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

The Bill comes before us in its original form without any Amendment, and I hope I may be forgiven for saying that that might be some relief to the House when we recall the Amendments to another Bill which we have been discussing this week. I should like to draw attention to one or two matters discussed in the Standing Committee and to one or two Amendments which were suggested. The first related to Clause 5, which gives power to the Council of the Society to register as pharmaceutical chemists those who have obtained a proper university degree; and gives them power to do that without having to ask the university degree holder to take another examination.

It was suggested that, as the examination held by the universities was of an admittedly higher standard than that of the Pharmaceutical Society, any student who had taken all the subjects and passed in them but had failed to gain the total aggregate marks necessary to obtain a degree should, likewise, be exempted from taking the Society's examination. As I think the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) put it, it was equivalent to the old and well-known qualification, "Failed B.A. Hyderabad University." This is no reflection on a "Failed B.A. Hyderabad University" or any other university. It was felt that it would raise a number of difficulties if this were accepted, and the Amendment was not pressed.

The other Amendment related to fees chargeable by the Society. There are four main types of fee which cover registration and annual retention. It was suggested that the personal fee, the annual retention fee paid by the individual pharmaceutical chemist, on which there was a maximum of£2, should be retained at that amount, and the registration fee should be raised. The matter was discussed at some length and arguments were deployed both for and against. Eventually the Amendment was not accepted. The result is that the Bill is unaltered.

I consider that I was extremely fortunate in the Ballot in my first few days as a Member of this House. My fortune was all the more remarkable because as a rule in other kinds of ballots and draws which might entitle me to considerable tax-free emoluments I am not so lucky. I was also extremely fortunate in taking over this Bill which I think the House will agree is a good tidying-up Measure which will be of considerable benefit to the pharmaceutical profession as a whole. I should not like it to be thought that I am in any way trying to take credit for the Measure. It is almost entirely the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead). aided by the Society of which he is the distinguished secretary, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health and her able staff.

As this Measure is the work of so many people, as it is one for which I can claim no credit except that of acting as its mouthpiece, and as it is bound to benefit many people in the profession. I can recommend it to the House for approval with the utmost confidence.

I beg to second the Motion.

I am sure that the whole House will welcome the Bill which, although a domestic one mainly sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Society, tidies up the matter of the two registers which formerly operated for pharmaceutical chemists and chemists and druggists. I certainly think that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) is too modest in disclaiming all responsibility for the success which has attended his efforts to carry this Bill through its various stages.

As he has said, within a few days of entering this House he was successful in the Ballot. I am sure that all hon. Members would wish to congratulate him on successfully piloting this Bill. He had to delve into many old Acts and Charters and various Measures of legislation in order to familiarise himself with the matter so as to be able and ready, as indeed he has been, to deal with any questions. We congratulate him on his success, especially in the Committee stage.

I should like to say a few words about one matter discussed by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) in Committee. The Bill was sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Society as a domestic measure dealing solely and exclusively with the professional qualifications, conduct and registration fees of their professional members, and I crossed swords with the hon. and learned Member in Committee when he sought to add to the Bill power to abolish the statutory limit of£3 as the registration fee for premises. Opinion in the Committee was divided on the subject, but I did not seek at the time to discuss the merits of the£3 registration fee on premises. I held then, and I still hold, that in a domestic measure promoted by professional members of the Pharmaceutical Society, it would be inappropriate and outside their province to introduce any matter which would require negotiation and consultation with non-professional bodies, in many cases limited companies, and would also require very much wider consultation with the Home Office.

We have been in consultation both with the Home Office and with the Privy Council to see whether they share our view on the domestic nature of the Bill. They accept that, as a Private Member's Bill, it is appropriately confined to matters relating to the domestic organisation and the professional members of the Pharmaceutical Society and that it rightly limits its terms to its effect on the individual pharmacists as professional men and does not seek to enter into the affairs of limited companies or, indeed, the registration of premises.

Or the 1s. prescription.

Nor into that. A point made by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee was that, had the suggested addition been made, there would have been great danger of the limited companies, by virtue of paying higher subscriptions, demanding a voice in the professional running and conduct of the Pharmaceutical Society, which at the moment they have not. That was the overriding principle which decided the majority of hon. Members against any such addition.

I wanted to clarify the point and to make it clear that there has been no lack of consultation but that we believe that, quite rightly and properly, the Bill is limited to the professional members of the Society. As such it has the full support of the Ministry. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe on the expedition with which he has conducted the Bill through the various stages.

I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall). He was exceedingly lucky in his success in the Ballot so soon after entering the House, but lucky generals and lucky Members of Parliament nevertheless often deserve praise. This is a Private Member's Bill and a good Bill, as many Private Members' Bills are. I know how often on Fridays, when I was at the Home Office, we discussed good work which had been done by private Members.

In view of the fact that we have so many other Bills on the Paper today and that we have had a tiring week, I hope no one will take advantage of the fact that we are so few in number, and that so many are probably resting, by counting us out. This is a good Bill, which I welcome.

rose—

The hon. Member seconded the Motion. He can speak again only by leave of the House, but I have no doubt that the House will grant him that leave.

I was under the impression that it was possible formally to second and to reserve one's speech until later, but I gladly claim advantage of the leave which the House has accorded me. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) has said, I have an interest in the Bill as one of the secretaries of the Pharmaceutical Society, and it would not be appropriate to allow the Third Reading to take place without my taking the opportunity, both personally and on behalf of the Society, of thanking my hon. Friend and the Parliamentary Secretary and her staff for their co-operation.

This is a small Bill when seen against the national background but an extremely important Bill against the background of the Pharmaceutical Society. If the Bill is passed, I hope that a further stage will be taken, with the good will of the Privy Council and the Ministry of Health, to consolidate the present Pharmacy Acts, which are scattered about in bits and pieces through 100 years of legislation. I hope the Bill will be a contribution towards such consolidation.

Both the Parliamentary Secretary and my hon. Friend dealt with an important point which was raised in Committee— the extent to which corporate bodies should have a voice in the affairs of the Pharmaceutical Society. I was very glad that, after deliberation upstairs, the Committee decided that it would be wise as far as possible to keep the Society what it was intended to be—namely, a professional society of individual practitioners—and not a mixed organisation partly representing corporate bodies and partly representing individuals. As a result, the Bill today is in the same form as that which it took on Second Reading.

I want to make it clear, however, that there is no fundamental difference between the corporate bodies and the individual pharmacists. Some of the discussion in Committee might perhaps have led people to assume that there was a bitter feud. That is far from being the case. Nevertheless, there is a great deal to be said for keeping a professional body restricted to its professional members.

This Bill is linked with the draft of a new charter which is at present before Her Majesty for consideration. It may be valuable to have it on record that it is the hope of the Society that the date of the coming into force of the Bill and the date of the granting of the new charter will be co-ordinated so that there shall be no gap in time between the old provisions and the new provisions.

With those very few remarks and with this expression of gratitude to my hon. Friend, may I say that I hope the House will now be prepared to give the Bill its Third Reading.

It is always a matter for congratulation when any private Member achieves anything in this honourable House, and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) is therefore entitled to his mead of congratulation on this occasion. The Bill deals with pharmacists, a body for whom we all have the highest respect and with whom we all hope to have as little as possible to do in the course of our day-to-day existence.

I venture to hope that the further stages of the Bill will be as happy and succesful as its previous stages. Although I cannot give an undertaking, I hope there will be no series of Amendments in another place which will mean that when the Bill returns here we shall have to discuss a long series of Lords Amendments, which, of course might introduce all kinds of other considerations on which the House would have to express its opinion.

The short debate which we are having would not be complete if one of the few back bench Members present on this side of the House did not add his tribute to the hon. Member for Wycombe and his associates upon the success which has attended their efforts, although it is regrettable but perhaps understandable that so many of the sponsors of the Bill, who added their names to it, are not present to witness the culmination of their efforts. For various reasons they are not present to join in this happy event. I wish the Bill well and I have no doubt that it will lead to many desirable improvements in the domestic and professional affairs of the pharmacists of this country.

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

This is a non-controversial Bill as far as the House is concerned and has the sympathetic support of hon. Members on both sides. Moreover, I have received a great deal of help with the Bill from the most efficient headquarters of the R.S.P.C.A., from the meat trade, and from friends of mine in the National Farmers' Union and, therefore, although points will have to be ironed out in Committee I hope that today the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.

Many people for some time have been under the impression that pigs killed outside slaughterhouses come under the protection of the Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933, but although something like 500,000 pigs, even before the ending of the rationing of feedingstuffs, have been slaughtered annually they do not receive that protection. All that the Minister of Food has been able to do has been to put in a slip of paper with the permit asking that the pig owner shall kill his pig in a humane way. What this Bill proposes to do is to give some legal backing to that slip of paper and give some legal protection to the pig.

I am not an urban Member of Parliament attempting to saddle the countryman with a new, irritating and unreasonable Measure. I represent a large agricultural constituency of which I am inordinately proud, and I am quite sure that the bulk of the pig breeders in my division feel that this Bill places upon them a perfectly reasonable obligation. What is that obligation? It is simply that the pig owner, having decided when he will kill his pig or pigs, must choose whether he will do it himself, or whether a member of his family or one of his employees will do it, or whether he will employ a jobbing butcher or some other expert.

He will probably decide to employ an expert, as the cutting up and treatment of a carcass is an expert job, and a pig carcass can easily go wrong in the process. If, however, he does not do that then he has to arrange to borrow from the most convenient source a humane killer, and if he does not possess a licence under Section 4 of the Firearms Act he has merely got to call at the police station to get it. In so far as both the humane killer and the certificate are concerned he is put to no cost at all.

I am satisfied that there is now an ample supply of humane killers, with local authorities, with sanitary inspectors, with every local representative of the R.S.P.C.A., and, of course, with most butchers. I am also told that there are adequate reserves of instruments and spare parts with all manufacturers. Surely it is fair and reasonable that the pig owner should be asked to take this small amount of trouble to spare his pig from the terror and agony of a painful and protracted death.

Inhumane slaughter does no good to anybody except to the occasional sadist, although I am bound to admit that I was something of a sadist myself up to the age of 10; but it may do a great deal of harm. There are authorities who consider that the eating of tortured and fevered meat leads to troubles and complaints in the human consumer of which now we know little. However, I will not pursue that argument today. There is one thing that is quite certain, and that is that the meat trade and the veterinary service have carried out exhaustive researches and intensive tests which have proved that the carcass of an animal killed by the humane killer is no whit inferior to the carcass of an animal killed in the old-fashioned way, as long as it is rested before slaughter in the proper way and bled immediately after slaughter.

At any rate, the old, cruel idea that a pig must struggle long and vigorously in its death agonies in order to bleed thoroughly and properly has now gone by the board, and should, I think, be relegated to those archives which contain the history and records of drawing and quartering, the ducking stool, and the burning of witches. Therefore, I ask that the House be kind enough to give the Bill a Second Reading.

I beg to second the Motion.

I should like to congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) on the speech he has just made. It was not surprising that the House gave him leave to bring in this Bill, because it is always sympathetic to humane provisions. When he was seeking leave to introduce the Measure, the other day, he made a delightful speech in which he became quite lyrical about the benefits which the pig has conferred on humanity, and I do want not to let this moment pass without bearing in mind the pleasant literary allusions for which the pig has been responsible.

Indeed, as I told my hon. and gallant Friend in one of the small hours of this morning, it was timely and comfortable to remember the words in Pickwick, "You will be finding yourself in bed in something less than a pig's whistle." As more humane methods are advanced we treat the sufferings of animals more and more as though the animals were human beings, yet the paradox is present in this instance: that it is the possibility of the pig being counted out that has the virtue of stunning.

The ordinary British person would be capable himself of wishing and desiring to secure that no animal he was slaughtering had to endure any unnecessary suffering. I feel some anxiety about enforcement in this matter, because the darkest and direst deeds are done by callous or ignorant persons in remote country places. I think we shall want something more than mere legal provisions to secure enforcement, and I hope that the widest possible publicity will be given to the mischief and the evils against which this Bill is directed so that we can have for enforcement purposes a vigilant and aroused public opinion.

I was particularly glad to hear my hon. and gallant Friend say that provisions have been made to ensure that the right —1 almost said "offensive weapon," but here the phrase is "mechanically operated instrument"—is freely and easily available so that no one can have any excuse for being brutal on the ground that he could not get hold of the right weapon to ensure there was no suffering.

One of the joys of Friday is the versatility of the House of Commons. From looking at today's Order Paper and seeing set out there Orders for the Road Transport Lighting (Rear Lights) Bill, the Pharmacy Bill, this Bill, Her Majesty's Civil Service Appointments Board Bill, the Press Council Bill, the Game (Duck and Geese) Bill, the Death of the Speaker Bill, the Women's Disabilities Bill, the Abortion Bill, the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Bill, it does appear that the House of Commons really can get down to a variety of subjects. I think it is a very good thing that it should. Friday mornings, and particularly during the consideration of Private Members' Bills, provides an opportunity to discuss some of the things the Government perhaps have not time to introduce. I therefore wholeheartedly support the hon. and gallant Gentleman on this Bill.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman and I have something in common. I remember some of his previous speeches about the slaughter of animals, and because of that I am very interested that he should bring this Bill before us this morning. He has in the past, I understand, been a gallant hunter of the wild boar. In remote parts of India and other places he has pursued the wild boar in the chase, which he believes is a quite legitimate way of slaughtering pigs, whilst I, on the other hand, to use an expression that he will not use in the House, have indulged in the cold, calculated slaughter of domestic animals. He and I together are, therefore, to use a very short term, ex-pig stickers, and we have something in common this morning.

