I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 4, line 21, at beginning insert:

'Subject to subsection (4) below'.

With this we may take Amendment No. 3, in page 4, line 40, at end add:

'(4) Before any money shall be defrayed under subsection (1) above the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament a report detailing the expenditure incurred by the CEGB as a result of commencing the Drax Works earlier than they might otherwise have done.'.

In Committee we discussed the principle of the amendment in some detail, and I said:

"If the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment, perhaps he would think about it and table an amendment on Report to cover the points that we make."

The Minister acknowledged that and, later the same day, referring to what I had said, he replied:

"He asked whether I would be prepared to think again about this matter. It would be a foolish Minister who ignored such a suggestion from the official Opposition. I like to persuade people. I have no hesitation in saying to the hon. Gentleman that I will look at the matter again. I can give no undertaking to the hon. Gentleman about the result, but I shall consider whether his doubts warrant fresh consideration."—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 11th May 1978; c. 48–51.]

In view of that generous assurance by the Minister, it is appropriate that we should deploy some of the arguments again in order to freshen his memory in the hope that when he replies he may find it possible to accept the amendment.

The importance of the amendment is that it deals with the way in which public money is paid out. We pointed out in Committee that, as custodians of the public purse, it is important that we should ensure that, where a sum such as £50 million is likely to be paid to the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Board should justify such a payment before it is made.

In Clause 5 we are advised that we might have to pay up to a maximum of £50 million. The principle is not in question. Some years ago, a Conservative Government found themselves in a position in relation to the Ince B power station not dissimilar to that in which this Government find themselves. At that time it was decided that compensation should be paid and that the order should be brought forward.

It is obvious that without Government intervention no order would have been placed for Drax before 1980. There would have been seven years without an order for main generating plant, either by the CEGB or by the Scottish boards. This would have been a serious situation and there would have been many consequences. Some of the worst effects would have been the loss of skills that would have resulted from the order not being made and the number of apprenticeships available in the industry that would have been put at risk.

In addition, there would have been serious unemployment problems in the areas most affected. As I said in Committee, I visited the Babcock and Wilcox works in the last Summer Recess and I was most impressed by the people I met and what I saw there. I was left in no doubt about the serious effect that the absence of an order would have in that part of the country. This fact was also represented by hon. Members from the North-East who explained on Second Reading the seriousness of the situation in that part of the country.

It is a great pity that the Government were not able to seize the opportunity for rationalisation of the industry. Some progress has been made in the boiler-making sector. This was highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) on Second Reading, but much remains to be done and there is undoubtedly general dissatisfaction with the organisation of the manufacturing side of the industry.

On the turbine generator side one can go back as far as 24th April 1977, when the energy editor of The Sunday Times, Mr. Peter Rodgers, drew attention to the problem at that time and said in an article:

"Meanwhile the political row over the other side of the power station problem—plans to merge the turbine generator subsidiaries of GEC and Reyrolle Parsons—is growing apace. At the last minute—at a meeting before Easter—the Cabinet appears to have abandoned a plan to push for a joint company, 40 per cent. GEC, 40 per cent. Parsons and 20 per cent. National Enterprise Board".

We know that that was the case. It seems a great pity that the Government were not able to bring the various parties together and to effect a rationalisation.

However, one does not want to inhibit what is being done and the efforts that are being made. Therefore, I shall not lay blame or offer criticisms but merely say that I hope that the situation will be resolved, because it will be to the long-term advantage of the industry if a rationalisation takes place.

I share, as the hon. Gentleman knows—and I thank him—most of the concerns that he has about this matter. However, he will be aware that the 40/40/20 solution was unacceptable to only one party of the three or four that were then involved. Is he also aware that continued uncertainty on this front is not helpful to the industry? There is now no prospect whatsoever of a turbine generating merger, so would it not help if we stopped talking about it for a while and started getting on with selling turbine generators?

That is a fair point, but I would not agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think that it would be wrong of us merely to take the attitude that because the attempts and negotiations so far have been unsuccessful we should just leave it at that. I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that the long-term future of the industry would benefit by rationalisation. Whether the fact that this was not achieved is perhaps due to personalities involved or basic disagreement between the unions and the various par- ties concerned is difficult to estimate. However, one can only hope that it will be overcome in future.

How can the compensation which is suggested to be paid to the CEGB be justified? We believe that the Minister was not as forthcoming as he might have been when he replied to the debate in Committee. I said at that time that it was doubtful whether he had satisfied the Committee as such. We should like to hear a little more from him today as to how he believes that the moneys for the CEGB can be justified.

Can we be certain, for example, that the £50 million will be the ceiling of what we are required to pay to the CEGB in compensation? Can the Minister be confident that in two or three years' time either he or whoever is sitting in the post he now occupies will not have to come forward and ask for some additional money?

I refer again to the article that I mentioned earlier. On 24th April 1977, Peter Rodgers obviously had doubts about this. He said:

"The Electricity Council, supreme body in the industry, believes Hawkins"—

that is, the former chairman—

"is exaggerating fourfold."

Hawkins had estimated that the early ordering would cost the power consumers something between £140 million and £160 million. Peter Rodgers said:

"the real cost would be £35 million to £45 million."

Are the Government satisfied that Sir Arthur Hawkins was as far out as that? This is one of the matters that causes concern. If we are to approve £50 mil lion now, what will be the situation if we find that Sir Arthur Hawkins was nearer the truth than the writer of that Article thought he was? This is a serious matter. I should like the Minister to comment on it.

Let us look at the situation regarding the power station delays. The delay in power stations coming on line over the past decade or thereabouts has been anything from three years to seven years. In Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) quoted from an article in The Times of 2nd October. On Second Reading I quoted from the same article. I should like to quote from it again. It said:

"experience suggests that an early start is necessary merely to get Drax finished on time."

We raised this point at some length in Committee. It is a significant point and one to which the Minister should pay a little more attention than he did in Committee.

4.45 p.m.

It seems to me that it would have been prudent for the CEGB to place the order early. If the situation that I have described is correct and these stations have been coming on line anything from three to seven years late, surely it would not have been unreasonable for the CEGB to take that into account when placing its order. If it were to do this, we again delve into the whole relativity of the compensation which it is to be paid.

In Committee the Minister said that arrangements with the CEGB provide for payments to be made only after expenditure has been incurred. But, whatever these payments may be, should there not be another side to the balance sheet, on which could be estimated the expenditure in which the CEGB would be involved in the event of its going ahead with its normal ordering and then the power station not coming on line at the appropriate time? There must be another set of figures that should be considered in this context.

What about delays? I know that certainly the CEGB believes that the new Drax power station will overcome all the previous difficulties that have been experienced concerning delays and that the new technology will be such that it will be able to start the project and complete it in the estimated time. But this has been the case with every power station that has been built. When a power station has been commenced, no one has ever expected that it would not be finished on time. Recent experience does not indicate that the present Drax order is any more likely to be completed on time than former power stations.

These are all arguments that the Minister should consider very carefully. Frankly, I am disappointed that he did not find it possible to accept the amendments in Committee, and I am even more disappointed that in the weeks since the Committee stage he and his officials have not managed to devise a form of words that would meet the points that we have raised.

Concerning construction difficulties, in Committee my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter drew attention to the whole question of the cause of these delays. In his reply, the Minister said:

"During the course of his remarks, the hon. Member for Exeter also asked about construction difficulties. This is an important point, but I must be frank with him and say that I am not briefed on that point. However, since the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter, and since he may wish to return to the subject on Report, I will certainly look into it."—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 11th May 1978; c. 48.]

I hope that, between now and when he winds up this debate, the Minister will be able to get the information.

On the question of construction delays, I hope that the hon. Member is not suggesting that in these days, with coal-fired power stations of this kind—a fairly straightforward job—the real trouble is technical problems. The problems are labour problems and varying rates of pay, differentials and so on.

I accept what the hon. Member says, but I have no doubt that there are also likely to be problems of design, for example. As a project continues, it is frequently found necessary to modify the design in some way, and this upsets the work scale and the work progress and can lead to the sort of difficulties that have been mentioned. The kind of construction problems that are likely in a project of this sort are varied, but perhaps the Minister can say something about that.

We have thrashed out this principle fully in Committee, and I hope that what I have said will persuade the Minister that there is merit in our arguments. The amendment is intended not in a carping way but as a constructive suggestion. Labour Members are probably as anxious as we to ensure accountability in the spending of public money. I hope that the Minister will consider my arguments in that spirit and will be able to give a favourable reply.

I shall be brief, because we are anxious to dispose of the Bill as quickly as possible; in any case, as the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) said, we dealt with these matters fully in Committee.

This quiet little debate has seen the emergence of the sensible face of the Conservative Party—for example, over the reorganisation of electrical manufacturing. The official Opposition spokesman talks of an amalgamation, creating one modern monopoly manufacturer, and concedes that 20 per cent. of public money should go into the combined enterprise. I cannot quarrel with that doctrine, but it clashes with many Conservative statements, which we shall hear again in the coming election, about the need for intense competition in British manufacturing, even when that is not domestically relevant or related to world conditions.

Like the electricity supply management, I am all in favour of the reorganisation of manufacturing of conventional plant, but that cannot be separate from the reorganisation of the nuclear plant industry. The whole question of manufacturing organisation and employment needs in different areas of the country has to be looked at again as it affects both kinds of plant construction.

I put down a Question recently about the nuclear side of the industry and changes now contemplated. There is a lot of secrecy and a lot of behind-the-scenes talk about coming changes, some of which will go deep, it is said. When public money is involved, as it is, we should have an early statement on these matters. It is long overdue and should be delayed no longer.

I support the amendment, for a number of reasons. Ever since the Committee stage, a number of factors have changed the situation. I very much agree with the hon. Member for Bristol. North-East (Mr. Palmer) about the problem of delays. We need not fear the technical problems in a coal-fired plant, but the construction problems are gigantic. One has only to consider the delays at Dungeness B. There are 50 sub-contractors on the site. The targets for cost and completion were £89 million and 1970. That power station is likely now to be 10 years late—not seven years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) said—and the total cost will prob- ably be £350 million. It is unreasonable to ask for up-to-date information, therefore, about Drax.

Only an optimist would believe that we are clear of all these constructional problems even when building what might be called a "simple" coal-fired power station—though that description is not quite accurate. I hope that the Minister will say that this £50 million of taxpayers' money which is to be given to the Central Electricity Generating Board will be used to ensure that we eliminate as much as possible the kind of situation which exists on the Dungeness site. There are lessons to be learnt there.

When talking about the Drax order, one is also talking inevitably about the coal industry. This power station is one of a group which will sit on the Yorkshire coalfield, particularly on the edge of the Selby field. It has been brought forward to help the plant manufacturers but also as part of the complete plan for electricity generation around that new coalfield.

The new information, since Committee stage, about the provision of subsidies for coal from the European Commission makes me wonder whether the British taxpayer has to fork out this money and whether we could not have got it from Brussels. As recently as last month, the Commission provided £65 million to help the Selby project. It could be argued that some of that money could be given to the CEGB to build this station, which is all to do with Selby.

We have also been told within the past month that the Government intend to subsidise substantially the additional burning of coal in power stations. Here again, we as taxpayers seem to be providing money which is available from other sources as well.

We need detailed explanations of what this £50 million will be used for. I am beginning to believe that more than that is already available and that this sum is simply the cherry on the top of a fairly large and expensive cake.

We talk about Selby, but I wonder how many hon. Members know that a major reconstruction of the London-Edinburgh railway line will be needed to get this coalfield on stream. A 14½-mile loop line will have to be built if we are not to lose the coal under the existing track.

5.0 p.m.

I hope that the Minister will not merely explain the matter but will convince the House that this is the only way that can be found to subsidise the CEGB. I think that even without this Bill we now have the available cash to do the job for us. I am not sure that we need to put our hands in our pockets on this occasion. After all, the NCB is doing quite nicely; it is breaking even and is showing a small profit. Here we have £65 million out of the blue from Europe for Selby. Surely the NCB in its wisdom, and, indeed, in a spirit of generosity, could have said "This power station will help us. Let us make a contribution."

Has the hon. Gentleman never heard of the concept of ultra vires?

That may be so, but I believe we should not part with this money without making sure that it is well and properly spent. We should keep a running tally of how the money is going, but my guess is that it will not be long before somebody comes back to ask for even more money. On the evidence that is now available to us, I do not feel that a further appeal would be justified.

I hope that the Minister will reject these amendments, however, well-meaning they may be. I appreciate that the large sum of £50 million is involved, and I am always conscious of the fact that hon. Members should carefully examine any figures that are put before them. However in this case it is not easy to examine these figures in detail.

The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) pointed to the difficulties of delay and said that a figure should be written in to take account of that factor. The hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) said that some of the dalays were due to complex labour problems. However, I do not know how my hon. Friend the Minister is expected to make such complex calculations. We all know that forecasting in these matters is a debatable exercise. Therefore, there is the general difficulty of providing meaningful figures.

I do not believe it is possible for the House to be presented with figures show- ing the economic advantages of bringing forward this project. In Committee the Minister said that some allowance would be made for interest, but I do not believe that the cost-effectiveness of the project in terms of its advantages to the generating industry and the coal industry can be measured. This is the difficulty of having to examine bare figures.

We know that in the longer term a great deal of coal will be used in the production of oil and chemicals and that that process will continue for many years to come. A major proportion of our coal production will be used for electricity generation. In that respect, it is impossible to measure the advantages of bringing forward this project.

I do not agree with the view of the hon. Member for New Forest about the bounty to be expected from the EEC. That is small beer compared with the amount of money which rightly must be spent on the expansion of the coal industry in the coming years. The recent disappointments flowed from conditions imposed by some of our EEC partners when considering further help. Clearly, there are insurmountable difficulties in presenting meaningful figures showing the advantages of the project.

The second reason why my hon. Friend the Minister should reject these amendments lies in the fact that any delay in this project would undoubtedly be fatal. I am referring not only to the delay as it would affect the firm of C. A. Parsons, the generation industry or the North-East in general, but to the delay that would be crippling to the future of the coal industry. That is a further problem when considering the relevance of delay.

Many of us regard the Drax B project as the first in a series of new coal-fired stations. I believe that there is a need to examine the whole of the generation industry. I know that Britain has moved more towards coal-burning capacity than is the case in many other countries. Many of the older stations are coal-fired, and there is a need to develop new ones in the future. We should refurbish the older plants, and I hope that we shall do nothing to delay this project. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will reject the amendments.

I shall be brief. I, too, hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reject these proposals. The Opposition speeches have puzzled me on Amendment No. 3, because it refers to

"expenditure incurred by the CEGB"

in bringing forward Drax B. The truth is that other expenses not mentioned in this amendment are involved.

I expected to hear at least one Opposition speech outlining the democratic necessity for proper investigations into public expenditure, and its proper deployment and scrutiny. The amendment contains no such general proposition, but is related exclusively to expenditure incurred by the CEGB. If the amendment had tried to make clear what expenditure would have been incurred if the project had not been brought forward, we could well have examined that proposition. The figure of £50 million must be offset against the social expenditure in which the community is involved in other ways.

The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) was correct to mention in this context the boilermaking industry and he recalled his inspection of the Babcock and Wilcox factory a year ago and the impression that visit made upon him. He mentioned the loss of skills and the loss of apprenticeships. We all know that if this order had not been brought forward, it might well have led to the destruction of the boilermaking industry.

The same argument applies to the other two AGR projects which are in the pipeline, and which are in the second stage of measures to preserve the industry. There is nothing in the amendment about the assessment of the cost of allowing an entire industry to go to the wall or about any attempt to resurrect it in five or 10 years' time. That is what would have happened if Drax B had not been brought forward. These amendments do not examine the social requirements or the social expenditure that is necessary, but refer only to the specific cost to the CEGB alone.

I think that the hon. Gentleman misses the point. There is no difference between us on the principle. The amendment refers purely to the CEGB and lays down that that organisation should have to justify the extra costs which it has incurred by bringing for- ward the order. The amendment is quite clear on that point.

The amendment is absolutely clear, but it ignores the entire cost of bringing forward the order, or of not bringing it forward. There is nothing in the amendment that says anything about the nature of the cost incurred in not bringing it forward. It is because of this that I am puzzled by the speech of the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray). He recognised the deep problem involved in the loss of apprenticeships and skills—

Will my hon. Friend agree with me that the cost of not bringing it forward is really immeasurable, and that that is part of the problem?

In that sense, yes. I do not go along with all the technical arguments. Of course there will be a technical problem when we investigate any costs of this type of involvement. To that extent there is always an area of doubt about the accuracy of the figures that we get. If 10,000 men become unemployed we can total up the cost of benefits to the community, but there are a number of other costs which would be difficult to measure. Merely because it cannot be precisely measured is no argument for not scrutinising public expenditure.

My objection is different—it is related to the reason for my being puzzled by the Opposition. We heard a speech from the Conservative Front Bench, much of which I agreed with. We then heard a speech from the Back Bench—from the hon. Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) and it emerges that he is totally opposed to the whole concept. He is arguing the whole question of bringing forward the order at all. He camouflaged it his reference to this unknown sum that we are about to get from the EEC. All I can say is that I think our Government are pretty remiss if they cannot lay their hands on £150 million that is going begging as the hon. Member suggests.

I made it very clear on Second Reading and subseqeuently that I support the ordering of the station ahead of time. All I am saying is that £65 million is available—it is not an unknown sum.

I really must try to clear the hon. Member's mind about our amendment. He knows that Clause 5 deals specifically with provisions of money to the CEGB. That is why our amendment is drawn as narrowly as it is. Will he now confirm that he believes that the CEGB, to which the clause refers, should explain to the Government why it needs £50 million, and £49 million or £51 million?

I accept that it goes without saying that this kind of figure is not produced out of a hat. It is an estimate of the cost of this kind of operation, and this is the ceiling that we have laid upon the costs that will be incurred. If the CEGB goes over that figure it will be up to our various Select Committees to investigate. The truth is that the hon. Member is willing to wound but afraid to strike. Of course he says that he is in favour of the project, but in fact all that he has said has suggested that he believes there is no need for it at all.

The Government, unlike the CEGB, must have a much broader vision. The CEGB must be concerned with the technical, commercial and construction costs, while the Government must move into the wider field and make the decisions. I suspect that it is the objection to public decisions of this kind, which involve a wider social cost and understanding, which is behind the speech of the hon. Member for New Forest. He objects to public activity of this kind.

I welcome the Bill and I hope that the Minister will reject the amendment. The Minister was very generous on this matter in Committee—to my mind, too generous. But re-reading it, I think that this proposition is even more delphic than I said it was in Committee. The Minister is not bound to anything; therefore, I hope that he will reject the amendment.

I have caused all this trouble that we are discussing today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, West (Mr. Buchan) said, I had a delphic touch. I do not know whether that was a compliment or a criticism. He has assured me that it was a compliment.

