the most recent checks so that hon. Members may see the situation as it is reported to us. These checks all refer to last year.

In Birmingham, in a recent check, one vehicle in 225 was found unlicensed, in Blackpool, out of 1,665 vehicles checked, all were properly licensed; in Wolverhampton, 2,314 vehicles were checked and only 29 were found to be unlicensed, which is rather less than 1 per cent.; in County Durham, out of more than 2,000 vehicles checked, only 20 were found to be unlicensed.

It may well be that, in the Metropolitan area, the position is much worse, but it is right that I should have given these figures in order to get a sense of proportion, although no single check can be conclusive. However, it may be that evasion is not as widespread as some people suggest. Certainly, I emphasise again that no one, whether in the Ministry of Transport, the Treasury or the Home Office or anywhere else, is complacent about the problem. We know that evasion exists and many thousands of cases are reported.

Last year, councils other than the Greater London Council received 118,000 routine reports from all sources of the unlicensed use of vehicles. Over the country as a whole, about one-sixth of the cases reported proved to have been properly licensed when a further check was made. Altogether, councils prosecuted in 62,500 cases while in 47,000 cases the authorities were satisfied that any duty due had been fully recovered and accordingly exercised their discretionary powers to impose a mitigated penalty or a caution.

The number of reports reaching licensing authorities represents each year is equivalent to about one report for over 80 vehicles—quite a high rate of reporting. More significantly, it compares favourably with the actual amount of evasion detected in the random checks I have mentioned.

I want to deal now with mitigated penalties and cautions. There is the impression, as was suggested in the Evening News article, that people asked to pay mitigated penalties or cautions are somehow getting away with it because there is no fine, or only a very small fine. This is not so. There is no loss of revenue in these cases. Councils do not proceed by way of mitigated penalties or cautions unless they are fully satisfied that any unpaid duty has been collected. This is normal excise practice.

But how can the authorities know how long a vehicle has been unlicensed? I know a case where a vehicle was unlicensed for four years. The man told the licensing authority that he had only been using it for the last six months. How could the authority know that, in fact, he had been using it for four years unless it was able to get the record of what he had been doing?

If there is no evidence —and enforcement of the law depends upon accumulated evidence—it would be wrong to impose penalties. The authorities must investigate and get the evidence. But it is right that the licensing authority should have discretionary powers in these cases.

Many citizens are merely forgetful or they procrastinate; they mean to take out a licence but find that they are late in doing so. Councils should not be asked to prosecute in all cases, therefore. That would be an absurd waste of time. They should, nevertheless, on the evidence they receive and after investigation be able to impose this mitigated penalty, which a citizen may refuse to accept, in which case the council must decide whether to prosecute or not or, in some cases, to give cautions.

Now I turn to enforcement in London. The figures I shall give are for the year ended 31st March, 1966—the first 12 months of operation of the G.L.C. The Council received 95,000 reports of apparent unlicensed use of vehicles, including about 10,000 which were taken over from the previous authorities. A very high proportion of these reports were made by the police and 30,000 reached the Council in the three months January to March, 1966.

Thirty-six thousand were still under investigation at the end of the year and the other 59,000 have been dealt with as follows: in 7,000 cases, there were prosecutions; in 11,500 cases, mitigated penalties were imposed; in 12,000 cases, cautions were issued; 28,500 were not proceeded with because the authority accepted that, on further investigation, there was a valid reason for not doing so.

Cases in which investigation showed that the vehicle was, in fact, properly licensed, but that the licence was not displayed, were quite numerous and the council was satisfied that, in a fairly large number of cases, the offence was actually failure to display the licence and was an innocent oversight.

In the case of the G.L.C., I should point out that the council has suffered from acute staff shortage. Investigation of reports of unlicensed vehicles is time consuming. Many records have to be gone into and both the Metropolitan Police and the G.L.C. have been up against the difficulty of manpower. Indeed, at the end of 1964, the Metropolitan Police decided that its manpower problems were such that it could no longer undertake to do follow-up investigation work in these cases and, therefore, the responsibility had to be accepted wholly by the G.L.C.

Following this change in Metropolitan Police procedure, the G.L.C. has set up an organisation to do the investigation work itself but, of course, it has taken some time to get the staff in order to carry it out. However, I believe that these difficulties are now being overcome and I am confident that the G.L.C. recognises the importance of dealing as expeditiously as possible with apparent offences reported.

Reference has been made to the question of notices on windscreens. In the Metropolitan area, a notice stating that a report is being made of apparent unlicensed use of a vehicle is affixed to the windscreen of the vehicle concerned. We are considering extending this to the rest of the country. My hon. Friend suggested that traffic wardens should be used for the job and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is already considering this suggestion.

It is also suggested that the penalties should be increased, but, as I have said, the maximum fine possible is three times the annual duty, and we feel that at the moment this is a sufficient deterrent and a hard penalty on those who are taken to court.

My hon. Friend suggested that the police might be empowered to tow away vehicles which they see parked on the road without current licences, but there is the difficulty that in so many cases, as I have shown, the offence is failure to display a licence, and not a failure to have one which is currently valid. I have some doubt whether the House would be willing to give the police power to tow away vehicles which were not displaying licences which were currently valid. If one in six were discovered to be licensed, but not displaying licences, I am sure that there would be a strong reaction on the part of the citizen.

We are considering all possibilities of reforming and streamlining the procedure, a point which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East. I cannot this morning give any details, but we are urgently considering and discussing with those concerned whether improvements can be made in the reporting and investigating processes, and also in the system of licensing itself, so that we shall be able to establish a better standard of enforcement.

I assure my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman that the suggestions which they have made will be very carefully considered by the Department and discussed with the licensing authorities, but let us realise that we do not imagine we can achieve a perfectly refined system of enforcement in this respect. In general, and in the last resort, we must depend on the good will and honesty of the majority of the citizens of the country.

I am grateful to the Minister for co-operating by curtailing his speech. I must protect the timetable, in the interests of the hon. and learned Member who has the last Adjournment this afternoon.

The matter which I have to raise makes a disagreeable story. Its nature is such that I have thought twice about raising it here at all, and I decided to do so only after thinking it over carefully and giving the mainly afflicted parties a chance to think it over and decide whether, on balance, it would be right to raise this story publicly.

As far as concerns this House, the story of John Harold William Moon began on 30th November, 1962, when he appeared before the Ashford Juvenile Court and was found guilty of larceny of cash. He was committed to an approved school. He was assessed at Redhill Certifying School, and he was then sent to Court Lees School, Godstone.

On 13th April, 1965, while on home leave from Godstone, he took a 12-yearold girl into a wood at the point of a gun and attempted to rape her. He told the girl that if she informed anyone of the attack he would return and get her, adding that he had already shot one girl. The girl in question was the daughter of a builder who lives in Ashford, Mr. A. E. Wills.

Perhaps I should say that we have discussed the desirability or otherwise of mentioning names in this case, and that I think it would be wrong to suppress them. The names are well known locally, and I think that the Press can be trusted not to aggravate the experiences of this family.

The day following the attack Mr. Wills traced and identified the youth Moon from a description given by his daughter. Moon was arrested, charged, and appeared before the Ashford Juvenile Court. The case was then twice adjourned for inquiries. Medical evidence was then submitted—and I ask the House to note this carefully—that he was suffering from mental disorder to such a degree as to warrant his detention in hospital for medical treatment.

Accordingly, on 25th June, 1965, the court ordered, under section 60 of the Mental Health Act, 1959, that Moon be detained at Harperbury Hospital, St. Albans. Mr. Wills was given to understand that this would be for at least three years, owing to the youth's previous record which included similar assaults. For reasons which I do not understand, but which I hope the Under-Secretary of State will be able to explain, Moon was not made subject to a restriction order under Section 65 of the Act. In effect, in cases of special risk this subjects the offender to special restrictions which can be varied only on the authority of the Secretary of State.

Moon was given home leave at Christmas, 1965, and on 26th December he assaulted a 16-year old girl in Ashford. He was not caught, and undetected presumably returned to Harperbury. The following February, 1966, he was given birthday leave. He returned to Ashford, and on this occasion committed an assault on an 18-year old hospital nurse, who was engaged to be married. Incidentally, this nurse was a close friend of the mother of the original victim. She was a colleague in the same hospital as Mrs. Wills. On this occasion the nurse identified Moon and he appeared before the magistrates at the end of February.

The feelings of Mr. and Mrs. Wills on reading an account of this case in the local papers can hardly be imagined. I do not propose to leave all of it to the imagination of the House or the Under-Secretary. The hon. and learned Gentleman should know what the consequences were. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wills had from the outset devoutly hoped that their daughter would not learn of these further developments, because the first incident was beginning to fade from her mind. But of course she did. She gained full knowledge of the incidents, and was seriously disturbed.

It is not necessary to enter into the effect which this had on the relationship between the girl and her parents. She had received from her father a solemn assurance that Moon was out of harm's way, and the effects were grievous. I shall read what Mr. Wills wrote on 7th March, the week in which the case came to light and to the courts. He said:

"She is now most distressed and upset, and feels that she might well have been a victim, in view of his previous threat to her. As I was assured that he would be away receiving medical treatment for at least three years, my wife and I were able to assure our daughter that it would not be necessary to move away right out of the county, as was her only wish at that time.

Now, of course, in view of the recent events, she insists that we now do so.

Our daughter's safety and peace of mind are, of course, our chief concern, but as a small builder, it has taken me years to build up a regular clientele, and by moving away my livelihood would be put in jeopardy."

It seems to me, and I hope that it will seem to the hon. and learned Gentleman, that if this man and his family are compelled to move, in effect to take refuge in another part of the country, this really will constitute a most frightful reproach to the forces of law and order.

To complete the story, after his final appearance before the Ashford magistrates Moon was removed to Harper-bury Hospital for further medical examination. He came before the court on 17th March, when the court decided, in the light of the medical evidence before it, to place him on probation for three years with a condition of residence at Darenth Park Hospital, Kent, for a maximum period of one year.

It is not for me to comment on that decision, though I think it may well be that the police could perhaps, and should perhaps, in a case of this kind, have asked that it should be committed to quarter sessions or assizes. This is an aspect to which I shall call the attention of the Under-Secretary. It is something in respect of which his right hon. Friend may care to consider the need for a reminder to chief constables when cases of this kind arise.

These are the facts. I do not think that they are in dispute. I have taken most of them from the letter of explanation which the Home Secretary sent me on 19th April, and I do not think that the Under Secretary will deny that they raise questions of the utmost gravity.

How can it be that a youth in these circumstances, suffering

"from mental disorder to such a degree as to warrant his detention in hospital for medical treatment"

was allowed, not once but twice, to return home on leave and to commit on each occasion sexual assaults on these girls?

There can be only one of two answers. Either a very serious misjudgment was made in this case. If so, the Under-Secretary should tell us, whatever the consequences may be for individuals. Or, if we are to accept that no serious misjudgment was made, something is very much awry with our arrangements for dealing with cases of this kind. It must be one or the other, and if the second alternative be true, since there are quite a number of Moons in our society today this is a very serious matter.

Whatever the answer to the question, I am sure that the public interest requires a very searching inquiry to be made into this case, together with an examination of some of the considerations which arise from it. I am not asking the Under-Secretary now to agree that there should be such an inquiry; I know how Under-Secretaries are placed. But I must ask him to convey to the Home Secretary my request, and also to see that the House is informed in due course about the decision that is to be made. It would be wrong to allow this case to slip past without the sharpest scrutiny.

Let us consider the questions which arise from this occurrence. Why, in the first place, was Moon not subject to a retention order under Section 65? Who decides this? How is it decided? Because he was not detained under Section 65, the Home Secretary tells me,

"the grant to him of leave of absence from Harpenbury was a matter for the responsible medical officer, and was not subject to my consent."

What consideration went into the granting of such leave within six months of a criminal assault on a girl of 12? What consideration went into the granting of such leave again, six weeks later? More seriously, what is the situation now?

The Home Secretary tells me that the court, the hospital, the probation officer and all concerned are well aware of the need for Moon to be closely supervised.

That I can well believe. But the Home Secretary adds:

"It is most unlikely, for example, that the question of leave will be considered for some time".

Unlikely ! It was that sentence in the right hon. Gentleman's letter which decided me and Mr. Wills to raise this matter publicly. What in the world does that mean? How long is "some time"? How, in the light of all the circumstances, is it possible for home leave even to be remotely considered for this youth?

I am most anxious not to appear, or to make the Wills family appear, in any way vindictive. The House must accept my assurance that they are anything but that. Throughout my dealings with Mr. and Mrs. Wills both have displayed an exemplary attitude. They have no animosity towards the youth in question. But they have, as any of us would have, a deep concern for the safety and peace of mind of their daughter—and after what has happened they are entitled to feel mistrustful.

If this family is led, not unreasonably and not neurotically, but soberly, to move to another part of the country because their daughter cannot feel safe where she lives now, I am wasting my time as a Member of Parliament, and the Under-Secretary is wasting his time as a spokesman for law and order—because this is precisely the sort of situation which law and order exists to prevent.

Some of us—and I hope that I can include myself—care a good deal about the future of penal reform. I want to see enlightened policies displayed towards the treatment of delinquents, and particularly juvenile delinquents. I admit to having been greatly influenced by the approach of Lord Butler when he was Home Secretary. I admired his penal philosophy, and in a very small way I have tried to espouse it. It is difficult to exaggerate the harm which a case of this kind does to ideals for enlightened penology. It is just the sort of event which causes the reasonable man and woman to declare that penal reformers are barking mad. It is precisely this sort of action which makes any sort of penal reform and advance so difficult. It is not best met by hushing it up, as could have been done. The proper course is to bring every squalid detail into the open and to see what we can learn from it, and what we ought to repair.

I shall listen with great interest to what the Under-Secretary has to say, but I cannot think that the speech that he will be able to make will adequately repair what has gone wrong. The Home Office has a responsibility here. Can the Home Secretary really be satisfied with present arrangements, in the light of this case? I repeat: the Secretary of State must go over this ground, or get the right kind of body to go over this ground, with singular care. Was it an accident? Was it a chance in a thousand? I very much doubt it. Or does it—and this is much more probable—point to certain weaknesses in our arrangements for cases of this kind?

That is what the Home Secretary must consider very closely, and, if necessary, he must report back to us. Nothing less than this will satisfy me, or the House, I should imagine, and I ask the Under-Secretary, whatever he may say now, to undertake to convey to his right hon. Friend the feelings that I have expressed.

This is a very disturbing case, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) has pointed out. It raises some very serious questions, and I shall certainly convey to my right hon. Friend the right hon. Gentleman's request that the whole matter should be looked at in the light of what happened here, and to see whether a further inquiry is needed.

I fully understand why the right hon. Gentleman wished to raise this case and the obviously great concern that it has caused to his constituents. I also fully appreciate the appalling position in which the Wills family now find themselves, and I express my sympathy to them and to all the other victims of Moon's offences, and their parents. I am sure Moon's parents themselves would wish to express their distress at the suffering caused by the actions of their son.

This case involves the fundamental question of the balance between the protection of the public and the liberty of the individual. It also involves the relationship between the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend and those of the courts and the medical profession. It does not make the facts of the case any better, but I think that the right hon. Gentleman wil! agree that in this case the Home Secretary had no personal responsibility for anything which happened, because there was at no stage a restriction order under Section 65 of the Mental Health Act, which would have made his discharge or questions of leave or transfer subject to my right hon. Friend's consent——

More's the pity.

Of course, the Home Secretary is concerned, as the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out, with the adequacy of the law dealing with the treatment of mentally disordered offenders and the administrative arrangements. Also, of course, his responsibilities for approved schools and for probation services are also involved in this case.

The right hon. Gentleman raised some questions. The most important point is to turn to the facts and elaborate them in addition to what the right hon. Gentleman said. As he said, in November, 1962, Moon was committed to an approved school from Ashford Juvenile Court. The offence then was one of larceny. He had committed a previous offence of larceny and he had been on probation before this case. He was then just under 14—he is now 17—and there was then no question of any sexual offence. At the beginning of 1963, he went to Court Lees School, at God-stone, and during the first year there made satisfactory, but slow, progress and his conduct gave rise to no special concern.

I think, however, that I should bring the full facts before the House. I should state that, in February and September of 1964, while he was at the approved school, there were two incidents involving young girls which occurred near the school. On the first occasion, in February of 1964, Moon was out walking near the school by himself, which is permitted for boys who have shown good behaviour, and while he was out he tried to kiss two small girls aged 9 and 11. The 11-year-old girl ran to get help, but before she returned Moon had interfered with the younger girl.

The full details of the incident did not come to light straight away, but did so when the girl told her mother and the mother made representations. However, she specifically asked that the matter should be taken no further and the police were not involved. As a punishment, Moon was not allowed out of the school for a subsequent period and his parents were informed of the incident.

The second incident while Moon was at the approved school was one in which he tried to kiss the 6-year-old daughter of a member of the school staff. There was no indecent assault. He was caned and his parents were again told of the incident.

I should mention these cases. They were viewed with concern by the school, but were thought to be isolated instances. They were not thought, in themselves, on the information then available, to be sufficiently serious to justify depriving Moon of normal periods of home leave with his family. Boys and girls in approved schools may be granted up to 33 days home leave which are usually divided up into three separate periods of leave, three separate visits to the home, per year.

The grant of leave is a matter within the discretion of the school managers——

Are we, in fact, dealing with five separate incidents, now—three which I have raised and two which the hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned?

That is correct. There are five incidents, although the first two were at that time regarded as isolated ones and one was a very minor one.

I return to the question of leave. This leave is normally granted by the headmaster after he has first made inquiries of the home to see whether it is ready to receive him and to see that the home conditions are satisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman may agree that home leave in these cases should not be withheld without very good reasons. It is important that a boy should not be treated in a school in isolation from the home circumstances. It is, after all, a major task of the school to prepare him for his return to his home.

It is something which involves risk. There is always the risk that a boy will commit offences while on leave, but I think that this is a risk which cannot be avoided. Home leave is part of the process of readjustment to ordinary life and the failure to respond to home leave is an indication to the school that further training is required. Managers would not grant a boy home leave if there was any reason to think that he would be a danger to others.

Before the offence against Mr. Wills's daughter, Moon had been granted home leave on seven separate occasions, varying from two weeks to two days at a time and on no occasion had any misconduct by him come to notice——

We are dealing, on the facts, with a mental case. What medical attention was given to this case? It is not simply a question of the boy's record.

