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

Before I make some general remarks on this Bill, I would like to say how grateful I am to all Members of Standing Committee B, who, certainly when I was responsible for the Bill, worked so hard upon it. Although we had many long discussions upstairs, they were all, in my experience, always devoted to trying to improve the Bill in the interest of road safety and certainly not based on any political divisions. I should like to add also an expression of my thanks to the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) and to his hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies), who have, if I may say so, approached the Bill in a very factual and helpful fashion. It is only right that I should say that they have greatly improved it, and I am very grateful to them for the way in which we have been able to co-operate on this Bill.

There are three main points which I should like to make in moving the Third Reading. The first is on the broad question of road safety, which the Bill does try to attack from a good many directions. We have dealt with matters concerning cyclists, dogs on the highway, traffic signs, and a great many other things; but I wish to emphasise that the testing of motor vehicles, with its associated spot checking provisions, is, in my view—and, I think, in the view of the House—essential to this purpose of increasing road safety through the Bill. The powers which I have taken have been made as broad and as flexible as possible, because, as I have explained to the House, I do not want to tie my hands; I want to leave myself free to try and get quick progress upon this question of testing, and therefore I must leave myself free to use whatever means of testing seem most readily available. Although those things have, rightly, I think, and of necessity, been left flexible and not yet decided in detail, because I do want to get agreement about them, I want to say how much importance I attach to this principle of the testing of motor vehicles and the associated spot testing provisions. I really believe that if we are to make any inroads upon the quite alarming casualty figures—something like 5,500 deaths on the road this year, I suppose—we cannot neglect any possible means of attacking the problem.

We must try and attack the problem of road safety, and thus the question of saving lives and injuries, from every possible direction. I do not think there is any easy or simple solution. Parts of the Bill do foresee the steady stepping up of a roads programme. To take just one small example, there are provisions for putting right difficulties about central reservations and traffic signs. But I want to make the point that I do not believe that, even if we could have a very much larger roads programme than is possible because of our resources, that programme could be regarded as some sort of universal panacea which would immediately completely change the road accident situation.

It might, indeed, do nothing of the sort, unless the new fast roads were most carefully phased with improvements in traffic conditions round congested areas on the outskirts of cities and so forth. There is a risk that too many people in this country are being asked to opt for what is presented as being a sort of simple solution—just build new roads, and we shall not have any accidents. That is quite wrong and quite untrue. Indeed, experience in both America and Germany does not always indicate /hat fast new roads cure accidents. In some cases they may cause even larger and more multiple accidents, as is often shown in America.

As the background to the Bill, because it gives me powers concerning roads, I want to say that I do not intend to depart from the policy which I have tried to outline to the House. My view is that a roads programme must be a balanced programme, and that a considerable proportion of expenditure must be devoted to curing bottlenecks and bad traffic conditions inside cities and at the outskirts of cities as well as to building fast motor connections between cities.

That is important. I believe that it is only in that way that we shall make the maximum contribution to road safety in our road building programme. One must have a road programme not only for building new motor roads—I am determined to build them as fast as I think is fair and proper in the broad national interest, and many of the plans recently announced show that I intend to get on with the job—but also for improving traffic flow and reducing congestion in and round our cities, and plans that I have recently announced show that I attach very great importance to that. I believe that to be essential if we are to make a contribution to road safety.

That leads me to my third point, which is the general question of parking and traffic flow, covered by the Bill in the Clauses dealing with the provision of parking places and the use of parking meters. It is sometimes said that the parking meter is a retrograde instrument because it tends to control motorists and perhaps even to drive them off the roads. I do not take that view. My view is that the parking meter does not represent a new tax on the motorist. It is an essential part of the general attempt, which I am sure is necessary, and which I am sure any Government would have to try to face, to get a better traffic flow in our congested cities.

Also, we must have more off-street parking, as we all agree. Unless the Government are prepared to subsidise off-street parking, which I am quite sure would be entirely wrong, there must be revenue from the parking meter which, in this Bill, is clearly restricted to the development of off-street parking. Parking meters perform two functions in relation to off-street parking. They make the price mechanism work on the highway and they make it worthwhile for people to build off-street car parks. They pro- vide some revenue for local authorities to encourage them to help in the task.

The parking provisions in the Bill are, in my view, essential if we are to find a solution to our immense traffic problems not only in London but Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and other big congested cities, and I hope that they will be considered in that light.

I will give only one more example, and that is the traffic study which I have asked Mr. Alex Samuels and his colleagues to undertake in London in the small congested central area. That is well under way, and I shall expect to receive the Report in the early autumn. I am sure that the provisions in the Bill are absolutely necessary if that report is to be implemented in the interest of all the people who want to get about the streets of London on their daily business or their pleasure.

The Bill has had a somewhat chequered career we would all agree on that—particularly in another place.

It has to go back there.

As the hon. Member for Enfield, East rightly says, the Bill has to go back there, but it goes back there after this House has put into it an immense amount of hard work which, as I have said, has not in any way been devoted to the party aspects of the matter. It has been devoted—I say this most sincerely—to a genuine attempt to make it a constructive Bill which really will help us in dealing with the various problems that I have been discussing.

The country as a whole and all the interests concerned, should take note that this is now a Bill on which a great deal of time has been spent in the House and in Standing Committee, and which has been much improved. The responsibility for the improvement has been equally divided—I think it is fair to say so—between the two sides of the House. We have all played our part in it. I am grateful both to my hon. Friends and to hon. Gentlemen opposite for all their hard work. I think that the Bill is now as sensible and as practical as we can make it. Nothing can cure the great problems. but I believe that the Bill, if we can pass it into law reasonably quickly, can make a sensible contribution towards the solution of road traffic problems, to saving life on the roads, and to some general improvement in the many other difficult problems which it covers.

It is only at long intervals that we have the opportunity of dealing comprehensively in the House with the serious and vital problem of road traffic and road safety. During the last year we have had such an opportunity, and we have given this Bill most careful consideration at all stages. It is important that the outcome of our deliberations, in view of the rare occasions on which we can deal with the matter, should be good.

I would say straight away that I think the Bill as it now emerges from its previous stages is an effective one and will do a considerable amount in easing traffic problems And, in particular, in stemming—I will not say "reducing"—the increasing rate of accidents on our roads.

It will be remembered that when the Bill came before the House for Second Reading the Opposition were extremely critical. We thought at that stage that the contents of the Bill had been ill-considered, that the Bill consisted largely of unrelated odds and ends, that it would do little to affect road casualties, and that in a most important aspect of the problem, the testing of road vehicles, it represented a shameful retreat from the Government's previous policy. We were also critical of the related problem of road building. Taking all those considerations together, we came to the conclusion that it was right for us as an Opposition to oppose the Bill by a formal vote, and that we did.

There is no doubt about it at all that today the Bill differs immensely from the one before the House a year ago. It has been altered substantially in Standing Committee by contributions from hon. Members on all sides. The Standing Committee was not run at all on a party basis. Over and over again there were divisions in the Conservative Party and divisions in the Labour Party. All hon. Members made their contributions. The all-important Clause relating to vehicle testing was reintroduced after some difficulty and early opposition, but I do not intend to go over that history again.

Today a Bill emerges of which I think the House can be proud. I believe it will make a contribution towards the solution of our road problems.

I should also like to pay tribute to the sympathetic attitude displayed by the two Ministers who have been in charge of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, although we sometimes quarrelled with him, was on the whole, I think everyone will agree, most anxious to listen to the comments which came from various parts of the Standing Committee. The present Minister has been most sympathetic to every suggestion that has been made. He is obviously keenly anxious to do everything he can to help forward the solution of this problem. We all appreciate—I speak for all my colleagues in saying this—the way in which he handled the business in Committee. We are all appreciative too of the help given to him and to the Committee by the Parliamentary Secretary.

I told the right hon. Gentleman in Committee, when he was first appointed to his present post, what he should do if he wanted to succeed and to go down in history as a great Minister of Transport. I told him that what he had to do was very simple: when in doubt consult the Opposition and accept its advice. In his work upon this Bill he has done that; not entirely, but to a large extent. I must warn him, however, that he is slipping badly, because about other Measures which he has brought before the House, and in his relationships with the British Transport Commission and certain proposals it has made, he has rejected our advice. I must warn him that those chickens will come home to roost and that one day he will have to express regret, which, I hope, he will express publicly, that he did not follow our advice on those matters too. However, we are today dealing with this Bill, and with this Bill the Minister is doing well.

It is certain that because of the proposals in the Bill he is going to get into a lot of trouble. He will be criticised by motorists, by pedestrians, by large sections of the community. I fear he will be criticised by the motoring associations, which, in my view, have taken up a wholly anti-social attitude towards the Bill. They have carried on propaganda contrary not only to what we all here consider to be in the best interests of the motorists and of the people of the country as a whole, but even sometimes contrary to proposals whose value have been proved by experience in other countries, where they have been shown to be not only successful but exceedingly popular. Yet the motoring associations of this country have opposed them, heaven knows why—perhaps to justify their existence, or the existence of the special committees they have set up. Against these proposals they have carried out a very foolish but, I am glad to say, wholly ineffective propaganda.

The right hon. Gentleman will have this consolation, however, when he is subjected to criticisms. He can say quite fairly that this Bill has not been a party matter and that these proposals in principle have been agreed to by Parliament as a whole. We may criticise him because of a detail, or say that he is doing this wrongly or that, or that this piece of administration is foolish; or we may say that he is not acting quickly enough. There are such criticisms we may all legitimately make, but he can anyhow rest assured that for the principles involved he has and will continue to have the support of us all, and we of the Opposition will defend those principles when they are attacked.

Now I shall deal with some of the Clauses of the Bill. I do not want to go through the whole Bill. That would weary the House, and we are a bit weary already, having worked on the Bill for two long days already. There are, of course, many Clauses which, though useful and important, only tidy up the existing law, or make some minor improvements. There are two or three matters to which I want to draw special attention.

One is the proposal, about which the Minister has already spoken, to introduce parking meters. That has met with considerable opposition, and there still exists in the minds of many people, including mine I admit, doubt whether this will be successful. However, I have no doubt that the experiment should be tried. In other countries that experiment has proved successful even although in its early stages there was considerable criticism of it. Because it has been successful elsewhere, and because the problem of the flow of traffic and of parking in our cities is so serious and is becoming daily worse, I am convinced that this experiment should be tried here.

I am also sure of this, that if it is to be tried it must be tried on a proper scale. It will be of no use to have a petty experiment, in a few streets only and for a short time merely. If it is to be tried at all it must be tried on a substantial scale, in a large area and for a considerable length of time. If after that it is found that it effects no improvement, or that it causes more trouble than it is worth, I hope the Minister will tell the House, "We shall abandon it." However, I hope he will try the experiment, try it early, and try it on a large scale.

One Clause which aroused a certain amount of controversy in Committee, as, I am sure and hope, it will do in another place, is Clause 7, which introduces what is, I suppose, a new principle of law; and that is to make it an offence, punishable by five years' imprisonment, to kill any one on the road by driving dangerously. That is supposed to be in substitution for the existing procedure by which a motorist in such circumstances may be had up for manslaughter.

The argument in favour of it is that juries are unwilling to convict for manslaughter but will be willing to convict a motorist for killing a man while driving dangerously. It is doubtful whether that will prove to be so. Nobody knows. It is anybody's guess. What we do know definitely is that the Clause will create a ridiculous and, in my opinion, also an offensive anomaly. There are two different penalties now to be imposed— very different penalties—not according to the degree of dangerous driving for which a motorist is responsible, but according to chance consequences over which the motorist can have no control. If a man who happens to have a very thin skull is killed as a result of dangerous driving, the motorist is to be liable to imprisonment for five years. On the other hand if the victim of an accident has a skull of normal thickness and is not killed, the motorist, who may have been driving just as dangerously or even more dangerously will be subject to a penalty of only two years' imprisonment.

I put this example before the Committee. A motorist may be driving dangerously and kill somebody and, by the Bill, be liable to a penalty of five years' imprisonment; another motorist may be driving even more dangerously and may maim four or five people for the rest of their lives, but he is liable to a penalty of only two years' imprisonment. That is a ridiculous proposition, and I hope that it will be given further consideration in another place. It is wholly illogical and irrational.

I come now to the proposals concerned with road safety. First there is the increase in penalties for the existing offences of driving without due care, dangerous driving, and so on. I do not myself believe that that will have any effect whatsoever. This appears to me to be legislation by empty gesture. I know that every time any proposal is put before the Minister for dealing with road safety the first response by his advisers, and also my many outside bodies, is "Increase the penalties". It sounds a quick, easy and plausible solution of the problem; but we already know that magistrates do not impose anything like the maximum penalty. It is less than a quarter of the maximum penalty which is imposed by magistrates. They never impose the present maximum penalty. Therefore, what in the world is the use of increasing the maximum penalty from £30 to £50 for an offence when nobody now is given a penalty of £30? I do not think that increasing the penalty is likely to make any contribution to road safety.

We have had a great deal of discussion about the reluctance of juries to convict people whenever a substantial penalty may fall upon the offender. That is an undoubted fact. I have a theory as to why that happens. I do not know whether it will be accepted by other hon. Members, but I believe that most juries are unwilling to convict and see the offender sentenced to six months' or a year's imprisonment because so many of them have guilty consciences. Looking back on a long period of motoring, I cannot say that never at any moment have I driven foolishly or dangerously. I have kicked myself afterwards and said, "My God, I ought not to have done that. It was a bit of dangerous driving".

I do not believe there is a single motorist who would not admit to himself that he has occasionally driven foolishly or dangerously. Therefore, when a mem- ber of a jury sees a man in the dock he says to himself, "I might have been caught at one of those moments when my mind wandered and I was driving dangerously and been liable to a penalty of a year's or two years' imprisonment."

Because of this sympathy with the man juries see themselves in the dock instead of the defendant, and for that reason it is understandable that they are unwilling to convict, particularly when they know that the penalty will be substantial. For all these reasons, my view is that increasing penalties for offences does not bring about greater care on the road on the part of motorists and may indeed have the opposite effect.

We have had long debates about vehicle-testing, and I do not want to repeat the arguments that have been put forward already on this side of the House. Obviously this provision is most important and may have a material effect in reducing accidents on the roads. I am a little worried, however, about the Government's attitude towards this matter. The Minister accepts it in principle and says he is keen about it, but I am worried because neither he nor his Department appears to have given any thought to the way it is to be carried out.

It is not as if the principle had been agreed upon a week ago. It was first put forward by the Government over a year ago when they introduced their Bill in another place. Since that time we have had no idea whatsoever how the Government will proceed, what their plans are and what their administration of the scheme will be. We should have thought that the Government would have acted as Governments normally do whenever they bring a new and revolutionary proposal before the House and would have told us broadly how it was to be carried out and given at least an outline of what they had in mind.

We do not know how many testing stations will be put up and how many people will be employed in them. All we know is what the Minister has told us—that it will take some time before the scheme is worked out. There appeared in his speech the other day no real sense of urgency. One had the feeling that because the scheme would take some time to work out there was no hurry about it. I take the reverse view; that because it is difficult there is all the more reason for getting down to it quickly.

The real answer is that, as this provision has been defeated once in another place, it is only fair to my Department to say that it cannot make rapid progress in negotiations with the parties concerned until it is armed with the real powers to get on with the job.

I am interested in what the right hon. Gentleman has said, but I am not sure with whom he wants to negotiate to set up the various testing stations. If he carries out the scheme, as we hope and believe, and he himself sets them up—or perhaps it is with the local authorities that he wants to negotiate?

indicated assent.

Then I understand why the right hon. Gentleman has not made much progress. But I hope that he will get in touch with the local authorities as quickly as possible to see to what extent they will be willing to co-operate in implementing the proposal. I still hope, however, that the Minister will give some indication before the Bill passes through the House of the kind of pattern he has in mind for administering the scheme.

I pressed the right hon. Gentleman on the Report stage, but he has given no answer as to whether he has in mind that the bulk of the testing will be done by the local authorities and the Ministry or by private enterprise. We have no idea whatsoever. He should tell us at this stage what his intentions are. Does he rely mainly on private enterprise garages, with all the dangers that that involves, or is he merely going to use private garages to supplement the scheme where necessary?

I would like to reinforce what I have already said in Committee with a comment which I saw recently in the Economist, a paper normally in favour of private enterprise, which stated that it hoped that when the Government came to implement the scheme they would use as few private garages as possible. But I must confess, in view of the Government's general prejudice against public enterprise, that while I hope for the best in this matter I fear the worst.

The last point is in connection with Clause 4 which permits the Minister to provide

"... with the approval of the Treasury... for promoting roads safety by disseminating information or advice relating to the use of the roads."

The Clause goes on to enable the Minister to contribute towards local authority schemes.