Certainly I do not in any way criticise the way in which the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) opened his speech. What he quoted was perfectly true. When he appealed to me in Committee—it was a very good Committee—I assured him that I would look at this matter again. Of course I did. I confess that having listened to the debate I feel that hon. Members have been sidetracked from the question of parliamentary accountability. However, I examined this whole aspect and, as the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty has suggested, I do like to persuade people, and now I shall try to persuade him.

I am sure that the hon. Member will recollect that the Secretary of State informed the House during Second Reading that whatever happens to interest rates and power station costs, compensation will not exceed £50 million. However, it may be helpful at this stage if I explain how each annual instalment will be determined.

Payments by the CEGB for Drax B began during the financial year 1977–78, because of the placing of design contracts last November. The rate of expenditure will increase with the signature of manufacturing and construction contracts until it reaches a maximum of about £200 million a year in the financial year 1982–83.

As I indicated in Committee, we shall therefore deal with the problem of determining the Board's extra costs one year at a time. In the autumn of each year the CEGB will forecast the costs it will incur, mainly through making progress payments to the manufacturers on Drax. At the same time the Government will make a determination of what the cost of financing such payments is likely to be over that year. On this basis a forecast of compensation payable will be included in the estimates laid before Parliament.

Because the station is being ordered two years early it might appear correct to pay compensation as two years' interest charges on the capital costs, just as the previous Administration agreed to pay 18 months' interest charges on the capital costs of Ince B. But, as I explained before, the Board obtains some benefits through the early ordering of Drax, and it is right that these expected benefits should in some way be offset against the costs. The compensation payment will, therefore, be determined as six months rather than two years interest charges.

Payment to the Board will not, however, automatically follow approval of the corresponding estimate by Parliament. We shall await production of a certificate by the Board's auditors each July of what has actually been paid over during the previous financial year for Drax, and we shall be able to recalculate the corresponding cost of finance. Thus, payments to the Board will be based on annual parliamentary approval and revision of the estimates based on calculations of costs that the Board incurred. The compensation payment will then be included in the estimate prepared for Parliament each autumn, showing what the next forecast annual payment will be.

I have answered the point about parliamentary control. I was seized of the question. I think that I have answered the main points in the hon. Gentleman's amendment. I thought that he argued his case very fairly. As one of his hon. Friend's put it, we need Drax B and we shall have Drax B because there are so many people involved. That aspect was argued to some extent, but, of course, we have to will the means, and that is the nub of the argument that we are having on the amendment.

I am conscious of the point about construction that was raised by other hon. Members, who asked whether the House could have an assurance about it. We must try to assure the House that the CEGB intends to make every effort to keep to the programme of construction of Drax B.

The hon. Member for New Forest mentioned Dungeness. We have all made good speeches on that question from time to time. I have made some myself in the past. To this end, design contracts have been let with a view to freezing the design before commencement of construction. The mutual agreement between contractors on the site will be sought, and contracts will incorporate incentives for timely completion. I hope that I have ben able to assure the House that the construction aspect has not been ignored between the CEGB and the Government.

Concerning rationalisation, I have to repeat what I said in Committee. I tell my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer) that this is a matter for the Department of Industry and not for the Department of Energy, although I am quite sure that his points will be noted.

The hon. Member for New Forest also mentioned the question of the £50 million compensation. The EEC is no dripping roast for Great Britain. He talked about money being available. It may be available some day. I do not want to say that there will not be money available. But we have to remember that the plant manufacturing industry is involved here, and we cannot stand still and wait for some day in the bye and bye when we shall be able to get money, and proceed to save our plant manufacturing industry. The industry needs work in order to provide employment. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman's comments were not meant in a destructive way, but I am afraid that the money is just not available at the moment to solve the problem in the way that he suggested.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Roberts) made a very powerful point—one that is continually being made—in relation to refurbishing power stations. There are continual arguments about refurbishing. It is suggested that if we have a site already in existence we do not have to go through the long process of site acquisition, planning, and so on, and that when we have a power station it is possible to step in and carry out a refurbishing programme. I cannot say on behalf of the Government that we are pursuing a refurbishing programme or that the Government have decided to pursue one. My hon. Friend's point has been made very substantially by the plant manufacturing industry, and I am sure that his point will be noted.

I think that I have answered the major points made during the debate. I hope that the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty will agree that I have answered the main point of the amendment, concerning parliamentary accountability. The House can rest assured that there is adequate parliamentary accountability. I hope, therefore, that he will ask leave to withdraw his amendment.

I am grateful to the Minister for the way he replied to the debate. He went into considerable detail in explaining how the Government propose to scrutinise the whole exercise. I sincerely hope—I make no apology for mentioning it again—that the estimate of £50 million will not be exceeded. I know that it cannot be exceeded under this legislation, but I sincerely hope that the Government will not at some future time come back and ask for more money. I hope that the estimate which was made by Sir Arthur Hawkins of £140 million to £160 million is way out, but we are not discussing that point at the moment.

We are grateful to the Minister for what he said about the estimate of £50 million. We would still have liked him to concede something to us in regard to our amendment, but obviously it is not a matter on which we wish to press the House to a Division. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 2, in page 4, line 31, at end insert—

'Provided that no payment shall be made by the Secretary of State under this section unless he is satisfied that the Central Electricity Generating Board intends to make adequate provision for the utilisation of reject heat from the generating station either as industrial process steam or for district heating.'.

The amendment proposes that the £50 million subsidy should be granted to the CEGB only if it makes provision for the use of reject heat from the power station for heating homes or for use in industry.

The Government should welcome the amendment. First, it would help energy conservation. Secondly, it would make good financial sense. Thirdly, it would provide a longer-term future for the coal industry. Fourthly, it would be in the best interests of the consumer by providing cheaper heating. I believe that that is the most important consideration for the Government.

I declare an interest as a non-executive director of a company which has produced feasibility studies on various aspects of energy conservation. Having declared that interest, I point out that my main concern here has always been in promoting the wider interests of energy conservation. It is for that reason that I am pressing the amendment.

I notice that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Thomas) is chuckling. I point out to him that at no time have I benefited financially from the interest that I have just declared, nor would I do so if my amendment were carried.

With regard to the contribution to energy conservation which could be made by using the reject heat from Drax B, if we look at the national figures we find that the amount of our total energy consumed in the production of electricity is approximately a third. In other words, one-third of our energy goes into producing electricity. Two-thirds of that energy is rejected in hot water and not used. In other words, twice as much comes out of the power station in heat and is rejected in terms of fuel as is actually converted into useful electricity. We are throwing away every year about £2 billion worth of fuel. That is the equivalent of the whole of the North Sea gas contribution to our energy, or about half our total coal production.

This might be an acceptable situation if the rest of the world were not doing something to stop this waste. Indeed, it has done so for a very long time. We know that elsewhere this energy is being conserved. Why is it not being done here? It is certainly not because it is uneconomic to do so. Studies made in this country have shown that combined heat and power stations are cost-effective. Such stations are being set up in other parts of the world on the basis of cost-effectiveness. They will become increasingly economical as the fuel price rises.

The Government's study on combined heat and power—Energy Paper No. 20—headed by Dr. Walter Marshall claims that there are no insuperable difficulties in the way of the inclusion of combined heat and power district heating in a national energy policy.

The Government-sponsored Building Research Establishment paper of June 1976 refers to

"an economic assessment of long distance heat transport and the utilisation of power station heat for district heating."

For large schemes, the break-even distance is reckoned to be 13 kilometres. Within that the consumer would get cheaper heat and there would be substantial savings in national energy consumption.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As we have considered this amendment almost word for word in Committee, and we have heard the speech almost word for word in the Chamber, is this in order?

What happened in Committee is of no importance at the moment.

If this is cost-effective, in the national interest, and has been done elsewhere, surely we should be asking ourselves why it is not happening here. The answers come from different authorities. I could not do better than quote the Plowden Report on the reorganisation of the electricity industry. Paragraph 4.22 of the Plowden Report on the structure of the electricity supply industy pointed out that the expansion of combined heat and power is impossible without the active collaboration of the electricity supply industry. The report added:

"A good deal of evidence has been presented to us suggesting that the electricity industry could do more to secure the economic use of fuel".

Paragraph 4.23, on "the industry's statutory duties" stated:

"It has been suggested that the reference to 'the economical and efficient supply of electricity' in the Boards' statutory obligations might be held to prevent them from collaborating in schemes where an improvement in the overall use of energy required them to purchase electricity from a combined heat-and-power scheme at a price higher than the CEGB's marginal cost of generation. In future no room should be left for doubt about the industry's powers. Similarly, the most economic way of developing heat-and-power schemes may well involve providing only heat at the outset and adding electricity generation at a later date. At the moment, the industry is allowed by its statutes to sell waste heat from existing power stations but not to sell heat alone. In both cases, the statutes are an obstacle to the most economical use of all national resources. They should therefore be changed."

We are not, of course, debating a change in the statutes, but we are debating a public subsidy for Drax B, which could be an ideal example of implementing the recommendations of Plowden. A further restraint which has held up the development of co-generation is the criteria of the arbitrary discount rate of 10 per cent. in deciding whether or not the scheme is viable. Surely this is an unrealistic and inappropriate way of using such an arbitrary discount rate. Even the Government in their recent consultative paper have now admitted that a 10 per cent. rate may be unreasonable for such long term contracts. It is arbitrary and unrealistic because it is not weighted to take into account the declining availability of fossil fuels, the benefits to the balance of payments of the fuel savings that will arise from using combined heat and power, the likely rise in the price of fuels or the long lead times needed to develop a heat distribution network.

Section 5.13 of the Government's recently published consultative document on energy policy admits that substantial savings are obtainable from combined heat and power. It also admits that it is being adopted on a substantial scale in foreign countries. It further admits that if we are to achieve a substantial contribution by the year 2000, we need a fairly early start on a full scale demonstration scheme in a large city.

One is surely entitled to ask why, instead of making a start and using Drax B, we are proposing to subsidise with public funds the early construction of a power station for electricity capacity that we do not really need and use public funds to throw away 2½ million tonnes of coal a year in reject heat. According to the Minister's own answers to me, that could provide heating for 50,000 homes in the surrounding area.

The thermal efficiency of Drax B, as it is apparently to be constructed, would be about 35 per cent., whereas it could be 80 per cent. if the residual heat were not dissipated. I regard that as a folly. It is perpetuating a wasteful system, which is being increasingly rejected by the rest of the world. It is because we are perpetuating this folly that we are bottom of the league in terms of thermal efficiency in electricity production as well as bottom of the league in terms of the amount of combined heat and power that we produce from our power stations.

However, the pressure for change is building up. I hope that we are contributing to it this afternoon. It is certainly building up elsewhere. We know that within the Carter energy programme there are strong incentives for more combined heat and power production. We know that pressure is coming from within the EEC, not so much by directives but by action that is already taking place. Individual EEC countries, almost without exception, have introduced, or are introducing, measures to promote district heating schemes and co-operation between public utilities and industries for cogeneration for district heating and industry. Apart from Scandinavia, where this has been going on for many years. countries where particular progress is taking place are Germany, France, Belgium and Italy. Even in those European countries which are building nuclear power stations, sites are being specifically provided where that heat can be used for district heating or industry.

The British electricity plant industry, which has an important need for orders, has nothing to fear from combined heat and power. On the contrary, I believe that it will lose out if it does not catch up with the trend of the rest of the world. Increasingly that is where the market will be. We already have evidence that orders have had to be turned away from British manufacturers because they were not able to produce the combined heat plant that foreign customers wanted. Therefore, it would help the plant industry. If we do not move in this direction the danger is that we shall perpetuate an outdated technology for which there will be fewer orders in future at home and abroad.

I maintain that this would also help the coal industry. It is my belief that in the long term electricity cannot remain competitive for space heating if two-thirds of the coal used in that space heating production is rejected in electricity power plants. The only way to preserve the long-term viability of the coal industry and maintain its competitive position is by doing what the rest of the world is doing and moving over towards a more efficient coal burn through combined heat and power stations. The long-term interests of the coal industry—the future of that industry—can be secured only if it burns coal less wastefully than at present.

There are plenty of experts from industry who advise me that there is little doubt that if Drax B were being built anywhere else in Europe it would be a combined heat and power station. There has been so much progress in the past few years in the rest of the world. I quote from an international consultant, a world expert, a founder and former president of the District Heating Association—someone who is an adviser to the Department of Energy, among other things—Mr. Ernest Haseler:

"Of course Drax B should produce heat as well as power. As a combined heat and power station it will have a thermal efficiency of over 80 per cent. whereas, as an electricity-only station, two-thirds of the energy produced from the coal will be wasted. We want Drax B to be a shining example of Britain's skills in thermodynamic engineering and energy conservation, not an anachronism. The industry has already been overtaken by world progress, so, to survive, it will have to modernise. It will have to do so eventually so why not start now by using Drax B as Britain's first modern CHP station? Some of the £50 million could cover the industry's development costs."

That is the view of one international expert. There are plenty of feasibility studies to show that although Drax B would not be an ideal site it would, nevertheless, be far more suitable than many others where combined heat and power has been developed.

Within a 25-mile radius of the station there is a substantial heat load. Even within five to 15 miles there is more than enough heat load. Selby and Goole are five miles away, York, Castleford and Pontefract are within about 15 miles. There is plenty of potential heat demand. As we know, heat is transported far greater distances in other countries for use in heating homes—and transported in much less favourable circumstances.

There need be no major technological problems nor can the CEGB say that there would necessarily be a loss of electricity if it marketed the heat. In the modern system available this need not be so. Nor do we have to accept the excuse that it cannot be done because it would not be economical. This could easily be disproved because there would be capital savings in all sorts of other directions. If less electricity is used for space heating we would not need to build so many power stations. The infrastructure of the heat grid could become highly competitive as fuel prices rise.

The studies that have been done in the United Kingdom show that it is in many ways better suited for using reject heat than other countries that have already developed the system. We have higher population density than anywhere else in Europe, apart from the Netherlands, with 80 per cent. of our population living in large urban centres suitable for using such heat. I maintain that if public money is to be spent on subsidising Drax B it should at least be spent in the best public interest. I suggest that that is achieved by spending the money in a way which can make a major contribution towards energy conservation, in a way which will help the plant industry in the long term and build future markets, in a way which will help the coal industry maintain its competitive share of the market by more efficient coal burn and in a way which will be of most benefit to the consumer.

Surely in this way we can end the shameful situation whereby hundreds of thousands of our citizens have barely been able to survive the winter—particularly the lower income groups, pensioners and the housebound—because they could not afford to heat their homes, while we have been throwing away enough heat from our power stations to heat all of our homes.

5.45 p.m.

I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that he accepts in principle the case that I am making and will say that he will set up, if he has not done so already, an independent feasibility study to look into the possibility of using heat from Drax B rather than throwing it away. I hope that the Minister accepts the arguments which I have presented in a constructive way and will use this as an opportunity to do better than we have done in the past and ensure that we use our energy more rationally, for the benefit of industry and the consumer.

The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) made broadly the same speech, of 40 minutes in length, in Committee. I am sure that he would not disagree. I make no complaint about that but I say that he is not now putting forward anything particularly new within the memory of those who were present in the Committee. The whole subject of district heating in relation to the generation of electricity power is not new, either; some of the first electricity generation stations in this country were operated on this principle. The principle of district heating is now much more relevant in practice than it was, because of changing fuel costs.

I suggest that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East is putting forward a perfectly sound idea in the wrong way in the wrong place. The proposed Drax B power station is a coal-fired station, designed to provide electricity as cheaply as possible, allowing for present costs. As the hon. Gentleman admitted, this is in furtherance of the statutory obligation placed upon the CEGB, which has as its primary task the production of electricity as cheaply as possible. If the Board had a different statutory obligation the situation would of course be different. Its primary job, given to it by Parliament, is to make electricity as cheaply as costs allow. Undoubtedly, to extract low grade waste heat—and it is low grade—from this particular station, designed in the way in which it will be, is bound to be expensive and lead inevitably to an increase in the cost of the electricity generated.

I very much doubt whether there is a ready-made market for the heat. It cannot just be taken out into the wilds, away from Drax and then the CEGB say "Here is heat". It has to be marketed to potential customers who are probably already in possession of their own facilities for heating. It is a difficult matter commercially. I do not say that it cannot be done, but we cannot suppose that it could be done without a great deal of marketing preparation. If I doubt the feasibility of what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that does not mean that I am against the purpose-built joint heat-electricity station. Indeed, I had the honour, two or three years ago, of speaking to the District Heating Association at its annual conference on this. But it is not relevant, as it happens, to Drax B.

I said in Committee that schemes of that sort are best developed by the area electricity boards. That is because the local people are in touch with potential customers. They know the competitive commercial conditions. Surely that is the best way in which to proceed. It so happens that under the existing statute—it is a great pity that we have not been able to improve it in this Parliament—the area boards have the right, with the permission of the Minister, to build their own generation facilities. If opposed by the CEGB, the Minister may make the decision. Even with legislation as it now stands, there is nothing to prevent an area board developing a district heating scheme. As I have already said, the Midlands Electricity Board has such a scheme in mind but the CEGB is in a different position.

The House should take careful note of what the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East said. We sympathise with his broad crusading generalisations, but they have little to do with Drax B I am afraid.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) has done the House a great service by moving the amendment and making contributions on the subject over the years. It is significant that he should be able to call in aid, for example, the Electrical Review of 10th February 1978, which has an interesting article on district heating. The article begins:

"It might seem paradoxical that the nearer Britain comes to tackling combined heat and power seriously, the ideas of how to go about it become more and more diverse, not to say discordant."

The article concludes:

"As Sir William Hawthorne, chairman of the advisory council on energy conservation told the conference at Imperial College on local energy centres last year, eventually combined heat and power will make good economic sense as well as energy sense. But British plant manufacturers in an industry largely dependent on big orders for Drax B or the new AGRs are not yet alert to the demand for smaller sets that a combined heat and power programme will require. Their competitors overseas are alive to this potential market however."

It is sensible of my hon. Friend persistently to draw the attention of the Government to the fact that that is the situation.

As for the Central Electricity Generating Board and what was said by the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer), in page 29, paragraph 463, of the CEGB's 1977 corporate plan A discussion document it is stated that

"The Board's policy is to plan to retain the option to be able to adopt district heating and combined heat and power on a large scale in the longer term."

To be fair, I should add that the paragraph goes on to state that

"In order to be economically viable district heating networks would need to be introduced on a large scale".

Therefore, there is some merit in the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East in criticising my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East.

My hon. Friend deployed his argument skilfully. I disagree with the argument of the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East that my hon. Friend's argument has little to do with Drax B. My hon. Friend showed us exactly how it could be related to Drax B. I reread our debates in Committee and I was surprised that the assiduous hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Thomas) slipped up. The hon. Gentleman will recall that in Committee my hon. Friend spoke not to an amendment but on Clause 5 stand part. He was right on that occasion to rehearse the arguments that he has put forward today.