I am dealing with Moon's period at the approved school. At that stage there were these two incidents, but he was being given the ordinary course of supervision at an approved school. The question of mental illness, of course, arose later.

The House will, I hope, agree that the managers were justified in allowing Moon home leave in April, 1965. They had no reason to suppose then that he would not behave as well as he had done before on occasions of home leave. It was while he was on home leave in April, 1964 that the offence with Mr. Wills's daughter was committed. He pleaded guilty to attempted rape and asked the court to take into consideration another offence of indecent assault on another 12-year-old girl committed on the same date.

In June, 1965, as the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out, Moon came before the juvenile court. Medical evidence was placed before the court by two doctors, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, that he was suffering from mental disorder to such a degree as to warrant his detention in hospital for medical treatment. The court made an order under Section 60 for his detention in hospital.

I should elaborate this a little in view of the right hon. Gentleman's concern that no order was made under Section 65. An order under Section 60 can be made only if two doctors state that a person is suffering from a mental disorder to such a degree that he should be detained in hospital. This by itself would have the effect, as it did in this case, that he is placed in the care of the hospital and not in the care of the Secretary of State. The court could have gone further and made an order under Section 65. That would be entirely a matter for the court on the basis of the evidence before it.

It might, perhaps, be relevant if I read out Section 67, which includes an order to be made under Section 65:

"If in the case of a person of or over the age of fourteen years who is convicted by a magistrates' court of an offence punishable on summary conviction with imprisonment—

(a) the conditions which, under subsection (1) of section 60 of this Act," —

that is the section dealing with the evidence of two doctors—

"are required to be satisfied for the making of a hospital order are satisfied in respect of the offender; but

(b) it appears to the court, having regard to the nature of the offence, the antecedents of the offender and the risk of his committing further offence if set at large, that if a hospital order is made an order restricting his discharge should also be made,

the court may, instead of making a hospital order or dealing with him in any other manner, commit him in custody to quarter sessions to be dealt with in respect of the offence."

It is entirely a matter for the court to decide whether to commit him to quarter sessions for a Section 65 order, which would mean that the Secretary of State would have control over the offender.

The right hon. Gentleman has asked me to comment on this, but it would be improper for me to comment on a decision made by a court in the light of the evidence before it, whether this court or any other. The fact is that the court made the order under Section 60 and not under Section 65. Moon therefore came under the care of Harperbury Hospital.

The next matter which gave rise to the right hon. Gentleman's concern was the fact that he was granted leave and that, during two periods of leave, two further assaults were committed. The hospital was aware of the history of Moon. The school papers about the boy were sent to the hospital and his case was fully discussed by the headmaster of the school with the medical superintendent of the hospital. It was discussed both before and after the court order was made. Both had discussed with the probation officer attached to the court the possibility of his being sent there. I am satisfied that there was no failure of communication between the approved school and the hospital, or between the court and the hospital.

The right hon. Gentleman asked why leave was given. This was entirely a matter for the medical officer in the hospital. In fairness to the medical officer, in whose discretion this matter was, I ought to make two points. First, one of the main principles enunciated by the Royal Commission on Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency was that there should be a move away from institutional care as far as possible and towards community care. If someone is kept away from the community entirely, it is very difficult to bring him back as a normal member of it. Obviously, this principle cannot be applied in every case, because there may be very great risks.

The second point I must make is that in Moon's case the medical officer had to deal with someone whom the court had decided not to subject to a restriction order under Section 65, someone who was detained in hospital under Section 60. He had before him someone who behaved well in the hospital.

Anyway, leave was given. He was sent to the care of his parents at their request and they were, therefore, responsible for his supervision while he was on leave. It was then that two further offences were committed, although the first did not come to light until he admitted it when charged with the second.

I now come to the last stage of this most unfortunate and tragic affair. That is the present position and the decision of the Ashford Magistrates' Court on 17th March this year. As the right hon. Gentleman said, the bench made a probation order for three years, one of the conditions being that he should reside at Darenth Park Hospital for 12 months, which is the maximum period under the Statute. This order on the face of it may seem somewhat surprising and may give rise to some further disquiet. Again, it would be quite wrong for me to comment on the decision of the bench, but I should draw attention to certain points.

In this case, the bench could not make an order under either Section 60 or Section 65, because there was a conflict between the two medical witnesses. One of the doctors whose evidence was before the court stated that this was not a case of mental illness. The court could not make an order under Section 60, because he conditions required by the Mental Health Act—that there should be evidence from two medical practitioners both that he was suffering from mental disorder and that he was suffering from it to such an extent as to warrant hospital detention —were not satisfied.

Secondly, if the bench had committed Moon to quarter sessions, for, say, a sentence of borstal training, he might have been out in any period between six months and two years and it might have been regarded as questionable in the mind of the court how far a borstal sentence would have been a suitable sentence for a case which at any rate was on the borderline of mental illness.

Moon is now at Darenth Park Hospital. He is not allowed out of the hospital and I am sure that the question of home leave is unlikely to be considered at present. Indeed, not only is the hospital in constant touch with the probation officer concerned. who would be consulted, but the magistrates' court which sentenced him has also asked to be informed if any question of leave is contemplated.

There are certain safeguards. If Moon misbehaves in the hospital, this can be regarded as a breach of his probation order and he would come before the court for sentence for the original offence. But there is a further safeguard. Under the terms of the probation order, Moon is required to reside at the hospital only for 12 months, but the doctors at the hospital are bound to consider before his release whether, in the light of his condition, they should recommend that he should be compulsorily detained.

I think that we can all agree, using hindsight, that if certain steps had been taken, or had not been taken, these most unfortunate events might never have happened. But, despite what the right hon. Gentleman invited me to do, there is little point at this stage in trying to apportion blame among the various authorities concerned. Certainly let us look again at the whole question of administration. It is for the courts to decide within the provisions available to them and on the evidence before them how to deal with offenders who appear before them and when offenders are sent to hospitals by a court, when it is not a Section 65 case, it must be left to the responsible medical officer to decide on the appropriate treatment.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the public safety in all cases, even when there is no restriction order under Section 65 and the Home Secretary therefore has no control, must be of paramount importance. But concern for public safety does not necessarily mean the exclusion of the patient from all contact with the outside world. For a number of restricted patients under the control of the Home Secretary there is regular weekend leave and there is day parole to enable them to go to work.

As I have said, keeping the patients in touch with the community is an essential part of the treatment, but public safety should be paramount. Before a patient goes out into the community, whether temporarily or permanently, we must ensure that there will be proper supervision, that there has been proper inquiry into his background and that the risks of his committing further violence or sexual assaults has been fully assessed and been found to be without significance.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that unfortunate results like the tragic consequences of this case do a great deal of harm to an enlightened approach to penal matters, but if these safeguards are properly observed it should be possible to keep this very delicate balance and to combine a progressive system of treatment for the mentally disordered offender with due regard for the safety of the public.

It is a tribute to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that this debate on the Race Relations Act can be conducted not as an exercise in protest but as a constructive attempt to seek out ways of improving and strengthening the Act. During the Commtitee stage of our consideration of the Measure, my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) and I spent some time with the then Home Secretary suggesting improvements to the Bill and we moved Amendments in Committee. But all this was to no avail and we were left with a Bill without teeth and without guts. Recent events of arson against places of worship and the extension of racialist propaganda have proved that assessment fair. The failure of the Act to deal with extensive and fundamental areas of discrimination is now seen by all to have been an untenable position. The Home Secretary himself has referred to these matters in a very welcome speech which he made only last weekend.

Nevertheless, many of us supported the Bill because we felt that it would provide a foundation upon which we could build, and I hope that during this Session of Parliament we shall be able on that foundation to construct an edifice so that the spreading of racialist filth and the deliberate infliction of humiliation and a second-class status on any section of the people of the United Kingdom will be eliminated as far as it can be through the operation of the law. This is not to relieve the Government of the duty, through educational media and through the media of mass communication, of educationing our people against racialism and towards an understanding of different races, religions and cultures which together make up the only one race which is acceptable as such, namely the human race.

I therefore ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who, I am sure, will have every sympathy with what I have to say, to consider the following broad points in relation to amending the Race Relations Act, each of which I will discuss in turn. I suggest, first, that we should strengthen the law in relation to incitement; secondly, that we should extend the area of discrimination covered by the Act to include housing and employment; and, thirdly, that we should apply the Act to religious discrimination and incitement and, consequent on this, the application of the Act should be extended to cover Northern Ireland. It is——

Order. If the hon. Member's whole case is to be related to changing the law, he will be out of order in this debate. He is discussing the application of the Act. In doing that he may make only incidental references to the need for legislation.

I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker. It is in the sphere of incitement that the greatest danger arises, because there is now a substantial body of evidence to show that—to quote from the report of the study which was recently organised by the Manchester University Liberal Society, for whose work we are indebted—

"… we are no longer dealing with isolated groups of Nazis but with well-organised and well-financed racist groups, led by persons with contacts in many countries."

Later, the society referred to:

"… a fascinating matrix of inter-connected persons and organisations which point to fairly systematic planning, financing and operating on the part of a relatively small number of persons. Thus, links have been established between a large number of groups ranging from the Racial Preservation Society to the British National Party."

What concerns me is that, in spite of the deliberate attempts of publications like Sussex News and Spearhead to sow hatred and ill-will among different sections of the community, my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has so far been unable to act under the existing law.

It was a cause of concern to hon. Members in all parts of the House that in a recent case of arson there was a clear case of incitement by members of the National Socialist Party, yet no action has been taken under either the Race Relations Act or at common law to deal with this. The Attorney-General answered a Question of mine on the subject of racialist literature only last week and said that while 14 cases had been raised with him, he had not been able to take action, despite this. This shows the urgent need for teeth to be given to the Act.

The difficulty is that in some of these publications the very clever technique is being used of pretending to eschew violence while actually fermenting it. None but the most naive and gullible would believe that this is anything but a respectable front for ideas which essentially are intended to lead to the same horrors of Dachau, Belsen and Buchenwald. One leading participant of this campaign has admitted this.

It is significant that this man not only helps to run the Racial Preservation Society, but also distributes pamphlets to specially selected persons concerned with the glorification of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi régime. The "Support Rhodesia" stickers, one of which even the late unlamented hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr sported on his car in the House of Commons car park, came from the same source.

By a clever juxtaposition of slanted stories and statistics—such as photographs of coloured men with white girls—an atmosphere of distrust, revulsion and hatred is generated against the coloured section of the community. Some of these publications, like Spearhead, are more open in condemning what they call the sickness of the vote-catching democracy and they have openly stated that their intention is to seek political power. It is also significant that to avoid the Race Relations Act this magazine actually advertises a book club called "The Viking Book Club" and it is possible to join it merely by paying 6d. This is precisely what my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East and I warned the Home Secretary would happen when we debated the Race Relations Act. We said at the time that one needed only to attend a bingo session or private club to know how easy it is to escape the provisions of the Measure. So, for 6d. one can avoid the Act. It is necessary, therefore, to remove the words of Section 6 of the Act excluding its application

"… to members of an association of which the person publishing or distributing is a member."

One of the difficulties facing the Attorney-General is to find a suitable form of words which will cover the kind of literature to which I am referring. I do not believe he will have undue difficulty, particularly if he consults some of the sources overseas because there is a vast amount of legislation on this subject——

Order. The hon. Member is drifting into what I warned he could not do. In an Adjournment debate it is possible to criticise the working of the law, as the hon. Member is rightly doing. He can make only incidental reference to the need for changing the law, but that must not be his whole case.

The weakness here is that, as the law stands, we are not able to deal with this kind of literature because the wording of the Act is such that it does not include, for example, bringing into contempt or ridicule and it does not rely on the equivalent of the law of libel and slander. I was merely drawing the attention of the Attorney-General to some of the legislation on this subject which exists in other countries. I wished to give these illustrations only to show the diversity of methods which exist and which can be called upon to combat what amounts to a deliberate attack on the freedom of certain people in this country which is a great deal worse than libel or slander because these attacks are not based on what these people have done or said but on what they are and cannot help being.

It would be idle to quote at length from the squalid publications to which I have referred and which power-seeking politicians or psychological misfits are using. I hope that the Attorney-General will take note of the fact that these publications range from the semi-obscene to the semi-respectable. It is the semi-respectable, precisely because of their professionalism and obvious financial backing, with which I am most concerned. I wonder just how much of the funds for some of these publications are coming from foreign sources—from Johannesburg or from treasonable sources in Bullawayo?

I turn to the question of discrimination. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) will be dealing with discrimination in employment. I do not wish to delay the House on this matter, but I would like to pay tribute to her predecessor bar one, who is now in another place, without whose pioneering work we would not be debating any race relations legislation, with or without shortcomings.

Suffice to say that a survey made in Willesden, the results of which were published in the magazine New Society on 10th February, 1965, showed that there were widespread discriminatory practices in these spheres. Whereas 15 per cent. of the people covered in the survey who had visited public houses to order a drink had known the experience of being refused—and this is covered under the Act —84 per cent. of those who had applied for private accommodation, 21 per cent. of those seeking flats and 6 per cent. of those seeking houses had had this same experience. Further, 59 per cent. had been charged higher insurance premiums on their cars. It is vital, if we are to create the right atmosphere for integration and harmony, that we eliminate these discriminatory practices.

I dealt with this problem in some detail during the debate on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill and was able to move an Amendment on the Committee stage of the Estate Agents Bill concerning the practice by estate agents of discriminating. Suffice to say in respect of housing that, apart from the sale of part of a dwelling-house where the other part is retained by the owner—and where there is a personal element involved—there is need for amendment of the law in this respect.

In the sphere of employment I know that a contribution will be made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough. We have examples of discrimination by private employers, but we also have the situation in which employment exchanges are actively conniving by putting the words "No coloureds" in advertisements for employees. The excuse is that they are protecting people from humiliation, whereas in my submission it is not protection but connivance.

In case there is any suggestion that this is a universal practice of employment exchanges, I hope my hon. Friend will allow me to say that it is not true of my constituency, where the employment exchange goes a great deal of the way to discourage the appearance of this kind of discrimination.

I am grateful for that point. I hope that hon. Members will take note of that and perhaps bring pressure in their areas to see that this practice is stopped.

Would the hon. Member explain how better administration of the Act by any of Her Majesty's Ministers could possibly have any bearing upon the practices of employers in relation to employment? Since there is no provision whatever in the Act relating to employment, this could be only a matter for new legislation.

As the hon. and learned Member will realise, it is the purpose of this debate to show the shortcomings of the Act. Inevitably one would assume that new legislation would flow from this. It would help a great deal to stop the practice of discrimination if an instruction were given by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour to prevent this practice in labour exchanges.

One of the points I was trying to make was that coloured people often suffer discrimination when they seek to obtain a mortgage, try to obtain credit from a bank or in regard to insurance. This is another matter which I hope my hon. Friend will bear in mind.

Before leaving the question of discrimination in housing, employment and the rest, I make a point which I think rather important. I understand that the Race Relations Board and conciliation committees may well be overburdened at the moment, even with the limited amount of work they have. There may be a strong case for giving them a chance to get under way and to do the job they are seeking to do well before imposing further burdens. I hope that they will not be expected to run on a shoe-string. Information I have at the moment seems to indicate that the conciliation committees and the Race Relations Board are not provided with adequate means to do their job thoroughly and to get the right sort of people with the right qualifications for this very important job.

In Committee on the Race Relations Bill—I do not want to trespass beyond the bounds of order—I moved an Amendment to cover incitement and discrimination on grounds of religion. I trust that this will be in order because in so doing, apart from this being in line with the United Nations draft covenant on religious intolerance passed on 7th December, 1962, I was trying to prevent a situation arising whereby——

The hon. Member is going into detail on an amendment he is proposing to legislation. The purpose of an Adjournment debate is not that. There are other opportunities.

The point I am trying to make is that at the moment in the administering of this Act it would be quite possible for a group of persons to attack a community in this country ostensibly on the grounds of religion, when the intent was in fact to attack them for other purposes or reasons such as ethnic origins. It is quite simple to level an attack against, say, the Sikh community or the Moslem community——

I follow the hon. Member's argument, but the remedy he proposes is to change the law. This is an Adjournment debate.

I am drawing attention to a weakness in the administration of the present law and to the fact that as the law stands, or as it is being interpreted at the moment, it is possible for these attacks to be made. One might cite a recent example which exercised the attention of many of my hon. Friends and of hon. Members in all parts of the House. That was the example of an attack by arson on a synagogue. This was a case of religious worship. It might be argued that the attack was not on the basis of ethnic origin or nationality or race, but on the grounds of religion and therefore the Act might well be unable to cope with that sort of situation.

For this reason I have raised the problem of the administration of the Act in that it is possible to avoid its purposes in this way. It is high time that the practice of religious discrimination which exists in certain parts of the United Kingdom was rooted out and prevented. If the bounds of order prevent me from suggesting legislation in this regard to Northern Ireland, I only say that——

Order. As the hon. Member knows, the Act to which he is referring specifically does not refer to Northern Ireland. He cannot refer to that at all in this debate.

With respect, the Act specifically exempts Northern Ireland. What I am tying to say is that I have seen in the United Kingdom examples of communities so segregated that they would probably bring a gleam to the eye of Dr. Vervoerd. Instead of black persons, those discriminated against happen to be Roman Catholics.

Ian Smith supports them.

I do not believe we have any excuse today for not combating these evils. One of the reasons for the fall of the Weimar Republic was that it did not act swiftly and ruthlessly in eliminating the poison which eventually led to a world war, the deaths of countless millions, and indescribable barbarism. The world did not realise what this poison could lead to, but we do not have that excuse because we can learn from the past. We should act quickly to eliminate this racialist cancer operating against our heritage of freedom and tolerance of which this nation hitherto has been proud. The nation has derived a great deal from that tolerance in enrichment of our cultural heritage, our spiritual health, and material life. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, bearing in mind what has been said and what no doubt will be said by other hon. Members, will act swiftly and determinedly to eliminate this sort of thing which is at present growing in this country and which eventually could be a threat to democracy itself.

rose——

Order. Let me help the House. The House must not think that the Chair is unsympathetic to any point of view which any hon. Member expresses in this House, but the rules on Adjournment debates are as I have laid down, that matters can be raised for which Ministers are responsible administratively. Any reference to legislative reform must be purely incidental

Perhaps the best tribute I can pay to the person who represented Eton and Slough for so long until 1964 is to make a maiden speech on the question of race relations. I am sure that, had Lord Brockway remained a Member of the House of Commons, he would have been doing precisely what I and my colleagues are trying to do now, which is trying to make the Act which he initiated more effective than it is at the moment.

