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

This Bill has apparently occasioned so little adverse criticism that it comes to this stage with very little having been said about it, so that obviously it meets the wishes of hon. Members of this House. When, on 12th February, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) obtained leave to bring in the Bill, he made reference to the spectacular effect of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, which, he said, laid down that

"… before a court might send an adolescent to prison it must first examine and consider all alternative methods."

The imposition of this duty on the court involved no limitation of its powers, but it has reduced by one-half the proportion of adolescents sent to prison. The Bill we are now discussing proposes that Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, shall also apply, where magistrates' courts are concerned, to adult first offenders. I am confident that it will be equally successful in reducing the number of men sent, in my view often unnecessarily, to prison.

My hon. Friend, who is not given to overstatement, declared on 12th February that

"… there can be no other deduction but that the courts were in the habit of passing sentences upon adolescents very careiessly."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1958; Vol. 582, c. 401.]

In my view, the same strictures can be passed on some magistrates when dealing with adult first offenders, and one result of this is the gross and disgraceful overcrowding in the prisons, which has increased to such a degree as, in my view, to nullify to a considerable extent many of the attempts at reformation.

If we look at the figures, we find that in July, 1956, there were 21,000 prisoners in prisons and Borstal institutions, compared with about 11,000 pre-war. Today, less than two years later, the number has increased to 24,500, the highest figure ever recorded, and of this number, nearly 4,500 men are confined three to a cell, twice as many as a year ago. A very large number of them are locked in every evening after tea-time until next morning. We here, and people all over the country who are free, welcome a wonderful spring day like this, and gladly greet the warmer weather and sunshine, but to the men who have had to be locked up three in a small cell, it must seem to be a curse and not a blessing.

This subject has been debated in another place twice in the last twelve months, and has called forth very strong references and comments from noble Lords of a different party. One, Lord Huntingdon, referred to—

"A disgrace to any country that calls itself civilised"

Another said that it was—

"degrading and almost a disgrace to this country."

Yet another noble Lord said:

"A very large part of our prison population consists of men who ought never to have been sent there."

He might have added that many who have been properly sent to prison are sent there for far longer periods than can reasonably be justified.

There is no early prospect of increased accommodation. Even the prison at Hull, the first prison to be built this century, brings no relief because it has to be used as a Borstal institution. The only real hope of an improvement in this dreadful state of affairs is to reduce the number of men sent to prison.

The Home Secretary's Advisory Council, which was asked to devise alternatives to some of the short terms of imprisonment imposed by the courts, recommended amongst other things that the courts should be enabled to attach the wages of maintenance defaulters. That Bill has already passed us now, and if it becomes law it will reduce the prison intake of new prisoners by more than 3,000 men a year. The Advisory Council also recommended that Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, should be extended to adult first offenders, and my hon. Friend has therefore performed an invaluable public service in introducing this Bill, which I hope will shortly receive the approval of the House.

In my view, he has also very wisely added to the Advisory Council's recommendations the provision that Section 107 (3) of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, shall apply to adult first offenders. This is a most salutary provision and will go a long way to iron out the grave inequalities which exist in the sentences passed in different courts for similar offences. All of us have been shocked at times to note in different courts the wide and sometimes savage disparity in the sentences which have been passed for apparently similar offences.

When this Bill becomes an Act, a magistrate will be compelled to say exactly why he feels obliged to send a first offender to prison, and I believe that this requirement will give pause to a great many. I myself was in a not exactly parallel position, but one which is relevant for the purpose of comparison, when I had an example of the effectiveness of such a requirement when I was Chairman of the Mental Health Committee of a Regional Hospital Board, and, as such, was responsible for some 17,000 patients, many of them mentally deficient.

I found that while some medical superintendents pursued an enlightened course regarding discharges from orders, others seemed to keep the mentally deficient patients working on licence for ever. After one particularly distressing case, I made it a rule throughout the six counties that, when a patient had successfully completed two years on licence, the superintendent must state in writing his reasons for declining to recommend a discharge from order That rule had a very remarkable effect on the numbers who were so recommended for discharge from order. My hon. Friend's Bill will have a remarkable effect on some magistrates; not, of course, on the majority, but on those in whom a change of attitude is so badly needed. It is utterly wrong that, for similar offences, the question of whether a man receives probation or imprisonment should be entirely dependent upon the court or magistrate before whom he appears.

Comparatively speaking, there is very little stigma attached to probation. A man on probation usually has no difficulty in keeping his job, or, perhaps, in getting another. The situation is com- pletely different when a first offender is sent to prison. Usually his job goes, and it is much harder for him to get another when he is released. His earnings stop. His family has to go on National Assistance. He may even have to move to another area. There is also the mental anguish and all sorts of consequences to the prisoner's innocent relatives, his wife and his family.

If, of course, the crime is such that prison is the only possible sentence, it must be so, and the Bill will not interfere in any way with that or lessen the magistrate's powers in this respect. But, before he sends a man to prison, the magistrate should ask and answer the question, "What good will it do to send this man to prison, and what good will it do for society?" There are particular classes of first offender for whom it seems that a prison sentence is more or less automatic. Their crimes, of course, must be punished. This applies to people in responsible positions, for example, employees of the Post Office who pilfer mail or steal. When they are apprehended, as far as my experience goes, they are always sent to prison, because they are regarded as holding a position of trust which they have betrayed. There can be no question, of course, that they must leave their employment. They can no longer continue in a position of trust for which they have shown themselves unworthy. But it seems that offenders of that kind ought not automatically to be sent to prison.

One such man rang me up only last week. A first offender, a postal worker, he had been sentenced to twelve months imprisonment. I was rather surprised to find him telephoning me, for I knew that he had not yet completed his sentence. He was from the open gaol at Fafield and had been given a week's leave to come home, he with his family, and also, perhaps, try to make preliminary arrangements about getting another job. We had quite a long conversation about this job, and he asked me, as I could not recommend him a situation immediately, to write to the governor if I heard of anything within the next few weeks—his sentence does not expire until July—and the governor would be very pleased to arrange for him to come to London and interview the prospective employer.

I am very glad that such arrangements exist. It is most encouraging. But there we have a first offender automatically, as it were, sent to prison and then sent almost immediately to a special prison with special arrangements for his rehabilitation and return to society. I wonder whether it would not be infinitely better, in the first place, to say that prison for that man is not the place. There must be some other means. The magistrate should be called upon to asy why he insists that prison is the only thing in cases like that.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who, in a recent debate in the other place, said:

"I do not know how many cases 'there are of people who are sent to prison automatically because they have committed an offence and because prison at the moment is the appropriate method of dealing with them."

He went on to say that, in respect of a particular type of offence, a man has to serve not less than three months and not more than twelve years and, therefore, he has got to serve that sentence which is inflicted upon him. The noble Lord went on:

"But, if we apply this precept of whether prison can have a reformative effect, … I am sure we could find other ways of dealing with such cases. We could use more frequently the methods of absolute discharge or conditional discharge. That is permissible today; it is part of our system. Yet there is not enough being done in that direction and in the direction of the more frequent use of parole."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 23rd April, 1958, Vol. 208, c. 977–8.]

I entirely support those words. They would have a very useful effect if they were applied, and this Bill, when it becomes an Act, will enable those principles to be applied more frequently; in fact, it will require them to be. Without increasing crime or adversely affecting the course of justice, the Bill will reduce our prison population and will further the course of rehabilitating those who must still be sent to prison. I believe that it will bring greater equality in the treatment of first offenders. Above all, it will save many thousands of innocent people from the stigma of associating with a husband, father or brother who has served a prison sentence. I warmly commend the Bill to the House.

I beg to second the Motion.

I am glad to have this opportunity of saying a few words in support of the Bill, particularly as my name appears on the back of it as one of its sponsors. It is not a sensational or spectacular piece of penal reform, but it supplements the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, and the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, in a useful particular, by putting the adult first offender on the same footing as the adolescent first offender when sentence is being determined by the magistrates' court.

It seems highly desirable that, before passing sentence on an adult first offender, the bench should consider whether there is an appropriate method of dealing with the offender other than imprisonment. If there is no such alternative method, then the reasons for passing the sentence of imprisonment should be set out in the warrant of committal and specified in the register. As the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) said when he introduced the Bill, this will mean that, in future, magistrates will have to think twice before sending an adult first offender to prison. In the past, they have often thought only once and, sometimes, they have not thought at all.

Any Measure is useful which has the effect of reducing the number of actual and potential inmates of our prisons. Last November, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary addressed the Howard League for Penal Reform at its annual meeting. I remember the emphasis which he placed on the state of the prisons, which he described as grossly overcrowded. At that time, just six months ago, there were, according to my right hon. Friend, 3,000 prisoners sleeping three in a cell. As we have heard this morning from the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins), that figure has increased to 4,400.

In my opinion, this Bill should reduce at least by half the average number of adult first offenders who are sentenced to imprisonment by the magistrates' courts every year. The hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury referred to alternatives, particularly the use of absolute and conditional discharge. I would add to that the extension of the use of attendance centres and, also, that I hope to see established and extended a parole system similar to that which has been and is being operated with success in the United States of America and various European countries.

The House should be grateful to the hon. Member for Chesterfield for introducing the Bill. We should be grateful, too, to the Government for finding time to assist its passage through the House and to debate it today on Third Reading. I think that we owe a debt to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the interest which he and his Department have shown in the Bill, an interest which has gone so far as to assist in its drafting and preparation.

I should like to make one final point. For reasons which we all appreciate, the Bill does not extend to Northern Ireland, because the administration of justice is a matter which falls within the jurisdiction of the Parliament and Government of Northern Ireland. However, I hope I am not out of order in expressing the hope that the Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland will take note of these proceedings and will introduce a similar Measure in the Parliament of Northern Ireland.

I should also like to join with the hon. Members who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) on having introduced this Measure. I do not entirely agree with the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) in his statement that this is not a spectacular Bill. I think that it is. I think that it is extremely important, and every step that is taken in viewing penalties that are imposed for crimes by an entirely different standard from that which prevailed years ago is, in a sense, a spectacular move ahead.

It is perfectly true that the idea of the probation of offenders has been in existence for many years, and it is also true that a large number of magistrates and others who have the administration of justice in their hands pay due attention to the importance of ensuring that only those offenders who cannot otherwise be dealt with properly are sent to prison for the first time.

On the other hand, we have to face the fact that those who sit in courts daily are, in spite of themselves, apt to become used to the atmosphere of the court and to regard as somewhat commonplace the sending of people to prison. There is no doubt—and I have seen it for myself—that for many years magistrates with the best intentions in the world and of the highest integrity and deep human understanding, through being engaged every day in dealing with cases, are apt to regard penalties imposed in a less severe light than the individual who comes into the court for the first time. I have said in the House before that even a light sentence, such as a small fine, is sometimes very severely felt, from the psychological standpoint, by the person upon whom the penalty is placed.

Today, we are dealing with the question of sending offenders to prison, and I think that the courts, wherever they may be, should think very long before imposing a prison sentence for the first time. I think that when they have to consider whether they should send a person to prison for the first time it is of the highest importance that the responsibility should be made clear to them that, in spite of the fact that they may have been dealing with matters of a similar kind for years they are holding in their hands the destiny not only of that individual, but of his family and everybody concerned with him.

We know that years ago the poet Crabbe wrote about the shades of the prison house beginning to close upon the growing being.

Was it not Wordsworth?

I am sorry; I thought it was Crabbe. Anyhow, it was a member of the same romantic school who used that phrase. I think that it applies today as much as it applied then.

The domestic surroundings of an individual has a considerable amount to do, in many cases, with the crime that he commits, and it is so important that the whole of his background and surroundings should be thoroughly investigated by experienced social workers as well as by the policeman dealing with the case. I am not casting any reflection upon the police. In the majority of cases the police do their very best to be as fair as they possibly can in describing the life that has been led by the individual and what were the consequences leading to his position.

However, the probation service is a special social service. In my view, it is one of the most important services for the community today. We have had a debate recently about the probation service, and the Minister knows that there is considerable feeling about the necessity of having a properly and fully filled probation service to cope with the situations that arise. We all know the respect that is held for this service. It is important that a first offender should have the circumstances in which he is living and the circumstances in which he has been brought up fully investigated by such an officer before a final decision is made. A chance should be given, wherever possible, to an individual to rehabilitate himself with the assistance of the probation service. Our courts fully appreciate the value of the probation service. For instance, at the recent Leicester quarter sessions 13 offenders were placed on probation, five of whom were of no fixed abode or were destitute.

In dealing with this matter, we must first consider the principle. The principle is definite: that if possible, no man or woman who cannot possibly be otherwise dealt with should be sent to prison. I do not know whether a prison sentence is not more difficult for an adult to bear than for an adolescent. An adult who, throughout life, has conducted himself in a way which has not brought him into prison perhaps, is deserving of as much, if not more, sympathetic consideration. It is difficult to weigh up the respective positions. There is certainly no question of priorities in this respect.

The approach to the case of every first offender should be considered as that of a social case and not as of somebody upon whom an extreme penalty must be imposed. Once a person goes into prison the stigma remains with him for the rest of his life. It is true that 80 per cent. of first offenders, including those who go to prison, never again appear in the courts, but that is not the point. The fact is that in the life of the individual, especially a person of sensitive mind, a prison sentence stands out in such a way that it may very well cause distress far in excess of the punishment that his crime deserves.

The Bill should not be regarded merely as of importance in helping to meet the criticism that our prisons are full. If a crime justifies imprisonment and if there is such a vast amount of crime that, in consequence, the prisons are full, I and everybody else would condemn the fact that the prisons were not sufficient to provide proper and humane accommodation for those who are convicted; but that really is not an argument which should be advanced strongly for the Bill.

The probation service itself is not at present sufficient to cope with all the cases that should be referred to it, but that is a matter for the Home Office to deal with in another way. The position is serious, not only in Leicester in particular, but throughout the country in general. I have discussed this matter with our senior probation officer, Mr. Fogg, who finds the situation very serious because of the lack of sufficient personnel. But that is not an argument for saying that a person should not be placed on probation in the first place. It is an argument for saying that to cope with the situation that will arise when the Bill becomes law the Home Office must ensure that the service is extended and that people are fully trained for the probation service.

We are dealing with the lives, the mental condition and the happiness of a vast number of people: the offender himself, those around him and those whose names and characters are involved—for example, the offender's husband or wife and children. All of these are included in the consideration that we must give to this problem today.

I give the Bill my unqualified support. I am sure that most, if not all, hon. Members, on both sides, will feel the same and will be grateful to those who considered it advisable and took the opportunity to introduce it.

At first sight, there is a lot to commend itself in the Bill. Most of us are loath to send a first offender to jail, with the stigma which that naturally implies. We all tend to be lenient to first offenders. Before expressing full support for the Bill, however, one must look into it a little more deeply.

If a first offender is treated leniently, it must be made quite clear to him that any subsequent offence will be punished and punished harshly. That deterrent is important. If one's child behaves badly, the first time we catch him out we can be lenient, but we must make it quite clear that if the incident is repeated he will be punished and punished harshly. It is important to bear this in mind.

What is a first offender? Is he, for example, a member of a gang which has for some time been committing offences against society in general? I suppose it can be said that a person is a first offender if he has not been previously in court, but one should consider whether a boy or youth who comes before the court and who is known and proved to have been a member of a gang, of which nowadays there are so many, should, in fact, be treated as a first offender. It is likely that he has committed many offences, some of which may be more serious than the one with which he is charged.

Clause 1 contains the words:

"unless the court is of opinion that no other method of dealing with him is appropriate".

What other methods are envisaged by the sponsors of the Bill? Do they, for example, wish to bring back corporal punishment? If so, I support the Bill to the full, because I believe that a good caning might easily do away with the necessity of fining a person or even of sending him to jail. If that is envisaged, I believe that the Bill will do a great deal of good.

Frequently, a young person who is fined does not pay the fine himself; it is paid by his parents. They are the people who suffer and the offender gets virtually no punishment. A good caning, however, might do him a power of good. I am not one of those who believes that corporal punishment brings out the brute in people. I do not believe it embitters a person. When I was at school—and I deserved it every time—I had my fair share of beatings, but they certainly did not make me sour or turn me against human nature.

Let us make quite certain that these first offenders are really first offenders and not people who have been members of gangs. Secondly, let us give a little hit of corporal punishment and stop them going to jail and stop them committing these crimes again.

I am glad to have an opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance) and to congratulate him on what he said about the reintroduction of corporal punishment. He has taken the words out of my mouth. One of the few points which I intended to make was that although I am in favour of the Bill, I did not give it my approval without some doubts, because I feel that we are getting too sentimental about crime.