Although there has not been much discussion on this point, I think that at this stage we should say something about it and press the Minister to act on a large scale, because it is in the direction of propaganda and education that we can make the biggest contribution towards a reduction of accidents on the roads. Therefore, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the Clause merely envisages a comparatively unimportant procedural change or whether it contemplates a large-scale propaganda campaign. I very much hope that it is the latter.

We know by experience what such a campaign can do. We had one in 1946, 1947 and 1948. It was a campaign in the Press, on posters and on the wireless, using every method of communication open to a Government Department. We found that although new cars were coming on to the roads in increasing numbers, rising substantially month after month, the number of road accidents sometimes remained substantially the same and in some periods actually went down. I have no doubt that the most important factor in bringing about that reduction in the number of accidents was that large-scale campaign.

The right hon. Gentleman must not forget that at that time there was very severe petrol rationing and activity on the roads was very much less than it is today. I should not like him or the House to be under the misapprehension that propaganda can do so very much to prevent accidents.

That is true, but the point I am making is also true. It is that during the period I mentioned the number of cars on the road increased substantially month by month. I have not got the figure with me, but if the hon. Gentleman will look at the number of cars licensed between 1946 and 1948 he will find that it rose substantially. All I am saying is that during a period when the number of cars on the road rose substantially, accidents decreased, and that was remarkable.

The amount of money now provided by the Government which filters through the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to the local road safety committees, is very small, and I believe that the present propaganda campaign conducted by them is largely ineffective. Unfortunately, although the road safety committees consist of people filled with goodwill, who do their best according to their lights to reduce the number of accidents in their localities, they are not experts on propaganda. Their selection of posters is often deplorable, and so the money they use is often dissipated in small, ineffective posters splashed about in inappropriate places with no sense of repetition. The net effect is practically nil, except in a substantial waste of money. Only experts in advertising know how important it is to have constant repetition of the same large posters in appropriate sites and next to each other in a series. Therefore I hope that the Minister will look into this matter in order to see, without treading too hard on the toes of those composing the local road safety committees, that the money is better spent.

I am asking for something more. I am asking for a national campaign along the lines of that carried out between 1946 and 1948. I do not say that it would make the same contribution, but I am sure it would make a valuable contribution to the reduction of accidents. Of course this would cost money. It would cost several hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. But how can we value in terms of money, even a large sum, the hundreds of thousands of lives which might be saved? But even if we made a purely monetary calculation, I would again remind the House that road accidents are costing this country today £150 million a year. So that if we can reduce accidents by 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. by spending £300,000 or £400,000 a year, obviously it would be a good financial investment.

I put forward this further argument. We believe that the building of new roads will make some contribution to the reduction of road accidents. Incidentally, here I agree with all the qualifications put forward by the Minister. However, road building is expensive, and the expenditure of a few hundred thousand pounds a year on an all-out national road safety campaign would be far more profitable from the point of view of accident reduction.

If the Minister launches such a campaign, I hope he will not hesitate to use the same type of shock poster that was used before. The "widow poster" raised considerable controversy, but I am sure that it was extraordinarily effective. A campaign of this kind is useless unless it brings the danger home to the public, and that can only be done by shock. It cannot be done by pictures of pretty girls driving cars. We cannot use the same method as is used to sell chocolate. We have to shock people. So I hope that the Government will consider a large-scale campaign of posters and publicity in the Press, and so on. I hope also that it will be carried out with the same enthusiasm and keenness right down through the centre to local authority level, as before. Nothing would make a greater contribution to road safety.

Once again we must bring before the mind of every road user, pedestrian as well as others, that contrary to what they naturally and normally think, an accident can happen to themselves. The most important contributory factor to accidents is the subconscious feeling which most people have that accidents happen to other people and not to themselves. So we must bring home to them by shock the fact that they may be maimed for life, that they may be killed and leave behind a widow and orphans. If that is done on a sufficiently large scale, many lives will be saved.

We have to consider all these problems against the background of current events and today accidents are rising substantially and rapidly. Today there are nearly 300,000 deaths and casualties on the roads every year and about 5,000 people are killed every year on the roads through accidents. A large proportion of those could be prevented if proper steps were taken. One road accident in which ten people are killed becomes sensational, headline news. A colliery accident involving 100 people is a national shock, the main news in the papers, and the main item of conversation of the public for several weeks. Yet road accidents kill 5,000 people a year, and because they occur mostly in isolated units spread throughout the country, people do not pay as much attention to them as they give to one serious bus accident. Moreover, from calculations authoritatively made, we known that out of every ten children born today, if things continue as they are at present, four will be killed or injured on the roads sometime during their life.

Therefore I ask the Minister, now that he has been given various powers in this Bill, to act with the greatest urgency. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will do what he can, but he has so many other important occupations that I fear that through pressure of other business he will not pay as much attention to this matter as he would wish.

During the war, as I know from personal experience, Ministers had charts in their rooms showing the increasing production of various war weapons week by week. I should like the Minister to have a large chart put up in his room similarly showing the increase or decrease in road accidents. In that way the Minister would have the problem permanently before him, would never be able to forget it.

I hope the Minister will importune the Chancellor of the Exchequer for money when necessary. I hope he will use the powers given to him under the Bill with the greatest energy and drive. If he fails, there will be plently of public criticism, but I hope he will not. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that in any action, however unorthodox, however expensive, which he takes in trying to reduce the present appalling toll on the roads, he will have the unanimous support of this House and the gratitude of the country.

I am grateful for the opportunity of saying a few words in support of this Bill. Normally I take a considerable interest in traffic problems, particularly at Question Time in the House, but eleven months ago, when the Second Reading of this Bill took place, I was on a Parliamentary delegation to the West Indies and therefore I was not present then, and also I could not take part in the Committee stage.

congestion. My right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) are absolutely right in referring to the alarming casualty figures from which we are now suffering. They are a blot on our national life, and if it were not for the fact that our sense of tragedy has perhaps been deadened by the effect of two world wars, these figures would cause much greater concern in the country today than they do.

It is our duty to do everything possible to reduce those accidents. Even if some of the means, such as compulsory testing, do only a little, they will do something, and every little is a help. I therefore regard it as our duty to press forward with all the measures contained in the Bill.

I agree also that a new road system, although I welcome it from the point of view of relieving traffic congestion, is not necessarily a panacea for curing accidents. I well remember reading a vivid article in the Sunday Times a few months ago by Sir Miles Thomas, describing a journey he had made along Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, in California. His driver apparently took him past a place were eleven people had been killed a few days earlier in a collision in which several cars were involved. It was caused because one man had taken the wrong turning into a one-way road in a roundabout system and all the other cars, going at, I suppose, speeds of anything from 60 to 100 m.p.h., had all crashed and piled into the wreckage, with the result that eleven people were killed. When, and if, we get road systems like that, we shall need great propaganda and education among drivers if we are to avoid accidents of that kind.

I have an interest in the compulsory testing to the extent that I shall be one of its first victims. Although my car is seventeen years old, it has not done a mileage which is any way comparable with its age. In fact, it has not done as great a mileage as my previous five-year old car. I have left it in a garage today to have the brakes put right, because yesterday, driving down Whitehall, I had to pull up rather suddenly and felt that the brakes did not pull the car up as suddenly as I should have liked. That is one argument for having one's brakes tested from time to time to make sure that they are quite all right. It is not long since I had the car at a garage to have the steering put right after it had become jammed through a failure in the automatic lubrication system. That is something which cannot be detected very easily—except that the steering becomes a bit stiff—unless by inspection.

But I want to emphasise that these things are just as likely to happen in a car which is only a year or two old, and I hope that the compulsory testing and the spot checking will eventually take into account cars even less than ten years old. At the speed at which people drive today and in the conditions of traffic congestion which exist in and around London, brakes soon get worn out and need relining. It is necessary, therefore, that they should be looked at.

The third point mentioned by my right hon. Friend in connection with testing is headlights. I am not altogether happy that the headlight problem will be solved by checking, because what checking in a testing station or garage cannot do is to prevent the driver of a vehicle with headlights which possess no dipping mechanism, particularly on lorries, switching on the near side light only and imagining that he is not blinding anybody coming in the opposite direction because he has only one headlamp in use. The dazzle from one lamp straight ahead is much more than half the dazzle caused by two headlamps, and I hope that steps can be taken by the police to check this serious menace. There must be a large number of lorries which have no dipping mechanism on one of their headlamps. This is something which should be stopped but I do not think that checking alone will stop it.

Another cause of dazzle is motorists who use fog-lamps without dipping mechanism instead of, or in addition to, headlamps. I sometimes see cars coming along Watford Way, which, most hon. Members will know, is a fairly well lighted road, using three headlamps, including a fog light, with only two of them dipped. I sometimes wonder what the eyesight of these drivers is like. Anybody who needs to use all those headlights ought perhaps to have his eyesight examined. The fog lamp is a menace when wrongly used in normal conditions without fog, and without dipping mechanism.

Lastly, there is the question of parking. I quite agree that something must be done to take the long-term parker off many of the streets of London so that space can be left for the short-term parker who wants to call at one place for a short time. For a long time, I have wanted to call at an office in Savile Row. I am reluctant to do so because I should probably have to drive round and round to find somewhere to leave my car for only about five minutes. Whenever I have been there in the past either no space has been available or there has been insufficient room for me to park my car, and on occasions when I have stopped to back into a space somebody else has come up and got in behind me a little more quickly. I should like to see a system adopted in that part of London whereby short-term parkers can have some kind of a look in and not be crowded out by people who seem to put their cars there at nine o'clock in the morning and not take them away until six o'clock in the evening.

I am not too sanguine about the effect that the new arrangements will have on removing traffic congestion as a whole. Although there may be something in the argument that by clearing some of the side streets of cars which are parked all day, there would be more room for some of the traffic now using the main roads to use the side streets instead, I still think that the main cause of traffic congestion in London is the intersecting traffic at crossing places on both kinds of road. Until we can find means of preventing that by under-passes or over-passes, or whatever the method is called, I do not think that we will really deal with this traffic problem. Nevertheless, in so far as the Bill does take a step forward in relieving the parking congestion, and certainly so far as it goes to relieve the appalling problem of accidents. I welcome it and I hope it will be a great success.

I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) in expressing the view that the Bill contains some very important and useful provisions for the preservation of road safety. The Minister, and indeed the House, are entitled to be proud of the work and achievement which the Bill embodies.

I like to think that the Bill is an example of what Parliament could do when the Whips were kept in check. There are not many occasions in Parliament these days when we can boast that a Bill of such importance as this Road Traffic Bill has been the product of the best brains on both sides of the House. It is a great advantage to Parliament that it should be so. Many hon. Members, on both sides of the House, feel that if the principle which has been applied to this Bill could be applied to many other Bills which come before the House of Commons, in which there is no serious political difference of opinion, we should get better legislation, and I believe that we should inspire greater public confidence.

There are occasions when Ministers refuse to accept reasonable Amendments which would not in any way affect the policy of the Government or the broad policy of a Bill simply because they are not prepared to depart from their Departmental briefs. We are indebted to the present Minister of Transport for having thrown overboard that rather outmoded attitude, and I hope that on the general principle of taking the fullest possible advantage of the knowledge and experience of Members, to whichever side of the House they belong, successive Governments—whether the present Government or a future Labour Government—will try to restore to individual Members of the House an opportunity to make a real contribution to the work of legislation in which we are involved.

The Minister, in his opening remarks, made reference to the road programme. I think that most of us would share his view that the provision of an extensive road system in itself does not necessarily mean that we shall solve the problem of road casualties. I submit to the Minister that the country is entitled to expect that the Government, with all possible speed, will proceed with very extensive road reconstruction and the construction of arterial roads, having regard to the financial resources available. I believe that if the Minister can couple with this very splendid Road Traffic Bill the construction of motor roads here and there and the elimination of difficult points, he will have made a contribution towards road safety for which the House and the public will be extremely grateful.

On the question of testing stations, I should like to join with my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall in urging the Minister to try to avoid any undue delay. It is vitally important that the local authorities and the Ministry itself, with in some cases the assistance of private garages, should get down to that work as speedily as possible. I am grateful that the Minister has accepted those proposals, which were originally my proposals during the Committee stage of the Bill. While I believe it to be essential and vitally important that testing stations should be provided as speedily as possible, I share my hon. Friend's fear that two great an extension of the private garage testing system might not be advantageous to the community. I feel that by moderate use of this arrangement the local authorities and the Ministry itself can make a contribution in this field.

In regard to road safety education and information, I am very pleased indeed that there are provisions whereby greater use will be made of the local authorities. The local authorities, as I think the Minister would be the first to recognise. have already made a contribution towards road safety. I think that we should all like to join in paying our tribute to the work which is being done by the local road safety committees throughout the country. They have done a really good job, having regard to the financial limitations; and I think that if, by some increased financial arrangement through the local authorities, we can increase the propaganda on the lines indicated by my right hon. Friend, the local authorities can render even greater service to road safety.

We have spent many months on this Bill. I think that they have been months well spent. I hope that the provisions which we have made in the Bill will serve the purpose for which they are intended, that they will help to reduce the terrible road casualties which are occurring, and that eventually, by the joint efforts of the Ministry and all those concerned with this Bill, we shall find that there has been a very substantial reduction in road traffic accidents and casualties.

I should like to begin by endorsing the remarks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford, East (Mr. McLeavy) in regard to the non-party approach to the Bill during the long months that it has been in Committee. The line-up in Committee was really between the speed merchants [VICE-ADMIRAL HUGHES HALLETT.] and those who disapprove of them. The Bill, as I see it, is by its nature a miscellaneous provisions Bill. It is essentially evolutionary, and most of it merely amends and extends the existing law. Its only really novel features are the provisions for parking meters and tests.

In connection with the tests, I notice that my right hon. Friend made little, if any, reference to the fact that the Clause which allows of spot checks on the roads still remains in the Measure. I should like to suggest that that should not be overlooked, and that there may be occasions and circumstances in which spot checks on the roads may prove of considerable value.

Among the satisfactory provisions of the Bill are the increased grants for road safety propaganda, but I think that the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) is inclined to over-estimate what can be achieved by propaganda. I think that there is a great danger of propaganda being merely a shot in the arm. We can have our dramatic posters, weekly safety campaigns and so forth— even perhaps a year's safety campaign —but the old saying that familiarity breeds contempt is, I think, particularly true in connection with that type of propaganda.

Then there is the provision, to which little reference has been made, which gives increased powers for the driving away of vehicles which are badly parked. I urge the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department to use what influence and powers he possesses to make sure that the police take full advantage of that Clause. I am sure that that would be a great contribution towards easing the traffic congestion in our cities.

Then we have the much criticised Clause establishing a special statutory offence for killing while driving dangerously. I do not at all agree with the observations of the right hon. Member for Vauxhall. I should have thought that it was a well-recognised and very ancient principle of the criminal law of this country that the consequences of evil doing are taken into consideration as well as the intent. If anyone doubts that, let him fire at someone with the intention of killing him and he will dis- cover that the ensuing consequences, if he misses, will be quite different from what they will be if he hits.

It depends where he hits.

I personally support that Clause if, as we are assured, it results in an increased prospect of conviction.

I want to turn for a minute or two to certain features of the Bill which still need clarification, or where the Bill leaves something to be desired. The increased penalties for speeding, which the Bill at one time contained, have largely gone, and to that extent some of its original teeth have been drawn. I cannot agree with hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who say that because magistrates and courts do not impose anything approaching the maximum existing penalties, it would be wrong to increase them by Statute. I cannot believe that as a body magistrates would completely disregard the clearly expressed will of Parliament when it is decided that a particular offence must carry with it increased penalties.

I should have thought that it would have been better to have left these provisions unchanged. However, they have gone, and I have raised the matter again only to express the hope that the Minister will not be misled by various statistics which indicate that speed as such has very little to do with accidents. That is entirely fallacious, and I hope that a determined effort will be made, when the Bill is passed, at least to enforce the law as it now stands.

To argue that excessive speed scarcely ever causes an accident is like arguing that the height of a window has very little to do with the fatality which occurs when someone falls out of it. It may be true that it is uncommon for the height to be such that the fall occurs because someone gets giddy, but, on the other hand, the height has a great deal to do with what happens when he hits the ground. It is speed which governs the results of an accident, even though it may not be an initial cause.

The greatest disappointment in the Bill is that it has done so little to strengthen the law about drunken driving. Only two Clauses refer to it. One is Clause 8, which I welcome because it reduces the prospect of the law being brought into contempt by constructive interpretation. Clause 9 brings pedal cyclists within the ambit of the law about drunken road users. The value of that Clause is somewhat reduced by the technical difficulties in committing the offence.