Because of my trade associations, this is obviously a matter in which I have always been interested, and my mind goes back to the time of the passage of the Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933. I was not a Member of the House then, but I was deeply interested in what was happening. At that time the meat trade, which by the Act was being compelled to slaughter all animals by mechanical instruments, mechanical stunning, before the actual bleeding, rose in their wrath and had some terrible tales to tell about that Act.

I plead guilty to having gone up and down the country speaking against it, but I am now completely converted. After the years that have passed since 1933 I am confident that the members of the meat trade at that time were very shortsighted; and I am also confident that no one in the trade of which I have been so long a member would today revert to the old-fashioned methods of slaughtering animals. We have made great advances with the introduction of these new methods. Because of that, I welcome this Bill as a further step towards the welfare of the animals we are compelled to slaughter for human food.

During the war and since we have had the system of self-suppliers. The cottager, the pig breeder or the farmer who has reared a pig for his own purposes, has been permitted by a benevolent Ministry of Food to kill a pig for his own use once every six months. In some places those pigs have been slaughtered by licensed and registered slaughtermen, and there has been no difficulty at all about it. Whilst I would not for a moment go into some of the horrible details of the things I have heard and actually witnessed in rural areas in the slaughter of pigs on smallholdings and the like, I do feel that it is time those people, because of the privilege they enjoy, should come into line with those who do this job professionally. Therefore, the hon. and gallant Gentleman has introduced something of great importance.

As I have said, we have a large amount of important business on the Order Paper this morning, so I do not want to keep the House any longer, except to say that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has rendered a service to the country, and to everybody who is concerned about the well-being of domestic animals, in bringing this Bill before us, and I sincerely hope the House will accord it a very hearty Second Reading without any dissension.

Time passes quicker and quicker, and I suppose that when one gets over 50 it just goes headlong, for it is very difficult for me to think that it is exactly 20 years since I brought in the Slaughter of Animals Act of 1933. That action of mine fulfilled an ambition I had cherished since I was 10 years old when I went into one of these village slaughterhouses and saw a pig being killed and heard its cries.

There were two unfortunate omissions in that Act of 1933. One was that it did not apply to the farmer or the little backyard slaughterhouse, unregistered and sometimes almost unknown. Nor did it apply to a certain kind of slaughter known as "ritual slaughter." This Bill rectifies the first omission, and I imagine that time, and possibly education and greater tolerance, will rectify the second, so that the law will then be as near perfect as possible.

There is one serious complaint that I have to make against my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner), and that is his exclusion of Scotland and Northern Ireland from the beneficial results of this Bill. I have a connection with both, and I therefore take it rather more to heart than I otherwise would. I cannot see why Scotland and Northern Ireland should have been excluded. They are both equally humane, I assume. Or possibly it was thought they were so humane that it was not necessary to bring them within the scope of the Bill. I am giving my hon. and gallant Friend fair warning that one of the Amendments which will be moved in Committee will be to eliminate this gross insult to my two countries in Clause 4 (2).

The hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) said something which needed to be said, that when the main Act was first introduced it was greeted and opposed with violence by the meat trade, largely through ignorance. As we know, and as the hon. Gentleman himself admitted, butchers are by nature conservative.

I am the exception.

Therefore, they rather resented this new style of killing being forced upon them by an Act of Parliament. But, as he says, and as I know from my own experience, the meat trade are now enthusiastic for either the method of electric stunning or the humane killer. It is their co-operation in the implementation of the main Act that has made it such a complete success, and I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the meat trade for their quick acceptance of the humane method and their support of it during the last 20 years. I thank and congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend, and I hope the House will give an unopposed Second Reading to the Bill.

I welcome this Bill from the point of view of the pig keeper-pig producer. It is sometimes forgotten that the pig is a very sensitive animal. Indeed, it can be a very affectionate animal, very easily upset. Rough words to a pig will send it off its food. Pigs are sometimes upset by strangers.

I well remember the first pig my wife and I kept. When the time came to kill it—and it was killed on our own premises —we were in tears. We sent for the licensed slaughterman, and we had to go away for the day. The licensed slaughterman, I hope, did his job humanely, but, at any rate, it was a matter of great concern to us. I am sure that if thought were given to this matter it would be one of great concern to everyone who has ever tried to keep a pig—an animal which today, especially in this country, is doing so much to help the human race.

Perhaps I should declare that I have an interest to disclose, in that I once kept one pig. I then kept two pigs and now I am a sleeping partner in quite a substantial pig fattening scheme. Our pigs go away to a slaughterhouse and to bacon factories. What does worry me sometimes is that they make very long journeys, and we do not always know exactly what happens to them when they have gone away. I think that there is a case for the Parliamentary Secretary trying—and I have written to him about it —to reduce the suffering which pigs sustain in their long journeys, especially by rail.

I was terribly shocked to learn the other day that pigs moved from St. Ives slaughterhouse in my constituency to bacon factories as far north as Lancashire were without food for three or four days of a week. I have had an acknowledgment from my hon. Friend to say that he is looking into the matter. I am sure that this sort of thing causes him and many others great concern. I look forward to the time when that suffering of pigs will also be reduced.

As my hon. and gallant Friend, who has so wisely and gracefully moved this Bill will understand very well, because his local problems are similar to mine, in the rural areas—the rather scattered rural areas—we have not many large slaughterhouses. In my constituency, which, although it is in a small county, is a very large constituency, we have 80 or 90 villages. We have no large slaughterhouses at all. We have one or two small slaughterhouses, and a very great deal has to be done by the butchers and by other people who are licensed as slaughtermen.

I am inclined to think that in most cases the wishes of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) would be respected in that the provisions of his Bill, relating to licensed slaughterhouses, are, through the good offices of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, brought to their notice. I wonder whether it is generally known what wonderful work has been done by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and by the Ministry of Food in ensuring that.

Whenever a licence to kill is received, without any provisions with regard to slaughter—that is in slaughterhouses, and so on—the licence contains a statement which is headed, "Humane Slaughter of Animals." It points out that

"to ensure that the animal is humanely slaughtered you should have it dealt with at a slaughterhouse and if this is not practicable employ a skilled slaughterman. Where a humane stunner is not available, the police will give the address of the nearest inspector of the R.S.P.C.A.. or in Scotland or Northern Ireland of the Scottish or Ulster S.P.C.A. from whom one may be obtained on loan."

In spite of that useful administrative precaution, there must be many cases, nevertheless, in which pigs not killed in slaughterhouses suffer. This Bill if properly enforced, as I hope it will be when it becomes an Act, should reduce that suffering. But there is one exception which does not appear to be covered by the Bill. Perhaps my hon. and gallant Friend can help with an explanation. I will willingly give way to him, or he may prefer to consider it during the Committee stage, but this is the point: as we all know, the little pigs which are poor suckers—all sorts of rude names are given to them; they are called runts, squirts and one could go through the whole vocabulary of names given to them—are knocked on the head. They are sometimes drowned.

I presume that they will have to continue to be knocked on the head or drowned. But then there are the pigs which are a little older. They are not just the poor suckers. They have got beyond that stage. Yet they have not grown to great maturity and we at home call them "poor doers." They ought perhaps to have been knocked on the head at an earlier age, if anyone had noticed they were likely to be "poor doers." These animals are not so easily killed. I am thinking of the six months' old pigs. They are not so easily killed by knocking them on the head with a mallet or something like that, and drowning them would, I think, be very cruel.

I am wondering whether, in Clause 3, the definition of a pig, which includes

"any boar, hog or sow"

is intended to refer to a young pig of about six months which is a "poor doer" because that is very important. If I may make the suggestion, it would perhaps be worth considering in Committee putting in the age of each boar, hog or sow at which the provisions of this Bill have to apply. That, I think, would put the matter beyond doubt.

I am a pig-keeper myself, and I appreciate the point made by my hon. Friend. I think that it is a very good one, but that it had better be left to the Committee stage.

I am very much obliged to my hon. and gallant Friend. Those are the main points.

Now, if I may, I will make an appeal to those outside the House who would be affected by this Bill. I know that our constituents very often think that we waste a lot of time here doing unnecessary things; but I hope that nobody will consider that this Measure is unnecessary. For the most part, people have a great love and respect for animals and treat them kindly but, unfortunately, even in this country, there are some who are insensitive, and we have to impress upon those who are, perhaps not through any reasons of malice but simply because they have not been brought up to think of animals in a sensitive way, that this is not a waste of time; that this is a very necessary Measure to prevent suffering. I should like to join in the congratulations which have been offered to my hon. and gallant Friend.

I must declare my interest at the outset because, like the hon. and gallant Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner), I also breed pigs on a small scale. They are very good pigs, and they go to the bacon factories. That, I hope, will bring a little satisfaction to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food.

The point to which I should like to refer is that raised by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton), who spoke of the desire on the part of all of us to ensure that as little suffering as possible is caused to pigs or to any other animals destined for slaughter. In that desire we all share. He said that unnecessary cruelty is imposed upon pigs in transit from the place where they are reared to the slaughterhouse. It came as a revelation to me to discover that some pigs had to travel such enormous distances. I always make sure that my pigs have to travel only a short distance. The form which is sent to one through the Ministry from the bacon factory, on which the name and address of the factory is disclosed, gives the grading that one's pigs have achieved, and the price that one gets for the pigs depends upon their grading.

In my part of the country the pigs have to travel only a few miles and it can easily be arranged that the pig is in the bacon factory before the end of the day on which it is delivered live to the Ministry of Food agent. I appreciate that the distribution of the bacon factories may not allow that to happen in all parts of the country, but I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give heed to what has been said. It strikes me as curious, that, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon has said, it should be necessary to send pigs all the way from Cornwall or Devon to the North of England.

If I might correct the hon. and gallant Gentleman, the St. Ives to which I referred was that in Huntingdonshire, which should not be confused with the St. Ives in Cornwall. Neverthe- less, it is a long way from the St. Ives in Huntingdonshire to Burnley and Blackpool in Lancashire, where pigs have recently been sent.

In any event, it is a long distance. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food will do whatever he can to ensure that unnecessary cost in transport is avoided and that live pigs are not transported over unnecessary distances, which may entail suffering.

I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Totnes upon the Bill, which will, I hope, help to raise the standard of private enterprise pig-killing in the backward areas of the country. The standard of the more or less public enterprise bacon factory is very high. One can go to such a factory and see exactly what is happening to one's own pig and find out how it is being graded; and I am not aware that anyone has ever had cause for complaint about the way reputable bacon factories conduct their operations on behalf of the Ministry of Food. It is, however, necessary for the private enterprise small scale pig-killers to be brought to higher and more humane standards, and if the Bill contributes to that, it is worthy of the utmost support.

The final words of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Brixton (Lieut-Colonel Lipton) constitute the greatest recommendation for the Bill. It is introduced to eliminate the difference between the humane and proper way in which the great majority of pigs are killed at the knacker's yard and the way in which a small minority are killed in backyards. Several times this week we have heard that the minority, as well as the majority, must be respected, and thus we are today saying a word on behalf of this minority of pigs.

No one knows the exact numbers concerned, but the reports about what happens in backyards where pigs are kept are bad. Statistics show that, in 1951, 372,000 pigs were killed, and that in the first six months of 1952, 215,000 were killed, a rate of nearly half a million pigs a year. Some of these pigs are sent to slaughterhouses and all is well; some are merely knifed, sometimes expertly and sometimes very inexpertly. The really important change is that there will be many more pigs killed in backyards since the announcement of the Government's policy to free feedingstuffs. I have always thought that pigs are the best agricultural product that we can produce in this country. We have no large open spaces to grow all the wheat we want but we have the room to produce pigs, and I am sure that more and more pigs will be kept on small farms and in backyards, and, thus, more will be slaughtered.

Hon. Members have shown great concern about this subject of slaughter for many years. Questions have been asked in the House and letters have been written to the Press. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) has rendered the House a service by introducing the Bill and giving us a chance to make the system what we think it should be.

Reference has been made to the fact that the Government send with the licence to kill a notice about the proper way to deal with pigs. But there is a great difference between advising people what they should do and compelling them to do it in the proper way. Two hon. Members said that they had witnessed the scene of a pig being bled to death. I did that when I was very young, and I can remember to this day the screams I heard on that occasion. This sort of killing is still going on, but I do not want to tell gruesome stories of what happens.

The practice can be prevented. My hon. and gallant Friend said that it is no longer necessary to bleed pigs. He may be right, but I know that an opposite point of view is held by some people. If it is necessary to bleed pigs, one can stun them with a mechanical device and then carry out the bleeding, and I am certain that it is right and proper that this should be done. It may be said that there are no facilities for stunning pigs properly before cutting their throats. If that is so, the pigs can be sent to a slaughterhouse, as many are, and I believe that people should be forced and bound to send the pigs to slaughterhouses if they have not the facilities. There are also alternatives. People can easily borrow mechanical instruments. The R.S.P.C.A. provides them and will deliver them at one's house in order to avoid cruelty. Failing all else, one can hire an expert to kill the pig in the proper manner.