Although I am a practising solicitor, I do not practise very much in the criminal courts, and it might perhaps be said that I can make a more practical approach to the problem than those who do work in that branch of the law. In my opinion, we are getting too sentimental about punishing criminals. What has convinced me that on the whole the Bill is right is my investigation into the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, which was agreed by both sides of the House and which, by and large, has worked extremely well. Section 17 of the Act is invoked by the Bill. In view of the fact that the Act has not been quoted today, I will read Section 17 (1), which says:

"A court of summary jurisdiction shall not impose imprisonment on a person under seventeen years of age; and a court of assize or quarter sessions shall not impose imprisonment on a person under fifteen years of age."

Subsection (2) reads:

"No court shall impose imprisonment on a person under twenty-one years of age unless the court is of opinion that no other method of dealing with him is appropriate; and for, the purpose of determining whether any other method of dealing with any such person is appropriate the court shall obtain and consider information about the circumstances, and shall take into account any information before the court which is relevant to his character and his physical and mental condition."

That is an extremely sensible way of approaching the question of first offenders. As I understand the Bill, all that it does is to extend Section 17 to persons over 21. It is for that reason alone that I came down on the side of the Bill, and not for the reason that there should be any reduction in penalties at present. It is common ground to both sides of the House that every possible step should be taken to stop sending first offenders to prison, but I feel it most important that the courts concerned should be left with complete discretion.

It should be made absolutely clear that the Bill does not alter the powers of the court in any way at all. It merely places a new duty on the court.

I am sorry if I did not make that clear. I entirely agree, and I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for his intervention. All I was seeking to say was that I believe that the time has come when the principle laid down in the 1948 Act, with which I agree, should be extended to people over 21. That is the crux of the Bill.

I do not want to be on record, however, as having said that I am in any way in favour of diminishing penalties. I believe that this increase in juvenile delinquency and in crime all over the country can be dealt with only in a firm and determined way by the Government. As I indicated earlier, I am certainly in favour of the restoration of some measure of corporal punishment, but only for crimes of violence. That would be a great deterrent and would prevent a great deal of the hooliganism which is going on today. It would also deal in certain cases with what have come to be known as crimes by Teddy boys. I think the problem of these Teddy boys is one which we must face.

I welcome the Bill, which extends the 1948 Act, which I believe is an extremely good Act. It will undoubtedly mean that between 2,000 and 3,000 fewer people will be in prison. Nevertheless, in my humble view as a solicitor, we must not become too sentimental in dealing with criminalism and these thugs who are today doing a great deal of harm to peaceful people in the country.

I am sorry if I appear to be throwing a spanner in the works, but I must confess that I am somewhat unhappy about the Bill. While I admit the admirable intentions and the superficially persuasive arguments used by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, I am still unhappy about it, and I will try, shortly, to explain why.

It is undoubtedly true that our prison population will be substantially reduced if we pass the Bill, but there are other factors to be considered which might well tip the balance of argument against the Bill. Of course, the Home Office want to reduce the prison population, but are their reasons not somewhat materialistic? There would be fewer prisons to build, fewer prisons to reconstruct, fewer warders to provide, fewer prison visitors to escort, less clothing, less food and less cost generally.

These reasons do the Home Office no discredit, and they are perfectly natural, but I wonder whether the Home Office and the promoters of the Bill have fully considered the other side of this problem—the damage which these changes in the law may do to the ordinary law-abiding sections of the community who seek only to pursue their normal daily duties and vocations without let or hindrance and unmolested by violent interruption.

I am sure that we are all painfully aware of the increase in juvenile delinquency and in crimes of violence by juveniles generally. Every day we read about fresh cases and fresh victims as we open the daily Press. I cannot help thinking that the Bill, if passed, will tend to increase such crimes. I give the sponsors every credit for their intention, but, whatever they say, the Bill will undoubtedly lessen punishment and, therefore, lessen the deterrent against crime. Many of us are already gravely disturbed at the lenient sentences which have been passed by many magistrates' courts on first offenders and the frequency of fines—and only nominal fines at that. Under the Bill they need not be adequately punished even if they refuse to pay those trivial fines. My experience, such as it was, in the seventeen happy years I spent in the Army, was that if one meted out substantial punishment for the first offence, it had an enormous effect against repetition. I greatly fear that the Bill will lead to an even greater contempt of the magistrates' courts by the young offenders.

Is not the hon. Member confusing the matter? Does not the major portion of the Bill extend the provisions to people over 21?

I quite understand that.

I remember one case recently in which there was obvious contempt by the offender against the court itself. It was reported in the Press, only a few weeks ago. It was of a youth who had a cigarette in his mouth and a grin on his face and who listened casually to the whole of the hearing of the charge against him, which was one of violence, theft and general thuggery.

Why did he take such little interest in the case? Because he had no respect for the court, or for the penalties which it might impose on him. He said to himself: "Am I not a first offender? What can they do to me which will be of any consequence?" The same youth was stated to be earning £8 or £9 a week, keeping much of it himself, because good money was going into the house. He did not have to subscribe much to the general upkeep of his family. Under the Bill he need not even worry about paying the trivial fine of a few shillings which may be imposed on him.

Candidly, I am anxious. I wish the Bill well, but I am doubtful of it, although I do not wish to oppose its Third Reading. I hope that the Home Office, which will have to administer the Bill, will keep a watchful eye on its operations. I suggest, further, that the Home Secretary should issue a special directive to magistrates' courts, warning them of its dangers and calling for more serious punishment for those who are taking their first step on the criminal road.

Did the hon. Gentleman really mean "directive"?

The right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do the correct terms to apply to these matters. I merely wish that the Home Office should take whatever appropriate step there is to indicate to magistrates that, first, there should be a general average of penalties throughout the country conforming to one another and, secondly, that in the opinion of the Home Office more suitable penalties might well be imposed.

Like the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance), and, to a greater extent, like Mr. Justice Hilbery and many other justices and magistrates' courts, I regret that corporal punishment is not still available for young and not so young thugs. However, we shall have to wait until the Government take a more realistic concept of their duties to the public generally and a more sympathetic thought for the victims of violence and less for those who so wantonly inflict it.

While I do not intend to oppose this Bill I, too, have some grave misgivings. I have an ugly suspicion that this is a case of manipulating justice to meet expediency. Great play has been made of the overcrowding of our prisons. We are all well aware of the desperate state of some of those establishments, but I am not so sure that this in itself is a good reason, if only one, for bringing forward a Measure of this nature.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson), in asking leave to introduce the Bill, made great play of the results of research made nearly a quarter of a century ago in the United States of America. Perhaps that is relevant to the situation here but, on the other hand, America is a very different place from Britain. The standards of behaviour and morality there are rather different from our own. People are far too fond of talking about our cousins across the Atlantic and forget that a large proportion of the population in the United States has no relationship to Anglo-Saxon stock.

Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman allow me to interrupt, since he has alluded to my hon. Friend's remarks and has indicated that the research was confined to America? My hon. Friend also said that in France there is what is known as a suspended sentence and that they have a success rate of 80 per cent. In England there is massive evidence to show that 80 per cent. is the minimum success rate and it is the same rate all the time.

Yes, I was coming to the point of the 80 per cent. success rate, which I do not dispute.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Chesterfield has been fair in using this statistic to prove his case, but there is another aspect. It is not only the effect of imprisonment upon an offender which may convert him from being a potential criminal to being just a single lapse offender. That, I agree, is always present but, apart from that, to me just as important, and probably more, is the effect that these sentences have upon potential offenders, people who have not yet become even first offenders but who have spent their early lives in circumstances where sufficient attention has not been paid to their welfare and who subsequently have been skating on very thin ice on the very edge of the law.

We have to think of those types, also, when we are considering a Measure of this kind. In the Bill, magistrates are enjoined to consider most carefully, and to state, that there is no appropriate alternative. There are probably only two major alternatives, fine or probation.

When my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary speaks in the debate; I would like him to give statistics if he can, or, at any rate, to refer to the degree of defaulting in the paying of fines. Does he know how much variation there is in default? Has the Home Office a sufficient number of probation officers to cope with the extra work which this Bill will undoubtedly involve? If I can be satisfied on those two points, my misgivings may be reduced. Although, as I have said, I have no intention of opposing the Third Reading of the Bill, I am not altogether certain that the result will be all that is hoped for.

May I also be allowed to add my gratitude and congratulations to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) on bringing this Bill so far? I support the Measure and I feel bound to disagree with some of the misgivings expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wells (Lieut.-Commander Maydon).

The hon. Baronet said that he was unhappy about the Bill and joined hands with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) in speaking of the sentiment behind it. As I see it, there is nothing sentimental about the Bill, nothing sloppy, no suggestion that first offenders should be dealt with more leniently than hitherto. It does not affect the powers of the magistrates' courts in any shape or form.

All that the Bill does is simply to direct magistrates to their powers and to underline their duties about what they ought to do and what they can do. As we all know, magistrates already have power to place first offenders on probation, and the Bill will simply mean that before sending a first offender to prison—even if he is over 21—magistrates will have to ask themselves whether he ought to be placed on probation.

I cannot understand the objection of my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr and his reference to juvenile delinquency, and so forth. The Bill is hardly concerned with juvenile delinquents. It is concerned with those over 21. Whether those who are not over 21, or not over a certain age, should receive corporal punishment, is another matter. I am all for juvenile offenders being given a little bit of stick, but I would rather that they were given a little bit of stick outside a police station than dragged through all the rigmarole of the juvenile court and allowed to become accustomed to court procedure. There has never been so much work in juvenile courts as in recent years, but that is a matter far removed from the Bill, and perhaps I had better turn to the main purposes of the Bill and to my reasons for wholeheartedly supporting it

I was about to speak of the John Gordon school of thought, but I do not know whether I should include my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr in that. That is the school which pinpoints contradictions between decisions given in various magistrates' courts. It is very easy to quote one case from one magistrates' court and to compare it with a decision in a similar case in another court some miles away, carefully selecting the facts of each case and then drawing a distinction between the two sentences passed. Like all these allegations, there is some grain of truth in the belief that there are discrepancies.

There is no doubt that there are certain magistrates who very often make up their minds about sentences in a fit of anger. Having heard of an outrage, of an act of violence, they do not wait to hear whether there was some good reason for it. It may may be that the defendant was not represented and did not have his case fully presented to the magistrates. Such magistrates sometimes make up their minds quickly and decide at once to send a man to prison, without giving the matter further thought.

There are courts like that, and those of us who go around the lower criminal courts come across such cases where that sort of thing happens. The Bill will have a cooling-down effect on some magistrates and will remind them of their duty to have second thought about placing an offender on probation instead of sending him to prison.

That brings me to a possible loophole. The Bill does nothing to prevent magistrates remanding an offender in custody, for, say, a week, far a probation report. That will have the effect of committing him to prison for such a time. Whether there are any magistrates who would abuse the Bill in such a way, I do not know, and that may not, in fact, be a loophole.

The other possible defect in the Bill is that it requires a magistrates' court to consider probation before imposing a prison sentence on an offender who has failed to pay a fine. That could mean a second hearing. At the first hearing the offender would be fined and, if he subsequently failed to pay the fine in the requisite time, he would have to be brought back and the matter reconsidered.

If that is the case, I hope that a second adjourned hearing would not be necessary and that the court could consider probation at the time of imposing the fine so that it could tell the offender when it imposed the fine that it had considered probation if he did not pay the fine and was satisfied, for reasons which it would state, that the alternative to paying the fine was imprisonment. Subject to those possible defects, I have no complaint against the Bill and I support it wholeheartedly.

The hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) spoke of the probation service as a special social service. I repeat what I have told the House before, that the probation service is the Cinderella of the social services and that not enough people, especially those in high places, recognise its value. The Bill will be one more step towards the recognition of the probation service as a very useful and helpful service, not only in reducing and preventing crime, but also in the other work which it is able to do.

There is no doubt that the Bill will be largely unnecessary in the vast majority of magistrates' courts. It will be largely unnecessary in the very small courts to which only one probation officer is attached and in those large magistrates' courts to which ten or more probation officers may be attached. It tends to be in those two extremes where the probation service is most used.

The work of the probation service is largely dependent on the ability and personality of the officers concerned. In a very small court, where there is only one probation officer, he is very well known to all concerned and may be as well known to the magistrates as is the clerk to the justices. If he is a man of ability, who has achieved results, he is almost invariably given far more work than would otherwise be the case if he were attached to one of the slightly larger courts where the probation officers are not regarded as they are in the smaller courts where they are better known.

Likewise, in the larger courts at the other extreme, where there are ten or more probation officers, the Bill will be largely unnecessary because the principal probation officer in such a court is generally a person of very great ability and personality who is able to put across the value of his work. In those courts, probation officers nearly always have referred to them more offenders than would otherwise be the case.

Subject to those points, I support the Bill and hope that it will have the support of the whole House and be placed on the Statute Book.

A Bill of this kind presents many hon. Members with a dilemma because, at a time when crime is so prevalent, there is a natural reluctance to take any step which might seem to encourage the attitude that everyone is allowed one offence before he is dealt with seriously.

From that point of view, I approach the Bill with considerable suspicion. The community has to approach crime from many directions, but primarily, perhaps, from that of self-preservation. Our main interest must always be the diminution of crime in the interests of the non-criminal community and in order that men should enjoy the fruits of their labours and live in peace and unmolested. It is primarily with that attitude that I approach the Bill.

At present, we have in our prisons the most gross overcrowding. It is difficult to be up-to-date with the figures, but I believe there are twice as many people sleeping three in a cell in our prisons now as about a year ago. That situation is getting worse, not better. I ask myself, in those circumstances, what improving effect a prison sentence is likely to have on those subjected to it. In the case of serious and repeated offences, it is quite plain that the community has no choice but to send a man to prison, but when dealing with a man who has been convicted for the first time, one has to weigh up the balance of advantage in sending him to prison or keeping him out of prison.

I do not know whether it was during the period of office of the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), but some years ago there was instituted the idea of a short, sharp sentence. I think that was quite a proper thing to try, but my belief is that, at any rate in present prison conditions, it is not succeeding. It would be wisest, wherever possible, to keep a first offender out of prison rather than to make him a man who has been to prison. There is a tremendous difference. Once a man has been to prison he is never quite the same; he is always rather more likely to commit another criminal offence.

Therefore, if one can save him from becoming that sort of person without creating in the community the wrong attitude to committing the first crime, I think that it is something we ought to try. I do not believe that anyone can be dogmatic about the effect of any of the changes we make in the criminal law. Not enough is known about the relation between crime and punishment, or whether those inferences are constant or change rapidly in certain conditions. All one can do is to consider whether a particular experiment should be made at a particular time.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Body) said, the attitude of most magistrates towards this Bill will not make a difference, but there will be cases where it will make a difference. I have said some rather critical things about the matrimonial jurisdiction of magistrates' courts, and even sometimes about their jurisdiction in motoring cases, but I think that in the ordinary criminal case the magistrates' courts proceed, not only with great care—I am sure they always do that—but also with considerable skill in applying very sensible humanity in their decisions.

I think, however, that the odd occasion arises—certainly my experience has suggested it—where a prison sentence is given to a first offender for reasons which are not very clear. If we pass this Bill into law this question, by Statute, will be brought directly to the attention of the bench on every such occasion. Magistrates will not say, "This is really a bad thing. There has been a lot of it in the district lately. We shall pass a prison sentence." They will ask, "Is there any other way of dealing satisfactorily with this man other than by a prison sentence?".

That is all the Bill can do, but I think that in present conditions, more especially in the gross overcrowding of prisons we are experiencing, this is a wise and reasonable experiment to make, and I hope that the Bill will pass into law.

I regret if any of my remarks have been already made by hon. Members during my short absence from the House in keeping a previously arranged appointment. I rise to give the Bill very qualified support. I do not give it active opposition, because I do not think it goes very far. I object to it because of the implied criticism of magistrates and magistrates courts which I do not think is justified.

The implication arises from the fact that it is suggested that magistrates have been too free in sending first offenders to prison. I do not agree. Whether it is a stipendiary magistrate or a bench of magistrates which is concerned, very great care is taken in each case in deciding all the facts, and very often a probation officer's report is obtained before any action is taken. I would remind the House that the powers of the courts and of magistrates and others in dealing with different types of punishment have been very considerably curtailed in recent years, particularly under the 1948 Act. Except for probation or discharge, in practice, when dealing with persons over 21, magistrates can only impose imprisonment or a fine. If a first offender comes before magistrates and they are to be told that it is impracticable to send that person to prison, the law will be brought into disrepute.

I would remind the House that the criminal law does not only affect criminals. Criminals are not a problem of social welfare but are those persons who have committed offences, very often serious ones, against the State or individual. Over the centuries we have said, as all civilised countries have said, to the person who suffers at the hands of the criminal, "Do not take vengeance against the person who offends you, leave it to us. If you catch a burglar red handed, do not hit him on the head but hand him over to the police and the courts will deal with him." If the courts are going to make themselves—I will not say ridiculous—if they are to have the reputation of being unduly weak by merely saying to a prisoner, "You are a social problem, we shall put you on probation and not punish you", people will take the law into their own hands and there will not then be a deterrent effect.