I recognise that the time may not be ripe for any considerable amendment of the law about drink on the roads, yet it is rather humiliating that we should find ourselves in this position, because many people believe that it is the greatest single cause of accidents today. I am not saying whether that is right or wrong, but it is the belief. I suggest that here is one of those rare problems into which a Select Committee could appropriately look, hear the evidence, listen to the experts and recommend whether the state of the law as left by the Bill should be modified, or extended by special legislation.

In spite of various criticisms, I am sure that the Bill will prove fully justified. The Parliamentary time which has been spent on it will have been well spent if it reduces accidents by only 1 or 2 per cent., which, after all, is fifty to a hundred lives a year. I believe that the effect will be greater in due course. Looking ahead, a Bill of this nature has to be considered in relation both to what came before and what may come after.

I hope that time may be found to introduce a consolidating Measure which will incorporate the provisions of this extremely complicated Bill and consolidate them with all the other Measures to which it is related. As a comparatively new Member, I know very little about these matters, but I think that if scrupulous care were taken in drafting a consolidating Bill so that no change in existing legislation were made, it could go through almost "on the nod."

I hope that my right hon. Friend will give serious consideration to the advantage of setting up some form of independent highway authority. Listening to the long discussions in Committee, I reached the conclusion that we have reached the end of the journey so long as the existing organisation of the roads and for the administration of the law, with the complexities, remain. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, road development and administration of the law about road safety must go hand in hand. That is why we must look for greater co-ordination in that direction for the next big step forward.

This is a very important Bill, so important that the Committee stage might have occupied the attention of the whole House instead of being taken upstairs. I have listened to members of the Standing Committee praising themselves for their work, and I can add my praise to theirs.

It has been said that no opposition to parking meters has been expressed in the House, but I hope that the Minister will regard parking meters as an experiment, as is envisaged in the Bill. I hope that we shall avoid the use of parking meters for producing revenue and that the money will be used for its proper purpose of creating an easier traffic flow in the streets of great towns. I shall look forward to seeing the experiment, and I hope that Parliament will take notice of the effect of parking meters.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) said in Committee:

"Those of us who have been concerned about these matters of road safety for a long time, know that three things, in effect, can bring about a significant reduction in road accidents —education and propaganda, having newer and safer roads, and vehicle inspection." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th May, 1956; Vol. 553, c. 258.]

I should like to add a fourth—the removal of much of the heavy traffic which is now carried on the roads and which should be carried on the railways.

What about canals?

I agree that canals can also be used. While it is not within the ambit of the Bill, I hope that we shall not lose sight of the fact that we cannot solve the road problem unless we carry on the railways the heavy traffic which is now on the roads and is denuding the railways of their proper function of carrying the heaviest traffic.

Provisions dealing with safety are among the most important in the Bill. I was interested to hear a reference to an accident in America which was caused by someone who did not know that he was in a one-way street. The Minister should consider a better system of indicating one-way streets. Red arrows on the street and pointing towards the motorist would make the motorist less liable than he now is to miss an indication that he was in a one-way street.

We are universally agreed that it is the desire and aim of everyone to take murder vehicles off the road—and that is what they are. All vehicles which are unfit are a danger to those driving them and to other people on the roads. Anything which can be done to eliminate those vehicles should be done as quickly as possible. I quite agree that there is tremendous difficulty in getting this scheme into operation quickly. It is very easy to spend a large amount of capital and an immense amount of labour on new projects which do not fit in with the national economy at present, but I hope we shall use every avenue to make sure that these tests are made quickly.

I suggest that the Minister might lay down what he considers to be a proper test and a proper standard for vehicles. We might then ask all motorists to try to attain that standard. At present the average motorist takes his car to a garage only for oiling and greasing. If the Minister laid down a standard and asked motorists to conform to it when taking their cars to garages, it might have a very good effect.

I should like to see the present law used more extensively for the promotion of road safety. As I go about the roads of this country—not for very long distances—I see a large number of loads on the roads which in my opinion are definitely unsafe. I think the present law gives adequate opportunity to deal with the matter when it is applied. I have passed numbers of vehicles carrying timber on which huge loads were secured with what looked like watch chains. It is high time that more attention was paid to the safety of the load on the vehicle.

We should aim at conformity to a standard of efficiency and safety on the roads such as we have on the railways. If there were examination of the load and its security as there is on the railways we should do away with a very large number of accidents. I believe the present law is sufficiently strong to deal with that matter, and I hope the Minister will give very careful attention to it.

We shall look with interest to what happens when the Bill has passed. So far as I am concerned, I give it my full support.

if the passage of the Bill through various stages has taken a long time that is because most hon. Members feel that they are experts in this subject. Indeed we all have experience of the roads, either as drivers or as pedestrians.

I think that one reason why the shape of the Bill has changed so considerably during its passage is that the Government have quite rightly paid a great deal of attention to what has been thought about its provisions by private Members on both sides of the House. I say frankly that I was most opposed at the outset to vehicle testing, but, as a result partly of debates in the Standing Committee and partly through going into the matter more carefully and going to the Road Research Laboratory, I have become completely persuaded that vehicle testing is a necessary safety measure. I think that a great many other hon. Members have changed their minds in the same way. One of the most valuable features of discussions on the Bill has been the way in which there has been no party approach to it. I think that in the Standing Committee everyone learned quite a lot about road safety and road traffic law.

In the same way I was very doubtful about parking meters when I first approached the Bill, but I am now convinced of their utility and the contribution that they will make to the flow of traffic. I think they will be very popular. They will make it possible to do something which is now exceedingly difficult. I refer to the difficulty experienced on the rare occasions when one is justified in parking a private car in the centre of London because one has to go from place to place and bring away from a shop, perhaps, something which is bulky. It will be possible to leave a car in a parking place for fifteen minutes without having to drive around a block fifteen times before one can find a parking place. The all-day parker is the principal menace in the centre of London at present.

I was convinced of the utility of vehicle tests mainly by the consideration of headlamps, to which reference has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell). I do not think there is any other way of enforcing the existing provisions of the vehicle lighting Regulations than that of vehicle testing. For years I have been raising in this House the question of nonobservance by motorists of those Regulations, and in particular the point which was made by my hon. Friend, the driver who switches on his near side headlamp undipped, and thinks that he has made a generous contribution to non-dazzle on the road. I have received no satisfaction when I have raised this matter. The Home Office has always stoutly disclaimed any responsibility for police forces outside the Metropolis.

One has been told that the police are too busy and that they have no warranty or justification for stopping a vehicle which has undipped lights. The Regulations merely require the driver to have a dipping apparatus in good order; they do not require him to use it. If any vehicle is stopped on the road at night and has only its nearside headlamp illuminated, and that undipped, in nine cases out of ten it will be found that the dipping mechanism is not in order. That is why the driver has taken the bulb out of the offside lamp. I have made no progress in this matter, and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that all the devices such as amber headlamps and polarisation of light are not complete answers to the problem, but that vehicle testing is the only satisfactory answer. For that reason alone I am happy that the Bill contains the new Clause which we added during the Report stage.

I want to make a final expression of regret that this excellent Bill is marred by the presence in it of Clause 7. 1n the Standing Committee, I moved the deletion of that Clause, and we had quite a long and very useful debate on it. I was not successful in getting my Amendment called on Report, so this is my final expression, before the Bill goes to another place, of my unchanged opposition to that Clause. It is uttered in the hope that in another place the Clause will meet the end which it deserves. I am not entirely hopeful, because in the earlier Session of Parliament in which the Clause found its way into another Bill I believe the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, expressed his attachment to the principle which it contains. I can only say that I believe that the Clause has very few friends here and, if it were struck out in another place, no tears would be shed on either side of the House.

Although I have no right to speak for the legal profession, so far as I have been able to gather opinions in the last year I have found very few friends of this proposal in either branch of that profession. It would not be in order to repeat, on Third Reading, the arguments which I deployed rather extensively in the Standing Committee, but there is no logical justification of the anomaly of that Clause. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) justified it by saying that there were plenty of anomalies in the law now. So there are; but that is not a reason for adding to them.

The existing anomalies have ancient and not entirely respectable historical origins, which I described in Committee. We all know that these punishments for criminal offences were, in their origin, civil; they were the rights of redress given to the relatives of the men who were killed, and the punishment was compensation. Naturally enough, therefore, the law did not punish attempts, and attempts to commit crime were not punishable by the law of England for centuries.

It was as recently as the nineteenth century that attempts became generally punishable under the law of England by Statute; that was never part of the old common law. That is why we have this extraordinary anomaly of the punishment varying so much according to the consequences of the act rather than according to the act itself. The whole progres of the criminal law has been away from that state of affairs, and this Clause is a bit of legal recidivism.

I earnestly hope that the argument that the administration of the law is breaking down, and that this Clause will help juries to convict, will carry no weight when the Bill is considered in another place. The administration of the law is not breaking down because juries think fit to acquit; the man may be innocent, and the whole object of the law is not to procure convictions but to administer justice.

I am conscious of the fact that I have contributed many columns to HANSARD on the Bill, but I am quite unrepentant about that because I believe that the hon. Members with whom I have been associated in respect of various Amendments, and myself, have improved the Bill. At all events, these are the last words that I shall say upon it.

I want to associate myself with the opinion expressed by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) that undue reliance is being placed in road safety upon the punishments of the criminal law.

In the main, the increases in penalties remain in the Bill, although we were successful in knocking out the proposal to disqualify for a second offence of speeding. Even the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, in an earlier Session of Parliament, could find nothing friendly to say about that proposal. Nevertheless, we have increased the penalties fairly widely.

I make bold to say that in my opinion Sections 11 and 12 of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, have not done a useful job. The fact is, as we all know, that we are all guilty of driving offences fairly often. I have been driving for nearly twenty years, and I have no convictions against me for driving offences. What does that mean? It means that I have not been caught. Let us be frank about it. [Interruption.] One of my hon. Friends suggests that I make better use of my driving mirror than does the average motorist.

We all commit these offences, and what happens is that if we are involved in an accident we are prosecuted, whereas if we are not involved in an accident we are not prosecuted. Nor is any change in that situation likely. The standing orders in some areas are that where there is an accident there should be a summons. I understand that it has been laid down by the Court of Criminal Appeal that the level of guilt under Section 12 of the 1930 Act is no different from the negligence which would support a civil claim; it has gone as far as that. A man is involved in an accident, on balance he is to blame, and as a result he has also to pay a fine of £2 later in the magistrates' court; that is what happens, and it is a bit of a farce.

I do not think the criminal law plays a very large part as a deterrent, except in relation to drunkenness under Section I5, and in connection with speeding where it is playing a part. These apart, I should have been quite happy with the ordinary common law offence of furious driving on the highway and manslaughter, so that there was legal punishment available if necessary. I deprecate the belief which is so widespread, and which finds expression in the Bill, that by doubling the penalties we shall diminish the number of deaths or injuries on the roads. We shall not. It is a delusion which may take our minds off the true solutions to this problem.

Some of the true solutions are not in the Bill, and I will therefore, on Third Reading, not refer to them, except to say that I hope that my right hon. Friend will press on with new roads, even though they may not be the whole answer. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the Bill, which I think will make a valuable contribution to road safety, and which I hope will soon be passed into law.

The hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Bell) would like to know that at least one of his constituents agrees very largely with what he has said.

But the hon. Member does not vote for me at General Elections.

This is only a small point in the whole field of political activities. In the case of the other 99·9 per cent., I disagree with him entirely; but on this legal issue I very largely agree with him.

I was interested by the reference of the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) to the article by Sir Miles Thomas on driving in Los Angeles. The hon. Member said he was absent from the House on Second Reading. I was able to play truant from the Committee stage for a few weeks, and while I was away I arrived in Los Angeles, where I had the very pleasant duty of speaking to the State Convention of the C.I.O. Trade Unions, who asked me to speak about how trade unions fitted into the political scene in this country.

To help to make the point that our political set-up was not for export—at least that it could not be applied over there—I pointed out that, unlike the situation in this contry, where our political system is based on the idea that all men are equal, in Los Angeles they had two classes of citizen. The pedestrian had been debased to second-class citizen carrying an awful lot of responsibilities and no rights. The "Freeways" about which they boast in that part of California have no sidewalks and no provision for pedestrians at all. In fact, if a walker gets on the wide sweeping roads in some places he is committing an offence against the law.

I came to the conclusion—possibly I should not have done so from that short experience and from the little I saw there —that if we make proper provision on the roads for pedestrians we also help to make the roads safer for motorists. I should certainly not like to see the kind of road system which they have in that part of California adopted in this country.

We all agree that this Bill is overdue, generally worthwhile and ought to come into operation as quickly as possible, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) pointed out earlier, in spite of its being largely a good Bill, there are some things in it with which we disagree. Some think that it is not courageous enough and does not go far enough.

In spite of the fact that it is a good Bill, the Minister will run into difficulties in applying some parts of it. In particular, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, he will come up against some of the motoring organisations. It ought to be emphasised that we hope that he will stand up to any reactionary organisations which want to water down any part of the provisions of the Bill. If he stands up to them he will be in a very strong position because he will have the united support of the House.

I want briefly to refer to the opposition from the A.A., the R.A.C. and the Scottish Royal Automobile Club in their statement on car testing. In my view it was irresponsible to suggest that the car testing system would not work. I want to mention it in this context. Surely the experience of the Hendon testing station has shown that the vast majority of responsible motorists want this sort of testing to be developed. They have proved that by going along quite voluntarily to have their cars tested there. It seems to me that the motoring organisations are not now speaking for the responsible but for the irresponsible motorist, and I hope that the Minister will take no notice of any observations of that kind which they care to make. I should have thought that any responsible motoring organisation would have warmly welcomed this scheme and would have promised full co-operation with the Ministry and with the local authorities to make the testing scheme work successfully.

There are one or two matters that rather worry me in the Bill as it stands. For instance, I was somewhat worried when the right hon. Gentleman yesterday promised to look at the question of crash helmets for motor cyclists. I do not want to debate whether those helmets should be made compulsory, or whether the motor cyclist should be allowed voluntarily to use them and that there should be plenty of advertising with a view to extending their use. I want to raise the question of standards—which may apply not only to crash helmets but to other items of motoring equipment— which the Ministry may think ought to be applied in the interests of road safety.

I suggest that where standards are laid down by Ministerial authority, with the help of the British Standards Institution or other competent organisations, the onus of having equipment up to that standard should not rest upon the customer—the motor cyclist or the driver—but should be placed on the manufacturers and traders; and that it should be the manufacturer making equipment below standard, or attempting to sell equipment below standard, who should be proceeded against. It is altogether wrong that we should put this onus upon the users of the equipment. In spite of everything that may be done under the Merchandise Marks Acts and so on to prevent fraud and exploitation, there is still a great deal of dishonest advertising in the commercial world. Customers may fall victims to false advertising and should not be punished for it.

I turn next to parking meters. During the short debate we had about these on the Report stage, the Parliamentary Secretary suggested that opposition had completely disappeared because no voices had been raised in opposition. Certain of us may still not be convinced that parking meters will serve the purpose the Ministry has in mind of getting cars off the streets, particularly in the crowded areas of central London, but I do not think that those of us who disagree with the Ministry on this should continue our opposition at this stage.

The attitude we should adopt is that this is to be an experiment and that we want to see how it will work out. We should put our doubts on one side not only in regard to parking meters but in regard to other matters where we may be doubtful about the success or the virtues of Ministry schemes so that experiments can go on—and the more the better. However, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will realise that the purpose of parking meters is to get the cars off the road, and he really should make sure that all garage space that can be used for this purpose is in fact being used.

I think the right hon. Gentleman knows the point I have in mind. If it were his predecessor who was sitting there I would persist in developing this, but I am sure the Minister will see that even garages which are taken by the Government ought now to be thrown open to the public. I believe that he will look at that matter in a very favourable light and will make sure that all the space that can be used for garaging cars in central London is so used.

In our discussions in Committee, the Minister in a number of cases had either to turn down proposals or to say that he would have to proceed very cautiously about them because those proposals would place very heavy burdens upon the police and that the police would not, so he was advised, be able in present circumstances to enforce them. When this Bill is out of the way and the Act is in operation, one important thing that the Minister should consider is whether the time has not now come to take road traffic control out of the hands of our ordinary police forces and put it under the care of a special traffic police force. I mentioned this on Second Reading, and it would, perhaps, be out of order to develop it now. Even under the Bill we shall not have proper control of the flow of traffic, the handling of accidents, the dealing with blockages, delays, the carrying out of testing, spot checking and so on, all of which are implicit in this Measure.

We shall not have those things properly carried out as long as we have a police force which is under strength and to which, because of its limitations, we cannot give any more duties to perform. I think that the time has come when we should very seriously consider whether all this work should not now be handed over to a special traffic police force with no other duties than those of seeing that our roads are kept accident-free as far as possible, that the traffic is kept moving and that blockages and delays are dealt with.