My hon. Friend said that I suggested that it was not necessary to bleed pigs. It is as necessary to bleed them now as it has ever been. My point was that they can be bled just as properly, fully and efficiently after the use of the humane killer as they can be in the old manner. I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend says. I merely wanted to make that point clear.

My hon. and gallant Friend is right. If a mechanical killer is used, the pig can be properly stunned and then bled while it is still alive, if that is supposed to be necessary. Some people may argue that there may be no electricity supply into which one can plug the mechanical stunner. If electricity is not available, surely the pig owners should be bound to send the animals to a slaughterhouse, bring in an expert or seek the help of the R.S.P.C.A. That is not asking too much.

The Slaughter of Animals Act, mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) has worked successfully for 20 years. I have heard no complaints by butchers, bacon manufacturers, trade interests or anyone else, and I join in asking now for its extension to what I choose to call the backyard pig. It is only right and proper that this anomaly should be put right, and my hon. and gallant Friend has given us that chance. I feel sure that the House will agree with him that the Bill should be given a Second Reading.

I, too, welcome the Bill of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner). The hon. Member for Tonbridge (Mr. G. Williams) referred to the rights of minorities and was going off into general political theories. We were reminded by some hon. Members of how like the human being the pig is. Some may recall "Animal Farm" and the remarkable similarities between the pigs and men. Some of the good features are reflected in the animals and some of the bad features, too. It will be remembered how, in "Animal Farm", the rights of minorities were respected when it began with all animals being equal. But before we knew where we were some of them "were more equal than others."

I think we can all agree that pigs themselves amuse us, especially the young pigs, and that that is one of the problems of "the little pig with the curly tail, soft as satin, and pinky and pale," which is "a much more fascinating thing by far than the lumps of iniquity the big pigs are." That, of course, is true.

But the pig does more than amuse us. In the United States especially, medical science is using pigs because of the similarity of their internal organs and those of man. So it is being used more and more by surgeons there. It has been pointed out by those who have spent a lifetime among pigs and mixed with their fellow men, too, that they are externally alike in many ways. I have heard pig breeders describe their fellow men as Large Whites, Saddle Backs, Hampshire Hogs or even Lincolnshire Curly Coats in the case of a particularly fancifully dressed type.

I must deal with two points raised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore). He seemed, first, to be worried about ritual slaughter. I am not an authority on this subject, but it occurs to me that one thing that is impossible is a kosher pig. Therefore, I do not think he need be unduly worried about it. Perhaps I am wrong, but it strikes me as though he were worried unnecessarily.

Secondly, he made a reference to Northern Ireland. He mentioned that during the Committee stage he proposed to put down an Amendment to include Northern Ireland. Before he does that I hope he will consult the Home Office so that a Minister in Committee upstairs can tell us whether the Northern Ireland Government will agree to any such Amendment, because if anything is within the domestic jurisdiction of Northern Ireland surely it is the way they kill their pigs. They have excellent pig factories there, as I have seen for myself, and probably there is as much need for his legislation as there is in England and Wales.

One of the pleasant features of this debate has been the way in which country Members and urban Members have come together in supporting this Bill. The hon. and gallant Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner), who introduced it, spoke from the point of view of pigsticking in India, as reported in the "Field," and my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) spoke from the point of view of pigsticking in Lancashire, as reported in the "Butcher." They have completely different approaches, but both came to the same point: support for the Bill. It is difficult to understand and explain the feelings of a person who will kill an animal in the chase, but will not kill it in cold blood. I myself would shoot a rabbit in a field, but if the rabbit comes into my garden and I have had an opportunity to get to know it I do not shoot it. I think that that generally applies.

Enforcement of the Bill is, of course, the important matter. We can pass the Bill, but its enforcement depends on public opinion. Once it is realised that the instruments are easily available, there will be less difficulty, but a lot depends on education in the more remote areas. The National Farmers' Union and the trade unions can do a great deal. I hope that as the years pass when we come to read Charles Lamb's Essay or, better still, to eat the roast pork we shall do so with a clear conscience. I join in asking the House to agree to give a Second Reading to this Bill.

In a debate where one hon. Member after another takes the same side one is tempted by an imp of mischief to take an opposite view. But in considering this Bill anybody who was against it could be described, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton), as a poor sucker. The hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) described himself and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) as a pair of pigstickers. He was a professional pigsticker and my hon. and gallant Friend an amateur pigsticker. I am very glad that my hon. and gallant Friend is different from another soldier referred to by Mr. Noel Coward in one of his more amusing songs. This soldier got into some trouble not only because his mess bills exceeded his pay, but because he took to pigsticking in quite the wrong way.

It is on that basis of pigsticking in the wrong way that I want to say a word or two, and I want to follow the theme of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon. It is absolutely vital that this Bill should be passed, because we should not be complacent, and think that throughout the length and breadth of the country the present method of slaughtering is as good as it might be. I think we must always look at that, and I was very glad to hear mentioned the question of long distances, because I represent a rural, agricultural constituency, and it is undoubtedly the case that there is suffering there which sometimes, though by no means always, is due to carelessness and it can be eradicated.

I want to talk for a moment or two about what goes on in the slaughterhouse itself. A modern up-to-date one is a very remarkable place. Mr. Pig disappears through the front door. I do not think we can say that we can see his elegant stern disappearing in through the door as the stern of Robert Burns' Cutty Sark disappears through the front door, but the pig enters the factory and in an incredibly short time Mr. Pig is changed into an enormous quantity of commodities ranging from sausages to pigskin wallets.

It is the moment at which it enters that door to which I want to refer. Many hon. Members have mentioned that the pig is a sensitive and highly intelligent animal. Every human being has a definite sense of fear of death, and the more intelligent animals have that fear as well. In some slaughterhouses the method adopted when a pig is brought in could be better. More mercy could be shown to the pig.

As I understand, in some of these places a terrible looking instrument, rather like an enormous sugar-tong, is poked at the pig, among a whole lot of other squealing animals. Once the pig is firmly grasped, he is mercifully despatched. I suggest that it might be easy, in many of these slaughterhouses, to have a kind of corridor—some method which might be described by the way in which hon. Members leave the Division Lobbies, coming out one by one— whereby the pig could be taken to his death without having any anticipation of it, even for a matter of seconds.

My other point concerns the climate of opinion. When my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) introduced his Bill, 20 years ago, I was impressed by the kind of remarks made by the hon. Member for Salford, West. In those days there was a tremendous outcry from butchers, because something new was being done. There is still a feeling among smallholders and farmers that this Measure is not necessary. Only time will prove to them that it is necessary and will convert them, just as the butchers have been universally converted. The Bill has my full support, and I know that it has the full support of every thinking agriculturist.

I do not know what success the Parliamentary Secretary has had, but when I occupied his position at the Ministry of Food there was always strong and consistent pressure to induce me to go into the bacon factories. I was fortunate enough, however, always to be able to plead other more important matters of State, so I never had that experience.

I do not want my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) to prejudice the pig by quoting "Napoleon" and his totalitarian tendencies which upset "Animal Farm." My hon. Friend did not mention the help which the Home Office gave us at the Ministry of Food when we discussed this question with the R.S.P.C.A. We had long discussions with them and were most anxious to go as far as we could to meet them. What we did was to arrange that before any slaughter notice should be given of where the humane killer could be obtained. We tried to make it as convenient as possible to the farmer so that he would make a practice of obtaining a humane killer. We would have gone further had we felt that we were able to do so.

At that time we knew of certain large local authorities which, quite without authority, insisted upon the requirement of the hon. and gallant Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner). I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to accept the proposals which have been put forward, or, if not, that he will explain to the House the difficulties which prevent him from doing so. I think, however, that I can anticipate that, at any rate, the Ministry of Food will be still anxious to go as far as they can in meeting the very understandable point of view of the hon. and gallant Member.

I quite understand the feelings that have prompted my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) to introduce the Bill and the reason so many hon. Members have given him their support. Unfortunately, I do not feel able to give my wholehearted support, because certain difficulties would be created by the present form of the Bill for people in the very rural areas.

In the more rural parts of these islands it would impose a great hardship upon people if they had to bring their pig for slaughter to a place where electricity was available. It has been my experience, and I know from knowledge that I have sought, that when pigs are slaughtered with a humane killer—that is, the animal is actually dead before it is bled—the meat is not of the same quality as when the life slips out whilst the pig is being stunned by an electric stunner.

My hon. Friend cannot have been present during the whole of the debate. Electrical stunning has never been referred to. The question of proper bleeding has been dealt with in great detail.

I heard the two opening speeches and then dashed away for a little luncheon. In Clause 1, however, paragraph (a) says that the pig

"shall be instantaneously slaughtered or shall by stunning …"

Surely my hon. and gallant Friend is not suggesting that the animal should be stunned by someone running around with a mallet. Today all pigs in the bacon factories are electrically stunned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hor-sham (Mr. Gough) was concerned about pigs being stunned in the catching pens of the bacon factories. He will be relieved to know that in Dorset we have modern bacon factories. The pigs walk into a little pen on their own and are there out of sight of their neighbours. They walk in one by one. As each one is stunned, it falls forward, out of sight of other pigs, to the butcher with the knife. The platform is balanced so that it is up and after the animal passes the centre it tips forward.

I am delighted to hear that. It is a model for every slaughterhouse throughout the country and is a triumph of a little commonsense and foresight. Surely, however, my hon. Friend is wrong to read only paragraph (a) of Clause 1. Paragraph (b) says that

"the slaughter or stunning shall be effected by means of a mechanically-operated instrument in proper repair."

Does not that answer my hon. Friend?

My point is that the stunning today is all done by electricity. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] At any rate, my experience and information is that the bacon factories do not use any other form of stunning than electricity. The old method of using a mallet went out a long time ago.

If the Bill goes through without Amendment, a great deal of difficulty will be caused to the people in the more rural areas. Unless the pig bleeds itself out before death, the pork or bacon, into whichever it is converted, will not be of such good keeping quality as when the animal has been properly bled. The use of the humane killer would mean that a great deal of first-class live meat would deteriorate considerably after the animal had been killed.

In view of the fact that the Government have been so successful in removing restrictions and regulations with regard to the keeping of pigs, I think that the Bill in its present form would do much to undo the good work that the Ministry of Food have already done. I hope that if the Bill receives its Second Reading, as doubtless it will, there will be an opportunity in Committee to find the means of giving to people in the rural areas that latitude which would enable them to slaughter their pigs at home if they are a considerable distance from an electric or other stunner, and to enable them to store the valuable pig meat which they will have produced as the result of a great deal of care and attention. I am not going to vote against this Bill, but I hope my hon. and gallant Friend will see whether he can make this a better Bill when it goes to Committee upstairs.

May I first join in the chorus of congratulation to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) for having taken the opportunity presented to him and seeking to do a precise, well defined but an important piece of work still further to minimise the suffering which animals undergo? I doubt whether he could have expected that this subject would have aroused so much poetry, history and, I think, democracy, too, today. I am certain he will get his Second Reading and all I wish to do now is briefly to mention one or two points of difficulty which have to be met if my hon. and gallant Friend is to secure his purpose in a way that can be made really effective.

When the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) was developing his references to the relationship between pigs and men, I was glad, for reasons I need not elaborate, that he did not proceed with the comparison. But when he slipped into the egalitarian theme I was reminded of Arthur Street's little couplet:

" Dogs look up to us,

Cats look down on us,

But pigs is equal."

There are one or two difficulties. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) described this Bill as an extension of the Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933, to the backyard. Broadly speaking, that is true, but there is a not unimportant point to bear in mind. The Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933, particularly excludes pigs where there is no supply of electricity in the slaughterhouse or knacker's yard. What is here proposed is a higher level of security for the backyard pig than applies to pigs slaughtered in the premises covered by the Act of 1933.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Crouch) said that electricity is the method of stunning and spoke as if electricity were the only method. If that be true—if I may so put it in order not to get into that controversy myself—the question would be exceedingly difficult. But I am informed that the captive bolt method is a method commonly employed, and usefully employed where the job is skilfully done, for the purpose of stunning. Therefore, the sweeping argument used by my hon. Friend based on the assumption that the method of electricity is the only method seems to fall to the ground.

I do remember when that method was introduced, but it was not so very successful immediately we got this other form of stunning. I am unaware of any slaughterhouse which is using any other means of stunning than electricity. It is so much more simple.

Perhaps my hon. Friend will take it from me that, after having made inquiries on that point, I find that the captive bolt method is still used and, in certain circumstances, is the method preferred, even in the slaughterhouse.

In the Committee stage of this Bill it will be necessary for my hon. and gallant Friend to define with a little more precision what is meant by a "mechanically-operated instrument." No doubt he will consider the definition in the Act of 1933 which contains words to make clear that the electrical method is included within that definition, but not, of course, to convey that electricity is the only method which would satisfy the words in the Clause here. It must also be made clear that this electrical method and the captive bolt method reduce the amount of suffering only if they are in skilled hands. Let us face the fact that the captive bolt method, the pistol method, can aggravate suffering if it is used without skill.