The question of sending people to prison very often has seriously to be considered. All I would say to magistrates is that all this Bill does is to provide that they must state their reasons for sending a first offender to prison. There is no prohibition and no restriction on their powers to do so. All they have to do is to state their reasons. I have not the slightest doubt that in every case they have their reasons, and all they will now have to do will be to state them in public. Because the Bill goes no further than that, I give it my support, but I am not going to say that I give it unqualified support.

I take this course also for the reason, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) realises, that many Amendments were put down to the Bill in Committee. It would be quite improper for me to refer to the discussions which have taken place, but I have reason to believe that those Amendments have been noticed by the sponsor of the Bill. I would draw his attention to that particularly because they were put down by me and a number of other hon. Members with the idea of improving the Bill and improving practice under the Bill when it becomes an Act; not in any way in a critical or destructive sense. I cer- tainly would like the hon. Member to tell the House, not now but when he speaks later, exactly what action he proposes on what I and other considered would be improvements in the Bill.

I am in some difficulty, because the matters to which the hon. and learned Gentleman is referring are not in the Bill, and that is the limit to which the hon. and learned Gentleman can go.

I am hoping that they will be in the Bill, Mr. Speaker. One of the arguments in support of the Bill is that people will henceforth not be sent to prison in such large numbers because the prisons are not able to receive them. That is an argument for improving the prisons rather than for declining to send people there altogether. Let us not turn loose upon the public people who ought to be sent to the institutions intended to receive them. I have visited one or two of these establishments, in an official capacity, of course, and I can tell the House that it is high time those institutions were rebuilt. I do not use the phrase "brought up to date," because many of them are in such a condition that modernisation is impossible.

We have heard that three men sleep in a cell. There should be no objection to that per se—in a barrack room many more men than three can sleep—provided that the cell is fit to take three men. The complaint should not be that three men are sleeping in a cell but that the cells at present are not fit to take more than one prisoner. I press upon the Home Secretary the vital necessity of rebuilding most of——

Order. The Home Secretary cannot follow the advice of the hon. and learned Gentleman by means of the Bill, because there is nothing in the Bill about the reconstruction of prisons. Although the general argument can be alluded to that the effect of the Bill will be to keep people out of prison, we cannot have a speech on prison conditions on the Third Reading of the Bill.

I was going a little too far, Mr. Speaker, and I apologise. Other hon. Members have referred to conditions inside prisons and I was carrying on those observations. Perhaps you will allow me to say that conditions in one of the institutions of the United States ought to be brought to the notice of the Home Secretary and that I propose to do so by sending him a full, illustrated description of the place as a suggestion of what we might do in this country.

I think I have now concluded everything I wished to say, both in order and out of order. I hope I have also said a word in support of the magistrates who have been enforcing the law up to date. I hope that the Bill will reduce prison populations but will not bring criminals into the position of persons with whom we ought in every case to sympathise and say, "Please go away and not do it again." Restrictions are being placed on the course of the law and we ought not to go very much further in that direction.

During the past seventy minutes we have listened to ten speeches, all of which have been very interesting. I wish to make it clear on behalf of the Government that we welcome the Bill, as did nearly all hon. Members who spoke.

The Bill covers a narrow point but, as the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) said, it is important. It is one of several steps of penal reform being taken by Parliament and the Home Office this year. We are most grateful to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Sir G. Benson) for the initiative he took in following up this recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders.

The Bill is designed to eliminate unnecessary short terms of imprisonment for adult offenders only. Several hon. Members gave the impression that the Bill would be suitable for dealing with young offenders, but these are already covered in a similar way in Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, now replaced in part by Section 107 of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952. It may interest hon. Members to know that the effect of Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, was that the number of young offenders sent to prison by magistrates' courts fell by 60 per cent. when the courts were obliged to give reasons before sending young offenders to prison.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) suggested that the Bill was not very flattering to magistrates; but I disagree with him entirely. We have lay magistrates, and they have never taken it amiss when Parliament has given them guidance by altering the law. That is what we are doing. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) suggested that it was for the Home Office to give guidance to magistrates how they should do their job, but that is not the case. The most that the Home Office has done, and that only rarely, is to invite the attention of magistrates to a new Act passed by Parliament. It is now well known among magistrates that there is the Advisory Council for the Treatment of Offenders which makes recommendations from time to time. The magistrates are entitled to consider those recommendations, but they are not bound by them. From time to time, no doubt, those recommendations prove helpful to them.

There are six reasons why the Bill should be useful. The first was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) when he posed the question of the improving effect of prison; in other words, we should not send people to prison unless it is likely to have some useful effect. In the minds of many people, many of them old-fashioned people, punishment is an end in itself; but if we are to have people in prison to be punished, we are wasting the time that they spend in prison and wasting public money in keepng them there unless we use that time and money in making them into better people. Therefore we have to consider, when we think of magistrates' powers of sending people to prison, whether the short sentences which the magistrates can only award are likely to provide that opportunity for reform to which my hon. Friend referred. Let us consider that position.

Normally, the upper limit of the jurisdiction of magistrates is six months. If they are trying people on the same occasion for two or more indictable offences, they can send them to prison for a total of twelve months. But, as hon. Members who are familiar with the practice of the courts know, that does not happen very often. Six months is the normal maximum, and with remission that will generally become four months actually served. But there are many occasions when the magistrates sentence persons to much less than the maximum.

We are faced with the fact that many people are serving sentences varying from two to three weeks, or a month, to six months, and we are advised by the Prison Commissioners that periods of that kind are of very little value for reformative training. Therefore, if as a result of the Bill fewer adults are sent to prison for short sentences, we shall not be missing opportunities of reformative training which we ought to be taking. If we can cease to clutter up the prisons with people whom we have little opportunity of reforming, those in prison will have a much better opportunity of being reformed and the staff who have to train and look after them will have a better opportunity of reforming them.

The second point in favour of the Bill was touched upon by the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West. He pointed to the fact that when a man goes to prison for the first time it not only involves the loss of his job and the comfort of his home but also places upon him the stigma of prison. Further, it involves the risk that he will not get his job back, because a very high proportion of jobs in society today are jobs of trust. Although a great deal of fine work is being done in the after-care of prisoners, prevention is better than cure, and if we can avoid that stigma arising in the first place so much the better.

The third reason for commending the Bill goes back, in my opinion, to the original Probation of Offenders Act. 1907. That Act—if I may be allowed to refer to it in passing—was based upon the assumption that for first offenders, at any rate, prison was not normally likely to be the best method of treatment. It is difficult to say whether those who passed that Act now feel that their hopes have been realised, but we know that several thousand first offenders are still being sent to prison each year.

At least two hon. Members have asked me about the probation service. It is true that if the Bill is passed a somewhat increased burden is likely to be placed upon that service, which is already heavily strained. The position of the service was fairly fully discussed in two debates before Easter, to both of which I replied, and I would refer the House to what was said in those debates. I can say now, however, as I said then, that we are attempting to strengthen the service, and have hopes of doing so. I certainly do not think that we ought to refrain from passing a wise Measure of this kind because of any difficulties which the probation service may temporarily be experiencing. In any event, the difficulties of the service are not universal. They tend to be patchy. I repeat that the third reason in favour of the Bill is that it is in line with a movement which was started back in 1907 in order to deal with first offenders, on the assumption that prison was not normally the best method of treatment for them.

My fourth reason is that it costs £6 11s. a week of the taxpayers' money to keep a man in prison, and that cost should be avoided if possible.

Fifthly, as hon. Members have mentioned, there is very serious overcrowding in prisons. The hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins), who opened the debate very helpfully, mentioned a figure of between 4,000 and 5,000 men sleeping three in a cell. The figure is changing every day. The last figure that I heard was 4,300.

The Minister must have misheard me. I gave a figure of 4,500. The nearest actual figure that I have is 4,389, but I refrained from quoting that because it was increasing, and I thought that a round figure was better.

I am most grateful to the hon. Member for pointing that out.

When Mr. Speaker was in the Chair I was sorely tempted to plead with him to allow my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East to pursue his interesting line about prison con, but I obviously cannot do that, although I can say that this and other Measures, including the Maintenance Orders Bill, will have the effect of easing the problem of overcrowding to some extent. It is impossible to say exactly how many people will be kept out of prison in years to come as a result of the Bill. Nobody could give an intelligent estimate, and I am not going to be so rash as to try to do so, but I hope I can say that it will not be an insubstantial number.

My last reason is that the cost to the community of unnecessary imprisonment is increased by the delay which overcrowding in prisons imposes upon prison reform generally. It may be thought that the Bill will not make a very great contribution to the solving of this problem, but anything that we can do to lessen overcrowding and to get into prison the people whom we really ought to have there—the more serious criminals whom we must try to reform—will be to the good. It is impossible to say how far the Bill will go in that direction, but if it goes any distance it must be helpful.

Those are six fairly strong reasons for commending the Bill to the House. In the course of the debate hon. Members have mentioned various points which I shall endeavour to answer, to any extent that I have not already done so. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) mentioned the possibility of extending the parole system, and I will bear that in mind. It was pointed out to him that the Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland—and perhaps it would be appropriate to point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr that it does not apply to Scotland either.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) asked me—as it seemed to me, by implication—what had been the effect of the similar provision, applying to those under 21 years of age, in Section 17 of the 1948 Act. I mentioned earlier that the number of people committed had fallen by 60 per cent.

Do those figures apply only to what has happened in magistrates' courts?

Yes, that is so. We are speaking here in the context of magistrates' courts only and the figures have been given in that context.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr said that present fines were too trivial. He should console himself with the thought that in a case where the magistrates, but for this Bill, might have sent somebody to prison and now decide to fine him instead, the fine is likely to be not trivial bat substantial.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wells (Lieut.-Commander Maydon) asked me what degree of defaulting there is in the payment of fines. I am glad to be able to tell him that the number of fines not collected is infinitesimal. Over half-a-million people are fined each year for offences of various kinds and very many fewer than 1 per cent. of them default to the extent that the fines have to be written off. I have dealt with the point about whether we have enough probation officers. There is one other matter which I should mention and which, rather to my surprise, has not yet been fully developed. I understand, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Member for Chesterfield hopes to catch your eye in a moment, and I hope that he will be good enough to explain this point to the House. The Bill at present applies to imprisonment even in default of payment of fines, but it is quite inappropriate that it should do so. Administratively it is unnecessary that it should do so, and I believe that it would be placing an undue burden on magistrates if they had to go through the palaver, every time they committed someone to prison for defaulting on a fine, of explaining their reasons for doing so. Those reasons would be obvious. Indeed, there would be only one reason—that the fine had not been paid and there was no other sanction except imprisonment.

I understand that the references in the Bill to such a procedure are likely to be struck out when the Bill reaches another place and that the hon. Member for Chesterfield will arrange for noble Lords in another place to move suitable Amendments. That should be made clear, however, because the Bill may well have caused some confusion by containing that reference.

I am afraid that I have spoken at much greater length than have other hon. Members, who have spoken with such commendable brevity and clarity today, but I hope that it has at least been of some use to have the Government point of view fully developed.

May I deal, first, with the point about fines which the Joint Under-Secretary of State has just raised. I will certainly arrange for the reference to fines to be deleted. The purpose of the Bill is to make magistrates think twice, and if there is default in payment of a fine, they have to think not only twice but three times, because I understand that they have to consider the question of means before they impose imprisonment. It is a work of supererogation to include fines within the ambit of the Bill.

The case which has been put against the Bill is, broadly, that if one reduces the weight of legal penalties one reduces the deterrent effect of the law and this may lead to an increase in crime. I am afraid that the relationship between the maintenance of the law and the imposition of penalties is by no means as simple a relationship as that. Legal sanctions are only one of the many factors which lead people to live normal and law-abiding lives. I can say quite categorically that the severity of penalties and the rate of crime do not vary inversely, as so many hon. Members opposite seem to assume.

Many claims have been made that severe penalties have reduced crime. One of the most common claims—and it has been mentioned today—concerns the supposed efficacy of flogging and birching. Why that arises so frequently I do not know. We had a Departmental Committee's Report on the subject, in 1937, which showed that the whole structure of assumption which had been based on the idea that flogging was an effective punishment had no basis of fact whatsoever. There was not a shred of evidence that the severity of flogging or birching was any more effective than any normal punishment.

Claims have also been made not only for the general efficacy of heavy punishments, but that the incidence of a particular offence has been reduced by a sharp increase in penalties for that offence. Such claims have been made by high legal authorities, but when we look into the facts we find that they are utterly baseless. It is only too easy to suggest cause and effect when the real cause of diminution in a particular crime is generally something entirely different from the fact that there have been increased penalties.

Hon. Members opposite have referred to the increase in juvenile delinquency and the increase in crime. Since when? Since when is this increase supposed to have taken place? There has been a general increase in crime among all ages throughout the country since 1939, but if we take 1948 as a basis we find that there has not been an increase in juvenile delinquency and there has not been an increase in crime. There has been a decrease.

There has been an increase in crimes of violence in the age range 17 to 21.

I was about to mention the age group in which a decrease had not taken place—the 17 to 21 age group. This happens to be the age group which was affected by Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act, but if hon. Members look at the criminal statistics they will find that that increase in crime did not take place until 1956, eight years after Section 17 came into operation. Section 17, which cut the total imprisonment of adolescents by half, and in the case of the magistrates' courts by 60 per cent., had no effect whatever on the volume of juvenile delinquency in the age group 17 to 21. It was not until 1956, eight years afterwards, that there was an increase, and that is the only age group in which an increase has taken place. It is ridiculous to pretend that Section 17 was the cause of an increase eight years after it had been introduced.

I never suggested that.

I was merely pointing out that the casual reference to an increase in juvenile delinquency and an increase in crime is to an increase which does not apply to post-war years. If hon. Members want to find a datum line from which there has been an increase, they must go back to 1938.

I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but if it be true that we have to disregard the weight of punishment, logically we ought to say that whatever the crime is, the reformatory period should be eighteen months—that that gives enough time for reform—and than, whether it be attempted murder or larceny, nobody should be punished for more than eighteen months.

I do not know how to reform anybody, and I strongly suspect that nobody else knows either.

Why have different punishments?

Under this very small Bill I cannot go into the whole question of our penal system. I could argue with the hon. and learned Gentleman outside the House with pleasure but it would be out of order here. I could not give any satisfactory answer to the fundamental question why people cease to become criminals. All we know is that the very large number of claims that are made that the severe penalties are more efficacious than the minor penalties cannot be substantiated either by statistics or by any other form of analysis.

Reference has been made to the effect of the Bill on the number of prison sentences. About 4,850 first offenders are sent to prison every year. How many are sent by magistrates' courts and how many by the upper courts we cannot find out from criminal statistics, but I think it is a fair assumption that if we say that 4,000 are sent by magistrates' courts we shall not be very far out, because that represents roughly the proportion of sentences imposed by the magistrates' courts and the higher courts.

If—and it is an "if"—the effect of the Bill were the same as the effect of Section 17, that would make a reduction in the number of sentences on adult first offenders of 2,000 per annum. But I do not want anybody to have the idea that that reduction of 2,000 per annum will have any appreciable effect upon the prison population. Do not forget that, to begin with, the Bill applies only to magistrates' courts and the maximum sentence that they can pass is six months. The probability is that in so far as the Bill has any influence upon the magistrates, it will be the shorter sentences which are affected and not the longer sentences.

I should feel very happy if I thought the effect of the Bill upon the prison system was the equivalent of presenting the Prison Commissioners with another 150 cells. If one looks at the distribution of the prison population it is astonishing how small a proportion of the cells are occupied by prisoners serving sentences of under three months' duration. The Bill is not based on a hope that it will make any contribution worth mentioning to the overcrowding of our prisons.

What effect will the Bill have? Reference has been made to the possibility that it will reduce the deterrent effect of the law. On the assumption that it will affect 2,000 cases, what does that mean? About 330,000 criminal cases a year are dealt with by our courts. The whole of those 330,000 have got to go through the magistrates' courts. There are about 1,000 magistrates' courts, so that if the Bill were to have the effect which I hope it might, of reducing prison sentences by 2,000 cases a year, it would mean, on an average, that for each magistrates' court two people per annum would not be sent to prison who are sent to prison at present.

Does anybody suggest that that will have an impact on the public mind and reduce the deterrent effect of the law? If we put it in proportion, one realises what little effect it possibly can have. In fact, it is so small that any effect upon public opinion is bound to be lost.