Finally, although some of us have misgivings about some aspects of the Bill and about its scope, I am sure that we all wish it well. I suggest, however, that this is not the end of our deliberations about road traffic problems. There are many more difficulties and many more problems still to be dealt with, and I hope that after this Bill becomes law we will get down to the other problems, including this traffic police force idea, without any delay.

This is a great day to those of us who have lived with this Bill since July of last year, for we are here to give it, as I am sure we will, its Third Reading. As has already been said, it is not often that we have a Road Traffic Bill in this House. In some ways that is a pity, because with these great and complicated problems, many of whose aspects are changing from year to year, it might be wise to have such a Bill before us more frequently. When we do have such a Bill before us, with its many varied points, we give it full measure.

I should like to add my support to what has been said about the non-party atmosphere which has been present right through our deliberations since we gave this Measure its Second Reading. It will not go unnoticed in the country that when the House of Commons applies itself directly to matters affecting human safety and comfort it drops its political opinions, so to speak, and contributes the best of the brains of all Members of the House of Commons. In a word, the House of Commons is at its best when dealing with Measures of this kind.

I should like to join with others who have offered their congratulations to my right hon. Friend, the Minister, to his predecessor—now a Minister of another Department—and to my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, who has been with this Bill all the time it has been before the House since last July. All three have shown patience with the many points advanced from both sides and all have contributed in doing a very fine job. I should like to offer them all my very sincere congratulations.

I propose to develop one point only on one Clause, Clause 4, which deals with propaganda and road safety training to which I have made reference in this House on many occasions. When all the legislation is passed, when this House has concluded its weighty deliberations, when all the societies and organisations which deal with motor cars and the use of the roads have had their say and when all the special committees have been set up to further the cause of road safety, when all this has been done and everything that human ingenuity can devise has been conceived, road safety will still depend on the pattern and habit—indeed the good manners—of the individual.

Why is it that we accept the fact that today our children are much better trained in road safety than are we adults? It is because over the last quarter of a century, and especially in recent years, there has been an intensive campaign for the education of children in the proper use of the roads. That is why our children are better equipped, and I hope that future generations will be even better equipped, to preserve safety on the roads.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) thought that propaganda was a "shot in the arm." With great respect, I think that is only going so far along the road. What proper propaganda does, what useful road safety education does, is to inculcate a pattern of habit among road users, and that habit remains. It is not a question of selling something just for the time being. If the work is properly done, it should leave people with a habit of conduct, a habit of good manners, which will help in the preservation of life. The inculcation of good manners, which most of us experienced in our early days, was not a shot in the arm; it was something which I believe will remain with us throughout our days. Road safety, and all that goes with it, is something of the same nature and of the same importance.

There are about 5,000 fatalities on the roads every year. Let us put the other figure of injuries in the most emphatic and impressive way. One million people are injured every four years, a quarter of a million every year. Those figures are not decreasing. I believe that the reason they have not increased more, and thank goodness they have not, is that we have managed to keep them in check by intensive propaganda, especially in recent years. We must face the fact that we must continue to do that for ever and ever.

We are told that the number of vehicles in use will increase by millions in the next ten or fifteen years. Human frailty, the ordinary natural tendency to make mistakes, will always be the same. There will be this larger number of what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) yesterday called "lethal weapons" on the roads. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) said that he had been guilty, as all of us who drive have been guilty, of lapses from good driving. The only way in which we can stop these lapses is by having such propaganda inculcated into us that automatically we do the right thing. The more we can bring the practice of using the roads, as pedestrians or motorists, into a question of good manners as a matter of habit and less as a matter of objective thinking, the more we shall reduce the number of casualties, both dead and injured.

It is against that background that I commend Clause 4. I hope that this will not be merely lip service to propaganda. The right hon. Member for Vauxhall mentioned the amount of money which might be used for this purpose. I know nothing about the actual sums involved. but I am certain that whatever money can be found to implement the Clause objectively and thoroughly will be money well spent, not only because of the £150 million a year which accidents cost the country but because of the saving of human life. We are quite prepared in other connections to spend comparatively large amounts of money to preserve one human life. How much more should we be prepared to spend money to have a reasonable percentage of the five thousand lives which are lost every year, and to ensure a decrease in the number of people who are maimed or badly injured, sometimes for life.

I earnestly press my right hon. Friends and all concerned to make Clause 4 one of the outstanding parts of the Bill. I believe that, properly administered and in the long run, it can have more effect on road safety than any other Clause of the Bill. This is one kind of propaganda, from the Ministry or from the local authorities, which parents would take note of. There is not one father or mother who is not concerned with the safety of the children. Any kind of safety propaganda, as distinct from some of the political propaganda of which we have some experience, will have an effect in the homes if it is properly designed and addressed to the people.

I am sure that propaganda is the final answer and I am sure that it is the reason that we manage to preserve some kind of parity in the figures of accidents. It is a matter of education and of teaching our people how to preserve their lives in this age of ever-increasing traffic.

Once again I congratulate my right hon. Friends and express the hope that it will not be too long before the Bill receives the Royal Assent and becomes a historic landmark.

Many compliments have been paid to the Minister and to the other right hon. and hon. Members who have been associated with the Bill in its various stages. It is a Measure in connection with which no party pressure has been brought to bear on either side of the House. Therefore, for that reason, I find myself at liberty to express my regret at seeing the Bill in its present form.

Like the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell) I have never been convicted of a motoring offence, and I never shall be, because I have never attempted to drive a motor and I have no intention of learning. The only thing I was ever taught to drive was a grocer's delivery van to which a cob was harnessed. I was taught by my father, and the first instruction he gave me was that the pedestrian had the first right to the use of the road. That maxim is buried for ever if the Bill becomes an Act.

The motorist, the possessor of an internal combustion engine, will have the first right of the road. If he does anything very drastic on it he has the right to go before a jury, but if a cyclist or a pedestrian, both of whom are now made amenable to the law by Clauses in the Bill, gets into trouble and is brought before a magistrates' court he has no right to trial by jury. The cyclist and pedestrian must make way for these offensive weapons that are on the roads.

The Bill does, therefore, mark a phase in the development of social life in this country which ought not to go unnoticed. I was glad that the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) emphasised that there is still a social responsibility upon all classes of users of the roads which ought still to be inculcated as one of the elementary principles of social conduct. Let us be quite certain that, without that, neither this nor any other legislation will do anything to reduce these appalling casualties on the roads.

I recollect the awful gloom which was cast over this country by the casualties in the Battle of Spion Kop—1,453, about a quarter of the annual slaughter on the roads. It is true that since the time of Spion Kop we have seen life sacrificed on a scale which would then have been unbelievable, but none the less it is important that we should bear in mind that 5,000 human lives, in a small country like this, are an appalling toll, when so many of them could be saved by the recognition of a standard of social conduct which one would have thought would appeal to every section of the community.

The use of the motor vehicle has, of course, spread over all the community; there is nowadays no section which could be regarded as outside the motor-using classes, particularly if we include the motor cycle. In the old days, users of vehicles formed a strictly limited section of the community; the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood had their carriages, the tradesmen had their delivery vans, but, apart from that, very few people could give the time necessary to look after the animal which would have to draw the vehicle in those days. Now, people who want a car only for Sunday leave it in the garage during the week and take it out at weekends. The roads become almost unusable, and people wanting to get back to London from Worthing or Brighton have to spend several hours smelling the exhaust fumes from other people's cars.

Quite frankly, I feel that, in spite of all that is being done to improve this Measure, it does so mark a stage in the social development of this country that we should do well to realise its full implications. I am the more sorry that we appear to have to rely in this matter on voluntary social conduct rather than on any effective enforcement of the law. Yesterday, the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department made it quite clear, discussing the new Clause which has been put in dealing with dogs, that the police force as a whole will not be taking any effective part in the enforcement of that Clause.

I made no comment on that. I think the right hon. Gentleman may be under a misapprehension.

The right hon. Gentleman the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport said it.

I am sorry; the Joint Under-Secretary was here, and I apologise to him if I attributed to him something which his right hon. Friend, on his first day after his appointment to the Privy Council, said in laying down the law with regard to another Government Department, in a way which, I am sure, the Home Office, as the senior Department, must have regarded as most reprehensible.

Let us be quite certain that unless the police force regard the implementation of this Measure as among its most important duties, possibly the most important duty, in view of the loss of life involved in these motoring offences, this Measure will be very largely ineffective. Certainly, the proposal with regard to dogs will be ineffective. I hope that the police force will take a full share in dealing with the enforcement of the law when this Measure becomes an Act of Parliament.

I do not share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. G. Darling) that what is needed is a new traffic police dealing with nothing else. If we cannot recruit for the police force, how shall we recruit for that new force?

In fact, it might lead to a further reduction in the recruits for the police force as a whole. Moreover, it would be another step towards putting the motorist into a privileged position, where the offences which he commits are not crimes but merely an exemplification of the wickedness of being found out, not of doing something which, on the confessions which we have heard here today from my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss) down to the hon. Member for Buckingham. South —

Up to.

No. Of course, opinions as to the order of importance will vary on either side of the House; but on this matter, I may, after all, as a Privy Councillor myself, be allowed to regard a Privy Councillor as still entitled to a few privileges, in spite of the views of certain of my hon. colleagues in this House.

We heard from them the statement. made quite honestly, that infractions of the law are far more frequent than the number of prosecutions ever indicates. I hope that one result of our discussions today, and of this Bill, will be to bring home to the public that, as the hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South said, the important thing is to have regard to our standard of social conduct, whether we be motorist or pedestrian, that is to say. whether we be the quick or those who, unless they are very lucky, will be the dead.

It is twenty-two years since we last had a Road Traffic Bill before the House, and in my opinion that period is far too long. I think we probably ought to have one every three or four years. The growth of the problem—a 10 per cent. increase in traffic every year, 2,000 new vehicles coming on the road every day, accidents going up 12½ per cent. every year—means that what is quite safe in fairly uncrowded conditions becomes extremely dangerous in crowded conditions. I suggest that it is up to the Minister of Transport, whatever Government we have, and to his Department, to impress upon the Cabinet—of whatever Government—the necessity for bringing our road traffic law up to date from time to time.

Personally, I think we undervalue the part that road transport and road traffic plays in this country. A lot of people still take a rather eighteenth century view of it, and think that a road which was good enough for horse traffic last century or in the eighteenth century is good enough for today. The great industry of road transport employs one in ten of the employed population, and some 7 million people drive vehicles on the roads. Despite what the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) has talked about, we are truly entering the era of democratic motoring, in which hundreds of thousands of people will in a short time, all have motor cars and be driving about the country. These facts must cause great problems, and we must go on facing them in the future.

I would not let the Bill pass without two short comments on its details. I am the first to agree that the maintenance of the standard of motor vehicles—cars in particular—is not all that it should be, but it should not be thought generally, as some people seem to think, that about three-quarters of the cars on the roads are unroadworthy. I consider that some of the criticisms from Hendon are rather hypercritical. Friends of mine have sent their cars to Hendon and have had black marks because their headlamps were not propery focussed. In fact, the fault was that the headlights were focussed too low and not too high. That is not dangerous at all, but it was marked as a fault.

What about the question of seeing a cyclist or someone else on the road, apart from an oncoming car?

I would not think it was a fault for a careful driver to have the headlights focussed too low.

It has been said that some of the horn buttons require rather more pressure than normal, and that those things have been checked as faults. I think that the standard of maintenance is such that about 15 per cent. of cars is rather defective, and nothing like the figures which have been quoted from Hendon.

Is it not a fact that in 20 per cent. of road accidents it has been shown that mechanical defects in the vehicles have been a contributory factor?

Not in this country.

The figures brought forward by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) showed that accidents in America have been reduced by 10 or 20 per cent. by having annual testing. I do not dispute that. I am quite in favour of the compulsory testing. All I am saying is that I should not like it to be thought generally that 75 per cent. of cars on the roads are unroadworthy, for I do not think that is true.

I must say a word for the garage trade. The right hon. Member for South Shields has said some black things in his references to "horse-coppers" and so on in the garage trade. There are 15,000 garages in the country, some of them very good and responsible. There are black sheep amongst them, but I am confident that there are sufficient good ones, many of whom already have their own testing lanes and undertake this work for the public, to be able to choose from them and authorise them as garages which arc worthy and sufficiently responsible to test vehicles, in addition to the testing by the public testing stations.

As I have said. we should have a road traffic Bill every few years to bring ourselves up to date. I realise that the standard of driving is not as good as it should be. I am one of those Members of Parliament who is taking an active interest in promoting an Institute of Advanced Driving which would introduce. on a voluntary basis, an advanced driving test for those who care to take it. We hope that that will have a salutary and psychological effect in encouraging young people, not merely to be road users or people who have simply passed a driving test, but people who will present themselves for a second and more advanced test. If that comes about, I think it will improve the standard of driving.

We shall have these road traffic problems with us for the rest of our lives, and they will probably go on increasing in intensity. Therefore, I welcome the Bill as a step forward in dealing with this great problem.

I should like to make two or three points before coming to the one which I regard as the most important. As a driver of more than twenty-five years' experience, my greatest difficulty is caused by dazzle at night. At times one is almost terrified to go on or to slow down because of what may be coming behind. I, for one, welcomed an offer by the police in my locality of the free testing of lights.

Secondly, I implore the Minister to use the technique of Guinness for advertising, with one large poster on the same site always displaying something fresh. That technique has never induced me to drink Guinness but, at the same time, I always look for the advertisements with great interest.

My third point is that the law should be enforced. I am reminded of an incident a week or two ago, when I came across two goats which had been parked beside a public highway for the last five months. They were in a dangerous spot but nobody had done anything about it.

I was impelled to try to take part in this debate because in my post this morning was news of a 12-year-old boy on a bicycle who was killed at the Tuckingmill crossroads, about two miles from my home. I wrote to the Minister about the danger of that crossroads three years ago. Only a mile away is a dangerous crossroad, for which the local authority has petitioned for traffic lights, but the application has been refused by the Ministry because of the cost. I implore the Minister, when allocating his expenditure for road improvements year by year, to consider whether he cannot set aside a fairly substantial sum—say, 10 per cent.—for the improvement of small crossroads. That would go a long way towards making our roads safer, and towards remedying a situation which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will appreciate, is like that of thousands of schools which are in a hopeless condition because successive Ministers of Education have not provided the money to carry out small improvements.

The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) has drawn attention to one aspect of road safety with which we can- not deal in legislation. Indeed, that position has occurred on many occasions in dealing with the Bill. We can legislate to a certain extent for road safety, but it lies within the hands of the Minister and of local authorities in many cases to provide the safety measures. Nevertheless, we can do a great deal by legislation of this nature.

The right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) grossly exaggerated in describing the deprivation of pedestrians, under the Bill, of their rights. As hon. Members who were members of the Standing Committee know, there could be no greater champion of the pedestrian in this House than myself. I am convinced that in the Bill there are many safety measures which will be of the greatest benefit to all road users, whether on foot or on cycle or driving vehicles. Indeed, the most important thing that developed from our discussions on the Bill was the deep concern of Members. both in Committee and in the House, to make this a road safety Measure.

At one stage in the Standing Committee I proposed an alteration in the Title of the Bill so that it should be called a Road Safety and Road Traffic Bill and not simply a Road Traffic Bill. I felt then that I was, perhaps, being a little cynical, and I also felt that it was, perhaps, a little hypocritical to say that the Bill contained any substantial provisions for road safety. It is true there were Clauses about the financing of road safety propaganda, and that there were provisions for increasing penalties. but there were at that time no substantial measures for safety.

While I sincerely congratulate the Minister and his predecessor and the Joint Parliamentary Secretary upon the introduction and their conduct of the various stages of the Bill, and thank them for their patience with many of us who talked for a long time in the Standing Committee, I do not think they will mind our putting on record today that in so far as the Bill contains measures to ensure road safety it is really a back benchers' Bill.

Until the new Clauses were introduced, until the Bill came to the House on Report, safety measures were absent from it. Now it contains certain substantial ones. There is to be compulsory testing of vehicles. A provision to ensure that was brought about by pressure from the private Members on both sides of the House. There is provision for the control of young motor cyclists, and if it is implemented it will contribute greatly to safety. There is provision for the control of dogs. That, I am sure, will prevent a great number of accidents on the roads.

I have tried to estimate in figures how many casualties the Bill will save us if it is fully implemented. It is almost a mathematical certainty, judging by the information which we have from the United States, that if the provisions for the compulsory testing of vehicles are fully implemented accidents can be reduced by 10 per cent. One can say that the casualties will be reduced even more, and I would put that saving at 12 per cent.—a 12 per cent. reduction in the number of casualties if compulsory testing is fully enforced.