It was significant that my hon. Friend observed that we are wasting £2 billion worth of fuel and that each year we waste 2½ million tons of coal with heat loss. That is a great waste and a great pity when energy is of such enormous importance and cost. The Government should be much more vigorous in their research on the subject. The Minister may say that the cost is such that combined heat and power schemes are not viable at present. That may be so and he may have figures to substantiate that argument, but that is no excuse for research and development not being intensified. We cannot be complacent when we are losing such a large amount of potential energy every year.

In Committee my hon. Friend made the reasonable observation that where Drax B is located there are within a radius of 20 miles cites and towns such as Leeds, York, Hull, Castleford and Pontefract. Surely there is potential there for the development of a scheme such as that which he has suggested. When I reread our proceedings in Committee I paid special attention to the answers, if such they can be called, that the Minister gave my hon. Friend. They were far from convincing. They did not begin to deal with the problem that my hon. Friend raised.

The Opposition are sympathetic to the amendment. We are critical of the Government for not pursuing a more vigorous attitude towards research and development. We shall await with interest the Minister's reply.

In the unlikely event of a Conservative Government being elected as a result of the next election, would a Conservative Minister occupying the position of the Secretary of State for Energy use his powers to instruct the CEGB to turn Drax B into a district heating station?

This a matter that should not be jumped upon. A Conservative Government would ensure that realistic sums were made available for research and development so that the CEGB could incorporate such a system in a station similar to Drax B.

I have been accused in the debate, as in Committee, of giving far from convincing answers. I hope at this stage even to satisfy the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost), although I have been told that it is a difficult job to do so.

The hon. Gentleman is well known for his consistent advocacy of combined heat and power schemes. I think that he must know that the Government are by no means inactive in that sphere. The combined heat and power group that was set up by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State some years ago has already published a report on district heating, which is listed as Energy Paper No. 20. In the next few months it is expected to produce a final report. Meanwhile, my right hon. Friend and I are always ready to consider combined heat and power schemes that are put forward.

The House will know that my right hon. Friend recently approved the scheme submitted by the Midlands Electricity Board for the supply of heat to industrial consumers in conjunction with the supply of electricity to the grid. The hon. Gentleman spoke at length in Committee—that is putting it mildly—and made a number of rather sweeping statements about how far Britain is behind various Continental countries, particularly in the application of combined heat and power and in Government assistance for that purpose. The hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm may in some instances have led him to make slightly exaggerated claims. Nevertheless, I do not dispute that certain Continental countries, particularly Germany, Denmark and Sweden—I have seen some of them—are active in the encouragement of combined heat and power.

The Minister has accused me of making sweeping statements. I was quoting his own figures to me on the percentage of combined heat and power produced by different countries to show that, without any question whatsoever, we are bottom of the league. If the Minister wants me to quote the figures, I can do so. However, I do not want to waste any more of the time of the House. I simply point out that we are bottom of the league. For example, in Denmark 36 per cent. of electricity is produced from combined heat and power, whereas in this country the figure is only 6 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman always chooses figures which suit him. I heard him chastised in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer). It is not a question of my saying that some of the figures that he gives are of dubious origin. But let us try to be friendly about this matter. I said that I thought that I could satisfy the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, give him a great triumph. Apparently, he does not want any great triumph; he wants to continue to interrupt.

I must object to the insinuation, first, that my figures were sweeping and, now, that they are dubious. I was quoting the Minister's replies to my questions. If he wants the full reference, I can give it. These are not selective figures. Presumably they are neither dubious nor sweeping figures. They just show that we are bottom of the league.

The hon. Gentleman made that point before. I merely emphasise that he picks figures to suit himself. However, I shall leave it at that. I also quoted what other Members said about the hon. Gentleman in Committee. Indeed, I even quoted some poetry on the last occasion. I am trying to be helpful.

As we are correcting insinuations, will my hon. Friend confirm that British manufacturers can manufacture these schemes, that they are not losing orders because of their failure to do so and that in general terms they can apply these ideas to small as well as to large sets?

We are now coming to the dubious assumptions in the figures given by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East. However, the hon. Gentleman does not accept this argument, so I shall leave it at that. We may come back to it on another occasion. The hon. Gentleman and I have made many speeches across the Floor of the House, and at times we have given no quarter. However, as I said, we shall no doubt return to this matter.

There is no question but that the amendment is unacceptable. I do not imagine that Opposition Members will go into the Division Lobby in support of it.

Turning to some of the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East, I think that I have to demonstrate to the House in particular, and certainly to the hon. Gentleman, that some discussion has gone on about power stations and combined heat and power. The Department of Energy has had the opportunity to discuss with the CEGB the extent to which heat from Drax B could be made available for industrial or domestic use if practical proposals were made. The design of the station is such that, although it is by no means a complete combined heat and power station—heat would be the main product and electricity a by-product—it would be possible, if practical proposals were made, for the reject heat to be made available for either domestic or industrial uses.

Allowance will be made in the design of the steam pipework for suitable terminal points for the heat supply. If a suitable heat load became available after the plant were constructed, and provided that all safety aspects were clear, it would be possible to complete the scheme by the installation of additional steam pipework and control. That was the triumph that I was trying to give to the hon. Gentleman, but he was not prepared to listen.

Clearly, the economics of any proposal would need to be studied closely. I should emphasise that the modification would not mean any delay in the beginning of work on the station. At present, neither I nor the CEGB are aware of any proposals for a suitable heat load. Nevertheless, the Board would welcome such proposals. I believe that the House will agree that, in the light of what I have said, the Government and the Board are doing everything possible to ensure that use can be made of reject heat from Drax B.

I do not think that it is necessary for the amendment to be written into the Bill. Therefore, I ask the House to support the Bill as it stands. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will seek leave to withdraw his amendment.

I think that the House will agree that on this occasion the Minister listened to the proceedings in Committee, because he went back to the CEGB and asked "For goodness sake, what shall I say when the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East comes at me again on Report?" Indeed, he has come back with something which I suggest is a move forward, in the sense that it could be the beginning of a real contribution towards energy conservation. I am sure that we all welcome that. I should naturally expect to hold the Minister to this vigilant approach and to ensure that we move forward, not just make provision for and talk about it. We must find an application for this reject heat.

I think that the Minister accepts that my approach has not been critical of him so much. I was hoping that he would assume that we were on the same side on this matter. My criticism has been directed more at the intransigence of the public electricity supply industry, which has continuously attempted to resist any application for reject heat. Therefore, this is as much a victory for the Government as for Back Benchers such as myself who have been raising this matter for a considerable time.

I hoped that the triumph would be mine, because I did the work on the Bill.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

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

I shall make no further comments at this stage. I understand that the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) wants to make some remarks.

I think the brief introduction by the Minister marks the Third Reading, rather appropriately, of a small and sad remnant of what should have been a major Bill for the reorganisation of the electricity industry. I well understood the sad reference to it by the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer) and his recognotion of what might have been. We referred to this matter on Second Reading. I do not propose to pursue the point now.

In Committee, my hon. Friends diligently pursued the Minister on the issues that we said we would raise: certain aspects of nuclear safeguards, which we broadly welcome, and the compensation proposals about which we were keen to get further details.

One issue which cannot be overlooked when giving a Third Reading to what has become a minor Bill is that it leaves one major aspect unresolved. Many feel that it has made the resolution of it more difficult. I am talking of the rationalisation of the power plant industry.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Thomas) suggested that that was now a totally unobtainable objective and so everybody had better forget about it. But it is not as easy as that. During Second Reading the hon. Member intervened during my speech and said that it was a pity that the CPRS Report was published. I agree with him. But it is published. It is lying on the tables of the main potential export customers of the British power plant industry. It contains the recommendation that there is no real future for the industry unless it is rationalised.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) said that one of our overseas competitors is making great use of that report in its attempts to secure business in competition with British companies overseas. The Government understand the significance of rationalisation. On Second Reading the Secretary of State said:

"Although rationalisation remains the Government's long-term aim, and in our view would help the industy to remain internationally competitive, the problem as it finally emerged for a decision by the Government was that we had to act in advance of the rationalisation that we sought."—[Official Report, 24th April 1978; Col. 948, c. 1021–2.]

The Secretary of State said that it remained the long-term aim, but it has not yet been achieved. The House should appreciate that the problem is more one for the turbine generator industry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Sir W. Elliott) and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East will know because of their close interest in C. A. Parsons.

It appears that there is more prospect for rationalisation in the boiler industry. The turbine generator position is acutely worrying. I have recently visited GEC and talked to the workers and management there. They have a point of view. It is important that the House should understand what that view is, because it has not been fully explained. It does not concern a battle between Sir Arnold Weinstock and many hard-pressed workers in Newcastle. The futures of workers in all the companies—in Newcastle, Rugby, Stafford and Trafford Park and at Larne in Northern Ireland—are tied up in the future of the industry.

GEC has made a particular effort not only to obtain domestic orders but to obtain export orders. Over the last 10 years that company has obtained about 90 per cent. of such export orders, which amount to £370 million. The international market is intensely competitive. Anyone with any experience of these large construction contracts, which often involve Government intervention, all types of special arrangements and extremely tough terms, often without a good hedge against inflation, will know that it is an extremly competitive business.

The workers at GEC feel that they have got business for this country, have taken on some competitive and sometimes risky orders and, by so doing, have in some way jeopardised the opportunities for a fair share of the home market. This is understandable. Any Government could be faced with that problem. All Governments are faced with the unemployment problem. It is understandable that they will look at each firm's order books, see which is better loaded and be influenced to give domestic orders which are in their control to areas where the threat of unemployment is greatest.

I do not say this in a pejorative sense. The whole House has an interest in the success of the generator industry. One can admire the success that GEC has had in the international export markets. That success is based on a successful home market. GEC claims that the export markets cannot of themselves justify the present work load in its factories. GEC is concerned because its future success in the export markets could prove a penalty to obtaining domestic orders.

It is generally felt in the industry that domestic orders are more profitable than some of the more risky projects overseas. If that situation continued GEC could find that it could no longer sustain its activity in this area. Obviously, the nation would be the loser.

I know that the view at Parsons is different. But there is a problem. The CPRS Report states that the British domestic load, or the ordering prospects, and the possible export contributions cannot sustain two manufacturing companies on a scale at which they would be able to compete in world markets. That is the view in the report which has been circulated to all our major customers overseas.

The hon. Member has made his case articulately. I do not dispute that his account is accurate. But is he going to give the views of the workers at Parsons?

I know that the hon. Member has fought hard for the people who work at Parsons. I understand the issues. I understand the problem of unemployment in Newcastle and the North-East. That is of concern to the Government, whichever party is in power. These are difficulties that we must all face.

We are about to give a Third Reading to a Bill which will approve the funds for advancing the order for Drax, for which the turbines are to be allocated, unilaterally, to Parsons. Parsons gains on this occasion. That company will receive the order for the turbines. But that raises the question of what is to happen to the still unresolved question which is being pre-empted, as the Secretary of State said, by this decision. In some ways the problem might have been made more difficult to resolve. What is now to happen about the ordering of the turbines for the two AGRs? How will those orders be allocated? Will they be split? Will they go to one company or to another?

GEC has obtained the order for the China Power and Light Company in Hong Kong. That is a competitive order. The company has taken on that order to maintain its work load in the factories. But will that order count against the company when consideration is given to the allocation of AGR turbines? These problems go to the heart of an industrial strategy.

Special pleading.

Whatever the hon. Member says, this is GEC's argument. We have had much discussion about the problems in the North-East. But all the problems must be put on the table. The hon. Member for Luton, West (Mr. Sedgemore) will have read the CPRS Report. He will know that its recommendations have not been implemented and that the Bill ignores one of those recommendations. One of those recommendations was that the precondition of the order for Drax should be the rationalisation of the industry. The House is about to approve a Bill which ignores that recommendation.

That is wrong.

The Government do not think that it is wrong. The Secretary of State has made it clear that rationalisation remains the Government's long-term aim and that it would help the industry to remain internationally competitive.

I am not sure that people fully understood what was meant by that. I am taking the opportunity to amplify one aspect of it. The hon. Member for Luton, West said earlier that I was indulging in special pleading. I am stating one case. It is a case which has not been made clearly. It has lost out by default under the Bill. I shall be visiting Parsons very shortly and I shall be discussing the other aspects of the case with the people there.

However, our concern in this House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) said, is how we retain the skills in the industry and how we maintain an internationally competitive turbine generator industry in this country with the maximum employment in all those areas where employment is at present offered for these skills. That is the challenge we face.

We must recognise that that challenge has not been met by the Bill. The problem remains, and it would be quite wrong to let the Bill pass without recognising that fact. I understand why hon. Members who have partisan views based on the constituencies they represent feel obliged to fight every inch of the way for their constituents and for the factories in their constituencies, but we in this House have a national responsibility. The problem has not been resolved, and it would be wrong to give the Bill a Third Reading before we recognise that fact and before we recognise the problems that it can pose for us for the future.

I should not allow the Third Reading to pass without paying tribute to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench for the way in which the Bill has been conducted and for the outcome of our discussions. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will already know the views of the coal mining industry. He is closely associated with it. He also should know of the gratitude of many people in my part of the world and of workers in the GEC factory at Larne in Northern Ireland who will also benefit from the work. I am sure that they are grateful also for the speedy way—Conservative Members are also due for some credit on this score—in which the Bill has passed through the House.

I cannot allow the Third Reading to pass without making one or two comments which have been provoked by the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). He is right to say that I feel strongly about these matters, but I am not purblind and partisan about these matters, neither am I unreasonable about them. I hope that he will accept that.

We have seen a late conversion to the principle of the Bill, and I still doubt whether, if the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) had been occupying the Opposition Front Bench, we should have heard the same sort of speeches and the same views from that Bench even now. I shall not go into that, however. I am glad at what I hear the hon. Member for Bridgwater and his hon. Friends say now.

The hon. Member was right to refer to the CPRS report. He and I share a great many views about that, not least about its publication. I am not entirely sure that the commissioning of the report was helpful in the circumstances. It was, after all, in part the use of one of the traditional British democratic ways of delaying a decision—that is, to have a commission to look into the matter. We were pressing very hard to get the power station ordered long before the CPRS team was asked to look at the subject.

The fact that the CPRS made a conclusion of one sort or another does not mean that that conclusion was necessarily right. In my view, it was wholly foolish for the CPRS to conclude that that power station order should be tied to the reorganisation of the industry. That was never a viable strategy for achieving an objective that may or may not have been desirable. It was nonsense ever to believe that it was. That demonstrates the political naivety of some of the people who were associated with the CPRS Report.

I hope that the hon. Member for Bridgwater will enjoy his visit to Parsons. The company is in my constituency, although many of the workers there live in the constituency of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Sir W. Elliott) and others of my hon. Friends.

I hope that the hon. Member for Bridgwater will forgive my saying that if he continues to make speeches such as the one he made in the House today he will be widely thought of in my part of the world as a spokesman for GEC. I know that that is not his intention, but he must be clear that that is the impression that his speeches create. I know that that is not his intention, as I said when I intervened, but if he is unaware of the impression he creates I am telling him of it now as someone who represents the feelings of the people in my part of the world.

I am glad the hon. Member recognises that I am in no sense a spokesman for one interest or another. I have not made speeches of that kind. Today was the only time that I have spoken in that way. I did so because, as the hon. Member knows, this is an issue on which the benefits will be going to Parsons on this occasion. There is a GEC point of view here. It is a view that is strongly held by the workers at GEC. I am not sure that people have fully understood the background to their concern about the industrial implications of this decision. I thought it right to put that before the House.

I thought I had made it quite clear that I was putting forward the views that were expressed to me by GEC. I look forward to visiting Parsons to hear its views on the matter. I am not in any sense an advocate of one side against another, and I am glad the hon. Gentleman recognises that.

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman has said, and I accept it. I always have. However, he must be careful over the impression that he gives. I say to him humbly that we must also do a little more study. On the restructuring front, about which we are all concerned, it was unrealistic to suggest that there was the possibility of a solution. Let us consider the history of the matter. The 40-40-20 percentage arrangement was not acceptable to one party to the talks. Even 50-25-25 was unacceptable to the same party. If we are talking here about imposing upon what were 5,500 but are now 5,000 people in my constituency a solution of this kind which is wholly against their wishes and which they do not construe to be in any way in their best interests, we are not thinking in terms of practical politics. In this day and age, matters cannot be handled in that way. I know that Conservative Members representing my part of the world know that that is true.

The hon. Member for Bridgwater must do his homework about the market. He speaks of this order as though it represents some mammoth distortion of the home ordering pattern in favour of Parsons. In fact, it is a small redress after a long period in which the home ordering pattern has been consistently biased against Parsons. Even if Parsons were to get the next two or three power station orders from the CEGB and the SSEB, that would only just achieve equalisation between one part of the industry and the other. Let us have no mythology about this being an unfair division of the work available. Until this order came along, there was an extremely unfair division in favour of GEC.

For the future we must consider a number of factors. The first is the level of work at home and abroad. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will tell us today that we shall get the two gigawatts of construction a year from the home market, of which the AGRs and Drax B are just the start. Secondly, there is the question of the export market. That depends almost entirely on the extent to which world trade picks up. I do not think that the electricity market can be treated separately. I hope that world trade will pick up generally, that this will filter back specifically to electricity supply and that we shall see a substantial increase in the export market.

Again, however, the hon. Member for Bridgwater must do his homework more carefully. One can pick one's cut-off points where one likes, but in any decent, recent period Parsons' export record is not bad. It is nothing like as bad as getting only 10 per cent. of the orders. We must pick our dates more carefully and consider who is providing us with the dates and the cut-off points.

We have to consider the sort of contracts that are and will be available in the future. The creation of one turbine generator company is not necessarily the most important thing. That CPRS conclusion was not necessarily the right one. It may well be that the creation of turnkey capacity, involving boiler-making, switchgear and other technical aspects and possibly civil and mechanical engineering of a more general kind, will be the way in which the market will go in the future. It may be that it is the company that can deliver that package that it is important for Britain to have rather than the company that happens to make turbine generators. Northern Engineering Industries, of which C. A. Parsons is a part, is far better placed to produce that type of package than GEC could possibly be.

In the future we cannot guarantee parity of treatment in the international market place. There will be some parts of the world in which Parsons is well placed and some parts of the world in which GEC is well placed. Incidentally, C. A. Parsons did not tender for the order in Hong Kong in part in order to give a fair wind to the GEC prospect, for the company seemed much more likely to get the business for Britain. I hope that we shall see that approach in reverse when the opportunity comes.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will take back to his colleagues the fact that no one in Parsons will want to see anything other than parity of treatment in ECGD and on the question of Department of Trade and Department of Industry support for future export orders. I am not suggesting that there is less than parity at the moment. I am sure that there is not. However, should there be any sign of it, a number of us will become agitated.

I wish the Bill well on its way. I hope that it will be out of this place as soon as possible and through the other place like a dose of salts.

I wish briefly to intervene and at once acquit my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) of any suggestion that he has been unfair to Parsons in what he said. There is no doubt that under the terms of the Bill Parsons will benefit.