I am not now seeking to press the point that the slaughter should be conducted only by a licensed slaughterman, although I can see an argument for making that requirement where such services are available. I think we should remind ourselves that it is not enough to require that the mechanically-operated method should be used, nor is it enough to secure that such instruments are available. It is also necessary, if we are to achieve the purpose that all join in praising, to secure that skill is used by the operator.

There is no reference to the authority which is to administer the Act when it so becomes. As matters stand, I imagine it would be the police in the absence of any specific reference. The Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933, is administered by local authorities and there is something to be said for considering whether local authorities should be mentioned in this connection, particularly when we bear in mind the other responsibilities of local authorities in the field of hygiene and the functions which they exercise at approximately the time of slaughter.

While joining in the chorus of praise given to my hon. and gallant Friend from both sides of the House, I am sure he will not misunderstand me when I say that doing good is not a particularly easy thing and that in the Committee stage—which I am sure will follow—it is desirable that certain practical problems and difficulties shall be faced, including those I have mentioned, and no doubt others which will be in the minds of hon. Members. I think he has performed a most useful service. I know that he will agree that the next stage of making certain by facing the practical difficulties involved that this really works and really does reduce the amount of suffering is no less important than the approval of the general objective. I have no doubt the House will give this approval by granting a Second Reading to this Bill.

I hope that the speech which we have just heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food does not mean that when this Bill goes upstairs to a Committee it will receive other than constructive support from the Ministry and any other Department of State that may be interested in it. It would be a pity, on a Bill that starts off with so much good will behind it. if technical difficulties should be piled up to prevent the realisation of the objective which the hon. and gallant Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) has in mind.

I am glad to know that the Parliamentary Secretary is at last discovering that any efforts to do good are confronted with considerable difficulties. I can only imagine that he is now, as a novice, trying to do good after spending so long a time at his Ministry, and has just had this borne in on his mind in a flash. I can only hope that he will persevere in well doing if he can find any good to do there, and not be deterred. We have had a very encouraging debate from both sides of the House, and I hope that the hon. and gallant Member will be able to overcome the difficulties that have been suggested by the Parliamentary Secretary.

I think that it is better that the operation of the Bill should be generally under the supervision of the sanitary inspector of the local authority rather than the police because the police have a great many jobs to do, and a policeman snooping round the backyards might give undesirable notoriety to perfectly respectable people who are perhaps finding some difficulty in complying with all the requirements of the law.

A visit of the sanitary inspector, on the other hand, does not bring the same kind of opprobrium on the man who is keeping a pig in what is described as a backyard. I imagine that neighbours would more likely think that the occupier of that house had at last managed to persuade the sanitary inspector to take some interest in the shortcomings of the landlord rather than that he was taking any interest in any iniquities on the part of the tenant, who might easily be regarded as a person to be honoured rather than despised.

In view of all that has been said today about this Bill, I sincerely hope that the hon. and gallant Member will get the Measure through Committee in sufficient time for it to complete the Report and Third Reading stages in this House and go to another place for consideration and, I hope, acceptance before the Session ends.

I wonder if I may, with the leave of the House, make a speech, bearing in mind that on a previous occasion I uttered the words, "I beg to second the Motion"? Having uttered those words, I require the leave of the House, which I have no doubt will be given to me if hon. Members show their customary kindness and indulgence.

It may be for the convenience of the House if I briefly remind hon. Members of the object of this Bill and of its terms, because it is some time since my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) introduced the Bill, having given it that objective and careful study which he gives to so many subjects. We always respect his efforts when he does so. I should confess that I have not given this subject the same degree of careful and objective study, but when my hon. and gallant Friend asked me to add my name as one of the sponsors of this Bill, I felt that we should welcome any move which is made to improve our machinery of Government from time to time.

The State has, in recent years, undergone tremendous changes. The central Government have had placed upon them responsibilities which are perhaps twice as great as they had before the war. I need not go into the reasons for that. We have to be sure that the machine of central Government which has to carry out the various duties now placed upon the central Government is a machine which is working smoothly, efficiently, and, above all, in the public interest.

It is a tradition of this country, and a very honourable one, which has been meticulously observed, that civil servants should be politically independent in their work and in the advice which they give, whatever private political views they may hold. That tradition has been so faithfully carried out that many of the senior civil servants have, in the course of time and by experience, found that they are entirely without party considerations, even privately. Those whom I have met privately have told me that they have trained themselves, probably subconsciously, but certainly, to a state of mind in which they do not hold party political opinions. I believe that is very often the case. I mention these facts as a background to the Bill.

The object of the Bill is to provide a panel of senior civil servants possessing wide experience in the working of the machinery of Government and a personal knowledge of their colleagues in the higher grades of the Civil Service; and that this panel of experienced, able and distinguished men should be available—I stress "available"—to Ministers requiring advice regarding the suitability of individuals to hold any of the three highest posts in each of the Departments of our home Civil Service. That is one of the main objects of the Bill.

The other main object is to describe the gentleman who is the senior civil servant of this country as "Marshal of the Civil Service." It may be asked "What is there in a name?" But this is a very important position, comparable in dignity perhaps with that of one of Her Majesty's judges or some of the more senior ambassadors. Many might think it a post comparable to that of the Speaker of the House of Commons—in a different sphere but at the same sort of level. We feel that the designation "Marshal of the Civil Service would be not inappropriate to the dignity of the senior civil servant.

I should remind the House that at present the Prime Minister's approval is required for appointments of the permanent heads of Departments, and also their deputies, their principal finance officers and their principal establishment officers. In practice he takes advice on these matters solely from the Permanent Under-Secretary to the Treasury. Although my hon. and gallant Friend may hold different views, I wish to make my position in this matter quite plain. I make no complaint whatever about the way in which either the present Prime Minister or his predecessor or the distinguished Permanent Under-Secretary carry out their duties; but it is no defence of any system to say it is satisfactory merely because it happens to be made to work well by individuals of good sense.

Surely the whole basis on which the British Constitution has developed has been that we have found that things worked well and have left them alone?

The hon. and learned Gentleman is overlooking the important fact that there have been times when parts of the Constitution have worked well because there was good will to make it so. But Parliament decided that unless something was done it might not work so well—

rose—

I am conscious of the fact that I have occupied a lot of the time of the House today, mainly because I had my name down as a sponsor to two of the Bills on the Order Paper and I am particularly interested in speaking on yet another Bill. I think, therefore, that I should be allowed to get on with my speech. No doubt the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) will have an opportunity to speak later.

The designation "Head of the Civil Service" dates from 1919 and is derived merely from a Treasury minute. There was no Parliamentary authority underlining it and it is limited to the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. Clause 1 of the Bill proposes to establish:

"a Board to be called Her Majesty's Civil Service Appointments Board…for the purposes hereafter mentioned."

The chairman of the Board is to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he may delegate all his functions under the Measure to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury; that is to say, the chairman of the Board will be someone whose advice is not really sought in accordance with the objects of the Bill. He is a mere chairman. But advice will be given by the members referred to in Clause 3:

"The members of the Board, other than the chairman, shall be such of the persons holding office as Permanent Under-Secretary of State or Permanent Secretary or Deputy Undersecretary of State or Second Secretary or Deputy Secretary in the Government Departments…"

All the Government Departments of standing and importance in the home Civil Service are mentioned. That is not including the Foreign Service or the Colonial Service. It is essentially a body of senior civil servants of the home Civil Service.

Clause 4 is perhaps the most important. Having considered the matter since the Bill was printed, I think it might be amended in Committee, should this Bill be sent to a Committee, in order to clarify the real purpose of the Bill. At present the Clause reads:

"It shall be the duty of the Board … to select officers in Her Majesty's Civil Service to be recommended to the appropriate Ministers of the Crown as being suitable for appointment to any of the following posts…"

and the posts are set out.

It would seem that the wording,

"select officers…to be recommended to the appropriate Ministers"

does not sufficiently clearly emphasise that the Board is to be used only if the Minister should require their advice. There is no obligation on the Minister to consult the Board and in making a senior appointment in his Department he need not accept recommendations which the Board may make. What we consider important is that Ministers shall be heads of their Departments and that in making appointments they shall have the benefit of the present system; but I do not think, with respect to my hon. and gallant Friend, that we have made the position sufficiently clear.

In an article some weeks ago, soon after my hon. and gallant Friend introduced this Bill, "The Times" criticised it very severely. It seemed to me that the article revealed a misunderstanding of the meaning of Clause 4. It did not seem to be understood that the function of this Board was purely advisory and that their advice need not necessarily be accepted. We think Ministers must retain control of their Departments and any steps likely to deprive them of the right to seek discussions with the Prime Minister on matters affecting their Departments should be deplored. The Bill is intended to place the onus for seeking advice of the members of the Board upon a Minister in search of a new officer to fill a vacant post, or to fill a post not well enough filled at present. It would be intolerable if the Board were able to impose its will upon the Minister. It must, therefore, be advisory both to Departmental Ministers and to the Prime Minister.

I ask hon. Members to consider that this House has a responsibility to keep an eye on our system of Government— not to be complacent about it but to be prepared to see it overhauled and examined from time to time. Since the present Government came into power, I have been astonished at the great difficulty which they appear to have had in achieving economies in the Civil Service. We were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the number would be reduced by 22,000 in two years. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that Parliament has been inclined in an irresponsible and most disgraceful way to criticise civil servants as idle people. This criticism is one which personally I think could never be supported.

It is made only from the Government side of the House.

If the hon. Gentleman likes to make that point he can. I will accept it. It is irresponsible to criticise in that way. At the same time I blame Ministers from the party opposite who over-recruited the Civil Service in the years after the war, or did not let it run down enough after the war, and so created a condition in which men were idle. Civil servants have told me, "We are not necessary; we want a good job." The responsibility for having created the situation where some criticism was justified lays with hon. Gentlemen opposite; but I still say that there has sometimes been irresponsible criticism as well as justifiable criticism from this side of the House.

What did the hon. Gentleman do when a civil servant came to him and said, "I am wasting my time"? Did he bring the matter to the attention of the Minister and suggest that this gentleman might have to be removed from the Civil Service?

If the right hon. Gentleman presses me, I will tell him. This happened about five years ago with a very old friend of mine. I was best man at his wedding; that shows how close a friend he was. He was in a Government Department the name of which I will not mention. He was an established civil servant. He said, "It is quite absurd. There are too many of us. I have delegated an awful lot of my work to people who are not really necessary, and the result is that I am not really fully employed." I went to a Minister in the right hon. Gentleman's Government and talked to him about it. In the circumstances I thought that that was the right thing to do. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes, I will discuss the matter further with him elsewhere.

I was trying to describe the attitude of this House towards the Civil Service. I said that sometimes there was irresponsible criticism about idleness: there has also been some responsible criticism of idleness. There has also been tremendous admiration of the personnel of the Civil Service and the way they carry out their work; but that admiration has generated complacency about the structure of the system.

That is why I say that this Bill gives an opportunity to look at an important part of the system—the appointment of the senior civil servants—so that we may be sure that it is working well now and will work well in future. The important consideration is that it should work well to cover all eventualities. Even if some hon. Members do not agree with the Bill as drafted, I implore them to let it go to the Standing Committee, where disagreements can be thrashed out. Even those hon. Members, if there be any here, who are resolutely opposed to the Measure and do not want to see it passed into law, may feel that discussion in Standing Committee would be useful. It would allow some grievances to be aired.

I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend upon the interest which this proposal has caused and also upon the slight controversy it has aroused in high places. One should never be afraid of arousing controversy in high places.

I interrupted the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton) because I have been concerned from time to time as to the damage and hurt done to worthy servants of the State by irresponsible criticism of the Civil Service. By all means let us not be complacent. Let us never be satisfied that any Department of State is 100 per cent. efficiently run. But I get angry and distressed when we have wholesale libelling by political doctrinaires of groups of men whose only crime is that instead of being paid by private enterprise they are paid by the State.

I was most interested in the hon. Gentleman's speech and in the Bill. The most important problem in local and national Government is that of the selection of the right person for the job. If I may air a bee in my bonnet, if one can indeed do such a thing, I have always expressed concern outside the House that for nearly a century most of the highest posts in the Civil Service went to an exclusive caste in British society.

When I spoke in this House some weeks ago about public schools and how we had recruited for a long time almost exclusively from them most of the senior civil servants, I was more delighted than I can say when a most distinguished right hon. Friend spoke to me after the debate. He pointed out that whereas what I had said was true perhaps 30 or 40 years ago, it is a fact that today more and more ex-grammar school and even ex-elementary school people are making their way up in the Civil Service to some of the higher posts. In the Civil Service, as in the military Services, we want the best men for the job, independently of the schools which they attended and the social group to which they belong, and I think we are moving towards that type of society.

I welcome this opportunity of paying tribute to the civil servants of the country. We have the most incorruptible civil servants in the world. Whatever criticism may be made of the habits of the Civil Service, nobody can fail to admire the whole of the Civil Service for its probity. When I was at school a long time ago—longer than I care to think about—I was taught by the teacher at my elementary school the value of honesty, and the man he held up to me as a pattern of honesty was the village postmaster. It is worth while remembering that there can be few more honest folk in any part of our community than the man who delivers the letters.