If the proposals relating to the control of dogs are fully carried out we shall prevent between 2,000 and 3,000 accidents a year—accidents in which human beings are injured or killed, and which also involve dogs. In 2,000 or 3,000 accidents there are probably many more casualties than the accident figures, and I should say that we could prevent 1 per cent. at least of all road casualties by implementing the provisions relating to the control of dogs.

We can prevent another 1 per cent. of casualties by implementing the proposals relating to motor cyclists and controlling the younger motor cyclists on their powerful machines. The miscellaneous provisions in the Bill should prevent another 1 per cent. of casualties. That amounts to a total reduction of casualties of 15 per cent. a year, which is well over a hundred casualties a day.

I am sure that if the Bill is fully implemented, if the Minister and the local authorities use the permissive powers which the Bill gives them, the casualties can be reduced by a hundred or more a day. It is up to the Minister and the local authorities to use those permissive powers. We are doing no more by the Bill than to say to them, "You can prevent casualties". That is the most, perhaps, that we can do here on the Floor of the House.

That is very important, however, for we can—I emphasise "can"—legislate for road safety. Study of the graph of acci- dents since the records were commenced in the 1920s shows that we can. Apart from the times when petrol was restricted, there have been only two occasions when the graph has dropped. The first was in 1934 and the other in 1952. In 1934 we legislated for a 30 m.p.h. speed limit. In 1952 we legislated for the zebra crossings. On those two occasions, and only on those two occasions, has the number of accidents dropped, but it shows that we can, by legislation, reduce the number of accidents and I believe that the Bill, if fully implemented, will succeed in reducing them.

I do not think we can pass the Bill without putting on record our special appreciation of my right hon. Friend for the way in which he took over this very intricate Bill late in its course through Parliament and at short notice, and proceeded to deal with it with considerable skill, patience and moderation.

The Bill is likely to receive a certain amount of criticism outside the House, and perhaps in another place, and it is therefore worth noting, as a number of hon. Members have noted, that the Bill has not been dealt with on party lines. I am never quite sure why people are surprised that matters are dealt with here on party lines. People should expect them to be, and should expect that in the normal course. They should give hon. Members the credit for sincerely believing, having sought election to Parliament in support of a party, in the programme of that party. If people do give that credit to hon. Members, then it should not be surprising to them if hon. Members back a party programme in the House. Nevertheless, it will be noted in the country, and perhaps, as I hope, in another place, that this Bill has not been dealt with on party lines. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) remarked, this Bill is of the nature of a general provisions Bill.

In such a Bill there is bound to be a variety of opinion as to what to put in the Bill and what not to put in it, and what ought to be given greater prominence in it, and I hope that when people outside consider the Bill and wish it contained some provision it does not they will understand that other people think that some other provisions ought to be in it which are not in it. This is a very large subject on which a very great many people have a very great many ideas not all of which could be included.

I hope that my right hon. Friend's remarks today about motorways will be noted. There is a tendency amongst many people to suppose that to make an improvement in the highways is all that is necessary for safety. Some hon. Members recently had the opportunity to hear a lecture by a very eminent German authority on road engineering, and we were surprised at the stress he put on the importance of improving the entrances to and exits from the towns before building motorways between them. In his view things could be made much worse by providing highways between towns unless the entrances to and exits from the towns were first improved, because bottlenecks were thus disregarded, or even thereby made worse, at those points. It is a fact which is sometimes overlooked.

In conclusion, I would refer to the parking meters. There is a great variety of opinion about them in this country and elsewhere. It is a distinctive feature of the Bill that the provisions relating to parking meters are linked with the provision of money to assist in the building of off-street parking places. There is great difficulty about off-street parking because of the considerable capital cost of building garages, whether autosite or other garages above ground or underground. Private enterprise hesitates to undertake it, because the profit is speculative, whereas it is certain the capital cost is high. Municipalities also hesitate because of the considerable cost. The way proposed in the Bill is different from that followed in other countries, in that it does provide the money to assist, and its new provisions for off-street parking we all ought to welcome. I am sure we all approve of the Bill, and I hope that it will soon be passed by another place.

I wish to join in the praises which have been showered upon the Minister and his predecessor for the way in which they have handled the Bill. I should also like to congratulate the Joint Parliamentary Secretary upon his eleva- tion to the Privy Council. I feel that his work in connection with the Bill over a long period has shown him to be a worthy appointee, if that is the right word, to that body. We have experienced in Committee and elsewhere his knowledge of the Bill. He has put in an enormous amount of work on it. I feel personally grateful to him and as a fellow-Member for Derbyshire I should like to congratulate him very warmly.

The Bill is intended to promote road safety, to relieve the congestion on our roads caused by short-term parking, and to deal with some glaring anomalies in the law. I regard the first of these purposes as by far the most important, namely the attempt to do something about the appalling problem of death and maiming on the roads. People ought to have the figures of casualties and fatalities ever before them. As far as legislation can do something about it, I believe the Bill will help, but I have no illusions on the subject. I believe that much the greater contribution must come from our approach as road users to the use made of our roads.

Education in the art of using our limited road space is of paramount importance, and I hope that, whatever cuts the Chancellor of the Exchequer may care to impose on the Ministry of Transport, none will fall upon the job of educating people in the use of our roads. I hope that the Minister will fight tooth and nail —and he has always shown himself capable of fighting—to prevent any cut in this type of education.

Road users must also recognise that they should exercise a greater degree of tolerance towards other road users. I believe that a great deal can be done if people are courteous to others, which means that in using the roads they do not assert the rights which they believe they have. There are many people in another place—and I am not referring to another place along the corridor in the Palace of Westminster—who say when they get there, "Yes, but I was in the right." Too many of us are inclined to say that and run the risk of accident as a result of claiming a right which we suppose to be ours. It surprises me that so many decent, kindly and courteous people become dangerous and ill-mannered boors when they get behind the steering wheel of a car. They assert themselves in a way which they would never normally dream of doing.

Perhaps the most outstanding thing that Parliament can do in relation to road safety is to bring our roads to a reasonable relationship with the use which we now try to make of them. Parliament ought to insist more and more upon this aspect of our legislation and the use made of legislation by the Minister. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) has reminded us that new registrations of vehicles are taking place at the rate of nearly one million a year. If they continue at that rate, obviously the roads will become perfectly safe, unless something is done about it, because nothing at all will be moving on them. but, at the same time. our economy will have come to a standstill.

I congratulate the Minister upon his courage in inserting in the Bill the provision for testing vehicles and upon reversing something that was done by his predecessor. He must have persuaded the Cabinet to agree to his point of view. I think that motorists and motorists' organisations are very much mistaken in their attitude of opposition to the testing of vehicles. I believe that as time goes by they will recognise the value of these compulsory tests and will join with the rest of us in trying to drastically reduce the minimum age of ten years at which a car must be compulsorily tested.

I regret that the Minister did not find it possible to adopt an Amendment proposed from this side of the House relating to a compulsory test before vehicles are sold. I know that I cannot develop that point on Third Reading, but I think that he or some subsequent Minister or Government will eventually have to come to it. The Bill effects a welcome change in the law relating to motoring offences. It tightens the law in some respects and changes it in relation to the offence of being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle. I notice that the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell) made sweeping assertions about the failure of our criminal law to deal with motoring offences, but I am glad that he excepted from those assertions the penalty for offences involving drink and the enforcement of those penalties.

Every time I pass by a public house during the evening opening hours I am frightened at the increase in the number of cars parked outside them. I see it in Derbyshire and wherever I go. The driver gets out of the car and goes inside the public house and, much too often, remains there until after closing time. I am fairly sure that the practice has increased ten-fold in the past three or four years. It is no chance that there is a distinct relationship between that fact and the fact that casualty figures shoot up after closing time.

Magistrates are nothing like as severe as they ought to be upon people who commit offences associated with drink. I am no teetotaller, but I do not believe that people should drive cars when they have been taking drink anywhere. We should do something about it. I find as a magistrate that when some of these and other motoring offenders come before the bench there is, as pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss), a tendency on the part of the magistrates to look at the man in the dock and say, "There, but for the grace of God, stand I." As a result of that sort of feeling there is a tendency to impose a lighter sentence than the seriousness of the offence ought to demand. There is also the fact that year after year we go on imposing fines which bear no relationship at all to the altered value of money and the resultant punishment which that inflicts upon those who ought to be punished as a result of their acts when driving this thing which has been called a lethal weapon.

The Clauses relating to parking meters have been the subject of much opposition from various interested organisations. Yet it is right that we should have included this provision in the Bill, because too much use is made of our roads for long-term parking. We ought to be driving these long-term parkers into proper provision which should have been made for them, but it is impossible to do that if the provision does not exist.

In this connection I hope the Minister will continue to use such powers as he has to encourage local authorities to use the money which will accrue to them from parking meters and in other ways, in order to provide proper parking facilities to get short-term parkers off the roads. At this time, when we want wider roads and more room upon which to drive, the motorists are causing those roads daily to become much narrower than they ought to be by using the roads for an entirely wrong purpose.

We shall watch the experiment of parking meters with interest. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall has said, we shall support the Minister in anything he does in this connection and in the amounts that he charges for the period beyond the first limited time. When this was mentioned in the House the other day I called attention to a case in America in which someone, seeing that the time was just about to expire, had put a nickel into the meter and had then stuck a label on the car window which read:

"' we have put one nickel into the meter. This comes to you by courtesy of'"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th May, 1956; Vol. 553, c. 298.

I said that there followed the name of some advertising agency which I could not remember. I have looked it up and found to my astonishment that the quotation should read:

"A nickel has been placed in the parking meter by the courtesy of the Salem and Evangelical Reformed Church."

I hope that none of our churches will follow that example, which comes from Buffalo, New York State, America.

We support the Minister on this Bill, we wish this Bill quick progress through the other place, and the Minister well also, in the administration of it.

I shall not make another long speech in winding up this debate, but I want to make three points. Before doing so. however, I thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Champion) for his kind words about my right hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, who cannot be here today for the best of reasons. I repeat what I said in Committee, that I am deeply grateful to my right hon. Friend for the great help and expert assistance he has given me throughout this Bill while I have been in charge of it. As we all know, my right hon. Friend has played a notable part.

First, may I assure hon. and right hon. Members that I shall take a careful note of what has been said today, Secondly, on the question of roads, I am glad that several hon. Members have taken up that point. It is essential that we do not regard any one thing as being the panacea for road accidents and road problems. Whilst new roads are essential, even the type of new roads must not be restricted entirely to inter-city motor roads if we are to get the right answer to the problem. I do not want people to get the idea that there is a simple way out of our traffic and accident problems. There is not. We all know that in this House, certainly those of us who have studied the subject in Committee upstairs.

My third point answers some of the proper views expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss), and by other hon. Members, as to what progress will be made in solving these problems once the Bill becomes law. I say as plainly as I can that flexibility and willingness to proceed by agreement, as we always should, must not be taken to mean that I am not determined to use this Measure, if I get it, to the full extent. I am glad to know that in this I shall have the full support of the House, because I may need it.

As hon. Members have said, some of the decisions are bound to be unpopular. However, I hope that as they are developed, and as it is seen that they are for the sake of the nation and for the benefit of everybody who uses the roads, all will co-operate reasonably in at least giving them a fair trial. I thought that hon. Members who have opposed parking meters, and who have now taken a different view, were fair in pointing out that although perhaps they still do not like the idea, it is right to give them a fair trial, indeed an extended trial. That, I hope, will be the attitude of all concerned to the measures which will flow from this Bill.

Finally, because the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), with his great knowledge as a past Home Secretary mentioned it, I should say that whilst it has been necessary during this Bill to say that the police will find certain measures difficult to enforce, I know he will agree with me if I say that, once they are matters of law, of course the police will loyally enforce them, as they always do. However, I thought it was right at various stages of the Bill to indicate which measures would place an extra burden on an already overstrained police force. But neither the right hon. Gentleman nor I interpret that as meaning that the police will not co-operate, as I trust everybody else will, in trying to give the measures taken under this Bill a fair run in order to ensure that they are properly enforced. If we do that, I am convinced that we shall make a successful contribution to solving a great national problem.

I hope, therefore, that this House will give the measure a Third Reading, and that it may go on its way quickly so that we may have its benefits as soon as possible.

Whilst I do not necessarily agree with everything in the Bill, I shall certainly approach it in the way the Minister requests and will give some of the new ideas a chance. I add my congratulations to those of other hon. Members to the Minister in the way he has handled the Bill.

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) drew attention to the fact that this opens a new era for pedestrians, because this is the first time that they have not automatically had the right of way. I suppose it will now be true to say that the only time the pedestrian will automatically have the right of way is when he is in an ambulance. Now some attempt is to be made to control his activities and this is done in Clause 10 of the Bill. On the whole I think that is a good idea, though I should have thought that the amounts of the fines proposed for pedestrians tend to be rather high. The fine for a first offence of a pedestrian going against the directions of a constable controlling the traffic is somewhat high at £10, with £25 for a second offence.

I agree with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. R. Bell) about Clause 7, and I hope that after the Bill has been through another place that Clause will be missing. However, that may be optimism on our part.

My main point is on parking meters and on the provision of power for the Minister to provide parking places. I hope it will be borne in mind that the more parking places we provide, the more motorists will be tempted to bring their cars into the centre of London. If a large number of parking places are provided, the roads will become more congested. Indeed, we might reach a stage where it will not be possible to move along the roads.

These matters have been pointed out to us by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) and others. I hope the Minister will bear in mind the possibility of providing parking places outside London, and of consulting the appropriate Minister with a view to setting up shopping centres on the perimeter so that people may shop there rather than inside London.

Parking meters may not be the great success that it is hoped they will be. Charging heavily for their use is a further imposition on motorists, a serious additional charge to the already heavy costs motorists have to incur. I hope the Minister will approach this aspect in the way that we do and will be prepared to remove parking meters if in the end they are found not to be giving exactly what they arc designed to give.

I hope the Minister will bear in mind the great problem which he will create if, by providing more parking places, he encourages motorists to bring their cars into London. Everything should be done to encourage motorists to leave their cars at home and travel by public transport. Otherwise we shall reach an impossible position.

Apart from those remarks. I wish the Bill every success.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

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

The main purpose of the recent Statute, the County Courts Act, 1955, was to increase the jurisdiction of the county court and to divert certain litigation from the High Court into the county court. It was hoped that the diversion might come about by certain penalties as to costs if one took action in the High Court when it was possible and proper to take it in the county court.

However, the High Court procedure for debt collecting claims is much more efficient and expeditious than the county court procedure. The Lord Chancellor asked the Law Society to recommend provisions for improving the county court procedure for debt collection so that it might be at least as efficient as the High Court procedure and so that the purpose of the 1955 Act might not be defeated. One of the recommendations of the Law Society to the Lord Chancellor is embodied in my Clause. The provision would enable the registrar of a county court to strike out a defence if it showed no reasonable answer to the claim.

A brief explanation of the difference between the High Court and county court procedures for debt collecting claims is required. Under High Court procedure, the defendant having entered an appearance to the claim, the plaintiff can proceed by way of summons under Order 14 for summary judgment, and if the defendant has any real defence to the claim he is entitled to put the defence on oath, and let the master of the court decide whether it is a reasonable answer to the claim, but he must do that in a comparatively short period.

That is not so in the county court procedure for debt collecting. When a plaintiff desires to collect a debt through the county court, he issues a default summons. To that, the defendant may put in any defence, however frivolous, vexatious, ridiculous or farcical it may be, and if the defence is filed, the case has to be listed for hearing. In many county courts the hearing does not occur for a matter of two months. That defence does not in any way require to be an oath. It is merely a statement which is filed in court. That describes the distinction between the two procedures.

One would have thought that it would be proper to give the county court registrar the right to strike out a defence which showed no reasonable answer to the claim in the same way as the master in the High Court can do. Not only has the county court registrar no power to strike out a frivolous or vexatious defence, but there is no power vested in the county court rules committee to give power to the registrar to strike out a defence. The new Clause would permit the county court rules committee to make a rule giving the registrar power to strike out a defence which showed no reasonable answer.

Those who have practised in the county courts for many years—I suppose that, as one who does so practise, I ought to declare an interest here—know that there are very many "professional debtors," as we call them, persons who know the tricks of county court procedure and deliberately delay matters. They put in a defence which really is no defence at all, but no one has power to say that it is not a defence except the judge himself. As the case does not come before the judge for two months, or even three months in the case of some country county courts, the plaintiff is kept from his money for that period.

I do not think there would be any oppression of debtors if the country court rules committee were given power to make such a rule as I have suggested. There would always be the right of appeal from a decision of the registrar to the judge. That occurs normally within the county court rules. If the registrar decides that the defence shows no reasonable answer, the defendant still has the right to go to the judge by way of an appeal from the registrar.