After listening to the assurance you, Mr. Speaker, gave of your sympathy with the points of view being expressed, I hope that you will appreciate that, as I have just learned the rules of an Adjournment debate, I will do my very best to keep to them, although I may stray to the side. I hope that you will be tolerant with me.

I speak on this subject with feeling and with great interest because, as hon. Members will know, Eton and Slough has immigrants of many nationalities and many backgrounds. Therefore, those of us who are associated with it have first-class experience of the problems of prejudice and discrimination. When discussing the question of discrimination, it is important to distinguish between discrimination, on the one hand, and prejudice, on the other. There are many people of high moral standards and of very high ideals who want to see the end of prejudice, but who argue. That we cannot legislate it out of existence. Yet the Race Relations Act is attempting to do just this.

We cannot legislate against prejudice. We cannot legislate against people holding certain ideas. Neither should we try to. No Act of Parliament can stop people from believing what they choose to believe or what they want to believe. What the Race Relations Act is designed to deal with is discrimination. This is a very different thing. Against this, as I have said, we have started legislation. By legislating against discrimination we make it more difficult for people to express their prejudices. Moreover, I am convinced that, if the Government, backed by local authorities, are seen to frown on racial discrimination, and to frown more strongly on it than they do at the moment, an atmosphere will be created in which it is less likely that prejudice will be expressed.

I want to refer to the speech my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made on Monday to the Voluntary Liaison Committee at the Commonwealth Institute. My right hon. Friend recognised the importance of discrimination and prejudice in employment when he said this:

"The employment aspect of this matter is rapidly becoming central to the whole future of our integration policy."

If this is true, it follows that the matter of discrimination in employment must be included in the Race Relations Act, because we cannot talk of integration and assimilation if in the very activities where man spends most of his time he is subject to the opposite of integration—discrimination.

To spend money and to do research with a view to discovering, as many have, the best ways of helping non-English-speaking children to become quickly scholastically equal with their English-speaking contemporaries is a waste of time if, having done this, we allow a society to develop which refuses the child a job, not because he is educationally inferior, because we have dealt with that, but simply because he is coloured.

But this is going on. Some hon. Members will have seen the television programme last November in which a youth employment officer, when discussing the employment of coloured youngsters, used these words when he spoke about interviewing them for jobs:

"… it means more interviews and I think it has been equated with the problems that we have in placing handicapped youngsters … It takes longer to place them. Sometimes they have to accept a job that does not require quite such high qualifications as they have got, but it is more difficult to place a well-qualified coloured youngster than an equally qualified white youngster. Indeed I sometimes think that they are rather in the same position that women used to be and still are, to some extent.

Certain firms within an industry are not prepared to accept youngsters because they find that there are some classes of occupation to which they are not acceptable. We also find variations of acceptability… There are some employers who will take West Indians and not West Africans, or Indians and Pakistanis or Indians and perhaps not Pakistanis, which is understandable, I suppose, at the moment. We also find, too. that some employers will say, 'Well, we will take them if they are not too dark'."

An instance was also given on the programme of two young boys going after the same job. The coloured boy was told that there were no vacancies. The white boy was told that there were several vacancies. I am sure that we could all relate similar stories.

We must take steps to avoid creating a society in which coloured people are forced into certain types of employment, though this is beginning to happen. For if we allow this to continue to happen. we shall produce a society where we will have second-class citizens, because it will hot stop, and it does not stop, in employment. If there are white jobs and coloured jobs, and if the coloured jobs tend to be less well-paid, it will inevitably lead to white housing and coloured housing, and someone in a lower-paid job will be in a cheaper house. This will mean a poorer type of living. If this happens and if, because of this trend in employment and housing, areas grow up which tend to be coloured—we have seen this happen in certain areas—it will be seen also in our schools. So the thread must be followed right through.

If the matter of discrimination in employment could be dealt with in the Race Relations Act, we should take another positive step towards building a society which does not discriminate. Equally important, we should do something to dispel an idea which is often wrongly held by many coloured people that, if they are rejected for a job, it is because they are coloured. In fact, in this way they are given a chip on their shoulder. If discrimination in employment is put without the law, it will help to eradicate the misunderstandings that arise.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary also referred, in the speech which I have mentioned, to the question of including in the fair wages clause the matter of discrimination. Other local authorities should be encouraged to follow the example of the London Borough of Camden, not to put work out to contract to firms which practise discrimination. If the lead is given in this matter, it will be followed through.

I should also like to ask my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary if the powers of the Race Relations Board can be strengthened in certain respects. The powers of this body should not be as limited as they are. At the moment, the Board cannot subpoena witnesses, nor can it examine documents. At present, any complaints or charges that the Board wishes to bring to court must go through the Attorney-General for approval. If the powers of the Board were streng- thened, it would be better able to deal with discrimination.

Finally, in the speech I have mentioned my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary expressed particular concern for the generation of children whose parents were coloured immigrants, but who themselves were born here. If my right hon. Friend feels sincerely that their chances in employment and housing when they grow up and get married will be the same as those of their white contemporaries, the Race Relations Act will not need to include provision for those two aspects of our life.

However, if my right hon. Friend feels, as some of us do, apprehension about the attitudes which are being expressed and which will be expressed towards these youngsters, if he feels concerned about the assumptions of inferiority that they may be forced to accept because of prejudice, which will show themselves again in discrimination, surely he will want to do all within his power to legislate against discrimination until education and understanding have removed this necessity.

For the first time since I entered the House, 18 months or so ago, it is my very pleasant duty to follow a maiden speech and to offer congratulations upon it. I know that I speak for all bachelor Members on both sides of the House when I say that we always warmly welcome the recruitment of attractive lady Members to our ranks. In the case of the hon. Lady the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor), we have found that her looks are matched by an attractive and fluent Parliamentary manner. We listened to her speech with interest and admiration. We congratulate her upon it and we look forward to hearing her again on this and many other subjects.

I offer my congratulations to the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) for initiating this important and timely debate. I wish to detain the House for a few minutes to refer specifically to the publications of the body—it has already been mentioned—known as the Racial Preservation Society, a society to which I drew attention recently at Question Time.

When the Race Relations Bill was going through the House, and the hon. Member for Blackley and I both served on the Standing Committee, many of us firmly believed that the Bill and, in particular, Clause 6, was explicitly designed to catch this kind of racialist publication. We have, therefore, been disturbed and disappointed by the Attorney-General's reluctance to take action. To some extent, however, one can share his point of view that it would be fatal to initiate a prosecution which then failed. From that angle, therefore, I hope that recent reports that the Government are now considering moves to strengthen the Act to deal with this kind of extremist publication will prove well founded. Perhaps we may have an assurance on that either today or at an early date.

There is no doubt that the continued circulation of these despicable publications represents a grave affront to thousands of coloured citizens in this country who are living decent, honest and respectable lives. Happily, racial issues played little or no part in the recent General Election. If I may say so, much of the credit for that goes to the firm stand taken by the Leader of the Opposition, who made clear from the start that he would not tolerate the exploitation of racial issues for party purposes. Nevertheless, we should all be in grave danger of being accused of hypocrisy and self-deception if we imagined that, because racial issues were rarely mentioned during the election campaign, they were no longer of concern or anxiety to many people in this country, We have to face the fact that there is a great deal of latent racialism in Britain which can very easily be fanned by publications such as the Sussex News and British Independent, playing as they do on fear, ignorance and emotion.

We know that racialists are emotionally unbalanced and mentally sick but it is a sickness which can be very contagious, and, so long as these publications are distributed from door to door or by a certain notorious bookshop in London, we run the danger of more and more of our fellow citizens becoming infected by this kind of vicious propaganda. Anyone who has received letters from racialists—I now have quite a collection—will testify to their diseased and perverted state of mind. One extremist organisation wrote to me the other day to inform me that those responsible for what it called the "contamination of our land" will hang on Tower Hill for their treason against the British people, and the writer warned, "Make sure you are not among them". I now publicly stake my claim to the scaffold by continuing my campaign against the publications and activities of the Racial Preservation Society and all other organisations which aim to stir up racial antagonism.

As the hon. Member for Blackley rightly maintained, one particularly nauseating feature of the papers which this society produces is the publication of emotive and malicious photographs with no caption, but merely showing a white girl walking in the street with a coloured man. These photographs appear always to be taken by a J. Macintyre, who, I understand, is editor of New Nation, another nauseating periodical. But the disturbing aspect of this kind of thing is that any white girl who is innocently walking with a coloured man is liable to find herself featured, without permission, in this publication and in a context in which there is a clear implication that she is doing something immoral and undesirable. This is a quite intolerable situation.

I must say that I marvel at the restraint and tolerant good humour which is almost always shown by coloured people in face of this kind of provocation. Occasionally, of course, they give way to expressions of anger and bitterness. Some of the statements of, for example, the Racial Adjustment Action Society would themselves appear to fall within the definition of

"stirring up hatred on grounds of colour or race"

and I am sure that all hon. Members will condemn intemperate racialist language whether coming from black or from white.

But we must realise that we shall be able to restrain the justifiable anger of so many of our coloured citizens who at present feel themselves affronted and insulted by the racialist periodicals to which I have referred only if we take firm and positive action to deal with the circulation of these journals. This is why I strongly and earnestly support the plea made so cogently today by the hon. Member for Blackley for a strengthening of the Race Relations Act so that we can stamp out the evil forces of racialism and intolerance.

I join the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) on having introduced this subject today. Also, I am happy to express our delight at hearing my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor), in her most interesting maiden speech. We congratulate her on the fine manner in which she presented her case, and we look forward with pleasure to hearing from her often. If she maintains the standard which we heard from her today, as I am sure she will, the whole House will be very happy indeed to listen to her on all occasions.

I know that several hon. Members wish to take part in the debate and I shall, therefore, be as brief as I can. I shall not repeat what has been said by previous speakers. I agree with the expressions of anxiety to which they have given voice, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and his colleagues in the Government will take note of them.

I wish to direct attention to a particular aspect of this matter. We cannot deal with this subject in a vacuum. Those of us who experienced the rise of Nazism will realise that there can be no limit to the ultimate results, the horrifying results, which can flow from the dissemination of race hatred. Today happens to be the day after the anniversary of the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Worshippers in synagogues in this country and in very many other countries of the world were observing that anniversary yesterday and the day before.

When I was in the synagogue myself, I wondered how it could happen that men could sink to the depths to which those who villify others because of their race or religion have fallen, I thought of the horrifying effects of their indoctrination, of the millions of people who were slaughtered in consequence of what people believed to be just a passing phase of vicious propaganda. These passing phases can begin sometimes with the kind of literature being disseminated in this country today about which hon. Members have already spoken.

I thought of a recent case involving a synagogue, one of the centres of the promulgation of laws which have been accepted by all civilised people, and I wondered, if I may say so with respect, how a learned judge could have come to the conclusion he did and could have so overlooked the gravity of the serious crime of arson. But even if he were right—and I do not accept that—if a learned judge comes to the conclusion that the crime was committed in consequence of incitement, how can we stand by and not do something about bringing to justice those who by spreading their literature, by their words and by action in this enlightened country incite people, in many cases young people, to the commission of that kind of crime? I think that the common law as it stands enables us to take proceedings against those who incite and I hope that they will be taken in due course. It is no good those disseminating that kind of foul propaganda pretending that they are not inciting people or that their intention is not to incite.

I have here two books. One of them is a pornographic book issued to children in Germany at the time of Hitler. At the same time, a book was published there which was distributed among Members of Parliament in which this statement was made:

"At Chancellor Hitler's instigation … the foreign press officer of the National-Socialist party made the following statement in a transatlantic telephone-interview with the director of the International News Service. To the question: 'Are the reports of alleged offences committed against Jews true or untrue?' he replied: 'The Chancellor authorised me a few minutes ago, when I met him at the Munich aerodrome on arrival from Berlin, to tell you that in their totality all these accounts are vile lies.'"

That is precisely the kind of argument used by these cowardly people who, when accused, pretend that the kind of literature which they are spreading and action which they are taking is not conducive to the commission of crimes by themselves and by others.

Today, we have to some extent the same kind of matter which was published in Der Stunner.[Interruption.] This is a matter of extreme importance. It is no good the hon. and learned Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) smiling. Some people did that when Hitler came to power. There are cartoons in them which resemble the kind of libels produced in Der Sturmer, one of the most vile publications of our time. I cannot for the life of me see how cartoons of this kind, which vilify coloured people and Jewish people by expression or implication, do not come within the terms of the Act.

Genocide and incitement to genocide should surely be dealt with within the Act. I, and I am sure the whole House, look with concern on the publication of the kind of literature which is being sent out in many cases under the pretence of not being anti-racial and I hope that we shall take such steps as we can to see that in our country there shall not arise anything in any way resembling, let alone resembling substantially, the shocking incidents which happened in our own time. Those incidents should cause us to take the implications in the publications to which I have referred at their true value.

The hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Sir B. Janner) need not think that I was smiling at what he was saying. I was merely trying to draw his attention to the clock.

I am sorry.

I understand how the hon. Gentleman gets involved in this theme, as we all do. I was not making a personal attack against him. But one side of the case has been deployed for forty minutes. The other side will, I think, have five minutes.

I wish to join in the congratulations to the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor), for two good reasons. One is that my constituency of Buckinghamshire, South, if she will pardon the expression, embraces her all round. The second is that I have become something of a connoisseur of speeches on this subject, as some hon. Members will know. It is particularly pleasant for me to have the pleasure of congratulating the hon. Lady on an excellent exposition of her case. Her predecessor, up to 1964, introduced a Bill on this subject in nine successive Sessions which I, in nine successive Sessions, opposed successfully, I am happy to say. The hon. Lady will therefore realise that, when I congratulate her on her presentation of the case, I do so with some familiarity with the case. I hope that we shall have the pleasure of hearing her speak often.

I must be very short because my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) and the Minister both wish to speak. It would, however, be very wrong if the impression were to go out from the House, as it may on the balance of speeches today, that the views which have been expressed are either those of the House generally or of the public in this country. I remember the Race Relations Bill, introduced by the Government, going through the House. The predominant anxiety which was voiced, not from one side of the House only, concerned the encroachment which it made on the traditional freedom of discussion and expression of the British people. So strong and widespread were those anxieties that the Bill was drastically altered, totally recast, in Committee. Even then, many of us felt, and I still feel, that it was too high a price to pay for whatever benefits might accrue from it.

I am, and I think that all hon. Members should be, prepared to listen to any expression of view, from wherever it comes and in whatever terms it is cast. Those who advocate a contrary course do a grave disservice to the great traditions of this country. I fear that the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) injected into this subject the kind of acrimony which I find incompatible with the plea for tolerance which he made. He referred to the late unlamented Member for Perry Barr.[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] There we are. That is not exactly an example of tolerance and openmindedness.

With reason.

The hon. Member condemned an organisation about which I know nothing because it made it clear that its object was to achieve power. That is the object of every political party in this country—a wholly legitimate object if achieved by persuasion. We should be very wrong to block the channels of persuasion. He spoke of a deliberate attack on the freedom of certain people in this country. What is he proposing except a deliberate attack on the freedom of those in this country who disagree with him?

No.

Briefly, please. Time is short.

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman not agree that the law of slander and libel also imposes certain limitations on people? Is not this the extension of that law to unjustifiable attacks and not to individuals but to groups?

I do not think the hon. Gentleman has listened very carefully to what I said. He was attacking people, an organisation or an individual, for what he called a deliberate attack on the freedom of certain people in this country. I was pointing out that that was precisely what he was proposing. Whether that was a good or bad thing is beside the point: he was condemning them for what he was doing himself.

Sir Frank Soskice, the Home Secretary at the time, when introducing the Bill, spoke of the unrivalled tradition of tolerance and fair play in this country. There must be tolerance for everybody and for every point of view, and not merely for those points of view which have recently commended themselves to the seaside conferences of the Labour Party, and that is what the hon. Gentleman has been asking for.

I felt, with respect, that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) was saying very much the same thing. He referred to those who did not accept those particular doctrines which appeal to him as being animated by fear, ignorance, emotion; they were emotionally unbalanced, mentally sick; they were in a perverted state of mind; and their attitudes were intolerable. Intolerable! Well, what sort of debates do we have on this basis?

I do not want to go into the particular merits of things now, but I must say that, speaking for myself, I have grave doubts about the activities of the Minister for Integration—if I have got his title right. I had grave doubts about the flood of these people which came in.

This is not some old prejudice of mine, not something which brought me into politics. When I saw that flood coming in I thought it a bad thing. It is a bad thing he should now seek to integrate them into the community, because if they are so integrated they will remain here and become part of the community. Do we want that? Is that what the hon. Gentleman wants? What folly is this for him to commend to Parliament—

What does the hon. and learned Member want?

I would say that what I want is that everybody should have his own personal views about these matters of immigration, of integration, of the relations between people—on all subjects; and that he should enjoy freedom of expression and freedom to persuade other people.

What the hon. Member for Blackley said, astonishingly enough, was that the publications he was talking about ranged from the semi-obscene to the semirespectable—and that it is the latter that he is worried about. He does not mind the ones we would all condemn. It is the ones which are pretty respectable which he does not like. He agrees with me. This is precisely the danger of this point of view, because it is not intemperance of expression he is striking at, it is the point of view being expressed. It is the point of view being expressed which the hon. Member wants to strike at through legislative means. He wants to make temperate expressions of opinions in what he calls semi-respectable journals illegal by Act of Parliament.

We are in danger of binding ourselves with the chains of accepted phrases. I do not know what people mean when they talk about prejudice.[Laughter.] We live most of our lives—and must—according to prejudice. We cannot have specific judgments on all the things we do from day to day; 99 per cent. of them must be based on judgments made beforehand. There is no other way of living. These are prejudices. I heard discrimination condemned. Why? It is a peculiarly human quality. It is right that everyone should discriminate between all the people he meets on every ground that he can detect. This is how human progress is achieved.

Unbelievable, is it not?

To condemn discrimination is really to use words in a wholly artificial and unmeaning sense. This would not matter if this were a school debating society, but this is Parliament.

Whether this is on the Adjournment or not, I am afraid that what has been suggested in those speeches was legislation, legislation to prohibit people from discriminating in their relationships according to the judgments which they form of people as they go along, and that, to my mind, is something evil and wrong in itself. The hon. Gentleman does not believe in tolerance. He thinks it is wrong to discriminate between people on all grounds one can detect.