In the higher realms of the Civil Service it is true to say that many distinguished minds are serving the country at much lower salaries than their abilities could command outside. Whatever jokes are made about civil servants and their cups of tea on all occasions— as though no great business man ever drinks tea but, instead, works from eight in the morning until midnight without a thirst—my own contacts with many civil servants enable me to say that in Department after Department the country is served not only by able men but by men who work very hard, often beyond their official hours, and who work without overtime pay because they believe in what they are doing.

Having said that, I would add that, there are defects in the Service. The civil servant is inclined to play for safety—a book written during the war by one of my hon. Friends bore the title, "Passed to You"—the civil servant is often afraid to make a decision because, if he does and it turns out to be the wrong decision, he is punished by his superior officer. The whole pattern of the Civil Service tends to discourage initiative—and that is something which we have sooner or later to remedy. There is a tendency to transfer a man from Department to Department. The moment a man has become skilled in one branch of British civic life he is moved to another part of the country and to another Department, because we seem to be afraid that if he digs his roots into a certain job he may succumb to the temptations of corruption or may become hidebound, or may get to know really well the job he is doing.

I think the hon. Member for Huntingdon spoke fairly in his criticism of the Civil Service when he was urging that we want to make Departments efficient. Nobody on this side of the House would object to cutting the staff of any Government Department if we were merely weeding out those who ought not to be there because they were not doing an efficient job of work. One of the problems is that when a Government impose a cut on a Department, the Department solves the problem by sacrificing some part of the work it is doing rather than constricting itself and doing the whole job more efficiently. Our complaint about the Government's economies in the Civil Service is not that they make the Civil Service more efficient. If they did that we should be very pleased with them. Our complaint is that Department after Department will sacrifice some valuable piece of work which they have been doing in order to produce the economy which the Chancellor demands.

I am delighted to have the opportunity of echoing what the hon. and learned Gentleman said about the political independence of the Civil Service.

On a point of order. I trust that I am honourable but I am certainly not entitled to be called learned.

Everyone on this side of the House will agree with the hon. Gentleman's tribute to the political independence of the Civil Service, but I am one of those who do not think that one of the necessary prices which we should pay for the political independence of the Civil Service is to deprive civil servants of their political rights as human beings outside their professional jobs. I think it is possible to separate the two.

I believe, too, that in our present organisation the Permanent Secretaries and Permanent Under-Secretaries serve faithfully no matter who are the political Ministers in control of them, but the Bill provides an opportunity, for a short time at any rate, of examining the tremendous implications involved in our dual system of government. We are governed by two groups of people. We are governed by a group of amateur politicians and we are governed, on the other hand, by a group of permanent officials of State. Governments come and Governments go, but the Permanent Secretaries live on for ever.

Subject to superannuation.

While it is true that civil servants may regretfully claim that all the credit of the good work they do is taken by politicians, it is also true that most of the bad work of the permanent civil servants is passed on and the responsibility for it borne by the Government of the day.

I am not sure what is the present method of recruitment to the highest positions, but I should like to be sure that it is possible inside the Department for the man of character and efficiency and service to make his way to the highest position. If that is becoming true today, and if this Bill helps it in any way, I hope the House will give the Bill a Second Reading, because I believe the hon. Member for Huntingdon has done a service by raising the issue.

rose—

The hon. and gallant Gentleman spoke on the last occasion and he can speak now only by leave of the House. As he introduced the Bill, perhaps the House will grant him that leave.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for reminding the House that on the last occasion I made a very short intervention at the end of the proceedings and had three minutes in which to introduce the Bill. I am most grateful to the House for giving me leave to speak again, because I should like to fill in some of the background to what my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton) has so clearly said this afternoon about the Bill.

May I first thank my hon. Friend for the clarity with which he has put before the House the main purport of the Bill. In his very kind references to me he said that I had taken a considerable interest in this matter and had gone into it in some detail. Before the war I was a soldier, and I think any soldier of that period knew, as the sailors and airmen also knew, that there was something radically wrong with the provision of the equipment for the Forces.

Even at that stage, while I was still a Regular soldier, I did my best to try to find out what it was, and I came very decisively to the conclusion that one of the main causes was the fact that the Treasury, at that time, exercised a stranglehold over the defence Ministries and Service Ministries which made it virtually impossible sometimes for them to go ahead even with the findings of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet.

I have explained the origin of my interest in this particular matter. I bring forward this Bill not with the intention of removing from the Treasury the general supervision of expenditure. I am introducing this Bill because since my interest was first aroused in this subject one very important thing in particular has happened in relation to this matter.

During the war, and, strangely enough, in the same month as that in which the Battle of El Alamein took place, the Select Committee on National Expenditure issued its Sixteenth Report. It was House of Commons Paper No. 120 of that Session. That Committee was somewhat different from committees now going into such matters in that its minutes were never published. I think the reason was that a good many matters affecting security were involved. Anyone here who was a member of that Committee then will probably bear that out. We have had, therefore, only the findings and recommendations of the Committee, and not the facts that were laid before it and on which it based its findings.

There is a particular one that is relevant to what I am saying now. That Committee came very clearly to this conclusion:

"There is no evidence which would justify the transfer of the existing seat of control from the Treasury to any other existing or new Department. Their next recommendations will, therefore, be directed to the problem of improving the organisation of the Treasury in so far as it affects Establishments."

Without the evidence laid before the Committee it is hard to make up one's mind about its findings, unless one is prepared to take what that Committee says as an authoritative body in Parliament, as I am prepared to do, but in so far as the separation of the control of Departments from the Treasury is concerned, I am not sure that I quite follow it.

One of the papers I read very regularly nowadays is the "O. and M. Bulletin" issued by the Organisation and Methods Division of the Treasury. This paper shows what an immense amount of thought and useful work is involved in deciding the most efficient kind of organisation of the Department and others, too. I want to single out one aspect of this machine of Government, that aspect being the advice which is given to the Prime Minister and to other Ministers of the Crown when they require certain senior posts in the Civil Service to be filled.

Since 1919, when a certain Treasury minute was issued on the matter, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Treasury has carried with his appointment the designation of Official Head of the Civil Service. One of the things that this Bill does is to change that title. The only reason I want to do that is a constitutional one. It may even seem to the House slightly pedantic. The Civil Service is Her Majesty's Civil Service, and the one and only head of that Civil Service is the Sovereign. It always will be so, let us hope.

I think, therefore, that the nomenclature "Head of the Civil Service" is an unfortunate one. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon said, it is hardly in keeping even with its importance. "Official Head" does not sound a very impressive title anyway. We have an official head of the smallest office in the country. I think that, perhaps, the title of marshal or secretary-general, or something of that sort, would be a better title, and I think it is desirable not to call one of the Civil Service the Official Head of the Civil Service.

However, that is a lesser point in the Bill than the main point to which I should now like to direct the attention of the House. Since the "Official Head of the Civil Service" designation was created, and, I think, before that, certain appointments in the higher Civil Service could not be made without the Prime Minister's approval. I think it was the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) who interrupted my hon. Friend to suggest that we in this country have always tried to develop gradually having the right people in the right places, and to some extent to muddle through.

As my hon. Friend rightly said, what we are hoping to do by this Bill is to prevent something going wrong in the future, even if everything is right now. We are attempting to look ahead. That is always a dangerous thing to do, politically, commercially or otherwise, but it is sometimes right that we should do. One of the best reasons for looking ahead is that something went wrong in the past. I am not saying that that was the only reason, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that one of the reasons why we went into the war in an appalling state of unpreparedness was the stranglehold the Treasury exercised over the defence Departments. I believe that was because the Head of the Civil Service was the only person to advise the Prime Minister of the day as to who were the suitable people to appoint to the higher posts in the Civil Service.

It would be rash of me if I were to attempt to put forward this case purely off my own bat. I am by no means alone in this matter. Of all the authorities I could quote in aid I suppose I could hardly go higher than a former First Sea Lord, Lord Chatfield. He has himself written on the subject of the tyranny which was exercised by the Treasury over the spending of the defence Departments during that period before the war, so that it was quite impossible for this country to be properly armed or prepared against the event of war.

I want to make this point clear. Lord Chatfield had the greatest admiration for the Official Head of the Civil Service at that time, who himself was a great protagonist of rearmament. Indeed, I would say that so great a protagonist was he that certain things which were happening in the Department of which he was the Permanent Secretary seemed comparatively unimportant to him so obsessed was he with the rearmament of this country. He is dead now, and I am certainly not going to criticise him for what he did. I am sure he did what he thought was right. The point is that he was able to do it only by virtue of that Treasury minute of 1919 that I have already mentioned and which enabled him to exercise a general influence so far as policy was concerned and not only as far as methods were concerned.

It may be very advantageous to the country that such a person should exist, but it may also be very disadvantageous, and there may be a very real danger if he is not a man of the calibre of the present Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and some of his predecessors in that office. The damage they could do, not only to the Government of the day but the country as a whole, is enormous. One of the great principles on which this House has always been founded is that it never likes to give authority to people whom they are not able to call to question by Parliament sooner or later.

One of the evils in the present system seems to be that should the Permanent Secretary so choose—mercifully, the present one certainly does not choose—to try to put over a Government Department certain policies which may not be in tune even with the Government of the day, there is nothing to stop that man doing it.

Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman indicate what are those policies that could be put right through the Civil Service?

No, I certainly would not, because they are all hypothetical. I am speaking hypothetically at the moment. I am merely saying that there is that danger.

One of the things which makes me feel that all has not been as well as it should be is the fact that in 1944 my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary achieved some reforms in the Foreign Office by which the whole of our Foreign Service was separated from the rest of the Civil Service and made virtually a separate service. I believe that one of the reasons that was done was because in the inter-war period there had been interference by the Treasury in the conduct of foreign affairs.

Now, I am not saying this on my own authority; this has been alleged by a great many of our leading diplomats over that period. We also know that an attempt was made to introduce certain reforms into the Foreign Office long, long before they were achieved, and they were opposed, very largely by the Head of the Civil Service of that period. My belief is that we need to safeguard the rights of Ministers to run their own Departments. If a body such as the Treasury is interfering in the conduct of foreign affairs beyond the extent to which it must to ensure the necessary financing of those things which the Foreign Office want to do, then inevitably the whole structure of British foreign policy and defence policy must be imperilled.

I do not intend to bother the House with long quotations about this, because I am sure that hon. Members do not want that after the week we have had, but I assure them that all these things were written down and can be found. They can find what has been said by experienced men in the Foreign Service in days gone by, and by experienced men in the Forces, which bears out far better than I could ever show the fact that there was something rotten in the state of the Civil Service between the wars. It has been put right in the Foreign Service, but it has not been put right in our defence Services.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman says that things have now been put right between the Treasury and the Foreign Office. Do the Treasury still control British labour attaches attached to the Foreign Service?

I am prepared to believe that they do, as I presume the whole point of the hon. Gentleman's question is that that is so. But I must make it clear that I am not trying to divorce the organisation and methods side of it in other Departments from the Treasury. What I say is that, so far as appointments are concerned there is a separation of the Foreign Service from the rest of the Civil Service. The Foreign Office have achieved reforms which were proposed long, long before, and which had been opposed by the Treasury for a great many years.

My view is that the first interest of the House of Commons must always be the security and defence of this country. It is always dangerous to leave in being something which has gone wrong in the past simply and solely because the man at present in charge is managing the whole affair extremely well—and no one would deny for a moment that the present Permanent Secretary to the Treasury is one of the most valuable civil servants this country has ever had. I am suggesting, quite simply, that without in any way interfering with the machinery, which is working satisfactorily at the moment, we could ensure that never again shall things occur that went wrong before.

The suggestion in the Bill is simply this: that from the higher civil servants should be selected a body of the most experienced men to take over from the permanent Under-Secretary of Defence the job of advising Ministers and advising the Prime Minister when they want advice, and only when they want advice, as to who should be the people to fill the post. I understand that the Treasury have nicknamed this Bill "The Prime Minister and Sir Edward Bridges Bill." I have no wish whatever to abolish anyone at all. What I want to do, humanely, sensibly and quietly, is to destroy a certain power which still exists.

With great respect to the hon. and gallant Member, may I raise a point of order? This issue seems to me to involve some Cabinet responsibility. There is not a Member of the Cabinet here. Surely this is a question of such supreme importance that we should (have some one of sufficient standing in the Cabinet to reply to these issues.

Before you reply to that point of order, Mr. Speaker, it may help if I were to say that, originally, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury was representing the Government so far as this Bill is concerned. He was courteous enough to be present when the Bill was first introduced and he would, I know, have liked to have been present this afternoon if he possibly could have been.

I understand that the Joint Undersecretary of State for the Home Department has nobly come in his stead and that, so far as I am concerned, causes no offence to me because I am glad to see my hon. Friend who formerly represented my constituency in his place this afternoon. So far as the point of order is concerned, I have no complaint because if this Bill becomes an Act the person who, in all probability, would answer questions as a result of that Act would be the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is represented here this afternoon by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department.