The situation is very different from what it was a short while ago. Until legal aid was applied to the county courts, defendants had to a great extent to fend for themselves, because the county court is indeed the poor man's court and the court rules are such as to enable a litigant to conduct proceedings without being represented. Now that legal aid applies to county courts, if a defendant thinks he has a sound defence he can obtain legal aid and have the defence put in a proper way. Therefore, if the defendant has no defence and is deliberately trying to delay proceedings by putting in a nonsensical defence, the registrar ought to have power immediately to strike the defence out and give judgment for the plaintiff.

I beg to second the Motion.

A similar new Clause was discussed at some length during the Committee stage and we have heard again the argument which was advanced in support of this proposal on that occasion. I feel that I must advise the House to reject the proposal, and I will explain the reasons why I do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) indicated that the amendment which is desired by the Law Society was really directed to the claims for the larger amounts which are now brought in the county court instead of being tried in the High Court as a result of the extension made by the County Courts Act, 1955.

The basis of his argument, as I understand it, is that we should not extend the county court jurisdiction without also extending the powers of obtaining summary judgment, similar to those now exercisable in the High Court. The answer is that in those cases which are now 'brought in the county court the power to strike out a defence which discloses no reasonable answer is not likely to be often used for the simple reason that it is unlikely that in such cases the defendant would not be legally represented. I think that all of us who have had any experience of work in the High Court know that it is not difficult to draft a defence which prevents an order being made under Order 14. It would in that type of case not really prove, in my view, very effective.

My hon. Friend has really addressed his argument mainly from the point of view of the creditor or plaintiff. There is, of course, another very important angle to be considered here. That is the position of the defendant. Since this matter was discussed in Committee I have had the advantage of receiving a deputation from the Law Society and of hearing them at some length advance the same arguments as my hon. Friend has advanced today in support of this Clause.

I have also had the advantage of receiving the views of a large number of county court registrars upon this proposal, and their view confirms me in my apprehensions that the exercise of this proposed power of striking out a defence would, in all probability, leave a number of defendants with a real sense of injustice. I am sure the House will agree that it is essential that this should be avoided wherever possible, and particularly where litigants are unrepresented. We might easily get a case in the country or in the suburbs of London where the defendant, in answer to a county court summons, puts on a piece of paper what he thinks is a perfectly good defence. If this Clause is put into the Bill, we could get a summons taken out and proceedings started to have that defence struck out. The defendant might not attend the hearing of that application, and he would find that judgment had been given against him without any hearing and without his knowing in the least what it was about, and that that had happened when he had put in what he thought was a good defence.

I think that if this procedure were adopted there would be a real risk, particularly if the power were used, of such a sense of injustice being felt in certain quarters. Furthermore, the registrars' view is that they would seldom feel justified in making use of this power if they had it, particularly where the defendant did not attend and there was no opportunity of explaining the position to him.

If I may leave that ground and again look at this matter from the creditor's point of view. I doubt whether such a Clause as this would really achieve all that is claimed for it from the point of view of the creditor. I think that in practice it might in many cases neither save time nor cost to any appreciable extent. After all, particulars of the defence can be applied for now and the evidence that the plaintiff calls can be related to the particulars of the defence and costs would often be incurred by an abortive attempt to have a defence struck out.

I hope that I have convinced my hon. Friend that, in the light of the serious consideration which has been given to this proposal, we do not feel that the Clause would have the advantages claimed for it. We feel satisfied and, indeed, convinced that to accept it would increase appreciably the risk, if this power were exercised, that many poor litigants would feel that they were not receiving justice. Therefore I invite the House, because we have a good many Amendments to get through, without more ado to reject this new Clause.

I agree with the attitude taken by the Attorney-General on this issue. The gist of the case for the new Clause is, as I understand it, that it is desired to apply in the county court the kind of procedure that is applied in the High Court. There are two very brief answers to that.

First, the object of transferring a case from the High Court to the county court is to apply county court procedure to it—to treat it as something rightly considered to be within the ambit of county court treatment. To accept a Clause of this kind because there has been an increase in county court jurisdiction appears to me to be almost a contradiction in terms.

The second point, closely allied to it, is this. There has been a very substantial depreciation in money since the county court limit on jurisdiction was fixed. I doubt if we have done very much more, by increasing the county court's jurisdiction, than to restore to it the jurisdiction which it formerly held, having regard to the drop in the value of money.

I do not want to elaborate any of the cogent reasons put forward by the Attorney-General. My main purpose is simply to say that we on this side of the House agree with the attitude which he has adopted on this Clause.

There are two points which I should like to put, and which, I think, ought to be added to the case against the adoption of this proposed new Clause. The first is that it seeks to confer upon the county court registrar enlarged powers of a very drastic and radical nature. The County Court Acts and the county court rules have already conferred certain powers upon the registrar, but their nature is nothing in relation to what it is now being sought to do.

What the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) is seeking to do here is to confide in the registrar a task which, if I may say so with respect, he is not adapted by his experience, training and position to perform, namely, to strike out entirely the proceedings if, in his view, a proper defence has not been put in. What is a proper defence in a county court is one thing, and what is a proper defence in the High Court is another. After all, the county court is a poor man's court. There is not the same exactitude in pleading there as in the High Court, and there ought not to be. The proceedings there are of an entirely different character, particularly so far as the amounts are concerned.

The reason for having summary proceedings in the High Court is well known to those of us who have practised there for many years. Procedure in the High Court is costly and prolonged, and can involve a large sum of money in costs. Therefore, if a defence which has been put in and which goes before the Master is found to be a defence founded on no reasonable justification or substance whatever, it is right that power should be conferred at that stage on some officer to enable him to stop the proceedings from being costly and prolonged. All of us who have had practice both in the County Court and High Court will at once and conclusively say that this is a change which the House ought not to allow to be made.

The House shall not allow to go unchallenged the suggestion of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Turner-Samuels) that for some reason of training or otherwise county court registrars are incapable of deciding whether or not a defence discloses a reasonable answer. I entirely agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) in his objections to the proposed new Clause.

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for the study which he has given to this subject. I disagree with him, but there is no point in taking this matter to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn

I beg to move, in page 8, line 43, to leave out "not propelled by oars."

This Amendment is put forward in order to avoid limiting the present jurisdiction of the county court. That jurisdiction is contained in Section 56 of the County Court Act, 1934. Section 56 (7) of that Act defines "ship" as including any description of vessel whatsoever. Clause 8 will have the effect of repealing that definition, and I have moved the Amendment in consequence of that fact. The definition in the Bill very considerably narrows the definition of "ship." If the Amendment is accepted, the definition of "ship" would remain any description of vessel used in navigation.

I beg formally to second the Amendment.

I have great pleasure in saying the Government think that the Amendment should be accepted in order to preserve the jurisdiction of the county court for trying cases in relation to rowing boats.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in page 18, line 21, to leave out from "paid" to "such" in line 22 and to insert:

"to him at the time of the service of the judgment summons or paid or tendered to him at the time of the service of the order under the said subsection (2)".

This Amendment makes an improvement in the Bill and deals with a rather technical point which I will seek to explain. This is a matter of considerable importance and on which we had some discussion in Committee. It would appear from Clause 27 (3) that an order for committal can be made if the amount of conduct money was tendered at the time when the judgment summons was first served and then refused and before the order was made by the judge for attendance. The conduct money might be refused by a defendant who had no intention of going and thought it not right to take the money. It is not right that that kind of defendant should be put in peril as if he had received the conduct money when a further order is made that he should attend.

The effect of the Amendment is to secure that the debtor shall not be committed to prison under the subsection for having failed to attend as required by order under subsection (2) unless the conduct money was paid to him at the time of the service of the judgment summons —so that he was in actual receipt—or paid or tendered to him at the time of the service of the order under subsection (2). It has to be shown either that he actually has received the conduct money or that the conduct money was tendered to him at the time of the service of the order under subsection (2). That is an improvement, and I hope with that explanation the House will accept the Amendment.

There is only one short point, and I raised it during the Committee stage. It is the question of the amount of expenses. I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman has looked into the matter, but if he has he will know that at present when expenses of this kind are allowed they are merely travelling expenses and do not include, for instance, the expense of staying at a hotel. I raise the matter as this may involve a question of imprisonment. It is very important to see that in receiving expenses a man should receive a sum which would enable him to pay all the expenses which he would incur in going to the court.

He is certainly not entitled to any compensation for loss of time. I do not deal with that because there may be something to be said for not enforcing it, but I ask the Attorney-General whether it is intended to include a defendant's hotel expenses. A defendant may have moved from one end of the country to another, and merely to allow him a sum which would pay for his train fare there and back would not be adequate because it might prevent him from attending the court because he does not want to incur the other expenses.

There is nothing in this Amendment, either in relation to the words proposed to be left out or in relation to the words proposed to be inserted, which deals with expenses. This merely deals with the tender or payment of conduct money. As I think I told the hon. and learned Member for Gloucester in Committee, the amount of conduct money is to be as shown by the concluding words of the proviso:

".. such sum in respect of his expenses as may be prescribed for the purposes of this section."

I have no doubt that those who were responsible for drawing up a table of what can be allowed by way of expenses will have due regard to what the hon. and learned Member has said.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in page 43, line 26, to leave out "not propelled by oars."

This Amendment is consequential upon the earlier Amendment dealing with the same wording. It is obviously most desirable that Northern Ireland should walk step by step with Great Britain in this matter—

Should row with us.

It is only a matter of sea which separates our two countries. I do not think I need elaborate the Amendment.

I beg to second the Amendment.

It is obviously desirable that Northern Ireland should row at the same stroke as we in this country. Therefore I have much pleasure in accepting the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in page 44. line 11. after "enactments ", to insert;

"(including enactments of the Parliament of Northern Ireland)".

This Amendment is drafting. The words proposed to be inserted are normally included wherever an enactment of the Imperial Parliament is intended to override enactments of the Parliament of Northern Ireland.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in page 44, line 43, at the end to insert:

repealed in relation to Northern Ireland also.

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in page 45, line 12, at the end to insert:

Amendment agreed to.

I beg to move, in page 46, line 44, at the end to insert:

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

In moving the Third Reading of this Bill. I can say that I think it will be a useful Bill. Great assistance has been given both in Committee and today in securing its speedy passage to the Statute Book.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

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

This and the three following Bills are designed to secure the approval of Parliament for schemes prepared by the Charity Commissioners, and in various ways they are designed to bring the charities up-to-date. The purpose of this first Bill is to remove a restriction which at present exists on the letting of property owned by this charity.

The scheme of the Charity Commissioners has been publicised, and no objections have been received to it. For that reason I can commend the Bill to the House.

I beg to second the Motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Sir H. Linstead.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

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

The purpose of this Bill is to confirm the scheme of the Charity Commissioners, which gives certain additional powers to the charity, broadly to enable it to raise more money than it has power to do at present, and to apply those funds to a greater extent for the upkeep of property, in addition to the granting of pensions and the granting of out-relief. This Bill has received wide publicity locally in Warwick, and no objections have been received. I can commend it to the House.

I beg to second the Motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Sir H. Linstead.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

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

This is another old charity, dating back to the days of Henry VI. The charities are in difficulties about the repair and upkeep of their fabric, and desire to be able to use some of their funds to a greater extent than at present for that purpose. The scheme has, again, been widely publicised, and no criticisms or comments have been received. For that reason I commend the Bill to the House.

I beg to second the Motion.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Commitee of the whole House —[Sir H. Linstead.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

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

This, again, is an old charity; it dates back to before 1500. It consists of an almshouse, and among other provisions in the original constitution is a provision strictly limiting to thirty-two the number of people who may be accommodated in this almshouse. It has now become necessary to alter the size of the almshouse and to modernise it. In consequence, that provision, among others in the original constitution, requires to be looked at again; and the purpose of the scheme which the Bill seeks to confirm is to give wider powers to the trustees for the purpose of modernising the building and reallocating their funds.

I beg to second the Motion.

Does the scheme in any way involve a reduction in the number of beneficiaries? The hon. Member mentioned thirty-two as the present number. Will that number be reduced or in any way altered by these proposals?

That will depend upon the allocation which the trustees make of their money. If I may speak again, by leave of the House, I would explain that if they have sufficient funds they will, I understand, be able to reconstruct the building so as to take thirty-two or possibly more. If, on the other hand, their funds are insufficient, it may mean that the numbers will have to be slightly reduced in order to give more modern accommodation to those in the almshouse. I think that both possibilities are open under the new scheme.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Sir H. Linstead.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; read the Third time and passed.

I do not know the Minister's views, but I think that, like myself, he will welcome the extra time we have for this important subject, but I assure him that I will not wander out of Central Africa, which is a large place, and will not anticipate next Wednesday's debate on Kenya.

Some months ago, Mr. Harry Nkumbula, who is the leader of the Northern Rhodesia and African National Congress, came to the House on behalf of his people. He hoped to see the Colonial Secretary, but unfortunately the Minister, acting upon the advice of the Government of Northern Rhodesia, felt unable to see him. I think that was a mistake, on many grounds, not least that if the Minister sees any leader of a nationalist movement he prevents the leader from making false capital out of a Minister's lack of desire to see him. Nevertheless, that is what happened.

In Northern Rhodesia there are about 2 million Africans disenfranchised there, and of course, disenfranchised here, like all other colonial peoples. In a modest way. may I take up the cudgels on their behalf and outline one or two of the circumstances and conditions of their life? I am sure that the Minister will be sympathetic and I hope he will give me some helpful answers.

Like Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia is a Protectorate. It does not like the scheme of Federation, under which at the moment it is linked with Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. That view is shared by Congress in Nyasaland. They fear that later, in 1962, there will be amalgamation, and they fear, rightly or wrongly, that they will be dominated by Europeans, to their discomfort and handicap. Some people do not share this view. In his last speech, Mr. Harry Nkumbula made some comments on conditions in Northern Rhodesia and on his fears for the future:

"Northern Rhodesia is the darkest spot in the whole of the British Colonial Empire. Its social colour bar, racial discrimination, intimidation and ostracism are worse than those being experienced in the Union of South Africa. Its educational policy and health services cannot be anything but deplorable. The discrepancies in the conditions of service between the European and African Civil Services and between the European miner and the African miner are shocking."

Not all will share those views in their entirety. Some will say that Mr. Nkumbula paints a lurid picture.

People like myself—and I am sure all hon. Members on this side of the House —will welcome the award in the Honours List to Mr. Prain, the forward-looking leader of the Rhodesian Selection Trust. He was awarded a knighthood two days ago for his services. Not the least of those services was the munificent gift of over £2 million to the Protectorate Governments of both Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia for African welfare and advancement. There are, therefore, at least some good deeds in this naughty world of Central Africa. But let me see if Mr. Nkumbula's fears are justified and if his statements are correct.

In this context I am worried, and I should like the Minister to take particular note of this, by a speech made by the Governor to a gathering of business and professional women last month at Lusaka, in which he said:

"I want to get rid of the Colonial Office in Northern Rhodesia as quickly as possible."

Those are his words. I have met Sir Arthur Benson when he was Chief Secretary in Lagos, Nigeria. I have a high opinion of him. I am a little disturbed, and I am sure Africans are even more disturbed, by his words.

In that connection I will quote here a very famous man indeed, who until lately was the Leader of Her Majesty's Government. I refer, of course, to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). In his book "My Africa Journey ", Mr. Churchill, as he then was, discussing the position of Africans vis-à-vis Europeans in Africa said:

"It will be an ill day for the Native Races when their fortunes are removed from the imperial and august administration of the Crown and abandoned to the fierce self-interest of a small population of white settlers."

White settlers, of course, are perhaps not what they were half a century ago, but there is still substance in that statement. Of the Governor's speech, I will only say that it is a pity that the Governor spoke as he did. It need not have been said at all. One knows the psychology of Africans. Reading those words, Africans will say, "There you are, we will soon leave the protection of Parliament." There is no doubt that they have a protection, when Questions can be asked in this House about their affairs. It is a protection for them still to be able to look to Westminster and not to be cut off, as they might be in less than ten years' time if they were to be joined with Southern Rhodesia. What are the Government in Lusaka doing to allay the fears of Africans in this matter and to develop multi-racialism? I may say here that I do not like the term "multi-racial." I think "non-racial" is a much better term. The Government have appointed a Committee to investigate racial discrimination as practised in shops and other business premises. It has done a very good job indeed. It is an official Committee and has published its findings. It sat in Lusaka, but moved about the territory. It must have had about 67 memoranda to look at and must have taken evidence from 150 or more witnesses throughout the territory.