I think that the main advantage of the Bill is that this House will be giving guidance to magistrates' courts. Somebody referred to the wisdom of magistrates. Frankly, I do not know where the evidence is for that statement. If one looks at the sentencing policy of the 1,000 magistrates' courts, the only conclusion that one can draw is that there is no policy, that the whole position is completely chaotic. Every court is a law unto itself, and the more guidance that we can give to the courts the better—if we know how to give guidance, and that has not been proved.

Let us take the spread of sentences. Let us consider the Bootle magistrates' court. Bootle is a rather slummy area in the great conurbation of Liverpool. Over the past six years the average percentage of cases sent to prison is 8 per cent. per annum, and in one year it has been down to as low as 5 per cent. Look at the other end of the scale. Take Bournemouth, for example. Over the last six years, of the adult male indictable cases, 40 per cent. were sent to prison; Eastbourne has sent 42 per cent. to prison; Worcester has sent 44 per cent. to prison, as compared with 8 per cent. in Bootle.

Clearly, there is a fundamentally different attitude between these courts. It may well be that Eastbourne, Worcester and Bournemouth are infested by dangerous criminals. On the other hand, it may well be that they are infested by dangerous magistrates. I do not know. One thing is quite clear, and that is that there is no sentencing policy among magistrates. Let us admit that we are profoundly ignorant—not merely magistrates, but all of us, including those who have given years of study to this matter—of the way to deal with delinquents. At present, it is based very largely on guesswork and hope.

During the last five years a small section devoted to research has been growing up in the Home Office. It is growing rapidly and I am convinced that from that research section and from the work that I know is going on, in five or six years' time we shall have a flood of detailed and positive information which will greatly facilitate not merely the sentencing policy of the courts, but the Home Office handling of criminals.

It is in that direction that we must hope for a more intelligent and wiser handling of this problem. At present, this trivial Bill—because it is trivial when set in the context of the whole problem of crime—may do something, not so much in what it achieves, but in pointing out the need for an advance and further progress in this very complex matter.

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

I am sorry that it is necessary to detain the House on what is perhaps a rather difficult point of administration on the Report stage of this excellent Bill. I raised the question that is involved in the proposed new Clause on Second Reading. and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) expressed the opinion, with which at that time I agreed, that it would be possible to look at it in Committee. Unfortunately, I was not a member of the Standing Committee, so there was no opportunity of putting forward my views where they could be examined with rather more patience than it is easy to persuade the House to give to them. However, I think that the points involved are important, and I therefore raise them now.

I should like to explain briefly more or less what they amount to. The Bill gives to the Divorce Count two very important powers in considering the question of the custody of the children of parties to divorce proceedings. One is the power to commit a child to the care of the appropriate local authority, and the other is power to make an order for the child to be supervised by the welfare officer of the court, who may or may not be the probation officer.

My proposed new Clause has two subsections. The first provides that the power of the court

"to enforce, vary or discharge an order for payment for maintenance or education, may if the court thinks fit, be transferred to the juvenile count acting for the place where the infant was ordinarily resident at the time of committal to the care of the local authority".

May I explain two points about that? I put the rather obscure expression,

"enforce, vary or discharge an order",

in the Clause because of representations made to me by officers of a local authority that it would be undesirable to have a juvenile court enforcing orders for contributions of maintenance, whereas most orders of this kind, or similar orders under the Children Act and the Children and Young Persons Act, are enforced by magistrates' adult courts. Therefore, we should be in some confusion if, in cases of this kind, it were done by juvenile courts. I thought that the best thing was to take them out of it altogether and leave their position unaffected.

The other point is that the appropriate juvenile court is not, as I thought it ought to be and, indeed, on Second Reading suggested it should be, the juvenile court in the area in which the child resides, but the juvenile court operating for the area where the child resided when the order was made. The reason is that where a child is committed to the care of a local authority it is quite possible that it may be moved away from the original place where the order was made and may, at the time when an application is made to vary the order, be living in a place far removed from the original place where the child lived, or where the parents live, and where the appropriate local authority is placed. On the whole, it seemed best to tie the jurisdiction to the place where the order was made, rather than to the place of residence at the time of the application for variation of the order.

On the other hand, in the second subsection of my proposed Clause, dealing with the supervision proceedings, the powers of the court may, if the court thinks fit, be transferred to the juvenile court acting for the place where the infant resides. It might well be that while supervision was in operation the family had moved to some other part of the country, and, therefore, it is desirable that the place where the family is should be the place where these questions are fought out.

This is entirely permissive. I had great difficulty in appreciating some of the objections which have been felt to the proposals I made, but they are to some extent based on the idea that some children are altogether unsuited for the jurisdiction of a juvenile court, and I think that that is perfectly true. I think that some judges would feel that magistrates were inefficient—very like the people we were discussing a few moments ago—and not the sort of people to carry out this kind of work. If a Divorce Court judge did feel that way, he would not make the order transferring the responsibility. He would keep the powers within the High Court.

My proposal is simply to give the High Court judge the discretion, in cases which he thinks would be more appropriately dealt with by a juvenile court, to make an order transferring his powers to the local juvenile court, more accessible, easy to find, cheap, informal and experienced in the kind of problems that will arise. I am sure that there are many problems with which a High Court judge will be the first to admit that he has neither the experience nor the interest to concern himself, because he is not familiar with the complicated local details or the extent of the social services in the area.

Obviously—and my hon. Friend who is the promoter of the Bill is very much seized of the point—this is not a problem confined to any one class of the community. The welfare of the children of divorced people arises in every section of the community, and I know that my hon. Friend feels that strongly, and is nervous about anything that may give the impression to people who are not accustomed to going in and out of magistrates' courts that they were to be, to some extent, down-graded. There are obviously cases in which it would be wrong for juvenile courts to have the powers.

I mention as an illustration a report of a case that appeared in The Times for Tuesday under the somewhat startling and arresting heading:

"Boy Deprived of Chance of being Wykehamist".

The report said, and I am quoting from the arguments presented to the Court of Appeal:

"But by his order"—

and this is a reference to the judge—

"he had in effect and, in fact, deprived the boy of all opportunity of ever going to Winchester, for if he obtained a scholarship to Oundle the Judge had directed that he should take it and not sit for any further examination; and that if he failed that and obtained a scholarship to Repton that was to be taken up. So in the end he would either go to Repton or to Radley, with no chance of going to Winchester. And if he obtained the scholarship to Repton, he would not even be able to go to Radley, his father's old school."

Clearly, that is a case for the Court of Appeal. Nobody would suggest that magistrates can have any qualifications for dealing with a grave decision of that kind. It is quite right that matters of that kind should be dealt with by a High Court judge, and that if the parties are dissatisfied, the machinery of the Court of Appeal should be directed to sorting it out.

1.30 p.m.

I do not really think that my hon. Friend, with is wide knowledge of life, will really imagine that that is characteristic of the type of case with which his Bill is to deal. The average parties who come before the Divorce Court, of ordinary education, making use of the ordinary social services available to them, want a court before which they can go without feeling shy or embarrassed, or that they are entering upon something rather outside their normal range of understanding. Such people want to be able to go as individuals, not with legal representatives. They want to feel, when there, that they are talking to ordinary people with a knowledge of local conditions in their area.

My hon. Friend gave a clue as to what worried him, I think, in a remark he made on Second Reading. Referring to my suggestion, he said:

"… these children would be regarded psychologically as juvenile delinquents."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 7th February, 1958; Vol. 581, c. 1511.]

My hon. Friend feels that many people would be frightened off the Bill because the idea of the juvenile court exercising these responsibilities would "tar" the child as a juvenile delinquent. I do not for one moment suggest that my hon. Friend himself thinks that; he has had great experience as a magistrate in a juvenile court, and I am quite certain that he does not think that.

My hon. Friend says that that is the view of the ordinary outsider. It has never been the attitude which Parliament has adopted towards the work of the juvenile courts. Whenever matters concerned with children have arisen, the whole tendency of Parliament for many years has been to give responsibility to the juvenile court as opposed to the adult court. As an example, there are the provisions dealing with truancy in the 1944 Education Act, the power being given to the adult court to deal with parents permitting truancy, the child can be referred to the juvenile court to be dealt with as a problem in welfare. The juvenile court has concurrent jurisdiction with the High Court and with the county court in adoption matters.

Surely there is nothing more intimate than adoption, nothing where it is more desirable to avoid any hint or feeling of being a delinquent. Yet, in adoption proceedings, with, as it were, the more important object of creating a family rather than dissolving one, the juvenile courts have for years carried concurrent jurisdiction with other courts, carrying it effectively and well, with very little criticism. It is a matter for the parties to decide. If they would rather go to the High Court judge, they can go to him. If they feel that they would rather have the matter dealt with by the magistrates, they can go to the magistrates, as many do. In fact, the work is done in an atmosphere not of delinquency but in precisely the atmosphere which, though I have never been there, I imagine is found in the chambers of a judge, though with a little more flexibility and ease of access.

Even more relevant is that my hon. Friend's Bill applies to the children of divorced parents the provision of the Children Act, 1948, that the court can make an order committing a child to the care of the local children's authority, an order which is binding and cuts across any rights the parents have in the custody of the child. In other words, by Clause 5, it takes away the rights of the parent and places them in the hands of the childrens authority.

There is an equivalent of that in the Children Act because, although most children are dealt with voluntarily, being taken into care by agreement, if a child is in care it is possible for the children's authority, by a very old power going right back to the Poor Law, to pass a resolution assuming the rights and powers of the parents and depriving the parents of all right to custody of the child. In such cases, if there is a dispute of any sort, the matter goes to the juvenile court. Thus, in another case where Parliament was faced with the question of which was the best body to deal with the problems of custody and care, it has chosen the juvenile court as the appropriate court to deal with the matter.

It is a little late in the day, therefore, to say that the High Court should not be given discretion. I do not argue that for a moment that every case should go automatically to the juvenile court. I merely ask that the High Court judge should be given the discretion to say that this is the sort of case, parallel with cases of local authority resolutions under the Children Act, parallel with some of the cases of adoption, parallel with some of the cases of truancy, where the best body to deal with it is the juvenile court. The juvenile court already has jurisdiction in non-delinquency matters such as care and protection, looking after children who have been neglected or to whom the parents have been cruel. All that kind of work is done there.

I am not in a position to say, or to criticise, how the High Court would work in dealing with these matters. I have not sufficient experience. I have had long experience in the juvenile courts but, unfortunately, when I competed with the Solicitor-General on the North Eastern Circuit, I was never able to persuade any solicitor to give me any work which might take me into the High Court. Therefore, I know extremely little about it. I was, however, very interested in the view expressed by the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Body) during the Second Reading debate:

"… all of us who have to appear in magistrates' courts know that in the variation of these orders and the discharge of them, and in applications for arrears of payments, those courts can deal with the matters much more speedily and easily, and more cheaply for the parties concerned, than applications can be dealt with in the High Court."

I do not know whether the hon. Member will tell me I have misinterpreted what he said, but I understood him to say that, in these cases, it would be a slow business getting to the High Court. It might involve the employment of counsel by paying his fees—an admirable thing to do for counsel—or applying for Poor Person's Assistance which, as we all know, would be a long and cumbersome business.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me just to say that I was there going back to the subject of maintenance orders. My point was that it was far easier to obtain a maintenance order in a magistrates' court than in the High Court. In advancing that point, I was not concerned with applications for custody. It is easy, and takes very little time, to make an application for the custody of a child in the High Court before a judge in chambers, and varying the order also can be done quite easily.

I am sorry if I have misinterpreted the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps I ought to quote the sentence or two before the part which I actually read:

"The hon. Gentleman the Member for Widnes referred also to the matter of the variation of the order".

That is this particular order we are dealing with.

"If it is his suggestion that variations should be made by the magistrates' court, then I would strongly agree because"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th February, 1958; Vol. 581, c. 1543–4.]

and then he goes on to say what I have quoted. If the hon. Gentleman says that the High Court is easy of access, I do not quarrel with that.

What I do not know is how long it takes to set about going to the High Court. I am not sure who will go in these cases or who will actually make the decision. My hon. Friend was extremely vague about it. He kept talking about the court doing this, that and the other. Let us take as an example the case of a child in the care of the wife. There is some dispute as to whether the father should have access, take the child out, or something like that. It has to be settled, and the aggrieved parent wants to blow off steam about it. To whom do they go? Do they go to the judge of the assize: Do they go to the registrar, and if so, who is he? Do they come to London to the Divorce Division and see somebody here? I am not at all clear who is the actual human being who is to make the decision, as opposed to the institution which is to be charged with the responsibility. That is an important point. A lot can be said for continuity. If the judge dealt with the case in the first instance, it is important that he should make all the subsequent decisions, because he knows the position. I agree with that.

Will my hon. Friend now tell the House what is the procedure to be followed in the first instance for a matter to be considered by the juvenile court? Is it the probation officer, or a magistrate? If so, which one, or is it the magistrates in court?

The answer to that is perfectly clear. I do not know what will be the rules of court about the procedure, whether it will be done by summons or not, but I can give a parallel illustration. Under the Children Act the local authority goes to the court and informs the parent that it is going to the court. At the juvenile court they see the three magistrates who are sitting. If it is a question of adoption, the magistrates are consulted in a private room, but, in other cases, according to the nature of the proceedings, the matter is discussed in open court.

If the magistrates are unhappy about the case and they think that the children's officer is a little prejudiced, or that the parents are difficult and are taking a hostile attitude, they will very often adjourn the case and ask the probation officer, as an impartial person, to make an inquiry of the parents to try to get the whole story. Of course, the child can be and usually is seen by the magistrates, because they are specially skilled in the art of talking to children. God forbid that I should say that it is an easy thing to do or that I am good at it, but it so happens that the Home Secretary has chosen me because he thinks that I can talk to children, perhaps more successfully than I can talk to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen.

A juvenile court is chosen because magistrates are the sort of people who are accustomed to talking to children. It is important to get out of the child who is shy, nervous and diffident his side of the story, and to discover whether Miss So-and-So, the children's officer, is a bit of a so-and-so and has to be regarded with caution when she says bad things about the children, or is a reliable and competent officer whose judgment can be accepted. That knowledge is built up over years of experience of dealing with social services in the area. For instance, one gets to know the headmasters and the value that can be attached to their reports, and so on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen very adroitly tried to put me off when he asked me to deal with the point about the juvenile court. That is an important point. There may be parents in Widnes who do not like the way the Lancashire County Council is handling their children and want to get rid of the attentions of the supervising officer or to discuss, for instance, whether it is good for the child to live with the grandmother in Eastbourne. Who is the human being that the parents will see? That is an important point.

The person they see is the judge concerned. Those who practise in the Chancery Division know perfectly well that all children are interviewed personally by the judge if he considers it proper.

Does the hon. Gentleman mean the Vice-Chancellor's Court, in Liverpool, the Divorce Division in Liverpool, or the Chancery Division in London?

The judge of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court in chambers deals with the matter. He has local situations in 42 assize towns, and the nearest of these would deal with the matter.

I do not apologise for being confused on this matter, because I notice in the Law Reports that a dispute is going on as to which has the superior jurisdiction, the Chancery judge or the Divorce judge.

It entirely depends on whether the child is a ward of court or not. If he is a ward of court the matter is dealt with by the Chancery judge. If he is not, it is dealt within the Divorce Division.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman has read the same Law Report as I have.

No, I have not. I know something about it.

If the hon. and gallant Gentleman has not read the Law Report, then he is ill-advised to intervene. The matter was discussed at considerable length only this week. Therefore, the hon. and gallant Gentleman ought to brush up his law.

As I understand the Solicitor-General, one Divorce Court judge is responsible for this work. I understand that he has 42 local stations. He cannot be in 42 places at once. Therefore, he has either to go round on circuit to the 42 places or the whole bag of tricks has to come to London.

I do not want to weary the House with putting up a cockshy and knocking it down if there is not a cockshy to be knocked down. I am trying to deal with the matter in concrete terms. Lay Members of the House as well as people outside are entitled to know the answers to these questions. The matter can be dealt with comparatively easily in London, because it is only a bus journey to the Law Courts. I am not talking about whether it is a good thing or not to go to Winchester or Repton.

I quite agree that this problem could be settled by employing solicitors and counsel. But suppose a parent in Widnes wants to know whether it is a good thing for the children to spend the summer holidays with their grandmother in Eastbourne, for which one has to get permission from the supervising officer. He may think that it is a bad idea and the parent concerned may want to have the matter settled. After all, it affects the parents' rights in bringing up their children and they want to get a quick decision before the summer holidays are over. It is no use waiting for the judge to come round to his 42 stations.