Of course, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Thomas) and I have a partisan interest here, and from the knowledge that we have gained from studying the problem it is fair to say that there has never been any reluctance on the part of C. A. Parsons about the possibility of rationalisation. There have been arguments and union intervention. A newspaper report of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions' conference in Scarborough last summer said:

"Unions insist on NEB control in GEC-Parsons power merger".

The Secretary of State at that time said that the majority decision in the conference was bound to hold up any possibility of rationalisation.

In fairness to C. A. Parsons, it is right at this late stage of the passing of legislation which benefits C. A. Parsons and Tyneside to put on record that neither the management nor workers at Parsons have ever been against rationalisation, and they remain of this view. Rationalisation of the industry must in due course come in the face of international competition.

The hon. Member for Cannock (Mr. Roberts) asked earlier this afternoon whether cost-effectiveness with regard to Clause 5 of the Bill could be measured. I thought that the Minister's formula with regard to the £50 million, how it was to be spent and how there would be a parliamentary check upon it was reasonable. I hope that it can be adhered to, because it sounded perfectly all right to me.

Can cost-effectiveness with regard to the keeping in being of C. A. Parsons and GEC be effectively measured? I doubt it in terms of money. In the time that I have been a Member of the House, I have done my best in advocating the North-East of England as an area not so much wanting subsidy and not so much suggesting—as it had been accused of doing from time to time—that the rest of the country owed it a living. That is not true. We are a proud area. What we have suggested over the years, and what I continue to suggest, is that the North-East of England wishes to play its full part in the national economic well-being. I therefore believe that, without the provision in the Bill of £50 million to the CEGB, Parsons would have had great difficulty in remaining in existence, as would Babcock and Wilcox.

I suggest that Clause 5 will assist us greatly in solving our own problems in the North-East. Perhaps GEC has suffered through seeking export orders at the expense of home orders, but C. A. Parsons is, on the basis of the opportunity which has been given to it by the home order, seeking export orders and obtaining them. It will continue to do so. I therefore believe that the passage of the Bill will greatly assist the North-East of England to solve its own problems, as the Bill will keep in existence a centre of considerable skill without which our area would be much the poorer.

I want quickly to respond to the last point made by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Sir W. Elliott). We have to describe what the Bill has done. The Government's decision to ask the CEGB to proceed early with completion of Drax and the Board's response to that decision were made with a view to meeting the immediate needs of the power plant industry. As a result of the Drax decision and the decision on the thermal reactor anounced in January, the industry has in prospect a work load of 4·6 gigawatts for Great Britain, in addition to any export orders that it might gain.

GEC has recently won export orders for Hong Kong and South Korea after negotiations in which the Government did all they could to help. The Drax order will safeguard the substantial number of jobs at Parsons, at Babcock and Wilcox and their suppliers and in the construction industry.

The Drax decision is a mark of the Government's confidence in the future of coal. I am pleased that in Committee and in the House there has been a wide measure of support for this part of the Bill. When the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) introduced this aspect of the debate, he said that this was a small Bill. It is a small Bill, but I believe, as I said in Committee, that although it may well be a small Bill it is an important one. In the Bill we are talking about people, work and wages and how we can sustain and retain a plant industry. It is a small Bill but it is important.

I am grateful for what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Thomas) said, but I must say to him and to the hon. Member for Bridgwater that, when they start discussing rationalisation, the Bill and I have no locus in this matter. I am the Minister responsible for piloting the Bill through. It is urgently needed by people in the industry.

If hon. Members want to debate rationalisation, that is a matter for the Secretary of State for industry. My Department has no locus in this aspect. I cannot assist the House, because the Bill does not deal with rationalisation.

I am rather shocked by what the Minister has said, because his right lion. Friend the Secretary of State specifically referred to this question on Second Reading. I was about to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he could give us any further news of developments. He now says that he cannot answer such a question. Given what the Secretary of State said, it is extraordinary that one of his colleagues is unable even to comment on the matter.

It is astonishing that an Opposition Front Bench spokesman should not know that the Department of Industry is concerned with the rationalisation of the industry. There may have been comments on Second Reading, but we are not debating that now and the Bill does not deal with rationalisation.

The House is about to pass the Bill to another place, and it is fair for me to say that there is nothing in the Bill about rationalisation. The hon. Member for Bridgwater must accept what I am saying. He should not be so indignant or astonished. He quoted a Second Reading speech, but we are not debating the Second Reading.

I commend the Bill in the confidence that hon. Members will support its purposes, which are to bring the United Kingdom's civil nuclear facilities under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, thus fulfilling an undertaking that we have already given. It will provide for the CEGB to be compensated for the expenses incurred in the early ordering of the Drax B power station, thus lending its support to both the coal and the power plant industries in the United Kingdom.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill will allow the Government to plug a small gap in the present coverage of employment law. At present, we have the power under Section 127 of the Employment Protection Act to extend by Order in Council certain enactments concerned with employment law to the territorial waters of the United Kingdom and to areas designated under the Continental Shelf Act 1964. We have a similar power under the Sex Discrimination and Race Relations Acts. But that power does not extend beyond the median lines that have been drawn in the North Sea between the United Kingdom sector of the Continental Shelf and the sectors of other countries.

The oil and gas fields in the North Sea were there, of course, before anyone had heard of median lines; and they do not follow them. So there are some oil and gas fields that straddle the median lines, and it is to those fields that the powers concerned in this Bill are directed. The fields that we know about so far that are affected are Frigg, Statfjord and Murchison, all of which straddle the median line between this country and Norway.

As hon. Members doubtless know, the Frigg gas field and the St. Fergus terminal in Scotland, which it serves, were recently opened by the King of Norway and Her Majesty the Queen. It will meet about one-quarter of this country's gas requirements by 1980, and it may be convenient if I deal with this Bill in relation to that field by way of illustration.

It is essential that the Frigg field should be developed as a single unit. The main complex of platforms in the field itself straddles the median line and there are catwalks between three of them. It was thus essential to reach agreement with the Norwegian Government about how the field should be developed, and this was done in the Frigg Gas Field Agreement, concluded in 1976. Under that agreement, contracts of employment between the field unit or pipeline operator and his employees will be governed by the law of the State of which the employer is a licensee, without prejudice to the freedom which exists in any case under international law of that employer and any of his employees to agree to the choice of another law. Other legislation for the protection of employees is, under the agreement, to be applied consistently with the operation of the field as a single unit.

The Norwegians already have power under their domestic law to apply Norwegian employment law anywhere in the Frigg field, even on our side of the median line. We have no corresponding power to apply our employment law on the Norwegian side of the line. We would, of course, extend it to our side of the line, but that would make no sense in the Frigg field where employees of United Kingdom companies may work on either side of the boundary between our sector and the Norwegian sector.

While the Norwegians have the power to apply their law on our side of the field, they have told us that they do not intend that it should apply to United Kingdom employers. We are seeking agreement with them about how employment legislation should work as a whole in the field. This bill is needed so that we can put into operation by Order in Council the arrangements we finally agree with the Norwegians.

What we hope to agree with the Norwegians is that United Kingdom employment law should apply to United Kingdom-based firms working in the field and Norwegian employment law should apply to Norwegian-based firms. We think that that would be the most sensible result, since it will mean that firms are operating the law with which they are most familiar. We consulted organisations representing United Kingdom employers and unions working in the field some time ago and they agreed that this would be the most sensible outcome. If the Bill becomes law, and subject to our reaching a satisfactory agreement with the Norwegians, we shall then advise Her Majesty to make the necessary Order in Council. We shall, of course, consult the employers' and unions' organisations again at this stage.

This is not a Bill that will affect many people. As I understand it, there is only one United Kingdom firm working in the Frigg field at present and only a very few United Kingdom employees—not more than 40 or 50—are ever likely to be involved in Frigg. But the same principles will apply in future in Murchison and Statfjord and any future cross-boundary field. The administrative and financial costs will be negligible.

I should add that our agreement with the Norwegians also covers health and safety standards, and the question of what those standards should be in the Frigg field is currently under active consideration. However, that question is not relevant to the purposes of the Bill, since the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 already contains powers which would enable us to extend the application of that Act to the Frigg field if necessary.

The Opposition are not opposed to the provisions of the Bill and we think it reasonable that proper legislative action should be taken to cover those who are working across the boundaries in oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.

We are grateful to the Minister for his explanation of the particular circumstances of the Frigg field and the discussions that have taken place with the Norwegians, the organisations concerned with the industries and the workers involved. It seems fairly clear from what the Minister has said and from what we know from advice we have taken elsewhere that there is a broad measure of agreement among all concerned that this enabling legislation should go forward.

I am sure that it is right to seek agreement, where the boundaries where different nationalities working on the same project come together, to find a way of dealing with questions concerning employment law which will be seen as fair and reasonable by people working in the area concerned. If they saw unfairness in those provisions, it could lead to difficulties which would be exacerbated when one recognises the high skills and bounding courage of the people involved in working far out in the North Sea on these projects. One should pay tribute to those high skills.

One should also pay tribute, in passing, to private enterprise and the much maligned multinationals which have made such a great contribution to the exploration and exploitation of the North Sea. Without their contribution, heaven knows what our balance of payments deficit would be at present. It would be quite colossal. One must recognise the very great contribution that private enterprise and the multinationals have made in these areas and, indeed, the contribution, now growing, of the British National Oil Corporation, which is becoming greatly involved.

As I have said, the Bill is an enabling Bill. It extends the Employment Protection Act. One can understand that. It also extends the Sex Discrimination Act, or makes provisions for that. I do not know whether the presence of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) means that we shall hear a little more on that score. I am sure that the House looks forward to his contribution. When I saw the provision that allows Orders in Council to extend not only the employment protection legislation, which is set out in some detail in Section 127 of the Employment Protection Act, but also the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Relations Act, I had a question mark in my mind about why it was necessary for the Sex Discrimination Act to be included. The Minister did not comment upon this matter. Perhaps we shall hear more about it as the debate continues.

It is important that it should be clearly on the record that the fact that we now give this measure a fair wind should not be taken in any sense as a change in our attitude to the Employment Protection Act. We are still critical of some of the provisions of that Act. We still believe that they are damaging to employment prospects.

In passing, I thought that it was quite extraordinary this afternoon to hear the insensitivity of Ministers from the Department of Employment who still seek—the Secretary of State did this—to maintain that that legislation has had no effect on employment. I think that anyone who goes around and talks to people running small businesses or medium-sized businesses hears anecdote after anecdote which indicate that the measures are having a damaging effect. Therefore, the fact that we give a fair wind to this Bill does not indicate any change of attitude to what one might call the parent legislation.

Perhaps I may say that it is not "anecdote after anecdote" but solid figures that show that over 1 million people would be employed but for the legislation.

That is a load of nonsense.

I think that my hon. and learned Friend was citing a particular report by a particular body. I have seen no detailed research that would allow one to put numbers on this matter. I have not yet seen the research upon which that figure was based. All that I have seen, as has my hon. and learned Friend, are the Press reports. One is anxious to study this matter further. However, I do not believe that any one going around talking to people involved in businesses will not hear anecdote after anecdote and example after example of damage caused by that legislation. That alone is something which it is curious for Ministers of the Department of Employment to discount as they did today.

I have one query about the details of the Bill, other than the inclusion of the Sex Discrimination Act. That is to question whether perhaps the Bill has been drawn wider than is necessary. It is always difficult to judge these matters, particularly when the esoteric art of the parliamentary draftsman is not easily understood by most of us.

However, the Government have a track record for using legislation which has been passed for one specific purpose in a wholly different context for other purposes. One has only to mention the black list that followed phase 3 of the present Government's wages policy and the way in which that legislation was misused, or, indeed, to look at redundancy payments and what has been done in their name, to have at least the query that in this Bill there might be a widening of the provisions which could at some future time be used in a fashion different from that for which the House will now, I hope give support when the Bill gets a Second Reading later this evening. This may well be a point at which we should look in Committee. I hope that it is the Government's intention to keep the provisions as narrow as they reasonably can.

I do not seek to delay or to prevent the Second Reading of the Bill. I am grateful to the Minister for the careful explanation that he has given. I hope that we shall hear a little more from him on some of the other points.

I welcome any Bill that is put before the House to extend the protection to workers in what is a most difficult area of occupation—namely, that of the North Sea in the exploration of our Continental Shelf. However, I am bound to say, as my hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, that the Bill is rather an ad hoc measure. It is attempting to deal with an industrial problem that is continuing to expand, in this case into areas of exploration for mineral wealth, which are normally beyond the areas so designated within our areas of legislative control under the Continental Shelf Act.

Therefore, to that extent it seems that one is faced with the difficulty of having two legislative bodies laying down different standards in the same areas of occupation and of where those two bodies—namely, Norway and the United Kingdom—come to some agreement by which vessels from the other country will be able to operate in areas over which they have legislative control operating different standards from those recognised in this case by the flag State. For example, if a British ship was in the Norwegian area, the British standard, as such, would be recognised.

One can appreciate the difficulties of operators in having to attempt to observe standards that are very different in different countries. However, I think that the real answer is for countries bordering the North Sea—I have constantly called for this, whether it is in regard to pollution, to tankers or to safety standards for seafarers—to come to some kind of common standards which they can agree to implement within their own legislative frameworks. It is true that the Bill allows the Government to introduce an Order in Council, following discussions, and perhaps to arrive at that conclusion. I hope that that is given a great deal of consideration.

Perhaps I should declare an interest as a member of the National Union of Seamen. It is known that the union is very heavily involved in work in this area and is extremely concerned about the safety conditions and the disparities that exist in those conditions in this area. Therefore, I want to address some of my remarks to these problems. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider them during the passage of the Bill. I hope that he will consider how his Department may be able to deal with complaints from seamen, from people who work on the oil rigs and from people associated with this difficult area of operations. There is a very clear demand for uniformity of standards and for those standards to represent the best possible standards.

Many years ago I was calling for legislation on this subject, on which there was none when I first became a Member of the House. I think that one of the first speeches I made here was about this very matter. Considerable advances have been made by Governments of both major parties since then in advancing those standards. But, frankly, we have still not really grasped the nettle, which is really to consider how we tackle the problems of safety in a much more uniform way.

I have had discussions with Norwegian civil servants at various conferences discussing North Sea safety, particularly in regard to diving, in which I was heavily involved. I have found that it is not an easy procedure to get accepted, but it is one with which we must persevere and hope to get some further success.

The Bill also mentions the application in this area of the Employment Protection Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Relations Act. I should like to know why the Sex Discrimination Act has to be included. Perhaps it is because it applies to all workers unless there are some special reasons. Such discrimination has never been as evident on ships as on shore. Through the insistent demands of the unions, women have always been paid the same rate as men for doing the same job.

Surely the hon. Gentleman appreciates that the large number of pregnant Asian women who work on Norwegian oil rigs are regularly unfairly dismissed. Therefore, it is most important.

I was not aware of that, but it is relevant to my argument about the Race Relations and Employment Protection Acts.

It has always been a source of contention that we pay different wages to people on British ships according to the colour of their skin. Parliament said that that was illegal but made a special exemption for seafaring. Thus, those who do not have white European skins receive 25 per cent. of the normal wage on some British ships. The principle is made clear in Section 4 of the Act but Section 9 provides the exemption for seamen recruited abroad.

We in the unions have demanded equal pay and the Labour Government set up an inquiry. That inquiry has now recommended that we take the first steps to implement equal pay on British ships. If one of these ships manned in this way comes into the North Sea and does work associated with the Bill instead of simply transporting cargo, will that exemption still apply? That is a curious anomaly—that an owner employing Indians on wages of 25 per cent. would not be exempted from the Race Relations Act if he did this work in the North Sea in oil exploration.

Section 119(5) of the Employment Protection Act provides that most of the benefits in relation to pay, dismissal, union rights and redundancy should not apply to people working on ships. It is, therefore, a fallacy to talk of advances for workers in this respect. Norway gives such rights to workers doing this work. Thus, a British ship doing the same job as a Norwegian ship in a Norwegian area would have far lower employment standards for its workers.

If it were merely a question of rights, it would be a matter of concern and of debate, but a much greater problem arises over safety. As we saw in the case of the "Amoco Cadiz", a tanker can be mechanically perfect while its crews are unable to manage sophisticated equipment. That is the main reason why these vessels collide and run aground and pour out millions of gallons of oil.

Norwegian ships have smaller crews than British ships. By means of our recommended maritime notice, we have laid down standards for numbers of crew and their skills. This is not the case in Norway, Holland or Germany. In 1977, all 20 supply ships in Norway's area flew the Norwegian flag. In our waters, only 52 per cent. flew the British flag. The rest were Dutch, German and Norwegian.

I recognises that membership of the Common Market makes it difficult for us to discriminate against Community nations, but safety standards vary among nations and that is relevant not only to the safe operation of vessels but also to the safety of the seamen involved. It is not lost on owners that the safety standards of other nations are more favourable economically than ours. It is no coincidence that many tankers involved in collisions are registered in Liberia, Cyprus or Panama, which do not enforce safety standards. Those vessels are sinking at twice and three times the rate of the vessels of traditional maritime countries. Panama and Singapore may be far from the North Sea, but their flags are becoming more and more common there. It is estimated that about 17,000 foreign seafarers are involved in the North Sea.

It was a constant controversial issue in this House that the unions were made central to the enforcement of safety standards under the Employment Protection Act and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act rather than relying simply on the Factory Inspectorate.

When we are dealing with North Sea oil rigs and vessels operating in that area, we always face the difficulty of obtaining union recognition and organisation. There is one group of unions which are recognised and established in Aberdeen. It comprises a number of the older unions involved in North Sea operations. Despite the statement by the owners four or five years ago that they would offer every co-operation to the trade unions, these unions have been fighting to obtain recognition of trade union negotiating rights on the rigs. Two or three cases which have arisen in the last few months have involved the services of ACAS, and the workers when balloted requested trade union recognition on rigs. To that extent, the recognition of the role of the trade unionist and the rights established in legislation are denied to the very workers with whom the Bill seeks to deal.

I appreciate that there are difficulties for seafarers, particularly in an area such as the North Sea which has seen such massive industrial development. However, that enormous development should not be made an excuse for excluding wor- kers from these activities. Such development should be seen as a reason for finding a separate method of advancing workers' rights in view of their difficulties. A close friend of mine, Mr. Harry Bygate, an official of the National Union of Seamen, has been actively involved in one group of unions for many years in the North Sea area. I am told of constant breaches of regulations, and it is obvious that many companies ignore those provisions with impugnity. They ignore standards which are recommended rather than enforced by statute. The Employment Protection Act sought to get away from the codes of recommended practice into statutory obligations, a process which I believe to be essential in seafaring terms.

I appreciate that there must be flexibility in guaranteeing the various rights. One case that came to my attention yesterday involved a constituent of mine who had worked on a North Sea oil supply vessel. He served for five years on a vessel from Great Yarmouth which operated to and from the various rigs in that area. He then left that employment and obtained a job in a ship operating from Aberdeen. He undertook one trip on that ship, it returned to the United Kingdom and he was dismissed. He was given no reason why he was dismissed, but he was unable to appeal against unfair dismissal because he had not been 12 months in that employment.