Incitement to murder is discrimination.

It is not discrimination. It is incitement. The hon. Gentleman does not know what words mean. That is his trouble.

The hon. Member for Blackley wants to make an Act of Parliament to put people into prison for doing those things which he personally happens to disapprove of. For that reason I utterly disapprove of everything that he said, and I hope the House will not endorse it and that his words will carry no persuasion in any quarter in this House.

I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) chose this subject for the very short debate which we are having today. I only wish there were longer, so that all those who wish to take part could have a chance to do so.

I should like to congratulate, in particular, the hon. Lady the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) upon the speech which we have heard from her this afternoon. She, I think I may say, steered a careful course through the rules of order and many of us might envy her skill, but she gave us a thoughtful speech which was in the line of the thinking which had been carried on by both her predecessors in her constituency.

The debate has fallen, as the Act does, into two parts. First, the question of incitement, which we discussed at considerable length during the time when the Bill was passing through this House. I think that every one of us here would abhor some of the literature which we have been receiving through the post. It does seem that there is a possibility of a gap in the legislation, and I think, particularly, that there is a possibility of a gap in respect of the bogus association referred to by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackley, and, I think, by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt).

There is also the kind of propaganda which is much more difficult to tackle, and that is the kind which is put about by means of stickers in various different places. This breaks out from time to time, I understand, in different parts of the country. I think that this is probably a problem one which is very difficult to tackle.

There is the difficulty of preserving the balance between the right of free speech which this country has always enjoyed, and which is defended so forcefully by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell), and there is the abhorrence which we all feel in matters of this kind.

What I can say is that if there is a loophole in the Act through which propaganda of this unpleasant kind is slipping, despite the intentions which we all supported when the Act went through, we on this side of the House would certainly be prepared to examine in a constructive sense any proposals brought forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary.

I now turn to the other part of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackley described the Act—and I think that he was referring particularly to the other part of it—as being without teeth and without guts. We on this side of the House expressed considerable doubts when the Bill was passing through Parliament as to whether or not it would be an effective instrument and would achieve the purpose for which it was intended.

I believe—I said this at the time and I still hold this view very strongly—that one of the basic mistakes was in trying first to introduce a Bill related on a fairly narrow field to criminal sanctions, and then altering it and substituting in the same Act a procedure which was based upon conciliation machinery. We pressed the Home Secretary of the day very strongly to take the whole Bill back and to re-examine it from the start. If he had done so, and had introduced a Bill which was based upon the conciliation machinery from the start, it might well have been in a very different form to what we now know as the Race Relations Act.

None the less, the conciliation machinery grafted on to the other Bill was accepted, and our feeling now is that we should do what we can to assist the Act, as it stands, to work, and we should give it a fair chance to see how it works out in practice. One of the main aspects upon which the whole of the working of the Act will depend is the conciliation committees. I understand—and I should like confirmation of this—that none of the conciliation committees has yet been appointed.

I should like to know from the Under-Secretary of State how many conciliation committees it is foreseen will be needed to cover the whole country. How many people will have to be appointed to the committees? Will the principle that they should be impartial people, who are respected in their communities for their impartiality, be maintained in the appointment of members of the committees? The appointment of the committees should proceed, and they should be set up as fast as possible. Only in that way shall we be able to see how the intentions of the Act are working out.

I only regret that this debate has been so short, but I particularly congratulate the hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackley on having chosen this most important subject for this very brief discussion.

I echo all the words of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharpies), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) on introducing this topic. I also congratulate all those who have spoken, with only one exception, for the thoughtful presentation of their case and their measured tones. I am aware of the depth of feeling on this matter, and I share it. I suppose that the most charitable thing that I could say about the intervention by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) is that his was a speech from the backwoods.

I shall deal, first, with the question of incitement. Under Section 6 of the Race Relations Act, a person is:

"… guilty of an offence … if, with intent to stir up hatred against any section of the public in Great Britain distinguished by colour, race, or ethnic or national origins—

(a) he publishes or distributes written matter which is threatening, abusive or insulting; or

(b) he uses in any public place or at any public meeting words which are threatening, abusive or insulting …".

This reference to "colour, race or ethnic or national origins" follows the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and it is a definition which we should expect to cover any of the sort of cases to which my hon. Friends have drawn the House's attention.

National origins were included as well as ethnic origins, because some groups against which vicious allegations may be made are not distinguished by race, colour or ethnic origins, but only by national origins. Religion was not included in the list of prohibited grounds, because this does not give rise to the same problems as racial attacks, which would include anti-Semitism and anti-colour attacks. In practice, it would seem that an attack on religion as a concealed attack on race or colour would be likely to reveal itself for what it really was, and that it would fall within the scope of the Act.

As the House may be aware, there have not yet been any criminal proceedings under Section 6 of the Act. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions have considered various publications which have been mentioned here today, issued by Fascist and racialist organisations, but on no occasion has sufficient evidence been found that the matter was such as to constitute incitement to racial hatred as defined in the Act.

We are well aware of the circulation of repulsive and scurrilous literature, but my right hon. and learned Friend concluded, after very careful consideration, that the publications sent to him—those mentioned here today—did not infringe the terms of the Act, and I am sure that we are all concerned that it would be unfortunate, to say the least, if there were an unsuccessful prosecution in this type of case.

Why?

The answer to that question by the hon. and learned Gentleman from way down in the country is that if there were an unsuccessful prosecution this would give a measure of respectability to those that we condemn, and presumably he is not concerned with that, or is anxious to give a measure of respectability to their nefarious activities.

As to the use of spoken words—and I am not referring to words spoken in this Chamber—they can only constitute an offence under the Section if they are uttered at a public place or at a public meeting. If a person privately incites another person to commit an offence, this cannot constitute an offence under the Race Relations Act, although it may well be an offence under the ordinary criminal law relating to incitement to commit a crime.

This brings me to the comments made by my hon. Friend the respected Member for Leicester, North-West (Sir B. Janner) in relation to the shocking cases of attacks on synagogues. At the trial at the Central Criminal Court of four young men accused of burning synagogues, it was suggested that they had been incited to commit those crimes by leaders of the National Socialist Movement. The leaders in question were Mr. and Mrs. Colin Jordan. The Director of Public Prosecutions has investigated the case and there is insufficient evidence to take proceedings against Mr. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan is believed to be in France and there is at present insufficient evidence to justify an application for her extradition. If and when she returns to this country, she may be interviewed by the police.

Concerning these offences, I should like to comment on the excellent work done by the police in investigating and bringing to court on three occasions a total of 12 persons, 11 of whom were convicted and some of whom were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

When the then Home Secretary spoke on Clause 6 when the Bill was before the House last year, he said that it would in no sense inhibit private discussion and would not inhibit public discussion but that what it forbade was public abuse motivated by an actual intent to incite to hatred or abuse likely to stir up hatred on account of something which nobody could help, namely, his origin. That was what Section 6 of the Act was intended to do. It seeks to strike a most delicate balance so as to stop what we all, it would appear, with one exception, want to stop but at the same time not to curtail freedom of speech or to limit legitimate political discussion and controversy.

We must be careful, therefore, in trying to preserve this balance and not upsetting it. After all, the Act has been in force for only a few months and we have much to learn of its operations. We must, and shall, work it to the full. Even if it were shown—and there is some evidence to this effect—that the provisions of the Act in this direction could not deal adequately with the mischief at which it is aimed, amending legislation would probably be most difficult to frame.

The Government are aware of the concern of hon. Members on both sides. Our attention has been drawn several times to Motion No. 30. I commend to hon. Members the reply of my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council on 19th May, when he stated that active discussions were taking place with a view to looking again at the provisions of the Act and the extent to which they were adequate in dealing with this whole matter of incitement.

I turn now to the proposals that have been made to extend the provisions of the Act relating to discrimination. There can be no doubt where the Government and, I believe, all parties stand on this question of discrimination on racial grounds. There is clear evidence that we all abhor it. We deplore it wherever it occurs and are determined to do what we can to see that it forms no part of our national life. The Race Relations Act is evidence of this.

It is true that the Act does not extend to a number of important fields where discrimination occurs, in particular housing and employment——

Or Northern Ireland.

Or, indeed, Northern Ireland—and that there are those—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to refer to Northern Ireland when it has nothing to do with the Act? Is it in order for him to confirm that there is discrimination, which is quite untrue?

Further to the point of order. You may not be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that before you came into the Chair Mr. Speaker specifically ruled that it was out of order to refer to Northern Ireland in this debate.

References to Northern Ireland are out of order and were prompted by an interjection from the back benches. I hope that there will be no further references to Northern Ireland.

Outrageous.

I was saying that the Act does not apply to a number of fields, including housing and employment, where discrimination is evident, and there are arguments that it should be extended into these fields. Those arguments have been put forward in this debate. It is equally argued. as was done when the Bill was in Committee, that legislation is not necessarily the best method of removing discrimination and that education and an appeal to common sense and fair play can be more effective. The Government have an open mind on this question and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made clear in a public statement on Monday of this week that we are willing to examine in due course whether amending legislation is required or is appropriate to circumstances in this country.

Before closing, I should like to answer one or two of the points that have been raised concerning the Race Relations Board. I was asked whether the Board has adequate means at its disposal. The answer at the moment is that it has. The Board is in the early stages of its work and I can give an assurance that if the Board asks for more staff if it is becoming overloaded, we will look at this sympathetically. We are in close touch with the Board and will be aware of its needs as soon as they are apparent.

The Board is pressing on as rapidly as possible with the establishment of local conciliation committees. Its proposal in the first instance is to establish 15 local liaison committees. As a priority it is dealing first with London. It is hoped that two or three committees will probably be established before the summer, but if is a question of time.

As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam said, it is important that the right people are found to serve on these committees. There is no question whatever that the broad composition of a local conciliation committee will reflect a measure of impartiality. Inevitably, people will be asked to serve on such a committee who have particular experience in this field. In employment or housing, people will be invited to serve who happen to be members of an organisation. Some of them may well be people who themselves were born overseas and have lived here for some time. Broadly speaking, a local conciliation committee will reflect a cross-section of the community. There is no question of its appearing to be anything other than a group of public-spirited people anxious to effect conciliation in issues which are brought to their attention.

The Race Relations Board will shortly appoint a conciliation officer to act as its professional adviser and to assist local conciliation committees. It has decided to produce a pamphlet explaining in simple language for the information of the public how to complain in cases of unlawful discrimination and describing the way in which such complaints will be investigated and dealt with.

The Board will also produce a form of complaint for use by those who wish to make such complaints. It hopes to be able to arrange for copies of the pamphlet and form to be available at town halls, W.V.S. centres, employment exchanges, National Insurance offices, and so on. All these are essential pre liminaries to the efficient functioning of the Board and its committees under the Act. I am sure that we all wish them every success in the important work which they have undertaken.

Whatever form legislation eventually takes, it will never be the complete answer. Discrimination stems from an attitude of mind. Its eradication must depend ultimately on an understanding of its causes and on a process of education whereby we can create a climate of opinion in which it cannot exist.

May I, in conclusion, contrary to normal procedure, refer particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor), whose maiden speech we have heard today. Her two predecessors have contributed enormously in this field and my hon. Friend follows them in so far as she is advocating what we would consider to be sane and sensible policies. I am sure that we all look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend again on this and on many other subjects.

In the final minute which is available to me, I should like to comment on the work not merely of the Race Relations Board, but of the Archbishop's committee, the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, and of the various panels, for the work they are doing, and the work of local liaison committees. Whatever we may feel here in this House, the real job of work is to be done in localities to change attitudes of mind and the habits of people.

This is a job equally for voluntary organisations as it is for statutory bodies. It is a job for partnership in which we need an educative process and may also—and do—need legislation in this House. I am therefore happy to welcome the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley, in introducing this debate.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to Mr. Speaker for the opportunity to draw attention to a problem which I hope will be of interest to hon. Members from all parts of the country, including Northern Ireland, if it is in order to mention it in this context. The subject is the unreasonably high cost of living in Scotland. Certain major items of household expenditure in Scotland are greatly in excess of the comparable costs in England and Wales. This requires no explanation to Scottish audiences but, for the sake of argument in the British Parliament, I shall quote a few specific examples.

I have referred to the high cost of living as unreasonable, and that is so. The higher costs and lower wages in Scotland cannot be justified by any question of the Scottish people being less industrious or skilled than the English. Nor can it be attributed to profiteering or exploitation by shopkeepers and businessmen, for are not the big stores in England, particularly in London, usually owned by Scotsmen? There is a variety of reasons for the high living cost in Scotland, but I believe the principal one, and therefore the one that could most readily be put right, is due to Government policy and the policy of agencies and corporations coming under Government control.

I do not blame this state of affairs on any particular Government. While, as could be expected, the problem has become worse under the present Government, I do not believe that any Government of any party will go out of their way to help Scotland unless forceful and frequent efforts are made to spotlight Scotland's problems and to take appropriate action. This is a serious and vital problem. Last year, the rate of emigration from Scotland increased alarmingly, so that for the first time in a decade the number of people living in Scotland declined.

One of the main reasons for this massive exodus was the unreasonable cost of living and the low value in real terms of the average Scottish wage packet, and I ask the Government to take the appropriate steps to reverse the trend. What is the extent of the problem? The first factor is the basic household cost. The average cost of a new house built for sale in Scotland last year was just over £4,000. That is higher than the average for England and Wales, except for London and the South. I have checked these figures carefully and they have been confirmed by the recently published document by the Co-operative Building Society.

In the North-East of England, the average cost per house was under £3,000 compared with more than £4,000 in Scotland, while in the Midlands and the North-West it was about £3,300. It is true that some of the extra cost stemmed from building materials and transport charges for those materials, but I believe that the main cause was that in Scotland the Government and past Governments have not encouraged the building of owner-occupied houses and many local authorities have gone out of their way to discourage it.

Of the 550,000 houses built in Scotland since the war, less than 100,000 have been for owner-occupation. With he nation's dreadful housing problem, it is clear that a higher than average proportion of homes to let is required, but I believe that with proper encouragement, adequate land availability and financial incentives many of those occupying rented municipal homes would be glad to buy their own homes. At present, the prohibitive prices make this impossible.

It is not just the cost of the house in Scotland that is the sole cause. We have an outrageously complicated legal procedure for tracing and registering title deeds. The result is that while in England to purchase a £3,000 house will normally involve legal fees of about £50, the lawyers in Scotland would charge about £90. A simple Bill to revise and simplify the system of checking titles in Scotland on the English pattern would thus involve a saving of at least £40—perhaps more if some of the unnecessary complications in the English law were also removed at the same time.

In Scotland, we also have the feu system, under which a house purchase is not free of land burden. An annual feu is almost invariably charged. This is a fixed sum and in the past was normally a negligible amount like £2 or £3 a year. But on the new houses being built at present the feu duty is rarely below £15 per annum and in some cases well over £20. As such, it is simply a hidden increase in the price of the house. Any change in the system would obviously require some compensation of the individuals, charitable bodies and companies which have invested in feus, but the abolition of feus in respect of new homes purchased would at least prevent the continuance of what has become a scandal.

Having purchased a home at the inflated price, with the heavier legal fees and the peculiarly Scottish feu duty, the Scottish householder finds himself saddled with an iniquitous and exorbitant rates burden. In the Allen Report it was stated:

"The average rate payment in Scotland is greater than in England and Wales as a whole for all income groups, and very considerably so."

According to the review published by the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants, the average rate burden per head of population in Scotland in 1965-66 was over £25, with the average for the cities being over £27 and the average in Glasgow being almost £29. This means that the average family of four must pay over £100 in rates, either directly on their homes or indirectly in the prices in the shops.

In England the average is much lower, and in the rural areas of England the average for 1965-66 was just £15 per head or about £60 for a family of four—about half the burden in Glasgow. While it is true that some of the cause of the disparity is the relatively low level of municipal rents in Scotland, this is only part of the story, and it seems inequitable that Scottish folk should pay so much more for the same municipal services as are provided in England. If the rating system must remain—and I would like to see is scrapped entirely, with regional authorities being financed entirely from the Exchequer—then let us have a system of Government grants which will remove or reduce this inequitable differential in rating costs.

Having bought the house and paid the rates, the Scottish householder now has to turn his mind to heating the home. He has three alternatives, and in each case he will find an extra charge.

My first example here is gas. Up-to-date figures are impossible to obtain. When I asked the Minister of Power at the end of April, he explained that the most recent figures were for the year 1964-65. In that year, the average revenue per therm for domestic sales in Scotland was over 2s. 5½d., but the national average was just 2s. 2d. This is bad enough, but the fact is that a 6 per cent. increase on the Scottish prices came into effect in February, 1965, and that only three months of the figure quoted by the Minister included this increase. So the position is probably much worse. On top of this steep rise on an already excessive cost, we have had in the last few weeks yet another alarming and unprecedented increase of 13 per cent. in Scottish gas prices. The Ministry says that an exact comparison cannot be made at this stage, but it seems clear that the Scottish householder pays about one-fifth more for his gas supplies.

The differential in coal is well known and the figures of zone delivery prices showing Scotland's central belt coal prices only about 6d. per ton above those of the north of England and ls. per bag above the central areas of England seem nonsense when we see the price which the housewife has to pay. For industry, the extra cost is more alarming. For one big Scottish works, 10s. extra per ton can mean £1 million on its annual costs. The actual differential compared with some of its competitors is 35s. per ton. Can we wonder why Scottish prices are higher and wages lower?

The high cost of electricity in Scotland was not so serious when it was simply one of a range of heating systems which could be freely selected by the householder. But with so many local authority houses now being supplied only with electricity and, in some cases, with electrically heated floors, any excess can impose a heavy extra burden on living costs which it is impossible to avoid. I have not detailed figures about electricity, but I am assured that the story is not all that different from that of gas.

Travelling to work in Scotland can be much dearer than in England, and usually is. To travel short distances of between two miles and four miles in Glasgow on public transport costs about 20 per cent. more than in Manchester and Birmingham. Glasgow is bad, but I understand that, as in everything else, Edinburgh is worse.

Groceries also are generally dearer in Scotland. According to a reputable national newspaper, a Scottish housewife recently purchased a basket of messages in a London supermarket for £1 3s. 2d. On the same day, in Edinburgh, the same items cost £1 5s. in one shop and £1 9s. in another, a substantial differential. Transport costs of course add to the price of food, and it is interesting to note what happens to Scottish prices whenever there is any difficulty with transport, as in the present seamen's strike.