I was hoping that we should hear from you, Mr. Speaker, something on the point of order. The hon. and gallant Gentleman is making a series of attacks on the Treasury itself. The whole of his case seems to be that the reason that we were so badly off during the war was the fault of the Treasury. Surely there should be a Minister here who can deal with those charges.

No point of order is involved here. The Treasury is frequently attacked and, in my experience, as a Member of Parliament, is well able to look after itself. The presence of the hon. Gentleman the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office should, I think, by the doctrine of joint responsibility of Ministers, enable criticisms to be answered if necessary.

My last point is this. The idea which I was trying to embody in this Bill is not my own. I make no pretence that it is. It was first put forward in a book written by no less a person than Mr. H. E. Dale, formerly Principal Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He published a book called "The Higher Civil Service," by the Oxford University Press, in 1941. In Appendix B of that book he deals with the particular matter to which I have tried to direct the attention of the House this afternoon. I should like to make a fairly substantial quotation from it.

On page 227 he says:

"The possible candidates for a particular vacancy should be considered, I suggest, and the recommendation made, by a small ad hoc committee. It would probably require to meet only once. The Chairman should be the Minister for the Department where the vacancy has occurred or is about to occur; and the other members should be the Secretary to the Treasury and one of his immediate subordinates, the Secretary of the Department concerned, if available, and one or two permanent Heads of other Departments—usually the Departments that in the ordinary course of things have most business with the Department of the vacancy."

That was the germ of the idea which I tried to embody in the Bill. Mr. Dale wanted an ad hoc committee. The danger of ad hoc committees is that, if one is not careful, one is apt to forget that one has created them for certain purposes. In this matter it seems very much better to have a statutorily-provided body to be available in the event of a Minister requiring advice. That is why I have made mine a little more formal than Mr. Dale did his.

The other reason which fortifies me in putting forward a Bill is that in 146 a group of Conservatives, including several Members of Parliament, some still being Members of this Parliament, published a book entitled, "Some proposals for Constitutional reform." The group had considered the problem that we are considering this afternoon in the light of the 16th Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure. Recommendations were made about the selection of candidates for the Civil Service. The three leading recommendations were:

"(1) The title of 'Head of the Civil Service' should be abolished, and the general control of the Civil Service should be vested in a new Department; (2) the functions now exercised by the Civil Service Commission should be transferred to this new department, together with the work done by the Establishments Branch of the Treasury, and the administration of the Civil Service as a whole should be entrusted to it; (3) at the head of this department there should be a Minister of the Crown who should be responsible for all Civil Service matters; he should be a member of one or other House of Parliament, but not necessarily a member of the Cabinet …"

As to the wider aspects of those recommendations, I do not feel that I am in a position to judge. But what I do feel is that one should read what men who have held posts of great responsibility in times of great stress have to say about the period in which they did so. There is no question that the intolerable burden placed especially on the Foreign Service overseas—particularly in Europe —cannot entirely be divorced from the system of selecting the higher members of the Civil Service that we had at that period. That has been put right for the Foreign Service, but it has not been put right for the Defence Services. Anyone who imagines that this country will be able in the future to play the part it wishes to play in keeping the peace of the world without making sure that the machinery of Government is so good that our defence measures match our foreign policy is crying for the moon.

It is in that spirit that I present the Bill, carefully avoiding, so far as I can. any recrimination about the past, because that is purely a waste of time. In the hope that Parliament and the country will take a little more interest in the machinery of Government. I commend the Bill to the House.

I cannot agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) that he has made no reflections upon the Civil Service.

I said "recriminations."

Or recriminations. I understood the hon. and gallant Gentleman was suggesting that we almost lost the war because of almost criminal negligence on the part of someone in the Treasury before 1939. If that is not recrimination, I do not know what is; it sounds almost like treason. I should join with the hon. and gallant Gentleman in demanding an inquiry. I wish the Prime Minister were here, for before 1939 he had much to say about neglect, but I have never heard him complaining that it all flowed from this permanent Head of the Civil Service. I think the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton) should have told us how the Treasury stood in the way of preventing the country getting the defence it needed.

In the present situation the existing machinery, about which the hon. Gentleman and the hon. and gallant Gentleman made no complaint, is working well. I cannot support this Bill. I look at Clause 4 (b) which leads off with the statement "To perform all other functions …" That is a pretty sweeping statement. It may be that this is restricted by the Clause itself and by the title of the Bill, but it seems to me to be more than a question of half a dozen men coming together and making recommendations to a Minister or Ministers, or even to the Prime Minister.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman has said enough this afternoon—and I think he has given a good deal of attention to this matter—to demand, not the setting up of this Appointments Board, but some form of public inquiry. This Bill would not accomplish that purpose. There are no complaints against the present personnel and, generally speaking, against past personnel, although before the outbreak of war—I do not know whether the hon. and gallant Member was referring to before 1939 or before 1914—

Before 1939.

At any rate, there was some permanent official at the Treasury then who was standing in the way of the country getting what it needed for defence. Surely the best way to deal with that is by an inquiry.

I think I understand why the hon. Gentleman has drawn the conclusion he has from what I said. 1 hope that I was fair in my remarks about that particular official who was at that time the Head of the Civil Service. Never for one moment have I questioned his motives. In fact, I know he was adamant in getting the country armed, but what I say is that the system whereby his numerous powers were established was through this Treasury Minute of 1919, and that underlies the whole thing. That is a Ministerial responsibility.

I agree that the hon. and gallant Member has not ascribed motives to anyone, but he thinks that a certain change is desirable. I have listened to many speeches in this House, and instead of going for the benefits and instead of making sure that we are getting the right administration, we are all content to leave it and say that it is the system; and if it is the system to set up a Board then that particular Board will be right.

It seems to me that the hon. and gallant Member, who supports the Government, wants either the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to be in the position of answering Questions in Parliament on these particular promotions. Where would that lead to? Does anyone in the House seriously suggest that all promotions taking place in the Civil Service should, if necessary, be brought here for this Chamber to attempt to decide? That is utterly impossible.

I am sure the hon. and gallant Member will agree that if it were a case of a military promotion and the House had to start going into details about whether Field Marshal Montgomery should be appointed, we might be nine months wrangling about it, and if we had a week something like the present week the battle would be lost before the appointment was made. If we are satisfied that some individual officer is not doing his duty, let us get after him. He has a responsible position and is responsible to the head of the Department. Let him face those responsibilities and face the penalty if he is not doing his work.

I am attracted by the idea that the hon. and gallant Member, apparently, has in mind a department, which I will name an establishment department, with which the Treasury shall not interfere. That is an attractive position in local government, but when it comes to the question of establishment, grading, promotions and so on, it cannot be separated from finance. It cannot be done in local government. The ratepayers have to find the money.

The hon. and gallant Member agrees that the Treasury must have the power to supervise, and so do I. That is very important, and it was never more important than today, when throughout the world, not only here but in all countries, Governments find that they have to intervene more and more in the economic and social life of the people. As long as we have to keep Treasury supervision without authority, without responsibility, we cannot have what the hon. and gallant Member wants. That supervision must be accompanied by something else.

I have a good deal of sympathy with the point of view put forward by the hon. and gallant Member. I am sure he will agree that the head of a Department should have freedom in his Department and be responsible to Parliament, and subject to public audit and so on by the Treasury. Ever since I first entered the House in 1929, I have been a strong advocate of freedom for the Postmaster-General within his own Department, with no interference from the Treasury but always responsible to give an account.

The hon. and gallant Member can join me today. I want the present Govern- ment, as I wanted my own Government, to put the Postmaster-General back where he was in 1917, when he last published his annual report. I want that annual report to be restored. I should like a comprehensive report from the Post Office and for the Postmaster-General to have one day at least, not dependent on the selection of a Supply day, in which he would answer for his Department, as I should like to see done in the case of coal, gas, and electricity, for example. It is the business of this Chamber to protect the consumer or the taxpayer, whichever way we like to put it.

I have a good deal of sympathy with the hon. and gallant Member, but when he says that the Treasury still exercise no influence over the Foreign Office, I wish that were true. I have taken note of what the hon. and gallant Member said and I am sorry that the Financial Secretary is not present. I am not complaining of that, because Ministers have their duties elsewhere and must perform them. Who is responsible for the reduction in the number of labour attaches attached to the Foreign Service? I venture to say that it is not the Foreign Secretary, not the Minister of Labour, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Was there ever a more foolish policy than that to indulge in today, when the western world has to fight to get its ideas understood, its values appreciated, its methods understood and possibly adopted by other countries? What do we do? We reduce the number of labour attaches.

I do not know whether the hon. and gallant Member will join me in this. The duties discharged by the labour attaches are such as were never previously performed by members of the embassies and cannot be performed by them for the simple reason that they never mix with the people with whom the labour attaches mix. One of the greatest services done to this country was by my friend the late Ernest Bevin when he appointed the labour attaches. Is this reduction in the number from 20 to 17 a first step to get rid of them because those in the embassies do not like them?

No.

I hope the hon. Member is right, but I am not so sure that he is not mistaken. He thinks I am mistaken.

I met the labour attaché twice on two visits to Washington; that is the key appointment. He worked well as far as I understand it with the embassy in Washington, and is doing an important job. I am sure that no one wants to get rid of him.

I did not say that. He does work well. I have known that gentleman, Mr. Gordon, for many years. I know the full story of the struggle in Washington, and that is no reflection on existing members of that embassy. But the number has been reduced from 20 to 17, and I very much fear it is going to be reduced again. I hope I am wrong, but if I am right I hope hon. Members opposite will join forces with us. I am glad to have the tribute of the hon. Member that this is a good and valuable service. If we could have labour attachés throughout the world of the quality of the present labour attaché in Washington, and if we could have the service which is rendered in the United States given by those labour attachés, it would be very much better for this country.

In Yugoslavia, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey and Greece is it not there that we need to be understood? Why have we not a labour attaché in each of these countries? Again I say the reason is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We have not removed that influence and this Bill will not remove it. It is a bigger issue than this Bill contemplates.

I have been connected with the Post Office, and perhaps it is not for me to defend the Civil Service. Nor am I suggesting that nothing could ever be wrong or that they should never be called to account, but I think it will be agreed that the work done by the Organisation and Methods Department is very good work which is putting permanent heads of departments on their toes as to efficiency and so forth. It is a service which I want to see developed, because I think that as administrations grow and become more complex there is a case for this constant overhaul of staffing, duties, demarcation and so forth, and it needs to be extended to local government. There is a lot of work before it in local government.

There is another issue which this Bill does not touch, because all that the hon. and gallant Member wants is this Board of six, selected from certain Departments. How are they to be selected, these six who are always to produce the right men at the right time? The hon. and gallant Member does not visualise the inter-Departmental conflicts that can take place on this Board. Who is to come in and settle them? The Minister. Look at the position of the Minister if he is faced by a recommendation by this Board. It might become the most restrictive authority one could think of. Having now one person who is thought to be a danger, does the hon. and gallant Member think that by setting up a board of six that danger is removed? I do not think so.

The hon. Member is apparently more worried about that aspect than I am. The point I am trying to get at is the question whether one person's opinion is likely to be better than that of six: are we likely to get a better result than by giving one person all that power?

I do not think that six will necessarily be an improvement in that respect. The six combined might be a great danger and be very difficult for any Minister to deal with. If anything, it is strengthening the power of the permanent officials, not weakening it, by setting up this kind of board.

This proposal will put Ministers in a difficulty. The hon. and gallant Member would be on far sounder ground in demanding, as I have been demanding, full freedom and responsibility for the Minister in his Department, with responsibility to the Treasury and to this Chamber: but this Board?—no. The Financial Secretary or the Chancellor of the Exchequer would only be a figurehead, but so far as this House is concerned he would be the chairman. I do not think that this proposal is on the right lines.

I do not wish to take up too much time, as other hon. Members may wish to speak about this Bill. The hon. and gallant Member gave us a number of quotations. His main case was that of a soldier who had been worried about what was happening before 1939. I do not wish to be discourteous, but I do not think that that was relevant to this Bill, with its simple proposal of "Let us have six." These quotations may indicate something that ought to be looked at. I am not one of those who thinks that the Civil Service—as the Service as a whole would readily agree—is perfect; it is always open to suggestions. I do ask, however, if a top-notch civil servant such as the Permanent Secretary is standing in the way, what is the Minister doing?

I have heard suggestions made by those who occupy high places that they cannot do this and that because of the permanent officials. That is an explanation I would not accept from any Minister. That means either cowardice or laziness. The Minister is responsible, and it is the Minister we should go after. If he is not doing his job he should be removed, and I am sure the present Prime Minister would be very happy to remove him.

I have tried to be unprejudiced about this. I have had a great deal of experience of serving on joint committees and so on, and I have seen boards in operation. Do not let us deceive ourselves and think that because we get six heads together, they will be better than one. If that one is the right head I do not believe that six would be better, and I do not believe that the hon. and gallant Gentleman thinks so either. He is worried that at some time we may not get the right head. But this Board is more likely to give us, not the right head, but the result of an agreement about whose turn it is next

It depends on what he does.

I am talking about the Board—

It depends very much on what the head does when he is there. My opinion is that this Bill reduces the powers of the head very considerably.