There are 42 judges.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman says that there are 42 judges, but the Solicitor-General says that there is only one. It would be nice to know which is right. What I do know is that in every area of the country there is a petty sessional division, and attached to it is a juvenile court which is constantly dealing with this problem in other contexts. They are, therefore, used to dealing with people and have local knowledge and are accessible, meeting sometimes once a week, sometimes less often, according to the burden of work. However, the juvenile court can be summoned to sit at any time. This power ought to be given to the divorce court judge.

I am sorry to have detained the House, but this matter affects the liberty of the subject. It is not a piece of empire building on behalf of magistrates. My hon. Friends talk in vague and general terms about easy access to judges in chambers. The rights of human liberty and parents to get justice quickly, speedily, cheaply and in an atmosphere that they understand and in which they are free to move should be available to them in the local courts. That is the point at issue. The discretion could be left to the High Court judge to make up his mind whether, in a particular case, the balance of advantage lies in keeping the jurisdiction for himself or in passing it to the local court, which can keep a more intimate watch on what is happening.

I beg to second the Motion.

I do not propose to embark upon the technical matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), or to discuss the various towns where judges can be seen by applicants. When the most authoritative person at present in the House—the Solicitor-General—gives his reply, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) will probably realise that the new Clause is desirable. Anybody who would seek to oppose it should not make heavy weather of it.

There is no reason whatever why a High Court judge should not have the right, if he thinks it proper, to refer a matter of this description to a juvenile court. What is the purpose of the Bill and what is the problem that it is designed to meet today? The trouble today is that children are often being thrown like parcels from one person to another—from a parent to a grandparent, for example—without any consideration for the welfare of the children. The purpose of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen is to remedy that situation and this Clause is an attempt to help him in doing so.

The juvenile courts consist of men and women who, in the belief of the authorities, are capable of dealing with juveniles. I should like to pay a tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes. My wife, who sits from time to time in the court over which he presides, tells me that the manner in which he conducts the chairmanship of the juvenile court is exemplary. Men like himself are in a much better position than most people to decide what should be done to ensure that the children are happy and properly looked after. Those who oppose what we suggest often overlook the fact that there is an appeal against these decisions.

These men and women are usually specifically gifted or experienced for the purpose of dealing with the needs of children who, unhappily, are placed in circumstances in which their parents cannot decide, or should not be allowed to decide, for themselves how the children should be treated and where they should go from time to time; in other words, to decide who is a fit person to look after the child. I cannot see why that position should not be accepted by us, who gave to the Home Office its powers for the appointment of juvenile magistrates. These men and women investigate and know the background of the individuals concerned in cases which come before them.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) at one time had the power, and used his discretion wisely, of appointment of magistrates to sit in the juvenile courts. He inquired whether they had any knowledge of youth movements, what their characters were like and whether they were the kind of people who could decide these issues and he came to the conclusion that certain people should be appointed for these duties, which involve inquiry into children's backgrounds, finding out why they do certain things which are not desirable, and how they should be helped not to repeat them in future. Within that sphere comes the important matter of deciding who should look after the children. These decisions are made every day. If they are wrong there is an appeal against them.

There is the right of appeal from the decision of a Chancery judge.

In the Chancery Division, one comes before the judge. Even in regard to chambers, outside, there are lawyers crushing about the Law Courts; not that there is anything wrong in that——

Is it not better done among lawyers in the Chancery Division than among Teddy boys in the juvenile courts?

Teddy boys? I would like to understand what the hon. Member is driving at. I do not see how Teddy boys come into the matter. I am talking about the welfare of the children and who should look after them. It is a simple proposition.

Even if one goes to the judge in chambers, one goes to the High Court. The atmosphere is that of a court, whatever anyone may say. I agree that it is not the same as in the open court and that conditions are easier. The lawyers are entirely at ease, although they probably did not feel at ease in their first experience of this kind. If the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) speaks in this debate, perhaps he will tell us what he felt like on that occasion. We are discussing lay people and it is easy to imagine their feelings when they come into that type of atmosphere. It does not prevail in the juvenile court. The learned judge might well say, "Here is a case where the people will feel much more at home in the juvenile court than in my chambers" and there is nothing unnatural in that. The point is that people there may be more able to open their hearts and their minds.

2.0 p.m.

We are concerned with getting at what is really in the minds or hearts of those who come before the courts. The experienced people in the juvenile courts manage to do that. If the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham had any experience of the juvenile courts he would know that they are very much less formal, as Parliament intended. In them the youngsters and parents talk openly, and there is no heavy machinery which might create the idea that counsel and solicitors should be present.

I know that that sort of representation is not essential in the High Court, but if people go before a judge in chambers they feel that they want to be properly represented, believing—rightly or wrongly—that their representation will make a difference to the ultimate result of the case; whereas the people themselves come to the juvenile court and speak openly. There is little strangeness of atmosphere about the place.

In those circumstances, I appeal to my hon. Friends and to hon. Members opposite to give the judge this right. It does not mean that he has got to do what has been suggested. A discretion should certainly lie with the judge. Why should he be stopped from exercising this? Do we think that a judge is incapable of making such a decision? A judge may, in a sense, be living in an ivory tower, for he does not mix with the people. I say this in no critical sense, but a judge cannot mix freely among the ordinary people. He is a lonely person in his own way, because he is partially deprived of ordinary social intercourse. On the other hand, juvenile court magistrates live very freely among the people, do social work and know what is passing through people's minds from day to day. I have previously stated that Members of Parliament who are introducing legislation ought to be able to mix with their fellow men and learn exactly what is going on. Indeed, the argument of hon. Members opposite is that politics should not be entirely a profession for this reason.

In the type of case mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes, a judge is capable of making a decision very much more easily and better than a juvenile court can, but I am certain that in many cases the judge would say that he was grateful to this House for having given him the discretion that we suggest—this is what I want my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen to realise—and the opportunity to say that the matter before him should be decided by other persons who have a more intimate knowledge of the circumstances.

This is not a party matter. Obviously, different points of view can be held. Still, I do not think that a point of view ought to be held with such stubbornness that even at this late hour our minds cannot be changed by argument. I appeal to my hon. Friend to change his mind and give a judge the right to say, "I am, perhaps, the wrong man to decide this matter. I will not even hand the case over to another judge who might have more experience of this sort of thing than I have. I think that it should be handed over to the ordinary men and women in the street, represented by the juvenile court magistrates."

What can be wrong with that? Surely it is a commonsense attitude to adopt. I hope that my hon. Friend, in furtherance of the great objects that he has in mind—his Bill is a very useful one—will consider my hon. Friend's proposal as helpful and not set himself against it, saying, "I had previously made up my mind. I knew what I was doing. I am not now prepared to be convinced otherwise." After all, this is a debating Chamber, and the intention is that we should endeavour to convince each other of the rightness of our views. I know that we do not very often do that, but occasionally we do, and this might be one of such exceptions. I hope that my hon. Friend will come to the conclusion that, by this debate, we have convinced him that our proposal is correct.

What is of paramount importance in all matters relating to infants is what is in the best interests of the infant concerned. I hope that in what I have to say I may be helpful to the House. I have an interest to disclose, being a solicitor who has a very considerable practice in the Divorce Division and the Chancery Division. Since I qualified in 1932, I have been involved in a very considerable number of these unhappy cases relating to infants with divorced parents. I shall not put forward my views asserting that I am right, but I think I can help the House by giving some of my practical experience.

First, I should like to put the House rather more in the picture about what happens in respect of infants in the Divorce Division and the Chancery Division when children are wards of court. All that has been said about children being brought into the law courts and solicitors and so on running about is incorrect. In cases of applications relating to infants—I am doing about two or three a week—the infant is practically never present when the case is being decided. If by chance the judge, of either the Divorce Division or the Chancery Division, says that he wishes to see the infant and hear what he has to say, the judge invariably sees him not in court but in his private room.

What the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said, in itself, shows that it is better for the matter to go to the juvenile court. There the magistrates invariably see the child and discuss the matter with the child and the child speaks openly to the magistrates.

I profoundly disagree with the hon. Member. I think it is up to the judge—the system works extremely well at present—to hear the evidence and, if he then wants to see the child, he does so, but the infant is never in the atmosphere of court, which would inevitably happen if the matter were referred to the juvenile court.

The hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) suggested that I knew nothing about juvenile courts. I do not practise in the juvenile courts, but I have attended them on numerous occasions. I do not think the atmosphere of the juvenile court is at all proper for such a child as we are discussing. When my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Body) mentioned Teddy boys, he was referring to the juveniles before the court. An infant who attends a juvenile court finds himself with a lot of youngsters who, it is alleged, have committed offences. On the whole, I feel that these infants are better dealt with separately by the judge in chambers or his private room, as has been the practice hitherto. At the moment, the method works extremely well.

After my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) made a rather nice remark about my work in the juveniles courts, the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Body) mentioned Teddy boys in juvenile courts. I thought he was referring to me.

If what the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) has said is true, it would apply equally to adoption cases. In such cases there is a choice to go to the High Court, the county court or the magistrates' court. Many people go to the magistrates' court. The adoption cases are dealt with, quite separately, before the other cases, and these people do not come in contact with those concerned in the ordinary cases. That is a perfectly normal procedure, and if it can work in the case of adoptions, it can obviously work in the case of the children of divorced parents.

The hon. Member is supporting my case. He talks about adoption, but we are dealing with very unhappy situations—I stress this—arising from the divorce of parents, and it is my view, based on practical experience, that it is very much better for the affairs of children of divorced parents to be dealt with by judges who are dealing with these situations every day.

There are one or two other suggestions I want to refute. One was that any infant case would have to wait until the judge could deal with it in London or elsewhere. What happens in practice is that the judge feels that a visit should be paid to the infant and appoints the Solicitor to the Supreme Court to act as guardian to the child. This works well. The officials of the Department, at the instance of the Divorce Court or Chancery Court judge, send skilled visitors to see the child. It would be a fundamental error if these unhappy cases were referred to the juvenile court.

May I ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman two questions? First, does he believe that the judges before whom these cases come are capable individuals, as I do, who can decide for themselves what is best for the child? Secondly, if so, why does he not want the judge to have discretion to say that in his opinion the juvenile court would be better?

Of course, I accept that they are capable, and have been capable for many years, of dealing with these cases. The history of the Chancery Division shows that. As regards the second question, about discretion, I think the question of infants should remain where it is, for it has operated well over a number of years. It would be wrong to put any High Court judge in a position where he was allowed to refer these matters to a juvenile court. In my view, it is a tribunal quite unfitted to deal with these cases because automatically, in a juvenile court, there are other juveniles present who are alleged to have committed offences. That is not the proper atmosphere for a child who is innocent of any offence and is suffering only because his parents have been divorced and his future is being decided. I shall ask the promoter of the Bill, therefore, to reject this proposed Clause.

I admire the industry of my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and only wish it had been devoted to a worthier cause. Frankly, I am more convinced now after his speech today that I am right than I was even during the Second Reading debate when I listened to him, although I know his proposition is nothing more than an enabling Clause to permit the judge to do something he sees fit to do.

The arguments of my hon. Friend are all right. What is wrong is the premise of his speech. I never thought I would hear two lawyers come here and say, "It is good in principle for a High Court to surrender its powers to a lower court and give that court the right to vary the orders it has made." I know of no precedent for that in English law, and I am astonished to think it should have been sponsored with such enthusiasm by my two hon. Friends, both of whom have been nurtured in the legal nursery.

2.15 p.m.

On the question of experience, we have heard a great deal from my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), whose work in the field of child welfare is so well known that it needs no emphasis. His work as chairman of his own bench is well known also. There is no need to enhance the status of the juvenile court on a level which cannot be justified by facts. I speak as a magistrate—a career by no means as illustrious as that of my hon. Friend—but I know something about juvenile courts. We always dealt with adoption cases in camera, never in the court itself. I have yet to know from my experience that juvenile courts have had experience of matrimonial legislation. In other words, if we assign this duty to the lower court, the magistrates' court, it will be as green as grass because it has not had such experience.

What this Clause proposes to do is to enable the judge to say to the juvenile court, "If you feel there is a case to vary any order I have made, you are at liberty to do so." That is really the issue. When we examine it, and consider the range of children covered by the Royal Commission, we find that it affects only the tail end of the problem, and that only a few people will be affected even if this proposed Clause is adopted.

My hon. Friend is using the term "court" ambiguously. He is using it in the physical sense of the building, and also in the institutional sense of the legal body. The court which hears an adoption application in a private room is the juvenile court, just as the judge in chambers is the same as the judge in the Divorce Court. It is only a question of convenience. Obviously, in the same way these cases would be heard outside the court in a physical sense. His other point was about experience of matrimonial work——

Legislation.

Although many juvenile court magistrates have experience in matrimonial courts—I have not, but many have—juvenile courts have a great deal to do with matrimonial disputes, so they are used to dealing with and sorting out these problems.

I was looking for an equation between the arguments of the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks Beach) in favour of the judge in chambers. I have given this aspect of the matter very careful consideration, and I am satisfied about the easy accessibility of those concerned to the judge in chambers and what my hon. Friend said about the convenience of using the local magistrate. There are forty-two divorce courts and these cases will be considered by the judge in chambers. If there is any desire to vary an order originally made, there will be appropriate representations, and I would have thought that in this case the first person to hear of the desire would be the children's officer or the welfare officer as the case may be.

In the first instance, the person who sought to secure variation of the order would be the person in trouble, and that would percolate through the machinery and eventually come to the court. I am advised that, provided it is a proper case for legal representation before a judge in chambers, it will rank for legal aid, but there is no legal aid for juvenile courts for such purposes at least at present.

It seems wrong in principle by a Clause of this kind, which cuts right across one of the main purposes of the Bill, to divorce responsibility from power. If the Bill has any virtue at all, it is that there is a synchronisation of power and responsibility in one court from which will flow all the essential supervision required to ensure, as far as the law can ensure, that the welfare of children is maintained.

I can see no virtue in bringing in the whole machinery of the juvenile court when the administrative arrangements which the Bill provides for and those which will ensue from the rules of court, which are to be considered by the Lord Chancellor and which will stem from the administrative needs of the Bill, are adequate. I am satisfied that on balance there will be no advantage, even from the point of view of experience, convenience and intimacy, in using the juvenile court in preference to the High Court.

There is also the danger, having regard to what my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes said on Second Reading, that those children whom Dickens would describe as those of the deserving poor would have to go to the juvenile court, while the children of the rich could go to the High Court. I am all for equality, and my Bill as it stands is much nearer the Socialist concept of society than anything my hon. Friend has advanced in support of his Clause, and I therefore hope that the House will reject it.

The political character of the concept does not matter very much with this Bill. If this discussion has taught one thing, it is that the same point does not greatly improve by repetition, and I am not anxious to make things worse by repeating still more.

The hon. Member's new Clause would apply only to cases where there were exceptional circumstances. It would be only to the freak case that the new Clause would apply. I confess that our view is that it would be a very odd and deplorable novelty if, when a learned judge of the High Court had, with due care, made an order of a special kind in what he conceived to be an exceptional case, magistrates in the juvenile court had power to vary it. That would not be in accord with the usual proprieties.

I do not want it to be thought that I am uttering any word which in any way decries the splendid work of the juvenile courts and, in particular, the splendid work of the hon. Member for Widnes. I am not surprised to learn that the hon. Member does it so well that he earns the admiration of even the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner). Certainly I do not regard the hon. Member for Widnes as a Teddy boy, and I do not regard the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West as a Teddy boy. No consideration of that kind arises.

However, it is fair and true to say that, whatever the magistrates in the juvenile court do, they are not ordinarily charged in any sense with the making, variation or discharge of orders made in matrimonial proceedings by a High Court judge, and it does not seem to be a very good idea to make that innovation.

This is a Bill seeking to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce. That Royal Commission heard evidence from a large number of organisations and bodies with very special experience in these matters and yet, from beginning to end of its Report and recommendations, there is not a suggestion that the juvenile court should be given powers in these matters, or powers to vary the order of a learned judge.

These judges in the High Court will be sitting not in the Chancery Division, but in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court, and it is they who would be affected if the new Clause were added to the Bill. One might have thought from listening to the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West that judges were unnatural beings totally deprived of any kind of social intercourse, that they did not have children or grandchildren, and had no human sympathies, intelligence and practice. I wish the hon. Member could hear some of those applications with which learned judges in chambers deal.

If there was any implication of that kind, I hope that it will be entirely removed. I am concerned with the movements of judges and suggesting that, unlike juvenile court magistrates, they do not have an opportunity to participate in youth movements and in club work as the magistrates in juvenile courts are able to do from day to day.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for making that plain. I know that the House will be relieved to hear that he was not casting any doubt upon the skill of Her Majesty's judges in the appropriate division of the High Court to make the right orders for the welfare of children in matrimonial proceedings.