In the Financial Times on Monday there was a list of shopping prices in various cities for items such as meat. Scottish prices were shown to be so fantastically higher than in England that I believed the classifications of joints could not possibly have been the same. For a simple item like a lemon the London price was 4d., the average English price was 5d., and the Scottish price was 8d.

All these high costs and charges would not be so intolerable if wages were higher too, but the most recent Ministry of Labour Gazette shows that the average earnings of adult males in England are £19 1ls. 9d. per week, whereas in Scotland the average is only £18 9s. More than £1 a week is a lot, even when prices are identical, but the figures which I have quoted show clearly that the differential in real terms is much greater.

So much for my complaints. What can be done about them, and what should the Government in particular do?

The first task, I believe, is for serious consideration to be given to charging the same price throughout Britain for the products of nationalised industries. I cannot see any justification for making people pay more just because, by an unlucky accident, they live in an area which, for administrative reasons, the nationalised boards have given commercial autonomy. To establish the same price for gas, electricity and coal, whether it is sold in London, Glasgow, Manchester or Derby, would make sound sense, and I believe would be much more just.

The second job which the Government must tackle is the rating differential. If, for identical services of local government, and after making allowances which must be made for self-imposed special circumstances such as London rent policies, Scottish folk are paying more in rates, the Government should put this right through the general grant.

Next, by their own efforts, and by exhorting local authorities in particular, the Government must encourage owner-occupancy in Scotland, thereby facilitating the building of more and cheaper houses for sale. I believe that unless we can have more houses we cannot try to sort out this differential in prices and costs which exist at the present time.

I also hope that the Government will spare no efforts to try to attract to Scotland and industries and Government establishments which can offer employment of a highly skilled and highly paid nature. As hon. Members know, Scotland produces a relatively high number of university graduates, and we simply cannot expect the best from our own people when so many of them have to go south or abroad to look for highly paid jobs, which they cannot find in Scotland.

Fifthly, I hope that Scottish Ministers will take every possible step to persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer to exempt Scotland from the Selective Employment Tax. Whether this is a good or a bad tax, whether it is a fair or an unfair one, there is no doubt that it will add considerably to the cost of living and the costs of industry in Scotland.

Nearly six out of ten Scots at work are in the service or construction industries. This is well above the national average, and the inevitable consequence is that Scotland will pay more than its share of this tax. Quite apart from the fact that this will be the first clear breach of the Act of Union of 1707 between England and Scotland, which states that the incidence of tax should be equal in the two nations, the extra costs will be felt hardest of all in places like the Highlands, where a high proportion of the population works in the service industries, and where transport charges already add considerably to the cost of living.

The problem is a very serious one, and unless the Government are prepared to act along the lines I have suggested, Scottish folk will continue to leave our land in increasing numbers, and those remaining will be deprived of the justice to which I believe they are entitled.

I think that the House is indebted to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) for raising the issues which he has and for doing it so well.

I confess that I was surprised at some of the figures given by the hon. Gentleman. I am not challenging them in any way, but I have done a little research into the population matters to which he referred, and I have not found that Scotland's population has declined. As a matter of fact not only has the population of the United Kingdom increased by about 4 million over the last five years from 51 million to 55 million, but the population of every part of the United Kingdom —England, Scotland and Northern Ireland —has increased, most of all in England.

The growth has not been so marked in Scotland. I think that the increase here has amounted to less than 1 million over that period, and if my recollection is correct there has been an increase of one or two in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless. all the areas are thriving, in numbers at least, although the numbers vary.

The reduction in population to which I referred was in 1965 only, not over the four years.

I think that the hon. Gentleman said in 1964-65.

I think that one has to consider the population variations in a somewhat wider perspective than a year.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman recognises that the fundamental problem of Scotland lies in England. It is very difficult for a small country with little natural national wealth to live in elegance alongside a large wealthy country. England has great natural wealth. From north to south her soil can be cultivated. There is no part of England where big towns do not exist. The sparsity which we find in the North of Scotland is unknown in England. In the Midlands, in the West, in the East and in the South of England there is a fair amount of natural prosperity and there are well populated towns.

The result is that this great magnet continually attracts people from Scotland. Coventry has a large Scots population, and so, too, has London. This is our problem and this is what we have to contest. Special Government measures are needed to deal with it, and the Government are doing just that. They are bringing more hope to the Highlands of Scotland and to the Border counties than any previous Government ever did.

The hon. Member referred to one matter which has my special sympathy, because I am a house owner, having achieved that dignified status by paying a certain amount every year out of my salary for 18 years. Ever since I became an owner, I have been suffering from the tax called feu duty. Perhaps I am fortunate, in that my feu duty is only £3 15s. a year as compared with the £15 mentioned by the hon. Member, but this is an indefensible tax on savings and on the encouragement to live a sober and upright life in order to collect sufficient money to buy a house. There is little incentive when one is taxed for the rest of one's life.

But that is the system which the hon. Member and his party have supported all the years of my life. They are the party which looks after the landlords and the private vested interests. That is what keeps their party alive, politically. Many of them would not be here if it were not for the landlords' subscriptions which are being obtained from many people, including me, who does not believe in landlordism. The hon. Member waxed very indignant about this tax.

Through this tax my landlord—a respected gentleman in the City of Glasgow while alive, who has now gone to a higher and, I hope, a better place—charged me £3 15s. a year, and the income which he received from the community drew in £700,000 a year in feu duty alone. The hon. Member for Cathcart agrees with me that this system should be ended. Am I right?

indicated assent.

Then the sooner the hon. Member comes across here the better for him, if he wants to end it.

I shall not talk for too long today, although I have not spoken at all this week. I shall cut out a lot of what I intended to say. I merely say that I have some sympathy with the hon. Member on the question of rates and charges in the nationalised industries.

The sooner nationalised industries such as the gas and electricity industries appreciate that in a city like Glasgow, from which both the hon. Member and myself come, and also London and the other great cities, they cannot each have their own magnificent showrooms displaying their products in rivalry to each other, the better. That is bound to add to costs.

The sooner they realise that they are both nationalised industries and should work together, using a single showroom, with just the staff necessary for that showroom to let the public see the products they have to offer, the better.

The hon. Member wanted to see the same price for coal in England and in Scotland. But we cannot wish to see the same price for coal in England and Scotland without wanting to see the same price for food, because food is more necessary than coal—and if we have the same price for coal and food we could have the same price for clothes, because they are also necessary. We cannot go about without clothes and we cannot exist without food, although we can do with less coal.

This is a strange doctrine, coming from the hon. Member. He is preaching the doctrine of sameness, although I always thought that the Tory Party wanted variety. I thought that the Tory Party was the party of competition, which would applaud the shop which, last Saturday in Strathaven, was selling spring cabbages at 2s. 4d. each, whereas before the seamen's strike they were being sold at 1s. That is competition. That is not a case of sameness for Scotland, as the hon. Member is preaching. Competition is what Toryism has always stood for. In other words, "Here is your chance. Take it. The strike has created scarcity." So the spring cabbage which the housewife thinks is a nice adornment for the table at which I was to eat on the Sunday—the cabbage which normally costs ls.—cost 2s. 4d. last Saturday, because of the seamen's strike and the scarcity that it had brought about.

Few Tories have not thrived on preaching the doctrine of taking one's chance when the opportunity offered itself. I was therefore interested to hear the hon. Member for Cathcart talking of uniformity, conformity and sameness, and to hear him getting away from the competitive spirit which has caused the Tory Party in Scotland slowly to decline until in Glasgow only two out of the 15 Parliamentary seats are held by them. I still thank the hon. Member for raising this subject.

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) for raising this most important subject today, and for the interesting way in which he presented to us a lot of facts and figures, showing how the cost of living in Scotland is in some respects considerably higher than it is in the rest of the country.

I was sorry when I heard the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) say that he would curtail his remarks. That is not a feeling that I always have when I see him about to embark on a speech, but I was very much enjoying what he was saying, even if I found some of his statements somewhat startling and strange.

It is useful to have this debate today, because it fills in a notable gap in the series of debates that we have been having during the last six weeks. During that period we have covered a wide range of subjects, and I suggest that one theme has run through them all. Behind them has been the question of the Government's regional policy—what it is, and what it should be.

Both in this Chamber and upstairs we have debated the question of housing completions in England and Wales as compared with Scotland. We were given a picture for Scotland showing that the number of completions in March were down by 16 per cent. as compared with the same month last year, whereas the number of completions for England fell by only 4 per cent. This is a clear case of difference between the regions.

The same thing happened in school building. Although assurances were given all through last year that the Government's economic restrictions would not apply to the building of new schools, we have been discussing in Standing Committee this week the drop of over a third in the number of approvals in the past year. On the question of industrial incentives, the whole problem of how best to attract new industries to Scotland and the other regions was discussed. In this case, too, less money has been made available—even if not much less—and the fact that it is spread over a very much wider area makes clear that individual places in those areas will get less special treatment than before.

We have already had debates, and will have many more in the coming weeks, about the Selective Employment Tax. Yesterday, the Minister of State for Scotland admitted in Standing Committee that if one calculated the likely effect of the tax, one would find that it would fall more heavily per head of the population on the Highlands of Scotland than on the rest of Scotland or the rest of the United Kingdom. My reason for mentioning these points is to try to fit this debate into the general picture, which is that all these questions affect the cost of living. The lives of ordinary people are bound to be adversely affected by all these Measures.

We are not, of course, discussing the general rise in the cost of living. That is not the subject which my hon. Friend chose, and in any case we have debated the subject frequently and we all know the facts and figures. There has been a rise in the general cost of living of 6.7 points since October, 1964, which in simple language means that £1 in October, 1964, now purchases approximately 18s. 9d. worth of goods. But what we should consider today is the extra rise in the cost of living for people in Scotland because of the difficulties associated with living far away from the South-East.

We may well ask, why should there be a higher rise in the cost of living in Scotland than elsewhere? There are several reasons. The first, which is fundamental to all the others, is the fact that, being a widely-scattered and sparsely-populated area, Scotland, more than any other part of the United Kingdom, is bound to depend more on the costs of transport and travel and the service industries generally than the rest of the United Kingdom. In a scattered countryside, all goods have to be transported over greater distances. If people wish to travel, they have greater distances to cover and, therefore, greater costs to meet.

During the last 18 months or so there has been a truly remarkable rise in the costs of all forms of transport which are needed in Scotland, where this is particularly harmful.

The increase in the petrol tax immediately put up the costs of every undertaking which used road vehicles of any kind and the costs, even though in some cases by a small amount, of virtually every product in the shops.

The licence duty for private cars was raised by only £2 10s., but for commercial vehicles it went up by 50 per cent. I remember that we on this side said at the time that this would put up the costs of transport and that prediction has proved to be justified.

The reduction in the total value of the investment allowances and the special treatment given by means of free depreciation and otherwise in 1963 by the previous Government may not in itself be a dominating factor, but added to all the other factors there is no doubt that it ultimately increased prices of goods produced by industry and, of course, ultimate prices in the shops. This is the first and fundamental reason for the tremendous amount of increased costs in the service industries in Scotland.

Secondly—this may appear to be obvious, but it must be recorded—the general increase in taxation all over the United Kingdom has applied exactly the same to Scotland as the rest of the country. Although this may seem obvious, many things have been said in the last four or five years about the necessity to try to exempt the development districts or those parts of the country which were in a low state of economic growth from at least some of the tax burdens placed on others. A small start was made on this in the 1963 Budget, when the principle was introduced of a lower form of taxation in Scotland and development districts than in the country as a whole.

We should also consider the question of increased interest charges. It may, at first sight, seem that a high Bank Rate affects the whole country indiscriminately and absolutely equally. However, I suggest that, when considered in detail, this will be found not to be so. It is almost always in the remote and underpopulated areas and those where business and industry have to work on smaller margins that high interest charges have a heavier effect than in the more populated parts.

The selective increases in the price of coal have also been mentioned. That was bad enough when it was a special increase of 10s. a ton, introduced some years ago, but to increase coal prices by a further 15s. in Scotland at this time, just when regional policies are most urgently needed, is the absolute negation of a sensible policy of diverting resources to the under-used regions.

I suggest that the question of coal prices throughout the United Kingdom has to be considered not only from the point of view of the Coal Board. Obviously, from the Board's point of view this policy is satisfactory and sensible. It is up to the Government, and particularly Scottish Ministers, to represent the fact that the interests of the regions as well as those of the Coal Board must be taken into account. I yield to none in my insistence that, from the Coal Board's point of view, this is a natural step to take. I consider that a regional policy, if it is to work and make sense overall, should have some influence on selective regional increases in the price of coal.

The debate has been useful. It fits into the general consideration of the question mark which hangs over the Government's regional policies. We have heard a good deal about the need for regional policies in the last few years—particularly two years ago, when the previous Conservative Government published the South-East Plan, which was greatly criticised by hon. Members opposite and particularly by those representing constituencies in the more remote parts of the country.

It was felt that, when the South-East of England is—as it obviously is—very much overcrowded and suffering from lack of space and labour in its main industries, it was a highly sensible policy to try to steer as much as possible away from that area and into the regions. We were very much criticised for having made a plan for the South-East at all. I did not agree with that criticism. We have to accept life as we find it, and it was clear that someone had to do something to sort out the problems of the South-East.

But today a question mark hangs over the whole idea of steering new industries to the regions. There has been much talk about it, but every time action has been seen to be required, the Government seem to have done the opposite of trying to encourage new industries to go to the regions. We now have less money for incentives and we have a larger area for the incentives, so that there is less individual help in the areas which need it most. Taxation carries on uninterrupted in the bad regions as well as the good. All we have—and I hope that we have these figures correct—is the fact that in mid-1965 there was the first overall drop in the population of Scotland which has been recorded for a long time, a drop of 3,000, showing that migration overseas is faster than it has been for many years.

I hope that the Under-Secretary will take it in the intended spirit when I say that he has a problem as a representative of the Scottish Office. Unless the Scottish Ministers can hammer home to their colleagues in the Government the need to consider the regions over and above the commercial considerations of the nationalised industries, they will fail Scotland. I am sure that it is not the hon. Gentleman's wish to fail Scotland, but he has to do a great deal better than he has done during the last 18 months.

I should have been able to do a great deal better in the next few minutes if I had been able to deploy all the comments which I wanted to make in order, in courtesy, to answer all the arguments of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor). I am disappointed with the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger). We did not expect him to fall into the fault which the hon. Member for Cathcart often exhibits to our delight and amusement from time to time. I do not say this in any nasty way, but the hon. Member for Cathcart has a considerable talent for fusing hyperbole of expression and paucity of fact, and I am only sorry that the hon. Member for Ayr should have done the same thing when talking about transport costs. In the work which has been done in deference to the House to make sure that we covered most of the issues likely to be raised, we did not find any evidence to justify the hon. Member's remarks about transport costs. Being a very open-minded Government, we always welcome evidence, but at present we do not have evidence to justify what has been said. If we have another opportunity, here or elsewhere, perhaps we shall be able to pursue the matter further.

In courtesy to the hon. Member for Cathcart and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin), I want now to turn in detail to some of the matters which have been raised. I will not say too much about the drop in population. I point out that the estimate for 1965 is sill only an estimate—which is always the position at this time of the year—and the figure still has to be assessed more precisely. It is a drop of 0.06 per cent., representing some 3,000 people out of a population of more than 5 million.

Of course, I do not make light of it. It shows that the wave of migration which has continued from our country since the great depression after the First World War has not been abated. The latest figures for migration cover the year June, 1964, to June, 1965. It has to be realised that, with the best will in the world and with the Government dedicated, as they have publicly announced in White Papers, to lowering the migration rate in a specific time and trying to halt it altogether and even to reverse the drift to the South, we cannot make our analyses of the population reflect themselves on the very day or in the very year in which we announce our intentions of doing so and providing the instruments by which it can be done. It may not seem unreasonable to the hon. Member for Cathcart and no doubt it is a matter of opinion. I could not square his remark about exploitation and profiteering by Scottish business men and shopkeepers with what he had to say about feus and prices and so on. I did not understand that and perhaps we can have an explanation at some later time.

Of course we have recognised for a long time that we ought to find out why there is a considerable differential between the price of housing in Scotland and that in England and Wales. In 1951, there existed the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee of which one of tin y predecessors was the chairman. It was a great pity that when the Labour Government left office that Committee was abolished by the Conservatives, of their own accord. We have reconstituted it and the Committee is going into the subject of the cost of housing, and working very hard doing so.

Apart from the former Under-Secretary of State, the father of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galbraith), no Minister before has ever managed to meet the private builders—I say this not out of any pride in myself, but to show the good sense of the builders—and to get them to offer their facts and figures from their own accounts and so on and to give their view of the Scottish position with materials, prices, processes and so on.

I cannot anticipate the nature of the report which we shall make to my right hon. Friend and I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to make a statement at some time, if not to publish what material we have. I accept the criticism that our costs are greater and I should like to find the reason. I do not accept that the reasons are simply bad organisation, or bad management, or anything like that. I think that much of the differential is due to the fact that in Scotland we build houses much more robust than those in England, and one can understand that in view of our vigorous climate.

Although it is true of former Governments, to say that the present Government are not encouraging the building of owner-occupied houses is to fly in the face of fact. We have done everything possible to encourage private builders. It has not just been a matter of meeting the private builders once. We are now meeting them regularly and we have established a dialogue between the Government and the private builders to see whether we can help them in many ways.

In the White Paper on the Scottish housing programme, there is a definite statement that local authorities must help private builders, who want to build for sale, to get land to do so. We do not want to go to the extreme of shutting out necessary council house building, nor do we want to go the other way of devoting all land to council houses. We want a fair balance between private building for sale and building by private builders for the public sector. I have told the builders many times that there is no ceiling on this. The announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer about easier home ownership is a reflection of the fact that Ministers have been hard at work to make sure that as many people as possible are able to buy a private house on mortgage.

The hon. Member for Cathcart went on to talk about our legal system. I can remember sitting almost in his place arguing this matter with a Conservative predecessor of mine over many years, right from the time when I came into the House in 1955 until the famous night in 1959 when the delightful Under-Secretary of the time, now Lord Craigton, conceded that he would advise the Secretary of State to set up a committee on conveyancing. I recall that he got a very good report in the Sunday Mail, which at that time was leading a commendable campaign. That Committee has done a lot of work and it has revealed that certain other intensive investigations should be carried out.