No, this Bill will not reduce the powers of the head; but it is hoped that it will help to get the right head and then my criticism of Clause 4 (1, b) is endorsed, that it needs a lot of amplification when reference is made to this Board undertaking other duties. 1 say again that a better result will not be obtained by taking away one and putting in six.

I am opposed to this Bill. I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman has raised a point which needs investigation, but this is not the way. If he had some specific complaint against the Civil Service he should raise it and we should get an answer from the benches opposite, and if necessary, an inquiry. This Bill is submitted to the House with good but misplaced intentions, and it will not achieve what we want to see done for the Civil Service.

This is a Private Members' day and it is not open to the Government to control the time at which business is discussed. Unfortunately, my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has an important public engagement elsewhere and is unable to be present. He has apologised to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke), but I should like to say how sorry he is that he cannot be present.

This is a matter on which I can properly express the view of the Government. Complaint was made that a Cabinet Minister was not present, but unless there are exceptional circumstances I think that the House will agree that on a Private Member's Bill it is desirable to have a junior Minister to reply rather than a Cabinet Minister.

The Second Reading of this Bill seeks to raise two important questions; whether a change in the present system of making appointments to the senior posts in the Civil Service is desirable and whether changes of the kind made in the Title of the Bill are workable. Of the existing machinery for making senior appointments in the Civil Service, I would say that all Civil Service appointments without exception are made by the Minister in charge of the Department concerned. In the case of the top level, however, and also of the Principal Establishments Officer and the Principal Finance Officer, the assent of the Prime Minister is required to the appointment in question.

That assent is required as a matter of practice. It is not required as a matter of law. The practice could be changed tomorrow, though I do not think anyone is contemplating that, and indeed it has been in existence for a very long time. When the Prime Minister's assent is sought he looks for advice primarily to the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He looks for that advice in the same way as any Minister looks for the advice of an official. It is a Minister-civil servant relationship. I do not think that there is any dispute, or that there has even been any dispute in any part of the House, that there is need for some such machinery as that which I have indicated to deal with these senior posts It is essential, among the senior posts at all events, that there should be some co-ordination. Therefore, some machinery of this kind has to exist.

What the Bill does is to substitute for the simple machinery which I have described a more complicated piece of machinery. Instead of the advice coming through the single official, it is proposed to put that office into commission, to put the matter in broad terms. The first question we must ask is whether such a duty as that which I have described can be performed at all by a committee. It is worth considering what is the nature of this duty. It involves the continuous collection of views and expressions of opinion not formally and not indeed even intentionally. This collection of views must necessarily go on all the time if it is to be of any value, and very often the views are collected incidentally in the course of the work of the official Head of the Civil Service. This involves constant informal discussion with Ministers and others.

I doubt very much whether it is possible for that to be done at all by any committee, board, or commission. The Ministers who make these appointments are fully responsible for the appointments, and rightly so, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. Wallace) said. The Prime Minister seeks and obtains in the normal way the advice which is required of him in the special cases. Instead of that, the Bill proposes to set up a piece of formal and somewhat cumbrous machinery. I think that is the intention of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely. He wants the machinery to be formal and cumbrous.

The result of that must be either that the machinery is ineffective to do anything at all, so that no satisfactory advice will be received by the Prime Minister when he wishes it, or alternatively it will be effective and it will lead to interference in the proper discharge of these duties by the Ministers concerned. That is the dilemma which at once arises from the proposals of the Bill.

Does my hon. Friend say that because of the wrong drafting of the Clause which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton)? It is certainly not our intention that it should work in any other way than solely at the option of the Minister or the Prime Minister.

I am not suggesting that the hon. and gallant Gentleman's intention is not a proper one. I appreciate what he says about the machinery coming into operation only on the action of the Prime Minister. Of course, that is necessarily so. The Prime Minister himself cannot possibly have this information. He will always have to seek to co-ordinate. My point is that the machine will be either ineffective or too effective. It is impossible that it should have the flexibility of the present arrangements.

It has been argued that the duty of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury in this connection should not be combined with the duty of the headship of the Treasury. I think that was implied in some of my hon. and gallant Friend's arguments, and it has certainly been argued, but it raises the whole question of the functions of the Treasury in relation to the Civil Service establishment. If we take away the duties of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury in this connection, we must also take away the whole of the functions of the Treasury in this connection. We cannot remove the duties of the head of the Treasury but leave the rest of the functions in the Treasury.

The Bill is silent on this point, although there is some rather vague drafting about it in Clause 4, but I think the intention of the promoters is that we should not take these functions from the Treasury. My hon. and gallant Friend very properly referred to the Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure which said quite specifically that there was no evidence which would justify the transference of the existing seat of control from the Treasury to any other existing or new Department. I thought he accepted that view and that he proposed that the functions of the Treasury with regard to the Civil Service should be left in the Treasury.

To suggest that these powers of the head of the Treasury enable him to interfere with the policies of other Departments is not borne out. The facts do not show that. I am not referring to the financial powers of the Treasury. We are not concerned with them this afternoon. We are concerned with the powers of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury in his capacity as official Head of the Civil Service. I have not time to deal with it, but the whole matter was fully dealt with in a letter by Lord Vansittart to the "Manchester Guardian" published on 25th July, 1950. Those who wish to do so can see there a very full discussion of the matter.

I can say, without fear of contradiction, that no person who has been a Minister would hold that the powers of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury have been used by him to interfere in the policies of other Departments. There has been no such suggestion made today and, as far as I know, no person who has been a Minister has ever made such a suggestion. If there were anything of the kind, it would be for Ministers and Ministers alone to make that complaint, because it is a responsibility of Ministers; and if they do not complain, I do not think it is open to anybody else to do so.

Perhaps I may turn for a moment to the provisions of the Bill. First of all, I repeat that this kind of matter is quite unsuitable for legislation. I think that the proposed constitution of the Board really brings out that point. First of all, we have to look at the position of the Ministerial chairman visà-vis his official colleagues on the Board, on the one hand, and his Ministerial colleagues in the Government, on the other.

The promoters of the Bill have suggested that the chairman should be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is quite obvious he will not have very much time to devote to this work. The suggestion then is that the Financial Secretary should occupy the chair, but he would be in a quite intolerable position in this connection. I do not think my hon. and gallant Friend would really say that that part of the Bill is satisfactory. I am not criticising the Bill in the sense that it is badly drafted. I am only saying that the difficulty that arises here shows the fundamental difficulty that this is not a matter to be dealt with by legislation.

I will withdraw the Bill now if my hon. Friend will undertake that the Chancellor will introduce a new Treasury minute to put right what is wrong.

My hon. and gallant Friend has not suggested what he wants in the way of a new Treasury minute. The choice of the particular Departments mentioned in the Bill is quite arbitrary. Of course, it is necessary to choose particular Departments because if he did not do so the Board would be so large that it would be quite unworkable. We are at once in this difficulty: how are we to say what Departments are to be represented on this Board? The method of choosing the individuals concerned is by length of service. That would mean their age—not a very satisfactory way. I am not in any way trying to make fun of my hon. and gallant Friend's suggestion. What I am saying is that these are difficulties which necessarily arise out of the fundamental difficulty of doing what he suggests and only show that his suggestion is not a practicable one.

One word about the "Marshal of the Civil Service." First of all, there is no Head of the Civil Service. The Permanent Secretary to the Treasury is described as the official Head of the Civil Service, and, of course, he is the official Head of the Civil Service. It is no good saying in a Bill that he is not so. One would by law be prevented from so describing him, at any rate in official documents, but he would still remain the chief civil servant. There is no particular objection to a name. I do not think that my hon. and gallant Friend feels that a name is objectionable. It is no good calling him the marshal. If there is objection to the name "head" there would be objection to the name "marshal."

No.

If the functions were the same the objection would follow. What is the "Marshal of the Civil Service" intended to do? The Bill says he is to be

"…the chief civil servant in respect of matters concerning establishments of Government Departments."

I think that is intended to mean the present functions of the Treasury in relation to the Civil Service in respect of such questions as pay, recruitment to the Service, discipline, and so on. If the "Marshal of the Civil Service" had responsibility in these matters and they were not to be transferred away from the Treasury, the marshal would be responsible, as regards a large section of his duties, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the Minister in charge of the Treasury, but as the marshal is intended to be chosen from some other Department he would be in exactly the position of the man with two masters, and I do not really think the result would be very satisfactory.

For the reasons which I have given as quickly as I have been able to do, I cannot advise the House to accept this Bill. I think my hon. and gallant Friend appreciates the difficulties, and I hope that after this discussion he will be willing to withdraw the Bill. I can tell him that Her Majesty's Government are always concerned to ensure that the machinery of Government works as efficiently as possible, and I can assure him and all the other hon. Gentlemen who have spoken that their views in this connection are always welcome, and will always be carefully considered.

Do not forget the labour attachés.

I said "all." I should like to thank my hon. and gallant Friend for the care and trouble he has taken, and in the light of what I have said I hope that he will withdraw the Bill before the matter has to be put to the House.

I gathered from the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) that this Bill arose out of the fears he entertained when he was an officer in the Forces during the period between the two wars. I can well understand that anyone who was an officer in the Forces at that time had every right to feel anxious about the provision that was being made.

Thanks to the Labour Party's opposition to rearmament.

Oh, no. After all, that was never effective. The Service Estimates always went through, and the Government of the day could have got any Estimates they liked to ask for.

rose—

The hon. and gallant Gentleman really must allow me to continue. During the First World War 1 also was seriously concerned, but it was mainly about the officers: I could not see as far away as the Civil Service. One always has to have some kind of lightning conductor by which to transfer one's fears to earth.

I regard this Bill as a very stupid Bill. I do not think that anyone who has had the task of serving in a Department could think that this would be an improvement on the present system. I am not saying the existing system is perfect. Far from it. But the idea that the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and the Prime Minister make these appointments without consulting the heads of the Departments concerned, is, I can assure the hon. and gallant Gentleman, quite an illusion. I was in charge of one Department, and I know something that happened in another Department which I had just left when the Government in which I was a Cabinet Minister was formed and there was a change of the Permanent Head almost at once. There was a change of the Permanent Head of the Home Office while I was at the Home Office.

I agree with the Joint Under-Secretary, that this is the kind of thing which, in the English way of doing things, is best left to those informal arrangements which enable the greatest variety of advice to be obtained. It must allow freedom of expression unformalised to be made so that, after consideration of a large variety of views, the best persons shall be put into these positions of great responsibility.

If anybody were appointed to be, say, Marshal of the Civil Service, I should think that that would create the utmost terror in the ranks of civil servants, who might very well expect to be paraded on the annual pay day to receive the issue in the way some of them recollect when they were in the Services. [Interruption.] The hon. and gallant Gentleman has already made a speech this afternoon. and has so interrupted other hon. Members as to create a record for this Parliament, and that is saying something. I am now glad to feed that the sound of clock chimes I can hear elsewhere means that this Bill will not receive a Second Reading this afternoon at any rate, and I hope it never will.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There was no objection before you asked for the Queen's Consent to be signified.

I heard someone say "object." There is no one here competent to give the Queen's Consent.

Further to that point of order. Is it not an abuse of the customs of the House that a Bill which I know has received the Queen's Consent should be refused Second Reading when it has not been objected to and there is nobody on the Front Bench alive to the duty of giving the Queen's Consent?

Order. I distinctly heard objection taken to the Bill.

The matters discussed in this House today have ranged over a fairly wide field. I want to bring the House back for a few minutes to what I consider to be the most important thing of all, and that is the manner in which the adults of tomor- row are being treated while they are the children of today.

I want to raise the question of the refusal of the Minister of Education to authorise the rebuilding of the Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic School, at West Hartlepool. There are two sets of buildings involved. The Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic School had an attendance roll at the beginning of the war of about 800. In June, 1940, that school was very severely damaged by an enemy bomb and rendered unsuitable. Five hundred and twenty of the senior boys and girls were accommodated, after some rearrangement and overcrowding, in the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic school one-and-a-half miles away, leaving 280 junior and infant children with nowhere to go for school purposes. For months the teachers and pupils were scattered over the town.

A quarter of a mile away from the bombed school there was an abandoned school building, formerly known as the Exchange School. At the time of the bombing of Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic School the Exchange buildings were in the possession of the military as a barracks. They had been abandoned by the local education authority in 1934 because they were sub-standard and not considered suitable under the modern conception of education.

About the middle of 1951, the military abandoned the Exchange School as it was no longer of any use to them, and the local education authority offered the building to the managers of the Roman Catholic chool as temporary accommodation. May I say that any criticism I have to make this afternoon is solely of the Ministry of Education because the local education authority have been as helpful as possible and have done everything they can to assist the managers in their difficulties. I should like the House to note that the Exchange building was offered as temporary accommodation because of its sub-standard character. Even now, after 12 months, the Minister refuses to do very much about it.

In May, 1944, the solicitors acting for the managers of the Roman Catholic school sought from the War Damage Commission an indication of what was likely to happen about the bombed school. The Commission replied that it was not possible, at that stage, to say what view they would take. Everybody, locally, thought that the school would be regarded as a total loss and that compensation would be paid on that basis, and from time to time, from 1944 onwards, the Commission were asked what progress was being made. But it was not until November, 1949, that the Commission intimated to the managers of the Roman Catholic school that it had been decided to pay for compensation according to a cost of works classification. They also called the attention of the managers to the powers in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, for other developments, if necessary, on the site.