It would be a misconception to think of a judge lacking local knowledge, or knowledge of the local welfare or children's services, for the purpose of varying or discharging his order if he wanted to do so. I believe that the hon. Member for Widnes and the hon. Member Leicester, North-West were deprived of the opportunity of serving on the Standing Committee which dealt with the Bill and which went into these matters to consider what would happen.

Under the new dispensation, there is a special team of welfare officers attached to the Divorce Division. They are probation officers seconded for the purpose. They are in personal contact with the children's officer, or whatever local authority service happens to be concerned, and the learned judge can, if he so desires, call them into advise him. They in turn can make contact, in any way with local information from the welfare service or children's officer, so that the learned judge can be informed as precisely as he desires about the local circumstances of a case.

That being so, I recommend to the House that, although this has been a most useful discussion, on the whole there is no reason to think that a High Court judge could not discharge the duty of varying his own order as well and as easily as a juvenile court could, and that it would be a pity to confer on somebody else the jurisdiction to do it.

2.30 p.m.

As regards access, all I meant in answering the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) was that in order to see a judge of the Divorce Division in chambers one does not have to come to London. The judge one sees is the judge of that division in the nearest divorce town to where one is. There are 42 divorce towns, and one is very unlucky if one is very remote from a divorce town for this purpose. The judges are in the assize towns three or four times a year. So I think that on the ground of inconvenience it is possible to state the case of the hon. Member too high.

I have to speak in somewhat technical language. It would be quite impossible to represent to the House that the Clause as it stands would be a desirable amendment to the Bill, because it has certain drafting defects, with which I shall not trouble the House unduly now. For instance, subsection (1) refers to:

"the power to enforce, vary or discharge an order for payment for maintenance or education …"

The wording is distinctly unfortunate, because the courts have no such power under the subsection (8) referred to. There is also a little difficulty about the conception of:

"Where the infant was ordinarily resident."

That would involve the court in inquiring where the ordinary residence was at the material time, which is a complication.

I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for his help in drafting, but my trouble was in dealing with the words of subsection (2) of Clause 5, which deals with the question of orders. It was in order to obviate any complica- tions of bringing those in that I thought it better to leave out the whole financial question.

I quite understand the difficulties which may have involved the hon. Member. I am not seeking to be discourteously critical, but I am pointing out that, to be consistent with one's duties in regard to reasonable draftsmanship, one could not incorporate the Clause in its present form in the Bill. No doubt there are tiresome difficulties, and it is difficult when one is an amateur to set about trying to create a new Clause of this kind.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 8, after the second "the", to insert "High"

Virtually, this Amendment and the whole of the succeeding 13 Amendments in my name are drafting Amendments.

I beg to second the the Amendment.

There are a number of Amendments on the Notice Paper relating to this Clause which appear to have the same import. I take it that they are all of a drafting nature?

They are all drafting Amendments, Mr. Speaker.

With the leave of the House, I propose to put all the Amendments to pages 3 and 4 down to the Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Hastings), en bloc.

I beg to move, in page 4, to leave out lines 8 to 10.

Clause 5 deals with the exceptional case in which there are no suitable relatives available for the care of the child and in which the court commits the care of the child to the local authority after discussion with the local authority. The court has power to hear any representations from the local authority. This Clause gives power to the local authority to over-ride the desire of the parents, if need be, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) pointed out, subsection (3) says:

"While an order made by virtue of this section is in force with respect to any infant, the infant shall continue in the care of the local authority notwithstanding any claim by a parent or other person."

Subsection (8) goes further and gives the court further powers over the local authority. It says:

"The court shall have power from time to time by an order under this section to vary or discharge any provision made in pursuance of this section."

We seek to remove subsection (5, a), which says:

"the exercise by the local authority of their powers under sections twelve to sixteen of that Act shall be subject to any directions given by the court."

The Act referred to is the Children Act. The powers of the authority under Sections 12 to 16 of the Act will be subject to any direction given by the court.

Sections 12 and 16 deal with the detailed care and management of children under the care of a local authority in respect of boarding out and the provision of a home provided by the authority, or a voluntary home, according to its discretion. Our contention is that conditions change very much and the local authority should not have constantly to ask for the decisions of the court as to dealing with the day-to-day care of the child it has to supervise.

I have had some experience of child care for many years and I realise what a difficult subject it is. We all know it is difficult to read the mind of a child and to know exactly what it is thinking. That applies to the ordinary child, but children dealt with under this Clause are, a priori, children of broken homes. They have already had a scar made on their mentality. I have had experience of dealing with delinquent children and know that a large number of them come from broken homes.

These children are difficult to deal with and decisions have sometimes to be made very rapidly. The local authority may decide in its wisdom, with the authority of the court, that the child had better be boarded out, but when the boarding out begins difficulty sometimes arises and the people concerned want the child removed. The child then has to be taken quickly to a home run by the local authority.

Let me illustrate another kind of case which I am constantly meeting, as chairman of a committee that deals with a hostel for teenagers. A boy may be starting business, or a child under the care of a local authority is starting out, and is put into lodgings. Again, difficulty arises, and we have to remove the young person quickly to a hostel. These removals would be very difficult if they could only be carried out after consultation with a court.

We all know how rapidly children appreciate dichotomy in authority. Where two authorities are looking after one child the child finds it out very quickly and takes advantage of it. When power has been given under the Children Act, 1948, or the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933, the local authority has been subject to no direction by the court. The children committee of the local authority has been asked to do its best and has responded to the best of its ability.

The Bill proposes to put strings to the suggestion, when a child is referred to a local authority for care. I cannot understand how, without a very marked change in the law, this proposal can he carried out. Section 12 of the Children Act, 1948, reads:

"Where a child is in the care of a local authority, it shall be the duty of that authority to exercise their powers with respect to him so as to further his best interests, and to afford him opportunity for the proper development of his character and abilities."

How can the local authority carry out that precept if it is to be instructed in detail by a court?

Does any Member second the Amendment? There being no seconder of the Amendment, it falls.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 28, at the end to insert:

"and may substitute for an order under this section an order under section six of this Act".

This is a probing Amendment. I want to find out whether it is possible, after a court order has been made committing a child to the care of a local authority, for the court to consider an application under Clause 5 (8) to vary that order by substituting an order for supervision under Clause 6? The contrary position arises where a supervision order has broken down, and it is possible for the court to make an order committing the child to the care of the council. Subsection (8) says:

"The court shall have power from time to time by an order under this section to vary car discharge any provision made in pursuance of this section."

Whether making an order under a different Section would be varying an order is not immediately clear and it would be very helpful to us and relieve our minds if my hon. Friend would say that there is a continuing provision under the Clause to enable that to be done and to deal with any problem that arises.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The Amendment seeks to give the Divorce Court power to substitute for an order committing a child to the care of the local authority an order placing a child under the supervision of the welfare officer of the local authority.

The Amendment is unnecessary, because the purpose my hon. Friend seeks to serve is already covered by the Bill, and I suggest that he withdraws the Amendment. For the purposes of greater accuracy, I have taken legal advice on this point and I am happy to be able to give a more positive answer to my hon. Friend than I did in the interesting exchanges that we previously had. It shows that it is unnecessary to confer this power specifically on the High Court.

It is unnecessary to confer this power specifically on the High Court. Clause 6 enables the court to make a supervision order as respects any period during which the child is committed to the custody of any person. Consequently, on discharging an order placing a child in the care of a local authority, the court can forthwith make an order for the child's custody—if it has not already done so—and put him under the supervision of a welfare officer or local authority.

There is a later Amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), in page 5, line 21, at the end to insert:

"and may substitute for an order under this section an order under section five of this Act".

This is virtually the same as the Amendment we are considering.

The two Amendments are connected, so there is no harm in discussing them together now.

As these statements have been made in the presence of the Solicitor-General, and have not been challenged, I am happy to accept the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle). I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 4, at the end to insert:

"if the council consents to their being so designated".

In the Scottish courts, the judge has a discretion to assign the duties in regard to the future welfare of the child either to a children's officer—who in Scotland is referred to as a local authority officer—or to a probation officer. The Bill at present limits the obligation of the court simply to consulting the local authority. As the local authority officer is a full-time employee of the county authority, it is only reasonable that the Amendment should be made, substituting the consent of the county authority for the obligation merely to consult the county council.

I beg to second the Amendment.

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

In view of the time, and the fact that another Bill in which we are all interested is on the Order Paper, I do not propose to speak for very long. I had better content myself with saying that the Bill is now a better Bill than it was when I introduced it. That is due to the cooperation of hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I want to express my appreciation to the Lord Chancellor and his staff, and particularly to Mr. Dobson, who has been my counsel and guiding hand during the whole of these vexatious and litigious proceedings. The Bill has a much more menacing and legal look about it than had my previous two Bills, and I am glad that it has been able to reach the safe harbour of the Third Reading stage without disaster.

We are grateful to the Solicitor-General for being here this afternoon, and I want to express to him my appreciation for the great help he has rendered to me during the progress of the Bill.

I very much regret that we did not convince the highest legal authorities that it might have been a good thing to increase the age limit from 16 to 18—or at least 17. I did my best to honour the obligation that I accepted in Committee, particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White), to reconsider the question of increasing the age limit in relation to the jurisdiction of the court on the question of the future welfare of children affected by divorce, but the decision went against me.

I do not think that there is any need for me to say any more, except to depart from making individual distinctions and to express my warm thanks for the very real co-operation which I have received from hon. Members on both sides of the House. To put things right with my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), I will say that, notwithstanding the contentious nature of his behaviour this afternoon, I am exceedingly grateful to him for the help he has given me during the course of the Bill.

I beg to second the Motion.

When a Private Member's Bill reaches this stage, the wisest thing to do is to say very little, but I should not like the Third Reading to pass without saying something. I have made it quite clear that I regard my hon. Friend the Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) as extremely pig-headed—but he is a very kind and warm-hearted pig, and very many unhappy children will be profoundly grateful to him in the future. There can be very few recommendations of as contentious a Royal Commission as the Morton Commission which have been brought on to the Statute Book so quickly, and to those who think that Parliament is sometimes a little sluggish in taking up recommendations of Royal Commissions, this is an object lesson. With an hon. Member who has the qualities of luck, skill and toughness—all three of which are possessed by my hon. Friend—it is remarkable what can be done in a short time.

I want to express my great gratitude to him for having used his luck in such a very worthy way, and I am sure that in future many children will look back to his work during this Session and say that he has done a tremendous job to help the wretched and unfortunate victims of matrimonial disharmony.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) on bringing the Bill forward. I regret that I did not volunteer to serve on the Committee. The first thing that strikes me is what an enormously important subject this is to be left to a private Member to bring forward. Most of us here realise that the consolidation of family life is rather more important even than the Purchase Tax on miners' helmets, and it is rather sad that it should be left to a private Member to bring it forward, with all the burden that it involves for him.

It is probably well known that for personal reasons I have very strong views about divorce. I do not believe that it is good, in the end, for the welfare of the State, because of the children concerned. Having once put the system into operation, however, it is necessary to defend the victims of divorce, namely, the children. The two Clauses which interest me most are the first two. Clause 1 deals with the extension of the jurisdiction of the divorce court to further classes of children, and Clause 2 deals with the duty of the divorce courts to consider arrangements for children's welfare before a final degree decree is pronounced.

At this late stage it would be useless and tedious to bring up comments which have probably already been expanded in Committee and at other stages. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that there is considerable danger to what I call the solidarity of family life in a provision which allows an illegitimate child to get into the same position as a legitimate child, because his custodian—not his parent—has assumed responsibility. It occurred to me that a person might assume responsibility under some misapprehension as to who was the parent of the child. It seems a little dangerous to introduce into the family that equality between people who are not equal in law. I will, however, leave that.

The difficulty of making arrangements for the child's welfare before the final decree is manifest in Clause 2, which in the end leaves the whole matter rather vague, because if it is impracticable for the parties to do anything, apparently nothing can be done. It seems to be a pious hope more than a strict legal provision. I notice in the Report of the Commission that it is hoped that this would preach a sermon.

It seems odd that the Report on which the Bill is based should say that perhaps these provisions will bring home to people who are contemplating divorce their responsibilities to their children. It is a sad commentary when a Clause in a Bill brought forward by an hon. Member is required to bring home to parents their responsibility. The sad fact is that, after all the well-meaning reforms which have been introduced, it remains necessary to plug the gaping holes in the social system which are created by maintaining a system of divorce.

Whatever may be sad about the present situation, it is not the Third Reading of the Bill.

We have had an opportunity of congratulating the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle), the promoter of the Bill, on his good fortune, but since he has said so many kind things about all of us, it is only fair that we should take the opportunity to say something kind about him. I now do that on behalf, I hope, of both sides of the House in this context. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That his Bill has had so smooth and swift a passage through the House has been due in no small measure to the personal affection which we all have for him and the charming and skilled way in which he has handled it throughout.

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

This is the third Litter Bill which I have helped to sponsor and I hope that it may be a case of third time lucky. I should like to express my thanks to those hon. Members on both sides of the House who have helped and encouraged me in guiding the Bill on its passage through the House. My special thanks are due to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill), who introduced a somewhat similar Bill two Sessions ago. He did a great deal of pioneering work on the Bill and he mobilised public opinion in favour of legislation.

My thanks are also due to the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Parliamentary Secretary and to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland for the help and assistance which they have given. These Ministers suffered a severe buffeting when my somewhat similar Bill was given a Second Reading in the last Session of Parliament, and they damned that Bill with the faintest possible praise. They received, in particular, a very severe dusting from the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede).

I am very glad that the Ministers have had second thoughts and that since then they and their Departmental officers have been extremely co-operative and helpful in drafting this Bill. The Bill is a good example of how Parliament, when it is united and determined, can exert a bene- ficial influence on the Executive and can prod the Executive into taking action.

Throughout the period that the Bill and its predecessors have been under consideration by the House they have had the wholehearted support of every one of the local government associations. The Bill has also had a wide variety of support from the many voluntary societies in Britain which take an interest in preserving amenities, both in our towns and in the country. The list of societies supporting the Bill is so long that it is impossible to mention them all by name, but pre-eminent among them and one of the most helpful has been the "Keep Britain Tidy" group. This group is sponsored by the National Federation of Women's Institutes and it brings together and co-ordinates the anti-litter efforts of many voluntary organisations.

Throughout the time that the Bill has been under discussion the "Keep Britain Tidy" Group has been a real tower of strength and I should like to express my appreciation to that group for its unstinted support. I should also like to thank the Country Landowners' Association, whose legal adviser has been of great assistance.

I do not know what reception the Bill will receive at the hands of hon. Members today. Some may think that it goes too far, while others may think that it does not go far enough. But I can say that it has come as a very agreeable surprise to me that in all the great volume of correspondence which I have had on this subject from public bodies and from the general public I have not had one single complaint or criticism regarding the objects of the Bill. No one has suggested that the Bill goes too far, and I think that this lack of criticism is rather surprising, because when one is taking steps to put restraints and restrictions on the liberty of the subject one would expect some form of abuse at least from members of the lunatic fringe.

I can only hope that the absence of criticism and opposition means that the Bill will prove universally popular and that its provisions will generally be observed. However, we should be under no illusion that if the provisions of the Bill are to be upheld and well and truly observed when it becomes law, we shall have to have a vast improvement in our national habits and attitude, not least among Members of this honourable House. At present, the House and its Members are very far from setting a good example to the country in the matter of spreading litter. We shall all have to mend our ways.

Does it apply to the House?

I regret to say that the terms of the Bill will not apply to the House.

In fact, we shall have to have a complete revolution in our outlook, and I do not think that we should fool ourselves into pretending that that will be easy to achieve. It will require a great deal more thought on the part of everyone. I believe that it can be done. One does not, for instance, often find people throwing away full cigarette cases, but very often one finds them throwing away empty ones.

I can honestly say that when presenting the Bill to the House or to others I have never pretended that the Bill of itself will do the trick. I have never suggested that it can of itself cure the problem. I have always taken the view that a Bill on these lines would help considerably, but that such a Bill must be backed up by a full-scale and comprehensive propaganda and educational campaign. We want a really worth-while propaganda campaign designed to educate the old and the young, in town and country, regarding the urgent necessity of keeping Britain tidy.

It will be seen, in this connection, that the Bill, which is extremely short, contains a provision that it shall not become operative until one month after it has received the Royal Assent, and I hope that the Government, through their various agencies, will get busy during that period and make known the contents of the Bill as widely as possible and warn the public of its intended effect. What will be required is a well-thought-out campaign warning people that in future the scattering of litter in public will be an offence against the land and will be punishable as such.

We must make a real attempt to make the British people litter conscious. I can well believe that some people will think that that is a hopeless task, and that it is foredoomed to failure. They might point out that already there are in existence many byelaws on this subject, and that for the most part they have failed. There is a good deal of truth in that suggestion, but I think that when Parliament has acted, and the Bill has become law, there will be a different attitude on the part of the public and on the part of the police, and, also, I hope and believe, on the part of magistrates, and that they will be prepared to treat litter louts a great deal more severely.