Two expert committees were recommended by the Reid Committee; the Halliday Committee, to look into conveyancing costs—and I hope that that Committee will report this summer—and the Hendry Committee, to consider the registration of title, though unfortunately that Committee's report might not be available until the end of next year. It will, therefore, be some time before we are able to consider matters which might prompt the Government to put a Measure on to the Statute Book.

I do not agree that it would require a simple Measure to revise and simplify the system of checking title in Scotland. I suggest, nevertheless, that as the Government are anxious for these Committees to report, we should first see what they have to say and that, in the meantime, we should get on with reducing the number of legal tangles and the expense of those tangles.

Much has been said about the feudal system. The builders are, of course, charging feus which are substantially higher than those charged pre-war. I am not sure if the figures which have been given represent averages. Perhaps they were only examples. However, the builders say that the present position is a reflection of the price of land and that if they did not charge feus they would have to demand even higher prices for the houses they build in Scotland.

The Government must, therefore, consider all these points. Perhaps there is some truth, or complete truth, in what we have been told, but we must go into these matters thoroughly. We have brought forward a Measure which applies to Scotland in the Land Commission Bill, which, we hope, will make land more readily available. We also hope that any development value in the land which takes place as a consequence of the land being used for building will not be burdened on the consumer, so to speak, of that land, who is the occupier of the house built on it.

Would my hon. Friend not agree that the landlord does not always get rid of his feu? The landlord is still charging feu. He is still charging me.

Perhaps this is another reason for backing up the complaint of the hon. Member for Cathcart. I do not completely dissociate myself from his remarks on this subject. Perhaps these feus should not be so high, but this is really a matter for the business men, about whom the hon. Member for Cathcart did not complain. Indeed, he specifically exempted them from his catalogue of complaints.

I apologise to hon. Members for racing through my speech. I do so because many points have been raised and I feel obliged to refer to them all. The Rating Review published by the Scottish Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants has been mentioned. The Secretary of that organisation is a constituent of mine, an admirable fellow. I was able to address the Institute last March and I enjoyed myself very much. I mention the organisation because I have studied a number of the figures it has given to us, not only in its various publications, such as the Rating Review, but also the statistics and evidence contained in its submissions to the Scottish Office. We have been glad of the Institute's help in the work we have been doing on the local government Measure, which will come before the House shortly.

Having said that, I must make it clear that I cannot square any of the figures I have received with the figures supplied by the Institute. I can only say that I am prepared to consider whatever evidence hon. Members have and that I will look at the whole matter again. I suggest that the best figures to study in relation to objective fact are those contained in the Allen Report. They show that the English rates figure for 1963-64 averaged out at £30.2 as against the Scottish figure for that year of £34·6.

In the preparation of the Local Government Bill we have had to study a great many figures. We have noted that if one examines the rates in Scotland as against those in England and Wales one could probably calculate them in three different ways. If one takes the data published for rates and rateable values for both England and Wales and Scotland respectively, and divides the total domestic rates by the number of houses, then for 1965-66 the rates in Scotland averaged £35 18s. and in England and Wales, £36 7s.

If one takes the Allen Committee's method of doing the calculation and one projects it on to the knowledge which we have of 1965-66, then by multiplying the average rates of a house by the averate rate poundage—a method which, I am told, is more open to inaccuracies than the first method—one arrives at the figure of £36 17s. for Scotland and £36 8s. for England and Wales, a differential of 9s. The Allen Committee did not, of course, refer to the rates per person, as the house is supposed to be a rating unit as such. Thirdly, to divide the total household rates by the total population gives the figure of £l1 14s. for Scotland and £11 8s. for England and Wales for 1965–66.

It is difficult, in other words, to get this point in perspective. I am sufficiently enough of a Scotsman to believe that there is a margin against Scotland in this matter. If it has corrected itself this year, then that is a good thing and it is a long overdue happening. But I would like to go into the matter in more detail before pronouncing upon it. Suffice to say that it is wrong of the hon. Member for Cathcart to believe that the burden of rates is, to quote his more restrained language, "fantastic, out rageous and a national scandal". We must be reasonable about this and consider the matter in greater detail before speaking in terms of that kind.

On the question of fuel costs—and have a considerable amount to say about this so I trust that hon. Members will excuse my speeding through my remarks —a case cannot be made out about electricity such as the hon. Member for Cathcart attempted to make when he said that the story concerning electricity is not all that different from that concerning gas. We have an appreciable advantage in Scotland in the price of electricity. The prices of electricity show that while compared with England and Wales generally we have an advantage of about ¼d. per unit—and compared with the London area Scotland has an advantage of about ½d. a unit, which is a considerable difference—in the use of gas the margin is higher in Scotland.

For coal, one must compare the various gradings, which are different in Scotland. To take the nearest grades, of the Scottish group 4 house coal compared with the English group 3, the current delivered price in Glasgow and Central Scotland is 153s. 11d. while in England it varies from 130s. 4d. in the zone immediately adjacent to the low-cost collieries of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, to 191s. 6d. in Cornwall.

It is, therefore, difficult to make comparisons in domestic terms, and I would not like to make any comment on what was said about the industrial coal differential because that was introduced by the party opposite in 1962 and we are merely perpetuating that differential. We are not adding to the differential in any way. We are simply maintaining that position. That does not mean that my right hon. Friend is not aware of what the consequences could be if we did not keep a close eye on the differentials as they exist in all these respects.

Passing quickly to the hon. Member's claims about incomes, I readily concede his figures. He is absolutely right and the figures he has given are quite fair. He made the point that if there are differences in prices in Scotland—which I do not accept generally as being true—the impact on lower wages is all the greater, as the economists tell us, in real terms. He asked for five assurances on points of policy. I shall take them in order and hope by that means to serve the House. In relation to average incomes and earnings the present position is that in all industries the average in Scotland was £18 9s. a week by October, 1965 which is 5·8 per cent. less than the U.K. average and for manufacturing industries in Scotland it was £19 0s. 5d., 5·7 per cent. less than the U.K. average.

The discipline imposed on nationalised industries is founded on the White Paper published by the Conservative Government in the early 'sixties. It was a discipline which demanded a return on capital. If one were to argue as the hon. Member did—there may be a case for that and certainly Ministers are willing to listen to it—it would be fair to say that while there is a case for equalising prices there is also the question of judging capital investment on the same basis. Whether that would accord with regional development, I seriously doubt. I think the different demands of the regions would be distorted by this U.K. treatment of investments and priorities on a commercial basis. Taking the island as a whole and ignoring regional differences would cause in the long run more suffering for Scotland. However, I am not asserting this, but taking the other side of what the hon. Member said. Ministers are prepared to look at it, but as our predecessors did not take it as an option I doubt whether we would do so now when the accent is on regional development.

On the question of rating differentials, there is a Bill before the House and we hope to argue that matter, debate and cope fully with the problem when we discuss the Bill. On the question of exhorting local authorities to help in home-ownership, this Government have tried harder than any in Scotland to promote home-ownership and we shall try harder still, not only in relation to home ownership, co-operative owning and local authority housing. Because of the time I shall not deal with the effect of the Selective Employment Tax, but my hon. Friend the Minister of State made a statement yesterday which shows that this matter is being considered by Scottish Ministers. Whatever decision is made it will be made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or one of the finance Ministers in discussions on the Finance Bill.

Anyone who listened to the hon. Member for Cathcart or the hon. Member for Ayr may have been given the impression that the real reason why Scotland has not been doing quite so well in the past and is not doing so well at present—which, by the way, I do not accept—is due to the considerably higher cost of living. That is quite untrue. Scotland has many problems. We do not have to look around for them. Nor do we need to inflate them nor advertise them. Some of them have been with us for a long time, 13 years at least, but we are getting rid of many of them. Nor can we go through a period of rapid change without experiencing growing pains of some sort. It does not do any good to explore the foothills or difficulties without venturing further up the slopes to look at the growing achievements which are spreading around the country.

Despite the points made by the hon. Member, there is no doubt that the Scots are more prosperous than ever before. The significance of his criticisms is better measured by the fact that English and American industrialists, who are as sharp as anyone in spotting weaknesses in the national economy are for the most part convinced that Scotland gives a better return for money than most places. May I quote the Scottish Council's experience in this matter of the cost of living——

May I remind the hon. Gentleman that this debate was supposed to have finished at 3 p.m.

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I was unfortunately curtailed in what I had to say. I thought that the understanding would be, in view of the immeasurably important points I have to answer, that I should try to get through as quickly as possible. I understand that I am not speaking slowly. I shall come as quickly as I can to the end of my remarks.

The Scottish Council said this, and it is worthwhile quoting this because we do not want a bad picture of Scotland to go out falsely to those whom we wish to come to Scotland:

"We have not found that the balance of factors which are involved in the cost and standard of living work to the disadvantage of Scotland as a location for manufacturing industry."

I have talked to the Council's people who are concerned in bringing industrialists into Scotland and they tell me that it is the quality of living in Scotland which attracts managers and workpeople to us.

A great deal of market research has been done on finding where the attrac- tions are and how best we can enhance them. The English have discovered industrial Scotland only recently. The best champions we have nowadays are not the Scots themselves but the managers of English and American factories who have recently settled among us. We should invest in the generous efforts which they make to publicise us. We are gaining in strength all the time and the rebirth of Scotland is not so very far away.

Industrial production is forging ahead. There has been a tremendous improvement in the issue of I.D.C.s for manufacturing industry in Scotland. Let us not hesitate to recognise and welcome it. Last year 10-7 million sq. ft, of industrial space was approved—twice the annual average of the previous few years. It represents work for 25,000 people, about half the figure for the previous five years put together. This is very good, but we must all help it along. This year so far over 2 million sq. ft. have been booked. Nevertheless, we want to get some more. Our own people, who might otherwise be drifting off south looking for jobs, will start to find them here. Then the drift south from Scotland will be reversed. If we can get more manufacturing industry to come to Scotland, the differential between the wages in Scotland and those in England will fall, as it has fallen quite considerably in the last year at twice the rate at which it fell from 1960–64.

Finally, there is fresh evidence this year of this rediscovery of industrial Scotland, such as Chemstrand's further development at Irvine, the pulp mill at Corpach and Hewlett Packard's extension at South Queensferry, each of them to employ over 1,000 workers. This week in my own constituency I.B.M. announced a new £350,000 extension. Earlier this year came the Plessey Company's £2 million factory at Dundee. The Government, too, have shown their faith by siting the prototype fast breeder reactor at Thurso. This industrial advance, with its positive effect on incomes, must continue to raise the quality of life in modern Scotland.

It is very noticeable that the concluding debates before we rise for the Recess are being conducted by the Celtic fringe. This underlines the anxiety that we sometimes feel about things which happen in our own areas.

The events of the recent military exercise which has taken place in parts of South Wales have given cause for concern. We have heard of incidents which have been happening in quite separate places. Obviously, those who live in South Wales are concerned about the manner in which future military exercises are to be conducted. This afternoon it is not my purpose to generalise about this. Instead, I wish to particularise on the more serious incidents that occurred during this military exercise. I hope that by doing this I shall be able to lay more stress on the general situation which has arisen.

The incident which took place at Lletyrefail farm on the night of 9th May which I am about to recount to the House would be more in keeping with the experience of those who suffered during the occupation of Europe in the last war than with the experience of those who live in rural Wales in peace time.

When I first read the account of the incident in the Neath Guardian I was inclined to think that we were being given, perhaps, an example of journalistic imagination. The story seemed very much out of keeping with the Welsh scene. But my inquiries and those of the police seem to confirm entirely the story which appeared in my local newspaper. It is because the reports of this incident have been confirmed from so many different sources that I think it right and proper that they should be examined by the House this afternoon.

The first intimation which the occupants of Lletyrefail farm, a farm situated about 800 ft. above sea level in the Vale of Neath, had that a military exercise was to take place in the vicinity happened when, a fortnight before the exercise was due to begin, the owner of the farm, Mr. John Roberts, was approached by the military authorities for permission to allow the Army to land helicopters on his land. He gave permission for this operation to take place, but he gave it very reluctantly. These people, living in remoteness as they are, are rather unsophisticated. The very fact that they had had a visit from the military made them feel that they were compelled to grant this permission. But, in giving his permission, Mr. Roberts laid down certain specific conditions.

One condition was that, if any damage was done by the landing of helicopters, it should be made good. He laid down the condition that there was to be no interference whatever with farm personnel. He required that there should be no interference with the operations of the farm. He laid down the condition that any activity which took place during the exercise should be well away from the vicinity of the farm itself.

The next intimation that anyone on the farm had that the exercise was taking place came early on the night of 9th May, when Mr. David Richards, who is employed on the farm and whose son was involved in the incidents which took place later that evening, saw troops being disembarked from helicopters. He tells me that he did not advise anyone else on the farm of the arrival of the troops, who left the area of disembarkation immediately.

Mr. David Richards, the son I have just referred to, is known locally as Robert Richards. He is a young man of 23 years of age. He is married and he lives with his wife and 10-week-old son on Lletyrefail farm. Mr. Robert Richards left the farm at about 9 p.m. on 9th May and went to a club at Resolven, a small village two or three miles from the farm. He left the club at approximately 10.30 p.m. During the time that he was at the club he consumed three pints of beer. On leaving the club, he drove his car, a 1957 Ford Anglia, to a small village known as Tonna, where he met a friend with whom he talked for a while before driving home to the farm via the main Vale of Neath road.

Lletyrefail farm is approached by a steep, winding stony track which requires a great deal of caution and care to negotiate it. I have travelled up this way in broad daylight, and it was quite a frightening experience, because in places the pathway drops away sheer to the road. On the approaches to the farm there are three iron gates. They have been placed at intervals as a means of preventing sheep—sheep farming is the main job on the farm—from straying.

As Mr. Robert Richards rounded one of the bends, he was aware of shadowy figures on either side of the track who made an attempt to stop his car and who, he tells me, banged on the roof of his car with rifle butts. The time of this incident was 11 p.m. It is reasonable to suppose that, if somebody had wished to question Mr. Roberts, it would have been best if someone were placed on the track in front of him to give a signal to enable him to realise that somebody wished to question him. But there was no one in front of the car. The only attempt made to stop his car was made by the people on either side of the track.

Mr. Richards' experience left him very shaken. He accelerated his car and shook off the men who attempted to stop him proceeding to the farm. On his arrival at the farm, Mr. Richards, who his wife described to me as being really scared, dashed into the farmhouse, which is occupied by his family and that of his brother-in-law, a Mr. Jim Evans, and told his wife to call his brother-in-law, who was in bed, as he had had a remarkable experience on his way home to the farm and wished his brother-in-law to accompany him to the police to report the experience.

Before going out to his car, Robert Richards picked up a Mossberg single barrel repeater shotgun and loaded it with three cartridges, one of which was in the breech ready for firing. The two men left the farm and got into Mr. Richards' car, which they reversed, and were about to put the car into forward gear when they were surrounded by a group of soldiers who ordered Richards, at gun point, to get out of the car. As he got out of the car, Richards fired the shotgun in the air in an endeavour to frighten those people who were detaining him.

Mr. Richards was immediately knocked to the ground from behind, and the shotgun fell from his hand. He was picked up by the soldiers, who attempted to bend him across the bonnet of his car to search him. His brother-in-law, Mr. Jim Evans, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, attempted to leave the car to assist his brother-in-law, but was prevented from doing so by men pointing rifles at him. Later he was taken from the car and taken to the place where his brother-in-law was being detained by the soldiers. This was done at gunpoint, and an attempt was made also to search him.

During this Mr. Robert Richards made an attempt to go for one of the people who were detaining him and found himself hit on the hand with a rifle butt, which resulted in his hand being split open. Mrs. Richards, who had now come on the scene and was protesting at the treatment of her husband and Mr. Evans, was prevented from approaching any further by soldiers who held rifles across their chests. During the whole of this time there was no attempt at explanation on the part of the soldiers. The only words used were those of command.

They were then marched at gunpoint into the farmhouse, where a means of identification was demanded, and Mr. Evans then produced his driving licence. The soldiers seemed to be satisfied—as to his identity, but when a request was made that they should be permitted to leave the farmhouse, to attend to a sick cow which was calving, this was refused, and they were told they must not leave the farmhouse that night. The soldiers left the farmhouse, but before leaving the farm precincts they searched the van belonging to Mr. Jim Evans and also the outbuildings of the farm. They left the farm eventually at 12 midnight.

The next morning, when Mr. Richards and other occupants of the farm went to report the incident to the police at Tonna police station, they found the track had been obstructed in that large boulders had been placed across it, and they also found that the gates along the track had been left open, which resulted in the sheep straying on to the main road.

This, then, is the recital of the events which took place at Lletyrefail farm, events which have given rise to a great deal of concern in my constituency, for, while it is appreciated that there is a need for military exercises which must have a touch of realism about them, the inter- ference with civilians which has been demonstrated on this occasion has aroused a great deal of public disquiet, and such things are not good for the image of the Army.

It is essential that the Minister, in his reply to the debate, should give answers to questions which have been put among people who have heard of this incident. I would ask the Minister to say why there was such an apparent disregard for the instructions which, we have been told, have been given to troops on such a military exercise concerning their behaviour towards the civilian population. I also ask him whether he can say why no explanation was given to the police or to the people at Lletyrefail farm that this exercise was to take place, and why, when these actions were taking place, no explanation was given to those people about the intrusion into their privacy. Why was there an attempt on the part of military personnel to prevent the occupants of this farm from reporting the incident to the local police?

Will my hon. Friend tell the House this afternoon what action the Army has taken against those who were responsible for this outrage, and what means of redress there is for these people who have been so ill-treated? I also ask him to clear up entirely the disquiet which is in the minds of people throughout South Wales, where military exercises are likely to take place, by telling us what his Ministry will do to ensure that this kind of behaviour does not occur again when troops are engaged in similar military exercises.

This incident has appalled the people who live in my constituency, which has a long history. The district has been the scene of important military operations, in the times of the Romans and in the times of the Normans, but this latest interest in the area by the Army is one which my constituents will not recount as being a matter of importance in the history of our ancient borough.

Public opinion demands that full assurances should be given that those who are responsible for such an incident as this will be dealt with severely, and that the Army will ensure in future that the strictest precautions are taken against such incidents ever occurring again.

I do not wish to dramatise these events, but, on the other hand, I hope that the Minister will not try to understate their importance. The significance of the episode goes far beyond the individual cases, important as they are. As my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman) said, no one denies the need for military exercises, but, as I was told in an Answer from my hon. Friend the Minister, the Army alone, during the past five years, has had to pay compensation in 1,144 cases for damage or injury arising from military exercises. This is an average of 229 a year, and the total cost over the five years is £44,000. In other words, individual irresponsibility is being financed from the public purse.