Six months.

I am grateful for that correction. I should have said for a period of six months. It is very sad that the man should be penalised because, in the nature of the job, he changes from one ship to another or one rig to another. That man has been denied many of the advantages that are available in the normal course of events to shore workers.

I must confess that the man to whom I refer had one peculiarity which amazed me. I tried to discover why he had lost his job and took up the matter with Mr. Harry Bygate, a trade union official. I discovered that the man had artificial legs. Since I served at sea for 10 years, that factor in the case amazed me, but I must point out that he had been carrying out that job for five years as a certificated cook on another ship. Although I appreciate the difficulties of the case, I discovered that the man was anxious to take on work, but after service in a ship he was dismissed. Surely that man, even though he has artificial legs, has a right to work.

I have spent a little time in explaining some of the difficulties which have been underlined to me by many seafarers and by officials such as Mr. Harry Bygate, who is involved constantly in these problems and is often the only source of protection for workers on ships and rigs. If the Minister wishes to see a uniform standard, he should be closely involved in negotiations—and no doubt he has been so involved—with the Norwegian authorities. I hope that as a result of negotiations with the Department of Trade and others a code of uniform standards will arise.

There is one other factor to which I should like to draw the Minister's attention, and I have made this point on other occasions with little success. It is often said that legislation applies to the flag a vessel flies. This is the point to which regard is paid when provisions are being extended to the Norwegian area.

If in this context the ship in question is not flying a British flag, these considerations will not apply to the rig—and in that sense our legislation will not apply to many of these rigs. At present we grant licences to all operators in the North Sea whether they are involved in oil production, exploration of mineral rights or whatever it may be. We should make it a condition of such licences that all our employment and safety standards and trade union rights are observed. Those who sub-contract should also observe those standards as a condition of their contract when operating on the Continental Shelf. That would overcome the difficulty that often arises where one nation's legislation does not apply to a ship operating from a different country. I believe that this process could be undertaken by contract obligation and that it should become a condition of such a contract.

I am sorry to have detained the House so long in making these points, but I wish to underline the concern on these matters which has been expressed to me by many of those who are involved in North Sea oil operations. I welcome the fact that we have been able to discuss these matters and I also welcome the Bill. I hope that seafarers will soon be given the same rights as those which have been won by workers in other industries.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has discussed very fully, as was his right on Second Reading, what is not in the Bill. There is nothing wrong in that. It is within the rules of order, the hon. Gentleman has a special interest, and he has deployed his case to the full.

I am rather more concerned with what is in the Bill, which I find very little to my liking. The Minister, in a tactful and pacific speech, talked about the need for and the desirability of co-operation and agreement between ourselves and the Norwegians in developing these fields together—and that is a good cause. But there is not much one needs to do about that situation. The hon. Gentleman made clear that our national law applies to British-registered ships flying the British flag. If we examine the provisions of the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, especially those which are relevant to the Bill, we see that those Acts are applied in a certain way.

Perhaps I should make clear to the hon. and learned Gentleman that the Bill deals only with fixed installations.

I am obliged to the Minister. I intend to make clear some of the things which he did not make clear in his speech. But to the extent that the Minister wishes to help me, I am grateful. The Minister's hon. Friend was pointing out that in regard to ships it was very much a question of the flag flown. If the Minister examines the provisions quoted in the Bill, he will see that they are a little more comprehensive than he thinks, especially in terms of the Race Relations Act, where the application is to three subsections and not to two. However, that is a small point and I do not wish to waste time on it.

What did not emerge from the Minister's remarks was the fact that the sole purpose of the Bill is to extend the Employment Protection Act, the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act to oil rigs in the North Sea outside British waters. That is what it is all about. One would think from the Minister's speech—it is a natural error for a Socialist Minister to fall into—that apart from those Acts, there is no employment law or custom in the British Isles. One wonders how the world managed before there was a Sex Discrimination Act, a Race Relation Act and an Employment Protection Act.

Much better.

The answer, as my hon. and learned Friend says, is that it managed much better.

The late Sir Henry Maine said, in his ancient law, that the progress of society appeared through the ages to have been from status to contract. The Employment Protection Act, on that judgment, is highly regressive, because it goes from contract to status.

All that we are doing in the Bill is extending three of the most controversial and foolish pieces of modem legislation to those on the storm-tossed and remote sections of the North Sea. We are fouling what would otherwise be a nice clean landscape. There is no limit to the bureaucratic expansion once it has started.

When it comes to extraordinary interventions into personal judgment and freedom to contract one would think that the Government would be content to confine this sort of legislation to the metropolitan area of the country and perhaps to ships registered in Britain. But as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East said, if these ships are trading beyond territorial waters the provisions of the Race Relations Act do not apply, on the whole.

In the Bill we are pushing these provisions out to the oil rigs, and it seems an unnecessary piece of nonsensical legislation. I am sure that the people on the oil rigs are doing a wonderful job. Will they feel that they are being recognised and rewarded by having the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act applied to them? Will they feel a sense of well-being and confidence because of this Bill?

Perhaps my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) does not understand the logic of the situation. In order to apply the Employment Protection Act to those working on oil rigs one requires both the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, because offences under these Acts are offences for employment purposes under the Employment Protection Act. Therefore, unless one can apply them, the ability of ACAS to infiltrate a dispute involving oil rigs is negatived.

My hon. and learned Friend may be correct. I have not gone into the motivation for the Bill. That is not part of the argument that I am deploying. I do not see this as a deep-laid plot. I believe that it is a prime example of Government by pressure groups. The Minister has put these two Acts into the Bill because he dare not leave them out. Think of all the fuss if he does. The Equal Opportunities Commission will be on to him and will haul him before the courts for offensive discrimination.

Almost anything is an offence today. Imagine some of those militant ladies or the race relations people attacking the Minister for discriminating on grounds of sex on oil rigs in the North Sea. I thought that those who worked on oil rigs were a pretty husky lot and they probably do discriminate anyway on grounds of sex. Some hon. Members seem to think that it is terrible that the Norwegians should dismiss Asiatic women from North Sea oil rigs on the ground of pregnancy. I can see no better reason for incurring dismissal. I think it is very undesirable to have pregnant women on oil rigs.

All three of these Acts and the associated measures are Acts which, in my opinion and that of a great many people on the Opposition Benches are harmful. I do not think that many Labour Members would regard the Employment Protection Act as harmful, but I do think that many believe that the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act are exceedingly foolish pieces of legislation, which they would have liked to oppose but did not dare to. There are hon. Members on the Opposition Benches who felt just as strongly about these measures but did not like to oppose them. Not many had the courage of their convictions.

One Labour Member told me during the passage of the Sex Discrimination Bill that I was right about the measure, and that it was a silly piece of legislation. I asked him why he did not say so in the Chamber. He replied that he had a lot of women in his constituency. Here we have a Bill the sole purpose of which is to extend these Acts to oil rigs outside territorial waters in the North Sea. Of all the solemnly silly things that have been done in this House, this must surely be the solemnly silliest.

The Bill is totally unnecessary. The Government can make their agreement with the Norwegians. Norwegian citizens will be governed according to their law and ours will continue as now. Why must we make this change? This is pure pressure group legislation. There was an agreement with the Norwegians, and someone said that if the Norwegians were applying their domestic law to their installations on our side, we had better introduce the Race Relations Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Employment Protection Act to our installations which overlap on their side otherwise we would be criticised. That is what this is all about.

I regard this as one of the silliest Bills ever to come before the House. The silliest of all was the Sex Discrimination Act. I said so at the time, and its working has proved me right. There is no one in this country outside the pressure groups, who does not laugh at the Sex Discrimination Act, regarding it as absolute nonsense.

The Race Relations Act is more emotionally fraught, but by and large people realise that it has done nothing but harm to race relations in this country, stimulating strong resentment among native inhabitants, who ask why there should be a law against them prescribing their behaviour which had previously been left to personal judgment.

I do not think that this Bill will result in any flare-up on the North Sea installations. They will carry on as before and this Bill will not affect anything. It is just a political gesture, which probably will be quite harmless. Nevertheless, I believe that it is a bad Bill. I do not want to waste much time on it, because it is such a silly Bill, but if it does not go on too long I shall stay and I hope that other hon. Members will join me in voting against it.

I do not share the view of the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell). I think that the Bill is a small but useful step forward.

Criticism could be made that in terms of employment legislation it has taken far too long for British Governments to come into the arena to try to hold the balance in favour of those who are working in oil installations. Those of us who have been interested in the oil-related industries during the past five years have heard many worrying accounts about the way in which workers are treated in those industries. Britain is very late in extending some of the employment legislation to the Continental Shelf. It was not until 1975 that Statutory Instruments began extending certain aspects of employment law to the Continental Shelf. Many of these left gaps, and they have been filled slowly over a period of time.

What worries me about the Bill is whether it will be very effective in its terms and how the two different standards which apply in Norway and the United Kingdom can best be made compatible. Although the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) dealt with the seafaring aspect, which is not really covered by the Bill, I thought that he made a good case. No doubt he was laying down a marker for the future.

I took the point that the Minister made about installations, but an installation can be a ship. When it is involved in exploration for oil it is an installation, but when it is moving from A to B it becomes a ship. It is not, therefore, totally unknown for such points as I was making to apply to the vessel concerned.

I accept that. I am not sure whether the Minister accepts it. I recollect that two years ago we had certain debates concerning hybridity and whether a fixed platform was a ship. I know that certain platforms can be uprooted and be converted into ships which are manned by seafaring officers and a crew. Indeed, some can go at about 12 knots under their own power. In different circumstances they can be fixed structures. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is not simply marking out his case for the future but is intending to do something about this in Committee, to make quite sure that ships can be fixed structures and that those who go to sea on them shall be entitled to some of the benefits.

I can foresee certain problems arising under the Bill. It is very difficult to settle jurisdictions. I recently came across a letter which I had received on 22nd January 1976 from the then Minister of State, Home Office relating to immigration control on oil rigs. The Minister said that possibly the matter could be dealt with by legislation, but he did not think that it would be possible to exercise on the rigs the sophisticated control that we have at ports in the United Kingdom, save at unacceptable cost. Although some of the foreign workers on North Sea oil rigs travel to and via the United Kingdom and pass through controls at that stage, others travel direct from Continental ports.

The Minister then went on to discuss the problems of work permits in situations of that kind. There has obviously been a degree of confusion in relation to the status of workers on rigs which straddle the boundary or, indeed, other rigs which may have been exclusively in the United Kingdom or Scottish sector of the North Sea but where crews have been brought in from the Continent direct.

Certain problems are likely to arise, and I shall put them to the Minister in the form of questions. The first concerns unionisation. The Norwegians have been far ahead of us on this and have made more progress than has been made in the United Kingdom. It was only in February 1978 that I received details from the Department of Energy of the agreement which had been reached between the oil companies and the inter-union committee, based in Aberdeen, which allowed for the very first time the access of union officials to workers offshore.

It might be thought that that was not a radical step forwards, but, nevertheless, it took about seven years and considerable pressure to achieve it. There had been some horrific stories of intimidation of workers who had sought to join a trade union or to recruit members for a trade union on board oil rigs. They were summarily removed from the rigs, and that was the end of the story.

I have a summary of the agreement signed a numbers of years ago between the assocation of Norwegian rig owners and the Norwegian seamen's union. The union played a strong role in relation to structures which are not ships but fixed platforms. Among the heads of agreement mentioned in the summary, it is stated that

"Each crew shall elect a maximum of three shop stewards who shall be protected against unwarranted dismissal. The rig owner shall co-operate so that officials of the Norwegian seamen's union can visit rigs when possible."

Paragraph 12 of the heads of agreement is concerned with union membership fees, and so on.

Where is the compatibility to be when we have the rather timid approach contained in the memorandum of understanding on trade union access to offshore installations on the United Kingdom side, compared with the very definite rights which Norwegian workers have? I should like to hear from the Minister what he thinks will happen and whether he thinks that the higher or the lower standards are likely to be adopted. I wonder what will be the position when workers from Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland, serving aboard offshore rigs straddling the border, learn that their Norwegian colleagues have much stronger rights than they have themselves.

With regard to safety, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East mentioned that under the Employment Protection Act 1975 certain obligations are laid on the trade unions. One of the weaknesses here is that the trade union position on the United Kingdom offshore rigs is much less strong. If we have not a strong trade union sector to start off with, the problems of the enforceability of safety obligations as laid upon trade unions will be almost insurmountable.

Will the hon. Gentleman remind me of any section under the Employment Protection Act which lays a duty on trade unions to deal with safety?

I cannot quote one off the cuff, obviously.

There are no such sections.

But it is clear, as the hon. and learned Gentleman knows—I have come across it in practice on many industrial visits—that factories now try to work in co-operation with the trade unions in enforcing safety conditions. Indeed, in the electrical power industry the primary obligation is laid upon the unions to achieve standards of safety on behalf of their members.

Those obligations are laid down in various sections of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which has nothing to do with the Employment Protection Act.

I was discussing the question of safety and, like the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East, I also reserve the right to go slightly outwith the Bill if necessary, because this is one of the difficulties which exist. Indeed, the Employment Protection Act laid down certain rights for union recognition. In relation to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, a role is also given to the unions. There is a connection between the two measures, whether it is stated explicitly or not. It still raises the question of how these obligations concerning safety, which are very important, are to be carried out. We must remember that offshore exploration is highly dangerous and that many people have been killed and injured in the course of the development of the oilfields.

The Norwegian position is significant again in that direction, because the Norwegians provide that there shall be a right of those who work on shore to elect officers from among the work force who will be responsible for safety. It is a rather interesting agreement. Perhaps the Minister will say whether there have been any fruitful results arising from the negotiations and consultations which have been taking place with the Norwegian authorities. As we know, there has been a very close relationship, and the negotiations may help the position of those who work offshore.

With regard to pay, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East referred to the fact that lascars and others who serve aboard United Kingdom ships are sometimes paid at a lower rate than other people. It is perfectly true also that United Kingdom workers on the Continental Shelf are frequently paid less than other workers, particularly in comparison with Norwegian workers. I have some figures giving the comparative wage rates in sterling. As they are two years old they would be out of date now, but nevertheless they show a rough com- parison. For example, a roughneck in the Scottish sector could hope to earn about £240 whereas the rate in the Norwegian sector was £366. There are different variations according to seniority and skill.

If there is to be some form of provision for equal pay, it would be interesting to know whether the Government expect a problem to arise in future, especially if there is to be some form of comparable standard between two countries whose pay conditions seem to have considerable disparities, even allowing for the fact that the cost of living in Norway is very much more expensive than it is here.

However, incomes for similar work done in two places within 50 yards of each other, or even less, are quite different. In many cases the same applies to the most senior of international oil workers, particularly expatriate Americans, who are paid the international rate for the job as part of the method of recruitment. That is an area of concern which has caused a terrific amount of resentment, particularly on the East Coast of Scotland, where workers involved in oil rig activity can see that they are being paid less for similar work.

Does the hon. Gentleman have evidence that this kind of discrimination exists with regard to wage levels and levels of reward?

The evidence is very difficult to come by. Whenever I have come across evidence of abuse in the offshore industry, I have sent the information to the Department of Employment or, more particularly, the Department of Energy. The Government have usually been very good in making investigations. However, in relation to wage levels it is extremely difficult to pin down what is happening, particulary if there are subsidiary companies which engage people at second, third and fourth hand and where pay may be made through the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas or wherever. These are legitimate methods of payment. I understand that the Inland Revenue has been carrying out certain investigations on this score during the last three or four months but has run up against a stone wall. What we know is that there are different rates for Norwegians who are working very close to our own workers. We are now dealing with a Bill which is trying to handle the problems which stem from that proximity.

I do not wish to say anything more with regard to the Bill. It is a very brief one. I welcome it as far as it goes. I see some difficulties with regard to the application of the Sex Discrimination Act, but they are probably not insuperable. The same applies to the Race Relations Act. I note the argument advanced by the hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn) that those Acts have been included in order to buttress the main provisions of the 1975 Employment Protection Act which are now to be extended.

I should like to be among those hon. Members who give a wholehearted welcome to the Bill. If there were to be any criticism at all it would be that we might have had a similar Bill a little earlier, especially when one considers the kind of problems that one comes up against. When one reflects on those areas of British industry where trade unions are needed more than they ever have been before, I think that there is no sector of British industry that needs trade union protection more than among those who work on oil rigs. It is high time that some kind of help was given for the protection of individuals who very often risk limb, and sometimes life itself, in order to win the riches of the North Sea. If any group deserves or needs trade union protection it is certainly the brave men who work in this area.

I simply want to ask two questions. The first relates to divers. From a constituency experience of particular cases I should like to express a widespread feeling that although most companies, most of the time, look after the safety of their divers as well as can be expected—the record of many of those who take part is wholly creditable—nevertheless, from tragic cases from time to time there is the suspicion that not as much care has been taken as should have been. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) and I know of individual cases which have made us very unhappy about what has happened. We suspect that carelessness has taken place, but it is often very diffi- cult to prove. Therefore, I believe that the presence of a trade union is wholly to be desired.

Precisely under what sections of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act can a trade union be useful on an oil rig? Considering the concern that most unions show towards safety, my general impression is that it could be extremely helpful. I should like the Minister to expand on this aspect of the matter. I hope that he will have information which will be of interest to the House and to those of us who propose to go out in Scotland and argue for the merits of the Bill.

My second question is the same as that of my hon. Friend—I should say the hon. Gentleman—the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson). When I call him "my hon. Friend" we are coming to a pretty pass. I usually disagree with him, but on this occasion I absolutely agree that there are worries about pay rates. There are complaints. There is the feeling that some people are getting a great deal more than others. Very often this comes down to the question of tax.

I wholly support the Government's recent action in making the tax position of divers more favourable. Like certain other people—dare I mention footballers? Perhaps this is not the week to do so for a Scot—their expectation of a working lifetime is such that they deserve favourable tax treatment when they are under 35 or 40. I am not complaining about that aspect. However, one does rather wonder about the sense of this labyrinth of wage rates. Are the Government satisfied that there is a system of reasonably equitable rewards for those who work on oil rigs? Can the Minister say something about the problems, some of which have been raised with his Department, relating to the seeming inequity of rewards among those who work in the North Sea?

Having put those questions, I simply want to welcome the Government's action in this area.

I confirm what the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has said, that the men who work on oil rigs are brave men, who make large rewards—

Not all of them.

They pit their skills against the elements to make those rewards. It is part of the fantasy of what I call the compulsion of indenticality that anyone should seriously suggest that a Norwegian national, a British national and an American national, all working on an oil rig, all governed by different tax systems—with the American being the beneficiary of a free enterprise system which enables his taxation to be much lower—should be compelled, in the interests of the Socialist concept of identicality, to be paid the same, regardless of the tax position, in case someone should get jealous. God Almighty! If a person gets that jealous he can emigrate and become an American citizen. If he is not that jealous—if he is so proud that he wants to live in a Socialist country with a Socialist tax system—he has to take the consequences. To suggest that they should all be equal because they happen to work within five yards of one another seems astonishing.