Undoubtedly, it will depend upon the keenness and enthusiasm of local authorities, the magistrates and the police; and if we want a real success for our anti-litter campaign we must make efforts to win over the great British public to our cause. We do not want to be "fusspots", and certainly we do not want a mass of snoopers, and that is why the Bill has severely limited the right to take names and addresses of offenders. Nevertheless, we do mean business. We must be fair, but we must also be firm.

I believe that it is the practice in the Royal Parks not to launch a prosecution against anyone scattering litter if a person has done so accidentally, and that it has to be a rather deliberate act before any action is taken. I venture to hope that the same kind of common sense approach will be adopted by the other enforcing authorities in the rest of Britain.

I am convinced myself that this is a worthwhile and workable Bill. Inevitably, some time will elapse before it can find its way to the Statute Book and before it becomes operative. Probably, a good time to bring it into operation would be just before the next August Bank Holiday, but even that is not now so very far off. If the Bill is to become operative then, the Government must now be doing some thinking about the ways and means of warning and educating the public.

The Government should tell the public how much the clearance of litter costs in the way of additional rates and taxes, amounting, I believe, to over £11 million a year. In the City of London, for instance, it costs over £3,000 a year per mile of streets to keep the streets of the City free from litter. The public ought also to be told how dangerous are the scattering of broken bottles, glass, tin cans and other litter on our shores and at riverside resorts. I imagine that a bather has to stub his foot only once on broken glass to become a keen supporter of this Bill. But litter is also very dangerous for dogs, horses, cattle and other animals.

Finally, we must tell the public how scruffy we are regarded as being by foreigners. They are shocked at the untidy mass of litter which they see despoiling our towns and country, and it is, indeed, a shaming fact to have to admit that

"This other Eden, demi-Paradise;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

is now one of the dirtiest countries in the world. We have played with this far too long: we have been far too tolerant, and now the time has come for Parliament to say that it means business and that we are all determined to keep Britain tidy.

I beg to second the Motion.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) on having reached the Third Reading stage with his Bill on this, as he explained, his third attempt to introduce or assist in the introduction of an anti-litter Bill. It is not a world-shaking Bill, but it is an important one. It is not, perhaps, as strong as one which he hoped to introduce last year. Nevertheless, for the first time throughout the country there will be statutory powers enforceable by local authorities against people who deliberately spoil our countryside and towns by throwing litter about.

During the earlier stages of the Bill, hon. Members spoke mostly about the spoliation of the countryside by litter louts; and, of course, that is the thing which comes most readily to mind because such disfigurement of the countryside is so conspicuous. The hon. Gentleman was quite right to refer to the opinion of foreigners. There is an unhappy contrast between our towns, cities and countryside and those we see abroad in this respect.

There is an almost complete lack of co-operation by the British public in keeping our own country in decent order, whereas on the Continent people voluntarily and out of pride in their own country and possessions behave very differently. We hope that more and more people will come to visit our beauty spots and historic places, but, if they find them disfigured by litter and rubbish, great discredit is done to our country.

The problem in the countryside, although important, is comparatively not so great as it is in the towns. Far more people live in the towns and there is far more litter cast about. There is a tendency to become, as it were, accustomed to litter. If there is anything in a man's hand for which he no longer has any use, he is inclined to throw it about the streets and leave it there for somebody else, paid for by the public, to clear up. The London County Council has been extremely interested in the Bill and most anxious that it should go through. The two local authorities in my constituency, the Metropolitan Boroughs of Shoreditch and Finsbury, are particularly anxious that the Bill shall become law. I mention this because I do not want it to be thought that this is purely a countryside matter. It is very much a matter for people living in the towns, and the local authorities in the towns are very closely concerned.

There is a special problem in London, in the throwing of litter from public places on to bombed sites where it becomes putrescent. All sorts of things are thrown—loaves of bread, food, mattresses, old prams—not merely hideous and disfiguring, but actually a menace to health. These things are not cleared up until a complaint is made to the local medical officer of health, who has power to clear such rubbish only if it is putrescent. However, many health officers exceed their powers and clear away a lot of other things. At one time, I took the view that there was a problem, not covered by the Bill, which arose from the throwing of this sort of thing by people from their own houses on to bombed sites, but I gather now that the War Damage Sites Act, 1949, will deal with it.

We must impress upon the public the enormous cost incurred by the local authorities, that is to say, the enormous cost incurred by every taxpayer and ratepayer, as a result of the defiling of our towns, our streets and public places. I have a friend whom I see every morning of the week on my way to the office. He is a roadsweeper. We always pass the time of day each morning, and I am always impressed by the way he works. He has his cart, and he goes up the left hand side of the main road in the morning, always at work—always, apparently, happy about it—his beat being precisely a quarter of a mile long. He goes up one side of the road in the morning and in the afternoon, when I am coming to the House, he goes down the other side of the road. That man, hard at work all the time, is devoting his life's work towards keeping one quarter-mile of a London street reasonably clean and reasonably clear of litter and refuse. When one thinks of the thousands of miles of streets in London and equates that to one man per quarter-mile, it gives an idea of the tremendous cost and how much that cost can be reduced if the Bill becomes effective.

The success of the Bill when it becomes an Act depends on three factors. The one which is of overwhelming importance is the extent to which we are able to make the public litter-conscious. There are a number of steps to be taken towards that end. First, we must hope that the police will take the Bill when it becomes an Act seriously enough to ensure that there are some prosecutions. I, too, hope that there will not be a lot of prosecutions, but there must be at least enough for the cases to be reported in the national and local Press so that people become aware that to throw stuff about is an offence against the public and themselves.

Some of us are more tidy-minded than others. To some of us it is almost a physical pain to see a filthy, untidy street, or a filthy, untidy town. Some other people are not similarly offended. Some friends of mine can sit happily in their armchairs smoking and flicking the ash on the carpet. It must come quite natural to such people similarly to throw things away in public places, because, if they cannot treat their own property properly, they cannot be expected to respect property belonging to somebody else, or indeed public property which belongs to them.

Therefore, it is necessary, first, for the police, when they find offenders, to institute prosecutions and for the local authorities to back them up. The local authorities perhaps are not the second arm, but they are a vitally important arm in this effort. They have to take the lead not only in implementing the provisions of the Bill when they have the opportunity, but in doing their utmost to educate public opinion about litter. Some local authorities are more conscious of this than others.

The question of clean streets is allied to the question of clean air. Some local authorities, my own in particular, have already started nominating areas for smoke abatement. It is that consciousness of cleanliness and implementing it that this Bill is designed to assist and which can only become effective if the local authorities play a part.

Many urban local authorities are gravely lacking in fulfilling their responsibility to supply enough litter bins and places where litter can be put. We all have the experience of coming off a bus with an empty cigarette packet in our hands and having to look round for a proper place to deposit it. My local authority makes its litter bins earn money by putting them on lamp-posts and letting them out to local shopkeepers for advertisement purposes, so that they are not a cost, but a source of revenue. If more local authorities would adopt that attitude, we should have a lot more places where litter could be properly put. It would be much easier and less expensive to collect and it would not cost the local authority anything.

Above all, as applies in so many other things, it is the members of the public who will decide whether we are to keep Britain tidy and whether we treat our property and our country in a way which shows that we appreciate it. When I have found my own workpeople abusing material, knocking it about and walking over it, an attitude which I have found successful is to impress upon them that the goods belong to them and are, in fact, theirs. This has a salutary effect.

We cannot impress sufficiently upon the people that public buildings, streets and public places really belong to them as individuals and that if they abuse them, they are abusing their own property. This applies irrespective of ownership. No matter to whom the land belongs, whether it is publicly or privately owned, it is our country. We must all collaborate in making people conscious of these things and securing their co-operation.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham on his pertinacity, enterprise and public spirit in introducing the Bill. I hope that the House will accord it a Third Reading without opposition and that it will pass its final stages in time for implementation by August Bank Holiday, so that that will be a cleaner Bank Holiday and, thereafter, we shall see not only cleaner streets, but less refuse after public holidays.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) on introducing the Bill. I hope that the House will give it a Third Reading. With modern transport, no place is safe from litter. People can go to the most remote corners of the country and to beauty spots—I am glad that they can—but, unfortunately, they often leave these places in a deplorable state. Not only is the litter hideous to see but, as my hon. Friend pointed out, it is often dangerous to stock and human beings, especially when it is broken glass and bottles.

It is a sad commentary on the manners and so-called education of a large number of people today that they should leave litter about in this deplorable way. In the part of the world in which I live, down in Devonshire, we suffer very much from litter louts. As one travels the beautiful roads and lanes of Devonshire and across the wild country of Dartmoor, one sees on every grass verge and in all these lovely places, after a weekend, at holiday times or during the summer, litter of every description lying about. It is infuriating and disgraceful. It is a poor return to many private owners who allow people to walk through their woods and drives that those who do this should leave orange peel, paper bags and all the rest lying about.

Not many years ago, I found a family picnicking on my drive. I was glad that they should, but they were about to leave behind them a mountain of mess. As politely as I could, I asked Whether they would mind picking it up. The father replied, "If you can afford to have a place like this, you can afford to have somebody to pick up the mess." That may not be a very prevalent attitude, but it is a deplorable one.

I should like to refer to a rather curious living form of litter which I came across the other day. In Hyde Park, there is a place known as the Dell, a nice little grass enclosure with shrubs and trees, near the Serpentine, with some water flowing through it. I have known it, as many hon. Members have, ever since I was a small child. I used always to make for it with my hoop when I was brought to London and was taken to the park. There were some wild rabbits, and a pair of mallard used to breed there. I used to love it. In those days it was a most charming little place.

Now, I am sorry to say, it is not at all charming. It is full of the most horrible-looking rabbits, not wild rabbits, but nasty, mangey-looking creatures, and people empty all sorts of muck, horrible things, out of bags—orange peel, bits of bread, bits of cauliflower, and goodness knows what, and the place looks like a pigsty.

The other day my wife asked one of the park keepers who was responsible for this horrible refuse. To her great surprise, she was told that people come along and drop rabbits over the railings and leave them there. They also drop tortoises, guinea pigs and other creatures. Then people come along and empty bags of this horrible stuff for the wretched creatures to eat. My wife was told that after the weekend it takes a man practically the whole day, and sometimes more, to clear up the mess.

That is very deplorable. I hope it is one of the things which will be stopped when the Bill becomes law. It is really awful that so many people in this country behave like pigs. Indeed, I believe that pigs would behave very much better, for in their natural state they are nice, clean animals. I trust that the Bill will receive a Third Reading.

Like other hon. Members, I am delighted that the Bill has reached this stage, and I hope that it will receive a Third Reading and eventually reach the Statute Book. I am not as optimistic as some hon. Members are about its effect on this shocking problem. I believe that a lot, if not everything, will depend upon the police.

Is it not one of the difficulties that the police cannot prosecute under the Bill, unfortunately?

What the police can do, I think, is to make reports so that a prosecution is instituted. Obviously, it will be for the police to note people who are flinging litter about and take such steps as they can under the Measure, if it becomes an Act.

Private individuals sometimes almost take their lives in their hands if they attempt to interfere with anyone who is throwing down litter. Several times I have picked up litter which someone has flung down, and have said politely, when I have caught the individual up, "I think you dropped this," and, as often as not, the person will reply, quite cheerily, "Oh, no; I have finished with it."

Sometimes, if these people think that one is criticising them for having flung down the litter they become belligerent, and if they are bigger than oneself often one does not speak. Therefore, it seems to me that private individuals cannot do a great deal, although all of us can do something, and we shall have to depend upon the authorities to implement the Measure if, as I hope, it becomes an Act.

We are nearing Trooping the Colour ceremony, and I have not the slightest doubt that St. James's Park will be in a shocking state by the time the ceremony ends. I live near Hampstead Heath, and weekend after weekend ice cream sellers have stalls near 'the pond there. People who buy ices, however, never dream of putting the wrappings into a receptacle, although there are a number of them about. I mentioned this to my Member of Parliament, the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government. He was at the time a member of the London County Council and a member of the local borough council, and I felt certain that if I mentioned it to him, as my Member of Parliament, something would be done. Nothing has been done, however.

This is a problem which ought to be taken in hand. It seems to me that the best way to get something done is for all men and women of good will to endeavour to make people conscious of what is happening, what it is costing the country and how easy it would be to educate people, as they have been educated in other countries, to be litter-conscious and to keep their streets and public places clean.

I join with other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) on his success in piloting this Measure through to what amounts the threshold of the Statute Book. My hon. Friend is the first to recognise that he has built upon the work of others, and it would not be too much to say that it has been an exercise in tolerant politics; and I hope very much it will succeed.

This is a small Bill, but I believe it is a milestone, inasmuch as it will give a chance to the British people henceforth to redeem themselves over something in which we have a bad record, certainly judged by normal standards of decency and by the standards of many people on the Continent.

I hope that when the Bill becomes an Act we shall see it enforced with vigour and determination. I join with other hon. Members in expressing the hope that we shall succeed in making some impact upon the public mind by striking when the iron is hot. As has happened in respect of bye-laws, this important piece of legislation may go by default, because it is overlaid by so many other considerations, and because anybody trying to enforce it will be swimming against the tide.

We have all had experiences of this kind and I will not detain the House in recounting many of mine. Only recently, however, I was shopping on Saturday morning in a neighbouring town and some children, who, in most cases, are much better about this than adults, dropped their ice-cream papers on the pavement. I ventured to step forward and pick up one of these pieces of paper and, rather ostentatiously as I thought, put them in the litter basket. I then ventured to suggest to the children that they might have done the same. It will not surprise hon. Members that I got a frosty response from these quite small children. They paused, looked at me as if I had two heads, and then said, "You don't say?" It was a disheartening experience, and I am sure hon. Members have had similar ones.

I recall, too, hearing on an excellent B.B.C. programme some years ago an account of this problem. The person presenting the programme said he had seen a mother and her child in one of the London parks. The child had unwrapped a toffee and was about to run across and put the wrapper into a litter basket. The mother was heard to say to the child, "We don't want any of your fancy ideas here." That is the mountain of indifference which the local authorities and others will have to surmount.

I make a plea for all those media which can influence public opinion because, as the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Collins) has said, in the long run it will be public opinion which will prevail. This legislation, the Press, the radio, television and poster campaigns can give public opinion a useful prod in the right direction. I am glad to have seen the posters which are available and to learn that the Borough of Oldham, which is the next borough to my constituency, is conducting an anti-litter campaign next week, which is a very fortuitous choice.

I want to make one other plea to hon. Members. If there was ever a time when it was worth while trying to give effect to the maxim that example is more powerful than precept, this is such a moment. As has been suggested, as things are today we do not set a practical example, and anyone who has stayed to have a look at this Chamber at the end of a long day's debate, or paused in his tracks to look at the Library, would be excused for saying that the Members of this honourable House of Commons are, in this respect, a rather filthy lot—and I do not mean any disrespect to anybody, or to the House as a whole. We could avoid the charge of the pot calling the kettle black if we made an effort in that respect.

I join with all my hon. Friends in expressing the hope that the Bill will be effective and will prove to be a step forward. It may be a small infringement upon private liberty, but if ever such an infringement was justified, the Bill has such a justification. I hope that it will prove to be the milestone which hon. Members have already suggested it can be. I very much welcome it and again congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this legislation to this point.

I know that at this stage of a Friday afternoon the best support one can give to a Bill is to say as little about it as possible, but in view of the courage which the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir) showed in the last Session of Parliament, when the Bill was most fiercely attacked from the Government Front Bench, and after he has persevered with it and carried it on Second Reading, I want to offer him my congratulations on the final success of his efforts.

I also convey to him publicly the thanks of the various amenity associations which have been wholeheartedly in favour of the Bill for a very long time and which have carried on a very long campaign to get it—the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, the Keep Tidy Group, the County Councils' Association, and the Southern Area of the Ramblers' Association, with all of which I am connected. All are very grateful to the hon. Member for what he has done.

We have managed to get ourselves into a genial mood this afternoon, even for a Friday. When one of my hon. Friends called another of my hon. Friends pigheaded when Mr. Speaker was in the Chair, nobody asked whether that was a Parliamentary expression. When the hon. Member for Hexham, sweeping his arm across the Front Bench below the gangway opposite, referred to the lunatic fringe, nobody seemed at all upset. I can only hope that that means that this matter, which is one in which public opinion more than the law will be the determining factor, will result in a united effort to persuade the people that our country—including the towns—is such a beautiful place that it is worthy of more respect than is sometimes shown.