I tabled five Questions on the dangers of this exercise before the events at this farm took place. I do not say this with an attitude of "I told you so", but because I want to establish that the dangers inherent in the exercise should have been apparent to all. I submit that the whole exercise was astonishingly ill-conceived. To begin with, contact with the public was absolutely inevitable, because this was an escape and evasion exercise, and the essence of such an exercise is that the escapee disguises himself as a civilian, mingles with civilians, has to be singled out from civilians, and can only be singled out as a result of many civilians being asked to prove their identity.

In peace time it is very difficult for the military to be able to do this without going beyond their legal powers. In pursuing the objectives of this exercise they were bound to stop cars, and I question whether they had any right to do so. They were bound to question civilians, and I am even doubtful about their right to do that. My hon. Friend the Minister, in an Answer to me on the 18th May, said:

"Military personnel are not empowered to stop, interrogate and search civilians during a peace time military exercise. That is, of course, no reason why they should not ask questions of civilians."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th May, 1966; Vol. 728, c. 261.]

The question arises: when does questioning cease to be questioning and become interrogation? If I were being asked the time of day at the wrong end of a sten gun, I would think that I was being interrogated. I am sure that many of the public feel the same. Many of them must have wondered what would have happened had they failed to answer the questions. The first feature, therefore, is that contact with the public is inevitable.

The second feature was that there was no public warning, a fact which added to already manifest stupidity. A spokesman for Western Command, when asked by a reporter from the South Wales Echo on 9th May why there had been no warning, said that it was an exercise of a highly confidential nature. He said:

"We did not want publicity on this".

That objective clearly failed. Two days later, on 11th May, the Minister said that chief constables were told in confidence, but that no general warning was given to the public.

Why should the public have been warned? The first simple and obvious reason is that some of them would be frightened. These were paratroops and the Special Air Service corps, who were carrying guns. No doubt my hon. Friend, when he replies to the debate, will assure us that those young men have hearts of gold and that the milk of human kindness oozed from them as they asked their questions. Nevertheless, they were armed with sten guns. One can understand a certain disquiet on the part of the public.

It is no good being told, as we were two days after the event, that the public need not have worried because the guns were not loaded. These subsequent assurances were of no use, because a posthumous explanation is no cure for an instantaneous heart attack. That is the sort of thing that could conceivably have happened.

Secondly, the exercise was taking place in lonely countryside, much of it after dark. Some of the public might have refused to stop. What orders had been given to ensure that they would stop, or what would have happened if in refusing to stop they had run down one of the soldiers? Again, many workers in the area are farm labourers and others who, by reason of the nature of their work, would have been wearing Army surplus clothing, which is serviceable for that type of work. Ordinary working men going about their work or on their way home would inevitably be confused by this exercise.

It should also have been envisaged that there were bound to be firearms on the farms. They are kept for the purpose of shooting pests. In this instance, however, as my hon. Friend the Member for Neath has said, one man in his constituency could have been made a killer as a result of lack of good public relations. Some of the public, not inconceivably, would have been to "pubs". We have to recognise that temperament can be a little fickle after a person has had a pint or so of beer. The troops would have to handle people who might not be quite as responsible at 11 p.m. as they would have been at 7 p.m.

The exercise might have involved people who were ill, or in some other condition requiring special attention. gather, for example, that the sister-in-law of the young farmer was pregnant and expects a baby during the summer. What if she, and not the farmer, had been driving the car? What if it had been she who had been coming up the car track at 11 p.m.?

No doubt my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will say that he cannot answer hypothetical questions. The misfortune is that more hypothetical questions were not asked before authority was given for the exercise to take place. Had there been a little more hypothesis, these silly incidents need never have arisen.

In these circumstances, where inevitably there was contact and the public were unaware of what was going on, there was an obvious requirement for close control of the troops. This was essential if there were to be no public incidents. Some of these troops were in the "pubs" drinking. I do not object to a soldier having his pint, like anyone else, but these men were on duty and about to interrogate the public. It hardly seems reasonable that they should be allowed to have a drink before indulging in this type of exercise.

As to the degree of control, we can best leave a description of this to the Army. Asked on 9th May by the South Wales Echo how the Army would guarantee that there was no repetition of these incidents, a Western Command spokesman said, encouragingly:

"I don't really know."

He proved it by subsequent events.

"But strict orders have been issued that the public are not to be subjected to any discourtesy."

That was on the afternoon of 9th May. My hon. Friend has told us what happened a couple of hours later that same day after these "strict" orders had been issued.

What was the Army's reaction? One would expect perhaps mild concern that these strict orders had been ignored, but no. On 19th May, the Western Command spokesman, again approached by the South Wales Echo, said:

"You cannot call the statement made on Monday, May 9, an assurance."

I am sure that most of us would not regard that attitude as much of a reassurance. He went on:

"We said orders"—

he has dropped the word "strict"—

"had been given that the incidents were not to be repeated. Orders can be given but this does not mean they will be carried out."

What an astonishing thing for a spokesman to say on behalf of the Army. If the Army could not guarantee that its orders for the non-molestation of the public would be carried out, it should never have unleashed the troops on the public. Such was the chaos of information, or lack of it, that two days after the incidents in my hon. Friend's constituency, on 11th May, I had an Answer from the Minister of Defence for the Army in which he said:

"The only incident that has been confirmed is that of an officer, in civilian clothes, who was captured and, in an attempt to escape, claimed that he was a civilian and telephoned the local police."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th May, 1966; Vol. 728, c. 86.]

Thus, two days later, the Minister himself did not even know that this situation had arisen. On 16th May, a Western Command spokesman excelled his previous comments by saying:

"We know nothing"—

this was seven days after the farm incident—

"of any incident involving civilians."

I wonder whether there is any literacy test in the Army these days, because the newspapers had been full of the incident. The Sunday papers had splashed it the day before in banner headlines. It seems that everyone in England and Wales knew —all except the Army, the people responsible.

All of this arises from astonishing lack of vision and of complete failure to anticipate the obvious. Yet this is an elite corps of the Army. What use will it be if it cannot anticipate the obvious? In war time, its role is to be to anticipate the unexpected yet it could not even envisage situations of this sort.

The trouble was also the result of bad communication with the public. After all, the public had a right to know, because it was public liberty that was to be intruded upon by the troops. Surely, in any case, it would have been sheer common sense to tell the public in the first place so as to try to cut down the number of incidents that could arise.

There was also bad communication with the troops themselves because they seemed unaware or, alternatively, unconcerned or unconvinced about their powers in peacetime. Finally, there was the complete lack of discipline which seems to have been manifest throughout the exercise, when strict orders seem to have meant nothing. No doubt my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will give youthfulness as an explanation and I am sure that the House is willing to accept it as a partial explanation and as an amelioration, but one can never condone this sort of behaviour merely by describing it as youthfulness.

This should never have arisen with a disciplined force. We have had breaches of the peace, trespass, threatening behaviour, assault and battery, wrongful arrest, and wilful damage. We have had all these from people whom we are paying to protect us. I urge the Minister to give us an assurance that this will never happen to the public again.

As the hour is late I shall limit very much the remarks which I propose to make. I intend to make only the briefest intervention in this matter which has been so properly raised by the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman).

As the House is aware, this matter has already been ventilated to some extent in the form of Questions by the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams) and Answers by the Minister of Defence for the Army, and it would appear from them that this was not the only incident which occurred in the course of this exercise.

As one who, more years ago than he cares to remember, took part in exercises of this kind, I appreciate that such exercises must be held. I fully appreciate the difficulties involved, and, that, unfortunately, incidents are bound to occur from time to time, but in fairness to the Army and to the other Services it must be said that for every exercise which involves unhappy incidents of this kind a hundred pass whhout any difficulties at all.

But having said that, I must add that the circumstances outlined by the hon. Member for Neath indicate a most disturbing and extraordinary state of affairs. The House will require a very clear statement from the Minister of Defence both as to the arrangements which were made for this exercise, and also as to precisely what instructions were given to the troops concerned. It has been said—I think this was in the Answer given on 11th May by the Minister of Defence for the Army ID the hon. Member for Swansea, West—that the officers and men taking part were briefed on their conduct towards civilians and private property and were told, in particular, that they had no powers of arrest over civilians. Perhaps we might be told a little more about this briefing, because, if there is any truth in these reports, it appears that the conduct of the troops concerned calls for the most searching inquiry.

I said earlier that this appears not to have been the only incident during the course of this exercise. A curious one was disclosed in the Answer given on 11th May, and must have occurred before that date, which involved an officer in civilian clothes who was captured, and, in an attempt to escape, claimed that he was a civilian and telephoned the police! It was later confirmed that there had been complaints of incidents on two farms, and I take it that the farm at Lletyrefail referred to by the hon. Member for Neath was one of them.

I do not seek to prejudge this matter in any way, but it appears that there is some suggestion about difficulty of identification. I do not know whether that will be put forward as some sort of excuse for the soldiers concerned.

I appreciate that in an exercise of this kind there cannot be any question of everyone wearing uniform, or even some distinctive brassard, but to avoid unpleasant incidents of this kind I would have thought it not beyond the bounds of possibility to have a distinctive password or some other means of ultimate identification. If that had been so, even the incident involving the officer in civilian clothes, which I do not think is a serious matter of complaint compared with the others, could have been avoided.

These incidents draw attention to a more general point on which I think we are entitled to some information and assurance, and which I put in the form of a question. What standing orders, if any, exist for the holding of exercises of this kind, or is the conduct of affairs left to the prevailing whim of the local commanding officer?

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that there will be the fullest inquiry, if only so that the matter can be put in its proper perspective, and that, if irregularities are found to have occurred, severe disciplinary action will be taken against those responsible and fair compensation paid to those who suffered. Last, but not least, I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that, so far as is humanly possible, steps will be taken to ensure that nothing of this kind ever happens again.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman) for raising this matter and also my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams) for joining in the discussion, because it gives me the opportunity not only of dealing with the specific points raised, but also of putting into perspective some of the colourful events which have been dramatised—and I would say over-dramatised—to the Press and presented today.

The escape and evasion exercise, about which we are talking, lasted for 12 days and covered seven Welsh counties— a good deal in open, mountainous land. It was designed to exercise Regular troops and members of the Territorial Army in counter insurgency and guerrilla warfare. It included a parachute battalion, a Special Air Service regiment, a unit of the Royal Naval Helicopter Squadron and a small contingent of men of the United States Army. Several hundred troops were involved. It was intended to be a realistic exercise and, as such, despite the incidents that occurred it was a highly successful one. The Commanding Officer of the 12/13 Para (T.A.) Unit described it as the best training his men had ever experienced. It was in fact the annual training camp for this paratroop unit.

The exercise was planned months in advance. Negotiations had commenced in October 1965 for permission to use land for the exercise, and in the main it was confined to land where the owners had contracted to permit soldiers to cross without let or hindrance. In other areas the movement was restricted to tracks, footpaths and roads. It would be impossible to make a categorical statement that all restrictions were strictly adhered to, but much of the value of this type of exercise is lost if it is too closely controlled and the element of realism disappears. From time to time incidents can occur regarding property.

But before the exercise took place the following instructions were issued to the troops taking part. I will give the actual terms in which these instructions were issued:

"1. No action would be taken which would interfere with normal civilian activities or unduly alarm communities or individuals.

2. Troops would not enter civilian or public buildings without proper authorisation.

3. Installations or facilities not assigned as targets would not be molested or attacked.

4. Known local customs and regulations would be observed.

5. Civilian traffic would not be blocked.

6. Live or blank ammunition and real demolition equipment would not be carried or used during the course of the exercise."

I agree that it is important that instructions should not only be issued but should be understood, and that those involved in the exercise should not only understand them but carry them out.

Furthermore, the exercise was approved at Ministerial level by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Merlyn Rees), who preceded me in this office—I am not passing the buck, but merely referring to the question of time —and the chief constables of the area were informed in confidence. I say that because my hon. Friend at one stage suggested that the police did not know that the exercise was taking place. If local policemen did not know, it must have been because the word did not pass down the line.

It is in the light of these rules that I would like to consider the alleged incidents which have come to light, and which I can assure my hon. Friend have been investigated in great detail. There are some points which have been referred to today of which I have not had previous notice, and there are certain other inquiries that I shall make; but I have seen the statements made by those concerned, including civilians, soldiers and the police. In one or two cases there is conflicting evidence, although, in the main, the misunderstandings have arisen partly from the highly dramatised statements to the Press. In my view, some of the misunderstandings, and the events themselves, might have been avoided if advance information about this exercise had been given to the general public.

My hon. Friends will be interested to know that so far there have been only four claims resulting from the exercise —a claim for £20 in respect of the rutting of a field by a vehicle; a claim for £3 1s. 5d. for the clearance of litter; an unsettled claim by a farmer who claimed that a heifer, frightened by the noise of a helicopter, had fallen off a cliff, and I understand Mr. Richards, the farmer at Lletyrefail farm—if I have pronounced it correctly——

No.

—my name is Dai, so I ought to know—is also making a claim. I heard during the discussion reference by my hon. Friend to the amount which had been paid out in claims in previous years. It is true that a tremendous number of exercises take place and the fact that we have paid out claims is an indication of our anxiety and determination that, if this is done, the owners of property do not suffer.

My hon. Friend has described in great and vivid detail Mr. Richards' side of the case, and I think that he and the House will want to hear the other side. There is a good deal of conflict of evidence and we need to understand the situation as it appeared to both sides in this "battle". My investigations produced first a statement by the sergeant in charge of the ambush party near Lletyrefail Farm.

According to him, at approximately 11.45 p.m., a car arrived on the scene in what can only be described as the most suspicious circumstances. Although the area was the worst possible area for motoring, a very dangerous and cliffy area, the car was showing only sidelights. When called upon to halt by three members of the platoon who were standing directly in the path—differently from my hon. Friend's account—the car, in spite of this, drove on and straight at them.

Convinced by these actions that this was a "guerrilla" car, the soldiers gave chase As has been said, they had heard that agents were operating in civilian clothes in that area. A man arriving at that time of night, behaving as he did, caused the soldiers to give chase. Arriving at the farmhouse, the car was parked outside with both headlights on, and on their approach the driver brandished a shotgun and fired. Some thought that he fired at them. If he did he fortunately missed, but he probably fired into the air. However, at this moment the exercise rules were clearly broken.

Not surprisingly, the sergeant decided in his interests—he did not know that there were only three shots in the shotgun—that he should disarm and apprehend the firer. Accordingly, he separated Mr. Richards from his gun—I like that term—and Mr. Richards was escorted with the other occupant of the car, who was wearing pyjamas and wellington boots, to the house to establish his identity. There seems to be no question that Mr. Richards had been drinking that evening, although there is some difference of opinion about the effect of the drink on him. I am not making any play with this.

I have seen the statements not only of the sergeant but of other N.C.O.s who were present, and I want to deal with some of the points on which there is a difference of evidence. Their suspicions were aroused at the time of the arrival of the car because of its behaviour, but mainly they were asked if there was any deliberate attempt to damage the car when they met it. They said that there was not, but added:

"… some damage might have been caused trying to stop the car".

One of the men was hit as the car drove through them, but denied that there was any deliberate attempt to damage the car.

Third, they were asked whether they saw any one using serious violence against the farmer or anyone else at the farm and they said, "No", but did not, of course, deny that they had forcibly taken the gun away from the farmer for fear that there would be serious trouble.

Fourth, they were not aware that any of the soldiers told the farmer or his family not to leave the house during the night. This is denied by all of them, and they also denied that they in any way restricted the ability of the farmer to report to the police. Instead they left only about 20 minutes after the farmer had run into his house.

Another point was made about the landing of helicopters. I have it on authority that no helicopters landed during the hours of darkness.—The following day——

In my statement of this evidence, I did not mention the hours of darkness. This was early evening, about 6 o'clock. It was perfectly light at that time.

Indeed. The following day——

rose——

I cannot give way to my hon. Friend. Only five minutes are left before the debate ends and there is a number of questions which I want to answer.

The following day an Army officer visited Mr. Richards, both to inquire about the incident and to apologise for any distress which had been caused. He described Mr. Richards as a friendly man who was quite prepared to forgive us, and I understand that at that stage he did forgive us and I hope that he still does.

In relation to this incident at Mr. Richards's farm, I think it is fair to say that in the absence of any advance noti. fication to the local population, the events reflect no serious discredit on either side. Looking at it from the point of view of the farmer; seeing a group of men blocking his way late at night on a country road, it is not surprising that he was frightened and that he refused to stop and rushed for his gun. Probably many of us would have done the same if we had seen a lot of soldiers without knowing why they were there.

As for the soldiers, suspicious that the "enemy" was in the area and using civilian vehicles, it is not surprising that the behaviour of the farmer aroused their suspicions. When he drove right through them, they were convinced that he was a "guerrilla" and gave chase—and get the spelling of "guerrilla" right, please, Mr. Hansard Reporter. When he started shooting, it was natural, to prevent bloodshed, that they should seek to disarm him. The error which was made was the failure to inform the general public in advance of what was going on, and I make a quite frank admission of this.

With the wisdom of hindsight, and hon. Members on both sides of the House are well provided with this sort of wisdom, it seems obvious that the public might have been alarmed by the presence of several hundred troops—large area though it was. It was an error of judgment which I regret. In future I shall ensure that we give the public due warning of any such exercises and the implications for them.

I would like to say that I am genuinely sorry for any distress which may have been caused to Mr. and Mrs. Richards, or their brother-in-law, or anyone else. Any additional claims for compensation will, of course, be very sympathetically considered. It would be easy to suggest, as one of my hon. Friends did, that the whole of Wales was in anguish about this incident, but I do not honestly believe that it has created as much of a sense of public concern as has been suggested. I do not myself attach real or serious blame for this incident to the troops who took part in the exercise.

Of course rules must be obeyed, and I was asked what was the law in this situation. The soldier per se in common law does not have any more right of arrest than the private citizen, although as a natural consequence of the scope of the exercise the personnel taking part might wish to invite civilians to identify themselves if they were suspected of being "guerrillas". But the exercise provided no legal justification for any of the personnel taking part in it to question, let alone take into custody, a member of the civilian population, and it is important that that should be put on the record. It has already been said that the lieutenant who appeared in civilian clothes showed an over-exuberance which may also have made a contribution to some of the misunderstandings.