Why is the Minister restricting this little Bill to the three Acts named in it? If we are engaged in creating a paradise on an oil rig in which Norwegians, Britons and Americans are all subject to some identical, universal and paradisical statute law, why is the Health and Safety at Work &c. Act not included? Why did the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), whose concern for the safety of the individual who works upon the sea, for those who

"go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great waters"

is manifest and excellent, not ask the Minister about the Health and Safety at Work &c. Act? Why was that Act not included, rather than these three miserable, pointless and rotten pieces of statutory restriction?

The hon. and learned Gentleman makes a fair point. I was trying to say that I believe the Bill represents an adult way of dealing with the problem. There are all sorts of other pieces of legislation that I would like to put into the Bill. I said that the way to deal with this is to have a much more uniform approach in one piece of legislation, agreed by all the countries surrounding the North Sea.

I was interested to note that neither the hon. Member for Kings- ton upon Hull, East, nor the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) apparently knew what is the Employment Protection Act. Neither did they know that the legislation affecting safety is in the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act. Why have the three pieces of legislation been chosen? Why the Employment Protection Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Relations Act? There is a simple answer, which is also the answer to the question why this legislation is being enacted to provide for British workers on the other half of the rig, so to speak. The answer is that the unions have been extremely anxious to get on to the rigs. A lot of people who have been making a lot of money on the rigs have been anxious to keep them off.

Under the Employment Protection Act, ACAS has the right to go on to a rig and recommend that unions shall be allowed on it. I can see no reason why this should be done if it is not to increase the numbers of those who, under Part I of the Employment Protection Act, are able to go on to the rig. I cannot believe that this part of the Employment Protection Act is there to protect pregnant Asian women and give them 40 weeks off before they have to say that they are going back to the rig. I cannot believe that it is to protect maternity benefits or to deal with the business of dismissal after 26 weeks—or 23 weeks and two days as it is under the Act. I cannot believe that the provision is there to obtain redundancy benefits for those who happen to have worked on rigs. This business arises solely because there is a difficulty for the unions in influencing those who work on the rigs. These people are entrepreneurs. They are rugged people who want a great deal of money and who want to make it without interference.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East struck an important seam when he spoke of safety on tankers, which has nothing to do with this Bill. Let me nevertheless—

My hon. and learned Friend may have been misled by the Minister, who, when he intervened in my speech, said that the Bill did not apply to ships. I thought that it perhaps applied to ships in relation to the Sex Discrimination Act. In fact the Bill applies to ships in respect of the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act. Perhaps the Minister did not read the Bill very carefully.

I am obliged to my hon. and learned Friend for that correction. I speak with more confidence on the matter raised by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East. He said that there were different regulations and pointed out that these tankers were not safe because there were not sufficient trained people upon them. The unions have to face the fact squarely and sensibly, because it is their dilemma, that all the legislation which they have demanded tends to protect overmanning.

What about the courts?

I am absolutely certain that once unions are represented on these rigs more people will be required to do the same jobs and as a result those who are doing the jobs will receive less. That absolutely artificial protection of employment is in contrast with the other effect of the Employment Protection Act. As a result of artificially making it difficult to reduce the labour force, to dismiss someone who is no good, as a result of the fact that people do not know how to go about this in the right way, employers say "God damnit, I will have nobody else because I dare not run into the abominable dangers of a tribunal saying 'You will pay £13,200 or £5,200.'" Those are the penalties. That is the legislation which, above all, has done more in recent times to ensure that there are 1⅓ million unemployed. It was interesting to note that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East did not know the period during which someone can be dismissed while the hon. Member for Dundee, East did not even know the facts.

Let me give a good example of this overmanning. I heard of a company this week which makes and hires forklift trucks. It requires only one man to service 14 of these trucks. Yet British Steel requires three men to service each forklift truck. This is abominable and silly overmanning. On the other side is the Employment Protection Act which, far from protecting employment, destroys it.

Nothing can be more farcical than a Government, in their final stages, taking this attitude towards those on oil rigs. I do not know whether the Minister has ever been on a rig. If there is one place where people are striving and fighting to earn a hell of a lot and do a good job and get on with it without regulations and interference it is on the oil rigs. To take these three insane Acts—intended to create paradise nowhere but to create hell everywhere—on to an oil rig, is quite fantastic.

I have listened with care to the thesis being put forward by the hon. and learned Member to the effect that massive amounts of legislation are causing difficulty and that some of us are not very well aware of the detail of this legislation. As a part-time Member of this House and a full-time practising barrister, it may be that the hon. and learned Member is more aware of the details and legislation. What he does not seem to have taken into account—I tried to deal with it at some length—is that in most of these areas the workers are exempt from major parts of this legislation. The central thesis of the hon. and learned Member's argument does not, therefore, apply.

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. Once again he has got everything wrong. I am a full-time Member of this House and a non-practising barrister. I do read the legislation that goes through this House and I lecture on it. I do so for the very good reason that I have discovered that no one in business, large or small, is capable of absorbing the nonsense that goes through this place. I have had to specialise to lecture on this subject. I understand it and I hear the implications. If the hon. Member heard these people to whom I lecture he might not vote so regularly for some of this legislation.

This legislation does not happen to apply to ships at sea. If it did, there would not be any ships under the British flag. That is for the good reason that it is possible, for example, to pick up a good crew in Ceylon and not apply this damned silly legislation to it. If it were to apply to ships at sea, we should never get a ship with a British crew member on it. The union of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East would realise that.

It is because of the situation to which the hon. and learned Gentleman refers that ships are colliding.

No, that is not why they are colliding. However, I shall not go into that. There was exemption by the Government so as to protect union members in Britain who would automatically be out of the pale in terms of employment on the high seas.

I do not propose to say much more. It seems a stupid Bill, which is not aimed at the health and safety of those who work on rigs. It is a Bill designed purely to get the influence of ACAS on to the rigs. It is a Bill that will have the same inevitable effect on rigs as everywhere else. It will take the fantasy of identicality, of equality, of decency and of fairness and it will do everything to the opposite of those objectives, which similar legislation has done in every other works, in every other firm, and in every other home.

With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall reply to some of the points that have been made. I shall try to take them in sequence.

First, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Hayhoe) said that there is a broad measure of agreement between the two sides of the House on these matters. I was grateful for those remarks but sorry that he went on to stray into the now almost ritual criticism of the Employment Protection Act that we hear from the Opposition, and especially from the hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn). For the hon. and learned Gentleman it was certainly a ritual. He used the word "fantasy" and, listening to his contribution, I thought that that was an apt description of his speech.

The hon. and learned Gentleman talked earlier about research that has been carried out covering about I million jobs. It would be helpful if we could have details of that research. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment said today in the House that the review of these matters that has ben carried out will be published in detail. It will be interesting to see whether the evidence to which the hon. and learned Gentleman has referred will be published in detail. If it is, it will be helpful to the Government.

The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth said that the Conservative Party is critical of some provisions of the Employment Protection Act. We are still waiting to hear the exact nature of that criticism. In fairness to the hon. Gentleman, he may say that he and his party are waiting for the results of the review. However, it would be better if he waited for the review before being critical of the provisions of the Act, unless he will tell us the nature of his criticisms. The Opposition never really spell out their critcisms of the Act.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his general support. He asked whether the Bill has been drawn wider than is necessary and wondered whether it could not be used in a different context. The hon. Gentleman was pressing me in that direction while my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has been pressing me in a different direction. The Bill will allow us to extend employment legislation to only the foreign sectors of the Continental Shelf that form part of the cross-boundary of petroleum fields. It would be done only by agreement with the foreign country controlling the other side of the field. It will allow us to give effect to the most sensible arrangement for extending employment legisaltion to such areas. We arc taking powers only to allow us after agreement to extend legislation in what is a rather special set of circumstances. I think that that is appreciated by the hon. Gentleman.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East made an important contribution. It is fair to say that his points ranged far wider than the limited form of the Bill. Indeed, that was the nature of one of his complaints about the Bill. My hon. Friend talked about a comprehensive agreement for countries bordering the North Sea and the setting up of a common standard with all the countries concerned. Desirable as that may be, T suspect that it would be rather a long time coming. I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept that. The fact is that there is a special situation involving our relations with the Norwegians and the Bill is aimed primarily at dealing with it.

I must tell my hon. Friend that IMCO has agreed manning standards on vessels and we have said that drilling rigs can be vessels in certain situations. The present circumstances are far more advanced than my hon. Friend seems to think. I refer to agreed standards of safety manning on rigs or drilling vessels.

I was about to turn to safety aspects, to which many hon. Members have referred. I have said that the Bill applies only to oil rigs. That is how the powers in the Bill are intended to be used. However, there is no restriction in the Bill placed on the sort of employment to which the Order in Council may extend.

There is a joint Norwegian-United Kingdom body considering safety standards for those working in the North Sea. The Health and Safety Commission has that very much on board. It is intended that there will be much more comprehensive legislation. That legislation is in the course of preparation. That is why the Bill is not dealing with health and safety aspects.

What is the time scale involved for the more comprehensive legislation? Is it possible that it will be introduced in the next parliamentary Session, or will it be longer than that in reaching the House?

I cannot answer my hon. Friend's question because these matters are very much in the hands of the Commission. The Commission is an independent body. It will treat these matters as expeditiously as possible. We are all well aware that the dangers of the North Sea are considerable for those working in it and on it.

The question of race relations legislation was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East. As my hon. Friend said, there has been an inquiry into the rates paid to Asian seamen. Those are matters very much for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade. However, the Government are considering how the exceptions may be phased out. I cannot go further than that.

The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Bell) seemed to imply that it did not emerge from my speech that the Bill is all about employment protection legislation, race relations legislation and sex discrimination legislation. I thought that that emerged clearly. I made that clear in my opening remarks. The hon. and learned Gentleman brought his well-known antediluvian prejudices to the House on race relations and sex discrimination. It is a fact that the House has overwhelmingly rejected his views on those matters time and time again. None the less, he keeps going and he is fully entitled to do that.

The hon. and learned Member talked about the Bill being nonsensical. I have said that the employers and the trade unionists who are involved consider the Bill to be a necessary change. If, as the hon. and learned Member said, the Bill will not affect anything, he made an extraordinary meal of his remarks dealing with it.

The Government seem to be making an extraordinary meal of these matters if they are introducing a Bill to do nothing. I am merely criticising the Bill.

We are not introducing a Bill that will do nothing. I did not imply that it will do nothing. I consider it to be a useful step forward. It rationalises a situation that needed that sort of attention. I do not accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's suggestion.

The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson), in a thoughtful contribution, referred to unionisation. Unionisation is not high. That is a matter for regret. The Bill should be helpful in assisting the unions to increase unionisation. That is a matter that must be dealt with by the trade unions. It is not for the Government to deal with unionisation, at any rate at root.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that over the past seven years the trade unions have found it exceedingly difficult to deal with the offshore industry, and that even with the present memorandum of understanding that exists many trade unionists feel that there will still be considerable difficulties?

I am sure that that is right. As employers are supporting the Bill—they have gone along with it so far—that is an encouraging sign for the future.

The hon. Member for Dundee, East also spoke of differing incomes. That is not a matter for the Government. That issue is not dealt with in the Bill. That has to be a matter for negotiation.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) talked about equity. He will apreciate that there are inequities throughout the British pay system. The inequities may be more glaring on oil rigs—I would not be certain—but there are many inequities. However, the Bill does not seek to deal with that situation.

My hon. Friend also referred to the question of divers. Again, that will be a matter for the Health and Safety Commission to look at in its more comprehensive approach to health and safety legislation in future.

As my hon. Friend knows, should there be the proposed Assembly in Edinburgh, health will be a devolved subject. May we have the assurance that responsibility for all these matters in relation to oil rigs will remain

I should have to check that point to be absolutely certain. However, I should be surprised if my hon. Friend were wrong.

I do not need to refer to the remarks made by the hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire because I have already covered them. We shall simply have to agree to differ. The hon. and learned Gentleman gave us an extravaganza—an incredibly distorted view of the results of the Employment Protection Act. I hope that in due course he will produce the evidence to support his case.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

As those who know anything about the law are aware, the Bill deals with a difficult and complex area of the criminal law. It arises from the Criminal Law Revision Committee's Thirteenth Report on Section 16 of the Theft Act 1968. I am sure that the House would wish to join me in paying tribute to Lord Edmund-Davies and his colleagues on the CLRC for carrying out the review of the law.

The story should have served as a warning to the Houses of Parliament about the way in which they amend Bills which have previously had careful consideration. Section 16 of the Theft Act came into being when the House was considering the Theft Bill generally and the original draft clause of the CLRC. In order to clarify the original clause which the House of Lords thought was not sufficiently clear, it introduced Section 16 in the form in which it appears in the law at present. It thought—and there was some evidence for this—that the original draft was too wide in the way that it defined a criminal. Unfortunately, because of difficulties in drafting, the provision did not introduce any certainty into the law and it has been redolent of controversy ever since. It has been not only a source of trouble for the courts but a source of fruitful discussion by academic textbook writers.

Three cases illustrate the difficulties that we have had. In one year there were two cases, that of Turner and that of Ray, which involved the evasion of a debt. In 1976 there was also the case of Charles, which involved the fraudulent use of cheques at a gaming club. These cases were decided with difficulty by the courts. Several Law Lords described in the strongest language the difficulty which the legislature had given to the courts when dealing with this provision.

Consequently, in August 1972, the Home Secretary referred the working of Section 16 to the CLRC. He asked the Committee to consider whether changes were necessary. On consideration of the problem the Committee found that not only did it need to deal with the question of whether that section was aptly framed but whether the right line between criminal behaviour and non-criminal behaviour had been drawn in the original report. The Committee therefore studied the matter anew, issued a working paper and obtained a wide measure of comment on it. It is fair to say that no working paper of the Committee has attracted such wide comment.

The Committee recommended that Section 16(2)(a)—which is the part which has caused all the difficulties in the law—should be replaced by new provisions which broadly cover the same ground as before, but in terms which are more clearly defined.

In one respect the Committee decided that the law should be slightly narrower than at present, and in another respect that it should be slightly wider. The slightly narrower definition involved the stalling debtor and the slightly wider definition involved making off without payment.

The Committee embodied the recommendations in a report which had a draft Bill appended to it. In substantial form that was the Bill which was introduced by the Government in the Lords. The slight changes which were made by the Government had the consent of the Committee and they made more clear what was meant.

Clause 1 of the draft Bill concerned deception as to the prospect of payment and it was intended to cover the more common fraud under Section 16 where there is a deception at the outset of a transaction, and Clause 2 created an offence of

"obtaining relief from liability by deception."

Those were the original provisions introduced in the Lords. Unfortunately, although Parliament has a comparatively poor record in trying to put right the law on this subject, that did not deter the Lords. It again introduced amendments to Clauses 1 and 2 which, although slightly more successful, are not acceptable to the Government in this form.

Clause 3 of the original Bill involved frauds in such places as restaurants and filling stations. At present there is a considerable loophole in the law. It is a well publicised loophole, which the clause is designed to fill. This clause was not amended during its passage through the Lords and its appears in its original form in the Bill.

In its present amended form Clause 1 creates an offence of obtaining dishonestly by deception services which are provided in return for payment or the promise of payment. In the Bill services are deemed to include the hire of any property.

The point made by the critics of the original CLRC draft was that it was too complex. There is no cheaper way of making a point in Parliament than to say that it is time we returned to simplicity in drafting. People often ask why we cannot draft laws which people can understand at a glance, but in reality the search for simplicity often leads us into greater complexity. That is because complex ideas—and fraud is a complex idea—have to be enshrined in difficult phraseology. That is because the end result is that they are more clear to the courts which have to interpret them than a general phrase which leaves everything for the courts to decide and which spells out nothing for them.

Unfortunately, the end result of the greater clarity that the other place sought in the now amended clause left the term "services" completely undefined. That creates a serious problem, because it leaves gaps in the law. Secondly, the phrasing, although this is by no means so important, would not work as it at present stands.

But on the concept of obtaining services a strong feeling came through from the other place. We asked the Criminal Law Revision Committee to consider the possibility of redrafting Clause 1 in order to make it less ambiguous than the version which their Lordships passed. It kindly agreed to do so at extremely short notice, and it came up with an alternative draft clause for which we owe it a debt of gratitude. The Committee did a great deal of work on this matter, and it is not an easy concept.

I believe it would be convenient to read out the new clause, not because this is the right place to discuss the detail of it but so that hon. Members can see what the CLRC is suggesting. I am bound to indicate on behalf of the Government that we intend to introduce an amendment in Committee to insert this clause in place of the existing clause in the Bill. The clause reads

"1.—(1) A person who by any deception dishonestly obtains services from another shall be guilty of an offence.

(2) It is an obtaining of services where the other is induced to confer a benefit by doing some act, or causing or permitting some act to be done, on the understanding that the benefit has been or will be paid for."

That is a far clearer draft and one which combines comparative brevity with clarity for the courts.

The existing Clause 2 is not satisfactory in the amended version which the other place has introduced. It reproduces almost exactly the wording of Section 16 (2)(a) of the 1968 Act, and since that Act is the subject of heavy criticism, reproduction of the criticised section in the new Bill will cause uncertainty and lead to what Lord Edmund-Davies described as a "judicial nightmare". Since Section 16(2)(a) effectively deals with two clauses of the new Bill, it would make Clause 1 redundant if we retained the wording of the existing Clause 2.

Thirdly, and most seriously, because this is an issue of principle, the Government do not agree with the balance that is struck by their Lordships in the present clause in the case of the stalling debtor. As the clause stands, any person making an untrue representation—for example, the housewife who in the time-honoured tradition falsely tells the rent collector that she cannot pay the rent one week because she has lost her purse, or because her husband is away, and promises to make up the money over the subsequent couple of weeks—would be guilty of a criminal offence even though the intention would be sincerely to make good the payment within the next two or three weeks.

That is a needless intrusion of the criminal law into what is traditionally a matter of civil remedy. For that reason, as well as the other two reasons, we believe that an amendment to restore the original Clause 2 is right. The stalling debtor, who is a person who merely temporarily does not intend to pay but intends to pay before long, thus not intending permanently to avoid payment, should not be the subject of the criminal law.

Clause 3, which deals with the conduct known as bilking, which is not paying for a meal that one obtains, or making off having filled up one's car with petrol without paying, remains as it was in the original draft. It fulfils a great need, in the sense that there is a gap in the present law, in that there may be no offence committed. Hon. Members will remember a case in which it was held by the court that although a person intended to pay when he started to fill up his car with petrol, his intention changed subsequently while putting, say, the additional three gallons in his tank and he was, therefore, not guilty of an offence. That seems to be a great source of difficulty, particularly for ordinary people, in understanding the substance of the law.

I believe that the Bill removes an unsatisfactory state of affairs in another respect. For example, there is the anomaly whereby a person who has had a meal and has formed the intention not t3 pay, and indicates to the waiter that he is going outside to make a telephone call, may be guilty of an offence, whereas in some circumstances a person who merely bolts from the table and runs away may not be guilty of an offence. That great gap in the law is covered by the Bill.