The Committee reported that shops, particularly bakers' shops, had too many separate counters, too many separate queues, and hatches through which they served goods to Africans. It must be remembered that after half a century of white contact there is now arising an African middle class of decent, cultured men and their wives. They do not like this discrimination, particularly in butchers' shops. In the Copper Belt a boycotting and picketting of these shops by Africans has done some good, and has now been called off. I must point out that it is not only an affront to the dignity of decent people, whatever their colour may be, to be served from hatches. Even more important, it is a disservice to the shopkeepers themselves because, if not in the short term, then certainly in the middle or long term, they will lose cash business with this emerging middle class of Africans, many of whom are now earning up to £40 a month—and will shortly earn more—in the copper mines.

The Committee said, and I hope the Minister will make a statement about this. this these hatches should be abolished from all shops. In one case an African went to a shop to buy a bed. He was told "Please go to the hatch." In Scotland, I know, beer is sold off-licence through a small hatch, but it is certainly a job to examine a bed, and have it delivered, through a hatch only a foot or two square.

It might be said that one cannot do much with shopkeepers because they are individuals who are independent and settle their own affairs; but I suggest quite sincerely that we can do something about post offices. Even if we cannot at present abolish the hatches in shops, or even in all post offices, may I ask the Minister to "vet" future plans of post offices and, indeed, any other Government buildings to be put up in the Protectorate in order to ensure that it is impossible to have hatches built into them whereby one gets such discrimination and segregation of Africans? All the post offices should be bigger; more should be built, and more African assistants should be employed inside the larger post offices so that everybody can be served within a short time and not have to queue in separate queues, or with Europeans and Africans going to the top and bottom of the queues, respectively.

To my knowledge Africans in Northern Rhodesia do not complain about the services at garages, petrol filling stations and the treatment they receive from the motor industry generally. But they are not admitted to hotels.

It is interesting to note that there are now only two hotels in Northern Rhodesia which admit Africans. In comparison there has been an enormous change in Kenya, since I was last there two years ago. The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, the Tors Hotel and the New Stanley Hotel, now admit Africans who have, so to speak, attained a level of culture which will enable them to mix not only with Asians but with English, Scots or anyone else.

If Kenya can do this, why cannot Northern Rhodesia? If the miners in the Copper Belt leave Northern Rhodesia and go to Kenya they can mix in the Norfolk Hotel; why cannot they mix in their own land in places like Lusaka and elsewhere? It could be done and to me it is rather scandalous that people like Mr. Nkrumah, the Gold Coast Premier, who, within a few days, may be attending the conference of Dominion and Commonwealth Ministers, Dr. Azikewe, the East Nigerian Premier, and even the Kabaka of Buganda would not be allowed to enter hotels in the Copper Belt in Northern Rhodesia.

What are we to do about this? This Committee upon Racial Discrimination, which is a statutory Committee, recommends that the Governor—and, of course, the Government there—should appoint a permanent advisory committee to advise the Government, to take evidence and make an annual report about colour discrimination. However, it is all very well to talk about this and that committee or this and that law, but in the long-term sense the only real answer is more and better education. Perhaps here I may quote this Committee's Report before I leave the social ascept of African life. This is what the Report says, and I do beg the Minister and all hon. Members present to listen to this, because it is an all-white Committee speaking about their own people.

"One of the biggest educational problems is what to do with children who in Europe would dig ditches, hew wood and draw water. This type of European knows that his white skin is his biggest asset and doesn't want it to mean any less than it does now. He has a vested interest in racial discrimination. On the other side of the picture we find some Africans who seem to go out of their way to provoke incidents."

It is not all one side of the medal.

"Such men invite rebuffs which they receive for a display of bad manners and for the aggressive attitude which they adopt towards Europeans."

As anybody knows, there are faults on both sides. It is mainly a matter of education. It will be a slow job but we can help in some ways, especially in post office and Government buildings, to give a lead because there, of course, we can do it definitely by executive action.

Conditions are improving. People who go to Northern Rhodesia can see a change from year to year, and we welcome that. The long-term solution is to close the gap in cultural and living standards between black and white. That can be done only by the better education of both races. A valuable experiment is being carried out in Lusaka where there is the Kabulongo, a mixed inter-racial club to which Mr. Harry Nkumbula has been elected, much to the editorial disgust of the Central African Post, which does not like him following his boycott of European shops, and which says that he should have been blacklisted. There are in the club 250 Europeans, 150 Asians and over 100 Africans. It is a most interesting and imaginative experiment.

What is happening in the sphere where we can do something in this House, by votes, by action and of course by money —that is the sphere of education? A distinguished Colonial Secretary, Mr. Leo Amery, once said that there is no more supreme task for any Government in Africa than to expand the field of education. Let us consider what is happening in Northern Rhodesia, which is an exceedingly wealthy Colony which exports about £100 million worth of base metals annually. It is not a poor, backward Colony like Somaliland or the Gambia. It is a wealthy Colony, and what does it spend on education? There are 2 million Africans and perhaps fewer than 50,000 Europeans. There are about 175,000 African boys and girls, mainly boys, in the junior or elementary schools, and in the year 1954–55 we spent only £1,100,000 upon African education.

There are just six junior secondary schools and really these are "intermediate" schools. There are fewer than 500 African boys plus a few girls there. Lastly, there is one upper secondary school in the whole of the Protectorate and there are fewer than 500 boys who are taking a three-year course to fit themselves for the higher school certificate and to enable themselves to go on to the new university in Salisbury. May I tell the Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations that we all hope that the new venture will be an enormous success?

We wish it well and we also wish Mr. Walter Adams well in his difficult task as Principal; but may I point out to the Minister that in Northern Rhodesia there were only fifteen boys last year who were competent to tackle the two-year course for entry in 1957 to the new university college. Of those fifteen only eight took the chance of coming back to take the course. If all eight pass, we shall have only eight boys who would enter the new university at Salisbury. It will be some years before we can think in terms of a large accession of boys to the new university.

What about the girls? The education of women in Africa is most important. At present there is a shocking state of affairs, and when I say "shocking" I really mean it. In the Colony there is not one secondary school for girls. All there is is a "junior secondary" school, which I would call an intermediate school, at which there are fewer than fifty girls. It is a Methodist Mission school at Chipembe to which is attached a teacher training centre, and it is said that they have only candles for light to work. There is no domestic science course and no science accommodation.

If only eight boys will be able to go to the university next year, how long will it be before girls are able to go there? Not only is technical education important, but even more important is the education of women in Africa. One of the sad features about the African is that he is conservative, with a small "c". He is backward and apathetic in his view of the progress of women. Our biggest obstacle in the way of providing education for the girls and women is the African man himself. We must fight this. We shall never have an educated, cultured African middle-class until the womenfolk catch up and live alongside their men in the new life now opening before them.

Can the Minister tell us whether we can expect Northern Rhodesian boys to come as students to the United Kingdom in future? In the past, when higher education was our responsibility, boys of 18, 19 and 20 years of age could come here. Four or five are here now, of course, but now that higher education has become the Federal responsibility of Salisbury, will these boys come to the United Kingdom? I do not know. The Africans fear that they will not.

All the Africans I know wish to keep up their contacts and to come to the United Kingdom, especially to the University of London, for higher education. It would be a sad thing if they were not permitted to come here but were to be educated solely in Central Africa, or perhaps in the Union. My last word on education is to say that technical education is also more than important. Will the Minister please say something about the plans for the expansion of the Hodgson Technical College? There are about 150 places there, and when I asked the Secretary of State about this in March he told me that he thought that was adequate. It satisfied demand, he said.

Today in Africa the demand for education is fantastic. Africans believe they can be like the white man if they can only get education; it is to them the white man's "ju-ju "; they want it, and their thirst is impossible to slake. Yet the Secretary of State told me he was satisfying their demand by this one technical centre, the Hodgson Technical Centre, with some 150 or 180 places. May I say, with respect, that Africa is second only to what Scotland was in the nineteenth century in the people's desire to educate themselves for their future life. Really, to say the facilities are adequate is sheer poppycock; I just cannot believe it.

What do I and, indeed, most Africans think about the European and his education? The answer is quite simple; I am appalled, as is anyone who goes to Africa, at the European's lack of knowledge of Africans and the African way of life. I am appalled also by the European lack of interest in the African way of life. I make this suggestion, not only as regards Northern Rhodesia but as regards any other Colony, that if the European had to learn a language in school other than his mother tongue that language should be an African language. What language will be learnt will depend upon the locality. For example, in Kenya he would learn Swahili, in Northern Rhodesia it could perhaps be Bemba; but it must be at the exclusion of any other language, including French or Latin.

If we cannot, in Northern Rhodesia, have an African language as a compulsory subject in European schools, then I would say we should stop giving the European Afrikaans as his other language. Living as he does in African territory, it is fearfully important that the European should know something about his fellow men and know their language. That is the first and most important step, that there should be taught as a compulsory subject, in all European schools in all the Colonies of Africa, one of the African languages.

Perhaps the Minister would care to indicate to the Governor of Northern Rhodesia that Europeans and Africans should mix more in their schools. Does he not think it would be a good thing if the boys at the Gilbert Rennie School could play football against African schools? Would it not be a good thing, since we talk about a non-racial society, if boys in the sixth form at the Gilbert Rennie School could, together with boys in the same class at the Munali Secondary School, be taught the lessons which they will need at that stage in their education? In two years or so they may be going to Salisbury, to the inter-racial University, and they could, while in the sixth form at the secondary schools, be taught those subjects which they will study together later. It would be an excellent thing, since they are to live together in the University, that they should take those lessons together in the sixth forms which they will be sitting for later at the advanced level. If we are to talk about partnership, and the European settling down in an African community, then let us do something about it; let us do something in our schools for which we vote the money and for which we are responsible in the Empire.

May I now ask one or two questions on the subject of land? Africans have great anxiety about the alienation of land by Europeans. I will mention three places, about which the Minister will perhaps make inquiries at some time— Kafue Flats, the Chirundu sugar area, and the Fort Roseberry mines. I would say that there is a need for the Government of Northern Rhodesia to consult with the African Advisory Board before they go into any schemes for giving to European immigrants—they may even be Dutch or German immigrants in the future—any permission to alienate African land.

The Minister may perhaps have seen the Report of Dr. Weizman, who was sent to Rhodesia by the Inter-Government Committee for European Migration to advise Rhodesia upon immigration of Dutch and Germans and other Europeans. What he says in his objective survey of land in the Rhodesias is quite simple. He says that while it might have been a very good thing in the poineer days for white men to have large expanses of land, 20,000 acres or more, he now finds something which is far from good. I will quote his figures; he finds that of about 30 million acres in Southern Rhodesia, only I million are cultivated in the hands of Europeans. In Northern Rhodesia, of 4½ million acres only 5 per cent. are cultivated by Europeans.

Despite the land hunger of Africans, we see the alienation of desirable places where the white man wants, for example, sugar to be cultivated or, sometimes, mining to be undertaken. I beg the Minister to look at this question—I will give him more detail later—because it is an important issue which causes more anxiety, disturbance and upheaval amongst Africans than anything else. There is the example of Kenya, for instance, with the Mau Mau since 1952.

Will the Minister also say a word about the evacuation of Africans from the Kariba Gorge hydro-electric scheme? I understand that a Scottish colleague of mine—my hon. Friend the Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin)—hopes to raise this matter on the Adjournment later. There is anxiety on two counts. It arises not so much because the people are being moved, but because of the place to which they are being sent. Will the soils be better? They fear it will be worse than what they have. Will the land be above flood level?

I have two questions to ask concerning the constitutional changes to come in 1958. At the moment, the Africans have four African members for 2 million of their own people. The Europeans have twelve members elected by 12,000 Europeans. In 1956, this is a little farcical. I know that it will be altered before 1958, when the next change is due.

In Tanganyika we have parity. In Kenya there are to be more Africans, certainly by March, 1957, from the African elections. In all the Colonies, more and more Africans are coming into the Legislative Councils. We want more Africans in the Legislative Council, and it would be a good thing if the Secretary of State were to think in terms of parity. as prevails in Tanganyika and as will surely come later in Kenya.

In the matter of the franchise, the Minister might also look at Kenya, Zanzibar and Tanganyika, think about gentlemen like Mr. Coutts, and send a commission to consider the question of the vote for Africans in Northern Rhodesia. No vote has been given in either Northern Rhodesia or Nyasaland. When Africans are in a communal electorate and voting only for their own people, what have the Government to lose by giving Africans the right to vote? No more Africans would be elected by vote than are nominated, if there is a certain number in a communal division. I implore the Secretary of State to think in terms of a commission for Northern Rhodesia headed by Mr. Coutts.

Allegations have been made about victimisation and ostracism of African chiefs who happen to be members of the African National Congress, Mr. Nkumbula's organisation. I can give chapter and verse on the forbidding of assemblies at places like Gwembe and elsewhere. I hope that we shall not, as in some other Colonies, forbid assembly merely because we do not like what Africans are saying. With a good case, we should not be afraid, whether on the question of evacuation of the Kariba Gorge or of franchise. Let us face up to comment by the Africans. We govern them, and they pay their taxes. Sooner or later they will govern themselves. Let us give them a fair hearing and not forbid assembly because it is inconvenient to hear what Africans have to say about our administration.

On behalf of Mr. Harry Nkumbula and of Mr. Manoah Chirwah of Nyasaland, I extend to the Secretary of State an invitation to make a long overdue visit to both Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. The right hon. Gentleman would be popular if he went, and would get an enormous welcome. I hope, therefore, that the Minister of State will convey this invitation to the Secretary of State to visit the two Protectorates, where the people look forward to his coming at the earliest possible moment.

We are very fortunate, as the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) said, in having a little extra time today in which to discuss this subject. I had not intended to make a speech, because I did not think there would be an opportunity, but now that, after all, there is one, I should like to make a few observations upon what the hon. Member has said.

Of course, the range of social and political problems about which he has been speaking, particularly in Northern Rhodesia, would be so easy to tackle if it were not for two difficulties. We have on the one hand the racial difficulty, if it is correctly so described, and on the other the time factor. If we had all the time in the world I have no doubt that the communal problem would present us with no difficulty. On the other hand, if we had only one race the time factor would not cause us much difficulty.

I found, when I was in Northern Rhodesia with my right hon. Friend's predecessor, and attended some seventy meetings with Africans throughout the territory, discussing the setting up of the Federation, that the Africans were constantly asking for time. The African's fear is of being hurried into a modern world for which he is not ready. He fears that if he were hurried into that modern world in company with European com- munities he would find no sufficient place in it, and he also fears that by the time he is sufficiently educated, and sufficiently firmly established in the social and economic structure of his country, it will then be too late for him to achieve equality with the European.

If we think only of the African's desire for more time, and say to ourselves that we must not hurry the evolution of this Colony or the development of this part of Africa at a pace faster than the African would like, we have to consider whether Northern Rhodesia herself, by delay, may not lose her place in the modern world, may not lose the opportunity which is now open to her producers of great raw material resources, and find herself outstripped by other raw material producers in other parts of the world. If we paid too much attention to the African's desire to go slowly we might find we had lost for Northern Rhodesia the great opportunity of this generation, which would be a loss which she would never make up, and which would result ultimately in a lower living standard for Africans.

So one has to try to make some kind of compromise between the need of the territory to become an effective, viable modern State or part of a modern State, the Federation, as quickly as possible and the natural desire of the African for protection until he has reached what he feels to be adult citizenhood. It is most encouraging that there is such a ready admission amongst Africans in Northern Rhodesia that that is the posi- tion. The African is willing to admit quite openly that he has a great deal to do before he can catch up with the European, and can compete with him upon an even footing. That much realism is of very great importance and help to us.

I want to consider the disparity between the races, for such undoubtedly it is, and ask whether it really is a colour problem with which we are dealing. I think that the hon. Member for Rugby will agree with me that it is essentially a difference in standards and not a racial problem. Wherever one looks in other parts of the world where different races have lived together for a long time, whether in Mexico or Jamaica or anywhere else, one finds that the so-called racial problem has gradually passed away and has been solved and forgotten because of the process of which the hon. Member for Rugby spoke—the rise of a new middle class among races which for the first part of the period suffered a low standard of education.

Did the hon. Member mention Mexico? If so he should be careful. We might be talking of miscegenation, because in Latin America the Spanish and the Portuguese have mixed with the indigenous Indian stock. That has not occurred in Africa. Perhaps the hon. Member visualises it, but it would not commend itself to Mr. Welensky or Lord Malvern.

I do not suppose that it would, and I am not expressing a view on that. Whether or not miscegenation, that rather tiresome word, has anything to do with it, the problem is solving itself in Mexico, which I happen to know very well, because the standards of living of the different communities have approximated to one another, and social distinctions hardly exist any more. I think that that will happen in Central Africa, and particularly in Northern Rhodesia, but it is a question of time.