The local authority, too, were interested, at that point in the acquisition of the site for other purposes. It was not until July, 1951, that the Commission told the managers and the owners of the school that the local authority had abandoned any idea of acquiring the site, and it inquired, having regard to the fact that it was merely paying according to a cost of works classification, whether the managers proposed to rebuild their school. The managers indicated that they did, and plans were put in hand for a one-storey school to accommodate some 240 children.

By March, 1952, the sketch plans were available, and the corresponding manager, on behalf of the managers, began the procedure for the rebuilding of the school. It is on record that on 4th April, 1952, he wrote to the Ministry of Education about it, and on 12th May the Ministry replied:

"With reference to your letter of 4th April. 1952, about the rebuilding of the above-named school"—

the Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic—

"I am directed by the Minister of Education to say that the question of the inclusion of this project in the building programme is primarily a matter for the West Hartlepool local education authority who will have to consider it with the needs of other schools in their area. At the present time, the very limited resources available for educational building must be concentrated on providing new places for children of statutory school age from the larger new housing estates and new towns who would otherwise be out of school. The Minister regrets that in present circumstances she is unable to approve for inclusion in programme work designed mainly to replace or improve unsatisfactory conditions in existing schools."

There are two points to note in the letter. The Ministry say that the rebuilding of the schools is a matter for the local education authority, and also that there is no material available to improve the conditions in existing schools. It is significant that the local education authority put the rebuilding of the school well up in its 1953–54 programme. The managers again contacted the Ministry to ask for an interview. The interview was refused. But through the activity of the local education authority an interview took place with officials of the Ministry in London last October.

The reverend gentleman who represented the managers put his case, and he writes:

" I was informed that, no matter what the conditions of the school were, so long as there was a building, nothing could be granted."

His reply was that the Ministry was responsible for the welfare of the children of the country. The answer he got to that was,

"That is what I have been told to tell you."

The corresponding manager reported the interview to the local education authority and also addressed a long communication to the Ministry on 3rd November. In December, 1952, the school was visited by one of Her Majesty's inspectors. On 13th January, 1953, the managers received a letter from the Ministry saying:

" Re your letter of the 3rd of November. 1 am directed by the Minister of Education to state that she has been fully informed by Her Majesty's inspector on the conditions of the premises used by the above school. After considering this information, she is unable to vary her previous decision not to include the provision of a new building in the L.E.A. 1953-54 building programme."

On 9th February the Minister said in reply to a Written Question from me in this House, when I asked her to give me a copy of the inspector's Report, that she would write to me. She wrote to me on 16th February, and said:

"I should explain that Her Majesty's Inspector did not make a report on this school in the normal sense of that word…. In this instance, he sent a fairly detailed description of the school premises and dealt in particular with the structural condition, the heating and lighting facilities, the sanitary offices, fixe precautions and the state of internal decorations."

I wrote to the Minister on 19th February saying I was amazed that anybody who called himself an inspector of schools could, either by minute, letter or report, regard these premises as being suitable for the teaching of children. The Minister replied, on 3rd March:

"I must start by making clear that Her Majesty's inspector did not in any way disguise from me the fact that these premises left much to be desired. He was at pains to make quite clear what defects there were. You must, therefore, blame me and not him for the judgment that the premises, though far from satisfactory, are not unfit for use."

It is not without significance, in that connection, to point out that the inspector who saw this school in December was of the opinion that it was quite unsatisfactory.

On 25th February, the school was examined by Mr. T. A. Crawford, a Licentiate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and I want to read his report:

"Generally, the structure of the building externally is sound. Internally, the conditions are, to say the least of it, shocking. The approach to the first floor classrooms is on a very gloomy stone staircase with the landing which is about three feet wide, serving as a cloakroom. The classrooms are exceptionally high and the windows are glazed in a good many cases with the war-time utility glass which helps to make the classrooms gloomier.

In each of these classrooms there are open fires, plus one or two inefficient radiators which are absolutely inadequate to maintain the proper temperature for the comfort of the children and the teachers. During the winter months it is difficult to understand how the pupils can see to read and write with the existing lighting, which consists in several rooms of one gas pendant with four small mantles in equally small globes which one would expect to see in a sitting room of a cottage.

Generally, the cloakrooms are of a makeshift character and the washing facilities totally inadequate. One of the drawbacks of this school is the appalling sanitary arrangements which consist of four w.c's for girls"—

might I here interpose to say that there are 135 little girls attending this school—

"and one w.c. for the boys"—

there are 110 boys in attendance at this school every day—

"and are in a completely deplorable condition. Whilst they are termed w.c's they are purely and simply pans which connect directly to the drains without any traps and without automatic flushing system. The only way in which these w.c's can be flushed is by the caretaker going round periodically with buckets of water and pouring it down. The condition of these lavatories is disgusting in the light of present day sanitation and is decidedly unhealthy.

The area of the playground is totally inadequate for the number of pupils in the school. I have no hesitation in stating that this school should be condemned as unfit."

That is the building that the Minister of Education, as recently as January of this year, said is not unfit for use by children.

But that is not the whole of the story. In March of this year, the school was examined by the senior sanitary inspector of the local authority. His report points out that whereas the Ministry's minimum requirement for this number of girls is 11 w.c's, the accommodation is six obsolete and insanitary trough closets. As far as the boys are concerned, there should be four w.c's and eight urinal stalls, whereas there is only one obsolete and insanitary trough closet in addition to a 10 feet urinal. The Ministry's minimum standard provides for 22 wash basins, but only five are available. There is a staff of one male and nine females and all the accommodation is three w.c's.

In some of the rooms the natural light is very poor. Artificial lighting is by gas, which is said to be fluctuating and inadequate. One room had to be artificially lit at 10.15 a.m. on an average day. Heating is by open fires and gas radiators. I have with me a chart showing the heating arrangements on 10 days in January, every day in February, and nine days in December last. The temperature at 9 o'clock in the morning was not above 45 degrees. This is the building which the Ministry of Education say is not unfit for use.

Because time is short, I put this last point to the Parliamentary Secretary. All over the country, houses and shops which were bombed are being rebuilt. Luxury and semi-luxury buildings which were partially or completely destroyed by enemy action are being rebuilt with scarce material. In this case, however, where a school was rendered unfit for use by enemy action, the Ministry are hiding behind the fact that there is this substandard building in the neighbourhood and they refuse to grant a licence to the managers to rebuild the school.

The question of finance does not arise. Apart from the minor provisions of the Education Act, 1944, the main provision for the new building will be either from the managers of the school or from the War Damage Commission. Plans have already been prepared, costing some£20,000, very little of which will need to be found by the Ministry of Education. All that the Ministry are asked to do is to grant the necessary licence so that building can proceed.

The sanitary conditions of the school are so damnable that they might easily lead to an outbreak of an infectious disease. In these conditions, it would not be difficult to get the material from the Ministry of Health with which to build the new school. I say to the Parliamentary Secretary that the attitude of the Ministry of Education is quite unjustified and unfair.

In her letter of May, 1952, the right hon. Lady the Minister, in a letter to the local corresponding manager of the school, said that no money was available to improve buildings which were then being used. It is not without significance to observe that since January of this year more than£1,100 has been, or will be, found by the Ministry of Education to improve this school. That is not because they want to do it, but because the facts of the case have been brought to light in letter and in Parliamentary Question.

I want the Parliamentary Secretary to deny this, if he will. I wrote to the Minister of Education on 3rd March, sending her a copy of the independent architect's report and threatening that if there was an outbreak of infectious disease in that part of the town, I should hold the right hon. Lady and her Ministry responsible. The very next morning the telephones between London and West Hartlepool were humming, because on that day instructions were given to the local education authority to go ahead with the improvement of the sanitary arrangements. Indeed, they were actually put in hand during the Easter holidays.

I say that it ought not to be necessary to do that, but that the report of their own inspector, the report of the chief sanitary inspector of the local authority and the report I sent of the independent architect ought to convince even the present Minister of Education that this building is unfit for children to use as a school.

It is true that the original application was made for this school to be put in the 1953–54 programme. That. I fear, is now too late, but I should like an assurance this afternoon from the Parliamentary Secretary that as the local education authority have placed the rebuilding of this school as first priority on their 1954–55 programme, the Minister will agree to this school being rebuilt as soon as possible.

I have no objection at all to the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) taking the platonic view that the most important thing of all is education, although there might be a long debate about the meaning of some of the words involved. I do not wish to diminish the importance of education, nor the necessity for doing all that can be done to provide the appropriate quantity of schools and, where the appropriate quantity of schools exists, there to improve the quality.

If I may mention one of two of the things the hon. Member said before I return to my notes: if I do not controvert I do not think I must be taken as accepting his accounts of conversations. Conversations are very notoriously difficult to report. 1 personally would never hang a dead dog on a report of a conversation, honestly as I should try to do it. I am therefore not in any way impugning the good faith of the hon. Member or those who informed him, but I think it proper to say that his accounts of conversations must not be taken as necessarily exact.

About the condition of the school in general, I would not very much differ from him. My knowledge is second-hand, but it is as exact and has been as much checked as second-hand knowledge can be. I think he was a little less than fair on one comparatively small point about the temperature. As far as I can tell from examining the papers, there is a real conflict of evidence about whether the warming of the school is anything like as inadequate as the hom. Member suggested. I have looked at all the papers very carefully and I would put it no higher than this, that there is a conflict of evidence on the point of the warming of the rooms. About the sanitation, lighting and the rest I do think the hon. Member, however unintentionally, was a little less than fair. I have listened to the hon. Member for two-thirds of his time and I must be allowed to say that he was a little less than fair.

In one part of his speech, the hon. Member described this school as it was before the recent repairs and improvements were made, and in a later part of his speech he seemed to object to the money that had been spent on repairs and improvements. That really is landing us in a situation in which we have not the proper opportunities for self-defence. 1 quite agree that there is here a good deal that needs defence. On the other hand, there have been honest attempts to make the premises tolerable lately and neither "satisfactory" nor "fit" is a term of art, so far as I know, or has been judicially defined. When my right hon. Friend finds herself unable to accept the putting of this school into the "unfit" category, it is not because she is not very well aware of what can be said against this school.

I put the argument at its simplest, and I am sure that the hon. Member will do me the justice of accepting that if I think the argument simple I do not for that reason think it any less important; the most important things are often the simplest. If it is true, and upon all the expert advice and information which my right hon. Friend can consult it does reasonably appear to be true, that the resources allotted for educational building would, if enough of them were directed to the rebuilding of this school, thereby prevent or postpone building somewhere where there is not at present a school—if that is true, and it is a matter very difficult to tell; nobody can tell without examining all the files and cross-examining all the officials concerned—I think, with every respect to the hon. Gentleman's perfectly proper feelings about the unsatisfactoriness of this school, that if it be true that to replace this school by another would mean postponing the construction of a school somewhere where it is quantitively needed, there can be no doubt that my right hon. Friend's decision has been correct.

I honestly cannot see how anybody, whatever his political principles or prejudices, can get round that argument, which I think is the simple and rather sadly simple argument in this matter. The Minister has insufficient capital; I think that "capital" was the word she used, whereas the hon. Gentleman naturally and unobjectionably said that "money" was needed. I am glad that in another sentence he said there was no financial question arising.

It is not here a question of finance, but one of actual material resources, human and otherwise. In that sense my right hon. Friend has not. and in view of the history and politics of the last 15 years, which we have not now time to debate, could not have had. enough capital to allow of the building which any reasonable person would want to replace both obsolete schools and war-damaged schools. That has not been possible, and where it becomes necessary for the Minister to choose between the quantitatively obligatory school and the qualitatively highly desirable replacement, one has only to state the choice plainly to see which way the Ministerial decision must properly go.

The local education authority now proposes the rebuilding of the bombed school—[Interruption.] With respect, last year, it was after the programme had been submitted by the local education authority and settled by the Ministry, that the town clerk wrote to the Ministry asking for this school to be added to the programme. The L.E.A. now proposes to rebuild the bombed school as the first item in their 1954–55 programme. That programme has not yet been settled by the Minister. I must not be taken as in any way binding her in her decision, but it is fair to say that the Minister and the Ministry are fully conscious of the unsatisfactoriness of this school, that they have been, and were, even before the hon. Gentleman took the active steps to which he has referred, considering this school and what could be done. Without making any promise to him, if any kind of new factor can be produced which may make it possible to reconsider her choice—which I have tried to indicate to the House—if any new factor can possibly be brought into that consideration, it will be given any weight that by any possibility can be given to it.

In view of what I have said about the necessary attitude of the Minister as between quantitatively and qualitatively desirable school building, I do not believe any Minister of whatever political colour —and we must remember that it was the late Mr. Tomlinson who established this quantitative-qualitative principle, although he did not use those words—could go further than I have gone in my last or my last-but-one sentence. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and all Hartlepool will accept the fact that the Minister, and particularly the inspector concerned, are not a bit hard-hearted or cynical about this, but are extremely sensitive about it and desire whatever can be done to be done as soon as it is physically possible to do it.