Having expressed my regret for any misunderstandings which may have arisen, I want to say that I think that the exercise was valuable in providing opportunities for ourselves and our allies to help each other in military training, and valuable for the men and officers of the Territorial Army to take part in a realistic exercise—we do not want to confine them to camp. I am convinced that, apart from the regrettable lack of communication with the general public, this was an excellent and worth-while exercise.

I do not believe that any real harm will flow from the events which we have been discussing. My impression is that relations between the civilians and the military in this area are very cordial and I was very glad that the hon. Member for Denbigh (Mr. Morgan) made that point.

I have noted the remarks of the landlord of the New Inn—and, if reports are correct, a number of those involved in this incident had visited the landlord of the New Inn at Ystradfellpe—I think that I have pronounced that incorrectly, too. He said that he did not know what all the fuss was about and said that the local people were enjoying the cat-and-mouse game. I think that probably many of them did.

I am grateful to have this opportunity of raising the matter of the Severn River Authority's plans to survey 29 valleys for their possible use as reservoirs, a matter of supreme importance to many of my constituents and to Wales generally.

I am sure that by now there is no need for me to try to persuade the House that in Wales we are devoted to our rural valleys and small communities. I have little need to convince the Secretary of State of the fierce emotions which the threat of flooding a valley produces in the Principality.

Hon. Members can imagine the feelings in my constituency when we were faced with the knowledge that the Severn River Authority had plans to survey no less than 29 valleys in Montgomeryshire for their possible use as dam and reservoir sites. In response to a request of mine, the Authority sent me a plan on 8th April and I think that all who have seen it will agree that it is a horrific document in itself because it purports to show, by way of illustration, about one-third of the land surface of Montgomeryshire under water.

It is true that the Authority made it clear that this was a survey and that some sites might be eliminated as a result of it, but in the hearts and minds of most of the people affected it was a preliminary step which would eventually lead to the submergence of their valleys. The production of this map and plan, more than anything else, obviously produced a psychological effect on them.

I feel justified in saying that in many cases people have been caused needless anxiety and fear by these proposals. From my personal knowledge of the Secretary of State, which covers many years, I cannot, despite our political differences, imagine him under any circumstances allowing a valley which contains a substantial and virile Welsh community being submerged as a reservoir, whatever the technical merits of the site. If there must be a survey at all, why can it not be confined to the unpopulated valleys or those where, at the most, there would be only minimal disturbance to economic, social and cultural life?

I hope that the Secretary of State will today make an authoritative statement on the Government's attitude towards the survey and about their water policy for Wales. I hope that he will be able to allay the fears and anxieties of many hundreds of my constituents and give a great deal of information which so far we have not had.

Why is such a survey necessary at all? The owners of the affected land have been told that a visual survey only was required in the first instance and that only in some cases might it be followed by bores and tests at a later date. Most of this work was done in 1961. Why is it necessary to consider 29 sites in 1966 when, five years ago, it was thought necessary to survey only 24, thus adding five additional valleys to the list? What, in any event, is the justification for the additional cost of doing work which was done just over six years ago?

On 7th April of this year Mr. Morley, the Clerk of the Severn River Authority, wrote to me saying:

"I do want to emphasise that the purpose of surveying so many sites is so that the consultants can get as complete a picture as possible when it comes to considering the requirements of the Authority for regulating and flood relief purposes, that any idea that the Authority have decided either on the number of sites or on any particular ones which will be required, is completely wrong."

I should be grateful if the Secretary of State would say just what are the requirements of the Authority for regulating purposes, for flood relief purposes and what decisions have been made under both of these heads.

The Authority has stated that the survey is to be carried out in pursuance of its powers and duties under the Water Resources Act, 1963, and at the request of the Welsh Committee of the Water Resources Board to look into possible sites for regulating and flood relief reservoirs. Under what powers is the survey being carried out, in pursuance of which duties and what was the precise request of the Welsh Committee of the Water Resources Board to the Severn River Authority? Can we know the estimated cost of the survey? If this work has been done before, and if we are in a time of financial difficulty, it would be instructive to know the additional cost of the new survey.

Why is it not possible for the Secretary of State to eliminate from the survey certain areas immediately on social, cultural and economic grounds? Some of the areas on the survey include whole communities threatened with flooding. In the Banw Valley there are the villages of Foel, Llanerfyl and Llangadfan, all of which are threatened. In Llangadfan, 80 per cent. of the population of the parish live below the projected water line, 80 per cent. of about 450 people. I cannot imagine under what circumstances the Secretary of State should give consent to flooding of this kind. Therefore, what is the justification for the survey at all? Most of these villages were categorised in the 1961 survey. For example, Banw No. 2 site was rejected on sociological grounds, others on agricultural and economic grounds, and others on geological grounds.

It is time that the Secretary of State put his foot down. His appointment was welcomed by many of us who do not share his political views because we believe that he is devoted to the cause of Wales. It would be a salutary matter and a great benefit to Wales, to the river authority and all concerned if he would make an authoritative statement today setting out exactly what his views are and what is the official approach to this problem which I think will increase in size in the next few years in Wales.

What consideration is the survey expected to give to Welsh cultural and social life? The villages of Pontrobert and Dolanog are threatened. The home of Anne Griffiths, Dolwarfach, a place of pilgrimage for so many Welsh people, would be flooded if a particular scheme were implemented. One does not expect engineers carrying out a specialist job to have regard to this matter, but it is a matter of great importance, sociologically, politically and culturally. I would welcome a statement by the Secretary of State on his attitude towards this matter.

For instance, could he ever contemplate giving permission for this inundation to take place? If not, as I suspect he would never contemplate it, is not a survey in this area a complete waste of time and money? What consideration is given in the survey to the indirect harm which flooding can cause, for example, the deprivation of a small town like Llanfair Caereinion in its position as a centre of the Banw population or the disappearance of agricultural land on which the economy of hill farms depends?

These are only some of the examples of the economic and social considerations which must exercise the mind of the Secretary of State. He will know of allegations that Wales has been surveyed more than England but the House should have the comparative figures. How many dams and reservoirs involving the displacement of people from their homes in different parts of England have been made over the past decade and how many in Wales? Are similar surveys to this going on in different parts of England? We ought to be told and put in full possession of the information. From time to time serious damage is caused by the flooding of the Severn in Montgomeryshire as well as elsewhere. Although we in Montgomeryshire were distressed to lose the Clywedog Valley, the county council, the water board and other authorities co-operated in a combined scheme for that valley provided additional flood prevention measures were introduced and they were introduced.

From my inquiries I am absolutely satisfied that to prevent completely any flooding in the Severn Valley does not require reservoirs and dams on anything like the proposed scale envisaged in the survey. Can the Secretary of State tell the House what surveys have been proposed or carried out on the English side of the borders of the Severn Valley to ascertain whether there are sites there available for regulating dams and so on.

One of the fears of the people of Montgomeryshire has been the apparently clandestine nature of the negotiations leading up to the publication of the fact that the survey was being made. Can the Secretary of State tell the House what was the exact nature of the meeting at Newtown on 28th February of this year? What organisations were invited to attend? What were the terms of their invitation. In particular, was a map produced showing the extent of the survey; and, if not, why not?

There have been allegations—they may or may not be true; I am not giving my opinion of them—that the meeting was secret and was ostensibly called to discuss flood prevention. Can the Secretary of State comment on these allegations? Are they well founded? Did the Welsh Committee of the Water Resources Board give the representatives of the various bodies invited the details of their task, or did they merely announce the general terms of their mandate?

The State already owns land recently forested in the upper reaches of the Severn and its tributaries. Some of this land is barren land, completely unpopulated. Can the Secretary of State say what surveys have been carried out, if any, or what research has been done, if any, into the possibility of constructing clams and reservoirs in the guttered forest area from which we believe so much of the extra water which certainly adds to the floods comes?

In assessing the future water requirements of the country, is any research being carried out into the development of estuary barrages as reservoirs? What plans are there in hand for such research?

In the magazine Water Power, in April of this year. there is a most interesting article by Mr. E. M. Wilson, apparently a distinguished engineer, on a multi-purpose barrage in the Bristol Channel. In last week's Farmers' Weekly there was a most interesting article explaining the estuary barrages, and so on, used by the Dutch to provide for their water requirements. What investigation has there been along these lines in Wales?

It is also said that the desalination of sea water will shortly be an economic proposition. If this is so, what efforts will be made to apply the new processes to the needs of the large conurbations?

I conclude by saying this. Our greatest need in Montgomery at the moment is information—information as to exactly what is entailed in these surveys; information as to the Government's policy. I plead with the Secretary of State to bear in mind the uncertainty of the people in my constituency and outside as to their own future and the future of the places that they know and love. I can assure the House that the proposals have aroused strong feelings which could quickly be turned to resentment.

I underline the strength of the feelings. People of all political parties; the two farming unions, and the Country Landowners' Association, have all co-operated to set up a defence committee for the whole country. We want to know exactly where we stand. No proposals for submerging any Welsh valley can go through without the eventual approval of the Government through the Secretary of State.

For the benefit of the people of Montgomeryshire and of Wales and, indeed, of the River Authority of the Water Resources Board, it would be a great help if the Secretary of State were today to make the authoritative statement which I have asked for as to precisely what the Government's policy is and what kind of proposal he would definitely not even consider on sociological and economic grounds. It might be possible for him to announce today the elimination of these sites from any further consideration. I hope that he will do so.

An English poet wrote:

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land !

Never was this matter so well expressed, even though it was expressed by an English poet. It expresses the feelings of many of hundreds of my constituents who are affected by this proposal.

I am very grateful, to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. for calling me in this debate. My intervention will be of the shortest possible duration.

As the Secretary of State knows, I am affected, marginally it is true, as compared with the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), but nevertheless affected inasmuch as two of the proposed sites are located in my constituency, one near Llanrhaidr-ym-Mochnant and the other near Llansilin. I am, naturally, concerned that the interests of these constituents of mine should be protected.

I entirely agree with the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery that a great deal of misgiving has been aroused. There are, I think, three main causes for this. One is the comparatively vast number of proposed sites to be surveyed. Another is the lack of information at present about the possible acreage involved. The third, more important still, is the lack of information about the number of inhabitants likely to be affected by these proposals. I appreciate that it would not be possible, if only because of shortage of time today, for the right hon. Gentleman to answer more than some of the questions put to him, but we are entitled to rather more information on these matters than we have had so far.

I should like an assurance from the Secretary of State, if it is possible for him to give it, that, if it be found necessary to take another Welsh site at all, there will be the least possible disturbance to existing inhabitants. Knowing the right hon. Gentleman as well as I do, I know that he will bear in mind that this is not merely a question of taking agricultural land, but a question affecting a language, a culture and a way of life as well.

The House, and hon. Members from Wales in particular, will be grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) for raising this important question this afternoon. He raised a large number of points of detail, and I shall deal with as many as I can in the time at my disposal. If I am unable to reply to some of them, I shall write to him about them later.

At the outset, I congratulate the hon. Member for Denbigh (Mr. W. G. Morgan) This is the first time I have seen him at the Dispatch Box opposite. I understand that this is his second short speech in a short space of time. He was brief, lucid and helpful and, if he follows those lines in the future, we on this side will be very glad to see him there on many occasions.

During the past few years, water has become an emotive issue in Wales, and I am concerned because in this particular instance much of the alarm and agitation which has occurred in recent months has been based on misconception. This debate provides a valuable opportunity for me to set the facts in the right perspective.

The House will be aware that, after the Tryweryn controversy, a Welsh Water Advisory Committee was set up in order to estimate water resources in Wales and what was likely to be the surplus over Welsh needs. This Committee, which performed very useful work, reported in 1961 that the exploitable surplus of water in Wales was of the order of 1,715 million gallons per day, and I understand that this was a conservative estimate. This is an immense amount of water, and, whatever else may be said, we can be sure that we are not likely to be short of water over Wales as a whole. But, in a period of rapidly increasing water consumption, we cannot expect that these water resources can remain entirely undeveloped.

The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery referred to desalination. Desalination may well be the eventual answer to the problem of water shortage in some areas. It is not yet an economic proposition, but when it becomes practicable, its value will be greatest near the coast, and it is unlikely to contribute much to meet water shortages in inland areas.

If further reservoirs are built in Wales for any purpose, my concern is to ensure that in this process the interests of Wales and its people are fully safeguarded. The need to develop water resources in a comprehensive and organised way led to the Water Resources Act, which was discussed at great length on the Floor of the House and in Committee in 1963. Under that Act, a Water Resources Board was set up responsible for the overall strategy of dealing with the water resources of England and Wales. It included a provision for at least one Welsh member with a special knowledge of Welsh water matters. In fact, there are two Welsh members on the Water Resources Board. Under the Act, England and Wales have been divided into river authority areas and the river authorities have been given responsibility for ensuring that water is made available in every river system for all demands made upon them. As a result of this, river authorities are now statutorily responsible for surveying their own resources and making plans for their use. Governing the River Severn and its tributaries is the Severn River Authority.

This, then, was the position when my predecessor took office as the first Secretary of State for Wales in October 1964. He was concerned, as indeed I am, that there should never be a repetition of controversy such as arose over Tryweryn. He decided to set up a committee to advise him on water matters in Wales. In consultation with the Water Resources Board and the various river authorities, he set up a Welsh Water Committee consisting of the two Welsh members of the Water Resources Board, together with the chairmen of the four river authorities wholly in Wales and the chairmen of the Dee, Severn and Wye River Authorities, whose areas straddle the English-Welsh border. This represents a body of advisers with expert knowledge of Welsh water and they are fully sensitive to Welsh feeling. They are now available to advise me on any question which I care to remit to them.

The Newtown floods are a matter of concern not only to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery but to all Welsh Members. They have been unusually severe in recent years. Following them, my predecessor decided that the first area which should receive attention was the Welsh section of the River Severn. Therefore, a Committee was asked in June, 1965, to report on the lines along which the water resources of the Welsh part of the Severn Basin should he developed, having regard to two things: first, the likely demand for water from this source up to about 1990 and, secondly, the need to utilise these assets in the interests of the area itself as well as of outside consumers through making abundant supplies of water available for incoming industries, through improvement of amenities, the promotion of tourism, and, last but not least, the prevention of flooding, to which I have referred.

The preliminary conclusions of the Committee suggest that early consideration should be given to further regulating works in the Upper Severn Valley. These, it says, would provide supplies for use in Wales and amenities and recreational facilities which could bring economic benefits to the area. They could also help to control the flooding.

Before recommendations can be made about actual sites, the Committee needs more detailed information, and it has asked the Severn River Authority to commission a report from consulting engineers on the relative merits of various possible sites. This sort of survey is essential if river authorities are to carry out their statutory reviews of water resources and the demands likely to be made upon them.

The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery asked why the present survey is necessary after the 1961 Report. It is a reasonable question. The Welsh Water Advisory Committee, in that Report, listed 24 sites of varying degrees of acceptability, although that Committee had not undertaken any detailed survey; and had merely made broad assessments of capacities and classifications. To complete this task, the Severn River Authority decided to survey all possible sites in greater detail. This has created a good deal of apprehension in the minds of many people, but it is fair to point out that it is in fact completing work commenced by the Welsh Water Advisory Committee in 1961 and also carrying out its statutory obligation under the 1963 Act.

The hon. and learned Gentleman asked what its authority was. Under Section 14 of the Water Resources Act, 1963, the Severn River Authority and all other river authorities in England and Wales are under a similar obligation to carry out these duties.

Let me emphasise again that what is now in prospect is simply a survey of the resources and potentialities of various sites on which the Welsh Water Committee will eventually report to me. "Survey" in this sense does not imply detailed site investigations everywhere, and in many instances little more than a look at an area may be sufficient to reveal it as unsuitable for reservoir purposes.

Let me say this to the House and to the people of the area concerned. There is absolutely no question whatsoever of constructing 30 or so reservoirs in Mid-Wales. Nothing has been decided, but the scale of development is likely to be very much smaller than that, possibly no more than two or three reservoits during the next 20 years or so.

I appreciate the natural concern of many people in these areas, and I want to do what the hon. and learned Gentleman asked me to do, and allay their fears. I am quite sure that the Welsh Committee and the river authority will take the most careful account of the sociological objections before they make any final recommendations. They are able and conscientious men, and I am grateful to them for the valuable work they have accomplished. They have a duty to perform and they deserve our co-operation. Let me say now, so that there may be no more misunderstanding or further misconception, that as Secretary of State for Wales I do not propose to consent to the drowning of any villages in Mid-Wales. I am satisfied that if regulating reservoirs are required then the two or three which I mentioned can be built without disrupting whole communities. I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Denbigh that communities count as far as I am concerned.

The need for preserving first-class agricultural land will also be very much in my mind. It may be some time before the Welsh Water Committee is able to make its final report to me, but I am asking the Committee to eliminate unsuitable sites as soon as possible.

I should like to say a word about the meeting which took place and to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred It was not a secret meeting. It was called together to explain to the local authorities, farmers and land owning bodies the purpose of the survey. A very large number were asked to be present, and those invited included rural district councils of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, the Water Board, the National Farmers' Union, the Landowners' Association. The extent of the survey had not at that time been decided but at the request of Montgomery County Council representatives it was accepted that all possible views would be considered which it was thought would be representative of all the major interests likely to be directly affected by the survey. The extent of the survey had not been determined at that stage. Although the Press was not present, full information was in fact given to the Press after the meeting.

Finally, let me say a word about the system of river regulation under which any reservoir in this area would be built. This is not the old system under which water is piped away to distant parts with little local benefit. A regulating reservoir merely holds back water in times of flood to release it in drier weather, so evening out river flows. No more and no less water flows down the river over a period of time than before a reservoir is built, but the regime of the river is improved and is better able to meet all demands made upon it.

The sooner the survey is completed the sooner I shall be in possession of all the facts so that I may decide what is possible and necessary. I should not like it to be thought that as a people we are parsimonious and inward looking. Let us remember that, by regulationg the flow of the Severn on the Welsh side, we are helping to control it on the English side of the border. The Severn belongs to both countries, and it is in the interests of both that the best possible use should be made of the resources of the river. A blind refusal to appreciate this and to cooperate with good will would be chauvenism of the worst kind and would be against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people of Wales.

I hope that what I have said will set at rest the minds of people who have thought themselves to be under threat. I give my assurance that in this, as in all matters affecting Wales, I intend to see that the interests of our country and its people are fully safeguarded. That is my responsibility and privilege as Secretary of State for Wales.