In defence of children, anyone who tries to preach to children will always have it proved to him that the best place to do it is from the pulpit and not from their level. It was noted after the Coronation that the only place in London which was not covered with litter was the place not so very far from this House which was allotted to children. Of course, they were under supervision of those professionally trained to supervise them. One must hope that the constant lessons on this matter now given in schools, and the pictures which are displayed there, will have some lasting effect after the children have left school. It is to be hoped that those who are older will not give them bad examples by leaving litter in public places, for which sometimes the children cannot be blamed for following.

I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for his services to this cause. He can rest assured that he carries with him the good will of the whole House and, I believe, of all right-thinking people in the campaign of which he has been so conspicuous a leader.

The promoter of this Bill will have noticed what importance the Opposition attaches to this useful Measure. We have three Privy Councillors on duty, two of whom have taken part in this discussion. That is one indication of the importance we attach to this Measure.

I am not quite so optimistic as some previous speakers. All our propaganda hitherto has failed, and we must now bring in legislation to assist propaganda against litter. That propaganda has been going on for many years, and it will still be necessary even when this Bill reaches the Statute Book. London, of all the capital cities, is probably the most untidy. I hope this Bill will make a difference in London where, of course, there are rather more people and, in consequence, unfortunately rather more litter. My local authority, the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth, is strongly in favour of the Bill. It happens that Lambeth Town Hall is at a very busy crossroads. One man has to be kept on duty every day of the week merely to keep the pavements outside the town hall reasonably tidy. He has a full-time job, but that ought not to be necessary.

I wish to make a suggestion which might help in this matter. At every bus stop there ought to be a litter bin. Although each bus has a container into which passengers are supposed to put their used tickets when they leave the bus, they do not make use of it and every bus stop is littered with old tickets. It would help the tidiness of London streets if there were a litter bin at every bus stop. It is necessary to make it so obvious that a person has deliberately not made use of the facilities available for disposing of litter before it will be possible to obtain convictions against offenders. We must not give offenders the slightest cause for making a mess in the streets. That, perhaps, is one way in Which a contribution can be made towards what we hope will be cleaner streets in London and cleaner roads in the countryside.

Another point that has not been made so far in this discussion is the extent to which car users contribute to litter by slinging cigarette packets and so on out of moving cars. It will be rather difficult to obtain convictions in cases of that kind. Let us hope that as a result of this Bill coming on to the Statute Book and the unanimous support it has received in all quarters of the House and from public opinion, it will mark a new stage in providing a cleaner and better country.

I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Speir), the promoter of the Bill, upon its success. He criticised the House in somewhat stringent terms upon its untidy habits and I wondered for a moment whether we were covered by the Bill. I see that it applies to.

"any covered place open to the air on at least one side,"

no matter which side. It is not a bad description of the House. I hope that we shall all take his words to heart.

It has been an interesting debate, although of fairly wide range. Although one must only refer to what appears in the Bill, perhaps I might mention the emergence of a new zoo in Hyde Park, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tavistock (Sir H. Studholme). That seems to be a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Works. It is quite a new one on me.

I do not think there is anything that I want to add to what has been said, except to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham once again. Therefore, I shall not stand any longer between the House and the passage of this most useful Measure.

I should like to strike a note of slight misgiving about the Bill. The hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) talked about it as designed to stop people who are deliberately spoiling the countryside. I see that the words of the Bill are:

"If any person throws down".

That is obviously a thing one cannot do by mistake. The Bill goes on:

"drops or otherwise deposits in, into or from any place …"

Subject to better advice, these words appear to catch the person who drops things by mistake. Papers may fall out of our pockets. A right hon. Gentleman did not pick up some papers that he dropped on the Floor of the House by mistake. He did not know he was doing it, no doubt because he was agitated.

It seems hard that we should introduce a penal provision which catches not only the deliberate person, but the person with a hole in his pocket, or a bundle of papers from which a bit of paper falls out, or who picks up a picnic basket in a gale, which causes a piece of paper to fly away. It is hard to make a criminal offender of someone who does not know that he has dropped anything or, having seen that he has dropped it, fails to pick it up. That is an act which might be deliberate or negligent.

If my hon. and learned Friend would read the Bill he would see that the offence is committed only if he both drops and leaves the matter in the public place.

Suppose he drops a wrist watch and does not know it; that might be litter. I am surprised that the Bill went through Standing Committee without an hon. Member suggesting the word "knowingly" or "deliberately" It is wrong to make an innocent act into a crime.

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

Several hon. Members have asked me to explain the provisions of the Bill. Time is short, but I will do what I can. The Bill is uncontroversial and makes several useful changes in the law, all of which were recommended by the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce.

My hon. Friend cannot say that.

If my hon. and learned Friend reads the Bill he will see that that is so. None of the proposals of the Bill touch the grounds of divorce, nor do they either offer encouragement or discouragement in that respect. The Bill simply deals with the rights of the supreme authority after the divorce or separation has taken place. The Bill is not intended to be comprehensive, as my hon. and learned Friend appears to think. The proposals have been carefully thought out as being those upon which no controversy can take place.

Clause 1 and the Schedule to the Bill are matters of very small moment. At present, the court may not make an order for maintenance after pronouncing a decree of divorce, nullity or judicial separation, unless the applicant first obtains the leave of the court. That has proved to be very cumbrous and unnecessary, and Clause 1 therefore enables the court to make an order at any time. The rights of the husband are taken care of by subsection (5), which requires that the court shall still take into account any delay in making the application. In other words, the substantive law is quite unaltered. This provision enables the court to deal with the matter in one bit instead of having to take two bites at the cherry.

Clause 2 is intended to prevent a person from defeating the requirement of the law as to maintenance. Some husbands, or ex-husbands, have been known to give away their property rather than maintain a wife and children. The Clause will enable the court to set aside such a gift. The provision is not limited to gifts. More complicated schemes are often devised for this purpose, and the Clause applies to any such transactions. Other provisions ensure that the Clause cannot be used where it may operate harshly.

Clauses 3 and 4 are perhaps the most important. At present, if a man dies without making provision for his divorced wife she may be left entirely destitute. The court at present has no power to order payment of alimony from the estate of the deceased person, and Clause 3 gives the court this power. It is subject to suitable safeguards, and the principle of the Bill is the same as that of the Inheritance (Family Provision) Act, 1938, which has been tried and proved, and commands general assent.

Clause 7 is a technical, but useful, provision. Under Section 17 of the Married Women's Property Act, 1882, the court had no power to decide any question between husband and wife as to the title to or possession of property. For example, where a husband had money or property of his wife and parted with it the court could make no order under that Section. The Clause will now enable it to do so, and in case of need it may order the husband or wife to make a payment.

I wish that I had time to deal with these matters more fully. I can assure the House that there is nothing controversial in the Bill.

I regret that I must join issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) in this matter. The point of principle involved in the Bill cannot be disposed of in a minute. Clause 3 makes provision for a former wife out of the estate of a deceased former husband. That was a very controversial matter when it was considered by the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce. Paragraph 502 says.

"Thirteen of us are satisfied that the court can safely be relied upon to order provision to be made for a guilty spouse only if it would be reasonable to do so in the circumstances."

But the views of six Members, as mentioned in paragraph 503 should be stated on the Floor of the House, so that hon. Members may have the opportunity of considering them. They say:

"Six of us think it wrong in principle that a husband or wife should be called upon to maintain a guilty spouse. It is a rule of the common law of England that a husband's liability to maintain his wife during the marriage ends if she commits adultery and is suspended if she has deserted him. The statutory deviations from this rule may be explained on the assumption that the legislature wished to ensure that a wife should not be left completely destitute. We doubt whether that could happen nowadays because, even if a woman cannot find employment, she may ask for national assistance. A husband may well preserve some kindly feeling towards the wife he has divorced and, if she has been left destitute, it is open to him voluntarily to make her an allowance. That is quite"——

On 6th January this year a constituent of mine died in Birmingham Prison, and I raised the matter with the Home Office in the form of a Question on 6th February. At that time, I received what I regarded as an inadequate reply, and I am therefore taking this first opportunity of asking the Joint Under-Secretary of State to the Home Department to amplify some of the answers which he gave and perhaps to deal with one point in particular which not only concerns the individual constituent who is now dead but certainly will have reference to many other people who may be brought to trial in similar circumstances.

I would like briefly to repeat the facts of the matter which are undisputable. In the first instance, Mr. George Phipps was sentenced at Coventry on 19th December to one month's imprisonment for making a false statement in order to obtain an increase in sickness benefit. When he was received into Birmingham Prison on 19th December he was then found to be suffering from chronic heart disease. He was seen by various prison medical officers on 21st, 22nd and 23rd December and on Christmas Day for bronchial trouble. On 27th December, symptoms suggesting a deterioration in his heart condition were noticed and he was removed to the prison hospital. On 4th January, 1958, he was seen by a specialist who apparently approved the treatment which he was receiving and he died on 6th January. These facts are not in doubt.

In order to supplement the Minister's information about Mr. Phipps, perhaps I ought to add that this man had a small spastic son and two other children, and his offence—I understand the first offence that he ever committed—was to draw sickness benefit for a wife who was working. That was wrong and he was properly brought before the magistrates. This case, which has caused a great deal of concern in Coventry, is one which I feel should be more carefully investigated simply because Mr. Phipps did not die of an acute heart attack.

He was a man suffering from chronic heart disease, quite clearly in a very advanced form, and, equally clearly, the circumstances in which he was sent to Birmingham Prison were such that his already deteriorated condition would probably have had a fatal result, were his condition known in advance. I am not dealing with the question of tempering justice with mercy. I am not criticising in any way the decision of the magistrates. They had, no doubt, a procession of people brought in front of them, and a number of cases which were to be judged by the rule of thumb which is used on these occasions.

It is because this man was brought to trial when he was already suffering from advanced heart disease that I want to put a few salient questions, which I have already put to the Joint Under-Secretary in the form of supplementary questions, which he said he would look into. I want to repeat these questions now, because this seems to me to be a case which is of concern not only to those occupying magisterial benches but all those who are exercised about the treatment of similar offences.

The first question is: was any medical evidence given about this man's condition when he was brought to trial? If no medical evidence was offered at all, is it suggested that the onus of offering medical evidence or of making a medical submission rested with the accused? I suggest that, in the case of Phipps, and I hope similar cases in future, in which a man's condition may be doubted, at the actual trial the accused should be invited to make a statement about the condition of his health. I am told, and perhaps the Joint Under-Secretary can correct me if I am wrong, that When Phipps was brought before the Coventry magistrates, no submission was made about his medical condition. I may be wrong about that, but that is the information I have.

If that is so, then clearly, taking the normal practice and routine of the court, it was inevitable that the condition which this man was in should have escaped attention and should only have been recognised when he was under medical examination when brought to Birmingham Prison.

Therefore, I want to ask the Minister, first of all, whether in the case of Phipps, medical evidence was given at his trial, and, secondly, if not, if he will consider very carefully, and perhaps give me an answer, whether in future in a magistrates' court it will become a routine measure that the accused shall be invited to make a submission about his physical condition. I believe that if that had happened in this case, the magistrate might have thought twice about sending this man to a month's imprisonment over Christmas for a first offence in these circumstances, which led, I believe, to the tragic result that we have already noted.

I raise this matter again now, not in order to engage in recriminations about the past, but in order to try to ensure that if there is any similar case in future, the accused will have the opportunity of describing his condition, and, if his condition is such as that from which George Phipps suffered, not only might the magistrates take that into account but, equally, when he is sent to prison, he will not be put to work, however light, but will be given promptly the treatment which his condition requires.

In replying to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman), I should make it clear that, under the law of our country, the only part of the sequence of events to which he has referred for which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has any responsibility is that part which accompanied and followed the reception of the late George Phipps into prison. I have, however, made inquiries of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance so that I was fully informed of the circumstances in which Phipps came to be prosecuted, and the clerk to the Coventry Justices also has been good enough to let us have some information about the proceedings in court.

I think that the hon. Gentleman does not doubt that Phipps was rightly prosecuted, in view of the offence committed. Obviously, he had to be, and I do not think any question arises on the part which the Ministry took. The hon. Gentleman will accept also, I think, that there is no duty on the prosecution to start making inquiries about a person's health when prosecuting, in order that it should lay the facts before the court. Indeed, people very often would resent it if, in addition to prosecuting, the prosecution started making inquiries of a personal nature like that.

As regards the court, anything which I say must be regarded in the light of the fact that we have an independent judiciary and there is nobody in the House who is answerable for decisions of any particular court. When we criticise the decisions of magistrates, we must remember that they have no chance of replying, and that that is of the essence of the matter when we have an independent judiciary, as I am proud to say we have in this country.

As an answer to part of the case raised by the hon. Member for Coventry, North I can say that Phipps himself made representations to the magistrates. He told the magistrates that he suffered from heart disease and bronchitis, that he had worked for only four years out of the previous eight, and that he was registered as a disabled person. He told the magistrates that, so they had it in mind when deciding to send him to prison. Phipps did not call any medical evidence himself. I presume that the magistrates accepted what he told them; they certainly did not challenge it, and neither did anyone else. One generally takes it, when statements are made in court and not challenged, that they are accepted by the court. So we have it that the magistrates, with that knowledge, decided to send Phipps to prison.

The facts about what happened to him when he was received in prison—here I enter the part of the case in which my right hon. Friend's responsibility, through the Prison Commissioners, is engaged—are not really disputed. The hon. Gentleman himself referred to the salient ones. Perhaps I should just elaborate what he told us very slightly. Phipps was medically examined on reception into Birmingham Prison on the day he had appeared before the magistrates, which was 19th December. That medical examination revealed that he had advanced mitral disease which, in medical terminology, appeared to be compensated, or offset, by the fact that the heart was functioning adequately, in spite of the lesion which accompanied the mitral disease of the heart.

Although there was obviously, as there is always in these cases, I understand, a risk of a sudden and dangerous deterioration in the condition of the heart, there was no reason to think, as a result of that medical examination, that death was imminent.

As I informed the hon. Member in reply to his Questions on 6th February, Phipps was placed on light sedentary work. He was, in fact, breaking down electrical equipment, and I am told that it was sedentary and not in any way strenuous work. He was in a cell which was properly heated by a central heating system which heated other cells. He was under medical supervision almost daily from the time of his reception and he was again seen by prison doctors on the dates that the hon. Member mentioned between 21st and 25th December. But he was seen by the prison doctors on those dates not on account of any heart failure or anything like that, but on account of bronchial trouble and constipation. However, on 27th December symptoms suggesting a deterioration of the heart condition were noticed, and so he was at once removed to the prison hospital. He was given treatment, and on 4th January he was seen by a consultant physician, who approved the treatment being given to him in hospital. He died two days later, on the 6th.

A post-mortem examination was held which showed that he died of heart disease complicated by pneumonia. I do not wish to make too strong a point of this, but it is material to note that at no time did Phipps make any representation either to my right hon. Friend or to the Prison Commissioners about either his sentence or his treatment in hospital.

Those are the essential facts. Like the hon. Gentleman, I grieve for his family in their sad loss, but I most earnestly feel that on those facts it cannot be said that his death was caused by his being sentenced to prison, by the life which he led in prison or by the treatment which he received medically after his sentence. Indeed, it might, on the other hand, be true to say that a man in his condition can be at least as well cared for after being sent to prison as he might have been outside. After all, he was taken straight to the prison hospital when it was found that his heart was giving him trouble.

In those circumstances, while we must all regret the fatal outcome of his sentence and sympathise with his widow and children in their loss, I cannot accept that any strictures should rightly be laid upon anyone who had anything to do with this very sad case.

I thank the Joint Under-Secretary for the care with which he has gone into this whole question, which, I am sure, will allay many of the anxieties felt by certain people in Coventry. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman, however, say whether the pneumonia was in any way induced by the man's translation to prison and whether it was thought by the doctors that there were any aggravating factors during his stay in prison which accelerated his death?

No. So far as the pneumonia is concerned, I ask the hon. Member to bear in mind that the man was in any event a bronchial subject.

Medically, the position is not easy to understand, but I will do my best to explain it. The prisoner was dying of heart disease and his heart was not properly functioning. As a result, his lungs became congested with blood and pneumonia supervened and was, therefore, a contributory cause of death. This may happen, and does happen rather frequently, to patients in the terminal stages of a heart condition of that kind. The fact that it happened in this case is, I am advised, not unusual in any way.

The fair answer, therefore, to the hon. Member's question is that Phipps had all the medical and physical characteristics which would lead to pneumonia if, with his tendency to heart disease and the tendency to bronchitis, he happened to have a heart attack of the kind that he did. Therefore, this is something which, given such a heart attack and given the conditions I have mentioned, would have occurred whether he was in prison or out of prison. Having been carefully into the case, I can see no evidence to suggest that the conditions in prison or the life that he led there in any way brought on pneumonia.