The penalties are set out in Clause 4. It is our general policy, as hon. Members know—they share this intention— to reduce maximum sentences wherever appropriate. In Clauses 1 and 2 we have followed the recommendation of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, but in respect of Clause 3, since that effects a slight widening of criminal responsibilty, we have heeded the comments of, among others, Sir Rupert Cross and Professor Glanville Williams, who are both members of the CLRC, and have reduced the proposed maximum penalty under that clause from three years to two. The fines follow the pattern set by the Criminal Law Act and are, of course, inflation-proofed by virtue of the provisions of that Act.

The three remaining clauses deal with supplementary and formal matters. Clause 5 secures that offences under the Bill are made extradictable—perhaps I anticipate here a Friday debate on extraditable offences in which the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) and I are interested—and they are brought within the scope of the Fugitives Offenders Act.

Clause 6 allows the changes made in England and Wales by the present Bill to be extended to Northern Ireland, where the relevant law at the moment is identical, by Order in Council subject to negative resolution. Clause 7 is concerned merely with formal matters and commencement.

I have tried in a short time to outline the main provisions of the Bill and to explain how I think it will benefit us. In my view, it can do no good to perpetuate a state of affairs in our criminal law in which the offence of fraud is dealt with in a manner so complex that even the courts have the greatest difficulty in considering it. I believe that, when it becomes law, the Bill will effect a great benefit by clarifying the law and thereby giving certainty in terms of when people are liable and when they are not. For that reason, I commend the Bill to the House. I believe that it will command wide support.

It will be no surprise to the Minister to know that we welcome the Bill and welcome what the Government suggest should be done to it. It is necessary to mention both because we are in an unusual situation here in that, at the same time as moving that the Bill be given a Second Reading, the Minister has informed the House that he proposes drastically to change the first two clauses.

However, it will be no surprise to the Minister that we welcome what he intends to do, because the Home Secretary was courteous enough to inform my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) when that decision was taken, and my right hon. and learned Friend informed the Home Secretary that we welcomed what was proposed. Indeed, when at one point it looked as though the previous business might collapse and the Minister was not in the Chamber, I had in mind that I myself might move the Second Reading.

The replacement of Section 16(2)(a) of the Theft Act is badly needed. That is a matter of agreement all round. Indeed, the Minister will recall that, when the Criminal Law Bill was in Committee, my right hon. and learned Friend and I and others of our hon. Friends moved as amendments to that Bill the proposals which had been put forward by the Criminal Law Revision Committee, and we withdrew those amendments on the Government's assurance that in the next Session they would themselves introduce legislation. They did so in the other place, and we all thought that things would go through not only smoothly but quickly. Life is full of surprises. I hope in this case that what at one stage looked like a slightly unpleasant surprise may prove to have served a useful purpose.

When those major amendments were made in the other place, it looked as though that might mean that progress that would otherwise be made could not be made. The debate in the other place had shown that there were some difficulties in Clause 1 as originally proposed. It is to the credit of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, although it is what one would expect, that when these matters were drawn to its attention it said that its own first suggestion could be improved. Had it not been improved, we would not have been in this position.

Some difficulties, which none of us had spotted, arising from the original Clause 1 had been drawn to our attention. Because of those difficulties, the clause had been replaced in another place by a new Clause 1. Not everyone was happy with the new clause. Therefore, we might have had the choice of two clauses, neither of which was entirely satisfactory.

That might have produced a position in which it would not have been possible to complete the progress of the Bill because it would not have been possible to reach the large measure of agreement necessary if the Bill is to go through in the time available. At that stage my right hon. and learned Friend and I had discussions with the Minister. My right hon. and learned Friend discussed with him the possibility of asking the Criminal Law Revision Committee to reconsider Clause 1. It gladly did so. The Easter Recess assisted in the matter of time. The Committee was not given very much time to respond to that request, and the time was slightly enlarged because of the Easter Recess. The matter was dealt with speedily and satisfactorily. I think that the House will say, having considered closely what is proposed, that the CLRC acted speedily.

I echo the tribute paid by the Minister to Lord Edmund-Davies, who was the chairman of the Committee when it initiated the report on which we are now basing our actions. I pay tribute also to the present chairman, Sir Frederick Lawton, who has been the chairman all through the period of time during which the matter has been referred back to the Committee. The Committee has speedily and helpfully produced another clause for us. It will prove to have been of great assistance to the House in arriving at a correct conclusion.

It follows from that that we shall support the Government when they move in Committee to remove Clause 1 and substitute the new clause which has been put forward by the CLRC and which the Minister read to the House a moment ago. One of the clearest things about our system is that although we talk about the separation of powers and the complete separation of the legislature from the judiciary, we do not observe it. There are many members of this legislature who sit in a judicial capacity. It is a very good thing. In that capacity we find how silly was some of the legislation that we allowed through in our other capacity.

Many Members in the House who sit as recorders have had to try cases brought under Section 16(2)(a) of the Theft Act 1968. I have presided over cases in which the deception involved was a deception in persuading the victim that he had already been paid. That was not covered by the orginal Section 16(2)(a), by the orginal Clause 1 or by Clause 1 as it stands, but it will be covered by the new Clause 1 to be moved in Committee. It is difficult for hon. Members to express a view on the new clause because no one has seen it. That creates problems, but it is not a matter for criticism. It is inevitable from the way the situation has arisen. That may be why the Minister said more about it than he would otherwise have done, and it is certainly why I am saying more than I would otherwise have done.

I assure my hon. Friends that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wimbledon and I are both satisfied that the proposed new draft meets all the difficulties that have so far emerged in the various debates that have taken place on Clause 1.

Unless something may yet be done about Clause 2, we shall support the Government in Committee in restoring the original Clause 2—broadly for the reasons that the Minister has advanced. I do not want him to think that because I am agreeing with so much I am agreeing with everything. There are a number of Committee points on which there may be differences. There is nothing serious, but I do not want the Minister to think that I am agreeing with everything he says. I am dealing only with the main points and leaving aside the minor Committee points. Equally, I do not want him to think that I have in my pocket a long list of amendments for the Committee stage. I do not think that there will be much serious dispute about any part of the Bill, but there may be discussion on some parts because we all share the wish to get it right this time.

I know that, so far, the time scale has been such that it has not been possible for the Criminal Law Revision Committee to give the same consideration to Clause 2 as it has given to Clause 1. If there had been sufficient time, the Committee would, ideally, have put before us not only a revised and improved version of Clause 1 but an improved version of Clause 2, but it may be that the time scale prevents that from being a possibility. I do not know whether the Minister has asked the Committee whether it could consider that or whether there is any possibility of its suggesting improvements. It is on the cards that its recommendations would be as helpful to us and to the improvement of the law as was its reconsideration of Clause 1.

I hope that the door has not been closed on that possibility, though I accept that time may close that door. Subject to that one hope, we welcome the Bill and what the Government propose to do in Committee on Clauses 1 and 2. I regret, as do the Government, that it has been necessary on Second Reading to say that the Bill will not be the same Bill as that to which the Government are asking the House to give a Second Reading, but I ask my hon. Friends and my hon. and learned Friends to bear with both sides on that. I do not think that it was avoidable. I hope that the fact that that unusual situation has arisen will not prejudice anyone against what is proposed, because I think that what is proposed will result in a very real improvement in the law. Accordingly, I am very happy to support the Second Reading of the Bill.

This Bill, originally introduced in another place, was based, as the Minister has said, upon the draft Bill which emerged from the deliberations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, set out in Cmnd. 6733. It was the consideration given by a very powerful Committee to the necessity of dealing with Section 16(2)(a) of the Theft Act 1968, which was described in the case of the Queen v. Royle as a "judicial nightmare". Cases brought under this Act have illustrated that this criticism is well justified.

On Clauses 1 and 2 of the original Bill, the recommendations made by the Committee were, as we have heard, materially altered as a result of Divisions in another place, and we now have the present Clauses 1 and 2, which were substituted. I readily agree that in some respects the original clauses presented some real difficulties. I was troubled, for instance. by the words in Clause 2(1)(b):

"in order to make permanent default."

I have doubts about the way in which these words would be understood and interpreted by a jury.

I am all in favour of simple language being used so that a layman, who is supposed to know the law, will understand the position. But as was said in another place, simplicity can be bought at too great a price, and brevity is not synonymous with clarity.

I have read the arguments used by the mover of the amendments in another place which resulted in the present form of Clauses 1 and 2. I have also read the speech made by Lord Edmund-Davies, the chairman of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. I feel that it is exceedingly important that when the Bill is considered in Committee in this House, careful attention should be given to the arguments on each side.

It seems to me that much more attention should be paid to what I believe are exceedingly persuasive grounds put forward by the chairman of the Committee in calling for the retention of the original draft. After all, it was the product of a specialist Committee of exceptional ability and knowledge. I am very glad, therefore, to hear that the Minister proposes to put forward in Committee a new clause which the Criminal Law Revision Committee has dealt with, and I hope that that will be considered in the light of the criticisms that have been made.

There is, however, one further point that I would raise which calls for consideration. In the case of the Queen v. Rigg, decided in 1892, it was held that an attempt to pick an empty pocket was an offence. That decision was followed for many years. In Haughton v. Smith, in 1973, however, it was held that an attempt to dispose of stolen goods where goods were in the possession of the police was not an offence, and in Partington v. Williams, in 1976, it was held that there was no offence where the defendent looked into a wallet and would have taken the money until he found that the wallet was empty. These cases, among others, have effectively overruled the decision in the Queen v. Rigg.

I understand from many discussions that I have had with magistrates that they often have cases of that nature and that they are constrained to advise defendents in such cases to plead not guilty.

Command 6733 says, on page 9, that

"If a man's intentions are dishonest from the beginning of a transaction and he practises a deception on his victim, the nature of the offence committed depends upon the nature of the benefit which the rogue is seeking to obtain."

The would-be thief should not escape punishment because the benefit was not there to be obtained. This is a good opportunity to deal with a point which I understand has troubled many magistrates. I hope that it will receive consideration in Committee.

I assume that Clause 3 covers that type of offence which is alleged to be shoplifting—alleged by two categories of shopkeeper. The first comprises those shopkeepers who reduce staff until it is almost impossible to find a cash desk in operation and there are long queues at those which are. The second comprises those shopkeepers who deliberately tempt customers to purchase and also accidentally tempt them to steal attractive and expensive goods.

Both types of shopkeeper expose shoppers to two risks—that of yielding to temptation and that of absent-mindedly taking goods without payment. There are many examples in one's mailbag of this type of case. I hope that we shall be told that the Government will at a later stage look into this serious problem and do something to remove a great deal of suffering among innocent people.

Clause 6 extends the provisions of the Bill to Northern Ireland. Once again, we express our satisfaction at the inclusion rather than the exclusion of Northern Ireland. Admittedly, a special type of mechanism is employed, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) explained on 23rd May, we are prepared to accept such a device on the basis of the understanding which he then set out and which was accepted by the Minister from the Northern Ireland Office.

We have no criticism of the Bill, although I expect that hon. and learned Members, with the benefit of their detailed legal knowledge, will have points to put forward which have escaped me. Broadly, however, the Theft Act 1968 and its parallel, the Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969, contain the same major defect, which the Bill seeks to remedy.

It might be asked why we do not have a simple application clause to extend these provisions to Northern Ireland, but I understand that in that case the text of the change in the law would appear in the United Kingdom statutes instead of in the Northern Ireland statutes, alongside the Northern Ireland Act of 1969. Such a complication would create unnecessary difficulties for law practitioners in Northern Ireland. I have no doubt that they could eventually overcome those difficulties, but perhaps at additional expense to their clients.

Because of the existence of Clause 6, we representatives from Northern Ireland can legitimately debate the Bill and its application to Northern Ireland. However, the House will be relieved to know that political and legal opinion in Northern Ireland welcomes the proposed alterations. I have received no adverse comment, and such views as I have obtained from legal and lay persons have been favourable. I conclude by expressing our support for this legislation.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to be called to speak in this debate following the remarks of the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux). I am not sure whether he is a qualified lawyer.

No, I am not.

That is good. He was the first non-lawyer to speak in the debate, since the Minister is a qualified solicitor and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) and the hon. and learned Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) are eminent Queen's Counsel. It was interesting that the hon. Member for Antrim, South assumed—I think with every justification—that the Bill was intended in some way to deal with or relate to the problems of shoplifting.

The hon. Gentleman will notice that the Long Title refers to

"An Act to replace section 16(2)(a) of the Theft Act".

Therefore, what ground does the hon. Gentleman have for taking such a view?

I have been on my feet for only a minute. I was referring to the remarks of the hon. Member for Antrim, South and I was making the point that he felt that something in the Bill was in some way connected with shoplifting. When the hon. Gentleman mentioned that matter, the Minister of State grimaced.

What does the hon. Gentleman make of the side note "Making off without payment"? Surely that is a vindication of what we are both saying.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We are here tonight discussing a piece of legislation, and the Minister of State used the phrase "a matter of parliamentary intention". It is clear to the two non-lawyers who have taken part in this debate that our reading is different from the view taken by those in the debate who are legally qualified. I am explaining why I am speaking in this debate, and I apologise to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport, who is on the Opposition Front Bench, and to the Minister for objecting to the proposition that the Bill should be taken in a Second Reading Committee upstairs. I believe that the Bill as amended in another place could be construed to be designed to deal with certain aspects of shoplifting.

The Minister has clearly said that he wants to throw out the amendments that were made to the original Bill in another place. I hope that I shall have the agreement of the Chair that I am entitled to make my speech on the Bill as presented to the House in the Vote Office and not in relation to the Bill as it may be amended in Committee upstairs. On that basis, I wish to deal with one or two points in the Bill rather than to discuss matters on which I am not qualified to comment relating to the deliberations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. Some of us who are non-lawyers can examine pieces of legal legislation, if I may so term them, through different eyes from those used by qualified lawyers.

The changed Bill, in Clause 2(1)(a), uses the expression "dishonestly evades". That begs the question of what is dishonest evasion. In order to find a text for my speech tonight, I went to the Library and turned to the dictionaries and in "Webster's Third New International Dictionary", under the heading "Dishonest", I found a quotation from that well-known American social critic and teacher Mr. Lewis Mumford. He said:

"While it would be dishonest to gloss over this weakness, one must understand it in terms of the circumstances that conspired to produce it".

This is where I relate my remarks to the point made by the hon. Member for Antrim, South. What, indeed, is "conspiring" to produce an increase in theft in general and in shoplifting in particular? We must not just look at the law as it affects these matters but we must look at the activities of those who were referred to by Mr. Mumford as conspiring to produce it.

The advent of self-service stores has been the greatest single factor in causing the increase in shoplifting that this country has ever known. The phrase has been used "the deliberate creation of temptation". I agree with this. Of course, if one sets out deliberately to encourage people to help themselves, one should not be surprised when they do just that. Therefore, what is the role of the owners of these chains of supermarkets in the increase in thefts and shoplifting which has taken place over the past 15 to 20 years?

The owners will, of course, deny to their dying breath that their trading methods have anything to do with the increase in theft. In fact, so adamant are they that they have now set up a propaganda organisation—the Association for the Prevention of Thefts in Shops—which is chaired by an eminent Member of another place. This organisation seems to spend a considerable amount of its time scouring through the newspapers dealing with points that I have made about theft and shoplifting and refuting them. But I believe that the Bill as presented to us tonight could be misused, certainly in a way not intended by Parliament.

Clause 3(1) of the Bill relates to what I have been saying. It refers to a person who

"knowing that payment on the spot for any goods supplied or service done is required or expected from him, dishonestly makes off without having paid as required or expected".

Many people have been to Marks and Spencer and have scratched their heads trying to find where, how and when they should pay. I am grateful to have the nodded support of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson), who probably will be embarrassed by what I am saying, but any of us who are remotely in touch with our constituents know that a significant number of people get caught and ensnared and find themselves on serious criminal charges of theft or shoplifting directly as a result of the trading methods of self-service stores and modern shopping methods. I ask the Minister to accept the point that it is not the law's fault but is in many cases the store's fault.

Another part of the Bill that is extremely topical is Clause 3(4). In today's newspapers, the Home Secretary is reported as having made a speech to a meeting of the International Professional Security Association. In today's edition of The Guardian, there is the phrase

"the infiltration of criminals into private security companies."

This must be a cause of alarm, particularly when related to Clause 3(4), which says:

"Any person may arrest without warrant anyone who is, or whom he, with reasonable cause, suspects to be, committing or attempting to commit an offence under this section."

It is relevant to ask whether the Government believe that that clause in the Bill could not be misused by people acting on behalf of security companies. According to the chairman of the International Profession Security Association, who was reported in The Guardian today, he would welcome a system of registration for personnel and companies to maintain high professional standards. The association's journal, "Security Protection", says:

"even the best public relations cannot conceal the fact that far too many villains have found their way into the murkier sides of our industry, causing untold mischief."

The Home Secretary was right to be worried about the activities of some security companies and about the so-called store detectives who may well find this clause of great benefit to them. What training is required of a store detective as far as the law is concerned? The answer is "None". How can one measure the productivity of a store detective? The answer is self-evident. If the store detective is unscrupulous—particularly one employed by one of the smaller security companies rather than by a large store—I am sure that many people will know perfectly well what I am getting at.

I have no wish to destroy or oppose the principles behind the Bill, but I hope that the Minister of State will not mind if I say that I think we are entitled to probe a little further. If I am fortunate enough to find myself on the Committee, I should like to have the opportunity to suggest one or two admendments to the Bill. They may or may not be selected. We shall have to wait and see.

Is it possible that we should be considering warnings, or fines on the spot? Could these be considered for incorporation in the Bill? I understand that warnings are common in juvenile courts and that thereafter a warning can be entered on a person's record but that this is rarely done in the case of adults. I wonder why it is considered appropriate to enter on the record of a juvenile the fact that he has received a warning for an offence when that is not done in the case of an adult? Perhaps this could be explored.

Fines on the spot may be relevant to supermarkets. There is no need to pretend that there is not a high proportion of rogues operating in supermarkets. Fines on the spot were the subject of discussion recently on the Transport Bill, I understand that the Home Office was alarmed at the proposals which were inserted in Committee and that the Government, having agreed to support the proposals for spot fines, subsequently removed the relevant clause from the Bill.

I remind the Minister that Clause 288(a) of the Customs and Excise Act 1952—with which I am sure he will be immediately familiar—makes provision to allow Customs officers to fine people on the spot. The effect of that legislation is to enable people to pay a fine for not being taken to court. Perhaps this is an idea that we ought to explore further within the ambit of this Bill.

The Minister knows about research being undertaken into shoplifting in my constituency. Indeed, the Home Secretary has been kind and courteous enough to take an interest in it. Together with three magistrates who live and work in or near my constituency, we have set up a study group to look into the question of shoplifting and the methods employed by stores in apprehending people. We have had meetings with lawyers, police, probation officers, security companies, store detectives, security officers and many other people, as well as with many people who have been involved in allegations of shoplifting.