It seems to me, therefore, that what we have to do in our generation, when we have to live with this uncomfortable racial problem, is on the one hand to try to show the African what I would call the light at the end of the tunnel, and try to make it perfectly clear to him that he is moving forward steadily and on the whole remarkably rapidly towards a situation which he can contemplate with satisfaction. At the same time, we must ask ourselves whether we are doing all that can reasonably be done to hasten the process of bringing the African up to a level of living which is intellectually, socially and economically comparable with that of the European community.

The hon. Member for Rugby began by quoting some things said by Mr. Nkumbula about the deplorable state of the health service in Northern Rhodesia. Anybody who has been to the Copper Belt and has seen, for example, the magnificent new hospital there, with its splendid equipment, far better than anything in my constituency, would realise what nonsense Mr. Nkumbula is talking. Anyone who looks at the progress made, as well as what still remains to be made, must realise what a tremendous achievement it is.

African leaders such as Mr. Nkumbula do harm and not good to their own cause when they look simply on the worst side of the picture and make statements like that which can quite easily be shown to be unbalanced and misleading. Therefore, we must ask that African leaders, in urging faster progress, will at the same time give far greater credit to the people responsible for the considerable progress that has already been made.

To be fair to Mr. Nkumbula, who is not here to speak for himself, I would point out that the hon. Member is speaking merely of a small urban centre inside the copper mining area. He should speak about the 2 million Africans of the rural areas who lack cottage hospitals, clinics and the like, outside the two or three copper mining centres on the railway line.

I have been over the hospital to which the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) refers. Is there not something actually distasteful in a show-window hospital on that scale, which is perhaps better than any hospital in England, being established against a background of total lack of hospitalisation for 99 per cent. of the population?

Is the hon. and learned Member arguing that the hospital should not have been built because there is no national health service in a country where it would be utterly impossible to have it or any hospitalisation scheme in a country where in present circumstances it would be a practical impossibility to extend it to the remotest places? If that is his argument I think that few Africans would agree with him. I certainly should not.

No, that is not my point. My answer is that if a person has a limited amount of money to spend, if he is amusing himself he provides a luxurious toy for a few people, but if he is really trying to serve the country he provides something with a vastly larger capacity, on a much lower standard, which is more useful to many people but does not look as nice to visitors.

I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman is being extremely superficial in his comments. I should have thought that if we are to have an effective health service in the remote parts of a territory, the first thing to do is to have really good central hospital facilitles around which it can function. I have a teaching hospital in my constituency, the significance of which relates not to my constituency but to an enormously wider area. I do not see how we can hope to have any medical care in Barotseland or in some far off portion of the Luangwa Valley unless somewhere in the territory we have a really first-class centre to which it can look.

It seems to me to have been a sensible policy to have erected this first-class hospital in the most heavily populated centre of the territory as an example of how things should be done, and as a place where people can go to learn, and afterwards go out from, in order to minister and teach in the administration of health matters. So I cannot see any logic in the argument of the hon. and learned Gentleman.

To return to my argument and to the remoter parts of the Colony, I heartily agree that the problem which we have to cope with is the administration of health measures in the villages all over that enormous territory. I am saying, however. that it is unwise for African leaders, or for the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), to neglect to give credit for the very good start which has been made. A great deal has been done, and that fact ought to give encouragement to further efforts which we all desire to be made.

The hon. Member for Rugby quoted some words of the Governor to the effect that he hoped that Northern Rhodesia would get rid of the Colonial Office as soon as possible.

indicated assent.

We should look at this in perspective. The fear of the African is that the Colonial Office will be withdrawn from his territory prematurely. I have heard a number of Africans say, "Queen Victoria promised us her protection, and we claim it now". I agree with all those Africans, who have often said those things to me, that the Colonial Office is serving a great purpose there, and is of great value to them in the services which it provides. So far as I understand what the Governor said, I do not think that he made any proposal for hastening progress unduly and unwisely. But to say that the Colonial Office should never withdraw from the territory—if that is the implication of the hon. Member's objection to "as soon as possible "would be a counsel of despair. I am sure that the Africans there would be the first to say that they envisage the day when their own territory will be part of a fully self-governing State.

Surely all that I said was that, in the context of the fear and suspicion of Africans and the psychological state they are in, it was something that need not have been said, that it was pointless to emphasise that at the earliest moment possible we should leave the territory, particularly in view of Federation and the campaigns that there were before and since and which are still proceeding.

I hope that any African reading the debate will note that the hon. Member is not himself alarmed by what the Governor said, and will take that as some reason for not being alarmed either.

Education in Northern Rhodesia is an appallingly difficult problem. The hon. Member has, as I have, been to Munali, probably more than once. Boys are educated there up to the age of 20 with great care in an excellent school. In spite of the considerable size of the school and the care with which the education system is administered, there are still only very few who reach a standard suitable for entry to a university. That is a terrible state of affairs. It ought to make us realise the extreme difficulty of the problem. But it would be a mistake if anything were to go out from the debate which indicated that the result achieved so far is, in all the circumstances, a bad one. I think that it is a good one.

Considering the very short time that education has been able to operate in Northern Rhodesia, and bearing in mind the excellent quality of the lads who come from Munali—even though they may not necessarily be university professors, they are still good stuff, a very great improvement upon their fathers, and a totally different product altogether from their grandfathers—we ought to give some credit to the people who built up the education system.

The hon. Member referred to the education of women. I agree with him that the situation is even more difficult in that respect. Not only have women, generally speaking—there are, of course, honourable exceptions—no desire whatever for education, but very often their husbands, prospective husbands or fathers would be extremely angry if the authorities tried to take them away. It is necessary to start by educating the men about the necessity to educate the women. I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend, who also knows that part of the world very well, having, I believe, spent a great deal of his life there, will agree with me about that.

I now want to say a word about the European. The hon. Member pointed out that there are in the territory Europeans who are holding on jealously to jobs which, perhaps, in perfectly free competition, they might not be able to hold down. He referred to the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. What he says may be so, but he ought not to complain unduly that there are people in Central Africa holding on to jobs if they can do so. I have noticed a good many people here and there in our own country holding on to jobs for dear life, and to say that they have a vested interest in doing so is no discredit to the people concerned. Everybody has a vested interest in keeping his job. It is not discreditable if the European in Central Africa does not want to lose his job.

I hope that some day we may be able to look at the position of the European in Central Africa a little more through the eyes of the European himself. I sometimes think that we in this country are tremendously smug, living in this highly developed, complicated, and, on the whole, very prosperous white community, about the thoughts and emotions of the European living in that remote and simple community as a very small racial minority. We need to make plenty of allowance for the difference between our circumstances before condemning him as being motivated by vested interests, which are, goodness knows, powerful enough in our own country.

I see the problems to which the hon. Gentleman has referred as all part of this great dilemma: the need for the African to catch up, the need for him to have time to do it in, and on the other hand, the need for Northern Rhodesia, as part of the Federation, to advance rapidly and take her place as a great State in this modern age. I think that the machinery of the Federation is specially designed to meet that dilemma. It is something unique—something new.

Considering the gloomy forebodings when the Federation was introduced, and the amount of opposition which it undoubtedly has had to face, the results so far are remarkably promising. If we can have, on the part of Africans, a little forebearance and a little readiness to give credit for the great things that have already been achieved, and, on the part of Europeans, the same forebearance and readiness to make ample allowance in respect of the position in which the African finds himself and the limitations from which he still inevitably suffers, we shall be able to achieve the two objects of enabling Northern Rhodesia and the Federation to become a powerful and prosperous modern State, in which the African would enjoy a good standard of living and good social services in due course, and at the same time gain time for him to take his place as an adult citizen.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) and the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) will agree with me that it is a pleasant surprise to be able to have sufficient time to do justice to the very important points which the hon. Member for Rugby made in his opening speech. I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester for the very thoughtful and constructive speech which he has made. It is my duty to answer as many as I can of the very large number of questions which he put to me. I assure him that if I do not answer them all today I shall be only too delighted to do so later on.

At the end of his speech, the hon. Member for Rugby said that it would be a very good idea if my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary paid a visit to Northern Rhodesia and to Nyasaland. I am happy to say that my right hon. Friend hopes that either he or I will be able to visit both these territories before the end of this year. I am glad that the invitation was couched in such welcome terms by the hon. Member for Rugby.

At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Member for Rugby did, I think, rather overdo the fears that exist as to Her Majesty's Government's intention concerning the future of Northern Rhodesia. I think that the hon. Gentleman tried to infer that in some speech which the Governor made the Governor himself added to these uncertainties. The Governor, I am sure, was making quite clear what our colonial policy is and that it is our duty to bring up these territories to such a state that they can stand on their own feet and enjoy the benefits of self-government without guidance from the Colonial Office.

So far as the future of Northern Rhodesia is concerned, the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that Her Majesty's Government and this House have pledged themselves that the political status of Northern Rhodesia shall not be altered without the consent of the majority of the inhabitants of that territory, and that pledge naturally still stands.

I should like to say something about education, because the hon. Member for Rugby asked a number of important questions about that subject. He was especially interested in the problem of secondary education for girls. I agree about the difficulties that exist there. He thought it was very shameful in view of the richness of the Colony that so little money was spent on education. It is only fair to point out that it is only in recent years since the development of copper mines that Northern Rhodesia has enjoyed the prosperity which she sees today; in fact only a few years ago Northern Rhodesia was certainly not one of the more forward Colonial Territories.

So far as girls' secondary education is concerned, I can tell the House that no girl who qualifies for secondary education is refused a place. Only two years ago there were not enough girls to form even one class. Those who wanted secondary education were given bursaries to schools outside Northern Rhodesia. As soon as enough candidates were available—that was two years ago—facilities were provided within Northern Rhodesia itself for the first time.

The hon. Member for Rugby will appreciate that perhaps the main obstacle to further development of that sort is what he himself mentioned—the traditional reluctance of African parents to allow their girls to stay at school. Every effort is being made by Government propaganda and personal persuasion to overcome that reluctance. I hope that anything which he and I say in the House will increase the propaganda drive which is being undertaken by the Northern Rhodesia Government in this connection. We are providing facilities and we shall continue so to do, and I hope that more will take advantage of them.

May I now take boys' secondary education? In 1954 the Northern Rhodesian Government added a sixth form to the Munali Secondary School with the express object of fitting boys to enter the proposed University College. As the hon. Member said, nine boys were enrolled then, a very small start. The number of boys enrolled in March of this year was 24. It is true to say that the facilities for secondary education in Northern Rhodesia at the moment have actually outrun demand, because in 1955 367 vacancies were available and only 336 pupils enrolled. That happened even though it had been found necessary to lower the standard of the entry examination because of the shortage of Africans for these vacancies. In spite of that the Northern Rhodesian Government are planning to increase over the next few years the number of places in secondary schools from 750 to 2,480.

The hon. Member for Rugby will probably agree that primary education is really the main problem facing Northern Rhodesia. I am happy to say that vigorous measures are being taken to increase the number of children at primary schools. To give an example, the number of places in Standard VI, the class which takes the secondary school examination, is being raised from I,500 to 6,000. The number of candidates for the Standard VI examination in May this year was about 4,000 compared with 2,000 last year, so we are making considerable progress. The number of girls was 700 and 200, respectively.

Will the right hon. Member kindly look into conditions at Chipembe Girls' Secondary School and my allegations about them?

I certainly will, but the hon. Member will not expect me to be able to give an answer straight away.

Considering the length of time needed for erecting school buildings in these rapidly growing towns and also the shortage of teachers and the length of time needed for training them, I doubt whether even if more money were available much more could be done at the moment. The main weakness is that children still leave school too early. I regard it as of great importance that the Northern Rhodesian Government should make a success of their propaganda campaign.

The hon. Member referred to the Hodgson Technical Centre. I understand that there were 16 empty places there a short while ago. That would surely indicate that facilities are adequate to meet the present problem. The maximum capacity is 400. It has not been reached, but when it is reached a further similar institution is proposed.

I move on to say something on technical education. At the moment. there is no lack of technical schools in Northern Rhodesia. I am told there are 11 trade schools run by missions, eight by local authorities and one by the Government, making 20 in all. Although the existing schools are not filled to capacity, six new trade schools are contemplated.

The hon. Member expressed concern about the fear of alienation of land, and I should like to deal with that matter. I wish to assure him that the anxieties that he expressed on behalf of others— he indicated that he was speaking for others—are really groundless. Permanent European settlement in the Colony is possible only on Crown Land, which comprises a mere 6 per cent. of the land surface of the Colony. The other 94 per cent. consists of Native Reserves and Native Trust land. Land in Native Reserves, except for public purposes, cannot be granted to any non-African save on a five-year lease. Although the Governor has power when it seems to him to be in the general interest to grant rights of occupancy of Native Trust land to non-Africans, in practice no non-Africans occupy Trust lands except missionaries, traders and Government servants and they are very few indeed. The Native Trust lands are extremely sparsely populated and there is certainly no shortage of land available for Africans.

The hon. Member mentioned the Kafue Flats, which is a large area of low-lying land, half Native Reserve and half Crown land. The possibility of retaining part of it for wheat growing has been investigated but neither the Native Reserves nor Native Trust lands were affected. The hon. Member mentioned the Chirundu Sugar Scheme for growing sugar in the Zambesi Valley. Because of the difficulties of transport it is proposed to build a sugar factory close to where the sugar is grown and, for the sake of efficiency, initially it may be run by a European firm. That may lead to difficulty over African land rights, but no decision has been taken and nothing will be done without full consultation with the Native Authority. I think that probably covers what the hon. Member said about the alienation of land.

I hope the hon. Member will forgive me if I do not touch widely on the subject of the franchise. Discussions arc taking place in Central Africa on this subject, progress is being made, and I do not think it would be in the public interest for me to make a statement at present while those discussions are going on.

I was glad that the hon. Member mentioned the very imaginative and generous loan from the Rhodesian Selection Trust to the Government of Northern Rhodesia; as the hon. Gentleman said, it was a loan of £2 million. It is to be applied to African developmental projects in rural areas which otherwise would have been difficult to finance, as they are not revenue earning. It is the intention of the Government of Northern Rhodesia to devote at least twice as much from their own funds, and about £6 million is therefore to be made available.

The money will be used in an attempt to redress the disturbance in the economy which the very success of the copper companies has caused. Many parts of Northern Rhodesia, particularly in the North-East, are seriously depleted of young men. As a consequence, villages are growing poorer, which in its turn hastens the drift of able-bodied people to the towns. That is a vicious circle which this £6 million project is designed to cut.

The Governor has ideas for developing certain areas centered around market towns; these towns will be under the control of Native Authorities, which will acquire a new dignity and a new source of wealth. There will thus be incentives for African farmers to stay in their rural areas and in their farms and for Africans to enter into local government service. This money will be spent in a large number of useful and constructive ways.

I was very glad that the Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations was here during the debate and was able to hear a number of points which are covered by his Department rather than mine. I hope that I have answered most of the questions which the hon. Member put to me. I am very glad that he raised the subject in the House this afternoon and if I have omitted any points I will write to him and try to deal with them afterwards.

I apologise to the House for arriving extremely late for the debate. I had imagined that it would start at 4 o'clock.

In spite of that, I want to say a few words on the subject, although I hasten to say that they will be of a relatively non-controversial nature. I was very glad indeed to hear the Minister speaking of the developments which are due to take place in Northern Rhodesia, because I think that in the past, both under this Government and, I say quite frankly, under our own Government, there has not been as much development as there might have been, nor as great a spreading of wealth among the people as a whole as there might have been.

There has been, particularly in the copper fields, a great development of wealth, but much of it has failed to find its way down to the people, and I hope that a great deal more will be done in the development of social services, and that generally, by various means, attempts will be made to spread the money which arises from the wealth of Rhodesia more widely among the people.

We have perhaps tended in recent years to think only of the Federation and to forget that a great many residual powers remain with the Governments both in Northern Rhodesia and in Nyasaland. Among these are powers to improve racial relations, and I hope that they will be used more than they have been used either by this Government and indeed by our Government when we were in power. Much could be done by the Government setting an example. For instance, I understand that in post offices in Rhodesia—I hope that this has been altered—there are still separate queues for white and for black people. That is something which should exist no longer in a territory for which the Colonial Office is responsible.

What happens in Salisbury is quite another matter, but I think that we should give a lead to rather than take the lead from, Southern Rhodesia and Salisbury. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that the new university was set up in Salisbury in the kind of atmosphere that exists there rather than in Northern Rhodesia or Nyasaland, where there is an infinitely better atmosphere.

I hope that the Government will use to the full the powers they have both for improving the economic position of the two countries for which they are responsible and for improving racial relations in those countries, and in that respect giving a lead to Southern Rhodesia, and indeed, if such a thing is possible, to South Africa.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at nine minutes to Four o'clock.