We are extremely perturbed about the trading methods of the stores and about the methods of apprehension used by some of these so-called store detectives. We believe that there is a need for a code of practice in dealing with these matters. I am concerned that some aspects of the Bill could be misused in a way that is not intended.

I have no intention of seeking to oppose the passage of the Bill, but I hope that the Minister will bear with me if in Committee I have the opportunity to raise some of these matters in more detail.

I shall lay rather less stress than my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) did on the possibility of amending the Bill in order to secure the object which both he and I have in mind. I am not sure that what we wish to achieve can be effected by amending the legislation but, with due respect to what the Minister of State said about the relevance to the Bill of what we are saying, I believe that to any layman the Bill, and particularly Clause 3, clearly covers a case of shoplifting.

Our debates here are not just debates between legal experts arguing the niceties of law; they are also debates between laymen who take a less expert view of these matters and in which they seek by their contributions not merely to amend the law but to affect the climate of opinion in which the law operates. It is to that end that I shall be directing my brief remarks rather than to making suggestions about the way in which the law can be amended.

If I am fortunate enough to serve on the Committee, and if it is possible to devise amendments, I shall certainly wish to support them, but my principal object in this brief intervention is to try to have some impact on the state of public opinion on this matter. If we are fortunate enough to extract a constructive and helpful comment from the Front Bench spokesmen, that will have an even larger impact on that section of public opinion which we are seeking to influence.

I shall not go quite so far as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and Lymington in attacking the self-service stores, although often their arrangements are open to severe criticism. I go part of the way with my hon. Friend in his attack on them, but I am more concerned not with those who are led into temptation by the selling methods of retail stores but with those who, entirely inadvertently, expose themselves to charges in cases such as this. For example, there is the mother who goes out shopping with a small child and who slips something into her shopping bag, or the housewife who suddenly remembers when she gets to the meat counter that she has left the gas on and dashes out. There is also the person who, while queueing at the cash desk, suddenly sees a friend, dashes over to have a word, and clean forgets. It is only too easy to commit by inadvertence something which is a relatively trivial offence for which the penalty is not harsh. I am not suggesting for a minute that the penalties are harsh. But the real punishment is the appearance in court.

There are a great many offences which nowadays one can commit by mistake. One can go through a red light, park in the wrong place, or exceed the speed limit. I see my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) on the Opposition Front Bench. I am well aware that these are offences which from time to time all of us commit. When one commits this sort of offence one is had up in front of the courts and perhaps fined. Perhaps one even has one's licence endorsed. But it is not a matter of disgrace. One's reputation is not thereby ruined. However, if a vicar doing some shopping for his wife and mentally composing his sermon as he goes around the shelves, leaves the store without having paid for a box of matches, he is liable to read in the local paper the following week "Vicar accused of shoplifting" or "Vicar accused of theft from store".

Does my hon. Friend agree that many of the stores quite deliberately use the courts as a deterrent in this way? Therefore, through the massive cost of keeping the courts going, the taxpayer is helping to promote the claim of these stores that they reduce the price of food.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. He has led me on to the next stage of my argument, of which I had lost the thread. I am very concerned about the way in which certain stores use a policy of automatic prosecution in order to reinforce their inadequate security methods. One of the things that bothers me most is the conduct of certain stores. If a charge of shoplifting is brought by a store detective, who may be a person with no qualifications, or a person with a criminal record, certain stores automatically bring a prosecution. I have made several speeches and broadcasts about this sort of activity and a number of cases have been brought to my notice.

Easily the most horrifying case was one about which I shall be specific. It concerns a Mrs. Fairbrother, a lady who lives in Aldershot and who went shopping at the Army and Navy stores in that town. At that time it was Messrs. Whites. Mrs. Fairbrother had been a regular customer there for many years. She was a lady in a delicate state of health, subject to some degree of nervous disability. She tried on a costume, liked it, bought it and put it down to her account. It was packed up for her and she left the shop with this costume in a shopping bag. As she reached her car, waiting in the street outside, where her husband was, she was approached by two detectives, who said "We have reason to suppose that you have stolen something from the store." They turned the shopping bag upside down and out fell the lid of a plastic jar. I believe that the jar and the lid together were worth 45p.

Unbelievably, the Army and Navy stores at Aldershot brought a case against this good lady which went to court. She was conditionally discharged. I found the case so incredible that I was not prepared to believe it. I wrote to the manager of the Army and Navy stores at Aldershot saying "I have had this story reported to me and I just do not believe it. If you will assure me that the circumstances are not as told to me, I will drop the matter." I had no answer. I know that the manager received my letter because he wote to Mr. Fairbrother saying that I had been in contact and was seeking to exert pressure on him over the matter.

If these remarks of mine receive any publicity it may provide a further opportunity for the manager of the Army and Navy stores at Aldershot to explain why he decided to authorise so indefensible a prosecution. I do not think that there are many cases like that, although I had a not dissimilar one in my constituency not long ago. Changing the law will not stop such things, but I believe that our debates can do something to prevent such incidents from happening.

There is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and Lymington said, a barrage of propaganda emanating from the organisation chaired by Baroness Phillips, the Association for the Prevention of Thefts from Stores. It is doing a job on behalf of its members. It sends out this barrage of propaganda which tends to cause people to believe that shoplifting is so prevalent, so uncheckable, that the courts ought to do everything in their power to stamp it out, even if that involves injustice to the individual.

Has my hon. Friend noticed how the Association for the Prevention of Thefts from Stores describes goods alleged to have been taken by members of the public as "shoplifting" but describes the event when goods are taken by members of staff as "shrinkage"?

Order. I have allowed a great deal of latitude to the hon. Member. Most of his remarks would have better formed the subject of an Adjournment debate. I do not think that we can pursue this matter of the trading methods of certain shop owners in great detail.

I do not believe that we would safeguard the public by amending the law. I do believe that we can achieve something by attempting to change the climate of public opinion, by attempting to influence the attitude of the courts, by attempting to influence the attitude of the police in bringing prosecutions and, above all, by putting moral pressure on stores to consider each case and decide whether prosecution is justified instead of resorting to the totally unjustifiable policy of automatic prosecution. It is because Clause 3(1) tends to give some encouragement to the point of view that automatic prosecution is justifiable that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and Lymington and I will seek to examine this provision rather more carefully in Committee.

I am not sure whether the Bill is an optical illusion, but I know that I came prepared to deal with it and that a large part of it has disappeared. I suppose that that is one way of keeping my speech short.

In general terms I welcome any attempt to clarify this area of judicial nightmare. I have had only a glimpse of the clauses and no opportunity to digest them, let alone study them. Therefore, I am not in a position to criticise what they may or may not do. However, I shall make one or two points that I believe are of general application to the debate.

It is a shame that there are not more hon. Members present. It is a pity that the debate will not take longer. It is not my intention to delay the House, but we are dealing with the boundaries of criminality. If we are not careful, the judges will tend to make the law and to say what is criminal and what is not. It is when the boundaries of criminality are to be discussed that the laymen in the House should be in the Chamber taking part in the debate.

The Minister referred to the width of existing legislation, which he suggested might be narrowed by the Bill's provi- sions. He gave the example of the housewife who gives some sort of excuse, which is a deception, to delay the payment of a just debt. The hon. Gentleman thought that that should not be criminal. I beg leave to differ. There might be a fair number of other hon. Members who have a different view, but if we are to make that distinction and to say that someone who does something deliberately dishonest by way of deception should not come within the bounds of the criminal law, we might as well open up many other areas of the criminal law. For example, let us take the case of someone who is guilty of a crime who takes a step towards the doing of that act and changes his mind. Morally, he may be less to blame than the housewife who seeks only to gain a temporary pecuniary advantage or delay.

There is a valid argument that may be put in opposition to the hon. Gentleman's point, namely, that the concept of permanent deprivation is already included in the law of larceny. For example, it may be that a person takes property without intending permanently to deprive the owner. Therefore, he is not guilty of an offence under Section 1 of the Theft Act. The distinction is already made. We are not seeking to introduce a new provision.

I am not suggesting that it is new. However, once the intent permanently to deprive is established, the fact that the person's mind is subsequently changed, perhaps even moments afterwards, is not a defence to the criminal offence of dishonesty. I do not seek to delay the House over this rather abstruse point of argument on which I have caught myself. There is the wider and more important point that there comes a stage when we are talking about dishonesty and when ordinary people, not lawyers, should be drawing the line.

For that reason, when the Minister makes a statement as though it is handed down from the High Court Bench, as well it might in some circumstances have been, it is something about which ordinary people, represented by ordinary non-lawyers in the House, might well want to form a view. It is dangerous when debates such as this take place in the House and only lawyers or those concerned—I say this with great respect—with one narrow aspect of the Bill, which may or may not be rightly founded, take an interest and take part. The boundary of criminality is everybody's interest.

The second general point is that the Bill is necessary because of the over-complexity of the law which has been built up not by a patchwork process but because, when the academics, the judges, the Law Commission, the Criminal Law Revision Committee and the lawyers got at it, they still could not get it right in the Theft Act 1968. With all the commentaries that have appeared from learned academics on the working of Section 16(2), it was only in the last few days that the Criminal Law Revision Committee had another look at it because the House of Lords made, as it sometimes does—perhaps deliberately—nonsense of the Bill.

This endless definition and redefinition may have stopped with this clause. I do not know. However, I have never understood why it is so simple in the Theft Act for the ordinary layman, who has to know what the law is, as the hon. and learned Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) said, to understand what theft is. He can look at the section which defines it, the sections which follow and explain what is meant when one dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention permanently to deprive, and see what the punishment is. All is clear and simple. If the ordinary person wants to know what constitutes burglary, aggravated burglary, taking and driving away, blackmail, and so on, and the penalties, they are all perfectly clear in the Theft Act. But in the case of fraud, for some reason it becomes muddled, unclear and intensely untidy.

I have never understood why we could not define our deception offence very broadly by saying that where somebody deliberately—that is, dishonestly, not accidentally—deceives another by what he says or does, as a result of which deception he gains something to which he has no right and the other person loses, that is an offence. It would and could be seen to cover reduction of debts, deferment of debts, services and a whole catalogue of offences.

When all is said and done, those who most frequently have to try the issue in serious cases are juries. Juries cannot be taken to understand what judges cannot understand—the complexities of the law. A juryman asks himself "Is this action dishonest? Has that person dishonestly said something as a result of which somebody has lost and he has gained?" That decides the issue.

It has never suited the conduct of our criminal law for these complexities to proliferate. The end result has been for judges—never mind the juries who acquit on countless occasions whenever there is a Section 16 type of offence because they do not understand what the lawyers are talking about—to say "Here is an offence which clearly has been committed, an offence for which Parliament no doubt intended there to be a criminal sanction but I do not understand it. It is not my job to administer to a jury a law which I do not understand." There have been countless acquittals of the guilty because of the preoccupation with over-definition and the lack of clarity that results.

I shall want to look at the clause with great care to see that it does not proliferate unnecessary complexity and definition to any degree at all. Not only does the law have to be clear to judges and lawyers who advise; it must be clear to ordinary people. They must know what the law is and what they may and may not do. They must know not only so that they can avoid criminal wrongdoing but so that they can have confidence that the law is being correctly administered in their names. The whole sorry history of Section 16(2) shows the dangers of going away from that approach.

What I am about to say follows upon the arguments that I have already made about the need for laymen in Parliament to decide the boundaries of criminality and the need for ordinary people to be able to understand the law thoroughly, but it is a point that has occurred to me only since I heard my hon. Friends raise the matter this evening. It involves shoplifting. The Minister knows that there is no intention to use Section 16(2) in a shoplifting case. I and my hon. Friends now know that there is no intention to use it, but Parliament's intention is not studied by the judges or by those who settle indictments or charges.

It reminds me of the story of the postman who goes to a house and sees a sign on the gate saying "The clog only barks". The postman will not go in. The housekeeper comes out and asks "Have you not seen that notice? Why do you not come in? The dog only barks." The postman replies "I know that, and you know that, but has the dog seen the notice?"

Unless there is some clarification to put the matter beyond doubt so that the layman knows as well as the solicitor who might frame a charge that there is no scope intended by Parliament for the use of that section in any shoplifting case, there will not be the clarity and the simplification of purpose for which the Minister is striving as much as other hon. Members.

I am sorry that we have not had more opportunity to study the new clause. I blame no one. I am surprised that what appears to have been achieved in a few days has not been achieved in years to clarify the section on deception. I shall look at the new provision with care and hope that it approximates to simplicity and clarity and reflects the needs of ordinary people.

With the leave of the House, I should like to answer some of the questions which have been asked in the debate. The hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) speaks with all the confidence that led Parliament to get it wrong last time. I cannot understand the ease with which he thinks that issues can be resolved in the interval between scrapping one speech and writing another. His attitude is a recipe for error. I ask the hon. Member to reconsider his argument.

When I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley), I was not questioning his right to make a Second Reading speech. As a mark of my seriousness, I shall deal with the case made by him and by the hon. Member for Flint, West (Sir A. Meyer). I have dealt with this on a number of occasions, and they have taken it up with one of my ministerial colleagues. In answer to the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux), the hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington said that it was entirely reasonable for it to be thought that Clause 3 dealt with shoplifting, and the hon. Member for Burton seemed to accept that. On reflection, however, I believe that he will revise his view. If he considers Section 16 of the 1968 Act, he will see that we are talking about obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception. In other words, shoplifting is dealt with under Section 1 of the Theft Act.

We are now dealing with the case known as bilking, which, for example, is the consumption of a meal and the evasion of payment for it. Another example which readily springs to mind is where a person fills his tank with petrol and leaves without the attendant being able to stop him in time to exact payment. Shoplifting is a charge under Section 1 of the Act and is dealt with by the need to prove dishonesty in the taking as much as in any other part of the Act.

The hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) and I have read Clause 3(1) separately and we reached our conclusions without collusion. In view of what the Minister said, will he make it clear beyond peradventure that the Government do not intend that the Bill, which will replace Section 16 of the Theft Act, will in any way be used, or should be used by the courts, to deal with shoplifting cases? Will he give that assurance and bring in an amendment in Committee to this effect?

Will the Minister explain why the subsection contains no reference to Section 16(2) of the Theft Act? There is a reference to it in the Long Title, but there is none in the subsection. Anyone looking at the Bill would think that this was an independent piece of legislation standing on its own feet.

The hon. Gentleman is entering the realms of fantasy. One does not amend a Bill by quoting in the new section the section that is being repealed. That is a patent absurdity. We may not all be lawyers, but we are all legislators, and I wish that some hon. Members would understand the process of legislation a bit better than they appear to do at the moment.

The hon. Member for Christchurch and Lymington made an important point. The framing of charges is not a matter for the Government. I shall check this point between now and Committee, but at the moment I have no evidence that the previous section was used in shoplifting cases. I therefore have no doubt that the new provisions will prove no more redolent of such charges.

Both hon. Members made what amounted to a massive indictment of private enterprise in terms which, though I was reluctant to pass up the chance, I could not aspire to. We should not fall into the error of saying that because some people are wrongly charged—I confess that that must be so in some cases, because, of those who are charged with shoplifting and plead not guilty, 48 per cent. are acquitted—we can then proceed from that simple premise to the opposite conclusion of saying that no one is rightly charged. There are massive thefts which are dishonest in intent, and a prosecution policy is therefore necessary where it is proved that there is dishonesty and dishonest intent.

The Home Office research unit is presently engaged in collecting information about the policy of stores towards shoplifting, with the aim, once it has collated the information, of making comparisons and drawing general conclusions from it, in the hope that firms will themselves draw therefrom certain lessons as to their own prosecution policies and will not needlessly invoke the criminal law. As I have said in answer to the hon. Member for Burton, I draw a line between what is a matter of recompense and what is a matter of true criminality.

In addition, as both hon. Gentlemen will know, since they have heard about this many times, the working party on shoplifting which the Home Office set up has made a number of recommendations to the major stores and has taken up with the major stores certain suggestions—for example, the suggestion about having parking areas for bags and so on in order to avoid mistake.

Perhaps it will go some way towards showing hon. Gentlemen that I take their point seriously if I say that I hope that no store or chain of stores will concentrate merely upon the apprehension of shoplifters in isolation from a review of their own trading practices so as to avoid the needless prosecution, the prosecution which occurs by accident. I hope that that assurance will satisfy hon. Gentlemen on that point.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke New- ington (Mr. Weitzman) dealt with the question of the impossible attempt, impossible because the pocket or the wallet is empty. I have to tell him that the Law Commission is at the moment reviewing the law on attempts, and it will form a natural part of that review that the Law Commission should consider the cases of Rigg and Haughton v. Smith. But I shall see that my hon. and learned Friend's words are passed on to the Law Commission so that it pays due attention to them.

The hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) invited me to commit Clause 2 to the scrutiny of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. I have to tell him that I think that, at the stage we have now reached, it is probably too late. The next meeting of the CLRC does not come until 16th June, and, with the complexity of Clause 2, I believe that it would be impossible for the Committee to deal with it in the time available.

However, the Clause 2 which we intend to put back into the Bill is the Clause 2 which was drafted by the CLRC itself, so that it has had not only the advantage of that Committee's initial consideration—I accept that it can have second thoughts, just as anyone else can—but the advantage of having been commented on by all those interested parties who were invited to comment upon the report of the working party. Although complex, the clause is the result of all that consideration.

On the question of timing, will the Minister say something about how the implementation of the Bill will fit in with the work of the Law Commission on cheques and bankers' cards? Clearly the two are related, and some people have thought that there was little point in changing the law on deception until the Law Commission had produced some proposals on cheques and bankers' cards.

The hon. Gentleman is referring to the more general study by the Law Commission on conspiracy to cheat and defraud. If there were some people who did not think that there was much point in altering Section 16 in advance of that more general review, they were not members of the Law Commission itself, because the Law Commission said that there was urgent need to modify Section 16(2)(a) in advance of its study, and the Law Commission is quite content with the terms in which it is proposed. I hope that that is of some assurance to the hon. Gentleman. There are some interesting points to be made in Committee.

I come back to the central theme of the Bill. Section 16(2)(a) of the Act combines confusion of the law with confusion of the judiciary. Confusion of the judiciary will lead to confusion of the public because we are in an extremely complex era.

The hon. Member for Burton said that certain crimes are easily encompassed and conceived. However, when one is considering deception one is considering evolution in human behaviour. Frauds become more complex. One has only to read the reports of the trials to see how much more complex commercial life has become and, therefore, how much more complex the frauds upon commercial life have become.

It is not always easy to encapsulate concepts, however easy they are to imagine, in words which will cover every eventuality. I hope that the House wants to cover every major eventuality. We do not want the measure some years later to prove to be so inherently rickety that the House of Commons has to consider it again and amend it. By passing a Bill the terms of which the Government will commend to the Committee, the House will do a great deal to stop up loopholes in the law and to cover the cases which it ought to cover—those of permanent dishonesty.